The Aztec Prophecy (Joe Hawke Book 6)

by Rob Jones

  “An Aztec thing?” Lexi asked.

  Eden nodded grimly. “Put all this together and it’s enough to have my interest.” He stared at them all before finishing. “And if it’s got my interest it’s got your interest, understand? This isn’t a holiday camp, remember. Now get that feed on the plasma screen, Alex!”

  “On it.”

  Eden paced the room as Alex hurried to patch the live video from Ben’s phone through to the plasma screen. After a few tense seconds an image of dense jungle filled the enormous screen and they watched with horror as they saw Ben running away from the camera toward some kind of clearing. Someone shot him, and then he was surrounded by men.

  “That one’s Wade,” Eden said, indicating a tall man in a battered Reiner hat.

  A short conversation followed and then things went from bad to worse when Alfie Mills and Sasha Harding were dragged into the frame.

  Eden hammered his fist on the desk. “Why the hell did they go into the jungle?”

  “Beats me,” Alex said. “They’re not jungle-trained.”

  “No they’re bloody well not! They were trying to impress me.” Eden’s voice grew quieter at the thought.

  “They look terrified,” Lexi said.

  “Damn it all!” Eden shouted. “I told him to get out of there! I told him his safety was the priority, not the mission. Things are bad enough with half the team in London.”

  Alex felt the anxiety rise. The whole scene was given a warped twist due to the phone being tipped at forty-five degrees, and she started to feel sick as she realized what was about to happen.

  “Is there anything we can do to help them?” she asked.

  Eden gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Nothing. They’re in the middle of the Lacandon Jungle.”

  “Where’s that exactly?” Reaper asked.

  Alex turned around and faced him, her face sombre. “In the Chiapas state of Mexico.”

  Eden sighed. “Even if we fuelled a jet and took off immediately it’s a three hour flight to the nearest city and several hours by Jeep, not to mention even more hours hiking through the rainforest. They’re totally alone.”

  For a moment there was another brief conversation between Wade and Ben, and then Wade ordered a man to shoot Alfie and Sasha. Alex watched in disbelief as both were gunned down and fell just out of the shot, dead.

  “Did that really just happen?” Lexi said.

  Eden said nothing, but Alex saw the tension in his jaw.

  “Fake, maybe?” Lexi asked.

  Eden shook his head.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Reaper said quietly.

  Now, Ben was struggling to free himself but he had no chance against the grip of so many men. Then Wade held something up to the sky and a look of deranged mania appeared on his face. Moments later he appeared to hand Ben a gun before taking a step back and ordering his men to attack the former Para.

  Scarlet narrowed her eyes. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I can’t believe we’re watching this live,” Alex said. “It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Ben works for me,” Eden said, his voice low and full of emotion. “I’ve known him since we were in the Paras together, and I sent him in there. You can all do as you please, but he’s in ECHO and if you think I haven’t got the courage to watch what he has to go through then you don’t know me at all. I need to know what happens because I need to know who to punish and how hard.”

  After that, no one else spoke.

  The feed beamed live into the ECHO headquarters and Eden and the rest of the team watched in horrified, stunned silence as the men pounded on their friend, stabbing and kicking him. Then Wade walked over and lifted the strange dagger above his head. The men gathered and obscured what happened next. A minute later, a bloodied Morton Wade saw the phone and walked over to it. The last image they received was the Texan smashing his boot down on the lens.

  “Alex, get me that phone’s location right now.”

  “No problem. The phone’s GPS tracker allows me to pinpoint it in seconds.”

  Alex spent a few seconds on her laptop before looking back to Eden. “Done – I have the exact coordinates.”

  Eden walked to the window wall and stared out across the Caribbean, speechless.

  Alex slumped down in her chair and thought about what she had just witnessed – the brutal murder of three of their own. She felt sick, and now she looked at the others for some kind of mutual comfort. She was one of the newest members of the ECHO team and had never seen anything like this before. She lowered her voice to a whisper and turned to Scarlet. “What happens now?”

