by Graham Brown
She kissed him back, pressing her lips into his. He could taste the wine on her tongue, feel the warmth of her breath in his mouth.
They kissed hard, then parted, looking into each other’s eyes for a second. He laced his fingers through her hair, placing his hand behind her neck, and cradled the back of her head. She closed her eyes and moved toward him again.
In a moment they were sitting on a stone bench with no backrest, facing each other, their legs straddling the bench. They were hidden in an alcove in a quiet alleyway. She kissed him again and rubbed her face against his, the soft skin of her cheek moving across his, the smell of her hair and the perfume of the night around them adding to the intoxication.
Holding her mesmerized him. It wasn’t as if he’d been waiting for her; there’d been plenty of women in various places. They had been comfort on hard nights, a chance to forget the hell that life sometimes was. But this was different. It felt like breathing again after drowning, a chance to rediscover what made life worth living.
He pulled her close, his fingers tracing the smooth curve of her neck, sliding down to the top of her back, to the top button on her dress. He opened it.
She traced a finger across his chest, leaning in and kissing him again. His hand slid down the side of her neck, across her shoulder, and down the smooth skin of her back. And then he stopped.
He pulled back.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at him. Her hair was a mess, her eyes half open.
He moved his hand to her back, just above her bra strap. But the movement was different, clinical, searching.
She seemed amused. “Having some trouble back there, sailor?”
“Have you had surgery recently?” he asked.
“No,” she said, slightly aggravated. “Why?”
“Because you have a fresh scar, between your shoulder blade and your spine. And there’s something solid underneath the skin.”
* * *
A minute later they were back in the guest room. Danielle slid the top half of the cotton dress past her shoulders and leaned forward in front of the light. Suddenly she remembered the pain in her back after regaining consciousness in Hong Kong. She remembered the bright room that she’d thought had been an interrogation room.
Could it have been an operating room? Could they have implanted something in her?
“What is it?” she asked.
“I’m guessing it’s some kind of tracking device,” he said. “Probably short range, but able to be picked up by remote sensors, like LoJack.”
Now it made sense. Of course they had given her boots back; of course they’d allowed her to escape. They knew what she was looking for and they realized she would find it more quickly than they would. Kang wanted her loose. He probably wanted Yuri with her, because of what he could do.
“This is how they found us on the water,” she said.
“Probably,” he said.
“And you thought you heard a plane earlier,” she said.
“It could have been anything.”
“But you know it’s not,” she said.
She stood up holding the dress against her chest to prevent it from falling.
She turned, trying to see the scar in the mirror, but it was in a place that was almost impossible to reach or even to see clearly. That had been done on purpose, so she’d never know it was there.
“How deep is it?” she asked, thinking she would have felt a lot more discomfort if they had cut into the underlying muscle.
She felt his fingers pressing for the edges. “It’s just under the skin.”
“Subcutaneous,” she said. That made things easier.
“What do you want me to do?”
She looked dead at him. “I want you to get a knife and cut the damn thing out of me.”
“Are you insane?” he asked. “Does this seem like a sterile environment to you?”
“We can account for that,” she said, knowing they had strong antibiotics on hand.
“Okay, fine,” he said, “but I’m not a surgeon and I’ve been drinking for three hours.”
She fixed her gaze on him. “I’m not asking you to take my gall bladder out. It’s nothing more than a big splinter. You just have to cut the skin and pull it out.”
Hawker did not look pleased by the thought but he seemed to realize there was no other choice. “Fine,” he said. “Lie down.”
She took off the borrowed dress and laid a towel on the bed, wrapping another one around her waist. A second later Hawker was back with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and Danielle’s first-aid kit.
He pulled out the Zithromax she’d been giving McCarter and handed her two pills, which she gulped down with a large glass of water.
“This is going to hurt,” he said.
She almost laughed. “Not as bad as I’m going to hurt you, if you don’t hurry up and get it over with.”
She watched as he pulled the scalpel from the kit. Using the rubbing alcohol, he sterilized it repeatedly and then put it down without letting the tip of the blade touch anything.
She folded her arms up around the pillow and closed her eyes, trying to focus on anything but the cut that was about to come. She could feel Hawker’s hands against her bare skin. They were warm and strong, and they felt heavy against her back. His leg pressed tight against her thigh and the feeling of his body over the top of her was distracting in an intimate way.
A sudden touch of cold brushed her back; an ice cube to numb the skin. She drew in a sharp breath and held it. Several droplets of water ran across her shoulder blade. One trickled to the side, curving over her body and down toward her hips, clinging to her skin until it trailed across her stomach.
The chill brought on goose bumps and she found herself holding her breath. She wanted to tell him to wait. To turn over and pull him close to her and to make love to him before all this would be done. But they’d run out of time to enjoy life.
