by Stephen Cole
‘I know of her by reputation – specialises in long-term cons with big payoffs. No true allegiance to anyone but herself, prefers to target and infiltrate wealthy extremist groups.’
Jonah nodded gloomily. ‘At least she’s only after the treasure.’
‘Isn’t that enough!’ Con looked appalled. ‘We’ve got to stop her.’
‘And get Tye back,’ Patch chipped in.
‘I imagine Tye will be going to the temple with Ramez – the boy will want her with him to the end.’ Coldhardt considered. ‘Traynor is set on doing things properly at all costs. In his mind it’s the only way to truly appease Coatlicue. So he presents her with a perfect sacrifice, groomed in the spirit of the old traditions. He brings Cortes’s sword along so he can “wipe it clean” before her. And he’s ready to poison millions of Western people just as they poisoned the Aztecs by bringing their diseases into Mexico.’
‘In other words, Traynor is completely mad,’ said Jonah flatly.
Con seemed puzzled. ‘But surely the authorities will work out the formula of this biological agent and trace it back to Traynor’s weapons plant, no?’
Coldhardt shrugged. ‘Perhaps he imagines that Coatlicue’s powers will have placed him above human governing by then.’
‘Or perhaps in the short term he’s covering his tracks,’ said Jonah. ‘Kabacra said he was getting a weak version of the biological agent as part-payment. Maybe Traynor has been mixing up different versions of the stuff and getting it on the market so it doesn’t seem like it came from his labs.’
‘S’pose he’d have to,’ Patch agreed. ‘After all, it’s gonna take time to set himself up as the big leader of a whole new age for the human race, innit? Even with a goddess on his side.’
Coldhardt was looking thoughtful. ‘Whatever he believes, whatever he and Honor hope to achieve, the fact remains that they now possess the means to raise the Temple of Life from Death from beneath the cacao grove – and that they will do so tomorrow.’
‘And now we know where it is,’ said Con, her eyes glittering, ‘we can get there first.’
‘Great,’ sighed Patch. ‘I always wanted to feel a nuclear bomb go off under my feet.’
Con rolled her eyes. ‘Nuclear weapons are tested underground all the time.’
Jonah frowned. ‘What, and we’re supposed to feel good about that?’
‘This bomb’s been prepared by an expert,’ Motti pointed out, like this was also in some way reassuring. ‘Sixth Sun aren’t about to blow themselves up, are they? They gotta know what they’re doing.’
‘They’re about to try and communicate with some ancient spirit they reckon influenced the entire Mesoamerican race,’ said Jonah angrily. ‘You think that sounds like they know what they’re doing?’
‘It shall be interesting to see,’ said Coldhardt, quietly but in a way that riveted all four of them to his image on the monitor. ‘Jonah, I want the four of you to fly out to Mexico as soon as we’ve confirmed that the map reference given on the back of Patch’s picture does indeed mark the location of the cacao grove. I shall charter a plane and make my own way there. Con is correct – if we move quickly we should just reach the area ahead of them.’
‘And then what?’ said Jonah. ‘Try to take control of the situation?’
Coldhardt leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. ‘Oh, I shall most definitely aim to do that.’
The morning was growing humid, and Tye pulled listlessly at the neck of her blouse. They had been trekking through the Mexican jungle for less than an hour, but already her clothes felt sodden.
Not that she was sweating purely from the heat.
Beside her, Ramez trudged on in compliant silence, his white shirt open to the navel, his dark eyes sunken. He had eaten and drunk way more of the spiked supper than she had last night. And since this morning she was feeling like death warmed up as a result, he must be –
No, she thought. Stop right there with the ‘death’ stuff.
Traynor and Honor were leading their priests on the trek – a pasty, motley bunch they looked, without their make-up and costume and sympathetic light. The men who’d guarded her and Patch were coping with the hike pretty well – one of them was carrying Cortes’s sword in a mahogany case on his back – and of course the two penthouse bruisers remained as strong and silent as ever, dressed now in light khaki and carrying a heavy-looking flight case between them. But the rest of the Sixth Sun elite – with their baggy shorts, skinny white legs, pot-bellies and huge sweat rings under their arms – looked more like a gang of pensioners off on their holidays than vicious extremists aiming to awaken dark and ancient forces. They’d even come here from the airport in an ancient hire coach, badly driven by one of the professor types. Tye supposed that a couple of swish Chrysler or Merc people carriers could have attracted attention, making their way along the winding roads into the remote jungle wilderness – but who would look twice at yet another coachload of foreigners on vacation?
