Down Among the Dead Men

94

When they drew close to the compound, Cristo told them they would have to turn off their flashlights. The tunnels were lit by torches after the next turn.

Beth was surprised. With the kind of money El Santo had to be making through his drug and prostitution rings, you’d think he would have wired the place for electricity.

But since the cult seemed to be living in a kind of netherworld between the old and the new, basing their lives on traditions and rituals that were modeled after some ancient pagan society, maybe torches was the way to go.

What would a good old-fashioned cleansing or ritual sacrifice be without the proper ambiance?

“Wait here,” Cristo said, and started to leave.

Beth grabbed his hand. “Where are you going?”

“I come back soon,” he said, pulling away. Then he darted through the tunnel, stopped at a junction to peek around the corner, then continued on, disappearing from sight.

Beth had butterflies in her stomach. The plan, they had decided, was for Beth to find Jen and the baby and get them out of there as quickly as possible before the ceremony began.

Meanwhile, Ortiz and Vargas would go to the cages and release any women who might be held there, then round up as many of the children as they could find and take them all to safety.

It was an ambitious and maybe even a foolhardy plan, but they thought they might be able to pull it off while all attention was centered on the festivities in the Great Chamber.

Even the guards attended these festivities, Cristo had told them. So if all worked out right, they’d have plenty of time to do what they needed to do and remain undetected.

Maybe.

Based on the story Cristo had told them earlier, it was painfully obvious that such plans didn’t always work.

After several nervous minutes, Cristo returned carrying black hooded robes and gold skull masks and handed them out. As Beth put hers on, she suddenly remembered a Stanley Kubrick movie she’d seen a few years back, where Tom Cruise and Sydney Pollack dressed up in robes and watched people have anonymous sex in a New York mansion. The filthy rich caught up in a decadent fantasy.

It wouldn’t surprise her, she thought, to discover that many of the people who attended this shindig were equally rich-and emotionally empty. People who rationalized their callous indifference to the suffering of others by wrapping it in pseudo-religious hokum.

It would almost be laughable if it all weren’t so deadly serious.

Nevertheless, Beth felt ridiculous wearing this thing. But she had to admit it was a great way to enter the place undetected.

Their backpacks, which were filled with the Jarrito bottles, would have to be left behind. So Vargas and Ortiz stuffed their pockets with as many of the bottles as they could fit. Which wasn’t many.

“Where’s your robe?” Beth asked Cristo.

“The children do not wear robes,” he said, then showed her his skull mask, which was white instead of gold. “Come. The ceremony is about to begin. I show you where they keep Jennifer.”

Feeling the butterflies fluttering away, Beth followed him.