The Death Relic (39 page)

He shrugged it off. ‘I’ve been called worse.’

She continued. ‘Actually, now that I think about it, I’m glad you gave the order to pull back. I’ve learned more about you in those three seconds than I could in a hundred war stories.’

‘Is that so? What did you learn?’

She stood from her hiding spot. ‘If you don’t have the balls to shoot an armed killer, then I know you don’t have the nuts to shoot an unarmed woman.’

He stared at her. ‘Try me.’

She smirked at him. It was the same smirk she had flashed at the security camera in the petrol station. It let him know that she had figured him out. ‘And based on your indecision, I know you were
this
close to giving the order. That means if I make a play for Angel, you aren’t going to stop me. In fact, I’d be willing to bet you’ll give me support.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t. But it would be nice.’

She tossed Payne an extra clip, then darted through the trees on her way to find Angel. She’d had missed the chance to kill him the day before. She wasn’t about to screw up again.

Meanwhile, Hamilton remained behind. He sat there in silence, studying Payne like a poker player looking for tells. After several seconds, Payne glanced at him and winked.

Hamilton laughed. ‘I’ll be damned! You played her. You gave the order
not
to shoot in front of her, because you knew how she’d react. You knew she’d go after him.’

Payne fought the urge to smile. He didn’t want to gloat.

Jones hustled through the jungle until he was back by Payne’s side. Sweaty, dirty and slightly out of breath, Jones was grinning like a child at an amusement park.

Payne stared at him. ‘Why are you so happy?’

‘This is
so
much better than shovelling snow.’

‘Good point.’

Jones glanced around the thick grove of trees where they were hiding. He spotted Hamilton but didn’t see Tiffany. ‘Where’s Red?’

‘We broke up.’

‘Damn, Jon. You can’t keep a woman to save your life.’

‘Actually, I let her go so she could
end
a life.’

Payne explained his rationale, and Jones wholeheartedly agreed with the decision. Although there was some risk in letting her go, they realized that she’d lured them to Chichén Itzá for a reason, and the quickest way to find out what that reason was, was to let her do her thing. In the meantime, if she happened to eliminate a dangerous criminal who might be after them, so be it. They also realized that if she started a major shitstorm, everyone at the site would be in danger. So they pulled out the maps they’d acquired at the visitor centre and planned for the worst.

Jones eyed the different archaeological sets, which were spread out over several square miles of mixed terrain, and realized their best bet was to keep the violence contained in one area. That would allow frightened tourists to flee the battlefield and hunker down in the outlying zones until the carnage eventually stopped. In addition, it would also draw sleepers into the field of play, which would be the easiest way to eliminate them. Fighting a team of armed gunmen was one thing. Fighting a team of anonymous gunmen was quite another. The sooner they saw what they were facing, the better – even if it meant fighting ten shooters at once.

Jones pointed at the main entrance to the site. It was on the western edge of the Great North Platform, which spread out to the north and east. This included El Castillo, the Great Ball Court and hundreds of feet of flat ground between the other ruins. ‘Angel’s standing here. The odds are pretty good that she’s going to engage him somewhere in this zone.’

‘Agreed.’

‘Did you give her a weapon?’

‘Nope.’

‘Then she’ll have to acquire one.’

‘My guess is that won’t be an issue.’

Jones looked up from the map. ‘Hey, Doc, get your wrinkled ass over here. I need your help.’

Hamilton, who had been trying to stay out of their way, trudged over through the weeds. ‘Is there a problem?’

Jones tapped his finger on the map. There was a 980-foot-long path that led from the Great North Platform through the northern wall of the city to a small body of water in the jungle. It was labelled, ‘Cenote Sagrado’. ‘What’s this?’

He looked at the name and smiled. ‘Cenote Sagrado means Sacred Well. It’s also called the Well of Sacrifice. A thousand years ago, when this city was thriving, the Maya used to sacrifice humans and treasures into the
cenote
in order to honour Chaac, the Mayan rain deity. According to Mayan mythology, Chaac produced rain and thunder when he struck clouds in the heavens with his axe of lightning. In the early-twentieth century, an American archaeologist named Edward Herbert Thompson dredged the well. He found everything from skeletons and skulls to pottery and jade. If you’re interested, he wrote a captivating book about the Maya called
People of the Serpent
. Really fascinating stuff.’

