When the grenades were launched into houses, the blinding flash, deafening blast, and searing heat often ignited drapes and carpets. Flashbangs frequently incapacitated people for a full minute.
But they wouldn’t kill Phoenix.
In fact, his vision might not even suffer the flash. Blinded by sunlight, he was still protecting his sensitive eyes with his forearm.
The women?
He hoped they’d remembered to set their weapons to semi.
Then he stopped worrying: He’d forgotten he was dealing with Coop.
Nodding to Jamesy, he counted softy: “One, two, three.”
On three, they both fired their grenades the full fifty yards into the bunched-up bandits.
Only at the last second did Hargrave remember to shut his eyes.
He hoped Coop and Reets would think to do the same.
11
Even through clenched eyes and the forearm pressed up against them, Jack Phoenix sensed the flashbang’s blinding glare and felt its scorching heat—heat, he thought briefly, like the opening of a blast furnace door.
He intuited its bang. This was amazing. Since shooting off a round in the tunnel and the snake attack, his hearing had dimmed, dwindled, and at last dissolved into nothingness until his world was now dead mute, soundless as the grave. Entombed in deadening deafness, he could not even hear or sense the blood-throb in his brain, which for the last hour had been his constant, nagging companion. He’d lived with that thundering throb nonstop since the diamondback sank its toxin-spitting fangs in his shoulder.
He’d worked enough dangerous digs in so many violence-torn Third World hellholes to have witnessed innumerable engines of military death, and he knew what flashbang grenades were. Overwhelming the retinas’ photosensors, they locked the vision into a single freeze-frame, paralyzing their victims and their eyesight for up to a minute. If he was to flee, he had to forcibly lift his eyelids and run toward his rescuers, regardless of how excruciating the sunlight was.
Willing the reluctant orbs to open was not as hard or painful as building the Great Pyramid or digging the Panama Canal, but it was close. Nor did his vision readily return. Even though he was facing Reets and Coop, he could barely make them out. At first, he thought they were apparitions from hell. They strolled toward him with an almost hallucinatory grace, their PDWs—now out and up from under their ponchos—smoking and hammering. Their two male comrades—off to his side—ran toward him, bent at the waist with military shotguns under their arms, clearly afraid to fire buckshot into the bandit gang, still tightly congested around the tunnel entrance.
Stop the lollygagging, a still small voice whispered in his ear. Time to run.
But it was not to be.
His legs and arms wouldn’t move, and his perceptions seemed surreal, as if he were frozen with catatonic dread in a bad dream. He felt as if he were backpedaling through time, returning to his twenties, teen years, grade school. Now he felt as if he were shackled to his childhood bed, with nightmare visions dancing around his room.
Then he was racing back even further, all the way into infancy. That was it. He felt infinitely infantile, locked immobile, irreducibly weak.
If he backpedaled any further, he knew he would vanish into the womb.
Into the void.
Is the venom causing me to hallucinate so? he wondered.
No, the little voice said in his head, death is doing it, good buddy.
So be it. Never thought it would come so soon, but then man does not know his time.
Who said that? Hamlet? Ecclesiastes?
Who cares?
You’re dying, asshole.
Christ, Coop and Reets were still strolling toward him, calm as Sunday-go-to-meeting, their automatic weapons blazing, looking like a female Fistful of Dollars. Now the men were close enough that the spread of their buckshot pattern would stay compressed. Their guns were booming as well, as they worked their pump-slides as fast as they knew how, taking out two men to his far right, three more to his left.
Only five killer-bandits were left, but they were close enough to him that the men couldn’t risk shotguns.
Which is where Coop came in.
Stepping in front of Reets, cutting off her friend, she raised her weapon shoulder-high and began dropping the blinded bandits around him with short, controlled semiautomatic bursts, which he still could not hear but whose muzzle flashes he could see.
Goddamn Coop. He laughed mirthlessly at the way she stepped in front of Reets, always protecting the younger sister. Reets forced her family to adopt Coop when the girl’s moonshiner father had been murdered. Coop, the mother hen, covered her brood with her own body, shielding any incoming bandit fire. Reets, finally stepping around her sister, took out a fleeing bandit herself, but Coop was still doing the heavy work, the hard precision-shooting, firing that weapon like she and the PDW were born together, conceived together in the same uterus, her eyes unblinking over its iron sights, empty and expressionless as the Martian moons, cold and compassionless as her violent moonshiner youth.
For a while he blacked out. When he came to, he was curiously still on his feet, the urn still under his left arm, the diamondback dangling from his right fist; and even though he was still stone-deaf, he could tell the firing had ceased.
Of course it had stopped.
His friends had no one left to shoot at.
They’d killed them all.
Their enemies all lay dead in a gathering pool of blood.
Most them at Phoenix’s own feet.
He was beyond light-headed now, feeling his very life leaving his body, as if his soul were being plucked from his expiring remains, like a white silk handkerchief from the sleeve of a diabolic magician-reaper, the lights in his eyes dimming, the earth itself drifting, disappearing, dying away.
He could feel himself dying with it.
Kill the body and the soul dies? he wondered absently.
