The Aztec Prophecy (Joe Hawke Book 6)

by Rob Jones

  Scarlet Sloane could hardly wait to start, but orders were orders and hers were to wait until precisely midday before launching the assault.

  She looked at her watch and sighed. 11:45.

  Fifteen minutes to go and not even the chance of a cigarette as she waited.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Hawke lunged toward Wade but was stopped dead in his tracks when Mendoza raised a gun and aimed it at his face. “No, no my friend,” he whispered. “No one gets near Mr Wade. Get back.”

  Lea glanced at Hawke as they followed Mendoza’s instructions. “If you’d locked the door behind you when we came in none of this would have happened.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Shut your mouths!” Wade said, turning to Mendoza. “Get some rope.”

  Mendoza returned moments later with a length of what looked like a double braid yachting rope. After he finished tying their hands behind their backs Wade ordered them to turn around and sit on a cotton chaise longue on the far wall. Then he turned to Mendoza and Aurora.

  “You two can go now.”

  “But…”

  “I said get out, damn it.”

  Mendoza stared at the Texan for a moment with hate smouldering in his eyes before stepping out with Aurora and closing the door behind him.

  Wade smiled and casually pulled a cigar from a box on his desk. “Poor Silvio,” he said, noting the look on Hawke’s face. “Just because he was a drug cartel lord he thinks he’s above me in the pecking order.”

  “But you’re the Big Boss, right?” Lea said sarcastically.

  “Silvio is nothing more than a violent thug, a common peasant who knifed his way to the top. Sadly for him the CIA has taken everything from him. Now he has nothing so he works for me.” He stared at her and narrowed his eyes to slits. “The Big Boss.”

  “Are you sure about that, Wade?” Hawke said. “I saw the way he looks at you and to me it seems like he’d like to use your skull as a potpourri bowl.”

  Lea nodded. “True story – I saw the look on his face too and he seems like the type… the potpourri thing I mean.”

  Wade gave an evaluating glance and nodded his head sagely before walking over to his desk and reclining against it for a moment.

  Hawke strained against his bonds as Wade casually lit the cigar and stepped over to the window looking over the yard. He opened it and leaned on the picket rail of his Juliet balcony, blowing a cloud of dark smoke into the furnace outside. Now, reduced to a silhouette by the bright sky beyond the windows, he lingered there for effect and took another calm drag on the cigar.

  He turned and after staring at Hawke and Lea for a long time, lifted the cigar box off the table and handed it to the Englishman. “Where are my manners? Won’t you join me – these are Gurkha Black Dragons in their own hand-carved bone chest. They cost over a thousand dollars a piece.”

  “Money literally up in smoke,” Lea said in disgust.

  “The average Mexican would take two months to earn enough to smoke just one of these. One of my coffee pickers would need three months,” he said with a grin. “Are you sure you won’t join me?”

  “Thanks,” Hawke replied, “but I’d rather eat a stir-fried dog turd than share a smoke with a man like you.”

  Wade was still for a moment, measuring up his opponent. He snapped the box shut and returned it to the desk. “A delightful image... I’d show you around but it seems you’ve already taken the liberty and done it yourselves.”

  Hawke said nothing. He felt the sweat building up on his neck and running down his back. Outside in the heat of the day the desolate cry of a prairie falcon filled the cobalt blue sky. A gust of hot air blew in through the balconette window and washed over the two captives. It felt like someone was pointing a hair dryer in their faces.

  “Why did you kill Barton?” Lea asked.

  “Barton was a trusted member of the Order, but sadly he lost his nerve at a critical juncture in the operation and decided to run to you. Obviously I couldn’t allow that so I had him neutralized with a tlacalhuazcuahuitl blowgun.”

  “A what?” Lea asked.

  “An Aztec weapon that fires small wooden darts coated in poison. I felt his betrayal was worthy of the death.”

  “What did he mean about the god of the dead, and how you were supposed to worship only the sun?” Lea said.

