by Rob Jones
Mendoza watched his man with merciless contempt as Hawke swung his weapon over his head and ran toward him. “Fight him, you coward!” he screamed as the goon tried to defend himself with trembling hands.
But it was too late for him.
Hawke swung the savage, close-contact weapon at the man and struck him across the flank of his torso, slashing through his flesh with the razor-sharp obsidian blades embedded in the hardwood edge of the macuahuitl.
The man screamed in agony as the volcanic glass ripped into his epidermis and shredded through the deeper subcutaneous tissue. The notorious weapon had gouged a terrific slash-mark through the muscle wall of his body. He fell to his knees and blood gushed out over his hands as he tried to stop the pain.
Hawke spun around and clubbed the man’s head with the base of the macuahuitl’s handle, knocking him into an unconscious heap on the smooth tiled floor of the museum.
“Any more for any more?” Hawke said, staring at Mendoza. “I think I’m really getting the hang of it.”
He tossed it from one hand to the other to underline the point and took a step closer to Mendoza.
The Mexican cartel lord looked at his comrade who was now unconscious and bleeding out on the floor. “He deserved to die,” he said. “But I will not share the same fate.” He snatched up another macuahuitl from among the shattered glass on the floor and tested its weight and movement in his hands.
Hawke moved forward. “Prepare to join your friend, you little shit!”
Mendoza laughed. “You seem so confident, Englishman – but you should know that I am a follower of what we call la verdadera destreza, or the true art, a form of Iberian fencing brought to Mexico by the Spanish.”
“Sounds a bit girly…” Hawke mumbled, never taking his eyes off the approaching man. “This thing isn’t a rapier, fuckwit, so let’s see how you go with it.”
Mendoza padded forward and plunged the macuahuitl forward at Hawke.
Hawke recoiled just in time, the obsidian shards at the tip of the weapon close enough to tear a slash in the front of his jacket. He regained his balance and took up a defensive position as Mendoza lunged at him once again, this time slicing the blades down in a savage draw cut and nicking Hawke’s shoulder again. He staggered back, the pain from the second slash-wound burning wildly. “You’ll have to do better than that, Mendoza.”
But without warning Mendoza took a step back and glanced at his watch. “I’m so sorry, but I must go. Perhaps I can kill you later?”
“Eh?”
Mendoza dropped the sword and fled the room with the canvas bag. Seconds later a chopper descended outside the exhibition room and began blasting the hell out of the windows with a chain gun.
Mendoza was outside now, and pulled himself into the chopper, which spun around ninety degrees as it ascended into the sky above Russell Square. Looping his arm through the grab-handle at the side of the door, Mendoza laughed as one of his men loosed a volley of submachine gunfire at the anti-terror police as they tried to advance on them.
Now, sprayed with lead and blasted back by the powerful downdraft of the chopper’s mighty rotors, the police broke ranks and dispersed to the cover of some nearby ash trees. Above them all, Mendoza’s helicopter vanished into the low cloud.
“We lost them!” Maria said.
“No” Hawke said. “I don’t think so.”
“What do you mean?”
“Earlier on when they first saw the artefact, Mendoza said ‘all we need now is the manuscript’ – something about a codex and then some words I didn’t recognize. They weren’t in Spanish.”
“Wait!” Ryan said, his face lighting up at the memory. “He said Yoalli Ehécatl! I understood those words but not the Spanish. They’re another word for the Codex Borgia.”
“The what?” Maria asked.
“It’s an Aztec manuscript currently held in the Vatican Library.”
“Damn it all!” Hawke said, but Lea was already on the phone.
A second later she ended the call. “The jet’s at London City, fuelled and ready to go.”
CHAPTER TEN
Aurora Soto drifted in and out of sleep, and when she woke she checked the sun for the time. It was a game she liked to play with herself, and then she would check her watch and see how accurate she was – today she was three minutes out.