Ramez grunted as he slipped and lost his footing. He fell, and his bad leg twisted beneath him.
Tye helped him up, ignoring the dull throb from the cut in her side. Luckily it was feeling a lot better. ‘You OK?’
‘I’ll live,’ he said dully. ‘Well. You know what I mean.’
Tye saw the bitterness in his eyes and looked away. She wished she had words of comfort to give him. All she could hope was that Jonah had somehow managed to escape. His not being here, the tight-lipped look about Honor this morning, and the gruesome bruise on the side of Xavier’s head all gave her hope that he had made his break. As for Patch, she prayed that he was still being held back at the mansion. But no one was giving anything away.
Traynor pulled a portable sat-nav device from the breast pocket of his white cotton shirt and shielded its screen against the glare of the climbing sun. ‘All right, everybody, wait up,’ he drawled. ‘The entrance to the underground shaft is close by. Time to prepare our own personal earthquake.’
Tye stared at him. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The temple was designed to be raised up in response to seismic disturbance,’ he told her. ‘The radioactive waste we stole has been converted into a small, precisely measured nuclear device.’
Now she looked again at the flight case the bodyguards had hauled here. ‘You so have to be kidding me,’ she breathed.
‘The moment our surveys located a natural shaft in the rock, I got moving,’ Traynor went on. ‘Rungs have been set in the rock face. There are platforms for rest during the descent and the ascent. The materials required to backfill the fissure to prevent radioactive contamination are in place.’ He smiled at the penthouse bodyguards. ‘My friends here shall carry the device down, and I shall set it myself.’
‘That’s so comforting,’ said Tye, burying her face in both hands.
* * *
Jonah wiped the sweat from his face as he followed Coldhardt and the others deeper into the Chicomoztoc rainforest. A guide, hastily picked up by Con from one of the outlying villages, had taken them as far as the outskirts of this near-deserted region. From there they’d been hiking for hours.
The forest was alive with insects and spiders and weird, screeching things. Jonah wondered just how poisonous everything was, how quickly he might die if he was bitten. It helped distract him from the heat and his aching legs, but did little to calm the queasiness he felt inside.
Coldhardt, looking dapper in a pale linen suit, was letting Motti lead the way. Mot was using a relief map and compass to navigate through the jungle and seemed to be in his element; Jonah had never had him down for the orienteering type, but aside from having to stop every few hundred metres so he could wipe moisture from his glasses, so far he had guided them unerringly. And a good job too. Coldhardt was making out that the journey was taking no toll on him, but Jonah could see the sweat beading on his lined and haggard face.
Patch was taking up the rear behind Jonah and Con, chiefly because he kept stopping to f
iddle with the portable FM receiver round his neck. The plan was that by listening in on Xavier’s radio mike – always assuming he’d recovered in time to go on the expedition – they could be sure not to bump into the Sixth Sun party unexpectedly.
‘Anything, Patch?’ Jonah wondered.
‘Sod all,’ Patch admitted. ‘Suppose they can’t be in range.’
‘Perfectly possible. There are many airstrips in this part of Mexico,’ Con reminded them. ‘And many approaches to this region.’
‘By making straight for the site of the temple we should be safe regardless,’ Coldhardt reasoned, an unsettling wheeze in his breath. ‘Traynor will need to go to the detonation site first so the shockwaves can trigger the temple’s lifting mechanism. That site’s probably a fair distance away for safety reasons. And once the temple is exhumed, while he and his priests are making their way over, we’ll be perfectly placed to get inside first.’
‘With the perfect chance to steal the finest treasures for ourselves,’ said Con.
Jonah sighed and shook his head.
‘Thinking of those millions who may die, Jonah?’ she asked coolly.
