Ruins

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “I read that the old tribes would take prisoners to slaughter in front of the gods, cutting out their enemies’ hearts rather than killing their own people.” He turned to look up at the central Pyramid of Kukulkan looming in the center of the plaza.

  “Their hearts weren’t cut out, Mulder. These people were shot.”

  Mulder shrugged. “Tossing victims into the sacred cenote was another perfectly legitimate way to appease the gods. If the Indians paralyzed the archaeology team before hurling them in, the sacrifices would still have been living and breathing—appropriate offerings.”

  Scully stood up, feeling her knees ache. She wiped her hands on her already stained slacks. “Mulder, remember that these people were shot with guns, not attacked with primitive obsidian knives. It doesn’t seem their style.”

  “Maybe they’re modernizing their religion.”

  Mulder actually took out his pistol this time and held it as he continued to scan the jungle warily. “This is their backyard, Scully, and there’s a lot of them. Why do I feel very much like another convenient sacrifice…say, like a turkey feels around Thanksgiving time?”

  Scully moved next to him, closer than she needed to. They looked out at the wilderness, the only human beings in sight. Even with Mulder next to her, she felt very, very alone.

  25

  Xitaclan ruins

  Tuesday, 11:17 P.M.

  Full darkness had fallen, leaving them in the company of only the late-rising moon and their laughably small campfire. The looming darkness of the surrounding jungle threatened to swallow them up. Mulder felt very small and very vulnerable in the vastness of the wilderness.

  Staring into the fire, Scully said, “Remember when I told you that Mexico sounded better than an Arctic research station or a chicken-processing plant in Arkansas?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I’ve changed my mind.”

  In light of the unspoken threat from the Maya sacrificial cult, or treacherous Aguilar, or whoever else was responsible for the numerous murders, the two agents had decided to take turns at watch throughout the night. But neither Mulder nor Scully felt the least bit interested in sleep.

  Mulder sat on the flagstones watching the campfire, looking up at the moon, and listening to the songs of jungle insects. The smoke from damp, moss-covered wood curled around his nose, thick and pungent, a relief after the underlying stench of decay that arose from the corpses. He cradled his 9-mm pistol in his lap, fully attentive, alert.

  Though night had fallen hours before, Scully had crawled out of her tent to sit up beside him. “We could heat some water,” she suggested, “have coffee or tea. Seems appropriate for a night around the campfire.”

  Mulder turned to smile at her. “Did we bring any hot cocoa mix, the kind with the little marshmallows?”

  “I think Aguilar took that with him.”

  Mulder stared out into the surrounding trees, seeing the silver dapple of moonlight. The Indians had not returned, nor—disturbingly—had Aguilar. Mulder wasn’t sure if that was a good thing, or if he wanted the others to come back and lead him and Scully back to civilization.

  Meanwhile, their only companions in the camp were the lumpy forms of the five corpses spread out not far from the tents, blanketed by a stained tarp Mulder had recovered from the team’s supply cache. Mulder kept glancing over at the shapes, unable to dispel images of the bloated, waterlogged forms of the four archaeology team members and the bony body of Vladimir Rubicon, whose open blue eyes had looked surprised even in death.

  He looked over at Scully. They were both grimy and dirt-streaked—they hadn’t showered for days. Their hair hung in unkempt tangles from the sweat and humidity. He was glad to be there with her, rather than anyone else in the world.

  “Scully,” he said, his voice quiet and serious, “with the…unorthodox explanations I often find when studying the evidence, I know you’re always skeptical—but every time you’re at least fair to me. You respect my opinion, even when you don’t agree with it.” He looked at his hands. “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you, but I really appreciate that.”

  She looked at him and smiled. “You’ve told me, Mulder. Maybe not in words…but you’ve told me.”

  He swallowed, then brought up the subject he had been avoiding. “I know you’re probably not going to believe this either, blaming it on a trick of the moonlight or my own grogginess from lack of sleep—but two nights ago I heard noises out in the jungle. I poked my head out to investigate, and I saw something moving, a large creature that wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before. Well, that’s not completely true…I’ve seen it many times before but not in real life.”

