Blood Sun dz-3

by David Gilman

  “My father?” Tears welled in Max’s eyes.

  The boy nodded. “She said he was beyond the mountains. Your father carried her for days through the jungle. He ran until he could run no more. At the place where the white stone stands at the ocean. That is where he buried her. That is all we know.”

  Dad ran. He ran to save her! Farentino lied! I got it wrong. Dad had run to save her!

  The boy touched Max’s forehead. “It is the time we call blood sun, when the sacrifice must be made. Go to your mother. She is waiting for you in the otherworld. Do not be afraid.” He stepped back.

  This was it.

  The shaman raised the knife, the light glinting on the blade; a wave of sound came from below as the children, Flint and Xavier screamed for Max’s life.

  Max lifted his head. Tears stung his eyes. He gripped the pendant until it cut into his skin. Mum, Dad. I’m sorry! Please help me. Then that moment of pure love and desperate fear deserted him.

  Anger erupted like a volcano unleashing its power. He would not die like a lamb; he would not show how scared he was-he wouldn’t! He would leave them with the foul taste of a curse in their superstitious lives. Thunder rolled around the mountain peaks. The air was still. He sucked in a lungful and spoke each word with as much force as he could muster. “I am wayob! I am Eagle-Jaguar! And my father will kill you all!” he snarled.

  He spat as hard as he could into the shaman’s face. The shaman’s head snapped back, blood splattered the group and the guards released their grip.

  The sacrificial priest was dead.

  25

  Riga lowered the rifle. No one but him was going to kill Max Gordon, and the kid deserved a better death than having his heart cut out or getting a long-range bullet through the head. The gunshot had been swallowed by the rolling thunder and torrential streams that splashed down the hillsides. Riga moved; his injured leg slowed him down, but he had figured out that Max had only one escape route.

  On top of the pyramid, Max was the first to react. The shock of seeing the shaman’s blood splatter across their fine clothes stunned the group into silence. In the past, Mayan kings saw death as an honor and offered their own blood to appease their gods, but for these people to hear a shouted curse and see one of their own die threw them momentarily into disarray. Had the wayob struck the shaman down?

  Max realized what had happened, but there was no time to work out who had shot the priest. Maybe Flint had broken free, found a rifle. From where? It didn’t matter. Max was alive.

  The guards were the first to recover. Whatever they believed about the supernatural, they did not lack courage. They were there to defend the boy and his family. Max was already on his feet. There were no weapons to hand except the shaman’s censer. He swung it. The incense plumed and the men ducked back, shielding their eyes. He felt it connect with one of the guards’ heads. Like an ancestral killing when bodies were thrown down from the top of the pyramid, the man tumbled into space, his cry cut off abruptly as his bones shattered on the steps and his rag-doll body fell limply toward the bottom.

  The rod holding the incense burner snapped. The men lunged at him, but Max sidestepped and grabbed the boy, whose look of confusion turned to fear.

  Max yelled at the men. “Stay back!” He felt a pang of sympathy for picking on the boy who had tried to help him, but he was all Max had as a bargaining tool. The guards ran at him, but Max’s snarl as he half pushed the boy over the edge made his intention clear-Come for me and the boy dies. Max held him over what was almost a sheer drop. His heels slipped; he nearly fell. One of the elders raised a hand and the guards stopped. Max wasn’t sure what to do next. He would not be able to manhandle the boy down those steps, and the moment he released him, the guards would be on him.

  The boy whispered fearfully, “Behind you.”

  Max looked. There was a narrow arched doorway with steps inside leading down. He pulled the boy with him and entered the cool shelter of the pyramid. The stone stairway twisted downward, and he pushed the boy in front of him until light from another doorway spilled into the building. They had quickly reached the first level of the pyramid, where the kings of old would have entered and moved up to the top, showing themselves to the people, convincing them that they were descended from the gods. No more than a magician’s trick.