‘Fancy you remembering that.’
‘Rest assured, Jonah,’ said Coldhardt, dabbing at his forehead with his silk handkerchief, ‘that I intend to pay the very closest attention to Traynor’s ritual.’
Jonah thought of the cold, empty vault hidden beneath the New Mexican hideout, of the altar it housed, of Coldhardt’s fading hopes of redemption. ‘Yeah,’ he muttered. ‘I bet you do.’
‘Heads up, people,’ called Motti from the lip of a rise, satisfaction in his voice. ‘We’re getting closer. And whaddya know, I think “eggs” marks the spot.’
Jonah trailed along behind the others to join him. With a tingle of unease mixed with anticipation, he saw that they were overlooking the site in the photo – the grove of ancient cacao trees, with the vast, pitted oval of sandstone squatting in its centre. It had entered his mind as a fragment of some ancient puzzle, and now here it was, an undeniable chunk of reality right there in front of his eyes.
It was an unsettling feeling.
‘How far away is it now?’ Con wondered.
‘Can’t be much more than a mile,’ Motti reported.
‘So, what – we make our way down there and wait for the earth to move?’ Patch ventured.
Coldhardt nodded. ‘We must be ready. Come on.’ Pushing past Motti, he started gamely picking his way down the steep slope towards the temple site.
With a shrug to the others, Jonah began his own descent into the valley, Con, Patch and Motti close behind.
Tye sat with Ramez on an outcrop of rock, guarded by the penthouse meatheads. Ramez didn’t want to talk. She tried to hold his hand but he didn’t react – it was like squeezing a mannequin’s fingers, cold and dead to her touch. He’d been like this all afternoon, retreated into himself, gone some place no one else could reach him.
Tye wished she could just opt out too. But she knew she had to be ready to take advantage of the slightest distraction. She had to try and get Ramez away from there whatever it took – not just to save his life but to stop Traynor’s plans from working out.
She had to admit, though, that for all their unlikely appearance, the Sixth Sun priests were proving a formidable workforce, even in the thick plastic hazard suits they’d brought along. They laboured in teams in strict rotation, drinking to keep hydrated and resting often to keep themselves fresh for the next shift. They were moving tons of sand and gypsum and gravel, sealing off the shaft in the rock. Tye supposed that they wouldn’t dare to pollute their goddess’s homeland.
The fitter ones like Xavier and red-mouth were doing more of course – but unfortunately, they also kept taking turns with the penthouse bruisers to guard Tye and Ramez. If the old professor and pot-bellied Douglas were watching over them it would be child’s play to take them and get the hell out. Then again, even if she could get Ramez to help her – with his bad leg, how far would they get?
Her heart sank further as Traynor’s triumphant face appeared from out of the fissure. ‘The device is in position, and the shaft is almost stemmed,’ he reported. ‘Soon we shall be ready to detonate.’
Those sitting round launched into spontaneous applause. Traynor climbed out, high-fived Honor and gave her a brief embrace. Tye noted how rigidly the woman held herself.
‘She hates you, Traynor,’ she called as the clapping died down. ‘You knew that, right?’
Honor glanced over blandly, her black hair plastered to her forehead with sweat; she had been working too. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘It’s in the way you stiffen up when he’s about. The way you can barely make eye contact with him. The way you cross your arms whenever he talks to you.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m useful to Coldhardt because I can read people. And stuff like that will give you away every time.’
Traynor smiled and shook his head. ‘Is this the best plan you’ve been able to come up with? Trying to cause a rift between us?’
‘I’m just telling you –’
‘Well, let me tell you something. When we’ve splashed your boyfriend’s blood over the sacred stones and smeared his fresh-cut heart over the deity’s face, we’re going to have some real fun with you.’ Traynor grinned at her. ‘You’re going to squeal like a piggy, little girl.’
‘We’ll see,’ Tye said, glaring defiantly. She was good at hiding her fear. But seconds later, as she looked away, unable to bear those staring blue eyes a moment longer, she knew with crushing certainty that she wasn’t good enough.
