A sound from the warriors’ camp startled him, the noise made by a small motor. Suddenly, lights were burning in the clearing and he could see lighted windows in the big silver box brought by the noisy flying machines. Los Oráculos meant to continue their rituals into the night.
Silently, as Guatemotzi trotted along a narrow jungle trail to the secret spring, he prayed the warriors in orange would not come to kill him tonight for what he’d done with the dead monkey’s collar he took from the sacred temple. It had seemed a small thing at the time, to take the collar from the dead monkey, hoping later to sell it for a few pesos to buy food with. The little collar was very old and it held only a few of the pretty green and red stones and some hammered silver.
What harm was done? The monkey would surely not miss it and the money the traveler in the jungle had given him would be put to good use in his village, making sure there was plenty of food for all of his people.
Perhaps, while Los Oráculos were busy within the metal box, he could sneak up without being noticed and see for himself what they were doing inside. After all, was he not known to be the best tracker in his village, able to creep up on deer and javelina and move through the jungle without making a sound?
He turned around and started back toward the clearing and its unearthly inhabitants. Moving silently through thick jungle vines and undergrowth, Guatemotzi slipped up to the edge of the forest and then crept to a wall of the iron box to peer carefully through a window.
“Madre de Dios,” Guatemotzi whispered, unconsciously mimicking the black-robed priest who taught him Spanish. Los Oráculos had shed their orange skins and had taken the form of ordinary humans, both men and women. Perhaps they were like el coyote, known as the trickster among his people, and could shape-shift at will. If so, their magic was indeed strong.
Though he couldn’t hear their voices, Los Oráculos appeared happy, laughing and joking among themselves much as the people of his village did when the rains came and the crops grew green and thick and food was plentiful.
And they were eating from the same green pouches Los Americanos had given to Guatemotzi. Were they saving the trophies and body parts they had taken from the dead bodies to eat later, or had they already consumed the souls and courage of the dead Americanos?
As Guatemotzi crouched outside the window, clouds parted and a full moon appeared overhead, bathing the clearing in ghostly white light. One of the females inside, the one with long hair like his mother’s (only a red-brown color instead of black) turned to gaze out the glass, her eyes locking on Guatemotzi’s. As she opened her mouth and pointed to him, Guatemotzi realized he had been seen.
With hammering heart and a dry mouth, he turned and sprinted through the jungle, thin legs pumping as fast as he had ever run in his life.
Lauren’s exclamation of surprise stopped all conversation in the lab as she pointed at an empty window. “There, outside that window! I saw a face staring in at us, a boy! I know I didn’t imagine it!”
Mason ran to the window and peered out. All he could see in the moonlight was branches of nearby bushes shaking as if someone had run through them. It had to be the same boy he’d seen earlier in the day.
Who was he, Mason wondered, and how had he escaped the plague? He knew the answer to those questions could very well be just what they needed to defeat this damned bug and possibly prevent many more deaths in the future.
Finding him would have to be a priority once daylight arrived.
Chapter 11
Eduardo’s face looked pale behind his Plexiglas face mask in the light from a flashlight he carried and his voice sounded different to Lauren when he spoke to her as they walked toward the temple. There was an animation and excitement in it that was normally absent from the taciturn professor’s usual rather formal demeanor. She knew that in spite of the deaths that had resulted, this would be the crowning glory of Matos’s career. He would be forever known as the man who’d made possible the discovery of Emperor Montezuma’s tomb.
“This does not seem possible,” Matos said, looking down and shining the light where he placed his feet so that he wouldn’t stumble. “All of them dead, and their blood appears to have left their bodies entirely. I have never seen or heard of such a thing. Of course, I am not a medical doctor; however it would seem logical to have something in the newspapers or on television reporting a disease in which every drop of blood drains from the human body. I wonder if this has ever happened before. I will ask Dr. Williams what it is, and if he has ever encountered so many people dying like this.”
