by Kim McMahill
“I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to bother you. Besides, I think I can take care of myself, but thank you for your concern.”
Marjorie recognized her tone sounded more clipped than necessary, but she was tired of being treated like an invalid. Managing fine on her own since age twelve when her mother walked out, she had taken care of herself and her unemployed father, put herself through college, and worked on digs in harsh remote environments all over the world.
Diego meant well, but she was fed up with overbearing egotistical males, not just during this current situation, but in nearly every aspect of her line of work. She picked up the menu and averted her eyes to the selections. Marjorie usually kept her temper in check, knowing the resulting loss of control could be ugly, and she didn’t want Diego to see that side of her.
“Do not be angry. I was just worried when I woke up and found your bed empty. We may have to change our sleeping arrangements, so I can keep a closer eye on you. I know you can take care of yourself, but I am more relaxed when you are near.”
Marjorie’s eyes flew up and locked on Diego’s. His smile was back, but his expression remained unreadable. She didn’t know if he was teasing her, if she was reading more into his words than he intended, or if he was coming on to her at seven o’clock in the morning. She stared at him in bewilderment for several moments before deciding to ignore the comment and move on to more pressing topics.
“I got online and brushed up on the Nasca Lines and Nasca Indians. The Nascans pre-date the Incans by about 400 years, and overlapped with the pre-classic and classic Mayans. Due to the vast distribution of the Mayans over Mexico and Central America, it doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that some ventured further south and came into contact with northern-ranging Nascans. Maybe the Mayans formed the idea to hide the crystals in a pattern from them, or perhaps the Nasca Line design came from the Mayans.”
“So, now that you are an expert on Nasca Lines, what is your theory as to why the ancients constructed such immense and varying figures?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert, though I don’t think all the images were done for the same reason. I believe some may have been created for purely artistic or religious purposes. For example, the animals, but the other shapes may have served as maps for something like water systems for irrigation. Or maybe the Nasca Lines mapped the location of objects of great importance, similar to how many of the Inca’s sacred places or haucas can be traced along their ceque system, which, as I’m sure you know, is a set of imaginary lines radiating out from a temple in Cusco.”
Marjorie hesitated while the waitress placed their breakfast on the table and refilled their coffee cups. She hoped Diego wouldn’t think she had lost her mind. The parallels between the spoke-like Nasca Lines and the pattern developing as they plotted the original hiding places of the relics on a world map excited her too much to keep to herself.
“So, you believe the ancient Mayans, with possible cooperation from the Nasca Indians and maybe other ancient peoples, split up the artifacts, and hid them along imaginary lines resembling the Nasca Lines?”
“Yes. By dispersing the objects so vastly, they ensured they would not be reunited until humans developed enough technology to discover the giant diagram in the desert of southwest Peru and make the connection to the crystals. With flight, we discovered the map years ago. We just didn’t know what to do with it…until now. So the human race has possibly attained the knowledge to find the relics. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear we possess the moral character to handle the responsibility and power, whatever those might be.”
Diego nodded his agreement and glanced at his watch. They needed to get moving if they hoped to make their appointment with Miguel, but he hated to go back out into the streets. He had already checked in with Hernando and discovered Ahmed and his accomplice had ditched the black Land Rover, which had been reported stolen in Buenos Aires. In the vehicle they had stood out like a flamingo in a chicken coop. Now, the two men could be anywhere, driving anything.
Knowledge Ahmed had already tried to kill Marjorie twice made Diego want to hide her away somewhere safe. Her attitude confirmed his suspicion that was not likely to happen in his lifetime, especially this morning. He wasn’t sure why he felt so protective of the young British woman, and he feared his preoccupation might prove deadly if he lost focus on his two primary goalsfinding the relics and keeping them alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
September 29, 4:00 A.M.
Navajo Nation, Arizona
BETWEEN MEMORIES OF dead mules and fears of someone trailing them swirling through his mind, plus visions of Olivia alone in the next tent and Benny’s snoring, sleep refused to come. Slipping his boots on, Cash crept out to relieve Diane’s shift as lookout. Not many hours of night remained, and he wasn’t getting any rest anyway. Besides, if he couldn’t be with Olivia, he wanted Diane in the sleeping bag alongside her.
