The Aztec Code (6 page)

‘Then why not take Jonah too?' said Coldhardt. ‘More profitable.'

‘Kabacra, maybe,' said Con. ‘He might have kidnapped Tye to get a hold over you.'

Motti shook his head. ‘If he knows we ripped him off, why not grab one of us from this hotel? Hell of a lot easier.'

‘It doesn't sound like it was much trouble getting inside the ranch.' Coldhardt fixed him with a glare. ‘I shall expect a comprehensive report on the state of those security systems upon your return to the estate.'

‘If you'd only let me oversee the guys who installed them like I asked –'

Something pale and dangerous flashed in Coldhardt's eyes. ‘Never question my decisions, Motti.'

Motti nodded mutely.

‘In any case, Jonah's found us something to go on,' Coldhardt continued. ‘One of the intruders left this behind.' He tapped a key to wake up his laptop, and the image of a circular amulet made of jade came up big on the screen. Engraved on the front was some sort of cartoonish birdman, with a big beak, muscular wing-arms and titchy legs like the artist had run out of room.

‘The design is antique Mesoamerican,' Coldhardt informed them. ‘It is centuries old, and almost certainly worn by a particular sect of Aztec priests.'

‘Aztecs,' Patch realised. ‘Them people Cortes conquered, right?'

‘Lived in Mexico, five or six hundred years ago,' Con agreed. ‘Big empire, big on sacrifice –'

‘Big whoop,' Motti put in sourly. ‘Back to the amulet. Do we think Tye was taken by an art collector?'

Coldhardt shook his head. ‘I believe this particular symbol has been adopted by a secret society calling themselves Sixth Sun. Their beliefs are apparently influenced by those of the Mesoamericans.'

‘What, they believe in feathered serpents and jaguar men and all that crap?' Motti frowned. ‘Gotta be crackpots.'

Con looked less amused. ‘If they are responsible for breaching our defences and kidnapping Tye, they could be very dangerous crackpots, no?'

Patch liked the sound of this less and less. ‘How'd you know about them, Coldhardt?'

‘It was when I heard of Sixth Sun's interest in Cortes's sword some time ago that I became certain the weapon's existence was more than just rumour. Naturally I checked them out, just as I would any business rival.' Coldhardt's face clouded slightly, enough to put the wind up Patch. ‘In this case, it seems secret society really does mean secret. I could find out next to nothing about them.'

Con shrugged. ‘But if they have links with Kabacra, they must be in the arms trade, no?'

‘Whoever they are,' said Patch fiercely, ‘we've got to get to these Sixth Sun-of-a-bitches and get Tye back, fast!'

Coldhardt ignored him. ‘Motti, a taxi is waiting outside reception to take you to the airstrip at El
Péten. You'll take the six a.m. flight back to New Mexico and go straight to the base to check security. I want to know how these people breached our defences.'

Motti raised his eyebrows. ‘Thought I was s'posed to work on getting you into Kabacra's place, once you found it?'

‘Plans change. Go.'

Motti nodded. ‘Am I gonna have to nursemaid Jonah, too?'

‘He is already using his computer skills to scour the Internet for further information on Sixth Sun. Now, get on with it.'

Dismissed, Motti slouched from the room.

‘What about the rest of us?' wondered Patch.

‘We still have our other business to attend to,' Coldhardt replied, closing up the laptop. ‘Namely, this meeting with Kabacra. Thanks to Patch's work at the nuclear complex, we now know the whereabouts of his base of operations.'

Patch frowned. ‘What did I do?'

‘It seems the number code you cracked with the bit-buster – 15-30-90-15 – was not picked at random. Turns out a similar series of numbers was imprinted on my reconnaissance photos of the nuclear power station – precise latitude and longitude co-ordinates for the location.'

Con raised an eyebrow. ‘So Kabacra's code was a set of co-ordinates, yes?'

He nodded. ‘Located at 15′ 30″ north, 90′ 15″ west in the middle of Guatemala is a large colonial-style mansion. The locals say the owner is a foreigner
with a scarred face.' He looked at them both. ‘I have invited all three of us round to deliver certain of his missing swords in person.'

‘No wonder you don't need Motti.' Con smiled. ‘We can walk in through the front door.'

‘So you
were
serious about giving them swords back.' Patch sighed. ‘Are you gonna 'fess up that we nicked 'em?'