  But there were no tricks that could make Max disappear; he would have to make a run for it on his own. He held the boy away at arm’s length, letting him feel the security of the wall against his back, then released him. The boy may have told him about his mother, but he had also been prepared to stand back and let them cut out Max’s heart.

  One last question. Max pointed toward the satellite dish. “Does that belong to the men who came here, who imprisoned everybody? The man who arrived in the helicopter?”

  The boy nodded. “We cannot go there; it is where they take our blood. It is protected. No one can go there.”

  Max had to know if that place held any other answers to his mother’s death. He couldn’t see an obvious way in through the jungle; it seemed to be blocked by a jagged scar of a ravine.

  “What sort of protection?”

  “They took one of our people and sent him through that place to show us,” the boy said, pointing to the building next to the pyramid. “It is the Razor House. We heard him scream before he was cut to pieces. Go. You must run. I will tell the guards you have gone toward the jungle.”

  No more questions. Max turned away and began the long run down, hoping the boy would do as he said, or he would still have to avoid the warriors on the ground.

  Riga followed the turbulent water that channeled down toward the compound. Max Gordon had his wits about him. He had got this far. Did the kid know anything about this place? Cazamind wanted Riga dead because he had disobeyed him and entered this forbidden killing ground. His secret was here somewhere. Did Max Gordon know what it was?

  He saw children and an old man being herded away by warriors. They had been spooked by what they’d seen on the sacrificial site. Riga could have shot a dozen of the men before they knew what hit them, but they were unimportant, and he did not have time-a shadow lengthened down the side of the pyramid. It was Max heading for the building where the water hurtled in a torrent of power through a narrow sluice. What was there? He wasn’t going to get down in time before the English boy reached the building’s entrance.

  Riga flung himself into the water chute.

  Max could see Flint’s feathered hat jostling amid the crowd of children. He knew Xavier would still be with him, but there was nothing he could do to help them now. The tendons and muscles in his legs screamed for rest. This was worse than any sports training he had ever done, but there was something else driving him now-something that felt like revenge. He had doubted his father. How could he have thought his dad was a coward and had abandoned his mother? So why did he feel this surge of vengeance? Who was it against? As he pounded downward, he realized it was against himself.

  He hit the ground running. Sprinting through the shadowed alleyway between the pyramid and the Razor House, he felt a low rumbling in the ground beneath his feet. Another earth tremor? He braced himself against a wall, but there was no surge of power rolling through the ground. This was coming from below the building. Running to the end of the passageway, he could see that the ball court was being cleared of the prisoners, and the guards moved in the opposite direction. The Mayan boy had given him a chance. He turned the corner quickly and stepped into the gaping cold shadow of the doorway. Dust sprinkled from the ceiling; the walls trembled with a slow, grinding vibration. He moved farther into the chilled interior. The light from the entrance was too far back to penetrate this deeply. He closed his eyes, wanting the sunlight from seconds ago to seep away so he could see into the gloom. Something moved. It whispered. The air brushed his face. He stopped.

  Whoosh.

  Stale air wafted past his face.

  He waited, caution reining in his urgency. The Razor House
? Blades?

  Whoosh.

  Like a fan.

  He took a step back, opened his eyes and concentrated on the darkness.

  Wooden poles, like fallen sticks, crisscrossed the narrow passage that led through the building. It was an ancient but intricate design to obscure and obstruct any further movement. The sour taste of nausea caught his throat. It was no fan that cut the air-it was hundreds of flint blades attached to wooden arms bound to those turning poles. Razor-sharp. They were like a meat grinder. With more angles than the face of a diamond, any one of those flints would snag clothing or flesh and churn their victim into its shredding jaws-like a boa constrictor’s teeth.

  Max backed away, lest the mesmerizing machinery draw him in. One more step forward and it would snare him, then slice and hack him in a terrifying and painfully slow death.

