The Aztec Heresy

by Paul Christopher

  ‘‘Oosters?’’ Guido queried.

  ‘‘What the hell are the Chinese doing here?’’ Eli said.

  There was the distinctive sound of an automatic pistol being cocked.

  ‘‘Perhaps I could ask you the same question, ’’ said an accented voice out of the darkness, and then Arkady Tomas Cruz stepped into the dying light.

  ‘‘This bloody tunnel goes on forever,’’ muttered Billy Pilgrim, hacking away at the undergrowth crowding the narrow passageway that led deep into the observatory-temple. It had taken Finn less than ten minutes to find the site of the entranceway, but so far it had taken them almost an hour to cut their way through the tunnel, one holding the flashlight while the other chopped with the machete and the other tools Garza had left behind for them.

  ‘‘Don’t be such a sourpuss,’’ answered Finn, holding the light. ‘‘This is important. This site has never been broken into. It’s pristine. There’s no telling what we’ll find.’’

  ‘‘Bugs,’’ answered Billy. ‘‘There’ll be bugs, and if it’s not bugs it’ll be snakes. Maybe both.’’

  ‘‘Look,’’ whispered Finn. She shone the big flashlight onto the walls. Long ago, perhaps four or five hundred years before, there had been a thick layer of mortar laid down over the heavy stones. The mortar, while still wet, had been used as the ground for a series of murals that ran along the walls at eye level. ‘‘It’s the same as the Codex we found aboard the ship,’’ said Finn. There were a number of glyphs that were clearly of Spanish soldiers and one of a man in a steel helmet but wearing a Mayan feather cloak. ‘‘Cortéz himself,’’ murmured Finn. ‘‘It has to be.’’

  ‘‘Can you read any more of it?’’

  ‘‘Not really, except that this was some sort of place used by royalty even before Cortéz arrived. That’s what the glyph of the guy in the big headdress represents.’’

  ‘‘A royal observatory?’’

  ‘‘Could be’’—Finn nodded—‘‘but this painting is from much later than that.’’

  ‘‘Remind me again why we’re doing this in the middle of the night in the middle of a revolution in the middle of the jungle?’’ Billy asked, stopping for a rest, hands on his knees, panting from the effort of cutting through the roots and undergrowth within the tunnel.

  ‘‘Garza needs a place for the plutonium cores,’’ answered Finn. ‘‘Which means we need to find a cenote under this temple.’’

  ‘‘Oh, right.’’ Bill nodded weakly. ‘‘The plutonium cores from the hydrogen bombs that appear to be in the hands of a Mexican drug lord.’’ He lifted the machete and started hacking at the undergrowth again. ‘‘How do you get involved in these things, Fiona? Explain it to me again.’’ The young British lord heaved a heartfelt sigh. ‘‘Last time it was secret codes in Rembrandts and typhoons, the time before that it was scorpions in the Libyan desert and sunken cruise ships, and before that I’m given to understand it was stolen Michelangelos under the streets of New York.’’ He shook his head. ‘‘Takes real skill, that sort of thing.’’

  ‘‘Just lucky, I guess,’’ she answered. ‘‘Keep digging.’’

  ‘‘Bollocks,’’ grunted Billy. He took a swipe with the blade and the floor suddenly dropped out from underneath his feet and he promptly disappeared.

  ‘‘We are here for the bombs down there,’’ said Garza flatly, speaking in English.

  ‘‘Mexican, yes?’’ Arkady said.

  ‘‘Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional. ’’

  ‘‘Ah.’’ Arkady kept the dark gray Makarov pistol steady on Garza’s midsection.

  ‘‘And you?’’ Garza asked. ‘‘Cubano, sí?’’

  "Sí, da.’’

  ‘‘One of those.’’ Garza nodded.

  ‘‘One of those,’’ said Arkady. ‘‘A brown Russian. Sometimes called a Rubano.’’

  ‘‘And the Chinese?’’

  ‘‘Friends of mine.’’

  ‘‘Here for the bombs.’’

  ‘‘That’s what Guzman thinks.’’

  ‘‘Guzman. Angel Guzman? The drug lord.’’

