How harsh. Some would argue that there was so much more. One woman wasn’t worth more than the human race. But they hadn’t loved her, survived her challenges, hated her ambition, despised and admired her strength, lost faith and trust, and regained it again. They hadn’t fought their own fears and nightmares to find her. They couldn’t imagine what it would cost to lose her. Dammit, why did Jorge have to get in the way?
Jorge. He cursed and slammed his fist on the ground. The man had brought him to her, had saved his life, had spoken to him of pain and suffering, and had reawakened the compassion in him that he thought was dying. Why had Jorge shot Kat? Why had he stripped away their hope of escape? Why the hell was he going to inflict everything he raged against upon the world? Why had he gotten to Mark?
No matter, it would all be over soon. Despite the twisting in his heart, Mark would have no compunction over taking him out. The terrorist was a dead man!
Chapter Fifty-two
Jorge shimmied into his drysuit for what he hoped would be the last time. There was just the short dive to the surface through the last sump and sinkhole, and he would be sprung from the trap the cave had become to so many others. Yes, he would be the first to emerge alive from the deepest cave, carrying, no less, the organism that had killed countless people in the ancient past.
But he was carrying it contained. He was carrying it to nurture and grow and disperse at his leisure and toward his designated target. This time more than just a handful of rural ethnics in a backward country would suffer. This time people would learn the real meaning of empathy.
He slapped on his pack and rebreather and dove into the water, powering it through his legs in his eagerness to reach the surface. This was it. His destiny had arrived. And there was no turning back now. He knew that. He’d known it the minute he’d fed the doctor down the gullet of the sinkhole.
Megan fell to her knees beside the snottites. It couldn’t be. The black grip of a gun poked from the pool of slime, calling to her like a cream-filled donut. She slipped on her glove, grabbed the gun, and pulled it free of the sludge with a slight squelching noise. The gun came smoothly into her hand. But the acidic snottites ate right through her glove. She felt the sting and burn of first contact and nearly dropped the revolver back into the pool, but she quickly regained her control when she thought of the implications. What was a burn compared to the chance of finally getting revenge for her lost innocence? The chance to conquer evil wherever it cropped up, even deep below the Earth’s surface? She plodded toward a clear pool of water and plunged both the gun and her hand into it. The glove fell away in tatters, completely eroded by the acid, and her hand was blistered and red. The gun looked rather hoary itself, its metal slumped and melted like candle wax. Yet the barrel seemed intact. If even one bullet was chambered, if the trigger worked, she would have all she needed.
She held the weapon firmly in her hand. The pain she felt was minor, a pesky mosquito bite, compared to the pleasure. The tingling possibility. But she was still too far behind in her chase. If only there was a way out of the cave that didn’t involve another long dive and a climb up the sinkhole. If only she could find a way to outflank the bastard.
She tucked the gun into her pack and walked forward, gazing at the rock ceiling.
They were near the surface. Mark could feel it. The pressure that he realized would never entirely fade underground, the pressure of the layers of rock above his head, seemed to have gradually eased up. When he noticed scuttling insects and the flapping of bat wings over his shoulder, his heart sang with relief instead of horror. But he was also worried about Kat. She staggered now, clasping the rock on either side to balance, slipping frequently on the flowstone. But she refused to stop. Her face was haggard and ash gray. Her eyes were cloudy with fatigue. Was this trip draining the last of her strength, leaving her with nothing left to fight the cancer?
“Damn Jorge,” he muttered.
“I think we’re ahead of him,” Kat panted through her clenched teeth. “If we keep going, we can stop him.”
“You shouldn’t go any farther without rest.”
“Stop nagging. Sometimes having a doctor for a husband can be a real pain,” she said to Pete.
“I noticed,” Pete replied with a grin. He halted where a bridge of air opened over his head. Tilting his chin, he stared upward, his jaw cracking wide. Kat came alongside and joined the gawking. When Mark reached them, he felt the brush of a breeze and knew they were near the end of the journey. He directed the beam of his flashlight upward through the long shaft. At the top there was something unusual: a vaulted ceiling.
