The man at her feet, his arm flopping and chest soaked with blood, thrashed into her. She stumbled, her machete scraping sparks from the wall. Lexi cried out, and the boyfriend shouted, “There’s a bomb!” He pointed up, toward those strange packets at the junctions between the beams. So, more sparks and the place could go down, taking all of them with it.
In the moment of her distraction, the boyfriend dove forward, crouching low. Raxha swung her machete down toward the altar, aiming for her enemy’s exposed throat. His eyelids fluttered, and his head twitched. He was waking.
The boyfriend shoved his shoulder against the base of the table, then heaved upward with a mighty groan, his feet braced against the uneven floor. He toppled the table, Lexi’s father tumbling off of it to sprawl, prostrate on the ground, his arms sliding free of their feeble bonds. The machete slammed into the wooden edge, hard enough to chop bone. The impact shuddered up her arms. She jerked back, but her hands slid, the hilt already slicked by another man’s blood, and the blade stuck tight.
Getting his hands under him, the boyfriend started to lever himself back up and roll away from her. Their eyes met, his dark and terrified. Raxha pounced forward, grabbing his ankle with both hands, and wrenching him back toward her. He screamed. She dropped a knee on top of the bent leg and felt bone snap beneath her weight.
Two more gunshots. One from the doorway where Lexi knelt, her arms extended, her bullet searing into Raxha’s gut. Not enough to kill. Enough to punch her, to spill her blood down her stomach as she turned from the source of the pain.
The upturned table lay between her and the second shot. Jade-green eyes staring down the barrel of a tiny gun. Blood smeared the father’s face — just as it had her own father’s — his expression was grim and determined. His daughter, at all costs.
His bullet slashed her throat. She gurgled as she tried to laugh. Someone should appreciate this irony, this symmetry. Clad in a necklace of blood. Was she wearing her gown? The room spun around her as if she were dancing. Darkness closed in, a warm, soft darkness armed with powerful teeth.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
* * *
Shaking off the shards of the jug that had saved his skull, tossing aside the handle he still held, Grant peeled himself off the floor as the weight of the jaguar bounded free. Dante’s whistling shrilled from behind him. Lexi’s scream resounded in front as she fired, something large and powerful. Blood spurted from Raxha’s body, streaking the jaguar’s black fur, spattering the shelves and drugs spilled during the fight.
Dante shouted, “Princessa!”
Behind came the ratchet of an automatic rifle, ready to take down whoever remained standing.
Gooney knelt on the near side of the upturned table, his back fully exposed. Malcolm on the other side rolled in agony. The two men still on that side plunged into the fray, holding knives. Gooney moved like lava, his arms already wavering, and Malcolm had said there was a bomb.
“Gooney, get out! Get Malcolm and go!”
Launching himself into the tomb, Grant spotted the rifleman from upstairs. His own gun was gone, somewhere in the wreckage of drugs and artifacts, in the growing wash of blood. He slammed his fist into the rifleman’s sternum, then brought up his knife, sidearm, to slash the man’s throat. He turned back, sinking low as a spate of automatic fire sprayed over his head from the second man.
Beyond his defenders, Dante howled. His neck stretched, his jaw parted, and his arms quaking as he gripped his gun. He lifted the weapon high, higher. What the hell was he doing? No time to worry about that. Grant launched into the other gunman’s path, pulling the weapon out of the way, trying to line up a solid blow with his knife, hoping to shove the man far enough to foul Dante’s aim.
Dante fired, a strafing barrage across the top of the room. He swept his long arm toward the ceiling and grabbed a dangling line, then pulled out a lighter.
A rifle butt slammed the side of Grant’s head. He let his knees buckle, pulling the man he had tackled down with him. The smell of detonation cord sparked a thousand memories, none of them happy. Dropped the knife and squeezed the gunman’s hand into the trigger. Bullets flew, followed by a rain of blood. The man he gripped cursed him out in Spanish as his comrade’s death sprayed them both.
Dante’s cackling overlaid the echo of gunfire as he retreated into the tomb, still firing.
