Aztec Fire

by Gary Jennings

  More people were hurt stampeding off the pavilion than by the explosion.

  I would have killed the viceroy, but a messenger from Guerrero had warned us that harming the viceroy would make the rebels appear to be heartless killers and turn the leading citizens against us.

  But it was a spectacular climax to Noche Triste—the Night of Sorrows.

  Abandoning my muskets, I raced to the back side of the building and tied the rope off so I could climb down. I figured that by now constables would be coming up the side stairway I had taken to the roof.

  I hit bottom and turned around to find my horse was gone.

  Someone stole my horse? was my first thought. But a man stepped out of a doorway.

  Colonel Madero pointed his pistola at my chest. He seemed to change sides so often, I wondered if he had trouble remembering what side he was on.

  “It’s just you and me, Azteca. You are the only mark on my years of enforcing the king’s law.”

  “You’re supposed to be on the same side as me.”

  He shrugged. “I am on all sides until the last card is turned over. But this is personal with you and me. I’d kill you no matter whose orders I obey tomorrow. Put your hands behind your head.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Informants are everywhere,” he said with a grin.

  “Not around here,” I said, glancing around. “I don’t see a soul—least of all yours.”

  “I never claimed to have one.” Again, he grinned—the ghastly grin that never reached his dead eyes.

  “No one else is here?” I asked once more, looking around.

  “I’m selfish. I wanted your death all to myself.”

  “Shooting an unarmed man with no chance at all is hardly a compliment on your manhood. But then, perhaps you have none.”

  Again, the ghoulish grin. “How’s this?” Backing up five feet, he lifted his pistola toward the sky. “You have a pistola under your belt. Go for it.”

  My hands were still at the back of my head. There was no way I could lower them to my belt gun, unlimber it, cock the trigger, and kill him before his gun hand returned to my chest … and blew a hole in it big enough for Cortés to march his army through.

  I didn’t have a prayer in hell of going for that gun. And he knew it. But what he didn’t know was that my hand was not clutching the back of my head but the thirteen-inch steel dagger in my back sheath.

  I fell backward at the same time I flung the dagger.

  Madero’s pistola fired.

  On my rear end, I clutched at my own pistola, but stopped.

  He stood upright, his whole body suddenly convulsing as the pistola dropped from his hand.

  Blood poured down from the blade of my knife wedged in his throat.

  “Madre dios!” he choked.

  “Y el Diablo,” I added.

  He dropped to his knees, clutching at the knife, but unable to control his convulsions.

  I shot him between the eyes. Not to put him out of his misery, but to make sure that he kept his appointment with the devil.

  I found my mount tied to a tree around the corner. Appropriating Madero’s sheathed belt saber, I strapped it onto my mount. Swinging on, I unlimbered my pistola as well. I might need them.

  As I rode toward the causeway, soldiers were fleeing for their lives, panic-stricken, in full rout, while mobs hurtled insults and rocks at them.

  The combined forces of Iturbide and Guerrero were entering the city.

  This time the fight for independence from the spur-wearers would succeed.

  Maria and my amigo were waiting for me on the other side of the causeway, tears in her eyes as she watched the waving rebels’ banners and flags of the vanguard approaching the city. Even Luis’s eyes were misted, though I would never dare to have pointed that out.

  “Next time,” she said, “when I am being tortured, rescue me quicker, Señor Alchemist.”

  As we hugged, I wondered what she meant by “next time.”

  The revolution had succeeded.

  New Spain would now be independent.

  We Aztecs would be free and equal with the criollos, no?

  Ayyo … I knew it was not time to put away my pistolas yet.

  PRAISE FOR AZTEC FIRE

  “If you’re looking for high adventure, here it is. Ripsnortin’, slam-bang, action-filled entertainment that hits the bull’s-eye. Once the hero, a young Indio weapons-maker, begins his quest, there’ll be no turning back … for him or for you.”

  —William Martin, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Constitution

  “Aztec Fire is a tumultuous tale set in turbulent times. It begins and ends in Mexico, but in between it takes the reader on a far-ranging, E-ticket ride through early nineteenth-century history.”

  —Lucia St. Clair Robson, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost Warrior

  “I stayed up all night reading Aztec Fire, and I was sorry I’d read it so fast.”

  —David Hagberg, USA Today bestselling author of Dance with the Dragon

  PRAISE FOR AZTEC RAGE

  “Fast-paced, absorbing … The authors paint a vivid picture of the early stages of the bloody war of independence. … This latest Aztec novel is likely to be irresistible to fans of the series.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[Aztec Rage lends] a resonant understanding of not only Aztec and colonial customs and even mind-sets but also how repressed peoples, whether by the act of conquest or the act of religious control, will indeed have their own day—how their resentment builds, in other words. A beautifully detailed novel for historical fiction fans.”

  —Booklist

  “Big, bold, and bawdy, Aztec Rage is a rip-snorting swashbuckler. … It’s fiction in the grand tradition.”

