Blood Sun

24

Ridgeway was collating his resources, calling in favors owed from civil servants and cabinet ministers, as well as discussing his fears with retired senior military officers. Someone had cleaned that private mortuary so well it raised suspicions to the point where he had instructed his team to go beyond their usual fastidious checks. He wanted to know what had happened to his man, Keegan, and why that building was shrouded in such secrecy. And the more he reached out for information, the greater the pressure that came from MI6. It would be a battle of wills between the two security services whether the truth was exposed or buried. One thing he was absolutely certain about was that his government, or rather the key people within it, were involved in some kind of cover-up.

Ridgeway sat with Tom Gordon in his room. Marty Kiernan hovered in the background as the MI5 man unfolded a large map of Central America across the table. He knew he was risking Tom Gordon’s health and mental stability by coming here, but he needed to pinpoint where the explorer and scientist had been with his wife when she disappeared. The room was tense with silence, and Marty could see the prickled sweat on his patient’s forehead as he gazed at the map.

“I have one of my people in the jungle. She has contacted me in the last few hours and believes she is close to an area that is exceptionally dangerous, guarded by armed men, and where your wife might have been before she died so tragically. Thanks to your son’s friend Sayid Khalif, we had sufficient information to convince us that an illegal covert operation is taking place. My agent volunteered for this. She wants to go in. She has no legal backing from me or our government, and I do not want to risk her life needlessly. There is a British Army training team based in the mountains of Belize, where our soldiers are taught jungle warfare. Right now there is a company of Gurkhas there, and if I have to, I will put my job on the line and get those men in to support my agent. But I have to know if this is the place.”

Max’s father gazed at the contours of the map, each swirl a memory of steep climbs and rugged terrain. Like a badly edited video clip made on a handheld camera, snatches of pictures flashed through Tom Gordon’s mind.

Ridgeway spoke quietly. “The boy who died on the London Underground has been identified as having gone there, and his death is still a mystery. But we believe that it’s the information he gave to your son that triggered Max’s disappearance. And if Max has survived, then I’d be surprised if he wasn’t in the same area. So these troops would be put at risk to save your son and help my agent,” Ridgeway said.

There was absolutely no response from Tom Gordon. His eyes were locked onto the map; he was in a world of his own, letting his mind reveal whatever memory could be recovered.

“Was this the area your wife had been in? If Max is there, we think time might be running out for him.”

Tom Gordon’s finger traced a route on the map. “A runner found me.… He came from the mountains, through a cave. He was frightened. He took me to my wife. I tried to save her. I tried … She was so ill.… No doctors … no one … That’s why I ran.”

Ridgeway saw that Tom Gordon’s hand had covered the area where Charlie Morgan was sitting on the edge of violence as volatile as an unstable volcano. He knew he could squeeze no more from the man’s ruined memory, but it was enough. He shook Tom Gordon’s hand and turned to leave.

Marty Kiernan escorted him to the door. “I know this has to be something big for you to be taking these risks, sir, and if there’s any likelihood of Max being in that area, then he’ll be there. The boy’s got guts and stamina-he’s proven himself before. I think there’s a better way of getting armed men on the ground-unofficially-and if anyone can help your agent and Max, then these are the people you need.”

Marty Kiernan had spent a few hours on the telephone. The British government might well have a training team of specialists in the jungles of Central America, but to use them for a live operation could cause a diplomatic incident. If there was a chance to save Max, and if there was fighting to be done, then Marty knew who to call.

Over the years, British soldiers who had trained others in the specialist art of jungle warfare had stayed in the area, married local women and settled down to raise families in the environment that was second nature to them. Most had served fifteen to twenty years in the army and now received a modest pension to supplement whatever work they did. In the modern world of warfare, they would be considered too old to go on active duty-but when the call came from Marty, each of the dozen men went to that special place in his home where he kept his well-oiled and trusted weapons hidden.