Rolling back, Grant pulled the gunman with him to the ground, slamming the man into the wall, and again, kicking him off and surging back to his feet. The first explosion knocked him back with a deafening roar.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
* * *
Lexi’s muscles trembled, but she managed her aim, shooting again and again, the two men staggering, her father staggering as well, but rising up to place the killing shots. He swayed. Something was very wrong.
From the alcove just past Malcolm’s fallen form, Chica snarled, flattening her ears across her bloody head. Bits of Raxha’s hair and scalp marked her teeth, but the cat didn’t move, defending its dinner.
Grant disappeared into the other room, and her father looked that way, every movement exaggerated. He’d never make it to the door. Lexi clutched her empty gun and ran in.
Blood-drenched and bleary-eyed, her father shook his head, his hand and face urging her away. He shouted desperately and she clearly saw the words: “Go! Go! Go!”
Stumbling a few steps, he got an arm under Malcolm’s shoulders, the other at his knees. Malcolm stirred, crying out, his face contorted with the pain. He managed to get his arm around her father’s neck, gripping a handful of his shirt.
She imagined them both going down. Her father, in his instability dropping to his knees, Malcolm falling beneath him. Two men remained, lunging first toward their fallen leader, then pulling back at the big cat’s hiss. The first one turned toward her, pointing, drawing a huge knife.
Lexi brandished her gun, covering her father’s back. The earth bucked beneath her feet, the sky falling in showers of dirt and gravel that rocked her all over again.
Lexi lurched and stumbled. The tossing rubble revealed a flash of metal. Her father’s gun. She slid to one knee, snatched it up, firing left-handed. One of the attackers bent double, clutching at his gut. Or rather, his guts. She scooted backwards, keeping both weapons, her hands shaking. His mouth working, the remaining man dodged behind the table.
Dropping the empty gun, she scrambled to her feet as the wall buckled with a wave as if it were water, not stone. Wooden beams burst, the force shoving her around as if she raced a tornado.
Putting a hand out before her, she reached her father and grabbed his elbow. He pulled Malcolm in close to his chest and they staggered on together, then he shot a glance skyward, and dropped to one knee, bending over Malcolm as a beam slewed down and swept through the air where he’d been standing. It glanced across his back, tearing his shirt and leaving a streak of blood then slammed to the ground.
As if the blow had been nothing, he shot to his feet again, tucking his elbow tight to his side and her hand along with it, Malcolm held safe in his arms, defended at the cost of his own injury. The open door vanished in a cascade of stone and earth.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
* * *
Flung to the floor by the wild pitching of the earth, Grant watched the entire drug chamber vanish in an avalanche through where the ceiling had been. At least the destruction collapsed only the man-made cave, leaving the pyramid and tomb largely intact. Pots shattered as they rolled to join the devastation, and his ears rang. The distinctive motor oil reek of C4 and the sizzle of the det cord stung his throat and nose and dust swirled.
Good news: at least he couldn’t hear Dante’s manic laughter. Bad news: he was trapped with a dangerous assailant with a gun in a very small space. With the force of the collapse, Dante and whoever else would be at least as impaired as he was, more so because they hadn’t spent months in Afghanistan learning to sleep through explosions.
When the smoke cleared and his
head stopped ringing — if it did — he needed to be ready. Dante had been opposite, ten, maybe twelve feet away, near the mummy. Rifleman had been grappling with Grant. If he found the guy’s weapon, the gun would be handy, and no kitty to answer its call. Chica lay under tons of rubble with her last meal.
Digging in elbows and legs, Grant commando-crawled back toward the rifleman’s body. Bits of stone rained down on him from above. Debris from the explosion or gunfire from his adversary? Hope for the former, bet on the latter. Grant tucked and rolled, coming up to the mess of stone, and the mess of flesh beneath. A boot rocked under his hand, the foot still inside, the rest of the body not within reach, nor were its weapons. No help there.
Another spray of gravel, from a different angle. Dante on the move. Grant braced his hands under him, getting ready to move. The shiver of the ground tracked to his left. The dust spiraled in thicker eddies as the flashlight beam gradually cleared. Got him.
