The Aztec Code

by Stephen Cole

  And suddenly the harsh rattle of gunfire added to the deafening din. The ground seemed to explode around Jonah’s feet as bullets strafed the concrete, kicking up clouds of dust and shrapnel. Terrified, he ran still faster, pushing himself to the limit. He and Motti practically bounced off the side of the lorry as they reached Con and its cover at last.

  ‘What the hell are they playing at?’ Jonah shouted.

  ‘We have to get out of here!’ Con shouted, her usual cool composure cracked wide open.

  ‘Working on it.’ Motti was just reaching for the door of the cab when the whole lorry shuddered under the impact of a barrage of bullets. Two of its tyres blew out and the windscreen shattered.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere in this thing,’ shouted Jonah.

  Then the chopper circled round to attack them again.

  ‘Get under!’ Motti shouted, and the three of them ducked and rolled underneath the truck. More bullets raked the ground around them. Another tyre burst, and the underside of the lorry lurched down, grazing the back of Jonah’s head. For a terrifying moment he thought they were going to be crushed beneath tons of metal.

  Then the firing stopped, and the roaring drone of the helicopter picked up in pitch. The light began to lose some of its neon brightness as it shifted away.

  ‘They are leaving,’ Con breathed. In the fading light, Jonah could see the tears streaking her face. He reached for her hand and she clutched hold of it tight. ‘I felt sure we were dead.’

  Motti cautiously dragged himself from beneath the ruined truck. ‘Here’s why we’re not.’

  Jonah wriggled out too and saw that the lorry’s rear doors had swung open during the onslaught to reveal the bare interior. Shakily he helped Con stand up. ‘All they’re after is the cargo.’

  ‘And now they’ve gone after Tye and Patch to get it.’ Motti whumped his palm against the side of the lorry. ‘While we’re stuck here.’

  ‘I told you this was a set-up,’ Con shouted. ‘Tye must have told them –’

  ‘No.’ Motti shook his head. ‘She couldn’t have. Coldhardt was monitoring all signals in and out of the base. Anyway, Tye didn’t come up with the hijack plan, I did. I never told her where this place was, and she never asked.’

  ‘When the lorry didn’t show, they must have traced the route it took in reverse. Spotted us miles away!’ Jonah pulled his mobile from his pocket, speed-dialled Tye’s number. ‘We’ve got to warn them to get the hell out of that truck, fast!’

  Tye was speeding around the industrial park, gritting her teeth against the pain in her side. Her first thought had been to try and reach Gallup along the Interstate before Sixth Sun could put whatever plan they had into operation – but it was a good six miles away and she didn’t like their chances. Instead, she was looking out for some place they could park the truck, get it under cover and out of sight, throwing Sixth Sun off the scent. If they could only find a garage or something, and if Patch could get them inside and safe …

  Her phone trilled into life, made her jump. Patch grabbed it and stabbed the OK button. ‘Jonah? Is everything – you what? Bleedin’ Nora!’

  ‘What’s happening?’ Tye demanded.

  ‘Chopper’s coming after us,’ Patch reported, pale-faced. ‘Sounds like they’ll shoot us full of holes the second they see us!’ He spoke into the phone again. ‘All right, we’ll clear out. Cheers, Jonah.’ Patch hung up. ‘Tye, we gotta jump.’

  ‘No way.’ She stepped on the accelerator and aimed the truck at the perimeter gates of some metalwork company.

  ‘But they’re gonna kill us! If you don’t kill us first –’

  The truck slammed straight through the gates, the impact rocking the cab, almost jarring Tye’s hands from the wheel. The cut burned red hot in her side. Wincing, she checked the rearview – just as the chopper swooped into sight from behind a building. She swore as its lights flooded on, dazzling her.

  ‘We gotta get out of here!’ Patch pulled at her arm. ‘Please, Tye!’

  Tye bit her lip, swinging the truck round a corner. She knew it was no good hiding the truck now they’d been spotted. But if they could only hide the cargo, make out it had been unloaded back in the depot somewhere…

  Spinning the wheel round sharply, she sent the truck careening through a flowerbed, bringing it to a sudden halt. But as the growl of the engine died, the noise of the chopper soon rose to replace it. Tye threw open the door. ‘We’ve got to hide the cases.’