  ‘‘That’s not what he calls himself.’’

  ‘‘You said thinks.’’

  ‘‘He’s out of his mind. Maniacs shouldn’t have hydrogen bombs. Stalin and the hydrogen bomb couldn’t coexist on the same planet. Stalin had to go.’’

  ‘‘You sound sure of yourself.’’

  ‘‘I’m half Russian. We know these things, us Russians.’’

  ‘‘Why should I believe you?’’ Garza said.

  ‘‘In the first place, I’m the one with the gun. In the second place, why would I lie when I could just shoot you instead.’’ Arkady looked at the other two. ‘‘Who are they?’’

  ‘‘Friends. Part of an archaeological expedition that got in the way of some rather large ants.’’

  ‘‘We heard they were nearby. Guzman thinks they’re monsters created by his bombs. He says it’s a sign he’s meant to be king of Mexico.’’

  ‘‘Idi Amin of the Yucatán.’’

  ‘‘Something like that.’’

  ‘‘So now what do we do?’’

  ‘‘You could put down the gun for a start.’’

  Arkady lowered his weapon slightly.

  ‘‘So, now what?’’

  ‘‘We work together. There’s a temple, an observatory about a mile or so away from here. Where the bombs were.’’

  ‘‘I know it.’’

  ‘‘These people have some friends who’re sure the temple is built on top of a hidden cenote. You bring along the cores of the bombs and we sink them there.’’

  ‘‘We were going to blow up the cores right here, get rid of the bombs and Guzman at the same time.’’

  ‘‘And turn a few square miles of my country into an irradiated wasteland?’’

  Arkady shrugged. ‘‘Not a Cuban wasteland, however. Not my problem.’’

  ‘‘No. Mine.’’

  ‘‘You have a way to detonate the casings?’’

  ‘‘In the backpack.’’

  ‘‘We were going to booby-trap the high-explosive triggers.’’

  ‘‘And get away in time?’’

  ‘‘It would be close. My Chinese friends are fairly sure, however.’’

  ‘‘It would cause a great deal of trouble if your Oriental friends were captured. International trouble.’’

  ‘‘Or a Cuban.’’ Arkady smiled. ‘‘Especially one who is half Russian.’’

  ‘‘Best to avoid it if possible, especially since our goals are the same. Or so you say.’’

  ‘‘You doubt me?’’ Arkady asked.

  ‘‘I doubt everything,’’ said Garza. ‘‘That’s the business I’m in.’’ The Mexican paused. ‘‘A truce?’’

  ‘‘For the time being,’’ said Arkady. ‘‘Until we figure this thing out. A truce.’’

  25

  "Billy!"

  For a few moments there was nothing and then Finn heard a faint groan.

  ‘‘Billy! Are you all right?!’’

  ‘‘Of course I’m all right. I just fell through the floor of a Mayan temple and cracked my head on a great bloody slab of polished rock. God knows, perhaps it’s the bloody carapace of a giant bloody mutated bug that’s about to swallow me whole, but I wouldn’t bloody well know, would I, because it’s dark as granny’s foot locker down this bloody rabbit hole, isn’t it?’’

  He groaned again.

  Finn laughed out loud. If he could grumble like that he wasn’t badly hurt. She took a length of rope out of the pack Garza had left and tied it firmly to a thick twist of root protruding through the wall of the corridor.

  ‘‘I’m coming down,’’ she warned. She tossed the end of the rope down through the ragged hole in the floor of the passageway. She threw the pack over one shoulder, clipped the end of the flashlight tether to her belt, turned, and began to lower herself through the hole.

  The bottom was covered in a heavy layer of veget
ative undergrowth that had intruded over the centuries, as well as the crumbled, thin limestone blocks that Billy had fallen through, weakened by dampness and the passage of time. Finn unclipped the flashlight and shone it around the chamber. The room was large, at least fifteen or twenty feet long and half as wide, the ancient ceiling twelve feet above them. The wall she faced was bare except for a single glyph in the center in a perfect circle. At first glance it appeared to show some sort of spiraling design. She turned the light away, searching for Billy.