Toes to the ground, pull up his knee, straighten his arms — and launch like a sprinter from the starting blocks.
Grant smashed his shoulder into the solid presence of the other man. Dante’s rifle barrel smote his back as the man tried to get it around to fire. Big gun, small space. Stay on him. Snaking out his arm, Grant caught Dante’s leg and flipped him back. He followed immediately.
Lashing out with both feet, Dante kicked him back, and something like a howl pierced the fog in Grant’s ears. The gun swung around. Grant snatched it, hauling upward. It heated his grasp. Bullets sprayed the ceiling. In the light of the muzzle flash, Dante’s face became the mask of Xibalba, all bulging eyes and sneering teeth.
Grant wrenched the gun free, letting it fly and smashing a fist into that face. Dante tried to buck him off and they rolled, scuffling together. With a vicious grind and scrape, Dante finished on top.
A sharp edge nicked Grant’s chest, and he caught Dante’s hand, twisting his arm. The obsidian blade twitched free. Their off-hands groped for it.
As he grabbed it, the blade bit his palm and fingers. Grant slashed at the man over him. He turned his head sharply as blood sprayed. Dante’s body jerked, unable to maintain his dominant position. Grant knocked him aside, gasping for breath. The air tasted of blood and powder, gritty on his teeth, coppery over his tongue. Stillness at last. The world no longer rocked beneath him or shot bullets at him. He lay in the gullet of the underworld, tempted, for a long, terrible moment, to let it swallow him. Let him lie here with his fallen foe, in the tomb of the princess, another warrior in tribute. He and Gooney not quite sharing a grave.
Overhead, the dust settled out of the air, sticking to the blood, some of it his own. Four objectives. Five, including the original mission: getting Lexi home safe. Take down the cartel leaders. Done. Destroy the stash. Done, with help from the leadership. Get out of there alive … keep Gooney’s heart where it belonged. Was it a partial victory if the rockfall crushed Gooney’s heart along with the rest of him? Did the contract cover the contingency of the abductee racing back into danger? If not for her and Malcolm, no objectives one and two. Three more warriors for the princess. Grant should care about the other partial victory, that of his own survival.
“Mission accomplished, kids. Let’s get moving.” The voice of his Commanding Officer echoed in his skull from the aftermath of a victory like this one. A few months into his posting with the Unit, when they took down a Taliban command post … and lost four men. Mission accomplished. The voice in his head was Gooney’s.
They had been heading toward the open door, the last he saw. The door turned from a rectangle of gray rain into a trapezoid. Lexi pointed. Gooney turned. After that, nothing but stone. Had they made it as far as the cave, the watery inlet on the far side? Could they have? What were the odds? How many tons of mountainside now barricaded the entrance? Half a million dollars could get a couple of excavators easy, maybe a construction helicopter. How long could they last, especially given Malcolm’s injury?
Honor the dead, fight for the living. And don’t give up too soon on that fight.
Grant rolled and pushed to his feet. A gray patch stood out from the darkness all around him, with a breath of moisture on the air. The god-awful stairs. At the bottom, he made out the smear of blood left by Gooney’s impact at Dante’s hands.
He tread carefully, hunched over, up the slick and narrow way, the path from which none were meant to return. The revelation hit so strongly Grant almost bolted the last few steps — then he’d be hit by the ceiling instead. Three paths, three ways to get to the stash. He, like Raxha, had entered the way of the bats. Lexi and Malcolm entered through the secret way, the jaguar path. That left the way of the snake, a river or a stream, Eleiua said, except there weren’t any rivers leading here. Not on the surface in any case.
He skidded into the temple, then dodged through the roots into the pounding rain. Any help Raxha was expecting would’ve been there by now. That left him the only one standing.
“Para o disparare!” Someone shouted from his left. Stop or I’ll shoot. A woman’s voice.
Grant dove forward into the rain, sliding to a halt behind a clump of palms. “Eleiua, is that you?”
“Dios mio! Grant Casey?”
He turned from his cover, and she skidded down to meet him, clasping his arm. “You’re alive — the others?”