  If he wanted to get through, he had to find what drove the stone-wheeled machinery and destroy it. He turned. A shadow stretched in front of him. A man, water dripping from his clothes, stood silhouetted in the entrance. His leg was tied with a sweat rag, a rifle gripped casually in one hand, his backlit face in shadow.

  Max knew without a doubt that if he saw this man’s eyes, they would have the same cold, penetrating gaze of the man who had nearly killed him in the British Museum.

  “Hello, Max,” he said. “My name is Riga.”

  Charlie Morgan and her convoy of ex-British Army jungle fighters had pursued the men from the City of Lost Souls. The old man who drove a battered supply truck in and out of the jungle stronghold had scraped the route map into the dirt, showing there was only one entrance, which lay between rugged boulders.

  She had been relegated to the back of the convoy, because the men knew the action would be ferocious. As much violence as the ex-soldiers could muster would be inflicted on the mercenary banditos, as the old man called them. The Brits had age and experience on their side, but the defenders of the jungle stronghold outnumbered them at least three or four to one. Charlie Morgan was trained to fight, but she had never seen this type of intense and determined action before. Her ex-soldiers moved in pairs, fire and maneuver, gaining ground, calling out to each other, working the terrain to their advantage.

  The enemy’s heavy machine gun, mounted on the back of a pickup truck, laid down wicked fire, shattering tree trunks and flailing branches and leaves. It was slowing her men’s flanking attack. Within moments they would be forced to find dead ground beneath the killing fire, and their momentum would grind to a halt. A failed attack meant a failed result for her. And she wanted success more than anything.

  She got behind the wheel of the old Land Rover, slammed it into gear and floored the accelerator pedal. The 4?4 bit into the mud and chewed undergrowth as she wrestled the wheel left and right, avoiding other vehicles, tree stumps and gullies. She was going for the gap, and the machine gun turned its attention to her speeding approach.

  As the gun swung and opened fire, her men on the ground took advantage of the brief respite and moved forward. She had created a diversion that allowed the attack to regain momentum, but Charlie was now staring down the barrel of the machine gun and saw the spent cartridge cases spinning away as the line of fire tracked her approach on the red dirt road.

  The last thing she remembered was throwing herself down as the windscreen shattered. The careering Land Rover plowed off into the undergrowth and immediately became ensnared like an animal in a trap.

  Max stood, unable to react for a moment, his thoughts shattering against the wall like water splashing on a rock. How had this man got to him? All this way? After all this time? Had he been the one pursuing him downriver in that helicopter? It was like a dark angel standing in the entrance. And yet he made no move to raise the rifle. Clearly it had been he who’d killed the shaman. What did he want?

  Even now Riga had little to say. He reached out to the wall with his free hand and hauled down a wooden lever. There was a sudden gush of water as if a small waterfall had been blocked.

  “Water powers a wheel that spins all those blades. We’re both looking for answers now, Max. You’re a hard boy to kill. You’ve earned the right to live awhile longer.”

  The poles creaked in the waterwheel and finally stopped. Water dripped somewhere; each drop like a small, echoing threat that the power could be unleashed again.

  Max had not moved. He knew that, even with the poles unmoving behind him, he would not be able to make a quick escape. Trying to get past those blades would be like edging through razor wire. “Who sent you? Did you kill Danny Maguire? Why are you after me? Tell me!” The questions came quickly. He wanted to buy time as well as get answers.

  Riga did not move from the entrance. He was not going to give Max, with his speed and agility, a chance to escape. He shrugged. “Why not? It makes no difference now. There’s a man called Cazamind, and he runs this project-whatever it is. This is his secret. Danny Maguire caught some stinking disease that chewed up his body and sucked out his brain. Blood poured out of every pore, even his eyes. When he fell on the high-voltage rail, it fried everything and stopped it spreading, but Cazamind had him cremated, just in case. And this place is connected with it. That’s why Cazamind didn’t want you getting close. In case you found things out.”

