by Larry Baxter
"Muy buen, gracias," said Teresa, in a heavy American accent. "Is this Pirates of the Caribbean?"
The men grabbed Robert by each arm and slammed him against the wall. His head rattled off the stone, causing a shower of sparks in his vision. "Your name, Señor, quickly, and how you came to be here," said the tall one, still smiling, "or I will be shooting your balls off."
"I am here to help," said Robert. "Trust me." He managed a grin.
Robert felt the man's grip slacken and whipped an arm free, bringing the blade of his stiffened hand down on the wrist in the same motion. The gun bounced on the floor and Robert kicked it with his right foot and sent it spinning across the wet stone. He spun and his other foot caught the shorter man on the kneecap. Robert grabbed the shorter man's pistol arm and brought it up high, then down on his own knee, hearing tendons snap as the second gun went spinning to the stone.
The tall man screamed and dove for the gun. Robert dove with him and knocked the gun over the edge into the stream. The man drove a knee deeply into Robert's stomach and scrambled away, but Robert grabbed an ankle, brought the man crashing down, and quickly twisted the foot and the man attached to it until the man had been rolled to the rim of the stream.
Then he heard a single pistol shot, echoing like a cannon blast in the confined space, and looked up into a third man's greasy face with tiny malevolent brown eyes almost obscured by thick eyebrows. The third man also held a machine pistol. Robert released his hold and braced himself to deliver another kick when he heard a cry from behind him. Teresa was on her back with the short man kneeling on her stomach, a knife pressed into her throat. "She dies," he said.
Robert relaxed in surrender just before a powerful blow to the back of his head smashed him down to the stone. In the remaining few milliseconds of consciousness he experienced a sudden close-up of the cave floor from an inch away and saw a tiny fossilized fish. Trilobite? Cambrian. Pretty sure it was Cambrian. The fossil turned red as the burst capillaries in his retina leaked blood.
Chapter 21
* * *
Houston, November 5, present day
Joe Rossi, of the firm of Rossi and Viscuso, Trucking and Rigging, tightened down the last chain clamp. They'd used the two-inch logging chain for the job. He stepped back for a final look. The Caterpillar D13N was a bitch and a half, all right: two hundred tons, thirty foot blade, fourteen hundred horsepower, almost two million U.S. At eighty-five freaking feet long it stuck its ass out over the back of his biggest trailer.
Rossi and Viscuso did a lot of oil field work and they were as good as anybody with the big iron, but this thing was humungous. Even the thirty-six-wheeler looked like it was sagging a foot. If Caterpillar and Komatsu didn't stop the contest to prove theirs was the biggest, nobody was gonna be able to truck their shit to the job.
He walked around one more time and motioned Lee into the driver's seat for the haul to Austin.
* * *
Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque
58th Special Operations Wing
The maintenance chief jockeyed the cart under the starboard wing of the F-16 and toggled the lever to start the hydraulic lift. His cargo, an unguided NAPLPS-12A gravity air-to-ground weapon, lifted to the hardpoints and the lift held it there as he scrambled up the ladder to secure the explosive bolts. He'd been trying to figure what the hell was going on, the F-16 now had four of the seven-hundred-fifty-pound napalm bombs fitted. What was the target? The ordnance was Vietnam era, about the oldest stuff in the ammo dump. Kosovo heating up again? Seemed unlikely that they'd load up the planes with napalm and do a long refueling flight instead of picking up the NAPs from some NATO dump. But, jeez, they had over one hundred NAPs hung off F-16s and the birds were getting fuel now: there was enough napalm to fricassee Cincinnati, right here on this runway.
* * *
The first of the five C-130s lumbered down the long runway. Loaded to the maximum, it needed every foot of the strip to get airborne in the searing hundred-and-five-degree heat.