  “Mulder, what are you talking about?” she said.

  Out in the jungle they heard other sounds, rustling noises, something large coming closer. Mulder perked up his ears and felt his blood run cold.

  “I think I saw…one of those feathered serpents. Just like that statue.” He indicated the coiled snake engraved in the limestone column of the stela in the plaza. “It was larger than a crocodile, and it moved with such grace. Ah, Scully, you should have seen it. It reminded me of a dragon.”

  “Mulder, that feathered serpent is a mythological creature,” she said, automatically falling back into her role as skeptic. “What you saw must have been inspired by looking at Maya carvings for days and all the research you’ve been doing into pre-Colombian legends. You probably spotted a cayman—those are large reptiles found in these jungles. When you saw it move, your imagination could have added other details you wanted to see.”

  “That’s possible, Scully,” he admitted, shifting the pistol in his lap from one hand to the other. He heard more branches cracking, additional movement in the jungle, creeping closer to them.

  He spoke more rapidly. “On the other hand, look at the sheer number of feathered serpent images throughout the Maya artifacts, at all different sites…here at Xitaclan in particular. It’s such an odd thing. A snake with feathers? What could have inspired such a myth if the Indians of the Yucatán hadn’t seen such a creature with their own eyes? It could even be an explanation for the prevalent myths worldwide of dragons and reptilian worms.”

  His words picked up speed as he followed his imagination. “Does it seem likely to you that dozens of cultures around the world would create an image so precisely similar? Think of the drawings you’ve seen of Chinese dragons. They weren’t called feathered serpents, but they had the same configuration. Long feathery scales and a sinuous body.”

  Out in the jungle the crashing, lumbering sounds became louder and louder. Some creature unmistakably was making its way toward Xitaclan as if drawn to a magnet. As the noise grew, it sounded as if many large creatures were converging on the plaza itself. Mulder raised his pistol.

  “Listen to that, Scully. I hope we don’t get a chance to meet one of my imaginary feathered serpents face-to-face,” he said.

  The sounds continued to increase. Trees bent, cracked, and fell over; ferns swayed. Scully cocked her ear and turned her head toward Mulder. They huddled around the campfire, both of them with their weapons in hand, ready to make a last stand, if necessary.

  But Scully suddenly became more curious than frightened. “Wait—Mulder, that’s a mechanical noise,” she said.

  As soon as she spoke, Mulder realized that the growling, grinding sound he heard was indeed an engine noise, the crunching of tires, and the humming of generators.

  Then, with a blinding roar, stars exploded in the sky, brilliant white glares like aerial combat. Fireworks shot into the air and burst like a white chrysanthemum.

  “Those are phosphorous flares,” Mulder said. “Military issue.”

  Under the glare of the scalding white light, two lumbering all-terrain vehicles smashed through the fallen underbrush and rolled up onto the flagstones of the Xitaclan plaza. Behind the ATVs, dark figures wearing camouflage outfits scrambled out of the jungle. They crept low, holding their rifles, snapping abbrevia
ted instructions to each other as they rushed into position like army ants swarming to a new nest.

  “What’s going on here?” Scully said, looking both alarmed and perplexed at her partner.

  “I guess it’s not a good idea for us to run for it.”

  Scully instantly assessed the weaponry, the soldiers, the vehicles. The hulking all-terrain vehicles rolled to a stop, crunching the weathered flagstones beneath them, smashing upthrust tree roots. The camouflaged commandos ran about, intent on their mission—and Mulder realized with surprise that the terse phrases they snapped back and forth at each other were in English, not Spanish.

  On first sight he had imagined a Central American guerrilla army, but though he saw no markings on their uniforms or on their vehicles, he knew he had found a different answer.

  “Those are Americans,” he said. “U.S. military. Some sort of commando operation.”