Charlie Morgan winced. It was a ragtag army that arrived at the rendezvous point Ridgeway had instructed her to reach. Battered old pickup trucks, ex-army Land Rovers and a quad bike cut through the mud and bush. Some of the men were still close friends; others hadn’t seen each other for a few years, but the more she looked, the more she realized that these were hard-nosed veterans, their skin tanned mahogany from years in the sun. They might have been older than your regular squaddie, but she could see that the men had an understated, deadly efficiency about them. By the time they’d introduced themselves, made a few passing cracks about her being young enough to be their daughter and then started asking for tactical assessments of the target, she knew she was in business. These were the men who had taught others how to fight.

Charlie Morgan, ever practical and self-confident, believed she now had the resources, no matter how meager, to take on the gunmen and whatever else lay in that forbidden zone. Now all she had to do was find Max Gordon in that twisted jungle that ensnared its secrets like a poisonous spiderweb.

Like startled birds, two of the children ran. Somehow they had freed themselves. They ducked and weaved as warriors threw their spears and gave chase for a couple of hundred meters. The kids sprinted for some boulders where bushes hid what must have been a way through. Cries of encouragement turned to alarm, and then screams. Tree Walker and Setting Star tried to break free in their anxiety, but a Serpent Warrior yanked the rope round their necks and pulled them back in line.

“Why have they stopped chasing them? What’s wrong?” Max asked Flint.

“There’s a hummingbird god up there. These kids are too young to know about it.”

Tree Walker gave a final scream of warning-but it was too late.

Max saw the two escaping children suddenly thrown to the ground as if a massive invisible hand had slammed them down. Everyone fell silent.

It made no sense. What had killed those children? He stepped forward; the warriors threatened him with their spears, but he continued walking slowly. They kept him encircled but moved with him, calling for instructions from their warrior leader.

“Don’t be crazy. Boy! You ain’t no jungle god! They’ll kill you if they have to,” Flint warned him.

The Serpent Warrior’s leader ran forward and shouted a command. The spears jabbed closer. Max stopped. He had pushed his luck far enough. But now that he was closer to the children, he could hear a gentle hum of something in the trees.

The children’s bodies were scorched. Red welts across their arms, chests and legs. Max realized that the hummingbird god was an electrified fence hidden from sight. There was a power source somewhere, fueled by what? Was a generator powerful enough? Maybe there was something hidden underground or in one of those caves he could see. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with ancient superstitions-this was modern-day technology being used.

Hours later, after stumbling along pathways hidden by the high canopy, a broad expanse of cleared forest, trapped on each side by mountains, opened up before Max and the others. Layers of mist and smoke hung in the air, seeping upward to escape the treetops. Shafts of sunlight angled into a collection of pyramid-like buildings. Max had been pushed through the trees into a lost city.

He scanned the ground as quickly as possible. How to escape when the time came? Water channels that led down from the mountainside to irrigate fruit and vegetable gardens seemed the best bet. Get across those, through the trees and climb! Young legs, fear and desperation could take you a long way in a hurry.

As the procession of captured children was stopped by the warriors, they saw women-also tethered-tending the vegetable garden and looking at the war party’s victims with expressionless faces. Their half-raised eyes told Max they dared not look too closely. It was fear that kept them under control.

Like bullying nightclub doormen, the guards chivied the children toward an overgrown entrance, an archway that looked like a short tunnel. Its stonework was intact, but, like an unrelenting virus, the jungle clawed at every stone, slithering across the limestone buildings, strangling them in a relentless embrace.

Max was still surrounded by his captors, so he was first through the archway, followed by Flint, Xavier, Tree Walker and Setting Star. Younger children were crying but were being comforted by the older ones. Max could hear the gentle, soothing tones of the Mayan language, which suddenly stopped as the prisoners emerged from the tunnel.

The main area was bigger than a couple of football fields. To the left and right were sloping stone walls, dotted with scowling gargoyles: squashed faces of ancient gods that reminded Max of the totem pole he had climbed in the British Museum-a couple of lifetimes ago, it seemed. Above these walls, steps rose up to create a low, flat-topped building. At the end of the field was a stepped pyramid that Max reckoned was fifty or sixty meters high. Smoke curled from the top, obscuring the summit. There were other buildings, most of them so ancient they were little more than ruins. The complex must have once been very impressive, with its brightly painted colors on smooth lime-plastered walls, but they were now worn away to reveal the underlying blocks, the structures subdued by the elements and the jungle. He could not recognize any of them from his mother’s photographs. Despair squeezed his insides. He had to shake off any soul-destroying depression, or he would be helpless. There must be other buildings he had not yet seen.

