The Death Relic

60

Jones hustled through the jungle until he was back by Payne’s side. Sweaty, dirty and slightly out of breath, Jones was grinning like a child at an amusement park.

Payne stared at him. ‘Why are you so happy?’

‘This is so much better than shovelling snow.’

‘Good point.’

Jones glanced around the thick grove of trees where they were hiding. He spotted Hamilton but didn’t see Tiffany. ‘Where’s Red?’

‘We broke up.’

‘Damn, Jon. You can’t keep a woman to save your life.’

‘Actually, I let her go so she could end a life.’

Payne explained his rationale, and Jones wholeheartedly agreed with the decision. Although there was some risk in letting her go, they realized that she’d lured them to Chichén Itzá for a reason, and the quickest way to find out what that reason was, was to let her do her thing. In the meantime, if she happened to eliminate a dangerous criminal who might be after them, so be it. They also realized that if she started a major shitstorm, everyone at the site would be in danger. So they pulled out the maps they’d acquired at the visitor centre and planned for the worst.

Jones eyed the different archaeological sets, which were spread out over several square miles of mixed terrain, and realized their best bet was to keep the violence contained in one area. That would allow frightened tourists to flee the battlefield and hunker down in the outlying zones until the carnage eventually stopped. In addition, it would also draw sleepers into the field of play, which would be the easiest way to eliminate them. Fighting a team of armed gunmen was one thing. Fighting a team of anonymous gunmen was quite another. The sooner they saw what they were facing, the better — even if it meant fighting ten shooters at once.

Jones pointed at the main entrance to the site. It was on the western edge of the Great North Platform, which spread out to the north and east. This included El Castillo, the Great Ball Court and hundreds of feet of flat ground between the other ruins. ‘Angel’s standing here. The odds are pretty good that she’s going to engage him somewhere in this zone.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Did you give her a weapon?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then she’ll have to acquire one.’

‘My guess is that won’t be an issue.’

Jones looked up from the map. ‘Hey, Doc, get your wrinkled ass over here. I need your help.’

Hamilton, who had been trying to stay out of their way, trudged over through the weeds. ‘Is there a problem?’

Jones tapped his finger on the map. There was a 980-foot-long path that led from the Great North Platform through the northern wall of the city to a small body of water in the jungle. It was labelled, ‘Cenote Sagrado’. ‘What’s this?’

He looked at the name and smiled. ‘Cenote Sagrado means Sacred Well. It’s also called the Well of Sacrifice. A thousand years ago, when this city was thriving, the Maya used to sacrifice humans and treasures into the cenote in order to honour Chaac, the Mayan rain deity. According to Mayan mythology, Chaac produced rain and thunder when he struck clouds in the heavens with his axe of lightning. In the early-twentieth century, an American archaeologist named Edward Herbert Thompson dredged the well. He found everything from skeletons and skulls to pottery and jade. If you’re interested, he wrote a captivating book about the Maya called People of the Serpent. Really fascinating stuff.’

Jones glanced at Payne, then Hamilton, then back at Payne. ‘We have to keep this guy away from Petr. Can you imagine how many years of our lives they could suck from us?’ To illustrate his point, Jones spoke in a mocking tone. ‘Hey, look at that bird! Speaking of birds, did you know that birds are the descendants of a specialized subgroup of dinosaur? Based on biological evidence, birds are blah, blah, blah …’

Payne fought the urge to laugh. He knew Jones was making a serious point.

Jones stared at Hamilton. ‘Do you understand what’s going on here? Bullets are about to start flying and you’re wasting my time with a history lesson. Meanwhile, I still have no idea what a fucking cenote is.’

‘Sorry. My apologies. I didn’t mean to ramble.’

‘And yet I’m still waiting for an answer.’

Hamilton nodded. ‘A cenote is a local term for a sinkhole that exposes the water table underneath the soil to the surface. This area is filled with them. Some are rather narrow, no more than a foot or two in diameter. Others are rather massive.’

