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“Why do you say that?” asked Susan.

“Because that someone's been keeping this place up.”

“Keeping it up?” asked Lobo.

“This kind of jungle would swallow a place like this within twenty-five years. The trees you see today would shed their seeds over the entire site in the spring, creating new trees. In fifteen years those new trees would have grown twenty feet high, their branches doing as much damage to the walls as their roots would to foundations, making the whole place crumble. In another five to ten years mud and vegetation would have covered the ruins. Even that pyramid would look like a hill covered with vegetation and trees. You'd never know what it was. Instead, there's just a few vines lacing columns and some shrubbery on the pyramid's limestone.” The archaeologist nodded. “It's a pretty safe bet to say that somebody's been keeping this up.”

“Who do you think has been—” Susan began.

Cameron clapped his hands once, the cracking sound bouncing off the limestone structures, creating multiple reports echoing in the night, before slowly fading away.

Susan and the SEALs jumped. The soldiers instantly pointed their weapons at the structures.

“What—what
was
that?” asked Susan while Lobo motioned to his men to lower their weapons.

“What a civilization,” he said in awe, walking to the edge of the courtyard. “The priests and nobles had these temples built with remarkable acoustical resonance. They did this to impress the people, who could only come to the temples during ceremonies. They called these places cities of voices. In fact, this whole place is built like an outdoor theater, and this large courtyard is the main stage. Listen.
Suuusssaaannn!
” Cameron hissed in a sinister voice.

Her skin goose-bumped when her name echoed among the ancient structures, like some spirit coming alive from the stone, slowly vanishing after several seconds.

She slapped him on the shoulder. “
Stop that.
This place is creepy.”

“Breathtaking is the word. This is
the
find of the century. Forget discovering Pacal Votan's tomb at the Temple of the Inscriptions in Palenque back in 'fifty-two. This one's in a class of its own.”

Lobo asked Cameron to refrain from making any more loud noises. The SEAL commander expressed concern about having given his position away. Cameron told him that whoever kept this place up probably had heard them hacking their way through the mangled brush and vines and probably knew they were here. That comment didn't make Lobo feel any better, and he ordered his men to form a defense perimeter around the courtyard.

“We'll set up camp right there,” he said, pointing to the edge of the jungle, by their hacked entrance.

“I'm going to check out the place,” said Cameron. “Be right back.”

“We have to conserve batteries. Please turn off the goggles in ten minutes,” said Lobo. “And don't venture too far until we get a chance to secure the entire site in the morning.”

While the SEALs set up their defenses, surveying the area around the tree line, Cameron dropped his backpack next to the rest of the team and ventured toward the other end of the courtyard, by the edge of the crater. Susan followed him, catching up with him halfway, amused at the excitement displayed on his face. With the goggles on she could see a grin painted across his face, reminding her of a child on Christmas morning.

“Are you all right?” Susan asked. “You have this strange look.”

“A cenote,” he said, pointing at the oval-shaped crater, roughly the size of one basketball court, filled with water up to around twenty feet from the edge.

“Excuse me?”

“A cenote. A sinkhole. They're very typical of these regions. Rain seeps through cracks in the limestone bedrock, dissolving areas of softer rock beneath the hard surface crust. Over thousands of years this process creates vast underground caverns roofed with only a thin layer of limestone. This weak roof eventually collapses, leaving this water-filled hole. Cenotes provided an ample supply of water for Mayan settlements away from rivers or streams.”

He walked to one of the freestanding slabs by the corner of the stone courtyard, near the base of the pyramid. It showed an elaborate carving of two men wearing what appeared to be thick pads around their groins, waists, shoulders, elbows, and knees. They both had the same exaggerated profiles and elongated heads that Susan had seen in Cameron's books. One of them held a ball. The carving was inlaid with stones that looked green, but then again, everything looked green with the goggles.

“Jade,” Cameron said, running a finger over the large diamond-shaped piece adorning the headdress of one of the players. “This is priceless.”