Howler monkeys bellowed their supernatural-sounding cries from the dense vegetation that skirted the buildings, like gatekeepers to hell welcoming the condemned.

Max kept looking, scanning each building, each frieze or sculpture depicting scenes from ancient life. He wanted one of the stone-frozen figures to point out where his mother had stood, had her picture taken-had smiled.

The prisoners were brought to a halt. Max’s guards moved away, leaving him separated from the main body of children. Flint was close to him and spoke quietly.

“These were sacred cities. All these buildings were aligned to the heavenly bodies so they could pinpoint planetary cycles. Y’see that smoke up there? That’s where the Vision Serpent is. That’s where they make sacrifices. They spill enough blood, it releases the ch’ulel. Then the shaman goes into a trance and sees the smoke take shape. He summons up one of their gods from the underworld.” He took a wheezy breath. “The Maya sacrifice prisoners of war by cutting their hearts out.”

Max gazed up. A figure stood at the top of the pyramid’s steps. Iridescent feathers plumed out from his clothing, swathed in bands of color. He held a staff of some kind from which swung an incense-laden censer, like a priest in a church. A dull ache spread across Max’s chest. He had brought this on himself in an effort to find the truth; now it stared him in the face-he was going to die.

A chattering flock of red macaws darted across the open space, like droplets of blood splattering against the forest green. Something was happening next to one of the buildings. Other warriors had moved forward, like an advance party, but Max could not yet see who was following them. He heard a whisper. “Chico.”

Max dared a glance over his shoulder and saw Xavier huddled amid the others. His bound hands were raised slightly, trying to point at the new arrivals.

“Not all these guys are Mayan warriors. You see those tattoos? They’re gangster tats. No way these fellas have been here a long time.”

Max looked hard at some of the approaching men. Xavier was right-they looked more like gang members than tribesmen. Before he could give it any more thought, three or four men and a boy who looked very important, flanked by more guards, emerged from one of the darkened passageways between the buildings and walked toward them. They were dressed in a more refined manner than the men who had attacked them in the forest. Swathes of cloth, folded and tucked like skirts with leather belts, were wrapped round their waists, and they each wore what looked like a turban held by a leather thong, studded with green stones and decorated with bird feathers that half hid their shoulder-length hair.

A dozen or more men danced around these important newcomers. Flutes and chest-high drums vied with the shrill cry of clay whistles as ankle rattles whished like dry sand on a tin roof.

The royal-looking group kept their distance, staying about ten meters away from Max and the other captives, but one of the warriors had approached the newcomers and knelt before them, and was explaining something. There was a look of concern on their faces. And then Max heard Tree Walker shout out to them in Mayan.

Flint heard him as well. “He’s telling them you are Eagle-Jaguar, that you cannot be harmed or it’ll bring great misfortune to this place. He’s trying to save you.”

Max looked into Flint’s eyes and knew that being saved was probably not going to be an option.

A guard moved quickly forward and hit Tree Walker with a stout stick across his back, knocking the boy to his knees. One of the fancily dressed people raised a hand and said something. Almost immediately, a young man ran into the arena carrying a ball slightly bigger than a basketball. The guards took over again, separated Xavier, Setting Star and Tree Walker and cut them free from the others.

Max looked at the boy who was with the dignitaries. He was probably a couple of years younger than Max, but there was something about him that he just couldn’t figure out. It was a brief moment of disbelief.

Max called out, “You! Wait!” The celebratory music stopped. He ran a couple of steps toward the younger boy but was stopped by guards who pounced, kicking his legs from beneath him. Max fell hard onto the grass and suddenly felt a spear against the base of his throat. He pointed up toward the boy. “That’s my mother’s,” he said. “Flint! Tell them that the necklace the boy’s wearing is my mother’s!”

Flint hesitated and saw the simple chain that bore the symbol of the sun. “You can’t,” he said. “They think you’re some kind of supernatural creature. They’re going to give you a chance to live. If they know you’re just like the rest of us, they’ll take your head off right now!”