Grant met her eye and shook his head, his hair already plastered to his forehead. He wiped it back. “I don’t know. The helicopter?”
“That’s how we got here, but he couldn’t stay.”
“Casey!” Pamela Dionne, a matching gun in her hand, stumbled up from the direction of the rockfall. “Where’s my daughter? What happened?”
He put up his hand to forestall her, keeping his focus on Eleiua. “The snake path. It’s through your well.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
* * *
As the doorway they headed for buckled to a close, Lexi stopped short. Always another way. Had to be. She glanced around, then dragged on her father’s arm, her other arm over her head to ward off debris as best she could. He saw what she had and they ran toward the mouth of the watery chamber as the world crashed down behind them. They slithered down into the cave, feet splashing into a shallow channel, then across it, to a mound of gravel and refuse that rose from the pool.
The stone here tremored, but did not fall. Her father’s chest shuddered where her knuckles pressed against him, then he sank down on the scree-covered slope. A few bits of gravel slid from his foot and into the water below. Two lanterns remained, jumping on their hooks, then swaying, then still, their light rocking around her as if she and her father were in a lifeboat, cast ashore beneath a lighthouse. Thank God, or the room would be completely dark, and she couldn’t even speak.
Taking a few shuddering breaths, his movements growing more deliberate by the moment, her father settled Malcolm on his back. Immediately he began scanning him, efficiently patting down his limbs, checking his pulse, drawing up his eyelids to check his eyes, then pausing over his left leg, blood-streaked and just plain wrong. Lexi’s stomach clenched and a wave of nausea passed through her. Malcolm’s skin carried a dusting of stone, and blood oozed from a variety of scrapes, and that leg —
Her father glanced up, then put up his hand and drew her down beside them, releasing her immediately. His signs, like the rest of him, shook at first, then evened out. “He’s unconscious, but breathing well. I need to set his leg. It’ll hurt like —” Suddenly self-conscious, he parted his hands.
“Will he be alright?” Her own hands shook, and she wanted to just collapse onto the rough ground, but Malcolm needed her. She stroked a hand over his dense curls and along his warm cheek, leaving a track through the grime.
“Depends how long it takes —” again, he broke off, this time with a wince, his gaze slanting back toward the rubble heap behind them, sealing them off from the chambers beyond. Plumes of dust still circulated around the mound. It must have been so loud, for how she felt it in her bones. She
still sensed the vibrations moving through her.
Sealing them in. Her father’s grim expression solidified in her mind and she grasped what he must have already known: they had no way out unless someone came with an excavator. So why did he keep looking back?
Oh. Lexi had been so wrapped up in their escape, in her worry over Malcolm she had almost forgotten they weren’t alone, or rather, they hadn’t been.
“I need to set his leg,” he told her again, unzipping Malcolm’s hiking pants to the knee, then around it, peeling off the lower pantleg on that side to reveal the unnatural direction of his foot. Her father set his hand to Malcolm’s ankle as if he were checking for a pulse. Whatever he found made him compress his lips even further. His head twitched again toward the sealed chamber, but he brought it back with a will.
She tapped his shoulder. “I’m sure your friend will be okay.”
In hard, sharp signs, “We’re not friends. We don’t even like each other.” A pause, and his hands faltered. “He certainly doesn’t like me.”
Really. For a smart guy, her dad could be such an idiot. “Then why is he here? Why fly all the way down here, and do everything he’s done?”
Her father paused in the middle of stripping off Malcolm’s socks. “Your mother is paying him a lot of money to bring you home.”
“You think he did this — that — for the money?” She indicated the mound of stone, with Grant somewhere — pray to God — somewhere behind it, not beneath it.
“And the thrill. He got excited to see the tomb.” He lay aside the socks and the lower pantleg, then stripped the lace out of Malcolm’s right boot. This time, his glance was upward and whatever he found there slumped his shoulders a little more. When they spoke, the overhead lanterns cast their signs into complex, oversized patterns of shadow racing across the surface of the gravel and water.
The Maya Bust Page 24