  Mulder and Scully sat frozen next to their little campfire, hands raised, pistols in nonaggressive positions. The commando squad ran up and surrounded the two, pointing rifles at them.

  “I knew I should have paid that parking ticket,” Mulder muttered.

  While two of the soldiers aimed rifle barrels directly at their chests, another man crept forward and cautiously removed Mulder and Scully’s weapons, holding them at arm’s length, as if the small 9-mm pistols were poisonous spiders.

  The phosphorous flares had gradually faded out. Several of the camouflaged commandos rigged up brilliant arc lights, flooding the plaza with a harsh glare.

  A slender, dark-skinned man marched up to Mulder and Scully, clearly in command of the operation. He had high cheekbones, an aquiline nose, generous lips, and a pointed chin. His eyes were narrow and as dark as obsidian. On his shoulders he wore the maple-leaf-cluster insignia of a major.

  “Habla Español?” the major demanded. “Que pasa?”

  Scully leaned forward. “We speak English,” she said. “We are Americans, special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  The commandos stopped and looked at each other. The major stood rigid. “What are you doing here?” he said. “On foreign soil?”

  “We could ask you the same question,” Mulder said.

  “My partner and I are here on a case involving missing U.S. citizens.” Scully reached into her pocket. The soldiers tensed, but she moved slowly enough. “I’m going for my ID,” she said and carefully withdrew her badge and photo identification card.

  Mulder looked at her, amazed that even here in the jungle she still kept her ID in her shirt pocket.

  “We are legal attachés, LEGATS, to the U.S. Consulate,” she said. “Our assignment here in Quintana Roo is to search for a missing archaeological team.”

  “Major Jakes, over here!” shouted two soldiers who had been exploring the open plaza area. They held back the tarp that had been covering the five bodies beside the feathered serpent stela. “Casualties, sir.” The major turned to look, saw the corpses.

  Mulder shrugged. “Well, actually we’ve already found most of the missing team,” he said.

  Major Jakes gazed around the ruins and the plaza. Seeing no one other than the two agents, he raised his voice to issue orders to his soldiers. “Continue securing the site. This isn’t what we expected to find, but we still have our orders. We must complete the mission, destroy this command outpost, and be gone before morning.”

  “While you’re at it, do you suppose you could give us a lift out of here?” Mulder said. “If you have room in the back seat of one of those ATVs, I mean?”

  “If the parameters of the mission allow it,” Jakes said, his voice entirely deadpan. He bent over to study Scully’s ID. “My men are not here in any official capacity, and we are under orders to respond with full denial.”

  “We’ve heard that before,” Mulder said.

  “We can operate under those conditions,” Scully answered more firmly, “if that is the requirement for getting us out of here. What is your mission, Major?”

  “To destroy this military site,” he said matter-of-factly. “Eliminate the source of a strange encrypted transmission.”

  “This is a military site?” Mulder said in astonishment. He spread his hands to indicate the crumbling pyramid, the weathered stelae, the fallen temples. “These are ancient Maya ruins, abandoned for a thousand years. You can see that with your own eyes. My partner and I have been here searching for days, and we haven’t found the slightest evidence of high technology or stored weapons. This place has no military significance whatsoever.”

  Then, as if specifically to contradict him, a rain of automatic-weapon fire showered from the shadows of the jungle, pelting the commando team.

  26

  Xitaclan ruins

  Wednesday, 12:26 A.M.

  As the sharp, high-pitched shots rang out with a sound like a chainsaw, Scully ducked reflexively.

  Mulder tackled her, knocking her down beside the meager shelter of their low tents. Her face pressed against the cold flagstones, Scully could see winking flashes of fire as hidden snipers continued the attack.

  Major Jakes and his commando squad exploded into motion, their own response as fast as a swarm of angry wasps. “Get to cover, everyone!” Jakes shouted. “Fire at will!”

  “Of course, I could be wrong about this place having no military significance,” Mulder said, breathing hard, close to Scully’s ear. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she said, panting. “Thanks, Mulder.”

