National Geographic loved her.
Not surprisingly, the high-powered Breslin Corporation had come calling soon after she got her doctorate.
Led by its eccentric billionaire chairman, Leonard Breslin III, the Corporation was the major sponsor of over a dozen archaeological digs around the world, including Chase’s Teotihuacan work.
As such, for the last six months, Chase and Kenny G—her symbol database manager and all-round techno-genius—had been working hard at deciphering Teotihuacan’s complicated glyph systems.
And then, today, the Corporation’s Lear jet had arrived, with a message from Leonard Breslin.
He wanted to see the m. Now.
There is an old adage in academia: He who pays the piper, calls the tune.
And so they’d got on the plane.
It was only once it had taken off, however, that they were presented with the government non-disclosure form.
THE HANGAR
After about an hour of flying, the Lear touched down. Exactly where it had landed, neither Chase nor Kenny knew. The shutters on the plane’s windows had been fixed in place, blacked out.
The plane taxied for a short way, then jolted to a halt. The side door was opened and a set of stairs folded down.
Chase emerged from the plane . . .
. . . and found herself standing inside a brightly-lit aeroplane hangar.
The hangar’s doors were closed, but they couldn’t hide the slivers of white sunlight that crept in through the cracks, or the dry oven-like heat inside the building.
All right, Chase thought, we’re in a desert somewhere.
But since the flight had lasted about sixty minutes, they could have been anywhere between Texas and Nevada.
A two-person reception party was waiting for them.
Leonard Breslin himself and a four-star US Air Force general, complete with a chest full of medals.
‘Jessica,’ Breslin said, stepping forward and kissing her on the hand. ‘ Delighted, as always.
I’m terribly sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger precautions surrounding your arrival. Awfully rude. But it seems that the US Government needs our help, and well, they want to keep all this sort of hush-hush.’
Even Chase knew Breslin’s links with the American government were strong. It was widely known that Breslin was a regular guest at the White House and a long-time friend of the President’s.
‘The US Government needs our help,’ Chase said, deadpan. ‘With what?’
THE DESCENT
‘With some stone tablets we’ve found,’ the Air Force general said, as he guided Breslin, Chase and Kenny G down a set of steel stairs that led underneath the hangar.
The general’s name was Haynes, Washington Haynes, and he was the officer-in-charge of this facility.
‘Mister Breslin tells me you’re from Australia,’ he said to Chase as they descended the stairs.
‘UWA.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘You studied under Hans Ziegler, right?’
‘Yes. I was lucky. He was there as a Visiting Fellow when I was doing my doctorate.’
‘Hmmm,’ Haynes nodded thoughtfully, then changed the subject. ‘Always wanted to go to Australia. Good skiing, they tell me. Nice old castles, too.’
‘I think you mean Austria,’ Chase said.
‘Oh. Yeah.’
Typical Americans, Chase thought. They could build stealth bombers and neutron bombs, but they couldn’t tell the difference between Australia and Austria. And this guy was a general.
The stairwell took them down into the earth.
As they approached a landing, Chase heard pained shouts coming from within. When they came to the landing in question, Haynes and Breslin just walked straight past the open doorway.
Chase, however, looked in.
And she gasped.
She saw four men lying in hospital beds, in various states of disarray.
Two were horribly bloodied and bandaged, their sheets awash with red splashes. Another man lay comatose, attached to a life-support system. The fourth man was struggling with two hapless doctors. Kicking and squirming, for a brief second, his feet protruded from underneath his sheets.
Chase held back her revulsion. The man’s feet were horribly deformed-it looked as if they had been crushed flat.
Kenny had also stopped to look. ‘Tell me we’re not going where he went,’ he said flatly.
THE TABLETS
They caught up with Haynes and Breslin on the next floor below, at a laboratory-type room. Chase took in the room.
A few benches, some wash trays, and at the far end, a solid-looking steel door that looked like a bank safe. Nearer to Chase stood a whiteboard with hand-written messages slashed across it:
‘PRE-AZTEC MINE, POSSIBLY TEOTIHUACAN . . .’
