by Rob Jones
“Good one, Ben,” Quinn said.
“I guess I don’t know my own strength.” He started to roll up his shirt sleeve. “Here, check my muscles.”
“In your dreams.”
“Take it easy, Ben,” Gates said. “These are priceless artifacts. Right, Dr Hunter?”
Hunter put the box back on the table and clicked the lid open. Taking a dagger with a red stone handle, he held it up for all to see and gently turned it in his hand. “Without a doubt, these are exactly the same as those Rorschach has, and simply in material terms, they would command a very hefty price at auction, but it goes much further than that.”
“So, we’re rich?” Lewis said.
Hunter set the blade down. “This is about more than money, and let me explain why. In their construction, the blades of these daggers are a mysterious alloy created from gold, copper and what Plato described as orichalcum.”
“I heard of that once.” Jodie said. “But isn’t it a myth?”
Hunter grinned. “As I explained to Special Agent Fox, it’s hard to say. It’s written about in Plato’s Critias, one of his later dialogues, and also in another I discovered recently called Diocles, in which he also describes the three Winged Guardians of Atlantis. That’s what started all this. I agree it’s not much, but it’s all we have. I think these daggers, and the winged statues are from Atlantis.”
Gates stepped into the stunned silence. “While half the team was getting shot at in Cuba, I had some tests done on the daggers. We found that while the blades are forged from this strange alloy, the metal running around the pommel had extremely high concentrations of iron and cobalt in it. It was, literally, like nothing on earth.”
“You can’t mean it’s an alien artifact?” Amy said.
“Yes and no. Yes, it came from out of this world, but no, it wasn’t made by aliens. The current theory is that it came from the metal of a crashed meteorite. Samples of metal from meteorites known to have crashed in Egypt show very similar levels of iron and cobalt.”
Amy shifted in her seat. “Very similar, but not the same?”
“No, not the same.”
Quinn twiddled her pen, determined not to look fazed. “So, that means the metal you’re talking about wasn’t made from the crashed meteorite.”
“Probably not, which means…”
“Which means aliens made it,” Lewis said.
“Which means,” Gates said, “that it probably came from another meteorite with slightly different metallic properties. Either way, there’s never been a meteorite crash-land anywhere on earth with anywhere near the metallic composition of these blades – or the statues, if they’re made of the same material. At least, not one that has ever been found. Dr Hunter?”
Hunter was thinking. “It’s my theory that the orichalcum in the blade alloy, along with the crazy iron and cobalt levels you found in the pommel, probably all come from a meteorite crash in an unknown site, probably in Atlantis.”
“This is getting heavy,” Lewis said.
Amy broke into another strained silence. “What about the photos of the statue and map Sal took back on the yacht, Max?”
Hunter held up printed copies of the photos. “You can see from this picture that there’s a lot of water damage on the map, but it seems to be indicating that there’s a kind of settlement or maybe even something more substantial in a very remote section of the Montecristo Cloud Forest in the east of El Salvador.”
“What do you mean by settlement?” Gates asked.
“As I say, there’s water-damage and smudging, but some of the notes on the map indicate that Himmler’s Ahnenerbe team were able to translate some of the inscriptions on the base of the Acassuso Idol, also known as the ‘Winged Guardian’ we found in Vazquez’s strongroom. The translation implies a substantial settlement in a hidden valley called the Scorpion Ravine, as marked right here on the map. More like a lost civilization really, including pyramids.”
Amy noted the shock on the faces of her team members. “You said back on the plane that something about the pictures was bothering you, Max.”
Hunter smiled. “It was, but it’s not any more. Back on the tender was not the greatest environment to study the images Sal took, but I’ve had time to think about it since. The problem was a technical one. The symbols on the statue are like some sort of cross between Assyrian hieroglyphics and Egyptian hieroglyphics. To me, it’s like a new language, and bear in mind I’m not the world’s greatest Egyptologist to start with.”