  ‘We’ve got to hide full stop!’ Patch hissed back. ‘Come on, I’ll do the locks on this warehouse, we can sneak inside –’

  ‘Get on with it!’ Tye ran to the back of the truck and opened the doors. She could hear the thrum of the helicopter’s rotors building, like angry bees swarming ever closer. She clambered inside the back, grabbed hold of one of the cases and started dragging it to the doors.

  Too late. She saw the bright white light flooding down outside, the flowers and undergrowth whipping about in the wind from the screaming rotors. The judder of automatic gunfire tore through the night, the noise reverberating through her head.

  ‘Patch!’ she shrieked.

  But a second later he scrambled into the truck to join her, one eye clutched in his hand, the other wide and terrified. ‘I couldn’t crack the door in time,’ he shouted. He reached out and pulled the doors shut, then ran across and hugged her tight. She clung on to him. What else could she do? They both knew there was nowhere to hide. Not now.

  The thrum of the rotors pitched down in intensity. The chopper had landed. Tye heard footfalls outside as people surrounded the truck, and the clatter and clicks of safeties disengaged.

  ‘This is it,’ Patch whispered in Tye’s ear. ‘We’re dead meat.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jonah stared out at the New Mexico sunset, cold and alone. Over the mountains, the deepening red was the same colour as the stolen lorry.

  He remembered when he, Con and Motti had found it, abandoned, all doors flung wide open as if in despair, bulletholes in the nearby walls. The image had haunted him on the long flight back – his first trip flying solo.

  He could’ve wished for happier circumstances.

  At least you know Tye and Patch aren’t dead, he told himself. The monitoring satellite had shown that much – the helicopter with its mysterious cargo had flown straight to the Black House in Colorado, and his friends along with it. There had been cars and trucks coming and going all day, and it was impossible to know if Tye and Patch were still there or if they’d been removed to another location.

  Jonah imagined Tye would have been reunited with Ramez by now. And he’d want to keep Tye happy, so surely he’d insist on nothing happening to Patch. But the thought of them, surrounded by so many enemies, being marched off to face God knew what …

  And what did Coldhardt have to say on the subject? Not much below one hundred and twenty decibels. Jonah had never seen him lose it so noisily. He seemed more disappointed that his ‘children’ had let him down than he was upset to hear of Tye and Patch, and had insisted that Jonah redouble his efforts to crack the meaning of the stubborn symbols.

  Then he’d gone off by himself.

  Jonah reckoned he knew where.

  With a sudden, steely resolution, he made his way to the wine cellar and marched down the steps. The curtain was pulled away from the vault door, which stood wide open. It was bright inside. Coldhardt stood before the altar like some dark, silver-haired angel.

  ‘Is there news, Jonah?’ he murmured, without turning round.

  ‘No. Only questions. And I want real answers.’ ‘The truth can be disturbing.’

  He glowered at the old man’s back. ‘Just why is finding this temple so important to you?’

  Coldhardt was silent, his fingers caressing the stone altar. Then, after a slow, weary sigh, softly he began to speak. ‘If we can only locate it ahead of Sixth Sun, I might stand a chance.’

  ‘A chance of trading the info for Patch and Tye’s lives?�
�� No answer. ‘Nah, I didn’t think that was on your mind. So what is? And what’s with the altar? It’s not Aztec like everything else, doesn’t even look like it’s worth much.’

  ‘What are any of us worth?’ Coldhardt whispered. ‘When I was a younger man I thought of nothing but money. I was prepared to sell everything I possessed, thinking I could acquire so much more.’ He leaned against the altar. ‘A policy that in my later years, as the sands of time run out … I have come to regret.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus. I get it now.’ Jonah sucked in an icy breath. ‘This isn’t a treasure vault at all, is it? It’s a tomb. It’s going to be your tomb, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re all dying, Jonah, all of us decaying a little more each day. And what waits for us on the other side?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jonah. ‘But I think you have a pretty good idea of what’s waiting for you. And you don’t like it.’ He remembered the little statue on Coldhardt’s desk, the man struggling with the demon, and shuddered.