Lauren realized he was babbling on because he was still nervous about the cause of so many deaths and was, in spite of his excitement over the archaeological discoveries, terrified that he would somehow become infected. Matos might once have been an intrepid explorer, but he was certainly not a brave man anymore. Perhaps he’d spent too many years behind a desk in the ministry and had forgotten what it was like to be in the field where death and danger were never far away.
Lauren quickly passed her flashlight beam over a body with a black plastic covering. She wanted to cry and couldn’t, as if no more tears were possible after what she’d seen today.
“They are calling the disease hemorrhagic shock,” she said, answering his earlier question. “I have no idea what that means. I think it’s a general term and is a condition caused by many different illnesses. Dr. Williams says they still have no firm knowledge as to what killed Charlie and the students, though they have some suspicions . . . they haven’t given the disease any kind of name yet.”
She glanced at Matos and tried to put it in terms the archaeologist would understand. “It is reminiscent of Dr. Howard Carter’s team after opening Tutankhamen’s tomb in Egypt, when so many died from a long-dormant fungus.”
“Aspergillus,” Eduardo remembered, nodding his head. “Though these symptoms are very different. That disease took many weeks to develop and the victims took even longer to die. Here,” he hesitated as if overcome for a moment, “they became ill and died within a matter of a few days.”
He paused to collect himself, and then he continued, “My heart is heavy over the loss of my friend, Charles, for it was I who arranged his permit to dig in Tlateloco. How could I have known I was giving him a death sentence? This was an archaeologist’s dream, to find the burial place of Chief Montezuma. I felt I had no choice but to arrange things for him since it was his work leading to the discovery of the chronicles of Díaz in a Madrid cathedral that led him here. And now my dear friend is dead, because I begged the Ministry of Antiquities to grant him special permission to excavate. I have not truly wept in many years, but now my heart weeps for my professional colleague whose death is forever on my conscience.”
“You couldn’t have known,” Lauren replied woodenly. “How could anyone know this was going to happen?” She directed the beam of her flashlight to the tunnel opening. “Charlie’s lying in there. I asked Dr. Williams to cover his body so I wouldn’t have to look at him. They put him in some sort of plastic bag like the ones outside.”
She stepped around a tangle of vines to continue toward the shaft running beneath the temple. “In the morning, as soon as I’ve identified the others, I’m going back to Austin. I can’t stand to be here. There are too many memories of my association with Charlie and these students.”
“It must be a terrible thing,” Eduardo said, “to be asked to identify the bodies of so many friends. I do understand why you wish to leave.”
“There’s the tunnel,” she said, aiming her light at a dark square near the foot of the temple, still too unaccustomed to the sound of her Racal’s breathing apparatus to ignore it completely when she spoke.
“Montezuma’s remains are about a hundred feet beyond the opening in a walled chamber. There are mummified bodies of monkeys and snakes and other animals in the tomb with him. Along with some clay tablets covered with hieroglyphs and a few extremely well-preserved garments.”
“Be careful where you step,” she said, shinin
g her flashlight along the floor of the tunnel to reveal multiple small- to medium-sized stones lying half-buried in the sandy loam. “There appears to have been a minor quake at some time, causing the partial collapse of portions of the roof, especially near the entrance. It may explain why things are so well preserved despite this high humidity. The quake must have sealed the tunnel off completely, making it virtually airtight.”
“Charles and the students must have had to work very hard to excavate this tunnel,” Matos said, awe in his voice.
“Yes,” Lauren answered, “Charles was an excellent field man who knew how to get the most out of his students and the local laborers he hired.”
“As I said, due to the dry air of the tunnel and inner chamber, most of the artifacts show very little deterioration. . .”
Matos turned to glance at her. “Yes, but now that the tomb has been opened, the humidity and dampness will quickly work to ruin the specimens in this tomb. We either have to reseal the entrance with plastic or work very quickly to recover the artifacts and put them in plastic bags or otherwise protect them from the environment.”