  The light found him sitting slumped on a shelf in the rock wall, rubbing his knee. Behind him on the near wall was the huge painted figure of a jaguar.

  ‘‘Well, here we are then,’’ said Billy. ‘‘The question is, where is here?’’

  ‘‘A burial chamber,’’ said Finn without hesitation. Her heart began to pound with excitement. ‘‘I think you’re sitting on the occupant.’’

  Billy jumped up as though the stone beneath him was red-hot. Finn shone the light down.

  ‘‘Dear God,’’ she whispered.

  The shelf Billy had been using as a seat was actually the top of a huge rectangular stone box. The box, a sarcophagus, was made out of huge sheets of quarried limestone. It stood at least four feet high and virtually filled one end of the chamber, making it ten or twelve feet long. The side panels and the lid were intricately painted and carved, the colors as fresh and bright as they’d been laid down in the wet mortar half a millennium before.

  The designs were classic, bats, jaguars, and birds swirling in wonderful patterns, a Mayan king in the center wearing a huge feathered headdress of office and carrying a ceremonial shield and spear. His chest was covered in a breastplate of jade squares and he wore a jade helmet in the shape of a snarling jaguar’s head. On his belt was an ornate obsidian sword, and in his other hand an obsidian fighting club.

  One arm was raised, pointing at the far end of the massive lid, where something that looked vaguely like an old-fashioned Mercury space capsule arced through the sky trailing fire.

  ‘‘Eric somebody or other,’’ said Billy as Finn’s light lingered.

  ‘‘Von Daniken,’’ Finn answered. ‘‘Chariots of the Gods. He had a weird theory about ancient spaceships. Historical UFOs. It’s actually a Mayan representation of the planet Venus, which they thought was a star. Almost all Mayan and Aztec cosmology is based on the transit of Venus across the equator. It made for almost perfect mathematical accuracy.’’

  ‘‘Don’t ask me,’’ said Lord Billy. ‘‘I needed a tutor to get me a bare pass on my R-level maths.’’ The Englishman paused. ‘‘Although it seems to me that he’s pointing to that round thingee on the wall.’’

  Finn shone the flashlight on the large round glyph she’d spotted when she first lowered herself into the burial chamber.

  It was at least two feet in diameter, and even on close examination looked like the whorled imaginative doodling of a bored schoolchild. To the left were a series of ladderlike spirals that went down to a narrow rectangle, and from a circular pattern in the center of the rectangle a whole series of interlocking angled patterns twisted and turned in a complex maze that led to another circle in the upper right. Both of the circular areas were marked by the flat outlined shape of a hand. Finn had seen a lot of Mayan hieroglyphs but never one like this.

  ‘‘Can you read it?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘Not even close,’’ said Finn, shaking her head.

  ‘‘Maybe it’s not supposed to mean anything at all,’’ offered Billy.

  ‘‘Unlikely,’’ said Finn. ‘‘This is a royal tomb. Anything here is here for a reason.’’

  ‘‘No cenote pool.’’

  ‘‘Gee, I hadn’t noticed,’’ said Finn, continuing to examine the circular pattern.

  ‘‘I thought it was only cavemen who used hand patterns like that,’’ said Billy.

  ‘‘It’s common to most cultures, certainly Mesoamericans.’’

  ‘‘I used to draw things like that in school,’’ mused Billy. ‘‘Especially in classes I didn’t much care for. Calculus and demotic Greek. Mr. Pieman.’’

  ‘‘Pieman?’’

  ‘‘We used to call him Simple. You know, Simple Simon met a pieman going to the fair . . .’’

  ‘‘I got it the first time round.’’ Finn laughed.

  ‘‘Everyone used to draw those. We’d hand them around and see who could work out the most complicated mazes.’’

  ‘‘That’s it,’’ said Finn, staring at the ancient circular drawing painted on the wall.

  ‘‘That’s what?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘It’s a maze. A map. That snaky thing is almost certainly the staircase in the observatory tower up above us. The rectangle is the burial vault. That other circle at the end of the maze pattern could be the cenote.’’

  ‘‘But where do we start?’’ Billy asked. ‘‘How do we get into the maze? I can’t see any way out of here.’’