“Serpent City,” said Kat with a sigh. “We’re almost home.”
Mark smiled and massaged her shoulders, resting his cheek in her thick amber hair. “I’ve never thought of Mexico as home, but after this trek, anything above ground is.”
She turned and wrapped her arms around him, nestling against his chest. “Anywhere with you is,” she said. “We’ve been living separate lives for far too long. Far too long even when we were together.”
Mark took a deep breath. If ever there was a time . . . “Kat, I have to tell you why I never wanted to go into caves.”
She met his gaze and nodded encouragingly.
“I was trapped in a cave when I was a child.” He told her of his traumatic experience. “That’s why I couldn’t follow you. It was just so terrifying for me that I couldn’t go in one again, and I couldn’t talk about it. You’d have thought me a coward.”
“No,” she said, her eyes glistening. “Well, maybe. But not if you’d explained everything. I would have understood. You needed to trust me. But don’t blame yourself for all our problems. I was just as responsible for them as you were. I made you follow me everywhere, made you fear for my life sometimes. After my mother died, I performed some crazy stunts. I guess I was lonely, and I wanted someone to notice me.”
“Kat,” he said, holding her tighter. “You’re one person I could never fail to notice.”
“Are you two just about done with the sappy stuff?” asked Pete, with a wink. “We have one more climb and we’re out of here.”
Mark sighed and let Kat slip from his arms. “Are you sure you can finish this?”
“Yes,” said Kat. “As long as you’re with me.”
Jorge nudged through the last cramped bend in the tunnel and swam into the large drowned cylinder of the sinkhole. As he brushed past the decapitated skeletons, he envisioned a new mound of sacrifices on earth. Most religions encouraged sacrifice, so how could they judge him for following their own philosophy? This sacrifice would cleanse the world. It would bring balance.
His heart drummed painfully from the exertion, but he was almost home. Above him, the surface of the water blended with a calm cerulean sky and a mask of green growth. Minutes later, he broke through the liquid-air interface and whipped off his mask, discarding the stale breath he’d been recycling and sucking in pure, clean air. He kicked over to the ladder, slipped the rebreather from his shoulders, and hooked it to the bottom rung. He was too tired to carry it the last thirty meters. But he clung to his pack and the treasure he’d unearthed—far superior to any jade ornament or golden death mask.
He clutched the ladder and began to climb. This ascent would be so much easier than all the previous ones in the cave. With each step upward he felt a sense of exhilaration and accomplishment. He attempted to isolate these feelings and ignore the others.
When he spotted the lip of the sinkhole, a flicker of movement halted his climb.
Mark took the lead in this final ascent. Kat just wasn’t up to it, and he wasn’t about to leave her behind. He climbed the narrow shaft by bracketing his arms and legs across the gap. When he reached the top, he tossed down the nylon rope and hauled Kat up with her harness. Pete followed, using the rope as an extra safety feature, but so accomplished a climber that he nearly flew up the shaft.
They entered a gloomy chamber that was empty except for some scattered debris.
A roughly-hewn stone staircase rose from the far side. Mark took the lead again, spearing the darkness with his flashlight. This flight of stairs, with its depictions on the walls of the Serpent King and various Mayan gods, seemed strangely familiar. Mark came to a landing, where he was stopped by a mountain of rock and rubble. He glared at the barrier, grinding his teeth.
“Damn,” he yelled and kicked a stone at the wall. A memory popped into his head, and he realized where he’d seen this before. They were in the temple where the bodies had been sprawled, except they were on the wrong side of the collapsed wall. The entrance to the cave had been barricaded. “I know where we are.”
“Great,” said Pete. “Is that going to help us get around this mess?”
“We’re in the temple,” Mark said, ignoring Pete’s sarcasm. “I guess we’ll have to dig our way out.”