  “This…” Scarlet said, pointing her chin at Eden.

  Across the room, Sir Richard Eden turned around and faced them. Silhouetted by the brightness of the tropical day outside the window behind him, his body took on an ominous, ethereal form.

  “I haven’t briefed anyone on this yet, but not long ago I was contacted by a man named Barton. He’s in London and claims to be part of Wade’s sun-worshipping cult, only he says something has changed, and he can’t be a part of it any more. He has information for us and he’s meeting Lea, Joe and the others in London today.”

  “Jesus,” Scarlet said. “I wonder how bad things have to be for a sun-worshipping cultist to get nervous…”

  Eden nodded grimly. “That’s what worries me. Barton’s defection is bad enough, but what we just saw on Ben’s phone obviously means that Wade is now onto the fact that someone is on his tail. He may or may not know that it’s ECHO, but we’re not taking any risks. If he’s onto us then we’re up against it, I can promise you.”

  “The best defense is a good offense,” Scarlet said coolly.

  “Exactly,” Eden said firmly. “But this time I think we’re going to need some help. My contacts in Mexico are limited but there is someone we can turn to.” He looked at Alex. “I appreciate your relationship with your father is rocky, but I think it might be a good idea to involve him with this. Wade is heavily connected with some of Mexico’s hardest drug gangs and that’s an area the Americans know better than anyone.”

  “Sure. I’ll call him.”

  Eden was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was level and commanding. “Three of our own are dead, including a very dear friend of mine. I want Morton Wade punished and his cult shut down.”

  “Got it.”

  “And I want to know why he’s been spending so much time in the jungle as well – we’re going to need to analyse that video feed for a start and see if we can pull anything out of it.”

  Scarlet stubbed out her cigarette. “Wheels up in ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lea Donovan smiled at Joe Hawke and looked back down at the menu. They were sitting on the terrace of a Tex-Mex restaurant in Covent Garden, enjoying some rare sunshine with some cold Corona lagers. Ryan Bale and Maria Kurikova were at the adjacent table. The four of them had decided to take a few days away from business and get in some critical chillaxing, as Ryan had put it. A few yards away a busker was playing a Rachmaninov adagio and not for the first time Lea hoped Hawke wasn’t carrying a weapon otherwise it might be the fiddler’s last stand.

  “So much to choose from,” she said, perusing the menu.

  “I can tell that,” Hawke said, raising his beer bottle. “This must be your third flypast of the menu.”

  “Get used to that,” Ryan said out the side of his mouth.

  Lea rolled her eyes but made no reply. The simple truth was that she was enjoying not being shot at for once, which was how she seemed to spend so much of her life these days. Spending a few carefree hours with the man she loved, away from bullets, explosions and ancient tombs, was a welcome relief and she didn’t want to rush a single a part of it.

  She was still haunted by the way Álvero Sala had mocked her back in his Andorran château, and crowed about not being chosen to kill her father. She had no idea what any of it meant, but if it was true it scared her more t
han anything. Sala had known so much about Valhalla and the Athanatoi that his reference to her father made Lea’s skin crawl. She had the terrible feeling that Sala was only the tip of the iceberg, and she was frightened to think about how far down she would have to dive to reach the end of it.

  But not today, she decided. Today was almost perfect… the cool beer, the easy chit-chat, the casual laughter of their fellow diners and the wispy cirrus clouds high above the capital made a great summer’s day. All around her she felt the city’s electric vibe – the possibility of possibilities receding like echoes down every road and alleyway. And then there was Joe Hawke… Sometimes she wondered if they should get hitched, but it never seemed like the right time to talk about it.