Who knows?
Well, my friend, in seconds you will have a truly definitive answer.
You will solve the Eternal Enigma.
Will you have anyone to report your findings to?
I hope so. It’ll be a hell of a find.
Thanks, Reets, Coop, you two guys over there, whoever you are.
Thanks for saving me from the Frito Bandito.
And for keeping my priceless codex from falling into the wrong hands.
I’d hate to see my death and my spectacular discovery go to waste.
Too bad you weren’t in the tunnel to protect me from Quetzalcoatl’s misbegotten scion, that goddamned diamondback.
I wonder if they serve beer in hell?
Somehow the thought of a cold one down there bucked him up.
12
“Bummer.”
Rita Critchlow took her middle finger off Phoenix’s jugular and stood. She and Cooper Jones were staring at the inert body of their friend.
“He’s the closest friend we ever had,” Coop said.
“Along with Monica Cardiff.”
“We trusted him with everything.”
“Now he’s gone.”
Yet even in death he was helping them. Coop knew; Reets knew it. Beside him lay the flat red ceramic urn containing, quite possibly, the greatest archeological discovery of all time. If the last codex was correct, Phoenix had unearthed the final Quetzalcoatl 2012 Codex—a find that would bring them fame and fortune of historic proportions . . . if they lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of his fatal labors.
Moreover, Reets was now starting to believe in the codex’s bizarre mystique herself, half-convinced that the flat crimson urn contained something . . . something . . . something . . . godlike. . . . She seriously wondered whether the sacred screed would save humanity or prefigure its extinction.
But now Jamesy was coming toward them, shaking her free from her reverie. He was swinging a collapsible entrenching tool he’d found amid the bandits’ gear. “I don’t want those birds up there picking him clean
,” Jamesy said, glancing upward. “We’ll bury him.”
Raising her head, Reets saw two dozen vultures swirling in a funnel cloud and more zeroing in from all directions.
“This is mighty sudden country,” Hargrave said, nodding.
“Only for the living,” Jamesy said, starting to dig. “For Jack it’s kind of slow.”
“It’s getting even quicker for us,” Coop said, jogging toward them from across the cliff face. “We have a small army of Apachureros coming up the east slope. Seems this was just a scouting expedition.”
“Maybe we should go back the way we came,” Reets said.
“They’d have the high ground,” Hargrave said. Glancing at the low summit to the northwest, he said: “Those high rocks look like our best defensive perimeter.”
“Natural defilade,” Reets said.
“We drag food, water, and ordnance up there—plus anything of use that we can scavenge from these Pach. Coop, you and Reets haul it all up to those boulders.” He handed her their TriSquare TSX300 two-way radio. “Reets, you speak the best Spanish, and this thing has a twenty-mile range—more here, given this summit’s elevation. Give the federales our GPS reading, and tell them we have an Apachurero army coming up on us. You have the map coordinates. There’s a federal army base ten miles from here.”
“We’re up to our asses in automatic weapons,” Reets said. “We took them off the Pach.”
Hargrave was already grabbing shotguns and fragmentation grenades.
“The base isn’t that far by chopper, and these frags hit like Gatlings,” Hargrave said. “We have a chance.”
“We can do this,” Jamesy agreed. “Gravesy and I’ll slow them down. On the two-way, Reets, you tell the federales about Jack’s codex.”
“Tell them how much it’s worth,” Coop said.
“I’ll tell them it’s their mordida,” Reets said.
“They sabe mordida real good.” Jamesy grinned.
“I’ll tell them about your mama, too,” Reets said.
Jamesy nodded. “If money doesn’t move those mercenary bastards, nothing will.”
Their packs filled with loaded magazines and grenades, the two men jogged toward the east slope.
13
“I hated leaving Jack’s body for the buzzards,” Reets said. Hunkering down behind boulders at the cliff’s summit, she slid rounds into their empty magazines.
“We’ll be joining him, those federales don’t show.”
“I told them we have a fortune in relics.”
“That must have got their attention.”
“You didn’t tell me how many were in that Apachurero army.”
“I stopped counting after a hundred.”
Reets stared at her. “Jamesy and Graves against a hundred-plus?”
Coop started laughing.
“What’s so funny?”
“You worried about Jamesy and Graves. I was feeling sorry for those goddamn Apachureros.”
PART III
14
For miles approaching the city, the sache—an elevated road made of limestone and mortar—ran straight and true to the city gate.
Before we reached the gate, we passed endless fields of maize, beans, peppers, avocados, and other crops grown to support the thousands of people within who did not grow their own food.
The great wall surrounding the city looked impregnable. Ten to twelve feet thick, it was at least seven feet high. Made of large, irregular blocks and laid dry, it ran for over six miles around the city and had nine gates.
“Sentries guard every gate, day and night,” Six Sky told me. “Hundreds of stairways and ladders allow men inside to mount the wall quickly. When the drums beat steady, day or night, every man in the city must come to the wall and be prepared to fight an invader.
“The city is vast,” Six Sky said, “its walls stretching, it sometimes seems, forever. It takes a full hour to walk just from the south gate to the north gate. Our city has fifteen thousand people. You can walk twenty days in any direction and not find a larger one.”