Kat brushed his arm and took the flashlight from his hand. “Over there.” She directed the beam at a small gap in the upper left-hand corner. “It looks like the wall has begun to crumble there. It might be weak enough for us to smash through with the hammer in Pete’s pack.”
“Right,” said Pete. “If we don’t bring the rest of the temple down on our heads.”
“Can you ever be positive?” asked Mark.
“I was,” said Pete with a chuckle. “When I suggested this exit. Of course I didn’t know the damn Maya had stoppered it.”
“The damn Maya,” said Kat, “were smart. They didn’t imagine some idiot spelunkers would ever dive through the sacrificial well and find their curse, despite all their efforts to confine it underground. But instead of grumbling, we’d better get to work. Or Jorge will get ahead of us.”
They set to bringing down the wall, cracking the limestone blocks above the gap and clearing the rubble below. It took about three hours before they managed to clear a wriggle pathway. In exhausted anticipation, they crawled through the hole. Soon they were covered with white dust from the broken limestone, as if they’d just rolled around in flour.
Now Mark knew where to go. He led the dusty trio through the chamber of skeletons and up the last flight of stairs to the top of the pyramid. They stopped at the entrance and looked out in amazement on the open-air jungle. The sky was a white-frothed blue above their heads, the breeze like a caressing hand on their cheeks. Mark seized a lungful of air and held it, relishing it. He felt light as a balloon.
Then he turned and gripped Kat’s shoulders. “Stay here. I’m going down there to wait for Jorge. Hopefully he hasn’t come out of the sinkhole yet.”
Kat shook her head. “Not alone, you’re not.”
Mark squeezed her arms tighter. The pigheaded woman. “This is between me and Jorge. There’s no reason for you or even Pete to get involved. I know I can stop him.”
“He has a gun.”
“I’m well aware of that. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
“Yes, you are,” said Kat. “You think you can talk to him, a bloody terrorist. Even after he shot me without warning, after he sabotaged our only escape route. You think that just because you had a few heart-to-hearts on the way down that you can cure his insanity. Well, Mark, you can’t cure all the world’s ills.”
“I won’t let him escape,” said Mark. “And you’re in no condition to help me.”
“But I am,” said Pete.
Mark looked at Pete uncertainly. The man seemed eager to help, nearly chafing at the bit. Dammit, he had to do this his way. What if Pete jumped the gun and got himself killed? Could he live with another death on his head? No, he couldn’t.
Mark hesitated for a moment, his hand curling into a fist.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Pete grinned and moved toward Mark, totally oblivious, as Mark’s fist exploded into his face. The microbiologist crumpled and hit the temple flags, his head resting near the sacrificial altar. Mark shook his hand, bent over the man, and checked his pupils. Pete would suffer a mild concussion, but he should be all right in a few hours. Just enough time, hopefully.
Mark stood and caught the narrow glance from his wife. “I can’t live with another one,” he said and walked down a few steps.
“Wait,” said Kat, stopping him in his tracks. She whipped open Pete’s pack and, astonishingly, snatched out a gun. She handed it to him.
“Why does . . . ?”
“I don’t know. And right now, it doesn’t matter, does it?”
He clutched the weapon, tucked it in his pocket, and continued down the steps.
Her words stung his back. “Don’t miss. I can’t live with another one either.”
Pain throbbed behind her eyes. It frazzled her nerve endings. It tore at her limbs. She’d lived with pain all her life, she told herself. This was nothing. But it still slowed her to a crawl. As she pushed her way through the dense vines and thickets, her damaged skin was scratched and torn. Now she knew why no one had ever climbed down those small funnels into the earth. Even though they were a shortcut to the cave, they were festooned with acidic snottites, lathered in them. Whoever had said “don’t sweat the small stuff” had never run across nanobacteria.