“You surprise me,” Amy said, arching a sarcastic eyebrow.
“I’m sure I do,” he said with a grin. “Anyway, I’ve done my best, and from what I can tell, the Ahnenerbe made a mistake when translating the inscriptions for their little map. This is not hard to do – hieroglyphics like these depend massively on context. The same sign can mean something quite different if put in a different place in the sentence. Also, some glyphs are logograms, which represent a word, and others are ideograms, which represent ideas, but we’re more interested in the contextual thing.”
Jodie groaned. “This is making my head spin.”
Hunter smiled. “I think the Nazis confused a syllabary sequence for a logographic one.”
“Stupid Nazis,” Quinn said.
“Yeah, stupid Nazis,” said Hunter, pointing at the picture. “Their map indicates that the lost city is reached at the southern end of the ravine at a location the ancients called the scorpion’s tail, but this is because the translator thinks this key symbol here means tail. I think it does, too, but not when combined with this glyph beside it. From the brief glimpse I got of the inscriptions on the base of the Mosul statue, I think this compound glyph means north. In other words, anyone following the map precisely is going to the wrong end of the ravine, in the south.”
“They’re looking in the wrong place?” Gates asked.
“I think so, but we won’t be. We have to go to the north of the Scorpion Ravine.”
“And we have enemies everywhere,” Gates said. “We know from Dr Hunter’s account of Mosul that this Brodie McCabe character is working for someone named Gaius, but we don’t know who he answers to, if anyone.” He left a long, weighty pause. “It could be Rorschach.”
More silence. No one knew exactly what to say.
Except Jodie. “This is all batshit crazy, dude.”
“No, it’s kinda cool,” said Quinn.
“It’s your next stop,” Gates said. “And be careful – we also all know Vazquez and his thugs are out there somewhere, searching for the third Winged Guardian. They’re dangerous.”
“And don’t underestimate McCabe,” Hunter said. “Maybe that Gaius freak will show his face again, too.”
“Or even Rorschach,” Amy said. “If that’s who’s tugging McCabe’s strings.”
Gates’s smile was fading fast. “Just watch your backs.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
High in the El Salvadorian mountains, Montecristo Cloud Forest is a high-altitude jungle teeming with tropical life. Pumas, toucans, spider monkeys, two-fingered anteaters and striped owls all live in the premontane forest, in a world unchanged since the dawn of time.
Sprawling over the borders into Guatemala and Honduras, the rainforest’s high altitude causes a fine cloud-mist to hang over it for much of the time, and gives the entire wilderness an eerie prehistoric atmosphere. Directed by their guides, Gerardo and Fidel, the team drove deeper into the wilderness and the mist grew thicker.
“I’m half expecting a T-Rex to come out of nowhere,” Jodie said. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“Me too,” said Lewis. “I want my mommy.”
Jodie lifted her middle finger and held it an inch from his face. “Get lost, Benedict.”
Fidel laughed. “It’s not always like this.”
“Wait,” Amy said. “I think I see something.”
Hunter pulled himself up beside her in the moving truck and rested his hands on the driver’s headrest to keep his balance.
“Where are you looking?”
Blanco changed down into second gear to navigate the rutted track more safely.
“Right there, just off to the right of us.”
“I don’t see anything,” Jodie said, staring into the misty jungle.
“Me neither,” said Gerardo. “Oh…”
As the hood of the 4x4 inched forward, the outline of a dead man slowly emerged from the shadows of the vines and laurels. He was wearing a moisture-wicking khaki shirt and camo fatigues, but they all recognized Diego Canosa’s face when they saw it from the briefing back in San Salvador.
“Maybe it was a hunting accident,” Quinn said naively.
“No. There’s no hunting in this park,” Amy said. “The government banned it outright a few years ago. I don’t know who’s firing weapons but I doubt it’s hunters – the park has armed guards looking out for them.”
“Poachers, maybe?” asked Jodie.
