The Annihilators

by Donald Hamilton

  “But what’s killing them?” Frances whispered. “What’s killing them, Sam?”

  There was no indication of what was killing them. There were no spear wounds or knife slashes or club fractures; there was no blood except around the altar where, obviously, elaborate sacrifices had been made just before it happened, whatever it was. They were simply dying, all of them.

  “I’d rather you wouldn’t photograph that,” Frances said. “We’ve made careful record shots of it, of course; but we’d rather it wasn’t publicized until we’ve found some kind of explanation to go with it.”

  “Sure.”

  Outside, the sunshine seemed very bright. Although I’d only been in there a few minutes, I felt as disoriented as if I were coming out of a long and scary movie. Frances left me; she wanted to find Sanchez and ask him when he’d scheduled the bus to take us back to the hotel. I worked my way around to the west side of the temple where the early-afternoon light now threw the carvings into sharp relief. As I turned the corner of the building, I almost bumped into the old man named Cortez. He gave me his formal little bow, and I answered it.

  “Iglesia hermosa,” he said.

  “Yes, it is a beautiful church,” I said.

  “But for you,” he said, “better Templo Guerrero.” He pointed. “For me, priest, better Templo Sacerdote.” He pointed again. Then he looked at me hard. “When I call, you come. Soon now.”

  He had those strange brown in-turned Maya-Melmec eyes; and I reminded myself that as a good transplanted Scandinavian, I allow myself to be slightly prejudiced against the brown-eyed variety of human animals, simply because as a rule I find them less comprehensible than the blue-eyed variety to which I belong; but somehow the prejudice did not apply here. I realized that, despite some minor differences in pigmentation, we knew each other very well in a strange and disturbing way, this old man and I. Uncomfortably well.

  I heard myself say, “I will come.”

  “Be careful. Vaya con dios, señor.”

  “What was that all about?” It was Frances’s voice behind me.

  I watched the old man move down the steep pyramid with a strange floating gait; well, climbing pyramids was in his blood. Maybe if my ancestors had been climbing pyramids all those centuries, I’d be good at it, too. When I call, you come. Who the hell did he think he was, anyway? Who did he think I was?

  But that was a foolish question. He knew who I was; he’d known ever since he’d looked at me in the hotel lobby. One day he’d tell me, and then I’d know, too.

  “What was he saying to you?” Frances asked.

  “He was saying that this is a beautiful church,” I said, “but that as a warrior, I’d do better over in the Temple of the Warriors; and as a priest, he’d do better in the Temple of the Priests. I think he was making a joke, in his own obscure fashion. What’s the bus story?”

  The bus story was that the bus was already waiting to transport us back—well, forward—a few thousand years to modern civilization as represented by the Hotel Copalque. When I came into the lounge for a much-needed drink, Miranda Matson, in her usual baggy seersucker pantsuit, was perched at the bar with a tall one in front of her, obviously not her first.

  “Hey, Flash, how are you making it?” she asked.

  “They got the wrong guy,” I said, sitting down beside her wearily. “Sir Edmund Hillary would have loved it; although Everest was never like this. Anything I can do for you, Miranda?”

  “Introduce me to the professor lady in charge, will you? She’s supposed to be digging up all kinds of strange and wonderful things around here, revolutionizing Mesoamerican history. What’s a Melmec, anyway?”

  “Ask her; she’ll tell you,” I said, and beckoned to Frances, who’d just come in. “Dr. Dillman, Miss Matson, and vice versa. Watch out for this one, Frances. Unlike some polite journalistic types you’ve been dealing with, she’s no gentleman.”

  I went over and had a drink with Paul Olcott, whom I’d seen negotiating the giant pyramid steps in a very relaxed fashion. Well, I suppose after chasing mountain sheep and goats—his hunting specialty—up thousand-foot cliffs, it had seemed easy. We were joined by his handsome blond wife Elspeth; but after a little they said that after all that climbing they wanted to shower before lunch, and left me to nurse my glass alone. Presently Miranda joined me.