The number of people meant nothing to me, because I could not comprehend such a horde.
As soon as we passed through the gate, the king’s city swallowed me like a frog snapping up a fly. My world had been one of villages with thatched-roof huts and cooking fires, a place where everyone knew one another and knew their place. I was unprepared for streets crowded by workers and masters and for buildings that rose taller than trees and pyramid temples that touched the sky.
The city closed tightly around me, squeezing me as we marched through, my heart in my throat as I gawked at the strange sights, sounds, and smells.
The people made way for Lord Janaab like parting seas. Still the crowds were so thick that as soon as he passed, the masses closed behind him, and I had to push myself through a crushing mob.
Inscriptions were everywhere—on the great walls that surrounded the city and on the walls of the palaces, residences, and temples. Most I knew; some were unfamiliar.
Lord Janaab was mistaken in his belief that in months or a few years I could examine all the tales—it would take a lifetime.
Six Sky explained the layout of the city as we walked.
“Once you understand how the city is formed, you will not get lost when performing your duties for our lord. The buildings nearest the city walls are the homes of merchants and workshops of merchants and craftsmen.”
Any of the buildings could have housed all the living souls in my village of stoneworkers.
“The buildings are not only the living quarters for the owners, workers, and their families, but also the workshops where goods are made—for potters; toolsmiths; jewelers who construct ornaments out of gold, silver, jade, and lesser stones; rope- and cloth-makers who fabricate their wares out of maguey fiber and deerskin, creating sandals, cloaks, and codex covers.”
The paper for the books themselves was made in the shop of the paper-maker.
“Fig tree skin makes the finest paper in the One-World,” Six Sky said.
We passed pens where deer were raised for food.
“Everywhere else, deer must be killed, then brought to the markets and cook fires, but here in Mayapán, the king pens the deer up, raising and fattening them for his table and that of his lords.”
Six Sky told me the city’s riches were beyond comparison—its warriors the bravest and mightiest in the One-World—and I found no reason to disbelieve him. Eyo! He could have told me all the gods in the celestial heavens resided in the city, and I would have accepted his words.
A guard I knew, who had traveled extensively, gave me a look after Six Sky made the statement, but he quickly averted his eyes.
Passing through a marketplace, I was staggered by its size and the variety of its goods. Everything I had seen in my lifetime and on the road from the village to the king’s city, as well as a thousand other products, was to be found there. One could buy a tortilla, a necklace for his loved one, or a lethally sharp obsidian dagger. Every kind of food, weapon, clothing, jewelry was available . . . for a price.
“Everything the Sun God passes over each day,” Six Sky said, “can be found for sale in this city square. Three hundred paces long and two hundred paces wide, it is just one of many in the city.”
As we continued north on the street, the houses grew larger, the temples and palaces higher, more spacious, and more complex.
Much of the construction was ongoing. A great deal of it consisted of resurfacing the old buildings because of the katun—a period that recurred about every twenty years, in which much renewal of temples and homes was made. This refurbishing was viewed as a rebirth, a new beginning in which old sins were forgotten.
Nearing the ceremonial center of the city, the beating heart of Mayapán rose above a wall higher than the outer city wall: the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, the mighty god my people call Kukulkán and the Aztecs to the north hail as Quetzalcoatl.
Finally, we passed through the gate to the c
eremonial center, the realm of the king, high priests, highest-ranking nobles—and most important, the place where priests offer the gods their covenant of blood and the king speaks to the gods, imploring them for bountiful harvests and victory at war.
Many cenotes were scattered throughout the city, because the city’s location was chosen for the presence of the underground reservoirs of water. The cenote with the biggest water supply was in the middle of the central plaza. Channels from the roof and streets in the surrounding area all fed rainwater into it.
Six Sky told me that the cenote was dedicated to Chaac, the Rain God, and that above the waterline inside, the walls had been elaborately inscribed with tributes to the gods—ones I needed to confirm were correct or Lord Janaab would have me painted red.
Fanning out from that cenote were the two largest structures in the city, the great pyramid temple and the palace of the king. Placed around them were temples of lesser gods and palaces of High Lords.
On the flat top of the Feathered Serpent’s pyramid temple was a square stone structure, and atop that a teak sanctuary. The work of the priests was done inside the wooden temple, except for their bloody chore of obtaining sacrificial blood. That task was done on a slablike altar atop the temple steps so people massed below could see the heart being ripped out and the blood flowing down the temple steps.
The sanctuary at the top of the temple was also where the king went to speak to the gods. When he did so, no one, not even the high priest, was allowed near.
To the main temple’s right was the observatory where the king’s star-watchers studied the sky and reported their findings to him. The stars in the sky were gods, and they, not ourselves, determined what we did. Our very fate was written in those stars, and the astronomer who deciphers in those glittering orbs our destinies, our dreams, the meaning of our lives, that sage among sages the king exalted above all other men.
The observatory was a circular building with four entrances standing on a raised stone platform that was about twice the height of a grown man. Round-shaped structures were rare among my people.