“I don’t think so,” Hunter said, pointing. “Look over there.”
Meters to the left of the corpse was another dead man. “I know that face, too,” Blanco said, slowing the truck and braking to a stop. “He was also on Vazquez’s ship.”
“And there’s another one farther off the track,” Jodie said in a sombre tone. “That makes at least three.”
“Four,” Hunter said. “Look over there.”
Amy gasped. “Davila’s dead?”
“I hope so,” Hunter said. “Because someone shot him in the face three times.”
“Good,” growled Blanco. “He was the bastard who shot Gabriela. The only problem is, I wanted to kill him.”
“Guys,” Amy said. “I see Raul Vazquez over there to the right. Major gunshot wounds to the face and neck.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “What the hell happened here?”
Blanco drove farther down the track and killed the engine. He leaned his head over the side of the truck and stared down at Davila’s dead body. After a long pause, he said, “These guys were real assholes, Amy. Not just that, they were ruthless and tooled up like a small army. And they knew how to use their weapons, too. They defended Vazquez’s cruise ship very professionally. I’d say they were mostly ex-army, maybe even special ops down on their luck.”
“I agree,” Hunter said. “I’ve fought alongside special forces on the battlefield and some of these guys moved in the same way. I think I have the same question as Sal.”
“Right,” Amy said. “If these guys were so good, who the hell could have made such a mess of them?”
“You think this was McCabe?” Blanco asked Hunter.
“Maybe, but whoever it was,” Hunter said, “we have to presume they now have the Winged Guardian and the map that was in Vazquez’s possession.”
“Not good,” Amy said. “A new and more dangerous enemy.”
“No, not good.” Blanco swung his arm off the top of the door and turned in his seat. “I’m tired. Who wants to take over?”
“I will.” Gerardo and Blanco switched seats and the El Salvadorian guide turned the ignition key. The truck grumbled back to life and he revved it a few times. Everyone was grateful when the eerie silence of the fresh open grave all around them was gone.
“C’mon, let’s get out of here,” Hunter said. “We still have a long drive to reach the coordinates on the map and it looks like we’re already losing the race.”
Blanco slapped a mosquito head-net over his hat and pulled it down over his face. “I’m getting some sleep. Don’t wake me unless someone’s shooting at us, and even then think very hard about exactly how much danger my life is in. If it’s sixty-forty, let me sleep.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “Sweet dreams, Sal.”
*
“Sal, wake up.”
Blanco heard the words but they were vague and muffled. He opened one eye and saw Quinn leaning over him. She was shaking him gently by the shoulder.
“What happened to sweet dreams?” he asked.
“Ask Amy, she said it.”
He opened the other eye and pulled the mosquito net away from his face. Shuffling up on the rear seat, he yawned and stretched his arms. “You remember what I said about that sixty-forty thing, right?”
“And right now it’s more like seventy-thirty,” Lewis said. He was sitting on the rearmost seat next to Quinn and looking rattled.
“Anyone care to explain what’s going on?”
“We have company, Sal.” Amy sounded as nervous as Lewis looked. “A Jeep and what looks like an old army truck have been following us for the last fifteen minutes.”
“Tourists?”
“Gerardo says he’s never seen tourists in an army truck before.”
“Nor me,” Fidel said. “This is very unusual.”
“How the hell did we get ahead of them?” Blanco asked.
“They must have gotten lost,” said Fidel. “It’s not hard in this jungle.”
Blanco turned and looked in between Lewis and Jodie at the small convoy traveling behind them. The lead Jeep was driving down into the ditch they had navigated moments earlier, splashing mud up onto the side of the track. The engine roared as it climbed back up the other side. It steered to the left to use a shallower gradient on its way back up to level ground and Blanco saw a man in the front passenger seat.
“Not seen tourists in a military truck before, huh?”
Gerardo said, “No, señor. I think we have trouble.”
“Judging by the guy up front with a submachine gun hanging out of the window, I’d be tempted to agree with you.”