  “Get what you wanted from Dr. Dillman?” I asked.

  “Bright lady,” Miranda said, and looked at me shrewdly. “Good-looking, too. Just about the right size for you, you damn beanpole, you. Too bad she’s married.”

  “Go to hell,” I said. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  We carried our glasses into the dining room and found a table overlooking the pool. The Putnams were swimming; and she really did have a nice, sturdy, well-proportioned young body, although she made it hard to appreciate, the way she usually dressed. He was in good shape, too. He had a long, slashing scar under the right shoulder-blade where something warlike had gone by very close, but not quite close enough to do the job.

  “Voss, Schmidt, and Roybal-Saiz,” Miranda said. “It’s supposed to mean something to you.”

  It meant something to me. It was the surviving remnant of the team that Bultman, the Kraut, had used for his ill-fated Cuba operation; the trio that had finally got him out of there alive in spite of a severed foot.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “They were all seen together in Mexico City, but the report came in too late, it says here, for anybody to get on them before they disappeared again.”

  “Great,” I said sourly. “Who’s holding down the fort in Santa Rosalia while you’re here?”

  “A young fellow came in, but I wasn’t allowed to know his name; I’m just the volunteer errand girl. But if your man appears, with or without friends, he’ll get word to me and I’ll pass it on to you.”

  I said thoughtfully, “It depends upon whether Bultman’s supposed to check back with Rael for final instructions after getting his manpower organized, or whether he’ll just head straight up north to do his job, if I’ve got the right job in mind.” I shook my head ruefully. “Wherever he goes, it’s going to get rough. That is one tough and competent and ruthless little crew of high-priced mercenaries.”

  “I suppose you know what you’re talking about,” Miranda said. She went on casually: “Incidentally, I heard rumors that the insurgentes had some kind of a headquarters down this way. Would you know anything about that? An exclusive interview with this elusive Lupe of the Mountain would help polish up the journalistic image.”

  I regarded her for a moment. “Scoop Matson, girl reporter!”

  “The tall, handsome professor-lady is a lousy liar,” Miranda said without expression. “She knows something about it, even if you don’t. She jumped like a goosed virgin at the name.”

  “So you didn’t come here just because of your burning interest in archaeology.”

  She gave me her rusty, scornful laugh. “I’m a working girl, dearie. Sure, I pay my obligations; but I won’t get rich running friendship errands for your crummy outfit. And things are getting ready to blow around here, and Montano is one of the explosive factors. I’d be a damn poor reporter if I didn’t make an effort to interview him for my loyal readers before the fireworks starts.”

  I hesitated, and said, “If they shoot you and throw you to the zopilotes, don’t blame me… You’ll be here overnight?”

  “As long as it takes, love.” She smiled. “I thought you might have an angle. Once a newspaperman, always a newspaperman.”

  “I can’t guarantee a thing; and I’ve never spoken to Montano. But you’re right, there is a possible angle. Let me try for it. I’ll let you know.”

  Leaving her there to wash down her lunch with another tall one, I found Frances in the lobby talking to Howard Gardenschwartz, the quiet professor from Northwestern, and his pleasant wife. Presently they went off and she turned to me with a certain amount of hostility.

  “That reporter friend of
yours is a very rude and inquisitive person,” she said.

  “Most reporters are when they have to be,” I said. “She says you’re a lousy liar—well, I could have told her that. But she wants to have a little chat with Lupe Montano.”

  “Oh, my God! I never said anything to indicate—”

  “You’ve got honest eyes, sweetheart. I’ve noticed that myself. The mouth tells all those lies, and the eyes get terribly embarrassed. Anyway, one way or another, you kind of confirmed some rumors she’d heard and some guesses she’d made; so now a problem exists. Do you trust Ramiro Sanchez?” I shook my head quickly. “Never mind that. The real question is, does Montano trust Ramiro Sanchez?”