‘VAULT STRUCTURE ON LOWEST LEVEL—OPEN IT BY USING THE TABLETS, BUT IN WHAT ORDER???’
‘WHAT IS TRIGGERING THE DAMN BOOBY TRAPS!’
‘7 MEN LOST: 4 WOUNDED, 3 DEAD . . . 1 BEING A CIVILIAN.’
‘WHAT IS IN THERE? HAS TO BE THE VISITOR’S STONE . . .’
In front of the whiteboard stood a long stainless-steel table. Chase approached it, saw what lay on top of it.
Five stone tablets.
Five glistening black stone tablets.
They were rectangular in shape, each about the size of a hardback book
But it was their blackness that seized her attention. They were more than just black—they were jet black, black-on-black. Chase guessed that they were cut from some kind of volcanic glass, obsidian maybe.
Carved into each rectangular tablet was an image that looked something like an elongated face.
Chase picked up one of the tablets. Heavy. She turned it over in her hands. On the rear side of the tablet there was a hollowed out section in the shape of a +.
‘Is this why you brought us here?’ she asked Breslin. ‘To decipher these.’
‘That and a few other glyphs that the general is having . . . trouble . . . with,’ Breslin said.
Chase looked at her boss hard.
‘I’ll have to run them through the database,’ she said, at last. ‘And even then I’ll have to make some educated guesses. But for that I’ll need my laptop and our scanning equipment. They’re up in the jet.’
Haynes nodded to one of the lab technicians, who dashed upstairs.
Chase said, ‘Right. I think I’ve been more than co-operative. Now it’s your turn. Blacked out jets, non-disclosure forms, men with flattened feet and ancient stone tablets. I think it’s time you boys told us what the hell is going on here.’
Breslin exchanged a look with Haynes, who nodded.
‘Why don’t you come this way,’ the Air Force general said, ushering Chase and Kenny toward the thick steel door at the far end of the lab.
He punched a code into a keypad and the big door hissed open. Haynes swung it wide.
Chase stepped through . . .
. . . and her jaw dropped.
She found herself standing in the entrance to a dirt-walled cave, about twenty yards square. The earthen cavern was illuminated by a series of halogen light-stands, arrayed in a circle around a squat stone structure.
It was about the size a single-car garage, and built in the shape of a solid little pyramid . . . and in the distinctly Teotihuacan style.
A square entryway filled its centre, yawning wide, inviting the unwary to enter its inky black depths.
Haynes and his scientific team had encased the little structure in a Lexan-glass airlock—a giant clear-glass cube that completely covered the squat little building-creating a bizarre mix of the dusty-and-ancient and the very high-tech.
Chase stared at the little stone portal.
She’d seen structures just like it dotted all around Teotihuacan.
It was the entrance to an ancient mine.
PART 2
THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG
Chase walked around the glass-encased mine entrance,
evaluating it with a cool gaze.
‘Teotihuacan structure,’ she said. ‘Late fifth century.’
‘Correct,’ Breslin said.
‘Design is similar to that of some of the gold and diamond mines on the outskirts of the main metropolis in Mexico,’ she said. ‘I assume you’ve encountered booby traps.’ Teotihuacan mines often featured elaborate traps as a deterrence to thieves.
‘Yes, we have,’ General Haynes said.
‘But this baby’s a long way from home . . .’ Kenny G said.
‘Yes.’ Chase rounded on Haynes. ‘Although it would help if we had some idea just how far from home we are.’
Haynes eyed her carefully, then said, ‘Nevada. We’re in southern Nevada.’
Kenny turned to Chase. ‘Could be Xutu.’
‘What’s Xutu?’ Breslin asked.
‘It’s a legendary Teotihuacan prison,’ Chase said, ‘reputedly built in the desert far to the north of the main city. The Teotihuacan version of Alcatraz. Legend has it that Xutu was also filled with lethal booby traps, and-at its lowest levels-was patrolled not by human guards, but by animals.’