“I’m ready,” she said.
She felt his hand pressing heavy on her shoulder, holding it still, and then the edge of the scalpel cutting a shallow line in her skin. She tensed, fighting the instinct to cry out in pain.
CHAPTER 59
Back in her own clothes, with her shoulder bandaged but still bleeding, Danielle hiked to the church with Hawker by her side. She carried the pack with the stone in it. Hawker carried the first-aid kit, with McCarter’s antibiotics.
As they walked, she tried to bottle up the waves of emotion running through her, pushing aside the feeling of having Hawker hold her and kiss her. She needed her wits about her now; she needed to be a professional again.
The tiny object buried under her skin turned out to be a radioactive pellet, an isotope that with the right equipment could be sensed from a distance. The fact that it wasn’t a transmitter made sense. If Kang knew about the stones, he knew that a small microtransmitter would not operate long in their presence. But the pellet was a simple solution. Danielle guessed and hoped it was a low-grade isotope, with a short half-life and capable of little damage, but she didn’t know.
She wrapped the pellet in a cloth and slid it into the lead-lined case that contained the stone. Then she and Hawker hustled to find McCarter. The plan was to go now, to lure Kang’s forces away from the town and ditch the pellet along the way, hopefully distracting him further.
They entered the church and immediately made their way to the wine cellar.
As they descended the stairs, she called out to McCarter. “Professor?”
She heard a crash and raced down the remaining stairs. She spotted McCarter in the far corner, the table overturned next to him. They ran to him.
“Professor,” she said, helping him up.
He was drenched with sweat.
“He’s burning up,” she told Hawker.
“Are you all right?” she asked him.
“I couldn’t …,” he mumbled. “I can’t …”
She pressed her hand against his forehead. His temperature had to be
over a hundred. McCarter reached into his pocket and produced five days’ worth of antibiotics, which he had been pretending to take.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to see her again. I thought that the stone could bring her to me. Make it real.”
“I’ve got to get you upstairs,” Danielle said, as she and Hawker helped him up.
With Hawker under one arm and Danielle under the other, they began to move. “I tried to figure it out, but I don’t know,” McCarter said. “I can’t think.”
“What did you find out?” Hawker asked.
“The stones, they heal the earth,” he said.
“The earth?”
“The ground,” he said meekly. “The land.”
“What about the Black Sun?” she asked. “What does the sun do?”
“Not the sun,” he said. “The land.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The land blackens the sun,” he said.
She looked over at Hawker. He shrugged.
“It comes …,” McCarter sagged, almost unconscious. “From down here,” he said.
They were holding him up now, a two-hundred-pound rag doll. He seemed on the verge of delirium.
They’d made it to the top stair and out into the church.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to see her again.”
“You will.”
The words came from Hawker, surprising to her as so many things about him were. She didn’t know if he was just trying to put McCarter at ease or if he believed them, but the way they’d been spoken, filled with conviction, seemed to indicate that he did.
“Outside,” she said. “The cool air might help his temperature a bit.”
They dragged and carried him outside, laying him down on the church step. He looked horrible.
“Can you do anything for him?” Hawker asked.
“I can force-feed him some antibiotics, I can jury-rig an IV with fluids, and I can clean out that damn wound again,” she said, then looked up at Hawker. “What I can’t do is leave him here alone.”
“What about the stone, the destiny?”
“I came back for a friend,” she said. “I realized that last night. Whatever other reasons there were, whatever the stone programmed me to do, I came back for McCarter. I’m not leaving him now.”
Both of them knew what that meant. Hawker would go for the Temple of the Jaguar alone.
CHAPTER 60
As Danielle worked on McCarter, Hawker went to find Father Domingo. Sneaking into his room, he switched on a flashlight.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he said.
Father Domingo blinked in the bright light. He blocked the beam of light with his hand. “What have you done, my son?”
“I woke a priest up in the middle of the night after he threw a heck of party.”
Hawker lowered the light.
“Is that all?” Father Domingo asked.
“No,” Hawker said. “But that’s all we have time for.”
Father Domingo sat up. It was a heavy, ponderous movement, like a bear coming out of hibernation. “You’re leaving,” he said, looking at Hawker’s manner of dress.
Hawker nodded. “Tell me where I have to go.”
“What makes you think I know?”
“You asked us if we planned to do anything with the stone, not what we might do or where,” Hawker said. “I figure that’s because you already know.”
“Are you sure you want to go there?”
Hawker nodded.
“You want to, or you believe you must?” Father Domingo asked.
“Other people believe,” Hawker said. “Right now, that’s good enough for me.”
“Then you must hike back to the lake where we found you,” Father Domingo said.
“Go past it and past the long, narrow lake beyond. There you will come to a series of hills. Between the third and fourth ridge you will find a sinkhole, much like the cenotes of the lowlands. At this time of year it is filled with water, with a small island in the center no larger than this room.”
