“Cold-blooded murder is never fair,” Sean said.
She rolled her shoulders. “Oh, get off your high horse, Sean. I didn’t walk into a monastery and gun down a bunch of priests. They were bad people. The world is better off without them…well, what’s left of the world will be, anyway.”
“So, that’s it? You think whatever is down here is going to destroy the world, including yourself. If Lilian can’t be happy, no one can?”
“Oh no, Sean. You’re thinking too narrow. You see, I intend to cleanse the world of its filth, of the problems that have wreaked havoc on humanity. Greed, deception, hate—they’re all deeply rooted in every culture across the planet. It’s time to dig those roots out and start anew. Of course, I’ll keep a few people safe from the destruction. I wouldn’t let them perish after all they’ve done to help me.” She motioned to Kirk and the others. “I’ve taken precautions. I own a thousand acres of mountain property in Colorado. I call it the ark. While the rest of the earth suffers through the apocalypse, we’ll be safe in an underground bunker in the Rocky Mountains.”
Kirk shifted a little, and Sean had to grip him tighter to remind him he was still at gunpoint.
“If you really believe this place is capable of that, then you surely know we’ll all die, too.”
“That might have been a problem before.” She let the words linger to make him wonder.
Before? Before what? He gazed across the room and saw her step out from behind Tommy while still keeping the weapon pointed at the back of his head. A new light, pale orange with a hint of yellow glowed from her chest.
She had the Zerzura medallion. The relic had saved Sean’s life once before. Now, apparently, it had saved Pike’s.
“Don’t bother asking how I came by this,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “Let’s just say that your security system in Atlanta wasn’t that difficult to crack.”
Sean felt something brush against his skull and then sink deeper into his skin. He winced both from pain and from irritation with himself.
“Put the weapon down,” the blonde woman said from behind.
“Do as she says, Sean. I don’t want to kill you. Not yet, at least. However, if you don’t comply, I’ll be more than happy to eliminate your friend here.”
“Don’t do it, Sean!” Tommy shouted. “She’s bluffing!”
“I assure you I am not,” Lilian said. “You’re a smart guy. Put the weapon down, and I don’t spray your friend’s face all over this room.”
Sean cursed himself for not sensing the blonde woman sneaking up from behind. Had he been paying closer attention, perhaps he would have heard her movements. Instead, he’d been caught up in the conversation with Pike.
He pulled back on the gun, removing it from the back of Kirk’s head. His grip loosened, and Kirk stepped forward, taking a deep breath as he moved away.
Sean lowered the weapon and placed it on the ground, then stood up straight with his hands by his shoulders.
Kirk spun around and punched him in the gut. Sean doubled over, grabbing his abs in an effort to ease the sudden throbbing pain. Kirk reared his left hand back and was about to smack Sean across the face when Pike stopped him.
“That’s enough,” she said. “Bring him.”
The blonde shoved Sean forward, nearly causing him to bump into Kirk. He sidestepped the mercenary and regained his balance, struggling forward with his stomach still sore from Kirk’s punch.
Kirk fell in line behind the two until they reached the other side of the room where Pike still stood with Tommy held hostage.
“That’s better,” she said. “You know, I had my doubts about this little trinket,” she said, holding up the amulet. “Now, though, I can see how wrong I was to question its power.”
Her shirt was covered in blood, but no more seeped from the wound. Sean didn’t have to see to know what happened. He’d experienced it himself when taking a bullet to the chest. The amulet healed him. Now it was being used by a maniacal woman bent on destroying humanity.
Pike turned to the other two henchmen and motioned to the tunnel beyond the doorway. “Lead the way, gentlemen. We have work to do.”
The group made their way into the dark passage. The walls were bored smooth just like those in the huge antechamber. There was a strange smell in the air, like a mixture of sulfur and something burning, but Sean couldn’t place it.
“How is it we always find ourselves in spots like this?” Sean asked his friend, who trudged through the passage a few feet ahead.
“I was just wondering the same thing,” Tommy answered. “Maybe we’re not that good at our jobs.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re very good at what you do. It’s my fault we’re in this mess.”
“Shut up, both of you,” Lilian ordered. “You’ll both have plenty of time to figure out your issues when you’re dead.”
Sean bit his lip to hold back the smart-aleck comment he wanted to make. There was no point. They were in a bind again without any foreseeable way out.
The passage made a series of sharp right-hand turns, working its way down farther into the crust until the group came to a place where a stone frame was cut into the rock. More Mayan symbols were carved into the header.
“Another door,” Lilian said. The two men in the lead had stopped short, suspicious of passing through. “What do those symbols mean?” she asked.
“Why don’t you build a time machine, go back to college, and major in ancient Mayan languages?” Tommy said.
He winced, knowing what was coming next. He wasn’t disappointed. Kirk drove the butt of his gun into Tommy’s lower back, dropping him to the ground in agonizing pain.
A second later, Kirk grabbed the back of Tommy’s shirt and hauled him to his feet, albeit unsteadily.
“How many times do you have to piss blood before you’re gonna learn to keep your trap shut, Schultzie?” Sean asked.