  Though Scully could not determine where the shots came from, the American commandos responded with an impressive display of firepower, the quantity of bullets sufficient to make up for their lack of a precise target.

  One of the soldiers next to her spun around as if from an invisible force, and he sprawled on the broken flagstones. The young first lieutenant gasped and choked as bright arterial blood spilled from both the entry and exit wound in his rib cage. Scully could see at a glance that the young man had received a mortal injury.

  Return gunfire rang out from the jungle snipers. A bright puff of splintered stone blossomed on the limestone stela nearest their tent, making a gouge across the feathered serpent carving still smeared with rusty brown splotches from the previous day’s blood sacrifice.

  The soldiers sprinted back toward the two armored all-terrain vehicles. One man ducked behind the limestone stela, another flattened himself behind the low, tarpaulin-covered corpses on the flagstones.

  “Who’s firing at us?” Scully demanded when she had caught her breath.

  The American commando squad continued blasting the trees, but they had only a slim hope of actually striking one of the shadowy enemies. Someone unseen screamed in pain, then renewed gunfire drowned out all other sounds. A lucky shot from the jungle shattered one of the portable arc lights the commandos had erected.

  A deep voice bellowed out of the jungle, using no loudspeaker, but with enough strength to penetrate the chaos. His crisp Mexican accent sliced through the night. “American invaders!” the man shouted. “You are illegally in the sovereign state of Quintana Roo. Your defiance of our laws and our borders is against all international treaties.”

  As they both remained low to the ground, trying to remain minimal targets, Scully looked over at Mulder. She recognized the voice. “That’s the police chief, Carlos Barreio!” Bullets sang low over their heads. “But why is the chief of state police firing at us in the middle of the night? In the middle of the jungle? This isn’t a law-enforcement raid.”

  Mulder raised his eyebrows. “It seems Chief Barreio has gone out for some extracurricular activities.”

  One of Major Jakes’s soldiers launched another garish phosphorous flare into the sky, where it burned white-hot, splashing a glare down upon the field that caused more confusion than illumination.

  “Identify yourself!” Major Jakes shouted, crouching beside Mulder and Scully in the illusionary shelter of the tent. “We have superior firepower.”

  More shots spat fro
m the trees, tearing holes through the fabric of the tent. Jakes ducked sideways, collapsing on top of Mulder and Scully. A furrow of blood appeared at his shoulder—merely a flesh wound, nothing serious. Major Jakes didn’t even seem to notice.

  “This is an act of war,” Barreio shouted back. “You invaders have brought contraband arms into our land.” The gunfire dwindled as the guerrillas’ leader spoke, with only a few sharp sounds peppering a flare-lit night. “We have no choice but to protect our culture. We cannot allow military intruders from the United States to walk off with our national treasures.”

  “But we’re not here to steal artifacts,” Major Jakes muttered to himself, shaking his head. “We’re just here to blow up the pyramid.”

  Mulder rose to an elbow and looked over at the major. “Well then, if it’s all just one big misunderstanding, maybe we can shake hands with him and talk about this?”

  Major Jakes didn’t appear to hear. “It all makes sense now,” he said. “These are freedom fighters, members of the violent revolutionary front in the Yucatán—Liberación Quintana Roo. They want to make their own little country and secede from the Mexican nation, regardless of what the rest of the Yucatán population wants. They don’t have many weapons, nor do they have any moral compunctions.”

  Mulder looked at him coldly. “Unlike you and your men.”

  Major Jakes returned the gaze, his expression blank, completely without anger. “Correct, Agent Mulder.”

  “Throw down your weapons and surrender!” Barreio continued to bellow. “You will be arrested, charged as illegal aliens, and punished accordingly…unless your country chooses to extradite you.”

  Major Jakes’s nostrils flared. Since this was not an official mission, Scully knew the government would deny its existence and write off the commando squad. Jakes and his men would be abandoned to whatever kangaroo court or dim torture chambers the guerrilla group chose.