The Codex

by Douglas Preston

  What he had to do was to ambush the ambusher.

  Hauser thought for a moment. The Indian was smart. He would already have anticipated this. He would know that Hauser would be expecting an ambush on this trail. Therefore, the Indian was not waiting in ambush on this trail. No. Rather, he expected Hauser to circle in and come around from the other side. Therefore, the Indian was waiting on the other side of the gigantic mass of growth to ambush Hauser.

  Hauser slowly began circling the edge of the creeper colony, moving as silently and smoothly as an Indian himself. If his assumptions were correct, the Indian would be found on the far side, probably up high, waiting for him to pass below. He would finish the Indian first—who was by far the greater danger—and then he would flush out the others and drive them toward the bridge, where they would be easily trapped and killed.

  Hauser circled at a distance, stopping every few moments to scan the middle story of the jungle. If the Indian had done as he anticipated, he would be somewhere to his right. He moved with great caution. It took time, but time at least was on his side. He had at least seven hours until dark.

  He moved forward, scanned again. There was something in a tree. He paused, moved a little, looked again. Just the corner of the Indian’s red shirt was visible, on a limb about fifty yards to his right, and there—he could just see it—was the tip of a little reed blowgun aiming downward, waiting to nail Hauser as he came through.

  Hauser moved sideways until he had more of the Indian’s shirt in sight to make a target. He raised his rifle, took careful aim, and fired a single round.

  Nothing. And yet he knew he had hit it. A sudden panic seized him: It was another trap. He flung himself sideways at the very moment the Indian came dropping down on him like a cat, sharpened stick in hand. Using a jujitsu move, Hauser threw himself forward and to the side, turning the Indian’s own momentum against him, neatly throwing him off—and then he was up and placing an arc of automatic-weapon fire across where the Indian had been.

  The Indian was gone, vanished.

  He reconnoitered. The Indian had still been one step ahead of him. He glanced up and saw the tree with the little bit of red cloth, the tip of the blowgun dart, all still in place exactly where the Indian had put them. Hauser swallowed. Now was not the time for fear or anger. He had a job to do. He would no longer play the Indian’s cat-and-mouse game, which Hauser now suspected he would lose. The time had come to flush out the Broadbents with brute force.

  He turned and walked along the edge of the creeper colony, planted his feet, and took aim with the Steyr AUG. First one burst, then a second, and then he walked on, pouring fire into the thick vegetation. It had exactly the effect he anticipated: It flushed out the Broadbents. He could hear their panicked flight, noisy, like partridges. Now he knew where they were. He sprinted along the mass of growth to cut them off as they emerged and herd them toward the bridge.

  There was a sudden sound behind him, and he spun toward the greater danger, squeezing the trigger and pouring firepower into the dense cover where the sound had come from. Leaves, vines, arid twigs jittered off the branches and flew in all directions, and he could hear the snick and thok of bullets striking wood everywhere. He saw some movement and raked the vegetation with fire again—and then he heard a squeal and some thrashing.

  Coatimundi, damn it! He had shot a coatimundi!

  He turned now, focusing his attention ahead, lowered his gun, and fired in the direction of the fleeing Broadbents. He heard the coati squealing in pain behind him, the crackling of twigs, and then he realized, just in time, that this was no wounded coati—it was the Indian again.

  He dropped, rolled, fired—not to kill, for the Indian had vanished into the vines, but to drive the Indian to his right, toward the open area in front of the bridge. He would drive him in the same direction as the Broadbents. He now had the Indian on the run, herding him together with the others. The trick was to keep them moving, firing steadily, preventing them from peeling off and coming back around behind him. He ran, crouching and firing short bursts, left and right, cutting off any possibility of escape back into the ruined city. By sweeping in from their left he was driving them ever closer to the chasm, crowding them, flushing them toward open ground. His clip empty, he paused to slam another in. As he ran, he heard, through the foliage ahead, the crash of the Broadbents in their flight in exactly the direction he hoped they would go.