“Why did they exaggerate their heads and facial features?”

“That's no exaggeration. The Maya practiced skull deformation. Infants' heads would be locked in wooden frames to distort the development of the skull and achieve the elongated head and flattened brow favored by the royalty and the high priests.”

She made a face. “That sounds sick.”

He shrugged. “Not really. It was just their tradition. They also favored crossed eyes, oftentimes hanging a ball of wax in front of a child's eyes for long periods of time to force the effect. The royalty also filed their teeth to points and filled the spaces with jade or gold.”

“Amazing,” she said, staring at the sculpted limestone. She pointed at the pads on the men and also at the ball. “Is that some kind of Mayan football?”

“Pokatok,”
Cameron said, running a finger over the aged surface, admiring the intricate detail of the relief. “A ball game the Maya played, but not quite for recreation. They used a heavy ball made of rubber, from the area's rubber trees, about half the size of a basketball. They played on a I-shaped stone court. Like soccer, they couldn't use their hands, having to propel the ball with their feet, knees, hips, and waists. I played it once at Copán, on the border between Guatemala and Honduras, with a few of my students and some locals during a research trip several years ago. Very difficult and very bruising. Got our butts kicked by the local Mayan team. During pre-Columbian times, the game had significant religious and political implications.”

“What did they play for? Land? Political advancement?”

Cameron shook his head. “For the right to live. It was played mostly by warriors. The object of the game was to bounce the ball off parrot-head sculptures on the sloping walls flanking the court. The losing team was sacrificed to the gods.”

“I don't really think I want to know how.”

“The victim's back would be broken in order to render him or her immobile. Then the high priest would carve out the victim's heart and hold it up to the gods while it was still beating.”

She kept her eyes on the carvings. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“From the perspective of the Maya it made perfect sense. See, our industrial world promotes the accumulation of wealth, which indirectly makes us fear death because we know we can't take anything with us. It leads us to be too attached to material things, to this world. The Maya, on the other hand, valued the enhancement of the spirit and the birth of ideas. They all knew that life on Earth was a very temporary stage. Dying was considered an honor, particularly if one died while protecting Mayan traditions or being sacrificed to a god. They had nothing to fear, nothing to leave behind but the knowledge that they had served their purpose on Earth and it was now time to travel to the Hunab Ku to achieve galactic synchronization.”

Before Susan could reply, Lobo approached them. “Bedtime, folks. We'll check out the entire site at first light.”

Cameron scanned the area, gave a heavy sigh, and followed Susan to pitch their tents.

2

A light fog lifted off the slow-flowing waters of the Rio San Pedro, hazing the shoreline as a cool breeze blew it into the jungle. A moon in its first quarter hung high from the crystalline, dawning sky, staining the mist with its wan gray light. The indigo tint gave way to shades of crimson and burnt orange as morning broke. Birds chirped. Monkeys howled. The jungle came alive, its sounds mixing with the soft purring of three outboards.

Slowly, like an apparition arising from the grayish cloud hovering over the surface in the twilight of dawn, three rubber vessels broke through the foggy veil, water lapping their sides. A lone figure stood at the front of the lead vessel, inspecting the shoreline with a set of binoculars.

Antonio Strokk concentrated on selecting a landing zone for his team, twenty-five of the most seasoned and loyal operatives he could find, many of them former Spetsnaz operatives—in addition to his sister Celina, who sat next to him in the lead Zodiac reading the amber display of a handheld GPS receiver.

Strokk checked his watch. According to his calculations, the Americans should have reached the target coordinates in the past few hours. Of course, the Americans had the advantage of using helicopters to get closer to the objective—something that the resourceful Celina had been able to figure out through another Internet breach at the FBI, where she had also learned that a team of U.S. Navy SEALs would be escorting the scientists to the site. The short notice, however, had not given the terrorists the time required to set up their own helicopter transport, settling instead for a turboprop cargo plane from an obscure field in south Florida to a strip near the Mexican town of Tenosique, by the border with Guatemala, where he easily bribed local authorities to look the other way while his men deployed the Zodiacs and transferred their gear into the boats.