  She glanced at her watch. Their rendezvous still wasn’t here. Eden had received a call from a man claiming to be a member of Wade’s bizarre sun-worshipping cult, the Order of the Sixth Sun. He said he had disturbing information for them about a major terror attack connected with the cult. Eden was on Elysium and had arranged for him to meet Hawke and Lea instead because they were in England, but so far there was no sign of him. Maybe Wade’s men had already silenced him.

  “If you don’t order soon I’ll do it for you,” Hawke said, also glancing at his watch.

  “You bloody won’t!”

  “Never get between Lea and her lunch, Joe,” Ryan said with a smile. “Trust a man who knows.”

  Hawke laughed at the joke but Lea saw that even now he wasn’t truly relaxed. His eyes were always scanning the crowd for trouble, always evaluating egress points. She wondered if he would ever be able to switch that mechanism off and unwind. Although he hadn’t told her where he had spent the last few days, she knew it was Scotland, and she knew what that meant.

  She had seen the look in his eyes when he’d found out about Matheson’s retirement. Joe Hawke knew how to play the long game, and with a man like him revenge was just a matter of time. You could count on it. Any doubt in her mind about what had happened was cleared up when she’d glanced at her iPhone and read the headlines: JAMES MATHESON DIES PEACEFULLY IN HIS SLEEP. She doubted that was how it had panned out, but kept her views to herself. He would share it when he was ready.

  It was tough that he wouldn’t let her into that part of his life – his first wife and her murder, and how he felt about it all, but that was the price she paid for being with a man like Hawke. One day, she knew, she would break his walls down and get to know the real man, but until then she had to give him the space he needed.

  Beside her, Ryan and Maria laughed at a shared joke. Ryan knew he was getting in deep now – after so many months he had finally been able to move on from Sophie Durand – and a good part of the healing had come from Maria Kurikova.

  “It’s natural that you still think of her,” Maria said when he mentioned her name.

  “I know… but it’s time for me to move on now. I’m with you, and we’re happy together, right?”

  She nodded and gave a sweet smile. He knew she kept secrets from him – she never spoke about her old life in the Russian Secret Service – but that smile told him how she really felt about him. Inwardly, he beamed with pleasure that life could be so good again.

  “All right,” Lea said at last, but not taking her eyes off the menu. “I’ve made my decision.”

  “Thank Crunchie for that,” Hawke said. He turned to catch the eye of a nearby waiter.

  “I’m going to have the Pescado Tacos – they look absolutely, bloody fan… oh damn.”

  “What?”

  “They come with chipotle aioli and I’m not so keen on that.”

  “You’re not so keen on chipotle aioli?”

  She looked at him with earnest eyes. “Sure, why not? Do I have to like chipotle aioli?”

  “Well no, it’s just that…” Hawke waved the waiter away with an apologetic shake of the head.

  Lea looked in his eyes. “What?”

  “We’re at a Tex-Mex restaurant. Most stuff probably has chipotle aioli with it.”

  “No it doesn’t! Look here at the Chile en Nogada. There’s no chipotle aioli with that.”

  “So get that then.”

  “I think I just might,” she said smiling broadly.

  Hawke caught the waiter’s eye once more.

  Lea sighed. “Oh – wait.”

  “What is it now?”

  “It’s got walnut-almond sauce with it.”

  “So what?”

  “So, I don’t like the taste of walnuts.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  Ryan nodded as the memory returned. “No, she’s not kidding.”

  Lea glared at him. “Why would I be kidding? Do I have to like the taste of walnuts?”

  Hawke sighed and waved the waiter away a second time. “Well… no, but…”

  “But what?”

  “If it’s not walnut-almond sauce it’s chipotle aioli.”

  “Stop saying chipotle aioli.”

  “You stop saying it!”

  “Oh I just cannot decide. Maybe we should have had Indian?”

  Hawke narrowed his eyes and smirked. “Now you’re having a laugh, right?”

  “I might be.”

  “Lea?”

  “What?”

  “Order your sodding dinner.”