“Hopefully, no more.” Tommy wobbled and braced himself on the wall with his right hand to keep his balance. He looked up at the header where the two gunmen were shining their beams. The engravings were on both of the stone studs as well.
“Well?” Lilian urged.
“Give me a break, lady. Jeez. There are three rows of symbols here. It’s not like they’re in an easy-to-read language. It’s going to take a minute.”
“I would suggest you don’t try to stall, Mr. Schultz. No one can save you now. No one is coming to your rescue.”
“No one ever does,” Tommy said, inching forward to get a better look at the engravings.
His eyes passed over the symbols one after the other, carefully taking mental notes as he translated the ancient script in his mind. It took several minutes to go over all the lines, and he did it twice just to make sure the translation was correct.
“It’s about the fourth prophecy,” he said when he was finished. “Pablo was right. This is a giant death machine.”
“What does it say exactly?” Lilian demanded. “How do we activate it?”
Tommy didn’t say anything.
Lilian turned to the blonde. “Erika.”
Erika raised her weapon and pressed it to the back of Tommy’s skull.
“I’ll ask you again,” Lilian said. “How do you activate the machine?”
Tommy chuckled. “Do you not see how ridiculous putting a gun to my head over this really is? You’re planning on killing all of us anyway. What’s the difference if I die from a bullet or from some ancient doomsday device?”
Lilian’s eyes twitched with anger.
“Very well.” She raised her weapon and pointed it at Sean’s knee. “Yes, you two are going to die. However, there’s still plenty of time for you to suffer. I’ll start with your friend’s knee, then maybe shoot him in the top of the foot. Then the other knee, knock out an elbow after that. There are so many directions I could take it. So, you can die for a cause and in such a manner that won’t put you in a tremendous amount of pain. Or I can make it hurt fo
r a very, very long time.”
“Don’t do it, Schultzie. Let her figure it out for herself.”
A blow to the lower back from Kirk dropped Sean to his knees. He coughed violently, and his body heaved violently for nearly a minute before the fit subsided.
Sean began to say something, but another weak cough escaped his lips as he started to stand up again. Kirk put his hand on the back of Sean’s neck, forcing him down again. He pointed his gun at the top of Sean’s head.
“We can do this all night, gentlemen. And if you prefer, we can make you suffer for days.”
“There’s a sequence,” Tommy blurted. “It’s very precise. There are four keystones you have to activate. According to the engraving, by turning those in the correct order, it will start the…the…whatever doomsday device this thing is. From what I can tell, it appears to cause a chain reaction with most of the volcanoes in the region.”
Sean’s head sagged. He appreciated his friend doing his best to keep their suffering at a minimum, but at the same time, he wished Pike and the others could be kept in the dark.
“Volcanoes?” Lilian asked with a hint of suspicion in her voice.
Tommy gave a reluctant nod. “Thousands of years ago, an ice age covered most of the continents. In North America, there is a distinct line where the continental glacier progress halted—where the rich, black soil turns to red clay. Many experts agree that multiple volcanoes erupting at the same time was the primary cause of the last ice age. Most of the sky would have been blocked out by volcanic ash, keeping away precious sunlight and causing the planet’s temperature to drop significantly.”
“Yes,” Lilian said. It sounded like she was enjoying Tommy’s tale a little too much. “Only this time, billions of useless people will die as a result and we can begin again.”
Sean wanted to lunge at her, take her weapon, and shoot her in the face with it. She’d played him and Tommy masterfully, a fact that only further inflamed his anger. He resisted, albeit with a great deal of effort. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in situations like this. In a strange way, he’d almost become comfortable with them.
“You played us like a cheap piano,” Sean said. “You used us to get here. Can’t believe I actually felt sorry for you when all this was just a way for you to get some kind of twisted closure on your family tragedy.”
Lilian’s nostrils flared in the glow of the lantern and flashlights. “This is the natural order of things, Sean. Life comes and goes. Look around you. How many lives have you taken? How many people have you killed in the name of justice, honor, America? You take the lives of wicked people. I’m simply going to do it on a much larger scale. I will wipe evil off the face of the earth.”
“And billions of innocent people will die in the process. I guess that doesn’t matter, though, as long as you kill the small percentage of bad people. Right?”
She snickered. “Innocent? There is no such thing. No one is innocent. Not even me. The difference is I have a plan, direction, a way to give this world a new start, a chance to do things right.” She turned to Tommy. “Now, lead the way. The time is at hand.”
Sean and Tommy exchanged a concerned glance. Sean was ready to make his move right then and there. Normally, Tommy would have been, too. What did they have to lose? Tommy, however, had other plans.
“If we’re gonna go, we might as well go big,” he said.
Sean caught something in his tone. He’d heard it before through the years. To Sean, it meant his friend had something up his sleeve.
Chapter 39
Chiapas
“Lead the way,” Tommy said to the two mercenaries.
The men looked at Kirk, who in turn gave a questioning glance to Pike. She nodded, and the two stepped cautiously through the doorway.
The second their feet touched the floor on the other side of the threshold, the earth began to shake. A thunderous rumble resonated from deep below. Dust broke loose from the ceiling and drifted to the floor.