Amy gasped. “They’re armed?”
Blanco rolled up his sleeves and twisted his hat into a more comfortable position. Sleep had pushed it over to the left and made him look like a drunken sailor, but he was all set now.
“I’d say heavily,” he said.
“And we know it’s not Vazquez.” Quinn slapped a mosquito and cursed. “Eww! Is there anything more gross than nature?”
Hunter was riding in the middle just behind Gerardo. He dipped his head and glanced in the side mirror. “Too far away – anyone got any bins?”
“Bins?” Amy said.
“Binoculars.”
“Sure, here.” She passed him a pair from a bag on the back seat.
“Thanks, and take it easy Gerardo – I want to see what’s going on.” He watched the Jeep pull up onto the level where it parked and waited for the truck to catch up. When the larger vehicle steered to the left to find the easier slope, Hunter saw what he had feared. Sitting in the passenger seat in the truck’s cabin with his arm hanging lazily over the door and his hand tapping the hot steel was an old friend.
“We’re in trouble,” he said. “It’s bloody McCabe. Get going, Gerardo. As fast as the track allows.”
Their driver speeded up and steered around some ruts in the track to make better progress, but behind them, the truck was out of the ditch and pulling up beside the jeep. Some of the men got out, followed by McCabe.
“They’ve stopped,” Quinn said. “And I’m in the back seat. That’s called drawing the shortest straw, right?”
“Guys,” Lewis said. “The guy in the big hat is drawing a handgun. Why is his nose all smashed in?”
Hunter flicked his head around and saw McCabe aiming a pistol directly at them. “We had a disagreement in Iraq recently.”
“Is this a joke?” Quinn said.
“It’s no joke,” said Hunter, tapping Gerardo on the shoulder. “Faster, my friend, and everyone else get down!”
The bullet smashed the rear window, ripped a split in the headrest and punctured a perfect hole in the back of Gerardo’s head before blasting the front of his skull off on the way out.
Amy screamed and recoiled back in her chair as far as she could go. A peaceful drive through the jungle had turned into a nightmare. The dead man slumped forward against the wheel and the truck began to swerve off the track toward the trees.
Hunter sprang into action, unbuckling his belt and clambering in between the two
front seats as pieces of yellow seat stuffing rained down like snowflakes in front of the blood-splattered windshield.
“What the hell is happening?” Quinn said.
“Driver just got shot.”
“I worked that bit out.”
“Then why ask the sodding question in the first place?”
“I don’t know, I…”
A second bullet obliterated the driver’s side mirror just as Hunter was trying to get control of the vehicle. There wasn’t enough space for him to get into a position where he could pull the driver out of the way, so that left only one option. He leaned over the dead man and opened the driver’s door. Steering the truck with his right hand, he pushed him out onto the dirt track and slipped down into the driver’s seat.
“Sorry, Gerardo,” he said, slamming the door shut and stamping on the gas. “It’s not personal.”
“How could you do that?”
He flicked his head around for a second. “Eh?”
“That poor man.”
“We’re being shot at, Amy! We have to get away!”
“Not just being shot at,” Blanco said, leaning awkwardly over the middle seat and looking between Lewis and Quinn through the shattered rear window. “They’re getting a GPMG out of the Jeep and setting up it up on the hood.”
“Not good,” Hunter said. “That is so not good.”
“They’re firing!” Lewis said.
Quinn screamed, crunching into a ball with her hands over her head and bringing her knees up to her face in one move.
“Get off the track, Max!” Amy screamed.
Rounds peppered the back of their truck, punching holes in the tailgate and blowing out the rear right tire. They all felt it collapse down to the right in response as Hunter struggled to control the vehicle.
More gunfire, chattering behind them. Puffs of smoke from the muzzle of the GPMG back on the jungle track. Fifty mil rounds from the belt-fed weapon traced through the steamy air and pocked the track behind them.
