by Rob Jones
Camacho lunged forward a second time, lashing out at the much younger man in the way a grizzly bear swipes his paw, but the man skipped back and laughed. He was mocking his older opponent now, which Scarlet thought would turn out to be a bad idea, and this was proved right when Bandana got cocky and came too close with his blade.
Camacho sidestepped, dodging the blade and then grabbed the man’s wrist to secure the knife away from his body. Before the man could respond, the American piled a square fist directly into the center of the young Mexican’s face and knocked him back off his feet. He dropped the knife and it clattered to the cool tile floor. His blood sprayed up in an impressive arc from his nose as the cumbersome American padded over to his opponent and hooked his fingers beneath the bandana.
He lifted the young man’s head and neck off the floor and raised him up a little, grinning at him. “Just so I don’t have to bend down too far to do this,” he said in his heavy New Jersey accent.
The man’s blood-soaked face was now confused. “Do what?”
Camacho pulled back his right arm and Scarlet winced as the CIA man hit his opponent so hard she thought he might punch a hole through his head. As it was, he merely knocked the man out cold and then pulled himself up to his full height.
The fighting was at an end, and Reaper was impressed with Camacho’s fist-work. He looked at the young Mexican as he rolled unconscious on the tiled floor.
“Something tells me his duck is cooked, n’est-ce pas?”
“It’s a goose, darling,” Scarlet said.
“Sorry,” Reaper said turning to her. “Something tells me his duck is a goose.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes as Lexi approached, wiping blood from a swollen split lip and wincing as she tried to blink a badly bruised eye. “Looks like we did it,” she said.
Outside the guardhouse, they watched as Wade’s slave laborers slowly reappeared from their shanties.
Scarlet frowned. “We need to get over to the main house and find out what the hell’s going on with Hawke and Lea. Maybe they got Wade.”
“I doubt that,” Alex said, pointing up the valley to the hacienda. Just above the ornate roofline of the former monastery, a Bell helicopter was powering up and lifting into the sky.
*
From the front seat of the ex-army Huey, Morton Wade surveyed the chaos unfolding on his property with no emotion. He had what he needed and he was on his way. Now he peered across the jungle canopy as a god looks upon the creation of his own works. He owned everything to the horizon, after all – this was one of the biggest coffee plantations in southern Mexico.
The Texan had been obsessed with the landscape stretching out before him since he was a young boy. This was the kingdom of the ancient Aztec emperors… those magnificent kings who ruled this part of the world for countless centuries before Cortés and his barbarian thugs sailed from the east with their steel swords and smallpox and wiped out the entire civilization.
Now, the burning plantation slid behind the chopper as they went deeper into the jungle, tracking the contours of the hills as they rose and fell away again. The rise and fall of the hills was a metaphor for his life, he considered. Ups and downs, progress and setbacks… but now it was all coming together. He had lost the coffee plantation in the raid by the ECHO team, but that was of little concern now he was so close to his life’s destiny, plus he could console himself with the thought that the bastard Hawke and the smart-mouth Irishwoman were currently being hunted by the Jaguar Knights through the jungle and stood zero chance of survival.
For a moment he thought he felt something – was that guilt or nerves? Pull yourself together, Morton. The gods demanded sacrifices – Huitzilopochtli needed the blood for the sun, he knew that. But Huitzilopochtli didn’t terrify him in the way Mictlantecuhtli did. The strange skeleton god of the dead mortified him, but in some weird way exhilarated him as well… perhaps he needed that psychiatrist after all.
The serendipity of life amazed him. Searching for the Temple of Huitzilopochtli and not only finding it, but locating… that as well. The room without windows.
As they drew closer to his dreadful discovery, Morton Wade surveyed the jungle once again from the safety of his helicopter. Its violent, noisy rotorwash blew the treetops all over the place as it raced toward the final destination. He closed his eyes and saw the entrance to hell all over again – only this time he had both parts of the key.
This time he would open the gate. He would enter Mictlan, the Aztec Underworld. As he visualized himself entering into the darkness a cold rush went down his spine.
It was too late to stop now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
As Hawke and Lea trudged their way back to the hacienda, they saw Wade’s chopper rising into the tropical sky, and then a second helicopter rising up behind it. The Texan was evacuating the property and it looked like he was heading east to the Oaxaca Mountains, where Hawke had seen the mysterious temple on the map.
By the time they reached the property, Scarlet’s team had secured the area and were gathering outside the hacienda. They were standing on the north lawn adjacent to the outbuilding Wade used as a warehouse for his crops.
Across the yard, Reaper saw them and waved a hand. He walked over with Alex, Kim and Camacho. “You missed all the fun.”
They stepped inside and took a look at the radiation equipment now scattered all over the floor – used NBC suits and other paraphernalia. “This must be where they stored the bomb,” Hawke said. The powerful Mexican sun lit motes of dust as it streamed through the wooden slats in the north side of the warehouse. All over the floor were chests full of bright red, ripe coffee cherries and their aroma was heavy in the humid air.
“You know they say these things don’t taste like coffee at all?” Lea said.
“No?”
“Nope.”
