The Death Relic

65

Payne stepped away from the pyramid to identify the source of the sound. But the scope of the building was messing with the acoustics. ‘Is that a chopper?’

Jones listened. He heard a distant rumble. ‘Sounds like it.’

She leaned back on the steps, cocky. ‘Told you he was coming.’

Payne scanned the horizon. ‘You never mentioned a chopper.’

She laughed. ‘Did you think we were going to take a bus? Come on, Jon. Get serious. We’re going to fly out before the Federales arrive.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Speaking of which, that should be any minute now. If I were you, I’d get my friends.’

Jones looked to Payne for instructions. ‘Jon?’

Payne continued to listen. The sound was getting closer. It was definitely a helicopter. ‘Get Petr, but stay hidden. There’s no telling who’s coming for us.’

Jones sprinted towards the east side of the plaza, where Ulster was hiding behind the Temple of the Warriors. Maria was much closer. She was waiting near a small ruin called the Platform of the Eagles and the Jaguars. It was between the Great Ball Court and the west side of El Castillo. She would remain there until Payne or Jones signalled for her to come over. After the violence of the past few minutes, she was inclined to follow their orders.

Payne stared at Tiffany, trying to read her face. ‘If you’re lying to me, I’ll gun you down before your buddy in the chopper has a chance to take me out. You know that, right?’

‘Trust me,’ she said to him, ‘he’s not my buddy. In fact, I have a strange feeling that he told Angel where I was hiding.’

The comment piqued Payne’s interest. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Why? Because Angel found me in the middle of nowhere in less than a day. He couldn’t have tracked me without help.’

‘We found you.’

She laughed. ‘No, you didn’t. You found Hamilton, and only because I sent you an invitation. You wouldn’t have found him if I didn’t want you to.’

‘Maybe Angel followed the same trail.’

‘What trail is that? There’s no connection between Hamilton and me. Absolutely none. Angel would have had no reason to check Hamilton’s credit card. Not like you.’

‘Then how’d he find you?’

‘Someone sent him my picture.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Angel told me before his, um, accident. I checked his phone and confirmed it. He had several photos of me at the campsite, taken with a telephoto lens.’

‘And you think your buddy sent them?’

‘I told you, he’s not my buddy. And yes, I think he sent them.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Why? Because he doesn’t like loose ends, and Angel was a dangerous loose end. Hell, I didn’t even know the bastard was alive until I saw him here. I thought I’d killed him yesterday. My guess is Explorer put Angel on my scent, so we could take him out together.’

Payne furrowed his brow. ‘Together?’

She nodded. ‘Why do you think he brought you to Mexico? He viewed you as the ultimate safety net. If anything slipped through the cracks, he knew you and Jones would handle it. And you did. You cut down Angel’s army in less than twenty minutes.’

‘No one brought us to Mexico. We came here on our own.’

She laughed. ‘You still don’t get it, do you? Explorer has been playing you from the very beginning. He knows you, Jon. He knows how you think. You, Jones, Ulster, Pelati. He needed your help, so he brought you here, one after another.’

Payne glanced at the sky. The chopper was approaching.

‘Bullshit! No one knows us like that.’

‘Really? Then how did I know when you’d show up? How’d I know how to lure you here? I didn’t plan that shit on my own. Explorer told me what to do and when to do it.’

Payne tried to connect the dots, but things weren’t clicking.

‘Think about it,’ she said. ‘He enticed Maria with a job offer. Six hours later, Hamilton was gone, her passport was missing and she had no one to turn to except …’

‘Me.’

‘Actually, no. When he monitored her calls, he thought she would call Jones, not you. He screwed that one up. But you two are connected at the hip, so he knew both of you would come running.’

Payne grimaced. That’s exactly what they had done.

She continued. ‘Without her passport, Maria couldn’t leave the country. Then again, even if she could, she wouldn’t abandon Hamilton because of her daddy issues. Explorer knew that if Maria was given a father figure, she would cling to him like a baby on a tit.’

‘Hamilton was in on this?’

‘Not knowingly,’ she admitted. ‘When I picked him up in Cancún, he honestly thought his life was in danger. And just so you know, he was asking about Maria the entire time. He truly was concerned for her safety.’

‘Great. I’ll be sure to tell her.’

‘Please do. That girl has enough problems already.’

The helicopter was ready to land. He only had time for a few more questions, so he changed the topic. ‘What about Petr?’

‘What about him? We knew you’d call Ulster about the artefacts in the trunk. He’s your go-to guy when it comes to history. We also figured he’d hop on a plane to give you a hand. And guess what? We were right.’

‘But why? Why do you want us here?’

She shrugged. ‘Unfortunately, that question is above my pay grade. I have no idea what he has in store for you. But I’ll admit, I’m kind of curious. I’m assuming it’s something big.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Why? Because Explorer used every trick in the book to assemble four of the top people in their fields, and he did it without you even knowing. Why go to all of that trouble unless it’s to conceal something huge?’

Payne stared at her, suspicious. For someone who had been unwilling to talk up until now, she was suddenly a fountain of knowledge. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘Because Explorer sold me out. I know he sold me out. He led Angel here and didn’t have the decency to warn me. A guy like that can’t be trusted.’

‘And I can?’

She nodded. ‘Pardon me for saying this, but there are a lot of soldiers in the world who are ex-Special Forces. Maybe they aren’t as good as you, but they’re pretty damn close. And I should know because I’ve worked with some of them.’

‘What’s your point?’

‘Explorer brought you here for a reason. My guess is trust.’

‘Trust?’

‘Even though he deceived you — even though he fed you a bunch of lies to get you here — he still feels he can trust you. That tells me a lot. That tells me I can trust you, too.’

‘He trusts me to do what?’

She shrugged. ‘You’ll have to ask him that yourself.’