Lieutenant Commander Harry "Horse" Lilleman and the 114th Combat Engineering Battalion's specially trained C Company heavy-equipment operators sat on the nylon mesh seats, stripped down to camo shorts and T shirts. Racked on the far wall were their supplies: square main chute, round reserve chute, helmet, first aid, SPF thirty sunburn oil, bug juice, GPS, rain gear, six canteens of Gatorade, VHF radio, night vision goggles, a selection of K-rations, and some chow put up by the mess. A few of the old hands also smuggled beer and pulled-pork barbeque put up by Smokin' Joe's, but they didn't advertise the fact.
The cargo was four DEUCEs—Deployable Universal Combat Earthmover—rubber tired dozers with earthmoving blades, capable of thirty-five mph on highway. But each was rigged for airdrop, as the target city's airport was in the red zone. Somebody was in a hell of a hurry.
Their briefing was pretty weird, something about a road building thing, but just the dozer stuff, no asphalt. And fast, round-the-clock operation, three shifts. But no armament, they thought it would be pretty much a tit job. But what the hell were the F-16's up to? That wasn't covered in the briefing. And there were a shitload of 'em: four squadrons, all flown in overnight. Brought their own maintenance, and they were all fueled and ready to boo-gie.
A wide climbing turn off the end of the runway brought a dramatic sunrise into view as the flight formed up and pointed to Austin, Texas.
* * *
Austin
"What's this about another zone?" asked Hapwell Theslie, scanning the flat Texas farmland through gyrostabilized military binoculars. He and Gary Spender were sitting on the roof of a Humvee.
"We're pretty sure the yellow zone has been compromised," said Spender. "We figured on thirty-six hours quarantine to make sure symptoms would appear. But it looks like there's a percent of victims, the people with some Maya ancestry, that carry the virus for up to a week before showing symptoms, and then they show just mild symptoms. They often recover, but it gives us a big problem with quarantine. I was almost happier with everybody dying in a week."
"Did you brief CDC?"
"They knew as soon as we knew…yesterday afternoon. We've divided the yellow zone into two rings and we plan on moving the red zone back another ten miles."
"Shit. Take a look at this." He handed the binoculars to Spender, who adjusted the focus and scanned the activity two miles away. There was a wall of smoke or dust, easily visible to the naked eye, rising in a ribbon. Underneath the cloud Spender spotted a frenzy of activity, led by a bulldozer about the size of a shuttle booster rocket. And about the same power, if the unmuffled roar clearly audible from this distance was any clue. The dozer was grinding westward at a fast walk, toppling mid-size trees like toothpicks.
Behind the giant machine Spender could see at least a dozen smaller rubber-tired dozers, circling around like little black flies, tidying up after the monster.
"You're reinforcing the red zone barrier?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," said Theslie. "We got a ring around the city, bulldozed fifty feet wide, hay-baled and staked. Then there's five feet of Mylar, and thirty feet of mist net for the small birds. If you don't think the Audubon Society is pissed, you don't know bird lovers. We didn't tell 'em about the PAHELs."
Spender handed the binoculars back and drank from a plastic water bottle, then splashed some on his head. Another scorcher. At least it wasn't raining.
"You know the equipment operators are going to need quarantine?"
"Oh, yeah. They don't yet, though."
"What's a PAHEL?" Spender wasn't sure he really wanted to know.
"Portable Array-steered High Energy Laser. It's been in our armory since Star Wars days. It fires a ten thousand joule near-infrared laser pulse. Capacitor bank, CO2 laser. It was supposed to kill incoming MIRV missiles and saw the wings off enemy bombers at forty thousand feet."
Spender closed his eyes briefly. The military complex seemed more interested in practicing with all their latest t
oys than in actually controlling the outbreak. "And are we expecting enemy bombers?"
"Naaah," said Theslie. "It didn't work that well, anyway. Just scorched the paint. But it does a helluva job on light planes at low altitude, and on birds. And we don't even have to worry too much about bringing down a few commercial flights, we've theoretically got them all diverted. The military flyboys are on their own. Look over there, they've got one of 'em set up. It should be on full automatic by now." He pointed to a distant bright spot and held out the binoculars again. Spender zoomed in on a white-painted trailer with military markings. A forest of small dish antennas on the roof swiveled in unison. As he watched, the scene shimmered as if a big blowtorch had been touched off. He heard a few distant clicks a second later.