Jones glanced at Payne, then Hamilton, then back at Payne. ‘We
have
to keep this guy away from Petr. Can you imagine how many years of our lives they could suck from us?’ To illustrate his point, Jones spoke in a mocking tone. ‘Hey, look at that bird! Speaking of birds, did you know that birds are the descendants of a specialized subgroup of dinosaur? Based on biological evidence, birds are blah, blah, blah …’

Payne fought the urge to laugh. He knew Jones was making a serious point.

Jones stared at Hamilton. ‘Do you understand what’s going on here? Bullets are about to start flying and you’re wasting my time with a history lesson. Meanwhile, I still have no idea what a fucking
cenote
is.’

‘Sorry. My apologies. I didn’t mean to ramble.’

‘And yet I’m still waiting for an answer.’

Hamilton nodded. ‘A
cenote
is a local term for a sinkhole that exposes the water table underneath the soil to the surface. This area is filled with them. Some are rather narrow, no more than a foot or two in diameter. Others are rather massive.’

‘And this one?’

‘It’s approximately one hundred and fifty feet in diameter and naturally circular. The limestone cliffs drop nearly seventy feet to the water below. It’s one of the main reasons that Chichén Itzá was built here. An underground river gave the Maya a fresh supply of water.’

‘Is it fenced off?’

Hamilton shook his head. ‘Actually, quite the opposite. There are no barriers at all. Tourists are allowed to walk right to the edge and peer into the water below.’

‘Thanks, Doc. That’s more like it. I can actually use that information.’

He smiled. ‘Glad I could help.’

Tiffany was tempted to jog back to Old Chichén, where she had stashed some weapons around the periphery of the campsite. In her line of work, it was better to be safe than sorry. But the more she thought about it, the less she liked the idea of a long run, since she didn’t know who had tipped off Angel. For all she knew, there was a spy waiting for her at the dig site.

Eventually, she decided to play it safe and hide in the trees that separated the archaeological zones. From there, she hoped to spot as many gunmen as possible. As a trained agent, she knew what to look for in large crowds of people. It went beyond the obvious – weapon bulges, earpieces and inappropriate clothing – she also studied the way people moved: the rhythm of their steps, the way they interacted with others and so on. Over the years, she had spotted more criminals from their body language than everything else combined.

It took less than five minutes to spot one of Angel’s men. He was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt that was a little too tight to conceal his firearm. She also spotted his earpiece as he strolled past the woods in an area known as El Mercado (The Market). Located on the opposite side of the zone from the main entrance, it was one of the easternmost ruins at the site, far from most people. Several rows of stone columns – some as tall as 13 feet – stood in the middle of a manicured grass field. The ancient columns once supported a thatched roof that had protected merchants and their goods from the elements. Unfortunately for the gunman, they offered him little protection from Tiffany. The moment he stopped to admire the pillars, she plucked a pointed rock from the turf and charged forward. Within seconds, she had bashed him on the head. Not once. Not twice. But several times. Over and over again until the white meat leaked out. Only then did she stop to take his gun and wipe the blood splatter from her face and brow.

Thrilled with the silence of her kill, she hooked her arms under his and dragged his lifeless body towards the nearby woods. She planned to dump him in the weeds before she hustled to the other end of the site, where she hoped to kill an unsuspecting Angel by the visitor centre. But it wasn’t meant to be. Ten feet short of the woods, her plan went to shit when she was spotted by a group of teenage girls, who were doing everything in their power to avoid their parents. There was a brief moment of silence as the girls processed the murder scene in front of them, and then they did what Tiffany had threatened to do earlier.

They screamed so loud people could hear it in Florida.

Jones winced when he heard the sound. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Howler monkeys,’ guessed Hamilton. ‘They’re surly creatures that prowl the treetops of Central America. However, I must admit I don’t remember their pitch being quite that high. Normally the sound is more guttural than bloodcurdling.’

