The Aztec Prophecy

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Lea’s spirit of adventure disappeared when a poison dart tore through the air and thumped into the trunk of a sapote tree twelve inches from her face. “Don’t you give me that spirit of adventure crap!” she said, somehow managing to resist the urge to slap him. “That thing nearly killed me!”

“Would you have preferred the bull sharks?”

“Well…”

“Into the jungle, now!”

Hawke grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the jungle, almost heaving her from her feet as he went. He pounded through the undergrowth as fast as he could, and her view was reduced to a blur as his broad shoulders powered through the tropical foliage ahead of them. Somewhere behind her she could hear the shouts and screams of Wade’s Jaguar Knights as they climbed off their boat and pushed into the jungle on the trail of their prey.

Lea ran faster to keep up with him, feeling his powerful arm pulling on her wrist, urging her forward. She sensed the terrible danger looming behind her — half a dozen men armed with poison darts and blow pipes. They were hunting them like this as part of Wade’s sick Aztec fantasies — playing with their lives simply to fulfil the monstrous delusions of an insane maniac. Her heart pounded from the thrill of the chase as the adrenalin coursed through her body and drove her ever onwards through the sultry vegetation.

Above her head a macaw cried out, started by their heavy footfall as they fled from the self-styled Jaguar Knights. Then a hollow, ghost-like shriek she didn’t recognize — some unknown creature deep in the jungle… It was followed by more cries and whoops as the men closed in on them. A second later she felt a dart whistle past her head and puncture a sapodilla leaf brushing her cheek.

“Jeaaaaus, that was close!”

Hawke glanced over his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Me?” She panted hard with the effort of the chase. “I’m just absolutely… bloody… fantastic, Joe Hawke. Nothing I like better than this sorta thing.”

“Good stuff. Keep it up.”

The look she gave him went unseen. He was ahead of her and had released her hand now in order to clear much thicker vegetation out of their path, but behind them the Jaguars drew ever closer.

“Is that a clearing up ahead I can see?”

“Nope.”

“Joe, they’re almost here.”

Hawke peered over her head along the path they had forged through the undergrowth. “Good.”

“Good?!”

“Sure — look ahead — that clearing you thought you saw is actually a waterfall.”

Lea followed his hand and saw the far bank of a ravine — high, steep rocks, wet and black with water vapor. “This time, please God, let this man be joking.”

“Sorry, but no. Fancy a swim?”

Lea peered over the edge of the waterfall. “Joe, it must be a hundred feet down!”

“No way.”

“You think?”

“I’d say a hundred and fifty.”

She looked at him and bit her tongue. “The guy in the front’s almost here.”

“Stay where you are and I’ll surprise him.”

“Not this again! Why can’t you be the bait for once?”

Then the man who had been leading the hunt reached them. He burst out of the jungle with the blow pipe in his hand and looked almost surprised to see Lea standing right in front of him.

She raised her hands. “Please… I’m unarmed.”

He wiped the sweat from his stubbly face and offered an uncertain grin. “Maybe I have my fun with you first…”

“Ya startin’ on me, ya skanger?”

He looked confused, and then raised the blow pipe to his mouth.

Hawke stepped out of the tree line and rammed the pipe into the back of the man’s mouth. He staggered back coughing and spitting blood, and in his agony he sucked in and swallowed the dart. His eyes widened with terror when he realised what he had done.

Hawke left nothing to chance, and after wrenching the pipe from his mouth he hit him with all the strength he could muster. It was a big, solid jab right in the middle of his face and it exploded his nose as if it were made of modelling clay. The man flew off his feet and smashed down into the jungle floor, catching the roots of a frangipani tree as he landed.

“Layabout,” he said and dusted the blood and dirt from his hands.

Lea rolled her eyes. “So what now?”

“Want to take a shower together?”

She smiled at him. “Don’t mind if I do!”

“Just what I was hoping you’d say.”

Hawke held her hand and they moved to the cliff edge. Behind them they heard the other men thundering closer through the jungle. Everyday with Hawke was a day she felt stronger, and this was no exception. But none of that changed the fact he could be a real mad bastard sometimes.

He looked at her and winked.

This was one of those times.

Lea closed her eyes as they leaped off the edge of the cliff. She felt the warm, humid air rush over her as she tumbled down into the abyss inside the raging waterfall. Now she felt Hawke’s hand slip from hers and she was alone, falling through the void, racing toward the white water turmoil far below.