  “You ask a lot of questions for someone with such a pretty little head.” He took a seat in a chair beside the whirring pedestal fan and took another drag on the cigar as the fresh air cooled the sweat on his face. For a long time he was still and silent, rolling the cigar in his fingers, but then he spoke: “I thought that the mark on the map you saw was the location of a temple I’ve been seeking my whole life.”

  “But instead it turned out to be a Tesco Metro?”

  Wade ignored the comment. “I wanted to find the Missing Temple of Huitzilopochtli for so long that when we finally located the complex you saw on the map I looked no further. It was only weeks later I made the second discovery… the room without windows is a much greater prize that demands a deeper commitment.”

  “The room without windows?” Hawke repeated. “What does that mean?”

  The Texan got up and strolled across to the stone object in the corner, tracing his fingers around its rim with tender affection.

  “Isn’t it magnificent? This is a genuine cuauhxicalli – an altar stone used by the ancients to safeguard the hearts of those lucky enough to be sacrificed to the gods. This one was discovered by me on one of my own explorations in the Lacandon Jungle. It is of particular importance to me because its motif is centred on eagles. It is my belief this stone was used during sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, sun and sacrifice.”

  Wade stared at the stone unblinking, once again tracing his forefinger around its smooth outer edge as he stepped silently around it. Lost in another world, he circled the ancient object several times before stopping and glancing back up at them. “And this over here is of course part of the actual sacrifice stone, where the honoured victims would be held down while the priests opened their bodies and extracted their hearts.”

  The aroma of the cigar smoke drifted over to Lea and she coughed in revulsion.

  “Does it upset you?” Wade said sarcastically.

  “Sure it does, you whack-job. You’re talking about tearing people’s hearts out. If that’s not barbaric I don’t know what is.”

  “The modern world has made us weak. The Aztecs were warriors who weren’t frightened of submitting to the gods. Take the Great Temple at Tenochtitlán. When they held the inauguration of the Great Temple, the Aztec ruler Ahuizotl ordered the sacrifice of over four thousand people. It lasted for days… can you imagine being there to witness such magnificence? They say the blood ran like a river down the steps of the temple. Glorious.”

  “Glorious?” Hawke said. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I’ve never told anyone this before,” Wade said solemnly, “but my mother was Mexican… a Nahua from Puebla. It is through her mother than I am directly descended from Aztec nobility.”

  “Fascinating,” Hawke said.

  “But it is fascinating! To be part of all this… The Aztec story of creation is one of rebirth. Everything about Aztec religious culture revolves around this concept. We sacrifice people in order to ensure rebirth and this is at the heart of the Five Suns legend.”

  “You’re talking about the Aztec creation myth?” Hawke said.

  “No,” Wade said sourly. “I’m talking about the Aztec creation story. It’s no myth. You must understand that Huitzilopochtli must be nourished every day with human blood. There is no other way to appease him, and if he is angered by a failure to give him this nourishment he will destroy us all.”

  “You make me sick,” Lea said, her voice barely a whisper.

  “The Jaguars destroyed the first sun, the hurricanes annihilated the second sun, fire from the sky took the third sun away and the fourth sun was
extinguished by floodwater. The fifth sun shall be burned by an even fiercer sun and the people turned to ash…this is the Aztec Prophecy… a new world shall be born from the ashes of the old… the sixth sun shall devour the sky and a new dawn will rise over mankind and only then will the gods be sated.”

  “You’re just as insane and barbaric as the Aztecs!”

  “And you think you’re any better?” Wade sneered. “Let me tell you a story. I was raised on the wrong side of the tracks up in East Texas. Life was real tough for me and my mom… don’t ask about my dad because I never even knew the bastard. I worked harder than you can imagine escaping from poverty. When I was still no more than a kid I started up Wadesoft Systems.”

  “Everyone in the world knows this,” Hawke said.