So far so good. They had secured Sobotka and were only minutes away from achieving their mission. She had no doubt Viktor would play ball. After all, he knew his wife was gagged and bound with Delgado in the Vandura following behind them. She had chosen Delgado for that job because putting Garza with her would have been a very bad idea – like setting a fox to guard a henhouse. All the same, she knew what had to happen to the Sobotkas in the end, but there was no sense in wasting time thinking about that now. Now was about the moment, as her mother used to say.
Another quarter of an hour of tense silence and they had almost reached their destination – Los Alamos National Laboratory. Aurora stared through the windshield at the vast complex of office buildings, hangars and nuclear facilities as the car turned a bend on the highway and it loomed into view for the first time.
She wondered how much destruction the Hummingbird might bring. She cared about that – she wanted as much of this world annihilated as possible and only Wade could make that happen. The Big Boss was completely loco – his activities down in Guerrero left no room for doubt on that score – but when it came to smashing the Americans as hard as she and Mendoza wanted them to be smashed, she knew only Wade could deliver. For now, at least, they all had a mutual goal.
Garza rolled a quarter across his knuckles and sniffed hard. “Don’t forget, old man – screw this up and your wife is dead meat.” As he spoke, he pushed the muzzle of his gun into Viktor’s ribs. “And maybe we’ll have a little fun with her before we kill her – understand?”
Viktor nodded. He understood. Locked away deep in that building was something very precious that Aurora Soto’s mysterious boss wanted very badly, and Viktor was going to get it for them. He was going to drive the Prius down to the lab and bring home the bacon.
Or Alena would die.
*
Viktor Sobotka was old enough to remember the old regime. He remembered life long before the Prague Spring when the hardliner Novotný and his StB goons ruled his country with an iron grip.
The StB… he recalled them well. He remembered the night they came for his father when they lived in their little home in Ostrava. He was just ten at the time, and even now if he closed his eyes he could still see his beloved father kicking and screaming as the men coshed him and dragged him through the door. They all knew what it meant – false confessions forced by brutal torture and life imprisonment in a Soviet gulag. That was the last time he had seen his Dad.
He showed no fear then, and he would show none now. He would do as these monsters demanded of him, and then he would free his wife.
As he drew nearer to the entrance gates of the complex, he glanced in his rear view mirror and saw the black GMC Vandura parked up on the side of the road a mile or two in the distance. He gripped the steering wheel in rage as he visualized his wife tied up in the back at the mercy of those animals, but knew there was only one way he could help her.
He pulled up at the security gate and showed his pass through the windshield. He was expecting the guard to wave him through but instead he flagged him down and stepped out into the road in front of the car.
Victor felt a wave of panic flush over him. What if they knew something was up? What if they knew he was coming in here to steal classified technology? His heart quickened in his chest and it felt like it was going to burst. He worked hard to calm himself down. The life of the person he loved more than anyone in the world was riding on his performance over the next few minutes and he couldn’t risk blowing it now.
As the guard got closer to the car he recognized him as Norm Bennett. Bennett was a friendly sort of guy but good at his job. He was too clo
se to his pension to risk his retirement now so he was very thorough.
Bennett tapped on the window and indicated that Viktor should wind it down.
Viktor took a deep breath and tried to look relaxed.
“Hey, Norm.”
Bennett smiled. “What are you doing here today, Professor Sobotka?” He said jovially. “I thought it was your wife’s birthday and you had the day off?”
“It is, yes.”
The guard smiled and nodded his head. “I thought you were planning on going out someplace?”
“Sure we are, yes.”
“Boy, I wish I could knock off early today.” He dabbed his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Jeez – this heat sure is something today, ain’t it?”
“Yes… it sure is.” Viktor glanced in the mirror at the Vandura and then at the little dashboard clock. The Soto woman had been very clear about not wasting time.
“You know, I remember back in the mid-nineties when we hit the record for the State. One hundred and twenty-two ball-crushing degrees that day my friend, Jeez… was that 1993 or 1994?”