Reaper reacted in a heartbeat, employing a speedy taekwondo collar-grab defense to knock the man’s arms away and then picked him up by his waistband and collar before piling him through a closed door like a battering ram. The man smashed face-first into a smooth floor of Talavera ceramic tiles and burst open his nose and lips with the force of the landing.

Behind him, Camacho was making good progress against the man with the red bandana around his neck. The former CIA man was a force to be reckoned with, but his bulk slowed him down if a fight went on too long, and Scarlet feared this is what was happening now as Bandana danced around him with a flick-knife in his hand.

Camacho lunged forward a second time, lashing out at the much younger man in the way a grizzly bear swipes his paw, but the man skipped back and laughed. He was mocking his older opponent now, which Scarlet thought would turn out to be a bad idea, and this was proved right when Bandana got cocky and came too close with his blade.

Camacho sidestepped, dodging the blade and then grabbed the man’s wrist to secure the knife away from his body. Before the man could respond, the American piled a square fist directly into the center of the young Mexican’s face and knocked him back off his feet. He dropped the knife and it clattered to the cool tile floor. His blood sprayed up in an impressive arc from his nose as the cumbersome American padded over to his opponent and hooked his fingers beneath the bandana.

He lifted the young man’s head and neck off the floor and raised him up a little, grinning at him. “Just so I don’t have to bend down too far to do this,” he said in his heavy New Jersey accent.

The man’s blood-soaked face was now confused. “Do what?”

Camacho pulled back his right arm and Scarlet winced as the CIA man hit his opponent so hard she thought he might punch a hole through his head. As it was, he merely knocked the man out cold and then pulled himself up to his full height.

The fighting was at an end, and Reaper was impressed with Camacho’s fist-work. He looked at the young Mexican as he rolled unconscious on the tiled floor.

“Something tells me his duck is cooked, n’est-ce pas?”

“It’s a goose, darling,” Scarlet said.

“Sorry,” Reaper said turning to her. “Something tells me his duck is a goose.”

Scarlet rolled her eyes as Lexi approached, wiping blood from a swollen split lip and wincing as she tried to blink a badly bruised eye. “Looks like we did it,” she said.

Outside the guardhouse, they watched as Wade’s slave laborers slowly reappeared from their shanties.

Scarlet frowned. “We need to get over to the main house and find out what the hell’s going on with Hawke and Lea. Maybe they got Wade.”

“I doubt that,” Alex said, pointing up the valley to the hacienda. Just above the ornate roofline of the former monastery, a Bell helicopter was powering up and lifting into the sky.

From the front seat of the ex-army Huey, Morton Wade surveyed the chaos unfolding on his property with no emotion. He had what he needed and he was on his way. Now he peered across the jungle canopy as a god looks upon the creation of his own works. He owned everything to the horizon, after all — this was one of the biggest coffee plantations in southern Mexico.

The Texan had been obsessed with the landscape stretching out before him since he was a young boy. This was the kingdom of the ancient Aztec emperors… those magnificent kings who ruled this part of the world for countless centuries before Cortés and his barbarian thugs sailed from the east with their steel swords and smallpox and wiped out the entire civilization.

Now, the burning plantation slid behind the chopper as they went deeper into the jungle, tracking the contours of the hills as they rose and fell away again. The rise and fall of the hills was a metaphor for his life, he considered. Ups and downs, progress and setbacks… but now it was all coming together. He had lost the coffee plantation in the raid by the ECHO team, but that was of little concern now he was so close to his life’s destiny, plus he could console himself with the thought that the bastard Hawke and the smart-mouth Irishwoman were currently being hunted by the Jaguar Knights through the jungle and stood zero chance of survival.

For a moment he thought he felt something — was that guilt or nerves? Pull yourself together, Morton. The gods demanded sacrifices — Huitzilopochtli needed the blood for the sun, he knew that. But Huitzilopochtli didn’t terrify him in the way Mictlantecuhtli did. The strange skeleton god of the dead mortified him, but in some weird way exhilarated him as well… perhaps he needed that psychiatrist after all.

The serendipity of life amazed him. Searching for the Temple of Huitzilopochtli and not only finding it, but locating… that as well. The room without windows.

As they drew closer to his dreadful discovery, Morton Wade surveyed the jungle once again from the safety of his helicopter. Its violent, noisy rotorwash blew the treetops all over the place as it raced toward the final destination. He closed his eyes and saw the entrance to hell all over again — only this time he had both parts of the key.

This time he would open the gate. He would enter Mictlan, the Aztec Underworld. As he visualized himself entering into the darkness a cold rush went down his spine.

It was too late to stop now.