The Aztec Heresy

by Paul Christopher

  ‘‘Got it.’’ Eli nodded.

  ‘‘Got it,’’ said Guido, who had used something much like it when he had been among the last Dutchmen to be inducted into the army for two years of national service back in the late ’90s.

  He took one of the stumpy-looking 40mm grenades, slid it into the barrel, and turned it expertly in the socket. It clicked loudly.

  ‘‘Good,’’ said Cruz. He handed Garza a bazooka-like RPG rocket for himself. ‘‘I’ll drive the first buggy with you as my passenger,’’ he said, nodding to Garza. ‘‘You take out the big half-round hut with the RPG as a distraction and we pick up one of my Chinese friends with the cores.

  ‘‘You, American, come in behind me and pick up the man with the second core. Dutchman, you come third and pick up the last two men. One of them is the leader. His name is Wong Fei Hung, but he answers to Colonel.

  ‘‘Guy with a nasty scar on his face. He’s already armed, except Guzman doesn’t know it. He and his companion will have set the charges you brought with you. The colonel’s job is to take out Guzman if he gets the opportunity. We go out through the main gate firing and hope your friends have found a way to get rid of the cores and save us from Guzman’s wrath. He cut a guy in half yesterday with a machete. Not pleasant.’’

  ‘‘Great pep talk,’’ muttered Eli.

  ‘‘Go, Yankees.’’ Cruz grinned. He headed out of the shack and back into the compound, the three men behind him. None of the other soldiers in the fort seemed to be paying any attention. There was no sign of Guzman. The four Chinese were still clustered around the fly tent in front of the Quonset hut.

  ‘‘Any signal to let this colonel know we’re ready?’’ Eli asked, glancing nervously around the compound. Too many men, too many guns.

  ‘‘The first shot,’’ said the Cuban. ‘‘Now, let’s vamos!’’

  Without the slightest hesitation Cruz clambered into the nearest jungle buggy, motioned Garza into the canvas-strapped seat beside him, and fired up the ignition. Garza tried to make the RPG as unobtrusive as possible, but it was hard to be discreet with a rocket launcher. No one paid the slightest attention. Eli climbed into the second buggy and fired up the roaring, unmuffled engine. Maybe they did this every night, a dusk patrol of the perimeter.

  Behind him Eli heard Guido start up the third buggy. There was a roar as the John Wayne Cuban let out a bloodcurdling wail and sped off in a cloud of dust, and after that things started moving unbelievably quickly.

  Just keeping the bouncing, leaping, slewing jungle buggy behind Cruz was hard enough, but he was vaguely aware of the bulky shape of Garza half standing in his canvas seat in the forward buggy, aiming the RPG toward the Quonset hut.

  There was a huge hand-clapping explosion, a six-foot tongue of flame from the rear of the RPG, and almost magically the Quonset hut seemed to lift completely off the ground and disintegrate in front of his eyes. Eli was vaguely aware of seeing one of the Chinese technicians grab something off the trestle table and dive into the rear of the buggy, and then it was his turn.

  He dragged his buggy around just in time for the second technician to vault into the seat beside him. Without a word the man picked up the grenade launcher, loaded it and hunkered down in his seat, balancing the fat flare gun barrel on the edge of the door frame.

  He was barely aware of the sound of rapid firing and then, as they swung toward the main gate, he saw a short potbellied figure appear on the front porch of the big tin-roofed headquarters building.

  The man had a pistol in his hand and a look of uncomprehending fury on his round, Charlie Brown face, centered with a silly mustache fifty years out of style. Then, almost magically, with cartoonish idiocy, the face sucked in on itself and then disappeared in an amazing explosion of flowering brains, blood, and other associated tissue that looked as though the drug lord’s neck had suddenly turned into an active volcano.

  The headless corpse stood for a moment, then crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut. Beside him Eli’s passenger steadied the grenade launcher, aimed it over the heads of Cruz and Garza, then fired. There was a hard cracking noise and Eli actually saw the grenade loop over the lead buggy’s front end and crash into the front gate.