‘And this one?’

‘It’s approximately one hundred and fifty feet in diameter and naturally circular. The limestone cliffs drop nearly seventy feet to the water below. It’s one of the main reasons that Chichén Itzá was built here. An underground river gave the Maya a fresh supply of water.’

‘Is it fenced off?’

Hamilton shook his head. ‘Actually, quite the opposite. There are no barriers at all. Tourists are allowed to walk right to the edge and peer into the water below.’

‘Thanks, Doc. That’s more like it. I can actually use that information.’

He smiled. ‘Glad I could help.’

Tiffany was tempted to jog back to Old Chichén, where she had stashed some weapons around the periphery of the campsite. In her line of work, it was better to be safe than sorry. But the more she thought about it, the less she liked the idea of a long run, since she didn’t know who had tipped off Angel. For all she knew, there was a spy waiting for her at the dig site.

Eventually, she decided to play it safe and hide in the trees that separated the archaeological zones. From there, she hoped to spot as many gunmen as possible. As a trained agent, she knew what to look for in large crowds of people. It went beyond the obvious — weapon bulges, earpieces and inappropriate clothing — she also studied the way people moved: the rhythm of their steps, the way they interacted with others and so on. Over the years, she had spotted more criminals from their body language than everything else combined.

It took less than five minutes to spot one of Angel’s men. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that was a little too tight to conceal his firearm. She also spotted his earpiece as he strolled past the woods in an area known as El Mercado (The Market). Located on the opposite side of the zone from the main entrance, it was one of the easternmost ruins at the site, far from most people. Several rows of stone columns — some as tall as 13 feet — stood in the middle of a manicured grass field. The ancient columns once supported a thatched roof that had protected merchants and their goods from the elements. Unfortunately for the gunman, they offered him little protection from Tiffany. The moment he stopped to admire the pillars, she plucked a pointed rock from the turf and charged forward. Within seconds, she had bashed him on the head. Not once. Not twice. But several times. Over and over again until the white meat leaked out. Only then did she stop to take his gun and wipe the blood splatter from her face and brow.

Thrilled with the silence of her kill, she hooked her arms under his and dragged his lifeless body towards the nearby woods. She planned to dump him in the weeds before she hustled to the other end of the site, where she hoped to kill an unsuspecting Angel by the visitor centre. But it wasn’t meant to be. Ten feet short of the woods, her plan went to shit when she was spotted by a group of teenage girls, who were doing everything in their power to avoid their parents. There was a brief moment of silence as the girls processed the murder scene in front of them, and then they did what Tiffany had threatened to do earlier.

They screamed so loud people could hear it in Florida.

Jones winced when he heard the sound. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Howler monkeys,’ guessed Hamilton. ‘They’re surly creatures that prowl the treetops of Central America. However, I must admit I don’t remember their pitch being quite that high. Normally the sound is more guttural than bloodcurdling.’

‘Shut up!’ Payne ordered as he tried to pinpoint the screams. He knew damn well they were human, but they were tough to locate from his position in the jungle. Trees and vines had a way of distorting sound. ‘I think they came from the east.’

His guess was proved correct by a series of gunshots.

They occurred one after another in rapid succession.

‘Definitely east,’ Payne said.

Jones cursed as he pulled out his map. Normally, he would have considered this great news because there was only one group of ruins to the east. They sat nestled in a tiny corner of the site, isolated from the rest of the Great North Platform like a tiny peninsula in a sea of trees. If a skirmish broke out over there, there was a damn good chance the fighting could be limited to that small quadrant, which would keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

Unfortunately for Jones, these weren’t ‘normal’ circumstances, so he didn’t view this as a positive development. In fact, he viewed it as the worst possible news, because the shootout was taking place next to a temple he had never heard of until moments earlier. A temple he didn’t care about until his friend Petr had whispered its name into his ear.

It was the temple where Ulster and Maria were hiding.