Since falling down the pit, Indy had held on to one slim hope.
The coast.
The jungle-shrouded ruins lay only five hundred yards from a remote section of the Yucatán shoreline, set high atop steep cliffs. There was a good chance that the underground river emptied into the sea somewhere along the coast.
He forced himself to keep holding his breath, banking on this one hope.
Suddenly the darkness fell away into a murky storm-light. The tunnel widened into a small cavern. The top was high enough for Indy to get his nose above the water. He gulped air into his starved lungs. He also caught a brief glimpse of an opening ahead, the end of the river. Stormy skies filled the view, framed by jungle vines. The water poured out of the rock in a heavy falls. He heard its roar over the rumble of thunder and pound of heavy surf.
He was still high up.
There was no fighting the current. Like a cork in a champagne bottle, Indy blasted out of the exit, shooting from the face of a sheer cliff. He caught a brief glimpse of sharp rocks and churning white water below.
Swinging in midair, Indy twisted and lashed out with his bullwhip. The lantern had long been shattered away, but he had kept a death grip on the whip’s leather handle. With a skill that was born as much of panic as practice, Indy snapped out for a tangle of stubborn tree roots protruding from the cliff face, exposed from years of erosion by rain and wind.
With a satisfying kuh-rack, the whip lashed onto the roots. Indy clutched the handle with both hands and swung back toward the cliff. He got his legs up in time to bear the brunt of the impact. Still, he smashed hard, bruising his entire left side.
He hung there, gasping.
Wind and rain thrashed at him. Thunder boomed, felt down to his aching bones. He had no choice but to keep moving. Indy fought his way up, climbing and hauling. The storm pounded his back and sought to rip him from his perch. Black skies churned overhead. The cliff was deeply pocked, offering decent footholds. Still, it took him a quarter hour to reach the summit and beach himself atop the cliff.
He lay facedown, hugging the earth.
He pictured his course on the river underneath him: first swallowed down the serpent’s maw, then swirled through its snaking belly, and finally shot out its end. The waterway formed the complete shape of a serpent.
Indy shuddered as he remembered Mac’s words. Looks like you’re being swallowed by a snake. Well, perhaps he had been. He glanced behind him, picturing his dramatic exit out the back end of the snake. Mac would not let him live this one down. He suspected his British friend would use a word more colorful than shot to describe Indy’s explosive exit from the snake’s rear end.
Still, he was out.
Indy groaned and pushed to his hands and knees.
He’d definitely had his fill of snakes for one day—slimy ones or stone ones.
With every fiber of muscle on fire, Indy gained his legs and headed away from the cliff. His back ached, and his legs wobbled. He had taken a couple good knocks to the head, too. He’d be feeling that ride for a few days.
As the storm worsened, he slowly made his way across the ruins. Step pyramids and stone homes spread out in a complicated pattern. His camp lay on the far side of the temple complex, buried into the edge of the dense jungle. With the wind wailing at his back, Indy hiked toward the flickering lights. Thunder pounded, and massive raindrops hit the ground and exploded like mortar shells. He skirted the edge of the ruins and headed straight for camp. Mac would be sick with worry.
At least, his friend would be thrilled to see him.
Bone-tired, deafened by the storm, Indy had entered the camp before he realized anything was wrong. He almost stepped on the first body, sprawled facedown in the mud and half buried in it. He fell back with a gasp.
The sharp crack of a rifle blast cut through the thunder.
It came from the center of the small camp.
Followed by a chatter of automatic fire.
Had to be grave robbers or a local guerrilla group.
Indy cursed and retreated to the jungle’s edge. He had no weapon, except for his whip. If he circled, ambushed a straggler, maybe he could steal a pistol or rifle—
As he turned, darker shadows slipped from the rainy forest. Soldiers, muddy, wearing goggles, pushed into view. Weapons leveled at his chest. A figure was shoved out into the open. The man fell to his knees, bloodied, clothes torn.
It was Mac.
He was followed by a giant of a man wearing a helmet and goggles and layered with mud. He bore no insignia, but he was clearly in charge.