‘No. Merely that we have located them, and wish to return them to their rightful owner. I want to put Kabacra in a generous frame of mind. But if he is not prepared to give, then we will take.' He looked at them both, his eyes like cold stones. ‘Acquiring Cortes's sword has to be our top priority.'

Along with getting Tye back again
, Patch willed him to add.

But Coldhardt's mind was clearly elsewhere. ‘Con, book the best car you can find for seven o'clock this morning. Oh, and just so you know – Kabacra has warned me that at the first sign of a double-cross we shall be taken and executed by a firing squad in the grounds.' Coldhardt leaned forwards. ‘It goes without saying, we must play this one
very
carefully.'

‘Play?' echoed Patch. ‘Sounds like this Kabacra don't know the meaning of the word.'

Con looked knowingly at Coldhardt. ‘Then we must teach him – yes?'

Jonah stared blankly at his PC, eyes stinging, head still hurting like hell. He'd been online for hours, breaking through firewalls and security protocols, trawling through encrypted postings from all kinds of weird
and worrying newsgroups, trying to find some trace of Sixth Sun's existence. But about all he'd dug up after near-enough twelve hours was some background on the amulet design and a possible reason as to how Sixth Sun came by their name. He felt so guilty, just sitting round while Tye was God-knew-where, so useless and frustrated that he couldn't find them another lead –

‘Yo, geek!' came a holler from downstairs. ‘Your nursemaid's here. Where are you?'

‘Mot?' Jonah jumped up from his chair and gasped as the world rocked about him. The back of his head hurt so much he felt sick. He sat down on the bed before he
fell
down.

‘Hey.' Motti was standing in the doorway dressed in washed-out black, a distressed
Punisher
logo screaming from his T-shirt, a smudge of stubble infringing on his goatee. He seemed concerned, and Jonah felt pathetically grateful that he should care. ‘You look dog rough, man.'

‘I know.' It all spilled out of him, everything that had happened last night. The only stuff he skipped was the close-call-clinch with Tye and the mysterious vault in the wine cellar. Motti listened in silence, nodding from time to time, his face grave.

‘I let Sixth Sun take her, Mot,' Jonah finished hoarsely. ‘I screwed up. Maybe if you or Con had been here –'

‘C'mon. You think I didn't spend the whole of the flight over here blaming myself for them getting past security?' Motti sat down in the chair. ‘I got scanners, I got motion sensors, I got microwaves … I got goddamned
Canada geese with spy cams wrapped round their beaks –'

‘You do?'

‘Well, no, but I thought about it. Look, geek, it ain't no good blaming ourselves.' He snorted. ‘So let's blame Coldhardt instead. There's more than five hundred acres to police here, man, including a goddamned river. And does he let me supervise the security installations? No, he's gotta get contractors in …'

Jonah thought of the vault hidden down in the wine cellar.
Tye was right
, he thought,
he didn't want you to see
. And for now, Jonah decided to keep quiet about it – he had to be in enough trouble with Coldhardt already.

‘Could the contractors have sold the details of security here to Sixth Sun?' he wondered.

‘Con wiped their memories with her hypnotism act. They won't remember jack about this place.' Motti shook his head bitterly. ‘Nah, Sixth Sun musta had the place under surveillance for some time. We were here, what, four days before Coldhardt sent us off to Guatemala. That ain't long enough to test all the sensors, the alarms, the infra-red …'

‘So they'd have known the place wasn't totally secure yet,' Jonah realised. ‘But how'd they find out Coldhardt was setting up here at all? And why take Tye?' He picked up the amulet from his bedside table and tossed it over. ‘They took a piece of me. But at least I got something in return.'

‘Saw this on Coldhardt's computer,' said Motti, studying the amulet. ‘Looks old. Real antique. Guess Coldhardt attracts a better class of housebreaker.'

‘Crazy thing was, one of them seemed more like a professor or something than a burglar. Short little guy.'

Motti looked at the design on the front. ‘Birdwatcher maybe?'

‘Apparently that's a hummingbird.' Jonah rubbed the back of his neck, felt the muscles all bunched up there. ‘It features on a lot of Aztec pottery and jewellery and stuff. Aztec warriors believed that when they died in battle or got sacrificed, they would transform into hummingbirds and flutter off to join the Sun God.'