He stood and stretched, but glimpsed no sign of Diane. Cash quickly assessed the camp and peeked into each tentall seemed normal except for the absence of his infuriating partner. He went to Pete and Ian’s tent and woke Ian, motioning the groggy Brit outside.
“Diane’s nowhere to be seen. You take up guard duty, and I’ll go look for her.”
Ian nodded, instantly alert as Cash slipped away from camp.
Cash hated to turn on his flashlight, but didn’t see any choice without returning to his tent and wasting valuable time. He neglected to grab his night vision goggles, not anticipating a missing person’s search, and unless he found some sort of clue as to Diane’s direction of travel, he’d just be stumbling around in the dark in this rough and rugged landscape teeming with scorpions, snakes, and cactus that could cripple the most stubborn mule—or in his case, the angriest agent in CIA history. He cursed Pete and Diane as he crept past the mules. The animals stirred slightly, otherwise ignoring his presence, and continued to sleep on their feet. He was surprised how quickly the herd recovered from the loss of one of its own. Then again, loosing Pete right now probably wouldn’t take him long to get over either.
He spied tracks in the dust, and the further away from camp the prints led him, the more Cash worried about Diane’s safety. He loved her like a sister, even when they fought like siblings. If anything happened to her, he doubted he could recover. He had survived after he thought he lost Zara, since he believed her to be a traitor, but Diane was different. Both were tough and smart, but that’s where the similarities ended. He trusted Diane with his life, and her loyalty to those she cared about never faltered. Zara had no loyalties to anyone except herself.
A snoring sound whipped Cash out of his thoughts. He ducked behind an outcropping of sandstone and listened until he confirmed the direction of the noise. He glanced around the rock and spotted a body on the ground, partially hidden by the terrain. It wasn’t Diane. The figure belonged to a person, sandwiched into a thin mummy-bag.
Cash scanned the area, doubting the slumbering form was alone, but saw nothing. He waited silently, timing himself for a full ten minutes in case the other party had just gone to relieve his or her bladder. He looked again, fearing a trapnothing. He couldn’t keep waiting when the possibility of getting some answers dozed not twenty yards in front of him. Scanning the area once more, he unsheathed his knife and crept toward the sleeping man. He straddled the inert form with such silent stealth, he didn’t wake up until Cash pressed his knife to his throat.
The man’s eyes flew open, meeting Cash’s gaze with fright.
For a moment Cash was stunned, and his blade bore harder into his captive’s flesh. It was the same green-eyed man he had seen in Mexico, but now that he knew Zara lived, he had no doubt this was her younger brother, Marabout. Cash had never met Marabout when he and Zara had worked together. At the time, the young man still resided with their father in Afghanistan. Cash shook the image of Zara out of his mind.
“Where is she?” he hissed through gritted teeth.
The fear in Marabout’s eyes did little to ease Cash’s desire to slit his throat, but he needed information more than revenge. He repeated the question, letting the blade press into the soft skin of his neck, making Marabout squirm. Blood oozed out and dropped into the dirt.
Cash was quickly losing his patience with the trembling man. “This is your last chance. Tell me where your sister is now, or I’ll kill you right here and leave you for the buzzards and coyotes to pick clean.”
A subtle flinch in Marabout’s gaze gave Cash all the warning he needed. He rolled off his captive and hit the ground just as the butt of a rifle swung over his head. Cash scrambled to his feet, but was rammed hard in the gut by the shoulder of a very large bald-headed man. Cash landed on his back, the wind knocked out of him momentarily, his gun gouging into his flesh. He fished out his weapon and took aim, but had to scramble to avoid the shots coming from the huge man’s semi-automatic rifle. He dove behind a rock, crouched, and returned fire before realizing it was too late. The men had disappeared into the night.