Still on his knees, Mac gaped up in shock. “Indy! How . . . ? I saw you swallowed by a bloody snake!”
“Apparently I gave it indigestion.”
Indy crossed to Mac and helped him to his feet.
Mac sighed as the soldiers closed in all around them. “I think you were better off with the snake.”
TWO
Nevada
THE DESERT killed the unwary.
One learned that lesson early or not at all.
Sergeant Jimmy Wycroft ground the scorpion under his boot heel. It squashed with a satisfying crunch. He stood with two other army MPs in the shadow of the dusty guard shack. One hand shielded his eyes against the late-afternoon glare. Beyond the shack’s tiny square of shade, the sun baked the Nevada desert into a searing plain of redrock spattered with sagebrush and cactus. Nothing moved out there except wind-spun dust devils and the occasional prairie dog or sidewinder.
So it was no wonder the dramatic desert chase held all the men’s attention.
A mile away two rooster tails of dust sped across the landscape, spat up by a pair of vehicles drag-racing down the distant two-lane highway. The pair made for a strange competition: an antique 1932 Ford roadster against a large army personnel carrier.
On Wycroft’s left, Corporal Higgins held a pair of binoculars fixed to his face and called out color commentary, as if he were reporting on the Kentucky Derby
“The Ford is making her move . . . she’s going wide around the truck. They’re neck and neck.”
Near the door of the guard shack, a rock pinned down a pair of sawbucks.
A gentleman’s wager.
Wycroft allowed a thin smile. He had placed his money on the Ford, though that meant he was betting against the home team. Army insignia were emblazoned on the side panel of the truck; the same with the Ford staff car and two jeeps that followed the pair. The army group made up a convoy, most likely headed here to the remote military outpost. Then a few minutes before, the roadster had sped up out of nowhere and passed the convoy with the whoop of its driver and passengers—clearly joyriding teenagers, their shouts bright enough to echo across the desert to the lonely guard post. The army personnel carrier had given chase, the truck driver clearly as bored as they all were out in the middle of the blasted desert.
“But wait, my horse is making her move!” Higgins continued. The corporal had bet on the modern army truck against the antique car. “They’re passing the Atomic Café.”
Wycroft pinched his eyes. He watched the two rooster tails, one larger than the other, shoot past the old diner with its missile-shaped neon sign.
“The roadster fishtails . . . the truck takes the lead! It’s anyone’s race!”
“Sir, shouldn’t we be radioing the convoy?” the last guard asked. Private Mitchell was new to the base, nervous about infractions, boyish behind a set of thick black eyeglasses. He glanced toward the chain-link fence topped with barbed curls of concertina wire. The gate was padlocked closed. “Aren’t we locked down until further orders?”
Wycroft waved down his concern. He had been stationed in the desert for five years. He knew to take his pleasure where he could. “Up my bet to twenty. The roadster to win.”
“All right!” Higgins cheered. “I’ll take those odds!”
The two vehicles raced down the highway, going faster and faster. They were dead even, and it became impossible to discern one from the ot
her with the naked eye.
Higgins kept his binoculars glued to his face. His voice faltered. “The roadster has the lead again . . .”
Wycroft’s smile grew broader. Though the Ford roadster was older by twenty-five years, he had worked on such beauties at his father’s garage in Muncie, Indiana, when he was a teenager. The roadster was equipped with an in-line six-cylinder engine and a counterweighted crankshaft. It could rocket from zero to sixty in just under seven seconds. Wycroft saw no need even to watch the finish.
Higgins swore, marking the final defeat.
Across the desert, a whoop of teenage victory echoed faintly to them.
“How’d you know, Sarge?” Higgins asked, lowering his binoculars, defeated.
“Wisdom comes with age, Corporal.”
Wycroft bent down, lifted the rock, and collected his winnings. Pocketing the bills, he dusted off his desert fatigues, shaded his eyes, and stared back out over the desert.
Off in the distance, the army truck slowed with a wash of dust and exhaust. It trundled up to an unmarked exit and veered off the highway. The narrow road climbed in switchbacks up toward their remote outpost. The rest of the convoy caught up with the truck.
