by Rob Jones
At the bottom of Huitzilopochtli’s temple their glow-sticks illuminated something that made Ryan and Maria freeze in their tracks. An enormous hoard of gold coins, artefacts and jewels – especially jade and emeralds – stretched out before them in some kind of antechamber.
“Holy God!” Maria said, looking at the treasure. “What is it?”
“It’s the Lost Treasure of La Noche Triste,” Wade said dismissively. “Pretty, ain’t it?”
Ryan’s eyes glazed over as he surveyed the glittering heaps of gold and gems, untouched for centuries. “The Sad Night… I can’t believe it.”
“An unexpected bonus, I admit,” Wade said. “But nothing compared with what lies ahead, so move along, assholes.”
The goons pushed the prisoners on again. Obviously the notorious Lost Treasure of the Sad Night was not Morton Wade’s final destination.
“What’s the sad night, Ryan?” Maria whispered as they walked.
“The Aztec King Moctezuma was killed in mysterious circumstances during the Spanish conquest. The Spanish had been using him as a hostage, so when he was murdered they had to flee Tenochtitlán, but not before plundering the place for as much gold and jewels as they could get their hands on. Some say pirates got hold of it, but I guess now we know.”
“A poor man wants anything, but a rich man wants everything,” she said.
“Nice.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Old Russian proverb.”
“Anyway, according to history, it was a dark, moonless night and Cortés and his men were able to flee the city with the loot, but as you know, Tenochtitlán was an island connected to the mainland by several bridges.”
“Yes, I knew that, of course.”
“When they got to the bridge they were planning on using for their escape, Aztec warriors saw them and a massive fight ensued – total chaos with hundreds of men murdered as they tried to escape on canoes across the lake – a seriously bloody night, but nonetheless a large part of the stolen treasure disappeared that night. Some have speculated that it could be as large as the lost treasure of the Incas.”
“And it’s right here.”
“So many of these treasures were plundered and taken back to Europe, but a lot of it was swiped by pirates and no one knows where any of that is.”
“But Dr Strangelove seems to have something else on his mind.”
Then the Texan yelled to his men. “Bring the keystone… we’re at the entrance to Mictlan.”
They assembled at the end of a stubby, dank tunnel and Maria was horrified to find at least half a dozen men and women huddling together in the darkness. They were wearing rags and chained to the wall. They jumped back and tried to hide from Wade as he drew closer to them.
Wade laughed and turned to Maria and Ryan. “Like you two, these kind folk have agreed to be my sacrifices to the god of the dead.”
“Bloody hell…” Ryan said, his voice trailing into the dank darkness. “I think you’re the craziest person I’ve ever met.”
Mendoza looked at the men and women and scratched his jaw. “Maybe we should just take the treasure and leave?” he said, the ridges and valleys of his terrible scars lit in the translucent chemical flicker of the glow stick.
“Don’t push me, Silvio,” Wade said. “We’re not here for any god-damned trinkets, you got that, boy?”
Mendoza got it, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to take it for much longer and was starting to think Barton might have been right after all. He’d mocked the old fool when he started to get nervous and break away from the Order of the Sixth Sun.
Barton said they were a sun-worshipping cult, not some crazy outfit of cannibals worshipping the god of the dead. Mendoza never thought a man like Wade would have the cojones to see something like this through, and yet here they were, outside the gates of the Aztec Underworld itself… knocking on Mictlantecuhtli’s grimy cobweb-covered door. How far would Wade go?
The Texan sniffed hard and ran his hands through his hair. “Now – you men! Get the keystone,” he said, sliding into the shadows. “I must prepare for the god of the dead.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Alex Reeve held onto the safety handle as Camacho swung open the door and the warm Californian air blasted into the chopper whipping her hair around and pushing her back inside. As she watched Potrero Hill slip beneath them, she knew time was running out. Just a couple of miles north was the Embarcadero Center where her father was about to give his speech.