  There was a scream from somewhere and out of the corner of his eye again Eli saw his passenger actually pulled out of his seat and thrown to the ground by the force of the round that had killed in a split second. There was no time to mourn or even be afraid. Directly ahead of him the palisade gate turned into a sheet of flame as the grenade exploded, and then he was out of the compound, heading down the narrow track into the jungle, swallowed by the night. The fight was over. The chase was on.

  27

  Finn shone the beam of the flashlight into the opening. The floor of the passage was split and wet, evidence that water flowed down it regularly. There seemed to be another passage as well, part of the maze, a low oval tunnel, which, if they chose it, would force them to walk stooped over.

  ‘‘Time to play Jeopardy! again?’’ Billy asked, coming up beside her. Since joining the crew of the Hispaniola he’d become a devoted fan of Alex Trebek and the addictive show. ‘‘I’m for the main fissure.’’

  ‘‘That’s because you don’t want to bend over,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘No,’’ said Billy. ‘‘That’s because the main fissure is wet, and I thought water was what we were looking for.’’

  ‘‘Point.’’

  ‘‘Thank you.’’

  Finn shone the flashlight into the narrower slot and then followed the beam, Billy close behind, dropping a second glow stick just inside the entrance to mark their way. Almost instantly Billy regretted his choice; the clammy walls of the fissure were only inches from his shoulders. If he deviated at all from the exact center of the tunnel his arms brushed the walls, each touch claustrophobically reminding him of what a cramped space he was in. He tried to keep his eyes fixed on the bobbing of Finn’s light ahead of him, gritting his teeth against the screams of panic he’d like to release. Cramped spaces were definitely not his forte.

  As they progressed, small streams of water joined the tiny trickle on the floor, seemingly coming out of nowhere, oozing out of almost invisible cracks in the limestone in the walls and ceiling of the passage. Twenty minutes in they were up to their knees. Billy crammed another glow stick into a wider crack in the wall.

  ‘‘What do we do if it gets any deeper?’’

  ‘‘Swim,’’ answered Finn, grinning back at him, but he knew she was worried too. They slogged on. Billy could feel the tension and his claustrophobia increasing.

  ‘‘Try reciting the multiplication tables. It takes your mind off things,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘I told you maths was never my subject.’’

  ‘‘Decline a few Latin verbs then.’’

  ‘‘Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatus, amant.’’

  ‘‘What’s that?’’

  ‘‘To love.’’

  ‘‘Try something else.’’

  ‘‘Ad praesens ova cras pullis sunt meliora.’’

  ‘‘What in the name of heaven is that?’’

  ‘‘Eggs today are better than chickens tomorrow. ’’

  ‘‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?’’

  ‘‘Something like that.’’

  ‘‘Quiet!’’

  ‘‘Silentium.’’

  ‘‘No, really.’’

  ‘‘Profecto.’’

  ‘‘Shut up and listen!’’

  Billy finally got the message. He stopped in his tracks and listened.

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘An echo,’’ said Finn, excitement rising in her voice.

  ‘‘What does that mean?’’

  ‘‘The fissure widens somewhere ahead. A cave. The cenote. Maybe where all this water drains.’’

  ‘‘Then let’s get going,’’ said Billy. They moved forward. Within a few feet the fissure began to narrow even more, the cold water pushing hard against th
e backs of their legs. Billy was forced to reach out and grab the slimy limestone walls for whatever grip he could find to keep from being bowled over by the rushing stream. As they went farther down, even the walls seemed to come together. At first Billy thought it was his fevered imagination conjuring up more Indiana Jones-style fantasies, but then he realized that the nightmare was real. The walls really were closing in on him. Within a few minutes they could no longer walk face-on and had to shuffle sideways, their noses to the wall only a few inches away. As the passage narrowed, the water naturally rose until it was frothing under their armpits. Billy knew he couldn’t take much more. His teeth began to chatter.

  ‘‘You okay?’’ Finn asked, turning back to him, the light shining brightly.

  ‘‘Just keep going,’’ he grated, pushing onward.

  A second later the light disappeared and Billy gasped with horror, terrified that Finn had vanished into some unseen pothole in front of them. Then the light reappeared and the sound of the water seemed to increase by a thousand percent. Billy took a stumbling step forward and suddenly he was out of the fissure and standing in a huge open cave, the water rushing out of the crack behind them as though it was spilling from a broken pipe. Finn swung the light around.