“So what do they taste like?”
“Watermelon.”
“So they taste of nothing, in other words,” Hawke said with a momentary smile. “Reaper, where are Scarlet and Lexi?”
“Just tying up a few loose ends,” the Frenchman said, his face changing. “We found Sobotka, by the way.” He nudged his chin at the scientist’s corpse stretched out in the sun a hundred yards or so beyond the warehouse, partially obscured by a hedge. “He’s for the vultures, I’m sorry to say. If it’s any consolation, I think he was dead long before we arrived.”
Hawke cursed and walked over to the body. He knelt and checked he was dead before turning him over. “Damn it.”
“And we found something else as well,” Reaper said. “Some kind of weird little chamber behind the house near the coffee fields. Looks like some kind of crazy fun house hall of mirrors but Alex says it’s made of polished obsidian.”
“Wade really is off his rocker,” Hawke said.
“Wait – what’s that?” Lea said.
“Eh?”
“There’s something written in blood under where Sobotka was lying.”
They gathered around and looked down. She was right. There, on the hot asphalt were the words Wade has a Co. They’d been written fast, but there was no mistaking them.
“Mean anything to anyone?” Hawke asked.
Reaper shrugged. “Could be anything.”
“He obviously died before he could finish,” Kim said, sighing heavily. “What the hell’s a Co?”
“A company?” Lea said. “We already know that.”
Alex frowned. “I think I might know what he was trying to say.”
All eyes turned to the young American woman.
“It doesn’t mean anything. He was obviously losing it,” Camacho said.
“No - remember, Sobotka was a nuclear physicist.”
“So?”
“So I don’t think this is a word. I think it’s a chemical symbol.”
“For what?”
“Cobalt – Co is the symbol for cobalt.”
“And what’s that when it’s at home?” Kim said.
Alex frowned again, trying to make sense of it all. “It’s a transition element, a metal to be exact. The transition part simply refers to its tendency to form into coordination compounds. Other examples of transition metals are things like iron or copper.”
“So what’s cobalt used for?” Lea asked.
“Cobalt has lots of uses – especially in industry, I think…”
“That’s right,” Camacho squatted to take a closer look at the grisly message. “They use it in the production of batteries and various alloys, not to mention the cobalt compounds needed to make catalysts. It’s also used as a pigment to color things like the old blue bottles the Victorians used to make.”
“So maybe Wade wants to take up glass-blowing,” Lea said.
Camacho gave her a look and ran a hand over the stubble on his shaved head. “Whatever he’s up to then, we know it has something to do with cobalt. Wait a minute,” he said, turning to Alex. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Alex nodded. “I think so. I think Sobotka was trying to tell the world that Wade has a…”
Before she could finish her sentence, Hawke spoke up. “Holy buggeration – Wade’s got his hands on a cobalt bomb!”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Camacho said.
“And me,” Alex added finally.
“And what the hell is a cobalt bomb?” Kim asked.
Alex sighed. “Up until about two minutes ago I would have told you it’s a theoretical device that was never made, but not any more.”
“Alex is right,” Hawke said. “Look at the evidence. We know Wade was on the market for a WMD with fifty million bucks in his pocket. We also know he was shopping in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. Now we find the dead body of a nuclear weapons specialist from Los Alamos who left us a clue in his dying moments… and that clue is the chemical symbol for cobalt.”
“So Wade really does have a nuclear bomb, in other words,” Kim said. “And we just lost it.”
“And not just any nuke,” Camacho said. “A cobalt bomb could be far more lethal.”
Before anyone could reply, they saw Scarlet and Lexi burst through the Mexican orange hedge that boxed in Wade’s north lawn. They walked across the grass, Scarlet dragging an overweight man in a soiled linen jacket behind her, courtesy of a painful ear-pinch.
“Hello Cairo,” Hawke said, eyeing the man. “On another date?”
“Drole, but no. I found this little woodlouse scuttling out of the east wing of the hacienda on his way to the garage block.”
“Emilio Perez!” Kim said. “The rat from the hotel drinking Tiger’s Claws with Soto.”
“Right,” Scarlet said. “Says he’s Wade’s accountant.” She tossed him to the grass where he fell in a heap and immediately began begging for his life.
Hawke sighed. “Just shut up and answer our questions. What are you doing here?”
“I run some of Morton Wade’s less public businesses. Please… don’t kill me!”
“You’d better explain what you mean.”
Perez sighed. “He’s a people smuggler, for God’s sake!”
Scarlet grabbed his hair and yanked his head back. “Less of the cheek, Perez – and give us details.”
“I’m sorry… he runs it mostly out of an abandoned concrete factory he bought because of its proximity to the railroad. After he has taken their money, he loads the migrants onto a train there – it’s part of the tren de la muerte.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Lea said. “Go on.”
“The Death Train is a vast network of freight trains all over Mexico that’s used to smuggle illegal immigrants into the United States. He charges $10,000 per head to get them over the border in his trains. I… clean the money before it goes into the bank.”
“A nice little earner.”
“There are many coyotes as we call the smugglers, but Wade is the best.”