The Eurocopter touched down minutes later on the Helipad of the new San Francisco Police Headquarters in Mission Bay. Alex and the others climbed out and ran out of the chopper’s powerful rotorwash toward a utility door leading inside the enormous complex. It was a vast monolithic structure of concrete and glass that housed the city’s 911 Emergency Communications Center and the regional Homeland Security.
They were met by a nervous police chief and after some hurried handshakes introduced to the SWAT Incident Commander, a man named Jackson. Thanks to a briefing from her father’s office, they knew that news of the bomb hadn’t reached the media and the city’s population was blissfully unaware of the terrible threat facing them. There was little point, the city’s authorities had argued forcefully – there was no way they could safely evacuate millions of people from the peninsula. In other words, it was all on Alex and the others to save Everybody’s Favorite City.
Jackson was on the ball, as Alex had expected. Moments after landing, his SWAT team was assembled and ready to go. They were armed with an eye-watering array of weapons including Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, AR-15 assault rifles and Beretta and Sig-Sauer side-arms. Other weapons in their arsenal included impact munitions and flash-bang diversions. There was even a sniper with a Remington 700LTR.
“Impressive little army you have here, Sergeant Jackson,” Scarlet said.
“The SFPD SWAT team is a highly-respected elite force, ma’am. If some crazy cult bastards want to take over our city then they’re shit out of luck with us around.”
It took a few short minutes for the team to strap on the body armor jackets and tool up with submachine guns and back-up side-arms and then they were walking back to the choppers, rotors already whirring and powering up ready for the short flight to Alcatraz.
As she walked through the warm San Francisco evening on her way to the helicopter, Alex reflected on how peaceful it could be even in the heart of a massive, sprawling city like this. All round her millions of people were living their lives – driving cars, pushing prams, walking dogs, sitting in bars enjoying a drink… children playing. She knew the cobalt bomb would sweep all of this away in a fraction of a second. It would be gone forever, and millions of lives all over the Bay Area extinguished because of one man’s insane obsession with revenge and resurrecting an ancient cult.
And Alcatraz was the perfect place to keep the bomb. Before her parents had split, they had made a visit to the island one hot afternoon in June. It was one of her favorite childhood memories – the last summer before her father left home, and their last family vacation together. If she closed her eyes she could almost walk back into that day, and hear the laughter as her father made jokes all the way around the tourist trail. Now her father was a mile to the south in the Embarcadero preparing to fight his way to the White House and there was an old Soviet cobalt bomb about to annihilate everything, and it was guarded by an insane death-worshipping suicide cult.
…Another day in ECHO, she thought as she climbed inside the chopper with her friends. But would it be her last day?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Maria Kurikova watched the crazed figure of Morton Wade with horror as he emerged from the shadows of the antechamber in full make-up. His human face was gone, replaced with black and blue stripes punctuated by the two white slits that were his eyes. On his head was a turquoise feather headdress, and in his hand he held a savagely crude obsidian knife. He had put the paint on hastily, and it was smeared all over his hands.
&n
bsp; “What the hell is this?” Mendoza said, taking a step back.
Wade stared at him for a moment, eyes bulging with madness. “I am changed, Silvio. I am a tlatoani – a priest, reflecting the image of the creator Huitzilopochtli. He commands me now. Bring the keystone! It is time to cross to the other side.”
“You are crazy,” Mendoza said, no longer able to conceal the contempt he had always felt for the Texan. This… insanity must be what his brother Jorge had seen when he said he’d witnessed Wade talking with the gods. He had ridiculed him for it – mocking his own flesh and blood, but now he saw it all. Jorge had seen no god in Wade’s secret chamber, but Wade himself, dressed up like Huitzilopochtli and parading around in front of the obsidian mirrors.
“This is over, Morton,” Mendoza said. “We take the gold and we leave.” As he spoke, the other men and women began pulling strange robes out of a bag and sliding into them. They looked like ghosts.