Jonah was slumped in the cacao grove, waiting for something to happen. Coldhardt was pacing slowly up and down, while Con and Motti took turns listening into the radio receiver.
‘’Course,’ Patch reflected, perched up on top of the big oval boulder, ‘if Traynor has got his nuclear sums wrong, or if these Aztecs weren’t as clever at building as they thought they were, this temple’s gonna stay buried below ground and we’re all going to feel pretty stupid.’
‘I can live with feeling stupid,’ said Jonah.
‘The mechanism will work,’ muttered Coldhardt. He wasn’t looking so good now, dabbing at his sweaty face with a wet handkerchief. ‘It must. We have to get inside.’
And then, just as he spoke, the ground shook like a hundred giants were stamping their feet.
The power of the tremor was incredible. Patch yelled as he was thrown clear of the huge rock and landed face first in the tangled undergrowth. Jonah tried scrambling over to help him up, but it was like the ground itself was billowing in some subterranean gale; he couldn’t stay upright. Thrown on to his back, shaken so hard his teeth rattled, he couldn’t make sense of the picture perfect blue sky above; he felt it should seem ashen and black, like some terrible storm was breaking over them.
Con was clinging on to one of the cacao trees, and screamed as it started to uproot itself. Motti was rolling helplessly about like a drunk, clutching hold of the radio equipment. Where was Coldhardt?
Then the tremor passed as swiftly as it had begun. Coldhardt was right beside him, helping him up – and Patch was staring round in a daze.
‘I can feel something,’ Motti said. ‘Ground’s still shifting.’
Con stared round as if expecting something to jump out of the ground beside her. ‘It’s different to that last tremor.’
‘Get over here,’ Coldhardt snapped. ‘Now!’
‘Uh-oh.’ Jonah looked at him. ‘The temple mechanism –?’
Then he was shaken to his knees as something huge pierced the overgrown surface of the wild, tangled grove. It was a great stone arrowhead, caked in mud, pushing up through the ground. Motti and Con sprinted away from it, but the ground bucked beneath them and they fell. Jonah staggered forwards, grabbed hold of Con and hauled her back to her feet – in time to be knocked back off his. Together they scrambled away on all fours, clawing at the grass. Jonah saw Motti was making better progress, swearing as fast as
he ran for cover.
The temple was still rising up, the noise was growing in volume, a grating, grinding, primeval roar from deep beneath the ground. Jonah cried out as the forest floor began to ripple and fold, like a great, grassy rug being pulled from under him. He was flung forwards, but there was nothing to fall against, the ground had fallen away and he was pitching through empty space …
He gasped as he hit a bank of mud heaved up from the colossal split in the earth and found himself tumbling down helplessly in a landslide. Pebbles showered over him, mud filled his mouth and got in his eyes so he couldn’t see. Where was Con? Please God don’t let me be smothered, he thought. He heard the creaking, thundering smash of trees toppling close by – and don’t let me be crushed – and wiped the dirt from his face.
Just in time to see a tidal wave of mud and vegetation ploughing towards him.
Chapter Twenty
Jonah didn’t even have time to shout.
Desperately he ran for the nearest tree still standing, jumped up, grabbed for its thick, gnarled branches, and tried to haul himself up out of range. As the mudslide hit, the tree shook so hard it almost hurled him clear – but just, barely, Jonah managed to hold on.
Finally, with an ear-splitting, bone-grinding crash, the world stopped shaking and the landscape fell abruptly still. Jonah dropped down from his tree into the dry, pebbly mudbank, panting for breath. ‘Guys?’ he called hoarsely. ‘You OK? Anyone?’
There was only silence in answer.
Tye supposed she should’ve expected as much – Traynor had got it right.
They’d retreated to a designated place of safety, out of range of the immediate area, he’d set off the bomb remotely, and here they were still in one piece. Apparently, the absence of any kind of sunken depression at ground level was good news – it meant the land vaporised in the explosion hadn’t reached as far as the surface, that the effect had been contained by all that sand and gravel and stuff. But Honor’s binoculars had soon revealed the worst possible news – for Tye and Ramez at any rate. The temple had risen up from the ground.