Hawke dumped the empty mag from his gun and smacked a fresh one in before sliding the gun in his belt. “Why would a man like Morton Wade be interested in a grubby little business like that?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“Don’t fuck around, Perez.”
“Wade’s fund management business is finished. After the crash he lost nearly everything. But he’s a resourceful man and didn’t take long to find a very lucrative substitute.”
“Yes, he mentioned he was down on his luck. Now tell us about the cobalt bomb. Where is it?”
He shot nervous eyes at them, but made no resistance. “On a truck.”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Time for a penalty kick.” She planted an eye-watering kick into the man’s groin. He howled in agony and rolled over on the grass.
“What truck?” Lea asked.
“I can’t be sure,” Perez said, his mouth dry with fear.
Scarlet slapped him, turning his cheek a bright red color. “Don’t try and be funny with me, Buckaroo – you know exactly which truck.” She pulled back for a second penalty kick, this time from the corner.
Perez’s eyes widened.
“Oh… yes – I remember now.”
“Do tell.” She squeezed his throat and cut off his breath. He tried to struggle but Vincent held him down on the lawn.
“Okay…” he croaked. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Scarlet released her grip. “I thought you might.”
Perez was deflated, and sat on his backside in the grass as he dusted himself down. “It’s an old Mercedes Atego but it left here hours ago. Wade has access to an airfield north of here. I’m not lying when I tell you the bomb will already be airborne.”
Hawke took a step closer to him. “Must be what he was referring to as his Hummingbird.”
Perez nodded glumly. “Si… that’s it.”
“Where’s the destination?”
“San Francisco.”
Before the words had barely left his mouth, Kim Taylor was on her phone.
Camacho got up in Perez’s face and grabbed his collar. “Are you sure, asshole?”
Perez nodded. “His cult believes he wants to sacrifice eight million people to the ancient gods, but I’m not so sure. I think the truth is a little more prosaic – he wants revenge against the tech industry that destroyed his business. In a few short hours most of America’s hi-tech sector will be vaporized. The eight million people he will sacrifice in the process are an added bonus.”
“Where exactly?” Kim said. “It’s a big city.”
“Alcatraz.”
“Alcatraz?” Camacho said with surprise. “Why there?”
“Wade chose the island as Ground Zero so it takes out the whole Bay Area, plus it’s out of the way, if you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, arsehole,” Scarlet said, kicking him in the ribs.
“Hey!” Kim said, pushing her back. “What is it with you guys and torturing prisoners?”
“Where is Wade?” Hawke asked, ignoring the reference to when he broke Nick Collins’s thumb back in DC. “I presume the little shit isn’t going to ride the Hummingbird into the Sixth Age?”
“No, he’s not. He’s gone to the temple.”
“Tell me about this temple,” Hawke said. “Your boss was strangely coy about the details.” He saw the man’s face turn a strange green color. “What’s the problem, Perez?”
“I’m not surprised he was coy…”
Scarlet rubbed the sweat from her forehead. “This just gets more exciting by the minute.”
Hawke narrowed his eyes and moved closer to Perez. “Spill the beans.”
“Wade was searching for the missing Temple of Huitzilopochtli, and he found it.”
“I know he did. He told me that. What’s the big secret?”
“What he found underneath it. It’s inhuman.”
Hawke and the others shared a glance before he returned his attention to Perez. “What the hell does that mean?”
“He found the entrance to Mictlan.”
“The Aztec Underworld?”
Perez nodded grimly. “Yes. That was why he needed the other half of the fragment in London. It goes with what he found here in the jungle to make a keystone. It’s very elaborate. He says it will unlock the underworld and release Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the dead.” Perez paused to throw up on the lawn. He was shaking with fear. “The god of the dead! He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s playing with fire. He thinks…”
“What?”
“He thinks he must appease Mictlantecuhtli with human sacrifice, and…”
Camacho tightened the grip on his collars. “And what?”
“And cannibalism…”
Camacho pushed him back to the grass and wiped his hands as he shared a look of concern with Lea and the others.
“And who’s he having for dinner, darling?” Scarlet said.
“He’s been taking people there from this plantation. Coffee pickers, mostly, but also workers from his sweatshops.”
“We have to get moving,” Hawke said flatly. “When does this bomb get to San Francisco, Perez?”
“Around nightfall. Wade says it’s important that the New Age is ushered in at a precise time – midnight at the temple here in Mexico.”
“All right,” Hawke said, assuming command again. “We need to break into two teams if we’re going to bring this insanity to an end. One team goes to San Francisco and works with the City to locate and deactivate the bomb, and the other goes into whatever nightmare Wade has built in the jungle.”
Then Lea raised her hand and pointed at the tree line just beyond the lawn. “Guys – there’s someone coming.”
Hawke spun around and raised his gun, but quickly saw it was one of the pilots who had brought them to the plantation. He was wounded and bleeding heavily. His face ashen white.
“What’s the matter, Johnson?” Hawke asked, a bad feeling rising inside him.
“They got the guys from your team…” His voice was weak, and dry. “I’m so sorry, but they jumped us. They killed the other pilot but I got into the jungle.”