  ‘‘Where are we?’’

  ‘‘Heaven, I think,’’ said Finn, her voice filled with awe.

  The cavern was no bigger than a large single-family house, rising three stories up to a roof that had vanished long ago. Directly overhead was only the dark night sky, the stars like a wash of fire, the entire drift of the Milky Way laid out before them. At their feet, perhaps ten feet below the ledge they stood on, was the pool of the cenote, the rush of water from their fissure gushing out in a miniature waterfall. Directly in front of them, rising out of the water like one of the mysterious jet-black slabs in the film 2001, was a massive plate of natural obsidian, the black volcanic glass that abounded in the Yucatán and that the Mayans and the Aztecs had valued so highly for its frightening ability to keep a sharp, weapon-grade edge. The obsidian slab was at least twenty feet across and almost perfectly circular, an extrusion of the broad limestone pedestal it sat upon in the center of the cenote. Even from where she stood Finn could see the delicate etching on the highly polished reflective face of the volcanic glass, reflecting each and every star in the night sky above.

  ‘‘A scrying mirror,’’ said Finn, staring.

  ‘‘Scrying?’’ Billy asked.

  ‘‘Divination. Look in the glass and see the future, which is presumably exactly what our dead king back there did. Most cultures have some form of it. Even the Mormons have a version. With a huge mirror like that you could track the stars, navigate, predict astronomical events. You could turn yourself into a god as far as the average Mayan in the street was concerned.’’

  Finn shone the light on the wall behind them. There was a large, roughly constructed limestone seat, or throne, and behind it a neatly carved design in the limestone wall. It was a graphic representation of a star field like the one reflected in the gigantic, naturally occurring obsidian bowl.

  ‘‘He’d sit in the throne and watch the stars,’’ mused Finn. ‘‘Just like a modern-day astronomer. ’’ It was a fascinating image, two astronomers across a millennia, staring into the night sky.

  ‘‘Well, your astronomer king didn’t make that,’’ said Billy, pointing at the star-field design. ‘‘Look.’’

  Finn turned the flashlight on the stone image. There was an inscription at its base:

  FRANCISCO DE ULLOA FECIT

  ‘‘Francisco de Ulloa made this,’’ translated Billy. ‘‘So it’s not the guy in the coffin back there.’’

  ‘‘No,’’ said Finn, a faint smile growing. ‘‘It’s not.’’

  She shone the light across the etched image of the star field. It was close to that of the one etched on the obsidian mirror but somehow different. Her smile broadened.

  ‘‘A treasure map,’’ she said softly. ‘‘A really for truly treasure map.’’

  ‘‘Of what?’’ Billy said.

  ‘‘The way to find the lost treasure of Hernán Cortéz, the millions in gold and jewels he was holding back from the Spanish Inquisition.’’

  Billy jumped as something hit the ground a few feet away from where he was standing.

  ‘‘What the hell?’’ The bottom of a rope ladder dangled in front of them.

  A moment later Eli Santoro, grinning from ear to ear, appeared in front of their startled eyes.

  ‘‘How did you find us?’’ Finn asked.

  ‘‘Apparently our Mexican friend didn’t quite trust us. He had a GPS beacon hidden in the pack he left you. All we did was follow it.’’

  ‘‘Sneaky bugger!’’ Billy grunted.

  ‘‘What about this Guzman guy?’’ Finn asked. ‘‘The bombs?’’

  ‘‘A Chinese guy blew his brains out. Amazing shot. Without anyone to lead them the rest of them headed for the hills,’’ said Eli blandly. ‘‘You have any interesting little adventures while we were gone?’’

  ‘‘One or two,’’ said Finn with equal bland-ness. ‘‘One or two.’’

  28

  "Okay, you’d better run this by us again," said Billy. "Because it’s still a little difficult for us to see the connection between a five-hundred -year-old observatory in the jungles of the Yucatán and bobbing around in the polluted waters of a man-made lake in the middle of the California desert that didn’t exist before 1906.’’ The British lord glanced around; they were completely landlocked. To the west were the Santa Rosa Mountains. The Chocolate Mountains were to the east and the Coachella Valley to the north. They were about a hundred miles inland from Baja California’s Sea of Cortéz.