She wondered how they could be talking about artifacts when Charlie and thirty-one students were dead all around her. Was she simply blocking it out or just using the talk of mundane detail of relic recovery to take her mind off the tragedy that had occurred?
She’d loved Charlie in ways few people would understand; he had been a father figure and a listening ear when the world seemed to be caving in around her in graduate school. She experienced a broken relationship of six years, the death of her father unexpectedly during her second semester of the doctoral program, and an overriding depression afterward lasting almost a year. Tears filled her eyes again, as she remembered Charlie.
“I just hope we are able to contain whatever this plague is,” Lauren said. “It would be a catastrophe beyond comprehension if whatever killed Charlie and the others were to escape and be unleashed on civilization.”
“The army has begun setting up perimeters around the site as Dr. Williams requested,” Eduardo said. “No one will be allowed in or out. Dr. Cardenez is also fearful of a widespread epidemic so close to Mexico City. The death toll could be staggering, but I simply cannot allow a discovery such as this to be destroyed as Dr. Williams believes it must be.”
He paused and stared at her. “Perhaps, Dr. Sullivan, you could be of help to me in reasoning with Dr. Williams.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, he has been talking of using a fuel bomb to completely burn this entire area in case they cannot find the cause of this terrible plague, or in the event that the cause is found but has no cure. You need to help me explain to him that the burial place of Montezuma is too important to the history of Mexico to be destroyed without first cataloguing all of the wonderful treasures here.”
He spread his arms out wide. “There must be some way to decontaminate this area. I know virtually nothing about diseases; however I will not permit something so important to be burned. Many secrets of the Aztec Empire may lie buried underneath this temple, so many unsolved riddles no one has ever been able to decipher. My government will never allow this place to be firebombed without absolute proof there is no other choice.” He hesitated, fixing on her with his eyes. “Will you help me?”
Lauren led the way to the tunnel opening and bent down to go inside, thinking about her answer. The wants and needs of science versus the potential deaths of hundreds or many thousands of innocent people was no contest.
“The decision may not be up to your government, Eduardo,” she said. “If enough people start dying like this, every country in the Western Hemisphere will demand that something is done to halt its spread.”
“It is unthinkable how such a disaster could occur with a simple archaeological discovery . . .”
The fan in Lauren’s breathing apparatus seemed louder in the tunnel as they followed the beam of her flashlight. “From what I have seen today, this is no simple archaeological find,” she said in a voiced dulled by sorrow. “Charlie may have found an explanation for the Aztecs’ sudden decline after Cortés looted their treasuries and in the process lost his life to the same fate as an entire civilization. Dr. Williams said he and several of the other doctors believe this is something that has been buried here for centuries, like what Carter unearthed in Egypt. Finding the burial place of Montezuma may not be the blessing it first seemed to be when Charlie discovered it.”
“How can you overlook the importance of it, Lauren? It is perhaps the most significant archaeological find in the history of Mexico, a missing piece to the Aztec puzzle and the collapse of their empire. My government will not allow its destruction, I can assure you.”
If enough people start dying in Mexico City they might, she thought, but kept her opinion to herself. She’d heard and seen enough of death in the past twenty-four hours to want to avoid discussing it whenever she could.
Although she was tired she knew she could never sleep . . . not here, not now, not until she left this dreadful place. Even though she found she liked Dr. Williams and other members of his team personally, this place would forever be synonymous with the deaths of her friends and mentor.
“Remember what Dr. Williams said about these suits, Eduardo,” she advised when she saw Matos stumbling along the tunnel, “to be very careful not to rip them or remove any part of it for any reason.”
Her flashlight beam fell on Dr. Adams’s body, the bag he was in. “This is where we found Charlie,” she said, with bottomless despair clotting her voice.