"It just fired," said Theslie. "Keep looking, you can see if they got a bird or a plane."
A smoldering black object entered Spender's field of view as it fell to the ground just inside the barrier. "A bird," he announced.
"Other than deploying weapons of mass destruction, and reinforcing a barrier that's already been breached, what are your plans?" asked Spender.
"Oh, the usual. The transition from civilian to military authority has gone pretty well. The mayor and the city council gave us some flak, so we declared 'em exposed and moved 'em into quarantine. They didn't like it, but there's not much they can do, right? Security on quarantine is really, really tight. What else? Lemme see. We have some volunteers inside in full Racal suits looking for pockets of infected people and animals and lighting 'em up."
"Lighting them up?"
"With lasers. So the Air Force birds can target them."
"Birds?" asked Spender. He was pretty sure he knew what Theslie meant, but he hoped he was wrong.
"Flyboys. Look over to the east."
Spender didn't need the binoculars to see dozens of slender fast-moving military airplanes with bombs hanging off the wings. Three broke formation and dove steeply at some target just out of sight across a low line of trees, and he caught the release of the bombs, tumbling through the air and flaming furiously on impact.
How many people had just died in flames? He thought about the Hippocratic oath. Was this evil, insanity, or essential? Cruel, ruthless, or just effective epidemic control? How many lives should be sacrificed for the concept of the greatest good for the greatest number? He didn't know for sure whether Theslie's methods were right or wrong, but he thanked God that he didn't need to make those decisions.
Chapter 22
* * *
Tulum, November 5, present day
Teresa awoke and looked around at some kind of storeroom illuminated with a single flickering incandescent bulb. Her head throbbed. She heard some kind of motor sputtering in the corner. Her hands were locked behind her somehow. Robert was slumped next to her—a bloody wound over his ear, a bruise on his forehead—not moving. She felt a flash of fear—he was still alive, wasn't he? She could just reach him with her foot and kicked him gently on his side. He grunted. His eyes were still closed, though. No blood, but his face looked bruised.
They were alone in the room. A dozen slender dark green pointed tubes, about twenty feet long, were stacked on nearby wooden cradles. Near the far wall a set of metal shelves held disorganized supplies, tools, cardboard boxes, tarpaulins. The room also was apparently cut from the bedrock limestone and the room's cross section was corbelled, trapezoidal, suggesting Maya origin again, but no glyphs appeared here. The rough chisel marks in the stone suggested a utilitarian use, not ceremonial. But the temperature was cool. Underground, she thought, but not ceremonial—unusual for the Maya, maybe a late construction. A big double metal door and a smaller metal door, obviously recent additions, were set in opposite ends of the room.
Maybe she could figure a way out herself, it was a little cold and clammy down here. She looked at Robert's hands, strapped to a three-inch iron pipe. She moved her hands, she was securely tied also. Hmmmm. She tried to move the pipe. Nothing. All right, maybe she would need a little help. She prodded him again. This time he didn't even grunt.
"Hey, sleeping beauty!" she said, maybe a little too loud.
She realized her error as two men entered the room a minute later with guns drawn. They looked Hispanic, young, dark but unhealthy-looking skin—maybe it was the sunless environment. They had black eyes, thick black eyebrows and stringy shoulder-length black hair, and they chattered in rapid Spanish. The short one smoked on a big cigar, the tall one had arms like a mountain gorilla. They spoke with a South American accent, maybe Venezuela or Colombia, debating how she and Robert had got into the caves. A moment later a third man appeared in the doorway with a rifle.
The tall man spoke to her in accented English, "You! What are you doing here? What are you looking for?"
She thought of what she should say, and how it probably would be smart to speak in English so she could continue to eavesdrop on the Spanish, then she thought she should pretend to be paralyzed with fear and shut up. Actually, she was just about paralyzed with fear. She did not reply.