  The treasure seekers were sitting under a canvas awning on the rear deck of the ancient houseboat they’d rented from the Bombay Shores Marina at the southern end of the lake. ‘‘Marina’’ was quite a stretch since they had only a ten-foot dock and one other boat for rent. Then again, ‘‘houseboat’’ was a stretch, too. It looked more like a 1950s two-toned aluminum-sided trailer home on a leaky barge, which was probably a pretty accurate description of the craft that the owner had named the Clarabelle.

  There were four of them on board: Finn, Billy, Guido, and Briney Hanson to operate the dredging equipment for them. Eli Santoro, wearing scuba gear and manhandling the vacuum dredge into position, had the unsavory task of being the chosen diver for the day. The water in the lake was a deep and chemical brown, the surface dotted here and there with belly-up dead fish.

  Arkady Cruz, sensing a certain lack of appreciation for his new alliances in Mexico, had prudently decided to defect and was now a full-fledged member of the Hispaniola’s crew in Nassau. He was now teaching Run-Run McSeveney, the half-Chinese, half-Scot engineer, how to swear in colloquial Cuban.

  ‘‘Perhaps you could start with this Spaniard, ’’ suggested Guido.

  ‘‘Francisco de Ulloa,’’ said Finn.

  ‘‘The very fellow,’’ said Billy.

  ‘‘The one who drew the map, yes?’’ Guido asked.

  ‘‘That’s him,’’ said Finn. She unrolled a small-scale chart of the Sea of Cortéz and Baja on the rickety card table between them. ‘‘He was a friend of Cortéz. Early on he acted as a courier for him between Cuba and Spain, carrying letters to Cortéz’s wife.

  ‘‘Anyway, Cortéz realized that King Charles and the Inquisition were plotting to steal his treasure and have him excommunicated, so he commissioned Ulloa to take the gold and jewelry from the hoard he’d seized from Montezuma, the Aztec king he’d conquered in what is now Mexico City, and find a place to hide it well away from prying eyes.

  ‘‘Nobody is entirely sure, but what is known is that the Spaniard sailed from Acapulco in three small ships built especially for the expedition. They headed north into what we now call the Sea of Cortéz, which Ulloa named in honor of his patron.

  ‘‘They reached the head of the Baja Peninsula and found what some pe
ople think was the original outlet for the Colorado River. He left two of his ships in the mouth of the river, then took the largest ship, the one carrying the treasure itself, and headed upriver looking for a good hiding place.

  ‘‘Before he could find a good spot there was a serious earthquake—the San Andreas Fault is only a few miles from here—and there was a tidal wave almost forty feet high that rushed in from the Sea of Cortéz.

  ‘‘The two ships at the mouth of the river rode the wave out easily enough, but the treasure ship was taken inland on the surge. Almost a hundred miles. When the water receded the ship was left high and dry in the middle of a desert—what was then known as the Salton Sink, a salt basin like Salt Lake City but even lower than Death Valley.

  ‘‘The ship was half buried in the sand. Ulloa finished the job with his men and then walked back to the other two ships. That’s how the Legend of the Lost Ship of the Desert was born. There were a bunch of sightings over the years as the sands shifted. In 1906 a section of the Imperial Irrigation Canal on the Colorado River collapsed and the river flooded into the old Salton Sink for two years. It put almost four hundred square miles underwater before they could stop the flow. It’s been underwater and getting more and more polluted ever since.’’

  ‘‘I still don’t see the connection to the map you found,’’ said Briney Hanson, lighting one of his spiced clove cigarettes.

  ‘‘I think Ulloa took one of the Mayan astronomers with him,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s the only theory that fits. There are more than a hundred stars a pilot can use to navigate by; the Mayans knew almost fifty of them, as well as the moon transit, the transit of the sun, and the transit of Venus across the night sky. Given enough reference points, which the map on the wall shows, coming up with the location wasn’t that difficult.’’

  ‘‘So you matched the plot of the map on the wall of the cave with a computer simulation?’’ Briney asked.