Now, after ten hours cruising on this winding river, enduring a dozen close encounters with caimans, a snake dropping into the tail boat from an overhead branch, and the unending buzzing of mosquitoes, Celina's GPS receiver finally indicated that they had reached their destination—at least as close as they could get using the river without reaching the Agua Dulce Falls and its majestic but deadly fifty-foot drop. Strokk could hear the distant rumble of the falls.

It was time to get off and start walking.

“How far is it?” he asked when the coxswain cut off the engine as they neared a sandy section of shore, lifting the rear of the engine to keep it from getting tangled in the roots and debris lacing the murky bottom.

Celina looked up, her eyes glistening in the early-morning light. She had dyed her blond hair dark brown to help her blend in with the jungle. “Less than two miles to the northeast.”

The sandy bottom broke the boat's forward momentum as it got within a dozen feet from shore, shortly after entering the murky shadows created by the green canopy projecting over the water. Two of his men were about to jump off to push the rubber vessel ashore when Strokk stopped them. Instead, the former Spetsnaz operative produced a halogen light and flashed it at the dark water, highlighting a half-dozen pairs of coallike eyes on the surface.

“Caimanes,”
said Celina.

Strokk glanced at his nearest operative, a native from Moscow who had never seen a live crocodile in his life, until today. Strokk had found it amusing to watch him inch to the center of the boat when a pair of caimans had gotten too close to the boat around dusk, while the team was just beginning its journey upriver. He now reacted the same way. Strokk grabbed him by the arm. “Your weapon, Petroff.”

The tall and stocky operative, almost twice the size of his superior, handed over a silenced Uzi, which Strokk aimed at the reptiles.

He fired, the multiple spitting sounds matching the splashes that tuned the river's calm surface into a boiling frenzy of dark tails and torsos rushing away from the boats, toward the opposite bank.

He handed the weapon back to his subordinates. “Now get out and push.”

The extra-large operative stared at the weapon in his hands, smoke coiling from the muzzle, before complying.

It took the team ten minutes to disembark, hide the Zodiacs with branches and other debris, and begin to move toward their target.

The seasoned Celina Strokk was point, guiding the group with her GPS as well as her innate ability to operate in the jungle. Five years providing technical assistance to Central American rebels during the late eighties had taught her more than she would ever want to know about jungle warfare.

The morning breeze sweeping through the thick jungle caressed Antonio Strokk's face and neck with the same rhythm as the moss swaying overhead. Strokk, his face painted with camouflage paste, moved through the forest quietly but swiftly, the rest of his team following single file.

Sunlight filtered through narrow breaks in the thick canopy, providing enough illumination for their silent advance. Strokk concentrated on the mission. The longer he spent in the region the more his senses tuned to its sounds, and the easier it became to imitate them. But never as well as Celina, who walked in a deep crouch a few feet in front of him, advancing through dense jungle without using a machete—and without the associated hacking noise it made. Celina swiftly moved branches aside and sneaked through them by twisting her slim body to correspond with the bends in the heavy foliage. As she slipped through openings in the greenery, Strokk would quickly take the branches that she had brushed aside and mimic her body movements, gently passing them to the man behind without letting them snap back, and grabbing the next set of branches that his sister was now using. They continued in this fashion for nearly two hours, covering roughly two-thirds of the distance to their target.

Strokk felt his machete safely strapped to his thick utility belt, and he wished he could use it instead of his bare hands to move the vegetation out of the way—particularly the black palm leaves—but they were too close to the target now. Even though the chance of anyone hearing them chopping foliage was slim, Strokk would not risk giving away their position—particularly to a team of deadly U.S. Navy SEALs.