But the younger boy stepped forward, waved aside the guards and ignored a rebuke from the man who seemed to be the boy’s father. He knelt next to Max and spoke quickly, barely above a whisper. His fingers touched the small sun disk at his throat.

“Before I was brought to this valley, I was taught in a school. I understand you. I speak English. This was your mother’s?”

“Yes,” Max said.

The boy looked stricken. “I cannot help you unless you win the game. Stay silent or they will kill you now.”

He got to his feet before Max could ask any more questions. The boy pointed at Flint and spoke in Mayan. Then he turned and joined the others, who walked back to the archway. As Max got to his feet, the boy looked back once and then turned away again.

Max felt a surge of hope. There was someone here who might help him but, more importantly, who also knew of his mother.

Xavier and the others had been pushed into the arena as Flint explained what he had been commanded to tell Max. They were in what was called a ball court, and what looked like a basketball was solid latex. The hard rubber was heavy, and it would bounce high and fast. In this game it was forbidden to use hands or feet-only knees, shoulders, chest and elbows. This ancient game had one purpose-to choose a victim. Once the game started, it would end only when somebody allowed the ball to touch the ground. Then that person would die a horrible death by having their heart cut out.

Flint gazed back toward the pyramid. They could see that the boy and the others had joined the shaman. “Chac Mool,” Flint said. Max stared to where the group stood next to a reclining sculpture that looked like a creature sitting back on its haunches and elbows, its stomach a broad flat surface. Max realized the stains that colored the ancient limestone were blood. “That’s the sacrificial stone,” Flint said.

“ ‘Into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell rode the six hundred …,’ ” Max muttered quietly.

“That’s not Shakespeare,” Flint said, a little uncertainly.

“No. But it’ll do,” Max replied.

Then someone blew a whistle. The game of death was on.

Riga had followed the tracks that Max and the others had left. Every scuff mark told a story, and when he heard the war cries and drums, it was as easy as a stroll in the park to locate the boy he hunted. Skirting the river, he gained high ground, ignoring the discomfort of the wound in his leg, letting the pain be something to beat at every step.

He saw the curtain of bloodred mist that rose from the valley floor as the hot lava sizzled through the wet ground. Like a dragon with bad breath, it continued its hissing roar unabated, as if its tongue were licking the jungle floor.

By the time the warriors had tied their captives, Riga was almost in sight of them. The earth tremor had caught him unawares. Some rocks around him were shaken free and went smashing into the gorge below. It happened so quickly he nearly tumbled from his precarious perch. Pain shot through his thigh, and blood seeped into his trousers-the jolt had torn a couple of stitches. He knew he should not let the wound become infected; it might easily prove fatal in this tropical heat.

If he went back through the cave, he could find a way out and get medical help. But then Max would escape him forever-a thought he considered for hardly an instant. He could find plants to keep the wound clean.

Using a small pair of binoculars to track the warrior group’s movements, he watched as they disappeared under the rain forest’s canopy. It seemed they were heading for that scalding river of fire.

Tightening his sweat rag across the wound, he gripped his rifle and made for the dragon’s tongue.

The ball bounced. Xavier ran like a midfield player and took it on his chest as if preparing to drop it and kick a long pass, but the weight of the ball thudding into him forced the boy to crash down onto his back.

“Don’t let it touch the ground!” Max yelled as he ran forward.

Xavier squirmed, arching his hips, pushing his face into the pungent-smelling rubber that now felt as though it was crushing his rib cage. Max was right there and saw Xavier push his body up with his hands and feet, keeping the ball clear of the ground and trying to flick it toward Max’s uncertain stance. How to stop it from touching the ground? As the ball came clear of Xavier’s body, Max went down on his knees, felt the grass burns cut into his skin, ignored it, caught the ball on his shoulder and pushed himself up as hard and fast as he could, forcing the ball onto the sloping walls, allowing the others to run and take the rebound.

Tree Walker, more muscular than Xavier, used the top of his bicep to hit it back on the sloping wall toward Setting Star, who pivoted like a gymnast, took the ball onto her knees, fell back and flicked it above her head. It was too low, its weight making it impossible to move with any great degree of skill. It would not be long before trying to push the solid ball of rubber would exhaust or injure them.