Tears streaming from her eyes, Megan crept through the foliage, parting leaves and peering through them for any sign of the bastard. Cautiously, she approached the border of the sinkhole, her heart thudding in her ears. Would she die before she had her chance?
Mark ripped through the liana curtains and chopped protruding brush from his path with his sturdy knife. He nearly forgot how immediate the plunge into the sinkhole was. He had to grab a branch to keep from hurtling into space as the hole opened in front of his feet. Ah, déjà vu. Interesting how things always came full circle. Not only that, but he was just in time. The Maya was even now surging up the ladder toward him.
Jorge stopped and gazed at Mark with a slight frown, but without the shock Mark had anticipated. Mark looked from the knife in his hand to the thin fibers of the rope ladder. A couple of hacks should do it. He lifted his blade.
“You are amazing, doctor,” said Jorge. “I knew if anyone could make it back out of there alive, it would be you. How did you do it? And even ahead of me.”
Mark paused and stared at him. The man was burrowing under his skin again and he couldn’t let him. “I’m not listening to you anymore.” He raised the knife higher.
“Cutting the rope won’t stop me.”
“You’ll be trapped in the sinkhole. How will you get out?”
“You did,” said Jorge. “Besides, I’m an expert climber. Spent many years leading the gringos around these caves. I’ll still find a way to the surface.”
“Then I’ll stop you again.”
“How will you stop me?” asked Jorge. He resumed climbing. “You’re not a killer, doctor. You’re a healer.”
Mark clenched his knife tighter, but he still couldn’t bring himself to saw through the ropes. “You once said that some men just need to be killed. They’re beyond healing.”
“But you don’t believe that,” said Jorge, now within a meter of the rim.
“I shot a man. In front of your eyes.”
“A life-and-death struggle. You had no other option.”
“I have no option now.” Mark severed the first fiber, feeling the rope weaken.
Jorge chortled. “You tickle me, doctor. I know you! If you spend time with a man during his worst nightmare, you learn about his character. You may insist that you’re an engineer, a manipulator of gadgets, but the true substance of your soul is healing, and you think that you can still heal me. That there’s a chance to save my blackened soul. Face it, doctor. You can’t kill me. If you could, you would have done it already.”
Jorge scampered up the last few rungs to solid ground. He stood in front of Mark and stepped right into the point of the knife. It rested casually against his chest.
“Do it, doctor! My soul is lost. Save the world.”
Mark’s hand trembled. His heart galloped. All he needed to do was thrust.
&nbs
p; “You don’t want to do this,” said Mark, desperately trying to buy time, to work up the courage. Dammit, he’d overcome his greatest weakness. Why couldn’t he just thrust? Or maybe this was his greatest weakness—believing he could cure anything. “There are other ways.”
“I’ve tried them, doctor. You know that. This is the only way.”
Jorge brushed past Mark and headed into the jungle.
Mark turned and let the knife slip through his fingers. “You won’t do it,” he said. “I know you, too.”
Jorge spun around. “I will!”
A ragged figure lurched from the jungle just as his words cut through the air. Her clothes were singed and hung about her in tatters. Her skin was bubbled, reddened, and oozing. A misshapen ebony object vaguely resembling a gun protruded from her hand. Mark only recognized her soft brown eyes.
“My God!” he cried. “Megan!”
She pointed the weapon at Jorge, murmuring to the shadows, “Have to stop him. Have to keep him from hurting more women.”
Her arm shook. She staggered against Mark.
“Have to,” she whimpered, and squeezed the trigger.
There was a thunk and nothing else. Apparently the weapon was too damaged to work. “No!” Megan shrieked. “He has to pay!” She crumpled to the ground.
Mark looked into Jorge’s wide eyes and caught the malignant gleam and the slight smirk. It was enough to shatter Mark’s last restraint. He yanked the gun from his belt, paused half a heartbeat, then pulled the trigger. Jorge staggered backward, a stunned expression on his face. He clutched his chest and fell with a crash into the undergrowth.
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