  ‘As a young man, the thought of what would happen to me after death never bothered me.’ Coldhardt turned and gave his wintry smile. ‘I was more than willing to sell my soul.’

  Jonah felt a shiver down his spine. ‘Is that a metaphor … or for real?’

  Coldhardt remained impassive.

  ‘Who d’you sell yours to?’

  A tight smile. ‘The highest bidder.’

  Figures, thought Jonah. ‘And now you’re trying to get out of it?’

  Again, silence.

  ‘So that’s why you’ve been so busy looking for the secret of eternal life. And why you’re banking everything on finding this temple, the Temple of Life from Death. It’s not the treasure you want – it’s that promise.’

  Coldhardt was staring into space. ‘Eternal life doesn’t seem to be an option. And although deep and deathlike trances can extend the body’s lifespan dramatically, it isn’t much of an existence.’

  Jonah stared wonderingly at Coldhardt. ‘So unless this temple can offer you another way out, you’ll end up hiding your body away in this deep freeze, hoping it’ll keep out whatever comes digging for you –’

  Coldhardt leaned forward suddenly – ‘Shut up,’ he hissed, and for a split-second Jonah caught a glimmer of something ancient and inhuman in the old man’s hard blue eyes. Then the moment passed, and Coldhardt leaned back heavily against the altar, wiping a hand across his brow. ‘You have no conception of the fate that awaits me.’

  ‘I know what’s waiting for Patch and Tye,’ said Jonah shakily. ‘Tye said Ramez will be sacrificed soon – which means Sixth Sun are almost ready to move. If they do know the location of that temple, and now they’ve got whatever that lorry was transporting –’

  Coldhardt pushed himself up from the altar. ‘We must find out the temple’s location for ourselves.’

  ‘But how? We’re still no closer to deciphering those symbols!’

  ‘So work harder,’ he snapped. ‘If we reach the temple ahead of Traynor we can deal with him, bargain for the safe return of Tye and Patch.’

  ‘What if he’s already had them killed?’

  ‘I will not be questioned, Jonah,’ Coldhardt thundered. ‘This is our path of action. I have made my decision.’

  Jonah turned and walked away. In that case, he thought, so have I.

  *

  Tye had been waiting in the room for what felt like for ever. The majestic view from the huge windows was no kind of comfort, showing as it did – with sick irony – the other side of the Sangre de Cristos mountains she’d stared out over from Santa Fe. She wondered vaguely if, given that Sixth Sun were a pagan outfit, there was some kind of symbolic reason for their choosing locations overlooking a mountain range named for Christ’s blood.

  She had no idea where Patch or Ramez were; all she knew was that she was somewhere in Colorado Springs. She guessed that she was being held to convince Ramez to play along, while Patch was being held to ensure that Tye didn’t try to escape again. Otherwise, Traynor’s thugs could have killed them both in the back of that lorry. Instead they’d had their phones snatched, been bundled off into the helicopter along with the cargo, and flown straight to some big industrial plant in Colorado – the Black House. She and Patch had been separated, and driven thirty minutes into the hills … a striking old mansion set all alone in rugged countryside, shaped like a black arrowhead pointing up to the stars.

  Presumably Traynor and Kabacra were nearby – and maybe the woman from the penthouse too, that ‘colleague’ Traynor had been so edgy about.

  Suddenly the door opened and a tall, stocky middle-aged man entered. He was dressed in black and wore a jade amulet around his neck. A band of dull yellow make-up was daubed across his face from ear to ear, framing his mouth.

  Tye glared at him. ‘Nice look. Can I help you?’

  ‘The Council of Thirteen Heavens has summoned you,’ the man said, quietly. He sounded more like a librarian than hired muscle. ‘Come with me. No funny business.’

  ‘I’m not feeling very funny,’ Tye assured him. With nerves flickering grimly through her stomach, she followed the strange-looking man out of the room. Any thoughts of trying to take him were abandoned when she saw a second man waiting outside the room, younger and fitter-looking than the first. He was wearing make-up too, though the stripe across his face was a livid red. As if to press home his advantage in the flamboyance stakes, he wore big, gold ceremonial earrings and a kind of headband festooned with turquoise sequins.