  After a moment, Frances nodded. “I think Ramiro is fairly high up in the councils of the revolution, when he isn’t playing tour guide and spouting the Rael party line.” She hesitated. “Actually I think that, given a choice, there’s another party line he’d rather spout.”

  “Oh, one of those,” I said. “Well, let’s talk to him. Ostensibly, we’re just arranging for me to have a Jeep and driver to take me back to the Great Court later this evening for some sunset shots…”

  We found Ramiro down by the pool, chatting with the attendant. We sent the man for drinks and sat down at one of the umbrella-shaded poolside tables. Ramiro said he would be happy to arrange my transportation for later in the afternoon.

  “But you say there is another problem, señor?”

  I looked at him: a stocky brown gent, rather handsome in his Latin way, with thick black hair and hostile brown eyes that confirmed all my anti-brown-eyes prejudices. There was no empathy between us. He had me classified as a lousy gringo, and there was nothing I could ever do to change that, so I disliked him cordially right back, the goddamned racist. I explained our problem, and my solution.

  Ramiro was incredulous that I would even consider making such a stupid suggestion. “It is out of the question, señor!”

  “Why?” I asked. “Hell, isn’t that exactly why you went to all this trouble to get Ricardo Jimenez here? Wasn’t the whole point to use him to make good public relations for your liberation movement? Well, here’s your public, why not start relating? Let Señorita Matson talk with General Montano. Show her young Jimenez, the crippled victim of Rael’s tyranny and Echeverria’s’ terror, fighting for his country’s freedom from his lousy wheelchair. The lady is good; she’ll give your revolution favorable publicity you couldn’t buy for a million bucks. If you’re careful setting up the interview, what harm can she do?”

  He hesitated. “You are persuasive, Señor Felton. Very well. Let me consult… my principal. I will let you know.” He rose. “The Jeep will be waiting for you in front of the hotel at five-thirty.”

  In the evening, returning to my thatched cabin at dusk, I felt pretty good; there’s always something satisfying about doing something that scares you shitless. Correction: about having done it.

  I’d ridden back out to the Great Court and I’d gone up and down those lousy stair-stepped rockpiles in the fading light; and I’d got all the low-sun shots I’d wanted without skipping a single one because it involved climbing where I didn’t want to climb. I guess I’d been doing penance for my easy entry into a certain married lady’s bed by doing something difficult for a change. Well, difficult for me. I felt pleasantly tired when I turned in at last, expecting a sound night’s sleep after all the exercise.

  The call came shortly after midnight.

  16

  I awoke sweating with the sound of the, sharp command ringing in my ears: COMECOMECOMEVEN-GOCAVERNACOME.

  Correction: not in my ears, only in my mind. I knew there had been no sound in the room. It took me a moment to disassemble the run-together words; but they remained clearly imprinted on my brain, so I could separate them and study them without difficulty.

  My Spanish is far from good, and vengo caverna left something to be desired as a complete grammatical sentence, but Frances had indicated that the old man’s Spanish wasn’t all that great, either. Once I had pulled those two words out of the jumble the meaning was clear enough. I got up and put on shorts and jeans and turtleneck and socks and shoes and gun, operating in the dark because it seemed indicated, although I couldn’t really have said why. The habit of secrecy, I suppose.

  I groped around in my camera bag until I found the diminutive flashlight and stuck that into my hip pocket. Then I slipped out the door very cautiously—exit procedure Mark VII—and moved softly past Ricardo Jimenez’s former cabin, and down the steep path toward Frances’s rustic hut at the foot of the hill. The windows down there were illuminated; then they went dark. I stopped and stepped off the concrete into the nearest flowerbed and crouched by a low bush, watching a wavering light come up the hill toward me.

  “Pssst,” I whispered, straightening up.

  “Oh, God, you scared me!” Frances turned off her light, one of those husky hand-held spotlights employing a square hotshot battery. She watched me step back onto the path. She was dressed as she had been earlier in the day, a tall slim shape in her jeans; but the bright red shirt looked black in the darkness. We faced each other for a moment. “You received it, too?” she asked.