Guards and warriors whistled and cheered. They beat drums and blew conch-shell trumpets. Their yelling faces and thunderous roars broke through in waves to Max as he fought the deafening sound of pounding blood in his ears. It was like a ribald crowd at an FA Cup final, only there was more to lose than the cup-and there would be no medal for the runners-up.

Xavier had football skills, and if anyone could keep the ball off the ground, he could. He outran Max and Tree Walker, his skinny frame sluicing sweat, his long hair flicking droplets to the ground as he twisted and turned, and on more than one occasion saved each of the others from dropping the ball.

It was, Max realized, an amazing achievement for the slightly built Latino boy. How much longer could any of them keep going in this crippling heat? Who would be the one to die?

Max could see Xavier was tiring. He had retrieved the ball and, in what had to be a near impossibility with a ball that size and weight, bounced it from knee to knee. He cried out, “Max!”

With an effort Max would never have expected of the boy, he got the ball high enough onto his chest, dropped it again onto his knee and then hefted his scrawny leg upward so the ball was in place for a header. He jumped, making contact, and aimed the ball directly to Max.

Then Xavier sank to his knees. He was out of the game. It was down to Max and the other two now. Max struck the ball with his shoulder, and it felt as though he had been punched by someone twice his size. Muscles and tendons would not be able to last much longer. Faces blurred; Max felt giddy. He saw the children screaming, watched as Flint waved his hat and roared encouragement, as the guards in their war paint became a surreal and macabre tapestry.

The ball!

It was in the air. Tree Walker had kicked himself against the side of the wall, powered into it from a low angle and struck it with his elbow. His arm snapped. He writhed in agony.

Setting Star was too far away. She ran like a sprinter out of the blocks. The rising cacophony became deafening. Tree Walker would die. He was the last to touch the ball. She dived in a hopeless attempt to catch the ball and amazingly got an arm to it. It skidded against the side wall, caught the pockmarked face of a gargoyle and spun away into no-man’s-land. None of the players would reach it. Setting Star would die for her brother.

In a startlingly brief moment, Flint saw Max’s face. The whole world stopped for that one blink of an eye as, in some kind of shocked understanding, he realized something about Max had altered. Every muscle in his body had contracted, a surge of power gathered down his back, his shoulders hunched, his eyes narrowed, and his teeth bared into a snarl.

Orsino Flint knew he was looking into the ch’ulel of the beast.

In three catlike strides, covering a huge distance, the ragged boy from England launched himself and leapt like a predator toward the stricken girl and the ball that was now only inches from the ground. There was a collective gasp from the crowd at the shock of seeing the impossible.

Silence fell.

Max’s attack, for that is what it was, never wavered. He stretched out; his sinews demanded he stop. The rush of air told a part of his brain that he was still off the ground.

He was too late!

The ball was on the ground.

Almost.

Max’s fingers curled like a jaguar claw and caught the edge of its weight. No human hand, let alone a boy’s, could stop it from rolling onto the grass. But Max’s did. It dug into the impenetrable, it squeezed the uncrushable, and it threw the ball of death clear from the girl.

The children cried out. The guards and warriors bellowed their approval.

They had their victim. The ball rolled away.

Max Gordon had sacrificed himself.

Riga clawed his way forward. The cheering had stopped, but now the jungle exposed the hidden city, and he followed the watercourses down the hillsides toward the blind side of a high pyramid where smoke and incense swirled across a small group of men who stood before a sacrificial stone.

The tumbling water would obscure any noise he made-not that he intended to make any-and he could see that one of the channels fed a waterwheel in a building adjacent to the pyramid. It had no doors, but the entrance was pitch-black. No light penetrated it. Maybe that was the way to get into this ancient settlement without being spotted.

Riga was no stranger to house-to-house fighting. He made his way down, scanning the ground for Max.

And then he saw him.

The guards had quickly surrounded Max and, as he staggered to his feet, made it clear by pointing their spears that he should move forward toward the huge steps of the pyramid.

Flint ran forward and helped the exhausted Xavier to his feet. “You did well, boy.”