  —Stephen Coonts, New York Times bestselling author The Traitor

  “Aztec Rage is a major epic, a grand literary canvas of thrills and chills, fire and passion. We’re tempted to say Aztec Rage isn’t even a novel but a hurricane, a tsunami, an exploding volcano and furious force of nature. The book kept us up long past dawn. Colonial Mexico, the land called New Spain by the Spanish, was a place of mystery and magic where the ancient rites of the Aztecs and Mayans clashed with the Europeans who mastered the land—but never conquered the people. Even if you think you know Mexico, you will never again look at Mexico the same way. You will look on the Mexican people with new eyes as well, and you will be changed. The final chapter will move you to tears—‘I am Mejicano!’—will ring in your ears forever.”

  —Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, award-winning, USA Today bestselling authors of People of the Moon

  “This is a book that will change your ideas about Mexican history and the whole history of the Americas. It resonates with original research and vivid drama.”

  —Thomas Fleming, author of Liberty! The American Revolution

  Forge Books by Gary Jennings

  Aztec

  Aztec Autumn

  Aztec Blood

  Aztec Rage

  Aztec Fire

  Spangle

  Journeyer

  Apocalypse 2012

  Visit Gary Jennings at http://www.garyjennings.com.

  About the Authors

  Gary Jennings was known for the rigorous and intensive research behind his books, which often included hazardous travel-exploring every corner of Mexico for his Aztec novels, retracing the numerous wanderings of Marco Polo for The Journeyers, joining nine different circuses for Spangle, and roaming the Balkans for Raptor. Born in Buena Vista, Virginia in 1928, Jennings passed away in 1999 in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, leaving behind a rich legacy of historical fiction and outlines for new novels. You can sign up for author updates here.

  Robert Gleason, author of End of Days, has worked for 40 years in the New York book industry, where he has published many scientists, politicians and military experts. He starred in and hosted a two-hour History Channel special, largely devoted to nuclear terror
ism and has discussed the subject on many national TV/radio talk shows, including Sean Hannity’s and Lou Dobbs’s TV shows and George Noory’s Coast to Coast AM. He has also spoken on nuclear terrorism at major universities, including Harvard. You can sign up for author updates here.

  Junius Podrug is the author of Frost of Heaven, Presumed Guilty, and The Disaster Survival Bible. He has experienced two major earthquakes, a flash flood, a blizzard of historical significance, a shipboard emergency, and a crazy with a gun. He considers his paranoia to be heightened awareness and habitually checks where the life vests are stored when boarding a ship and where the fire escapes are located before unpacking in a hotel room. He lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. You can sign up for author updates here.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART I: TWILIGHT OF THE GODS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  PART II: AND INTO THE FIRE

  EIGHT

  NINE

  PART III: GOLD AND GUNS

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  PART IV: BOOKS AND RECORDS OF THE “SAVAGES” OF NEW SPAIN

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  PART V: THE SWORD VERSUS THE PEN

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  PART VI: UN MAL HOMBRE

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  PART VII: JOURNEY TO THE END OF THE NIGHT

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  PART VIII: MONEY, GUNS, AND GAMES OF CHANCE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  PART IX: THE COUNTERFEIT COUNT

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  PART X: A GHOST SHIP OF THE DAMNED

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  PART XI

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  PART XII: THE CHIMNEYS OF HELL

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  PART XIII: HONG KONG

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  PART XIV: PIRATE ALLEY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  PART XV: IMMODERATE WRATH

  SIXTY-FIVE

  PART XVI

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  SEVENTY-THREE

  PART XVII

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  PART XVIII: ARMS MERCHANTS

  SEVENTY-SIX

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  PART XIX

  SEVENTY-NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY-ONE

  EIGHTY-TWO

  EIGHTY-THREE

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  PART XX

  EIGHTY-FIVE

  EIGHTY-SIX

  EIGHTY-SEVEN

  EIGHTY-EIGHT

  EIGHTY-NINE

  NINETY

  NINETY-ONE

  PART XXI: VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN

  NINETY-TWO

  NINETY-THREE

  NINETY-FOUR

  NINETY-FIVE

  NINETY-SIX

  NINETY-SEVEN

  NINETY-EIGHT

  NINETY-NINE

  ONE HUNDRED

  HUNDRED ONE

  HUNDRED TWO

  HUNDRED THREE

  HUNDRED FOUR

  PART XXII: WAR TO THE KNIFE

  HUNDRED FIVE

  HUNDRED SIX

  HUNDRED SEVEN

  HUNDRED EIGHT

  HUNDRED NINE

  HUNDRED TEN

  PART XXIII: BLACK INDIO

  HUNDRED ELEVEN

  HUNDRED TWELVE

  XXIV: CHANGING OF THE GUARD

  HUNDRED THIRTEEN

  HUNDRED FOURTEEN

  HUNDRED FIFTEEN

  PART XXV

  HUNDRED SIXTEEN

  HUNDRED SEVENTEEN

  HUNDRED EIGHTEEN

  HUNDRED NINETEEN

  HUNDRED TWENTY

  HUNDRED TWENTY-ONE

  HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO

  HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE

  HUNDRED TWENTY-FOUR

  PART XXVI

  NIGHT OF SORROWS

  HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE

  HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX

  Praise for Aztec Fire

  Forge Books by Gary Jennings

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  AZTEC FIRE

  Copyright © 2008 by Eugene Winick, Executor, Estate of Gary Jennings

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  All rights reserved.

  A Forge Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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  Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  eISBN 978-0-7653-9218-3

  First Edition: August 2008

  First International Mass Market Edition: April 2009