‘Shut up!’ Payne ordered as he tried to pinpoint the screams. He knew damn well they were human, but they were tough to locate from his position in the jungle. Trees and vines had a way of distorting sound. ‘I think they came from the east.’

His guess was proved correct by a series of gunshots.

They occurred one after another in rapid succession.

‘Definitely east,’ Payne said.

Jones cursed as he pulled out his map. Normally, he would have considered this great news because there was only one group of ruins to the east. They sat nestled in a tiny corner of the site, isolated from the rest of the Great North Platform like a tiny peninsula in a sea of trees. If a skirmish broke out over there, there was a damn good chance the fighting could be limited to that small quadrant, which would keep civilian casualties to a minimum.

Unfortunately for Jones, these weren’t ‘normal’ circumstances, so he didn’t view this as a positive development. In fact, he viewed it as the worst possible news, because the shootout was taking place next to a temple he had never heard of until moments earlier. A temple he didn’t care about until his friend Petr had whispered its name into his ear.

It was the temple where Ulster and Maria were hiding.

Angel heard the screams, then a series of gunshots. He immediately used his radio to find out what was happening. They spoke in Spanish. ‘Who is shooting?’

‘The Devil,’ answered Edgar, one of his gunmen.

‘Where?’

‘East of the pyramid. She just killed Pedro with a rock.’

‘A rock?’

‘She bashed in his head.’

Angel made the sign of the cross. ‘Can you see her right now?’

‘Not this moment.’

‘Why not?’

‘She has me trapped behind a pillar.’

‘Trapped? Are you
sure
she’s still there?’

‘Pretty sure.’

‘Make damn sure!’ he ordered. ‘I won’t send anyone to help unless I’m
sure
she’s there. We can’t let her slip past us.’

Fearful of Angel’s violent reputation, Edgar reluctantly agreed. He took a deep breath then peeked around the stone column, only to find Tiffany standing 20 feet away with her gun raised. His heart sank at the sight.

‘Shit,’ he mumbled.

Angel heard Edgar’s final word over the radio. It was followed by a gunshot to the east, then radio silence. After a few seconds, he nodded his head in understanding.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Now we know for sure.’

Payne and Jones sprinted through the jungle until they reached El Mercado. They found Pedro’s body 10 feet from the edge of the trees. He was missing his weapon, his radio and a chunk of his head. They assumed Tiffany was responsible for the scene.

Jones was impressed. ‘She has some skills.’

Payne spotted a second body. It was crumpled next to a pillar on the other side of the market. He went over and plucked the earpiece from Edgar’s ear. ‘A lot of skills.’

Jones surveyed the area. She was nowhere in sight. ‘Now what?’

‘Check on Petr and Maria. Make sure they’re OK.’

‘And you?’

‘I’ll watch your back.’

Jones nodded, then ran across the plaza towards a large ruin.

Known as the Temple of the Warriors, the building features a stone temple on top of three stacked tiers that resemble the bottom half of a pyramid. A Chac Mool is positioned between the temple and the main stairway that leads to the ground below. The complex is fronted by hundreds of carved columns depicting warriors. At one time the columns were painted in bright colours, but now the pigment is barely visible in the afternoon sun.

Jones ignored the ‘warriors’ and the restraining rope protecting them from the general public. He dashed through a gap on the right-hand side of the complex and made his way to the back of the bottom tier, which was shaded by trees and concealed from the rest of the site. According to Ulster, this was where he and Maria would be hiding.

‘Don’t shoot,’ whispered Jones as he inched his head around the corner. He knew them well enough to realize that neither of them was comfortable with a gun. ‘I come in peace.’

Ulster stepped out of the jungle and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank goodness it’s you. We heard shots close by and didn’t know whether to go or stay.’

Jones jogged towards him. ‘Where’s Maria?’

She emerged a few seconds later. ‘I’m right here.’

‘Good. I thought maybe you’d left.’

‘I was thinking about it. I’m not the type to sit on my butt and do nothing.’

‘I know you aren’t,’ Jones said. ‘But I also know you’re not a fan of bullets.’

She nodded reluctantly. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

‘You can stay put.’