‘Sounds fun,' said Motti. ‘What kind of outfit's gonna want that as their emblem?'

‘I've been reading up on it – Aztecs were big on blood sacrifice. They killed thousands of people each year, even their best warriors. The priests chopped out their hearts while the victims were still alive.'

‘Nice.'

‘Creepiest thing is, the victims were cool with it. They believed that by giving their life force to the gods, they would go to heaven and live with them.

Motti snorted. ‘Eternity as a hummingbird? You can keep it.' He looked down at the amulet. ‘Coldhardt said priests would have worn these. So is that what these guys think they are – priests or something?'

‘Priests or warriors,' Jonah agreed. ‘Or maybe both …'

‘Anyways.' Motti chucked the amulet on to the bed. ‘You find out anything a little more current that could help us?'

‘Not really,' Jonah admitted. ‘But get this.' He crossed woozily to the computer and called up a page in Explorer. ‘Apparently, the Aztecs had this weird calendar going on. Believed that the history of the world could be divided into cycles of hundreds of years, that they called Suns. And at the end of each Sun, the Earth was pretty much wiped out by a different disaster – flamed up one time, flooded by water another … and humanity only just survived.'

Motti fidgeted impatiently. ‘Just how bad
was
your knock on the head, geek?'

‘Right now, we're meant to be living in the fifth cycle of creation – and the last. The age of the Fifth Sun. The Aztecs reckoned this age would come to an end in the twenty-first century with a load of mega-earthquakes. No get-out for the human race this time. The end.'

‘So, what,' said Motti, ‘these guys call themselves Sixth Sun 'cause they think they're going to cheat the predictions and see in a new age?'

‘Could be. But what kind of new age would it be?' Jonah frowned, staggered back over to his bed. ‘Suppose it depends if they're priests or warriors …'

‘Whatever the hell they think they are,' said Motti, getting up. ‘How come they need Tye? As a hostage to use against Coldhardt?'

‘Then why not take me along too?' said Jonah. ‘Two hostages are better than one. They just beat me up and dumped me.'

‘They got taste,' Motti joked. ‘Or else not enough room in their transport. Their best chance of getting past the defences was if they took a chopper, and that
would mean limited space …'

‘Oh God,' said Jonah. ‘I did see a helicopter a bit before – but it was miles away.'

‘Nah. You'd have heard it touch down.'

‘But we … we were down in the cellar.'

Now Motti's eyes widened. ‘You and
Tye
were down in the cellar?'

Jonah blushed. ‘We just … fancied some wine to drink.'

‘Uh-huh.' Motti's voice had hardened, he clearly didn't believe a word of it.

‘It wasn't like that, Mot,' said Jonah, getting to his feet – and wincing as the world pitched and tilted.

‘Just stay in bed, lover-boy,' said Motti gruffly, getting up too. ‘I'll go out and see if I can find any evidence of that Sixth Sun 'copter. And you'd better hope I turn up a better lead than anything
you've
found so far.'

He stalked from the room and shut the door behind him. Jonah curled up on the bed and closed his aching eyes. ‘I'm hoping,' he breathed. ‘God, am I hoping.'

Con sat in the front of the Range Rover, shooting a pained glance at the chauffeur every time he took a bend too fast or drove over one of the many deep ruts in the road. He was a local, stuffed into an ill-fitting uniform and clearly wishing he was a thousand miles away. His presence was a constant unpleasant reminder that Tye had been taken from them.

Poor, serious Tye, always agonising over everything instead of milking the moment for all it was worth. It didn't seem possible to Con that she might never see her again.

She glanced over her shoulder at Patch and Coldhardt but they hadn't shifted; one wearing out his good eye and blasting both ears with his Game Boy, the other apparently asleep. Con sighed. Coldhardt looked so much older when he slept. Frail and vulnerable.

The road was near deserted as they climbed and swooped through the dramatic landscape of Baja Verapaz. They had driven for hours along the Carretera al Atlántico, scrubby bush and cacti slowly giving way to lush pine forest and alpine meadows. Now, as they descended into the heart of the Salamá
valley, there was an almost sinister stillness about them. Con's unease grew as the car drew inexorably closer to Kabacra's hidden lair. Hemmed in by parched hillsides, the hard, featureless sky like pale ceramic high overhead, she felt more and more isolated from the real world.