“I don’t know, I’m sorry,” Victor said, his throat growing drier by the second. “I wasn’t here then.”
“Well this ain’t nothing like that, I’ll grant you, but all the same…”
“I’m in a little bit of a rush, Norm, actually…”
Norm Bennett pulled himself up and dropped the smile. He nodded his head as if Viktor had asked a question, and then peered through the back windows of the car. “Pop the trunk, please.”
Viktor did as he was told and watched nervously as the guard strolled around to the rear of the Prius. Hurry up you fool! he whispered to himself.
After a heart-stopping few moments Norm finally waved him through and he drove down the driveway toward the immense car park. He looked at his watch. Not long until Aurora Soto and those thugs killed his wife. He knew what he had to do.
*
A few hundred miles south of the border, Morton Wade trembled as he moved slowly into the dark obsidian chamber. So many times had he come in here but now it somehow felt different – like other more powerful gods were observing them.
All around him he heard the screaming cacophony of the cicadas as they sang in the jungle, but in here, deep in the dark, volcanic inner sanctum, the Texan focussed as the ancient god rose in front of him and cast him into his shadow. The awesome, terrifying figure of Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec sun god, and great deity of war and sacrifice was finally standing before him.
“As ever, I bow to you, Great One,” he said, his voice trembling.
A long exhalation, somewhere between a hiss and a sigh. “You are late, mortal.”
Wade raised his fearful eyes to the deity’s powerful face. It was almost human, but the color was all wrong. The forehead, cheeks, chin and throat were Maya blue but the strip over the eyes was the darkest pitch-black he had ever seen. And the eyes inside that ribbon of black were faint slits of blood-shot madness. It was like he was staring into an abyss. The divine apparition was crowned with a magnificent headdress made of plumes of emerald-green quetzal tail-feathers. Wade dropped his eyes back to the floor after snatching the undeserved glance.
“I’m sorry, Great One.”
Huitzilopochtli growled, and Wade felt the floor move. It was all he could do not to run from the room screaming like a baby. This was the power he worshipped.
“You were right to kill the intruders, Tlatoani.”
“Thank you, Great One.” Wade shivered with pleasure as he heard the word Tlatoani reverberate in his head. Tlatoani… the one who speaks for the gods, a priest charged with making divine battle plans and expanding the gods’ empires. But was he really a tlatoani, or something more? Hush, you fool! Do not harbor such thoughts in the presence of… Him.
He growled again. “There are many more on their way. Kill them all. Offer them to me.”
“Yes, Great One.”
“Do you fear him?”
Wade knew who he meant but he was too frightened to mention his name.
“I fear all the ancient gods, Great One.”
A long silence was broken by the sound of a ringing telephone.
Wade spun around in rage and snatched up the receiver. “Who is it?”
“It’s Aurora.”
“What do you want?” he barked, looking nervously at the terrifying presence just a few feet in front of him. “I told you no one was to disturb me.”
“We have Sobotka. He’s in the lab right now.”
“Ah…” Wade glanced at the black and blue face. The red eyes… he looked away. “Good. You know what to do next. Make sure he knows what’s at stake.”
“You got it, boss.”
Wade didn’t like the way the woman had cut the call, and he didn’t much like the way she’d called him boss like that, in that not-give-a-shit manner of hers. She and Mendoza were lethal, he knew, but what were they when compared with the gods?
“It has begun, Great One.”
A low, long growl was the only response.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jack Camacho watched carefully as Special Agent Kim Taylor slipped elegantly off the sidewalk and walked confidently across the Avenida Costera Miguel Alemán. She had just exited the Acapulco Bay Hotel. She crossed over the central reservation which divided the avenue’s six lanes and lingered for a moment beneath a palm tree. Only an hour over the horizon, the tropical sun was already burning hot and bright above her head as they waited for Soto.
Aurora Soto.