“We got company, boys,” Wycroft said needlessly. “Look lively.”
They didn’t have long to ready themselves.
The truck, along with the Ford staff car and two jeeps, rumbled up toward the guard post. Diesel smoke choked, and gears ground and popped.
Wycroft stepped out of the shade of the shack and into the road. He lifted a palm toward the truck as it pulled up to them. He kept his face stoic, professional.
The heavy vehicle ground to a halt with a complaint of its brakes.
As it idled, Wycroft circled toward the passenger side. Higgins and Mitchell stayed by the shack on the driver’s side. Mitchell adjusted his eyeglasses more firmly in place.
The passenger window was down. An elbow rested on the door-sill.
Wycroft called to the truck’s occupants, his voice crackling with command. “Sorry, bad news, gentlemen. This whole area’s off limits for weapons testing. We’re on twenty-four-hour lockdown. That means everyone.”
Behind the truck, the Ford staff car’s door popped open with a puff of sand and dust. A tall figure unfolded from within. Well over six feet, thick with muscle . . . a good 260 if he was an ounce. His face was as hard as the desert rock, icy and cold.
The man strode purposefully toward him.
Wycroft stumbled back a step—not from the man’s size. Instead, he was startled by the silver eagles on the stranger’s shoulder, marking him as an officer of the army. Wycroft cracked off a crisp salute, elbow out. “Colonel, sir.”
The officer stepped toward Wycroft, silent, his demeanor hardening further.
Wycroft’s gaze flicked to his men. The pair had also snapped to attention. Mitchell had shifted so fast, his glasses had slipped down the bridge of his nose.
Wycroft refused to look daunted or cowed. He had his own orders. “Colonel, sir. I’m afraid that goes for you, too. CENTCOM sent out revised deployment oh dark thirty this morning. It cannot be countermanded.”
The colonel’s thin lips curled, half amusement, half sneer.
“Sir . . . ,” Wycroft said, hating the plaintive sound of his voice.
The colonel took another step toward him. Closer now, Wycroft noted the feral glint to his pale blue eyes. The man still hadn’t said a word. Something was definitely wrong with this whole situation.
Wycroft’s hand went for his holstered sidearm.
A loud crash sounded from the back of the paneled truck. Its rear dropgate had slammed down. Soldiers piled out, moving with a deadly swiftness, weapons, outfitted with silencers, held high.
Wycroft yanked his pistol free.
Too late.
The strange colonel swatted his arm aside. It felt like being struck by a wrecking ball. Wycroft’s entire arm went numb, and his pistol flew out into the desert.
Off balance, he felt odd rabbit punches to his chest—but no fist touched him.
Pain bloomed outward as flashes of gunfire, eerily quiet, erupted around him.
He toppled to the sand and rock. Blood poured from his chest.
Off to the side, he saw Higgins fall. No sign of the boy Mitchell. He craned to see more, hoping the boy had run. Then he spied something under the truck to its far side. Behind a massive tire, a pair of legs in desert fatigues lay unmoving. On the other side of the tire, a pair of black eyeglasses reflected the sun. One lens shattered and broken. Both of his men dead.
Why . . . ?
A pair of heavy boots stamped into view, blocking the sight. The colonel leaned down and tugged on his arm, as if trying to pull him up. But he was only removing Wycroft’s MP armband. He tossed it toward one of his men, along with the sergeant’s helmet.
Another soldier crossed to the gate with a crowbar in hand.
The lock snapped away with one fierce crank.
The gate swung wide.
Nearby, the truck engine roared back to life. The vehicle lurched into motion, followed by the staff car and two jeeps.
Wycroft coughed blood. “No . . .”
He was ignored. The convoy rolled past him and headed through the gate. As his vision faded, Wycroft noted the sign on the fence, naming what he and his men had been posted to guard: HANGAR 51.
He had failed.
A scorpion skittered past his nose, reminding him.
It wasn’t only the desert that killed the unwary.