‘Animals?’
Kenny said, ‘Most likely domesticated American marsupial wolves. Although-‘
‘The thing is,’ Chase said, ‘Xutu could just be a myth. Talk of it only arises from the disputed translation of a handful of glyphs in Teotihuacan.’
The lab technician arrived from upstairs with Chase’s computer gear. Her laptop was connected to a device that looked like a police radar gun: Kenny’s image scanner.
Chase looked expectantly at Breslin and Haynes.
‘Okay. So what do you want us to do?’
Haynes said, ‘We want you to go down into the mine, and using that little database of yours, open up its biggest secret.’
ENTRY
The door to the Lexan-glass airlock surrounding the mine entrance opened with a loud hiss.
Chase and Kenny stood before it, now surrounded by eight fully-armed soldiers-their escort-whom Haynes merely said ‘were from Delta’. Their leader was a lieutenant named William ‘Tank’ Kowalski.
A long length of nylon rope was also now tied firmly around Chase’s waist, connecting her to Kenny.
‘Buddy system,’ Kowalski had said as he’d tied the rope around her slender hips.
Chase had noticed that all the Delta men were joined together in a similar way, tied off into pairs. She wondered why.
The airock swung open, and a knot of apprehension materialised in her throat. She swallowed it. She was frightened, but her curiosity had got the better of her. She wanted to know what lay inside this mine.
And with that, they entered the airlock, and disappeared inside the ancient mine.
THE WELL-SHAFT AND THE LONG STONE
The first thing Chase saw were four close stone walls and a hard-packed earthen floor. In the middle of the dirt floor, however, was a dark circular hole, into which hung a knotted rope.
Following the Delta men, Haynes and Breslin, she climbed down the well, aided by the knots on the rope.
The walls of the shaft were perfectly sheer, and dripping with moisture. Every brick was set flush against the next. There was not a fingerhold to be had up its entire cylindrical length.
Which was odd, Chase thought. Most Teotihuacan mines allowed easy access to and from the digging levels.
After about sixty feet of climbing, she came to the bottom of the well-shaft, and found herself standing in a stone corridor that was perfectly square in shape.
Battery-powered lamps sat on the floor, bathing the tunnel in spooky diffused light.
Kowalski stopped Chase from stepping any further down the corridor.
‘Whatever you do, don’t step on the long stone.’
It was then that Chase noticed the tunnel floor in front of her. It was made up of hundreds of small flat floorstones. One stone, however, stretched for the entire width of the hallway-a long, wide rectangular slab. Beyond it was a doorway leading into another passageway. If she hadn’t been forewarned, Chase would almost certainly would have stepped on it.
Everyone leapt over the long stone. When they were all safe on the other side, Kowalski turned to Chase. ‘Want to know why?’
‘Okay.’
The lieutenant raised his gun and fired a single shot into the long stone.
The bullet sparked off the stone——and then with shocking suddenness, a large square section of the ceiling rushed down from above them and banged down against the long stone, before retreating quickly back into the ceiling, leaving the tunnel silent once more.
Chase was stunned.
It had happened so fast! It had looked like a pile driver of some sort, an enormous stone mechanism designed to flatten the unwary soul who stepped on the long stone . . . or maybe just flatten that person’s legs.
THE PASSAGEWAY OF ANIMALS
They pushed on, heading deeper into the ancient mine.
They entered a long extra-narrow passageway that they could only pass through single-file indeed, it was so confined, their shoulders brushed against its uneven rocky walls.
Carved animal heads lunged out from the walls on either side of them. Sinister alligator heads, snarling snakes, and some older creatures: a woolly mammoth, a sabre-toothed tiger.
There was even one statue that looked like an enormous wrinkle-snouted rat.
‘What the hell is that?’ one of the soldiers said as he bumped up against the giant rat’s bared fangs.
‘Megafauna,’ Chase said. ‘Overly large prehistoric mammals. Every continent had them, but most died out with the arrival of man about 10,000 years ago. Mastodons in North America.