She was the weak link, and they’d had her apartment under surveillance since they’d arrived. Now it looked like it might be paying off. After days off the grid she’d suddenly resurfaced at a private airfield to the north of the city with two goons and an elderly couple. No one knew who they were but they split at the airport, with the goons and the elderly couple piling into a Chevrolet Beauville and Aurora Soto driving a black Porsche Boxster. They’d trailed them to the hotel where Aurora had met a man known to the authorities as Emilio Perez, a small-time embezzler, and now she was going to lead them to Wade and his cult one way or another.
“Another hot day in Mexico,” Camacho drawled in his New Jersey accent.
Scarlet Sloane raised an eyebrow. “You could always take your shirt off, darling.”
Lexi rolled her eyes.
Reaper rolled a cigarette and fired it up. “I like the heat. Reminds me of sitting on the terrace with a coffee. Maybe a little chocolatine, just watching the world go by.” He puffed out some smoke and pushed back in his seat.
“Sounds sorta French,” Agent Doyle said dismissively.
When the westbound traffic had thinned, Kim made her way to their SUV, a six-seater Ford Explorer loaned courtesy of the Mexican Government after a call from Jack Brooke’s office. Camacho was less than amused by the manual transmission, but other than that all was good with the world. The Mexicans were reluctant at first but it wasn’t exactly the first time US law enforcement had worked cases south of the border.
The heat was rising in the car, but there was no chance of switching on the engine to run the aircon in case they drew attention to themselves. Camacho felt the sweat running down his neck and building in the small of his back. He tried to cool himself by using a street map as a makeshift fan.
“I’ll keep my shirt where it is, babe,” he said, cocking his head an inch to Scarlet. He yawned and cracked his knuckles. He liked it down here – even the heat. Most of his CIA work these days was office-bound in DC back on The Farm, and missions like this gave him a chance to relive the old days and push himself to the limit again – to prove to himself he wasn’t over the hill just yet.
Kim climbed into the Explorer. “She’s in there all right,” she said. “She’s still with Perez and drinking Tiger’s Claws like there’s no tomorrow.”
Camacho nodded calmly. “What about the Chevy?”
“In the underground next to the Porsche.”
“You get th
e bug on her car?” asked Doyle from the back.
Kim nodded. “No problemo.” She ran her hands through her hair and checked her phone. “Nothing from the Boss.”
Camacho made a friendly nod to show he’d heard her, but no reply. He was too busy watching the entrance to the car park. If Aurora Soto could lead them closer to the Order of the Sixth sun and the rest of Wade’s dark empire then they’d do whatever they had to, and planting a GPS bug under her car was a great start.
Aurora was an unknown quantity. Her background was murky – never part of anything formal, nothing traceable until she arrived on the radar in connection with Silvio Mendoza’s drugs cartel based in Mexico City. She was dangerous and had at least three kills to her name.
Her preferred method of execution was poison delivered by cocktail glass and rumor had it she liked to watch her victims die. Her connection to Wade and the Sixth Sun loons was her occasional lover Silvio Mendoza, whom Wade had hired as a facilitator in Mexico. Up till recently it was just regular criminal enterprise, but now there was talk of weapons of mass destruction and rumors of people disappearing from a coffee plantation he owned. Maybe Aurora could lead them into that particular heart of darkness.
“Check out that moon,” Kim said, glancing through the tinted window. “It’s setting over the ocean.”
Reaper turned to her. “Tonight the moon dreams with more indolence, like a lovely woman on a bed of cushions.”
She gave him an ambiguous look. “I’m sorry?”
“It’s the poem I gave you in Los Angeles. I said I would tell you what the words mean, and there it is.” He gave a Gallic shrug, narrowed his eyes with indifference and dragged on his cigarette again.
“I remember now, thanks Vincent.”
“De rien…”
Camacho sat up in his seat and switched on the ignition. “Here we go – she’s off.”