Seated in the truck’s passenger seat, the large colonel took off his cap, ran a thick palm over his shaved scalp, and pointed toward the rise. As the road crested the hill, he sat straighter. A desert valley stretched wide and flat ahead, shimmering with heat. The sun blasted the landscape into iron reds and broken scrabble.
Who lived in such a place? The colonel’s home was much colder, a place of snow and hard winters, of ice and brittle forests. No wonder the Americans hid their secrets here, where only snakes and tarantulas lived.
Down below, a long airstrip split the valley, a black stripe of tarmac that ended at an impossibly massive hangar. It could easily hold a fleet of jumbo jets, but he knew it held much more.
Despite the miserable heat, he allowed a smile to thin his lips.
They had made it.
It would not be long.
Beside the hangar, a smaller bunker sat atop a hill outfitted with blast doors. A single set of railroad tracks ran out into the deep desert and disappeared among the rocky dunes.
The colonel turned his attention back to the tarmac below and nodded toward their destination. The truck followed the road to the airstrip, leading the convoy to the hangar. They crossed the tarmac and braked before a set of giant steel doors, four stories tall. Etched and painted into the steel was the number 51.
Engines idled, waiting for the colonel’s order.
He heard the whisper of his men in the truck bed behind him, anxious, worried at being so deep in the enemy’s heartland. In the rearview mirror, he spotted the Ford staff car. Inside that vehicle was the key to unlock the treasure hidden within the hangar.
It had cost him blood and men to obtain it.
The colonel shoved open the passenger door and climbed out. Other soldiers followed suit, ready to set up a perimeter defense in case their cover was blown. He motioned to two men with toolboxes, indicating the hangar doors’ circuit box. The doors had to be opened as quickly as possible.
In the meantime he had another duty.
In large strides he crossed to the staff car and nodded to the guards posted at the rear. One leveled a rifle, while another popped the trunk. Two more hauled out a flailing man and set him on his feet. He was tall but slightly paunchy around the middle; he sported a thin gray mustache. His red face streamed with sweat. Bruises marred one side of his face, and a swollen gash blackened one eye. Despite the rifle pointed at his face, he kept a stiff-backed demeanor, even straightening his rum
pled brown jacket with a few swift tugs and pats.
The colonel stepped past him, ignoring him.
This one was not important.
One of the soldiers held a picture next to the battered face of the man. “Is that not the professor?” he whispered to his neighbor in Russian.
The colonel silenced the soldier with a glare. Now was not the time for mistakes. In the desert, voices echoed and carried far. It would not be good for voices to be heard speaking Russian on a secret American military installation.
With a wave from the colonel, a second prisoner was dragged out of the trunk, a battered sack of a man. His hair was salt-and-pepper, his beard grizzled over the hard planes of his cheek and chin. He was slammed up onto his battered boots. Three rifles leveled at him. No one dared take any chances. Ignoring the threat, the second prisoner searched all around him. His face was just as bruised as the first man’s, only bloodier. He had fought them at every turn.
“So he’s the one,” the soldier with the photo said in Russian.
The key to it all, the colonel added silently. The man was vital to their mission. Under strict orders not to fail, the colonel had plucked the man out of the jungle and brought him here.
Another guard reached back into the trunk and removed an old brown fedora. He mashed it atop the prisoner’s head.
The first prisoner rubbed at his mustache. He glanced at the sky, the desert, then back to his fellow captive. He spoke with a crisp British accent.
“Well, Indiana Jones, at least you’re back home.”
THREE
MARCHED AT GUNPOINT across the tarmac, Indy blinked away the sun’s glare. The heat scorched and shimmered in waves across the blacktop. With each step, his head pounded from whatever they’d drugged him with. His mouth felt waxy, bitter with a hint of almond and apple. An unfortunately familiar taste . . .
Sodium Pentothal.
The sedative was also used as truth serum.
That couldn’t be good.
Indy scratched at the injection site in his neck. How many days had passed? He remembered the attack in the jungle, a long ride in a jeep over muddy roads, an airplane sitting on a remote airstrip. Then they’d drugged him. From the corner of his eye, he sized up the forces around him.