“Who wants to do it?”
Excitement lit Healey’s eyes and even Russo’s. Good soldiers. Alicia felt a similar eagerness to enter the fray. The battle called to her as much as it had to the ancient Aztecs. Maybe soldiers never changed.
“Rock, paper, scissors?” Healey suggested.
Alicia groaned. Out here, among the stone terraces, on the trail of Aztec gold and with armed enemies at their back, the youngster wanted to play a game. So be it. Quickly she thrust her hand out three times and then held it palm down, the accepted sign for paper. Both Healey and Russo held out clenched fists.
“Whoa,” Alicia said. “I think we found our first battle contest. And I won.”
“Not next time,” Healey said a little hotly. Even Russo looked like he wanted to complain.
“Tell you what,” Alicia said sweetly, patting Healey’s cheek. “Complain to your relevant politician. But don’t mention his expenses.”
With that, counting in her head, she pulled on the rope attached to the piton they’d fastened into the rock wall to double-check its safety, and then ran hard toward the edge of the terrace. Without a sound she leaped into thin air, sixty feet above the desert floor, and used the rope to swing out then back in toward the lower rock wall. A brief memory flashed through her mind — about the last time she’d fought using ropes during the Bones of Odin quest against Matt Drake — and then her body was jockeying to change the position of her flight as her feet kicked out, slamming into the chest of the stunned scout. The man folded instantly and stumbled back into the mountain, not even a grunt escaping his broken chest. Alicia let go of the rope, landing lightly and at a run, reaching him before he had a chance to draw a weapon.
“Surprise!”
She hefted him over her shoulder and threw him back toward the cliff edge. The man landed in a tumbling heap, reflexes finally catching up to his predicament and arresting his roll. By then Alicia was on him once more, lifting him by the straps of his utility jacket until she could stare into his eyes.
“Radio?”
The scout struggled in her grip, surprisingly strong. Twisting sideways he moved until the rising sun flashed and blinded her, pushed away and drew a knife.
“Won’t matter,” he said in a thick South African accent. “Boys are coming.”
Alicia heard the scramble as Healey and Russo made their way down the slope from the terrace above. She debated waiting until the sheer force of numbers intimidated the scout into submission then decided it just wasn’t in her nature.
“Let them come,” she said, striking at the knife-hand with one arm and the neck with a flying foot. “They’ll last about as long as you.”
The knife hit the gouged, rocky floor with a clatter; the neck jerked sideways. The scout fell to his knees, grasping for the deadly blade. Alicia drew one of her own.
“Come nicely,” she said. “Or I’ll feed your carved bones to the coyotes.”
Healey and Russo arrived, the latter bouncing off the rock wall, the former staggering as his foot caught in several deep channels cut into the ground. Exposed up on the terrace, Alicia had no time to dither. Her peripherals also noted the arrival of Crouch, Caitlyn and the others but her concentration focused solely on the scout and his whirling blade. The first thrust went under her arm, the second across her chest, missing by less than an inch. Alicia stepped in and broke the arm, now hitting hard with her own knife, jamming it into the soldier’s ribs to the side of his vest. Eyes opened wide, still uttering no sound, still coming at her, she drove the knife in again for good measure.
This time he staggered.
Alicia let go, allowing the body to fall heavily away. Healey and Russo raced up.
“Took your damn time.”
“It was that or fall off the bloody rock,” Russo returned, indicating the edge.
Crouch arrived with a worried frown plastered across his face. “I’m seeing bodies.”
Alicia stared out across the open plain, toward the distant hills where they had traversed Paria Canyon. There, antlike, were Coker’s crew, heading this way, purposeful and plentiful.
“I guess an hour, maybe more,” Crouch said. “Depends on how much this guy managed to tell them. We’re nowhere! We’re here, but we’re nowhere. Might as well be trolling around Vegas.”
“Hey,” Caitlyn called, staring down at them from the ledge fifteen feet above. “According to the Aztec scholars Huitzilopochtli was the god of war and the sun. Remember the greatest Aztec treasure — the Wheel of Gold shaped like the legendary Pieces of Eight. Well, that was a representation of him, that obviously upped its value. Huitzilopochtli required a blood sacrifice, not always in the form of human martyrdom. Sometimes a ritual bloodletting was used.”
Crouch stared up at her, the rising sun at his back. “What does that tell us?”
“The Aztec’s also called him the Hummingbird.”
Crouch swallowed drily. The poem’s last line stormed through his head — look between the Hummingbird and the Ritual for your final guidance.
The sun god and sacrifice.
Slowly, he turned around, saw how the rising sun developed, extending its rays in piercing beams, spectacular in the dawn. He saw how the fiery blush of the sun played against the walls of the mountain as it rose, marking a straight line as perfect as the one he’d drawn on his map.
Oh my God.
The straight and accurate line, their headstrong route of travel, had been a clue.
Then his mind switched to the Ritual and immediately sent his gaze downward to where the scout’s body lay at their feet, bleeding.
Blood trickled along rivulets that had been carved into the rock floor, seeping toward the mountain’s rock wall.
“Between the Ritual and the Hummingbird,” he said. “I know where the treasure is.”
TWENTY FIVE
Crouch scrambled at double speed up toward Caitlyn and let out a shout of exultation, quickly tempered.
“Rivulets, tracks in the floor, have been cut on every ridge,” he said, inwardly berating himself for his outburst. Though stupid, even as he rebuked himself he knew exactly why he hadn’t been able to hold the enthusiasm in.
Here was the culmination of a lifelong dream, a ridiculed fable he’d proven to be true, a treasure found that a murdered and imprisoned culture had once owned and lost, a vanished heritage that attested to their true greatness.
Spurred on by urgency and desire he raced for the next slope. “We have to find the one that leads to something more than the face of the mountain.”
“Between Hummingbird and the Ritual.” Caitlyn fixed the line of the rising sun in her mind as she pounded after him. “Between that line and these channels… ”
Alicia and the rest ran in their wake, the force at their back immaterial now. What would happen was inevitable. Crouch needed his proof to initiate the call for help. When Alicia chanced one more glance at their backs she saw Coker’s force traversing the far slickrock ridge and two small specks above them, birds in the sky.
“Bollocks,” she intoned. “Coker has at least two helicopters with him.”
Russo kept his head down. “As soon as he realizes the scout’s been neutralized he’ll send ‘em in. Shit.”
Above them, Crouch reached the fourth, fifth then sixth tier of rock. The older man was starting to pant. Caitlyn disregarded etiquette and pushed at the small of his back, helping him over the more awkward parts. The seventh ridge passed and they were nearing the top, over a hundred feet high. Still, the rock face was solid, offering no sign of a niche, cave or even a tunnel in the floor.
Alicia, Healey and Russo caught up to them. “Still nothing?”