Wade laughed and the thugs he called his Jaguar Knights leaped up and pinned Mendoza against the tunnel wall. “You cross me, Silvio – after all I have done for you?”
Mendoza struggled against the grip of the men. “Let me go… you’re insane!”
Wade walked to him and placed the tip of the obsidian blade on his lips to silence him. “Hush, Silvio… don’t exercise yourself. You have made your choice, blasphemer. You will make the ultimate sacrifice to the gods.” He turned to one of the cultists behind him. “Bring the ECHO prisoners. They will join Silvio in making the ultimate sacrifice.”
“What are you going to do, you bastard?” Maria screamed.
“Why, cut your heart out and eat you, of course. It is the only way to appease the god of the dead, the mighty Mictlantecuhtli.”
Maria could hardly believe what she was hearing and struggled against the ropes to free herself but it was useless, and Wade ordered the surviving Sixth Sun members forward with the keystone.
She watched, terrified as the robed cultists lifted the heavy stone artefact they had looted from the British Museum and carefully inserted it into the aperture in the wall. She saw now the way the key worked, with the intricate carving slotting perfectly into corresponding recesses in the aperture.
Wade could barely conceal his delight as he ordered them to turn it, and a terrible, low grounding sound emanated from inside the wall.
“That’s as far as it goes,” one of them said.
“Push on the wall!” Wade screamed.
As they pushed against the stone the wall moved a few inches. The strain on their faces showed it was almost impossible to move, stuck in place for millennia, but after a few seconds it began to slide forward at an angle.
“It’s on hinges,” another cult member said.
“It’s a gate, not a wall,” Wade added.
When the gate was open, it revealed an empty darkness like none of them had ever known before, and a cold, damp air rushed over them. How long since this air had been trapped down here, Maria wondered as a wave of nausea overtook her. The burned-out American technology mogul snapped his fingers at a member of the cult. “Give me the map.”
The man reached around into a canvas sack slung over his shoulder and handed Wade the map from the Codex Borgia and the multispectral reflectographic images that Maria had seen Professor Pavoni use in Rome before Mendoza had murdered her.
The Texan snatched the map from the man and spun it around a few times as he tried to make sense of it. “This must be where we are now – the entrance to Mictlan.”
“La puerta del infierno,” Mendoza muttered, and made the sign of the cross over his face and chest. He took a step back and swallowed hard as the fear rose in his throat.
“Your god won’t help you in here, Silvio,” Wade said with a sneer. “This is a very different kind of kingdom… a very different kind of kingdom indeed. Bring the prisoners!”
Morton Wade took a deep breath, stepped through the gate and led the group into the darkest heart of Mictlan.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Hawke dived into a high-velocity parkour shoulder roll and dodged the M2’s lethal bullets as they sprayed out across the plaza. Reaper was at his side, his trusty PARAS drawn and raised into the aim at Garza and the other men behind the M2. Thundering forward through the smoke, firing their guns as they ran, the two men had become an awesome unstoppable force.
Neither man was in the least concerned about preserving the archaeological integrity of complex, and the salvos loosed from their weapons were savage in their failure to discriminate between man and woman. They were all cartel thugs or Sixth Sun cultists committed to supporting Wade in his insane venture to bomb San Francisco back into the Dark Ages and resurrect human sacrifice and cannibalism as a new religion.
“Kill them, you cowards!” Garza barked as the ECHO alliance drew closer.
“You’ll have to kill me ten times over to save your arse!” Hawke yelled.
He fired again, this time striking one of the cultists in the throat. The man toppled back from the mouth of the temple and fell over the edge of the upper square. He was dead by the time he hit the steps but tumbled all the way to the jungle floor, leaving a streak of blood behind him.
“You’ll die here, Hawke!” Garza screamed, but he looked panicked and was starting to move backwards toward the steps which led down inside the complex below the temple.
“You guys tried that back in London, remember?”