Xavier nodded, grateful for the compliment from the man who had always been an enemy. After a moment, he got his bearings, watching the children run to Tree Walker and Setting Star. Max was already thirty meters away, surrounded by the grinning, joyful warriors. Now there would be blood.

“Max, no …,” Xavier whispered.

“We can’t help him now, son. We have to find a way out of here. There might be a chance when they’re distracted …” Flint did not allow himself to finish the sentence.

“When they kill Max, you mean? No, no, we have to do something. We have to,” Xavier insisted.

But the brief thought of bravely trying to rescue Max was cut short as the guards turned back to Xavier and the others. They were to be herded along as witnesses to the sacrifice.

Max began the long climb upward. The steps were chest-high, and he had to lift himself up with his arms and drag himself up each level. This alone, without the exertion of the ball game, would have exhausted anyone. Perhaps it was designed so that the victim would have no fight left in him once he reached the sacrificial stone at the top of the pyramid.

He had to concentrate! He had to use every breath to feed his body, to hold on to his remaining strength. And each time he climbed higher, he looked around him. If nothing else, he would get to see the surrounding countryside, the other buildings, places his mother might have been. Perhaps she, too, had escaped from this terrible place. The thick curtain of crimson mist was beyond the perimeter of the buildings, and he felt the air grow hotter from the molten lava. The jungle sizzled and he could hear rocks cracking as the lava cooled.

Water tumbled down the hills through the trees and disappeared into the ground. There was no sign of any escape route. The sun was blistering; Max was weak from lack of food and water, and he was desperately thirsty. His knees and elbows were badly grazed and painful, and he could feel the bruises forming where the ball had struck his arms and chest. It felt as if he had been beaten with a baseball bat.

He glanced down and saw the others, under guard, watching him. He did not want to die like this and hoped against hope that at the top of the pyramid, the boy who wore his mother’s necklace might reach out compassionately and save him.

Crunching fear twisted his stomach. Had his mother been sacrificed? Was this the terror his father had run away from?

If you’ve got one breath left in your body, then you have a chance. Don’t die like a lamb to the slaughter, Max. Keep fighting, son. It’s your life. Don’t let the killers and the thugs take it easily from you.

Dad’s voice. Why hadn’t he fought?

Two steps left.

He looked around. The panoramic view showed the mountains, the river, the smoldering, troubled volcano and the far horizon, where another world lay hidden beneath the rim of the earth. A crease in the tree canopy looked wrong. It was a strange shape, a gaping hole in the natural curvature of the treetops. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and stared into the glare. It was a camouflaged satellite dish nestling in the tree line above a partly exposed smaller building.

The breeze caught his face. It had changed direction. The incense and smoke cleared. He looked up into the eyes of the waiting men. Any thought of fighting his way clear and finding an escape through whatever lay at the back of this pyramid was snatched away. The shaman wore a painted wooden animal mask, some kind of mythical creature whose curved open jaw exposed vicious teeth like a snarling wolf. Even the boy wearing his mother’s pendant looked frightened. And, unexpectedly, there were four other men in attendance-guards. The shaman lifted the sacrificial knife and pointed it at Max. There was no need for him to climb the next couple of steps. Two men jumped down and hauled him up.

Max shuddered, fear rippling through him.

A lamb to the slaughter.

This is how they killed lambs. They cut their throats. Did they feel fear? Did they smell the blood of others? Max felt revulsion as he thought of the times he had seen lambs playing in the fields around Dartmoor High, because, like them, herded to the slaughterhouse, he was now helpless.

He could smell the men’s sweat, and the sweet, cloying incense stung his eyes. It was a nauseating mixture. The shaman was chanting something quietly beneath his breath. The guards waited, ready to do his bidding the moment an order was given. The others sat on stone benches awaiting Max’s execution, a cruel entertainment to satisfy an ancient ritual.

Only the boy stood. Max’s mouth was dry from the exertion and the heat, and now the smoke scratched the back of his throat. He needed to buy time. Every single second was vital now, because the longer he could delay the inevitable, the greater the chance of escape-somehow.

He gazed at the boy. “Don’t let them kill me yet. Please, before I die, tell me what happened to my mother.”