Cash sat for several minutes behind the stone, cursing. He had cactus in his rear, suspected the bald guy had broken a rib or two during the tackle, and probably had a permanent imprint of his gun in his back. Worse, the answers he desperately wanted had slipped through his fingers.
I should’ve just killed Marabout when I had the chance. That would have forced Zara out of hiding. Cash struggled to his feet, wincing with pain as he placed a hand on his tender ribs.
He bent to pick up his knife, and whirled around with his gun ready to fire in one hand and his blade poised to throw in the other as he heard a rush of footsteps approaching. He held his ground, waiting until his target came into view. He slowly lowered his weapon as Ian burst onto the scene, with Pete close behind.
“Holy crap! What happened? Are you okay?” Ian asked while trying to catch his breath.
Pete stood behind Ian, panting, naked except for his baggy SpongeBob boxers and his unlaced hiking boots. His complexion had whitened to the color of new-fallen snow, his hands trembled, and his weapon trained dangerously on Ian.
“Put that gun down before you shoot someone,” Cash demanded, shaking his head. “Who’s watching camp?”
“Diane. She came back about fifteen minutes after you took off. She wanted to come after you, but I thought it would be best if we all stayed put until you returned, or we’d end up in a never-ending cycle of searching.”
“She better have a darn good excuse,” Cash growled.
“I’d say. She heard braying not far away, and in the direction opposite of our stock. She honed in on the noise and nabbed two mules. I hope that’s all of them, because it will put our buddies out of luck and on foot.”
Cash wanted to be furious with Diane, but he couldn’t. Marabout and the bald man had escaped. He would have preferred to capture or kill the men, but without their mounts, they wouldn’t be able to maintain trailing them, so at least Diane had made it possible for them to continue the search without being tracked. Plus, she had replaced the much-needed pack mule Pete shot.
He grunted and followed Ian and Pete to camp. When they arrived, everyone was awake, the tents taken down and packed, and breakfast prepared.
“You should have woken me when you heard something,” Cash snarled as he stood in front of Diane. “I had no idea where you went. You could have been taking a piss, or dead, for all I knew.”
Diane smiled. “You were worried about me? Because you love me?” she teased. “In all seriousness, though, speed and stealth were essential. If the braying stopped, I wouldn’t have found the animals. I almost made it back with no one any the wiser. If I spotted anyone nearby, I would have returned for help, but you needed your sleep.”
“And I didn’t get any, thanks to you. So you now have the honor of pulling these cactus spines out of my butt cheeks and shoulder, sweetheartgrab some tweezers and follow me.”
Diane cast a wicked smile at Olivia, but held in the laughter. Her sister had already fished tweezers and a flashlight out of her bag. The three walked to the pile of gear waiting to be packed on the mules. Cash plopped face down on the rolled-up sleeping bags, forgetting momentarily about his ribs. He gasped and cursed as he turned his head to give Diane a scathing look and spotted Olivia.
“Oh great, now it’s a group activity,” he snarled.
He ignored Ian and Pete’s occasional bursts of laughter. He supposed they could have been laughing at something other than his situation, but he doubted it.
By the time Diane and Olivia had pulled out all the cacti and rubbed an antiseptic ointment into the puncture wounds, Benny had the mules saddled. The sun was just beginning to rise, so they decided to get on the trail and put as much distance as possible between them and the two men on foot.
Cash eyed the saddle and absently rubbed his backside. The thought of getting on a mule, after the morning he had, absolutely fouled his mood. He approached Gertrude, grasped the reins, placed his toe in the stirrup, and threw his long leg over the animal’s back.
“Wait a second before you sit.” Olivia walked up next to him and slid a folded blanket between his butt and the hard leather. “Maybe this will help.”
“Thanks. I’m glad there’s at least one person here who isn’t enjoying my misery.”
He glanced around and realized the group was mounted and waiting on him. No one looked at him except for Olivia and, at the moment, she and Benny were the only ones he didn’t have the desire to spit on.
Benny started down the trail and Diane trotted back toward Cash.
“Don’t worry, boss, I’m going to take up the rear so I can keep SpongeBob in line,” Diane stated as she rode by.