  “Maybe. We specialized in very high-performance computing technology, both hardware and software. It was tough, but I made it. I was the original rags to riches story. I was worth three billion dollars before I was thirty, but then I lost everything in the crash… by 2012 it was all over. I was forced into a Chapter 11… totally bankrupt and my carcass was picked clean by all the other tech guys. Some of those assholes had been my friends, or so they said. Yet when the time was right they stripped everything I had left and acquired whatever assets they could get their filthy cheatin’ hands on.”

  Lea scowled at him. “Shit happens, Wade. Get over it.”

  “My dreams were crushed by what I call the American Nightmare. Now those bastards are gonna pay for humiliating me.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They took everything from me, and now I’ll take everything from them. It’s going to be beautiful. The ultimate human sacrifice to our suns…”

  Hawke frowned with confusion. “What do you mean… Suns?”

  Wade laughed out loud and slapped his knee. “When I say suns I mean suns, boy!” he repeated, looking at Hawke like he was an idiot. “Just how many suns do you think we have in our solar system?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  “Last time I looked we had one sun, crackerjack,” Lea said, straining at the yachting rope binding her hands behind her back.

  “Well ain’t that cute? Cute – but dead wrong, baby, because our solar system is binary. We have two suns. We might have only just worked it out, but the ancient Aztecs always knew this was the case. They were infinitely wiser than us – we’ve lost so much ancient knowledge now ’cause we’re always looking down into our little screens… The Aztecs described these two suns very clearly – the sun of the day – the young, fresh sun, and then there was the ancient, black sun. The Black Sun story is central to Mesoamerican Underworld mythology.”

  “Sounds like you need a nice lie down,” Lea said.

  If Wade heard her, he didn’t show it. “The Aztecs called them the Day Sun and the Black Sun, and yet today modern science would describe them as the Sun, or Sol to be more precise, and Gliese 229, a red dwarf around nineteen light years away. That is what makes our solar system a binary one. I know it’s hard for you to get your lil’ pinheads around it, but yeah, it’s true – we have two suns. The red dwarf is completely unobservable without modern, high-powered telescopes of course, which makes me ask the question: how did the Aztecs know of its existence?”

  “Do enlighten us.”

  “You’re too ignorant to understand.”

  “Try me,” Lea said.

  “I deal in dreams,” Wade said, drifting away again. “That is why I intend on reviving such a wonderful ancient cult…”

  Hawke glanced at the clock. 11:58. “And I deal in reality, Wade. You and your men are nothing more than common terrorists.”

  Wade chuckled as he looked at them. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? You tryin’ to threaten me, boy? Trussed up like a Christmas turkey?” He kicked Hawke in the stomach and roared with laughter as the Englishman doubled over, gasping for air.

  “Anyway, it hardly matters now. It’s all over. The bastards who gutted me are about to find out what happens when you screw with the ancient gods. Long before your unwanted presence arrived at my plantation, my little Hummingbird flew up into the sky. She’s long gone now, and can’t be stopped. It’s over… a done deal.”

  “If your little hummingbird means the bomb, we know all about it.”

  Wade looked at Lea sharply. “You know squat.”

  “I know you’re a maniac with a cult who wants to sacrifice people to ancient gods, and that’s not crazy at all. Did I miss anything out?”

  “You know nothing about me, you little bitch.”

  “Hey!” Hawke shouted. “Watch your mouth.”

  “Or what, Limey?”

  “You’ll find out, Tex.”

  Wade laughed. “I’m not afraid of you, little man. Eighty thousand people were sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli when a new temple was dedicated to him in 1487. Today, I will dedicate my new temple to him, and sacrifice over one hundred times more people. Does that sound like the actions of a man who can be easily intimidated?”

  “A hundred times more?” Lea said, shocked. “That’s eight million!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with your math, Irish.”

  “Get fucked,” Lea said. “You need a psychiatrist!”

  “Feisty,” Wade said with a grin. “I like that in a woman. It’s just a shame you’ll be dead in ten minutes.”