The boy turned to his elders, spoke quickly to them, and Max saw them nod.

Hope restored.

And then it got better. The boy offered Max an animal-skin water bag. Max grabbed it before anyone could change their mind and gulped as much water as his breath would allow. That water was high-octane fuel to his starved body. The shaman snatched it away and commanded the guards, who then grabbed Max’s wrists.

“Wait! Not yet!” Max shouted.

Skin scraped from his back as they manhandled him onto the stone sacrificial table, his wrists and ankles held by the four men. The shaman put his hand on top of Max’s chest-to feel the heartbeat. Max squirmed. There was no need to feel for his heart as far as Max was concerned; it was banging so hard it would burst out of his chest of its own accord.

The shaman recoiled, pulling back his hand as if burned, said something to the other men, who looked scared, and then took a step backward.

The boy spoke again. “He says you are a creature of power and that he must call on all the forces of the Vision Serpent to destroy you. He will take your heart and burn it. It is the only way your ch’ulel can be sent back to the otherworld.”

Max twisted his head, trying to appeal directly to the boy, wanting eye contact. “Don’t let him kill me! Come on, mate. Help me out here! Come on!”

“I cannot,” the boy said, lowering his face to Max’s. His mother’s pendant swung close to Max’s eyes. Max struggled, but the men held him firmly. It couldn’t end like this!

“Your mother came here, by mistake. She was going to join your father on the other side of the mountains. At the sea. Have you seen the ocean?”

“What?”

“I have never seen it. Your mother told me many stories about it. I was sick. Your mother helped me. I was only a boy.”

Max had to concentrate more than he ever had before. He had to understand what was going on-what had happened. This wasn’t a nightmare he was going to wake up from. This was moments before his own death.

Max cried out in despair and fear. He could not move a muscle. Now the men put their weight on his legs as he bucked again. The shaman said something to the boy, but he responded with a stinging reply, and the shaman obediently waited for the moment when he could plunge the knife into Max and cut out his heart.

“My mother! Tell me!” Max begged.

“Before the people came here and took the children’s parents away, everyone lived together. We are the last royal family of the Maya. We are descendants of the great kings. Many of those warriors do not belong in this valley. They were brought here by the outsiders. They made us their prisoners. It is because our people have something in our blood these men want.”

The boy gazed away across the darkening sky, as if seeking a way for his memories to escape. He quickly slipped the pendant over his head and curled it into Max’s open palm, his wrist held tight by the shaman’s henchmen.

“Your mother got sick. She saved me, but we could not save her. There was a white man here, the one who controlled everything. He had a helicopter, but he would not take your mother. He left her to die. He did not want her to speak of him. Two of our people took her through the Cave of the Stone Serpent, but only one survived. Your mother told us that if we could find your father, he would get her to a doctor.”

“My father?” Tears welled in Max’s eyes.

The boy nodded. “She said he was beyond the mountains. Your father carried her for days through the jungle. He ran until he could run no more. At the place where the white stone stands at the ocean. That is where he buried her. That is all we know.”

Dad ran. He ran to save her! Farentino lied! I got it wrong. Dad had run to save her!

The boy touched Max’s forehead. “It is the time we call blood sun, when the sacrifice must be made. Go to your mother. She is waiting for you in the otherworld. Do not be afraid.” He stepped back.

This was it.

The shaman raised the knife, the light glinting on the blade; a wave of sound came from below as the children, Flint and Xavier screamed for Max’s life.

Max lifted his head. Tears stung his eyes. He gripped the pendant until it cut into his skin. Mum, Dad. I’m sorry! Please help me. Then that moment of pure love and desperate fear deserted him.

Anger erupted like a volcano unleashing its power. He would not die like a lamb; he would not show how scared he was-he wouldn’t! He would leave them with the foul taste of a curse in their superstitious lives. Thunder rolled around the mountain peaks. The air was still. He sucked in a lungful and spoke each word with as much force as he could muster. “I am wayob! I am Eagle-Jaguar! And my father will kill you all!” he snarled.

He spat as hard as he could into the shaman’s face. The shaman’s head snapped back, blood splattered the group and the guards released their grip.

The sacrificial priest was dead.