Hawke immediately moved the gun to Garza and fired another series of shots, peppering the masonry around his hiding place and only just missing his head. “So you can go to hell!”
With a look of panic on his face Delgado stood up to flee and Hawke took the shot, blasting a bullet through his back right in between his shoulder blades. The velocity of the bullet blasted the gangster forward and he crashed down the temple’s internal stairs.
Garza saw his colleague’s death and turned on his heel to flee down the steps, his eyes wide with terror. Hawke watched his battered Dakota hat bobbing up and down as he jogged down into the dark interior of the temple.
Reaper looked at Hawke. “Crazy bastard did exactly what you told him to do…”
Hawke wiped the back of his hand across his face, leaving a smear of gun grease and blood. “I should have put a bullet in his back.”
“So let’s get after him!” Lexi said.
Hawke turned to see Lexi and Lea. Gonzalez and the rest of his men were pursuing the fleeing cultists into the jungle.
They wasted no time in jogging down the steps and going deep inside the temple where Garza had fled a few moments ago. Skipping over Delgado’s dead body they raced down into the temple, but at the bottom of the steps the atmosphere changed fast. The only light was provided by the glow-sticks left behind by Morton Wade, and now a ghostly green glow emanated around them. Hawke saw movement and turned his head to look down one of the many tunnels. He saw a green light bobbing about, and the sound of footsteps receding into the distance.
“Garza – he went down there,” Reaper said.
Hawke thought fast. “All right. Lea and I will take Wade, you and Lexi go after Garza.”
“Let’s do it,” Lexi said.
“And when you find that bastard,” Hawke said. “Make sure to thank him properly for me.”
Reaper nodded grimly and Lexi smirked. They both knew how Hawke thanked people who had crossed him.
“Right,” Hawke said, reloading the Sig. “Time to get our people back.”
*
The map from the Codex Borgia proved invaluable as Wade pushed deeper inside the complex. Mictlan turned out to be the craziest labyrinth Ryan Bale had ever seen, with tunnels twisting in every direction – left, right, up and down – as they moved further inside.
Wade gasped when they reached a low archway, and as they stepped inside their glow sticks revealed a large chamber that looked artificial but had clearly been carved from some kind of aquifer. At the far end was a carved plinth that was obviously used as the sacrifici
al altar. On the wall behind it was a series of small head-height alcoves. Inside the central one was a small golden idol.
As Wade forced everyone closer, Ryan suppressed a gasp of shock when he saw it.
“Oh my God…”
Maria looked at him and lowered her voice to a whisper. “What is it, Ryan?”
“That idol over there in the alcove – it’s Tanit… from Carthage.”
“Carthage?”
He nodded, unable to take his eyes off the idol. “The old Phoenician Empire in North Africa.”
“I know what Carthage was! I meant what the hell is it doing in here?”
Ryan shook his head. “Europeans didn’t arrive in this part of the world for hundreds of years after the time this tomb was sealed, Maria. The likeness of Tanit just cannot be in here unless our entire understanding of history is all wrong.”
“So what the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling it might have something to do with Aztlán after all.”
“Atlantis?”
Ryan nodded, but before he could reply, Wade ordered the cult members to grab Maria and drag her to the altar. Maria resisted but they were too strong and she started to get nervous for the first time since the mission started.
The Russian Federal Security Service had trained Maria Kurikova for all eventualities. All, she thought, except for being sacrificed inside an Aztec temple deep in the Mexican jungle. She had fought a contract killer to the death in Kiev, played dead for Chechen terrorists in a filthy safe house, and even assassinated the occasional government official, but there was something about this that terrified her and she knew what it was.
All the other challenges she had faced might have been difficult, bloody or even unethical, but there was some semblance of political logic to them. This, on the other hand, was pure madness and the point was underlined when she saw Morton Wade lurking in the shadows, his face still painted black and blue. She recoiled with horror at the sight of him as he approached her.