The two men looked back at Kirk and Pike, wondering what was happening.
“Keep going,” Lilian ordered.
Reluctantly, the men pushed ahead. The tunnel steepened, and everyone in the group had to lean back as they walked, pressing their palms to the wall to keep their balance.
The air seemed to grow hotter with every step and filled with a bitter, acrid smell like sulfur. The rumbling ceased as the group continued downward, casting them into an uneasy silence.
After walking for 150 feet or so, the left-hand wall cut sharply in the other direction and gave way to a dramatic drop-off. One of the men in the lead pointed his light down into the abyss. A crevice about forty feet wide dropped hundreds more feet to the bottom where a narrow river of bright orange flowed through the pitch blackness.
Sean risked a look over the edge for a nanosecond before taking a wary step back toward the safety of the right-hand wall. He leaned his shoulder into the stone as Tommy stole a quick glance down into the ravine.
“Hot lava,” he said.
“Is there another kind of lava?” Sean asked with a tremor in his voice.
Tommy knew his friend was cracking the joke to play off his fear of heights. The drop to the hot river of liquid magma below was the stuff of Sean’s nightmares. As far as Tommy knew, it was his friend’s one true weakness.
“Keep going,” Pike ordered. “I don’t want to be here all night.”
The group proceeded down into the depths until the ramp leveled off and curved around to the right. The temperatures had to be pushing over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The air was thick and difficult to breathe, full of the fumes coming off the lava river.
After marching around the bend, the path widened slightly and passed through another stone doorway. The room on the other side was cast in a pale orange glow. The hot, orange river below disappeared into a hole that must have come out in the chamber on the other side.
More Mayan symbols adorned the doorposts and header. Pike looked at Tommy for answers.
“It’s more stuff about the fourth prophecy,” he said. “And another warning about Yum Cimil. It says that whoever passes through this door may only taste eternal life after they die and are reborn. Then it goes on to reiterate the four keystones and all that.”
“Very well,” Lilian said, motioning with her pistol for the group to keep going. “We have a date with destiny. I’d rather not keep it waiting.”
The men walked through the doorway and into the next room. The earth shook again, and the rumbling they heard before returned, although considerably louder than the first time.
The artificial light from the lantern and flashlights illuminated a massive box-shaped chamber with ceilings over sixty feet high. In the center, spaced about ten feet apart, were four stone pillars standing five feet tall. Each had an image carved into the side. The images matched on all four sides of the pillars, but each column was different. On top of the four plinths were rounded rocks that looked like primitive dials.
“The keystones,” Tommy muttered. “This is it.”
Kirk walked over to one of the pillars and motioned for his men to keep an eye on Wyatt and Schultz. The two underlings did as instructed and took a step back behind the two captives. Kirk reached out his hand to touch one of the dials.
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you,” Tommy warned.
Kirk turned his head and scowled with a look of irritation. “Why not? You said these were the keystones that activate the machine.”
“They are,” Tommy said. “But if you turn them in the wrong order, it won’t work.”
“I’m okay with experimenting.”
“That’s fine…if you want to kill us all and break the thing.”
Tommy stared at Kirk with a smug look on his face.
“Step aside and let Schultz handle it,” Lilian said, “Only he knows the correct sequence.” She pointed her pistol at Sean’s head. “If you try anything stupid, though, I will kill your friend.”
“I as
sumed as much.”
“Don’t do it, Schultzie,” Sean said.
Pike swung the side of her weapon into Sean’s temple. The weapon struck hard and sent a dizzying pain through his face and head.
Tommy swallowed hard, fighting off the urge to help his friend. Sean touched the fresh wound with his fingers and checked for blood. There was none, but that didn’t stop the new pain from pulsing through him.
Tommy reluctantly stepped up to the pillar closest to him and examined the image. Then he moved to the next, and so on until he’d inspected each one. He returned to one on the far right that had an image of a jaguar engraved into it and placed his hand on the dial.
“You’re sure that’s the first one?” Lilian asked.
“I’m sure,” Tommy said with a nod.
He took a deep breath and tried to twist the stone dial. Nothing happened. The thing wouldn’t budge. He frowned and realized it was going to take a little more effort than just a one-handed twist of the wrist. With both hands on the dial, he leaned into it, grunting as he wrenched the knob to the left. The thing resisted but gave way under Tommy’s strength. As it turned, a low grinding sound came from the pillar and the floor beneath until the dial would move no more.
Next, he stepped over to a pillar with a bird carved into the side and repeated the process. This time, the sound of stones grinding came from the walls around them.
Pike’s men turned their heads to see where the noise was coming from and realized that panels on the walls were sliding open, revealing what appeared to be vents. Troughs protruded several feet above the floor.
Tommy moved to the third column. He rechecked the symbol on the side to confirm it was the right one. “The serpent,” he said and then started turning the dial as he had the others.
This time, the floor trembled beneath them. Little bits of debris fell from the ceiling. A pebble landed on Tommy’s shoulder and startled him, but he stayed focused on the task at hand: one more dial to turn.
The Fourth Prophecy Page 29