The man with the cigar slapped her face and grabbed the zipper on her wet suit, pulling it to her waist, revealing an orange halter. He yanked the halter down roughly, leaving painful scratches from his fingernails. Cigar smoke filled her nostrils, triggering a wave of nausea. "First tell me what you do here, then I may do you a big favor." He squeezed her breast in an oil-stained hand, sending a wave of revulsion through her. Anger pushed away her fear.
The big man, José from the Spanish conversation, kicked at Robert. Robert grunted again, and this time his eyes opened, or at least one eye sort of opened. She could feel her fear washing away. He was awake. Time he used those big muscles for something constructive, like beating up on these guys. Could he break loose of these flimsy-looking wire ties, or what? But his eye, what was wrong? She looked closer. Jesus, bright red, he could be really hurt.
Robert shook his head sideways a few times and moaned again, then he looked up at her with both eyes more or less open, but they didn't seem to be pointing in the same direction. She could see him struggle to focus, staring at her. Migod! She looked down at the direction of his gaze; her breast was hanging out like a cow's, greasy fingerprints and all. She twisted away as far as she could. At least he didn't seem to be able to see too well yet.
The big man slapped Robert across his face with a pistol, drawing blood. Robert's head tilted down again, and Teresa felt a burst of concern. He could be badly hurt. "Stop that!" she screamed. "He didn't do anything!"
The man casually hit Robert again and spoke, "You! Idiot! What are you looking for?"
Robert coughed, cleared his throat, shook his head and tried again, "Relax. We're just archaeologists. We're looking for ancient Maya relics." He coughed again and spat blood onto the dark floor. "We don't care about whatever you're doing here."
What the heck were they doing here, Teresa asked herself. Secret military installation? No uniforms. Not neat enough for the military. Grave robbers? Too many of them. Terrorists? In Tulum, for Christ's sake? Drugs? Maybe, but why underground?
The big man jerked Teresa around to face Robert, and this time she saw his eyes focus clearly, saw his face darken in anger as the man grabbed her breast and twisted it, bringing tears to her eyes. "We keep her. If you don't tell truth, we kill her, after a while. What you looking for?"
"We're archaeologists, dammit! Dirt archaeologists! Diggers! Looking for Maya ruins! Don't hurt her!"
José hit him again and he slumped. Then José turned and walked to a table, unclipped a radiophone, pushed some buttons, and spoke in Spanish, "Lopez? José. You will not believe this, but two college gringo diggers showed up in the warehouse…Yes, one man, one woman…No, English only, they don't speak much Spanish. They had SCUBA gear, that's how. But how do they get past the net…OK, we'll keep them here all year, if you want…No, no alarms at all, they didn't open the underwater grate or use the dry entrance. OK, we'll wait, but Carlito wants to bang the woman, h
e's like a dog in heat…OK, sure, three hours, we'll be here, where we gonna go?"
José spoke to the other man, "Carlito, Lopez says no banging the broad. Until he gets here." He walked back to zip up Teresa's wet suit.
"How does he find out, if you do not tell him?"
"From the smile on her face, idiot. Maybe when Lopez talks to them, he wants to make sure they're not D.E.A. or something. Maybe he wants the woman for himself first. After that, it will be our turn, if they are still alive."
Carlito patted Teresa's thigh, revealed his missing teeth in a smile and spoke in English, "Later, querido. Wait for me. You are much happy here, I promise." They walked out.
Chapter 23
* * *
Tulum, July 27, 823
Peloc moved quickly to the machine at the far end of the cave with his short, precise steps. Every minute was important now, if he was to unravel this tangle which had so quickly and so unexpectedly ensnarled his Maya. The eternal, the magnificent Maya, his Maya, chosen of the Jaguar God, favorite of Chac, builders of the tallest pyramids, the largest cities: the Maya were humbled, panicked, running to the forests, no longer able to live in the cities with the horror.
Peloc called for his main assistant, Bird Eater Xcatca. He sighted down his impressive nose at Xcatca like a crossbow being brought to bear and asked for the body of the next victim, already cold with the temperature of the cave, already stiff in death. With the obsidian knife he scraped the tongue and collected the thick effluvium in a dish, then added berztl liquid and mixed the solution.