  “Loud and clear,” I said. “Full gain on the transmitter.”

  “I don’t believe this, you understand!” she protested with sudden anger. “Even if Archie did have a very useful dream, it’s got to be extrasensory bunk. I’m a trained, skeptical scientist and I don’t believe a word of it!”

  “I didn’t believe in flying saucers either, until I saw one,” I said, “if you care to look it up in my hometown paper, I’ll give you the date. Everybody saw the green thing go across town; it was written up on the front page the next day.”

  “Oh, the green fireballs.”

  “Calling them that doesn’t explain them,” I said. “I saw another one off Mazatlan later. Nobody ever did tell me what I saw, but I damn well saw it; and I’m not going to say it didn’t exist simply because nobody’ll explain it to me. And I know what I heard—felt, sensed—tonight. Maybe the old gent hypnotized us both with a glance this afternoon, and left a posthypnotic suggestion to be triggered by the phase of the moon or an accomplice tossing rocks at our windows. I don’t know how the hell it was done, but I damn well know it was done. COME TO THE CAVERN. The question isn’t whether or not we received it, because we did. The question is: Do we go?”

  She hesitated. “Do we have a choice?”

  I grinned. “I guess not. How far is it? Should we try to promote a vehicle?”

  “No, it’s well this side of the Great Court, only about half a mile from here. We have to go through the site that’s currently being restored. I was over there the first night we were here. They’ve got it pretty well cleared; once we’re on the Jeep road it’s plain sailing. This way…”

  Even with discreet use of the lights, it was difficult to follow the winding concrete paths through the picturesque gardens; but once we emerged from the hotel grounds and found the proper Jeep track, progress was somewhat easier, since it was a fairly wide slash between the dark trees. The jungle was eerily silent; there were no gibbering monkeys or chattering parrots or slithering boa constrictors that I could hear.

  Then the cleared site she’d mentioned opened before us; and ragged black silhouettes of ruins loomed against the sky on both sides of the trail. I caught glimpses of trestles and scaffolding in a couple of places, but even with those modern touches it was a disturbing place, the one where she’d claimed to have been panicked by cold emanations from ancient tombs. That had been another of her numerous falsehoods; but at least she’d picked the right shooting-location for her phony script. I stopped at the touch of her hand on my arm.

  “Listen!”

  Standing still, I heard it, too; a distant thumping sound. “Hell, that’s a motor.”

  “Somebody’s started the gasoline generator for the cave lights!”

  “How modern can you get? I thought we’d have to do it all by
torchlight.”

  “I just wonder who…” She shrugged. “Well, watch your head when we start inside; they didn’t build this cave for people your height. Or mine. There are several places where we’ll have to crawl.”

  I faked a shiver that wasn’t entirely playacting. “Lady, you’ve got an unerring instinct for my worst phobias.”

  She laughed softly in the darkness. “I know. I saw you on those pyramids; but you went up anyway, didn’t you?”

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean I can go down. If I freeze and start weeping helplessly, just take my gun and go on without me.”

  She shuddered in the dark. “You and your nasty gun! Now you’re talking about one of my worst phobias, darling… Why do you think he wants us?”

  “Cortez? He’s your friend; I’ve barely met him.”

  “Hardly a friend,” she said, “but of course I have known him for a while. Consulted him; worked with him. I think he likes me, or at least respects my feeling for these ancient places. But, nothing derogatory intended, darling, why would he pick you?”

  I said, “I’ve been picked before. By people who were looking for a man who had a gun, knew how to use it, and was willing to use it.”

  She nodded in the dark. “It could be that. I guess the selection makes sense if… if there’s real trouble. Your gun, and my knowledge of this place to guide you.”

  “In that case,” I said, “we’d better stop stalling and get moving. People who need men with guns generally need them now… Just a minute. One question.”

  “Yes?”

  “Talking about guns, if I do have to use mine in there, will it bring the whole damn cave down on top of us?”