  Max’s stomach lurched as he thought of his mother. Had her beauty drowned in blood? But Riga, why was he here now? Why had he not killed Max already?

  Riga looked at him, sensing the question flitting through the boy’s mind. “I came here to kill you-but Cazamind tried to kill me. He didn’t want me to find out his secret either.”

  Max’s mind raced. He was on the brink with Riga. In a second he could kill Max. Why hadn’t he? He knew the answer!

  “You think I know what’s going on here and how to get my hands on that secret,” Max said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe. Definitely. Otherwise you would have killed me by now. Well, I do know that there’s something going on.…” He hesitated. This wasn’t good enough. He had to convince Riga. “My mother left me clues,” he lied. If he could stay alive long enough to reach that satellite dish, he might find a way of calling for help.

  “What kind of clues?”

  “Photographs.”

  Max saw something cross Riga’s eyes. Recognition? Understanding? Belief? “You know my mother was here.”

  “OK,” Riga said, “he told me that.”

  Max nearly winced. This Cazamind knew his mother had been out here. Had he been the man who’d refused to airlift her to safety? “You need me. I know where to go,” he bluffed.

  Riga studied him. Max stared back, desperately hoping his lies would not flicker through his eyes.

  “Through here?” Riga asked, nodding toward the blades lurking in the darkness.

  “Yes. It’s the only way.”

  Riga thought about it. “All right. You take me there.”

  “What happens then-between you and me?”

  “A contract is a contract. But when the time comes, I’ll give you a chance. You have my word. You deserve that.” Riga smiled. “You remind me of myself when I was a kid.”

  “I’m nothing like you,” Max said. “And if I get out of here, I’ll do everything I can to make sure you’re caught.”

  “It’s a deal,” Riga said. “Now get over here and help me with this lever or we’ll never get through those blades.”

  Max moved cautiously, but he knew he had no choice. Riga could have killed him then and there and hadn’t. So now the assassin and his quarry would work together to reveal a secret whose keeper had tried to kill them both.

  The wooden handle quivered under the weight of the water that was building up. The lever had to be jammed into position. Riga leaned his weight down onto it and shoved his rifle into Max’s hands. Max could see exactly what needed to be done. He settled the butt of the rifle onto the lever and its barrel into the wall so that the pressure of water could not force it upward and start the blades spinning.

 
; Riga took his weight off the lever; the rifle took the strain. “OK. Go,” Riga said.

  Max looked at the vicious obstacle course and then at the manhunter. “You first,” Max said.

  Riga laughed. The kid had guts, but was he a killer? Would he yank the rifle away and unleash the water pressure when Riga was in the middle of all those blades? He had answered that question once before; nothing had changed. Max Gordon was no killer. He shook his backpack free and pulled out half a dozen small flares. He ripped the tabs clear and threw each one as far as he could, clattering them through the blades and poles into the darkness. Their crimson glow dabbed the blades’ tips.

  He moved into the labyrinth. Max gave him a couple of seconds’ head start and then followed. His eyes quickly adjusted to the flickering light, and he bent and twisted his body like a contortionist through the sharpened flesh shredders. He could see a couple of the points had nicked Riga’s skin as he bent and stooped his way around the lethal obstacles. Riga had made no sound, as if impervious to pain. Max winced; his concentration had flagged watching Riga’s movement, and one of the blades had scraped into his back. He felt the warm trickle of blood ooze like sweat. But he knew they were almost through, because he could see light seeping through from the other end of the building. Another four or five meters and they would be clear.

  He wanted to move more quickly, but the blades snagged his shirt and trousers like barbed wire. He had to pick his way clear. Riga seemed to be making better progress and was almost through.

  And then Max’s legs trembled. He felt the panic rise quickly and almost reached out to grasp one of the blade-tipped arms for support. He twisted his upper body to balance the movement under his boots. Another earth tremor.