  He had them now.

  77

  Tom was already halfway back across the plateau when he heard the staccato fire from Hauser’s gun. He instinctively ran toward the sound, fearful of what it might mean, knocking aside ferns and vines, jumping fallen logs, scrambling over wrecked walls. He heard the second and third bursts of gunfire, closer and more to his right. He veered toward it, hoping in some way to defend his brothers and father. He had a machete, he’d killed a jaguar and an anaconda with it—why not Hauser?

  Unexpectedly he burst out of the foliage and into sunlight; fifty yards away lay the edge of the precipice, a sheer drop of more than a mile into a dark coil of mists and shadow. He was now at the edge of the great chasm. He looked to the right and saw the graceful catenary of the suspension bridge dangling over the canyon, swaying gently in the updrafts.

  He heard more gunfire behind him and glimpsed movement. Vernon and Philip appeared out of the trees beyond the bridge, supporting their father, running as fast as they could. Borabay appeared a moment later farther back, catching up to them. A raking fire came past them, snipping off the heads of the ferns behind them, and too late Tom realized that he, too, was trapped. Tom ran toward them as another staccato peal of gunfire came out of the trees. Tom could now see that Hauser was several hundred yards behind, firing to their left and driving them toward the edge of the chasm and the bridge. Tom ran toward the bridgehead and reached it at the same time as the others. They paused, crouching. Tom could see that the soldiers on the other side, alerted by the gunfire, had already taken up covering positions and were blocking their escape.

  “Hauser’s trying to drive us out on the bridge,” cried Philip.

  Another burst of gunfire tore some leaves off a tree branch above them.

  “We’ve no choice!” Tom cried.

  In another moment they were running out on the swaying bridge, half-carrying, half-dragging their father. The soldiers on the far side dropped to their knees, blocking their exit, guns pointed.

  “Just keep going,” Tom shouted.

  They were about a third of the way across when the soldiers in front of them fired a warning volley above their heads. At the same time a voice rang out from behind them. Tom turned. Hauser and several more soldiers were blocking their retreat at the other end of the bridge.

  They were trapped in-between, all five of them.

  The soldiers fired a second volley, this one lower. Tom could hear the bullets passing like bees above their heads. They had reached the middle of the bridge, and it was now swaying and jouncing from their motion. Tom looked back, looked forward. They stopped. There was nothing more they could do. It was over.

  “Don’t move,” Hauser called out to them, strolling out on the bridge with a smile, weapon trained on them. They watched him approach. Tom glanced at his father. He was looking at Hauser with fear and hatred. The expression on his father’s face frightened him even more than their situation.

  Hauser stopped a hundred feet from them, steadying himself on the swaying bridge. “Well, well,” he said. “If it isn’t old Max and his three sons. What a nice family reunion.”

  78

  During the twelve hours Sally had lain behind the tree trunk, her thoughts had, for some reason, turned to her father. That last summer of his life he had taught her how to shoot. After he died, she had continued to go down to the bluffs to practice shooting apples and oranges, and later pennies and dimes. She had gotten to be an excellent shot, but it was a useless skill—she had no interest in competition or hunting. She had simply enjoyed it. Some peop
le liked to bowl, some liked Ping-Pong—she liked to shoot. Of course, in New Haven it was the most politically incorrect skill of all. Julian was horrified when he found out. He made her promise to give up shooting and keep it a secret—not because he was against guns but because it was déclassé. Julian. She pushed him out of her mind.

  She shifted her cramped thighs and wiggled her toes, trying to limber up the stiffened muscles. She gave another handful of nuts to Hairy Bugger, who was still sitting grumpily in his vine cage. She was glad he had been there to keep her company these past hours, even if he was in a foul mood. The poor thing loved his freedom.

