To the left, one of his men lay dead, a long wedge of glass sticking out of his neck; two others were badly injured and a trickle of blood ran down his own side where several pellets of buckshot had caught him.
As his two remaining men helped their wounded comrades, Saravich stepped out onto the balcony.
“Get them to the van,” he said without looking back.
“What about Gregor?” one man asked.
Saravich shook his head. “Leave him,” he said. “He cannot be traced to us.”
The men shuffled out and Ivan looked around. A glass of rum lay undisturbed on the balcony table. He picked it up, sniffed the aroma, and then raised it to his missing adversary.
That’s twice the luck was with you. The third time it will be mine.
He downed it in one gulp and stepped back inside. As he was heading for the door, something caught his eye. Lying on the floor beside the overturned table was a large, unfolded map. He crouched down to grab it. To his surprise, he saw several places circled and a black line drawn across it.
Saravich smiled. Perhaps the luck was with him already.
CHAPTER 43
Thirty minutes from the hotel, now in possession of a different, legally obtained vehicle, Danielle, Hawker, McCarter, and Yuri were traveling north, back toward the more crowded sections of the coast near Cancun, headed for the airport.
Danielle sat in the back trying to communicate with Yuri in Russian. He had grown frantic and with the stone now so close to him again, he could not settle down.
“Yuri, we’re going to a new place,” she said. “It will be all right.”
He looked at her and then at the backpack containing the stone. “Brighter,” he said in Russian. “Brighter.” He covered his eyes.
They’d assumed this stone’s power wave matched the one from Brazil, but what if it didn’t? She wondered if it was near to peaking now.
“What do you see?” she asked in Russian.
He held his hand out, demonstrating curved lines. “Yellow,” he said.
“Is it hurting you?” she asked.
He did not respond.
“Does it hurt your eyes?” she asked. “Does the brightness hurt your head?” She touched the side of her temple.
He shook his head. “Yellow is good,” he said. “Blue, no good, darker then it hurts.”
Danielle was thankful for what he said. She noticed he’d gotten more used to having the stone around since the night before, but she guessed that would change if it began to power up again.
Their current guesstimate had the next scheduled peak coming in about five hours, an event she suspected would be a “normal” burst, nothing like the energy wave released on the boat. It could still be problematic. They would have to time their actions accordingly.
She stroked Yuri’s hair and he pressed into the seat, leaning against her. One thing for sure, the kid was a trouper.
Ahead of her, Professor McCarter sat in the front passenger seat. He seemed to be focused on pain in his leg. He touched the skin around the dressing, gingerly probing the bruised muscle.
“You all right?” Danielle asked.
“Either I hurt myself in the fall or the infection is coming back.”
“I’ll give you another dose of the antibiotics,” she said.
“Not right now,” he said. “I feel a little queasy. Let’s get settled somewhere first.”
She relented and looked over at Hawker. They were picking their way toward the local airport in heavy traffic along a narrow, two-lane road. They had been moving steadily earlier but it had become stop-and-go now.
“How the hell can a little town like this have so much traffic?” Hawker grumbled.
“Didn’t you see all those hotels along the beach?” Danielle said.
Hawker didn’t reply; he just switched on the radio. After scanning through a group of Spanish language channels he found one that was broadcasting in English. The announcer was British.
Danielle guessed it might have been the BBC Worldwide.
… they’ve come here by the thousands to celebrate this Mayan milestone. Serious scholars, curious travelers, and New Wave crystal worshippers searching for something called the vortex. Above all, tens of thousands of vacationers, mostly Americans and Europeans expecting a party that should be a cross between Mardi Gras and New Year’s Eve, with much nicer weather.
Until recently, that’s exactly what they’d gotten. All enjoying themselves and eagerly awaiting that ultimate moment when the Mayan calendar hits its end and rolls over to begin again. Most just smile and laugh when any talk of a cataclysm is raised. At least that was the case, until midday yesterday when an unexplained shock wave plunged half the country into darkness.
Hawker turned the broadcast up just a bit.
Officials insist the blackout was caused by an overload from the U.S. grid, after a mishap in the top-secret Groom Lake air base. But many insist a shock wave was felt here and was particularly strong along the coast. This, combined with what might have been a terrorist attack at one of the hotels earlier today and the sudden uptick in tensions worldwide, has the vast majority of these travelers trying desperately to get home.
End of the world or not, most of the travelers I talked to aren’t in the mood to stick around and find out.
Hawker shut off the radio and Danielle stared through the traffic up ahead of them. They were a mile or so from the entrance to the airport. She could see units of the Mexican army and riot police around the gates. Every car that passed was being checked and rechecked.
“They may have our description,” she said. “Not sure I want to chance making it through security.”
“I wasn’t planning on buying a ticket,” Hawker said. “I was planning on borrowing a helicopter.”
“You mean stealing one,” she replied.
“It’s not stealing if you bring it back.”
She laughed. Perfect Hawker logic.
“This is too hot, though,” he said. “Too many people. Too much security.”
McCarter seemed pleased. “I can’t say I’m completely disappointed.”
“Me neither,” Danielle said.
He smiled at them. “Might want to hold off on that,” he said. “You haven’t seen plan B yet.”
With that, he turned into a gas station, waited for a few moments, and then accelerated calmly back out onto the street, moving opposite of the traffic and away from the airport.
CHAPTER 44
Kang’s warehouse in Campeche had become a command center to rival Mission Control at NASA. On one side were scholars he’d hired to translate the glyphs from the submerged temple; on the other were banks of computers, dozens of screens, and groups of trained men working the equipment like air traffic controllers.
It was a face-to-face search with a twenty-first-century twist. Kang had teams scouring the various towns, villages, and archeological sites that he suspected the NRI team might visit, including the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. All in all two hundred men were running about, carrying cameras and other remote sensing equipment. They simply wandered around, scanning faces, moving from section to section, through plazas, airports, restaurants, and hotels, wandering up and down streets and avenues. His men did not have to find the NRI team; in fact most of them had no idea what they were looking for. They just had to execute the simple orders they were given. Kang’s computers would do the rest.
Behind him, racks of high-powered servers hummed as they absorbed and processed the data. Facial recognition software running at blazing speeds examined every image. A man moved down one street, and five hundred faces were scanned and ruled out. Another man wandered the airport from gate to gate, and in thirty minutes Kang could be certain that the NRI personnel were not there.