Cash shook his head. As much as he wanted to be mad at Diane, she had come through again. And, she was righthe did love her, not in a ‘get married and make babies kind of way,’ but he cared deeply for her nonetheless, and he couldn’t think of anyone he trusted more with his life than her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
September 29, 12:00 P.M.
Cusco, Peru
ZARA PACED, WATCHING Mustafa work, stewing because her insurance policy had crashed and burned. Waiting for the other two teams in the field to check in only served to increase her anxiety. She assumed her trip to Virginia would simplify the rest of the operation, but the excursion proved a total waste of time. Like years ago in Hong Kong, she planned to stay one step ahead of Cash by manipulating a weak and lustful man. Unfortunately, Owen Washburn confessed his involvement in the disaster to the director before blowing his brains out. She never imagined he had it in him to pull the trigger on anyone, especially himself.
“I have a message from Reza. They encountered some problems in a rural village, but they have everything under control. They followed the targets into Salta and have tracked them to a hotel in the city. They are waiting for them to leave, then they will continue to trail them.”
Zara cringed at the mention of trouble. Argentina appeared to be a simple assignment. The discussion they had eavesdropped on verified the woman’s civilian status. Cash argued against her accompanying the man named Diego, with the Regional Secretariat Office, to Argentina. Diego had the advantage of home turf and local resources, but he should be hampered by the untrained woman. Interpol primarily dealt with information and left the physical tracking of criminals to other agencies. Zara had heard of Diego Vilas before, so she knew he hadn’t always worked behind a desk, but she figured that like Owen Washburn he had probably gone soft.
“Any word from Heinrich and Marabout?” she asked, trying to push Reza and Ahmed out of her mind.
“Nothing, but I think I’m on to something as far as how to unleash the power of the crystals.”
Zara stopped pacing and whirled around to face Mustafa, fire in her eyes. “What is it? Show me now.”
“I conducted several experiments on the objects in your absence. Some didn’t go all that well, but others showed promise.”
“You were not to remove the artifacts from their boxes. I trusted you to protect them.” She pressed a knife to Mustafa’s throat so quickly he didn’t realize what was happening until he felt the cool steel against his skin.
“Wait. The relics are back in the locked chest and none suffered damage. Using the actual artifacts was the only way to accurately test my theories, since I believe the individual shapes and sizes are important and these specific items may contain additional properties not present in commercially available crystal. Crystal is very stable and I did all my experiments on a small scale, so as not to risk harming them in any way. Let me show you what I found.”
Zara lowered the knife, unsure why she had reacted so violently to her long-time trusted colleague. The thought of someone taking her treasures out of the secure holding cases sent a surge of panic through her system. She wasn’t prone to rash actions, and the momentary lapse in control unsettled her.
“Follow me.” Mustafa rubbed the spot on his neck, still tingling from the blade of Zara’s knife as he led the way to a room in the back of the warehouse which once served as a walk-in freezer for storing goods to be distributed throughout the city. “I thought the set up provided an ideal place for testing, since the entire room is so well insulated that noise and fire could be contained, and conditions more easily controlled, without drawing attention from anyone outside the building.”
“What did you find?” Zara demanded impatiently.
“I think you will be pleased with the results of my experiments,” Mustafa replied, struggling to keep the anxiety from his voice. She had always frightened him, but she had become even more unpredictable and dangerous since they began their current mission. Clearly she was in no mood for mistakes, and he feared the consequences if he, or any other member of the team, failed. “After you.” He opened the door and stood aside to let her pass.
Zara scanned the room, speechless with the scene. The walls and ceiling were charred and a substance had melted and begun oozing through the seams between the metal panels. Some of the molasses-colored material had fallen to the floor, but most hung from the ceiling like thin, black stalactites. Whatever had happened in the room had turned the once creamed-colored enamel coating of the walls to shades varying from caramel to coal. Zara shook her head in disbelief and suppressed a smile. She didn’t want Mustafa to suspect she found anything amusing in what he had done and wished she had witnessed the explosion that caused all this damage.