  Finn stepped forward and stared at the map on the wall. The hand outline on the glyph was located in the center of the circular pattern laid over the rectangle. The hand on the hieroglyphic was the hand she was looking at right now. Tentatively she reached up and placed her own hand over the outline drawn five hundred years before. It was an eerily accurate fit.

  ‘‘Press here,’’ she murmured. And she did. There was a deep-throated groaning noise, as though the very earth around them was in pain, and then the huge circular glyph rotated on hidden hinges, revealing the dark entrance to a tunnel behind the wall.

  ‘‘Cheeky buggers,’’ said Billy, staring at the yawning hole. ‘‘Hiding that there all this time.’’

  Finn could feel a faint cool breeze against her cheek.

  ‘‘This leads to the outside.’’

  ‘‘We’re not going in there, are we?’’ Billy said. ‘‘What about the others? How will they manage to find us?’’

  ‘‘Didn’t I see some glow sticks in the pack Garza left us?’’

  ‘‘What about it?’’

  ‘‘We leave a trail of bread crumbs for them to follow. If we’re going to find deep water for those plutonium cores, it’s the only way.’’

  Billy dug around in the pack and came out with a handful of the eight-inch-long batons. He counted them.

  ‘‘Eighteen.’’

  ‘‘That should do. Crack one and let’s get moving.’’

  Billy sighed. He bent one of the plastic sticks, breaking the fragile interior glass vial inside and activating the chemical reaction. A soft green glow filled the cavernous chamber. Finn gripped the flashlight and stepped through the hole. Heaving the pack onto his back, Billy followed, sighing.

  ‘‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, all in the valley of Death rode the six hundred. ’Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!’ he said: Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred.’’

  ‘‘Oh, shut up,’’ said Finn.

  26

  "This is definitely not going to work," muttered Eli Santoro, pulling the fatigue cap lower over his eyes as he marched with the others across the compound.

  ‘‘I thought all you Americans were positive thinkers,’’ said Arkady Cruz, leading Eli and Guido across to the far palisade and one of the shacklike huts against the gate-side wall. Cruz had found the two outsiders the proper uniforms for members of Angel Guzman’s little army and was now preparing to arm them to the teeth.

  ‘‘Eyes left,’’ said Cruz under his breath. Eli looked. Beside the shack were a line of three of the roughly armored jungle buggies the soldiers used to get around in.

  ‘‘Can you drive that?’’ Cruz asked.

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘What about you?’’ Cruz asked Guido, who towered over Cruz and was larger than any one of Guzman’s soldiers Cruz had seen so far.

  ‘‘Positief.’’ The big Dutchman nodded. ‘‘Makkelijk.’’

  ‘‘Let’s hope that means yes,’’ said the submarine captain.
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br />   ‘‘It does,’’ said Garza. ‘‘What’s the plan?’’

  ‘‘We get you into the weapons hut, pick up a few things we’re going to need, then make like John Wayne in Fort Apache.’’

  ‘‘What?’’ Eli said, startled.

  ‘‘Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande. You know, Howard Hawks’s cavalry trilogy. What kind of an American are you, gringo?’’

  ‘‘What kind of a Cuban are you?’’ Eli responded.

  ‘‘One who watches a lot of old movies on boring patrols.’’ Cruz laughed. He jogged up three rickety steps and ducked through the open doorway of the makeshift armory. The tin-roofed shed smelled of hot metal and gun oil. It was also very dark.

  Eli could just make out racks of weapons and shelves loaded with wooden and cardboard boxes of ammunition. Cruz handed Eli and Guido identical weapons. They looked like old-fashioned wood-stock AK-47s with a flare gun strapped on underneath, giving the forward area under the barrel its own trigger. The description wasn’t far off.

  ‘‘Russian GP-30 grenade launchers,’’ said Cruz, handing them over along with the canvas sacks full of projectiles. ‘‘Jam a round down the barrel until you hear a click, then squeeze the trigger. Make sure you put the stock against your shoulder before you fire or you’ll blow your arm off. Effective range is about a hundred and fifty yards. Got it?’’