  ‘You guys could have told me the party was fancy dress.’ It may have been a lame joke, but it was still defiance, and to Tye that was the important thing. She tried to put some of Motti’s swagger into her step. She was going along with these bastards because she had no choice, but she wasn’t about to act all cowed and helpless. Not now, not ever.

  They led her downstairs and through the hallway to a set of double doors. Here they paused. The doors were dark, made of some kind of smoked glass that absorbed all light.

  ‘O great black mirror, we seek to enter the highest heavens,’ yellow-mouth announced. ‘We seek to enter the homes of storms and winds, of colours and remote gods.’

  Then the other man started spouting off. ‘We are only paintings in your book of pictures,’ he intoned. ‘Destroyer of eagles and jaguars, we ask that you let us enter.’

  The doors swung open. Yellow-mouth grabbed Tye by the back of the neck and marched her through the double doors.

  Tye almost gasped as she was thrust suddenly into a large, cold, circular space. If the weapons plant was Traynor’s Black House, his space to think and plan, then this place must be where he went for all-out worship of his own cult. It was done out like some strange, two-storey temple – and since there were no windows she guessed it must form the centre of the house. Weird effigies lined the sandstone walls high above their heads, fantastical creatures that resembled crocodiles or birds of prey or big cats, dramatically lit with spotlights above and below. Images of the sun and six smaller circles that might have been planets were carved above and below them. A muted lightshow was playing on the upper reaches of this bizarre space; the ceiling slipped between light and shadow, colours bled, then clotted, then dissolved and turned black or white in turn. It was soothing and unsettling all at once.

  At ground level, a table shaped like a giant horseshoe dominated the space. On the wall above it, in pride of place behind the table, an elegant but dangerous-looking rapier had been mounted. The hilt was swathed with coils of swept steel to protect the owner’s hand, and the blade was pitted from frequent use.

  ‘Guess you’ve got to be Cortes’s sword,’ she murmured. ‘Finally found you. Way, way too late.’

  All but four of the thirteen chairs ranged around the table were taken – the two at both ends of the horseshoe sat empty. Tye’s escorts drifted away to stand either side of the doors; she supposed they must usually occupy two of the seats, but where were the others?

  Whatever, it didn’t take Einst
ein to work out that they must make up the Council of Thirteen Heavens.

  The members present varied in age from maybe mid-thirties through to sixty. They were all done up the same, in headdresses and make-up, and all except one was wearing the distinctive amulet – a blond-haired guy with staring green eyes and a swollen nose. Perhaps he wasn’t the necklace-wearing kind.

  Then, with a shock, Tye recognised Traynor at the centre of the table, in a kind of crude crown. She noted that the only woman was sat to his right – the woman she’d glimpsed on the balcony back in Santa Fe. She was tall and thin, her black bob emphasising her sallow skin, her dark eyes made up black, and a streak of gold make-up accentuating her narrow lips.

  ‘Nice ’ere, innit.’

  The familiar voice echoed all around the temple. Tye turned to find Patch stumbling forwards from out of the shadows. He looked pale, the rigid way he was holding himself betraying his fear. ‘Patch, are you all right?’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ve been better.’

  Tye took both his hands in hers and whispered, ‘Can’t you break us out of here?’

  ‘Got no tools, have I?’ he reminded her. ‘Lost ’em when they snatched us.’

  ‘Quiet,’ Traynor snapped. ‘You defile Omeyocan with your ignorant speech.’

  ‘Defile who?’ Tye frowned.

  ‘Omeyocan. Highest of all heavens.’

  ‘You really do take this Aztec stuff seriously, don’t you?’

  ‘Sixth Sun was founded to celebrate the achievements, the culture and beliefs of the Aztec people, last and greatest of the Mesoamerican races.’ Traynor spoke quite casually, as if talking to someone over tea. ‘They picked up the baton of progress from other chosen peoples, of course. The Izapan civilisation, the Maya, the Olmecs …’

  ‘Let us not waste time, Michael,’ said the woman. ‘We should receive Coldhardt’s emissary.’

  Tye glanced at Patch but he seemed none the wiser. ‘What are you talking about?’