  Bugger gave a squeak of alarm, and Sally was instantly alert. Then she heard it: some distant shots from the White City, a faint burst from an automatic weapon, then a second. With the binoculars she scanned the forest on the far side of the gorge. There were more shots, and still more, growing louder. A few minutes went by, and then she saw movement.

  It was Tom. He had appeared at the edge of the cliffs, running. Philip and Vernon emerged out of the jungle ahead of him, supporting a wounded man between them—an old man in rags, Broadbent.

  Borabay was the last to appear, closest to the bridge.

  There were more shots, and she now spied Hauser corning out of the trees from behind, flushing them out and driving them like game toward the bridge.

  She lowered the binoculars and raised the gun, watching the drama through the scope of the Springfield. It couldn’t be a worse situation. The Broadbents and Borabay were about to be trapped on the bridge. But they had no other choice, with Hauser behind them and the chasm to one side. They hesitated at the bridgehead, then ran out onto the span. Hauser was out of the trees and shouting to the soldiers on the far side, who kneeled and fired warning shots.

  In a moment all five of the Broadbents, including Borabay, were trapped in the middle of the bridge, with Hauser and four soldiers at one end and four at the other. Totally trapped. The firing died down and all was silent.

  Hauser, with a grimace on his face, now began walking along the precarious bridge toward them, his weapon leveled.

  Sally felt her heart hammering in her chest. Her moment had come. Her hands were shaking, sweating. She remembered her father. Calm your breathing. Allow your airflow to stop. Find your heartbeat. Shoot in between.

  Sally aimed at Hauser as he strolled along the bridge. The bridge was swaying, but she felt her chances of scoring a hit were better than fifty-fifty. They would be even better once he stopped walking.

  Hauser advanced to within a hundred feet of the Broadbents and paused. She could kill him—she would kill him. She centered his torso in her crosshairs, but she did not squeeze the trigger. Instead, she asked herself: What will happen after I kill Hauser?

  The answer wasn’t hard to figure out. This was not The Wizard of Oz, and the Honduran soldiers on each side of the bridge would not lay down their guns saying, “Hail, Dorothy!” These were brutal mercenaries. If she shot Hauser, the soldiers would almost certainly open fire and massacre all the Broadbents on the bridge. There were ten soldiers—four at her end and now six at the other—and she couldn’t hope to pick them all off, especially the six at the far end, who were virtually out of range. The chamber of the Springfield held only five shots, and when those were done she would have to pull back the bolt and manually reload five more, a long process. And she only had ten rounds anyway.

  Whatever she did had to be done in five shots.

  She felt a sense of panic. She had to think of a plan, a way to bring about an outcome where they all survived. Hauser was swaggering toward them with his rifle, and he clearly intended to kill them. Yes, she would have to kill him, and then it would be all over for the Broadbents.

  Her mind reeled. There would be no misstep here, no second chance. She had to get this right. She played every option she could think of through her head, but they all ended the same way, with the Broadbents dead. Her hand shook; the figure of Hauser jittered in the scope. If I kill Hauser, they’re dead. If I don’t kill Hauser, they’re dead.

  She watched helplessly as Hauser aimed his weapon. He was smiling. He looked like a man about to enjoy himself.

  79

  Tom watched Hauser walk down the bridge, an arrogant smile of triumph on his face. He paused about a hundred feet from them. He swiveled the muzzle of the gun toward Tom. “Take off the pack and lay it down.”

  Tom carefully took off the pack but, instead of laying it down, held it over the gorge by a strap. “It’s the Codex.”

  Hauser fired a round from his gun that snipped a piece of bamboo from the railing less than a foot from Tom. “Lay it down!”

  Tom did not move. He continued holding the book over the gorge. “Shoot me and it goes over the side.”

  There was a silence. Hauser moved the muzzle of his gun toward Broadbent. “All right. Lay it down or Daddy dies. Last warning.”

  “Let him kill me,” Broadbent growled.