  “You’re not going to get away with any of this, Wade,” she said. “It’s not just us who are onto you. The Americans are on your case too.”

  “The Americans are on everyone’s case, but they’re gonna have a shitload more to worry about than me in a few hours.” He gave a low laugh and whistled. “Shit yeah, boy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Have you never wondered how these ancient civilizations knew so much more than us? Look at people today! Concerned only with buying their junk and getting drunk and living in total ignorance of their own world, and yet men and women who walked this earth centuries ago knew more than they do!”

  “Oh, come off it,” she said sharply. “People like you think you’re so much cleverer than the rest of us, but you’re wrong!”

  Hawke watched the clock.

  Right about now…

  Then Wade’s dreamy state was broken by a sudden explosion and the sound of submachine gunfire. “Right on time,” Hawke said, giving Wade his best piss-taking grin.

  Wade leaped from his seat, panicked, but before he spoke the door smashed open. The scarred face of Silvio Mendoza appeared in the doorway. He was gripping a Nosler deer hunting rifle and looked rattled.

  “What is it?!” the Texan snapped. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s the favela, sir… it’s under attack.”

  Wade looked alarmed for a moment, but then composed himself. “Send Soto and Garza and the men and kill them all. He turned to Hawke and Lea. “You take these two outside. You know what to do.”

  Mendoza gave a businesslike nod and padded over to the prisoners. Raising his revolver above him, Hawke saw the pearl-handled weapon sparkle in the sunlight. Then he saw Mendoza bring it down hard on his head and he was out for the count.

  *

  Scarlet led the assault on the guardroom and a few short seconds later the melancholy peace of the favela exploded into a savage battlefield, with the former SAS woman and her team rushing toward the buildings and engaging with the enemy guards.

  The plantation workers screamed and scattered like coffee tea leaves in a hurricane, hiding inside the shanties and slamming shut the plywood doors.

  A man with a paramilitary uniform raced toward Scarlet, obviously shocked by the surprise attack but still ready for a fight. As he pounded closer to her he ordered the other guards into the fray and then raised his fist to strike her.

  Scarlet sidestepped and dodged the blow, but returned fire with the butt of her gun which she plowed into the man’s jaw. She heard a cracking sound and he cried out, but not before she brought her left hand up and planted a vic
ious tiger punch in his windpipe. He crashed to the floor in a wheezing heap and she finished the job off with a solid kick in his face.

  A guard saw the attack and raised his gun to fire at Scarlet, but Reaper ran forward and grappled him to the ground. The guard’s automatic rifle fired off a few rounds in a lethal, uncontrolled arc as the two men fought, but the former legionnaire brought matters to a conclusion with a devastating head butt which knocked the man out cold. Reaper then yanked the rifle out of his hands and emptied the magazine in the direction of more of Wade’s goons.

  Lexi Zhang had decided to use the assault as a workout and was currently cutting her way through several armed men. They fought with knives but their efforts to keep her away from the favela were in vain.

  Kim and Camacho were making their way toward the east end of the guardroom, but Alex Reeve was hanging back for a moment, fazed by heat of close-combat after so many years behind a desk. One of the guards saw her and clambered on a motorbike. He kick-started it and drove toward her with a pistol in his left hand.

  This was the moment to prove herself ready for the field again.

  She aimed her gun and fired at the serpiente as he raced toward. Her shot was good and hit the Michelin Scorcher tire on the front, tearing into the silica-enriched rubber compound and exploding it off the aluminum wheel rim in a burst of sparks and smoke. The bike spun out of control and skidded off the dirt track between the favela and the coffee fields. It smashed into a low fence and propelled the guard through the air in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes. He landed in the gravel with a heavy whack.

  The former CIA agent had been out of the field a long time, but it looked like she hadn’t lost her touch. And proving it in this part of the world was extra sweet, because it was down here in Latin America that she had been shot and paralysed.