“That’s the temple?” Hawker asked.
“The island is the temple; the cenote is the Mirror.”
“Why do you call it the Mirror?”
Father Domingo nodded. “The water is like glass. Like any mirror it shows us who we are.”
Hawker tried to take it all in. “Where’s the stone? The others were hidden.”
“Get onto the island. The Temple of the Jaguar is a simple place. Up close you will see what looks like a common drinking well. But it is different. Instead of dropping a bucket and working to pull it out, a system of counterweights was developed. All you must do is release the lever. The weights will drop, the shield of rock will move apart, and the stone will be brought up to you.”
“You’ve been there.” He guessed.
Father Domingo nodded. “I have seen it. I have touched it.”
“Last of the Brotherhood,” Hawker said, admiringly.
A gleam appeared in Father Domingo’s eye. “I should hope not,” he said, staring at Hawker.
Hawker didn’t know what to think. All he knew was that he had to get away from San Ignacio as fast as possible, to lure their pursuers in one direction and make his way in the other. “Thank you for trusting us.”
The priest stood and took a sip from a glass of water. “The Mayan people that I know would tell you this day is not doomsday but a day of transformation. Perhaps like many transformations it will be painful, even destructive. But they believe it will lead to a new dawn.”
“What do you think?” Hawker asked.
Father Domingo looked to the Bible at his bedside. “When he was on the earth, the Lord told us that he would make all things new again. He did this through his death and resurrection, and by granting us the faith to believe we could do the same. Painful, destructive, but leading to a new dawn. So who am I to say this isn’t another way of his making?”
Hawker stood to go. “I just wonder why they didn’t design these things to do what they’re supposed to do automatically.”
“You’ve said they are machines, sent here to save us?” Father Domingo replied, echoing an earlier conversation.
“Some people think so,” Hawker admitted.
Father Domingo smiled. “My son, even God requires an affirmative act of faith. Machines cannot save us alone. We must have a part to play. It seems that part is yours.”
Hawker did not know if he had the faith everyone was placing in him, but he had no time left to worry about it. “I have to go,” he said.
“I will pray for your safety,” Father Domingo said. “Vaya con Dios.”
A moment later, Hawker was leaving the village, sneaking out of town two hours before dawn, the stone and the pellet secured in his pack.
* * *
In a small house near the edge of the village, Yuri awoke in the darkness. He had heard something, as if someone had shouted. But there was no sound around him, no light or noise. The other children slept, some of them breathing loudly, but there was no movement.
And yet he could feel movement.
He sat up and looked around. He was certain now; he could hear it again. He could feel it.
Carefully, he picked his way across the room and looked out the window. There was no light, but there were colors to be seen. He could see it off in the hills just past the edge of town: The siren was moving.
He found his clothes, put on his shoes, and snuck out the door.
CHAPTER 61
At the helipad in Campeche, armed men piled into the bay of the Skycrane, taking seats and stowing their weapons. There were twenty men in all, followed by their leader, who strode calmly up the ramp, most of his body wrapped in what looked like Kevlar armor.
Kang stepped aboard the Skycrane and looked into the hearts of his men. They had no fear of what was ahead, but they regarded him with a sense of foreboding. He was a man encased in a machine now and they were not sure what to make of
it.
He turned toward the cockpit, finally getting used to the speed at which the hydraulic actuators responded to the electrical input from his own nerves. At first it had felt too quick, as if he were being shoved around by some will other than his own. But now that he was used to it, Kang had begun to revel in it.
In the suit, he had the strength of a bear and the quickness of a cat. He had already decided that once he was healed he would continue to develop this suit and use it as he saw fit. He had been right all along. The machines would save him.
“We will find the boy and the other stones,” he said to his men. “And we will take them without pity. And when we return, there will be fortunes waiting for you all.”
A cheer went up from the men, instinctive, unplanned for, like soldiers from the dynasties of old. They had just needed their leader back and now that they had him, Kang knew they would follow him to the end.
He motioned to the pilot and the engines began to roar.
CHAPTER 62
All through the night, Danielle had worked to stabilize McCarter, rigging IVs that she hung from a lampstand, cleaning and dressing his wound, and dosing him with antibiotics. Shortly after Hawker left, Father Domingo had come down to help and sometime around dawn, the fever had broken. McCarter wasn’t out of the woods yet, but she believed he would survive and recover.
Relieved by his progress, she’d rested, until being awoken by the church bells ringing across the street. Was it Sunday? She had no idea.
She checked her patient. He was doing well, lying on the floor of the small guesthouse, conscious now.
“You’re awake,” she said.
He strained to get the words out. “Who can sleep with all those bells?”
He had a point. The church bells were ringing rather insistently.
Insistently.