  “And after Dad there are your two brothers. Don’t be stupid, and put it down.”

  After a brief moment Tom laid it down. He had no choice.

  “The machete next.”

  Tom eased it out of its sheath and dropped it.

  “Well, well,” said Hauser, his face relaxing. He turned his gaze on their father. “Max. We meet again.”

  The old man, grasping his sons to help him stand, raised his head and spoke. “Your quarrel is with me. Let the boys go.”

  The smile on Hauser’s face took on a frostier look. “On the contrary, you’re going to have the pleasure of seeing them die first.” Broadbent’s head jerked a little. Tom tightened his grip. The bridge swayed slightly, the cold mists drifting upward. Borabay took a step forward but was stayed by Philip.

  “Well then, who’s first? The Indian? No, let’s do him later. We’ll go by age. Philip? Step away from the others so I don’t have to kill you all at once.”

  After a brief hesitation Philip stepped to one side. Vernon reached out to him, grasped his arm, and tried to pull him back. He shook it off and took another step.

  “You’ll burn in hell, Hauser,” roared Broadbent.

  Hauser smiled pleasantly and raised the muzzle of his rifle. Tom looked away.

  80

  But the shot didn’t come. Tom looked up. Hauser’s attention had suddenly been diverted to something behind them. Tom turned around and saw a flash of black: An animal was bounding along one of the cables of the bridge toward them, a monkey racing along with his tail up—Hairy Bugger.

  With a screech of joy Bugger leapt into Tom’s arms, and Tom saw that he had a canister almost as large as himself tied to his midriff. It was the aluminum bottle of white gas from their backpacking stove. There was something scrawled on it—

  I CAN HIT THIS S.

  Tom wondered what the hell it meant, what Sally had in mind.

  Hauser raised his gun. “Okay, everybody calm down. Everybody keep still. Now: Show me what it is the monkey just brought you. Slowly.”

  All at once, Sally’s plan came to Tom. He untied the canister.

  “Hold it out at arm’s length. Let me see it.”

  Tom held the canister out. “It’s a liter of white gas.”

  “Toss it over the side.”

  Tom spoke quietly. “There’s a sharpshooter on our side who’s got a bead on this bottle as we speak. As you know, white gas is explosively flammable.”

  Hauser’s face showed no trace of emotion or reaction. He merely raised his gun.

  “Hauser, if she hits this can, the bridge burns. You’ll be cut off. You’ll be trapped in the White City forever.”

  Ten electric seconds passed, and then Hauser spoke. “If the bridge burns, you’ll die, too.”

  “You’re going to kill us anyway.”

  Hauser said, “It’s a bluff.”

  Tom did not respond. Seconds ticked by. Hauser’s face betrayed nothing.

  Tom said, “Hauser, she might just put a bullet through you.”


  Hauser raised his gun, and in that moment a bullet struck the bamboo bridge surface two feet in front of Hauser’s boots with a snick! sending a spray of bamboo splinters up into his face. The report came a moment later, rolling across the chasm.

  Hauser hastily lowered his gun muzzle.

  “Now that we’ve established this is not bullshit, you tell your soldiers to let us pass.”

  “And?” said Hauser.

  “You can have the bridge, the tomb, and the Codex. All we want is our lives.”

  Now Hauser shouldered his weapon. “My compliments,” he said.

  Tom, with slow movements, took the canister and, using a loose piece of twine from the bridge, tied it around one of the main cables.

  “Tell your men to let us pass. You stay where you are. If anything bad happens to us, our sharpshooter shoots the canister and your precious bridge burns with you on it. Understand?”

  Hauser nodded.

  “I didn’t hear the order, Hauser.”

  Hauser cupped his hands over his mouth. “Men!” he called in Spanish. “Let them leave! Do not molest them as they go! I am releasing them!”

  There was a pause.

  Hauser shouted, “I want a response to that order!”

  “Si, señor,” came the reply.