Marsupial lions in Australia. Some species survived until quite recently. For example, this species of giant rodent-rodentus carnifex—is known to have lived in the fourth century A.D.
Not surprising, really, rodents are the most resilient animals on earth.’
‘A giant rat . . .’ the soldier frowned.
‘Sort of. Carnifex was six-feet-tall and partially bipedal. It was carnivorous, and in appearance, kind of like a cross between a rat and a velociraptor-long tail, powerful hind limbs, fast mover. The Teotihuacans sometimes used them as guard animals, but mainly they were used for bloodsport-they’d put two carnifecia in a pit and bet on the outcome.’
‘Basically, cockfighting with big rats,’ Kenny G said.
‘Oh.’
After they’d passed through the ultra-narrow passageway, Kowalski demonstrated its secret.
He touched a small floor panel with his foot. There was a four second delay . . .
. . . and then suddenly the narrow passageway’s floor-the whole floor, about fifteen yards of it-just dropped away on a hinge, revealing a ten-foot-deep pit beneath it filled with viciouslysharpened wooden stakes.
Kowalski pressed the floor panel again the hinged floor rose back up into place, resetting itself.
‘Ouch,’ Kenny whispered.
THE SPIRAL RAMP
They came to a spiralling ramp that curved downward, bending around and out of sight. A rivulet of condensation ran in a trickle down its moss-covered floor.
An imposing stone statue glared down at them from an alcove at the top of the ramp. It was basically just a seven-foot-tall head, the face of an angry god. Long lethal-looking stone spikes jutted out from the face’s cheeks, nose and brows.
They headed down the slippery spiralling ramp, slowly.
Kenny G walked beside Chase. ‘Did you see that whiteboard upstairs?’ he whispered.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘See the part about the Visitor’s Stone.’
‘Yes.’
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s possible. It would fit the legend.’
The legend of the Visitor’s Stone was a famous one in Mexican lore. Teotihuacan myth had it that at the height of their power, the Teotihuacans were visited by a strange otherworldly individual. He bestowed upon the Teotihuacans a sing
le gift, a sharp pointed pyramid-shaped piece of silver stone.
Legend had it that this stone-known as the Visitor’s Stone-possessed incredible properties.
When dipped in water, it would bestow upon that water the gift of life . . . eternal life. Whoever drank the water would live forever.
But the lure of eternal life proved too much for the Teotihuacans, and they descended into infighting and murder. And so the stone was taken to a most secret location-a secure place far away from the city-and hidden there, never to be found again.
‘Do you think the Stone even exists?’ Kenny asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Chase said. ‘But it would seem that if it does, the American government wants it.’
THE BELLY OF THE MINE
After about three storeys’ worth of downward circling, the spiralling ramp levelled out at an L-shaped corner, which opened onto a long square tunnel.The wall facing the ramp was heavily battered and crumbling, as if it had been pounded repeatedly with a sledgehammer. Large chunks of broken stone lay everywhere.
Chase, however, didn’t notice them.
She only had eyes for what lay at the end of the new tunnel that branched off to her right. At the far end of it, she saw an enormous beautifully-crafted archway.
Strangely, however, the ceiling of this tunnel was made up of a grid of wide square-shaped alcoves. A lone object leaned against the wall halfway down the tunnel-a six-foot-tall golden cage, covered in broken cobwebs.
‘It’s okay,’ Kowalski said. ‘Just don’t step on the farthest edges of the floorstones.’
Chase did as she was told, careful to step only in the exact centre of each floorstone. By this stage, she didn’t even want to know what surprises lurked in the shadowed alcoves in the ceiling.
When they reached the decorated archway at the end of the tunnel, she gazed out through it.
And her eyes widened.
‘Oh. . . my . . . Lord . . .’ she breathed.
THE UNDERGROUND KINGDOM
It looked like a cathedral, a spectacular subterranean cathedral. A gigantic cavern, at least a hundred feet high.
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