  Lea folded the menu over and looked at Hawke. “Fine, in that case I’ll have the Salsa de la Casa for starters, the Enchilada Veracruz for the main with a side order of Arroz Verde and Flan de Vainilla for dessert.”

  Hawke looked at her. “You memorized that?”

  “I always eat the same thing at this restaurant. Rich and I come here a lot.”

  Hawke gave her a look that he thought expressed despair, but in fact told her again how much he loved her, and then he summoned the waiter over for the third time.

  “You’re very sure that you’re ready to order?” the young man said.

  Lea shared a look with Hawke. “We’re ready,” she said. “Joe here couldn’t decide if he liked coriander or not.”

  The waiter took the order and returned with more bottles of the chilled Corona which the four ECHO members drank peacefully while waiting for their food. All around them the city buzzed. Young couples walked hand in hand, stopping to share a kiss while leaning on the colonnades, a party of Japanese tourists shuffled past them, taking photographs of this and that, and finally the fiddling busker packed up his violin and meandered off to count his change and drown his sorrows in a very shallow pool of wine.

  Yes – she was happy now, but she felt that life was still pretty far from perfection. For one thing, Sala’s death had raised more questions than answers about the mysterious Athanatoi and the nature of her own father’s relationship with the enigmatic and elusive society. What had the crazed old man meant when he’d spoken of factions and war? How did it all fit together? What had her father known, but kept from her?

  But today wasn’t about those things, she told herself once again. Today was about relaxing and sharing some chilled-out time with Joe Hawke. She was glad he was in her life, but she worried that something would take him from her. It was that thought that had stopped her from getting truly close to him, but if he’d noticed he hadn’t said anything to her.

  The main course came and they tucked in while chatting about whatever drifted into their minds. As usual, Hawke deftly skirted around the issue of his family, even when they pressed him on the subject. All they could get out of him was that his family was right here in London and no, he didn’t want to talk about them, and no he definitely didn’t want to see them.

  Lea didn’t know if he was trying to be mysterious or not, but she didn’t have a lot of time for the sentiment. She, after all, would love more than anything to introduce her parents to him, but neither of them was alive. The idea of not being bothered to cross town to see his family made her angry, but she kept the thought to herself. Hawke wasn’t a man who acted without good reason, and she supposed he had good ones for being so reluctant, but
one day, she considered, this could lead to problems between them.

  Now, the Englishman pushed a little pot into the center of the table. “Want to try some of the chipotle aioli dip?” he asked, deadpan.

  “You know what you can stick in that dip, Joe Hawke?”

  “I think there’s a law against that sort of thing – outraging public decency, I believe.”

  “Urgh! Don’t be so foul. I was talking about the corn tortillas!”

  “Of course you were,” he said with a crooked smile.

  Ryan yawned and stretched his arm over Maria’s shoulder. “Chipotle’s a Nahuatl word, you know.”

  Hawke, Lea and Maria turned to look at him for a second. “Eh?” Hawke said.

  Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “Means smoked chilli.”

  “Thanks for that,” Lea said.

  By the arrival of dessert the sun had started to wane, and the baked caramel custard flan and fresh raspberries arrived with a candle in a small metal lantern. Diners at other tables were winding up and wandering away from their tables, their path home softened by the watermelon Margaritas and blue agave tequilas.

  “Time for us to go home too, I think,” Hawke said at last. “I don’t think Eden’s mystery man is going to show up.” He folded his napkin over on the empty plate and pushed his chair back a little. Summoning the waiter for the bill, he paid and moments later he and Lea were standing from their table and sharing a long kiss before turning into the square. Maria and Ryan were laughing at a joke a few yards behind them.

  Hawke was about to hold forth on the subject of tipping when they heard the sound of mopeds wildly over-revving somewhere to their left.

  “I don’t like the look of that,” Lea said, gripping Hawke’s arm.

  The Englishman barely heard her over the sound of the raspy engines, and a moment later three riders dressed in black raced into view. He fixed his eyes on the three of them and sighed.