She stepped around the body bag and continued along the tunnel, resisting an overwhelming urge to break down and cry again. For some reason, now she thought about the terrible contradiction here. The excitement in Charlie’s voice when he came back from his first expedition to these ruins, and how sure he was this was Montezuma’s lost burial chamber described in letters he found last fall in Madrid. He had told her then that every sign, every marking on the temple pointed to the correctness of his assumption.
Then the full-scale expedition this summer with the big foundation grants to prove his theory, the discovery of this tunnel and Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s skeletal remains with his handwritten journal and its descriptions of what had happened to Montezuma and the Aztecs at Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital a few miles away.
The journal proved Charlie’s assumption, he told her breathlessly when a cell call finally made it through the Mexican phone company’s maze one night as he labored with a hurried translation, that they would be opening the inner chamber the following morning.
It was the last time Lauren would hear his voice until he called to describe the horrors of what was happening here, what had happened here, what was happening to him. Even Díaz’s journal, which he had been so happy to find, had been left lying in his lap within the body bag. Mason feared it was too contaminated to allow out until they’d discovered the cause of the deaths.
Lauren entered the inner chamber and cast her light upon the corpse of Montezuma. Eduardo’s flashlight wandered from place to place, from relic to relic, until he halted it on the mummified remains lying atop the sepulcher.
“The Emperor, as Hernán Cortés described him,” Eduardo said quietly, almost reverently. “Chief Montezuma, discovered at long last. Charles has been vindicated for his belief in this temple as Montezuma’s tomb. So many at the ministry doubted him, calling him a fool, saying Tlateloco could not possibly be the right place for burial of a mighty king . . . there can be no doubt now. The animals, the robes, the tablets, are proof of Montezuma’s identity. There, on this clay tablet near his feet, is the royal Aztec symbol used during Montezuma’s reign.”
Eduardo moved his flashlight beam to a piece of flattened clay covered with etchings. “This is priceless, a discovery beyond measure.” He inched forward, approaching the sepulcher, squatting down to read pictographs on the tablet.
Lauren took a deep breath, wondering if Charlie truly felt vindication now or if
it mattered at all. Knowing him as she did, he would have placed a much higher value on the lives of his students and coworkers. No discovery on earth would have been worth the price paid in human lives to Charles Adams.
“What is this?” Eduardo asked, reaching into an urn where, in the illumination of moving light from his flashlight, small green stones glittered on some sort of object fashioned from a piece of bone.
Remembering Charlie, at the moment Lauren truly did not care what it was.
“Look!” Eduardo exclaimed, carefully withdrawing a long flint knife with a jewel-studded bone handle. “A sacrificial dagger, the sacrificial dagger of Montezuma.”
He held it before him, examining it closely, and the sparkle of gold filigree encircling bright green emeralds inlaid in a piece of bone reflected off his faceplate. “What a treasure. Just think, Lauren, this very knife was probably used to cut the beating hearts out of Montezuma’s enemies so they could be eaten by the high priests to gain their courage and strength. This find alone will occupy archaeological scholars for years to come.”
He was turning to Lauren, extending the knife to her, when suddenly his foot slipped off the side of a rock imbedded in the dirt floor of the chamber.
As he started to fall he dropped his flashlight to protect the precious relic he took from the urn.
She heard a cracking sound, then a muffled shriek before she could aim her beam of light downward.
“My mask!” he cried. “The knife has broken my face mask!”
“Eduardo!” Lauren screamed, forgetting that her scream was being broadcast through every headset worn by the Wildfire Team.
Lauren quickly ripped a spare piece of duct tape off the hip of her Racal where all the team members carried them for just such an emergency. Moving rapidly she slapped it over the gaping crack in Matos’s faceplate.
Trying to calm him down and stop his hysterical moaning, she led him out of the chamber and down the tunnel toward the mobile lab where all of the other team members were already gathered, having heard the commotion over the radios.
The Anthrax Protocol Page 10
