The Aztec Prophecy (Joe Hawke Book 6) Read online

  Wade leaned into the newly exposed entrance and poked his head inside. After a few short moments of contemplation, he pulled himself back out into the light of day. He was smiling but looked anxious. Singling out the perimeter guards and telling them to stay put, he ordered the other men into the ruins.

  Ben’s concern grew as Wade and the chosen men made their way inside the ruins and disappeared into the darkness within. Time passed, and they emerged from the entrance hauling what looked like half a stone disc out into the daylight.

  He made his way slowly forward to get a better look, trying not to draw attention to himself, but a dead branch gave way under his boot and the snap echoed around the area like a gunshot.

  The men immediately spun around and began to search in his direction. Seconds later Wade ordered his men into the jungle. Ben knew he had to get himself and the others out of there, and began to scramble through the undergrowth. He missed his footing on a loose rock and pitched forward tearing his knee open on a jagged branch. He suppressed the scream but there was no time to check the wound – they were closing in on him every second.

  “Get out of here!” he screamed at Alfie and Sasha. “Hide!”

  He pushed himself up against a tree trunk and grabbed at the cell phone in his pocket. Like everything else, the incessant rainfall had given it a good soaking, and he prayed as he switched it on.

  His prayers were answered – despite only one percent battery life remaining, the phone seemed to be in working order and he wasted no time in hitting the speed dial to connect with the ECHO headquarters.

  “Ben!” the voice said. He recognised it at once as Eden’s. “Where have you been?”

  “I’m in some trouble, Rich.” The sound of his voice – hurried and anxious – surprised even himself. “They’re closing in on me. They must have infrared tracking or something because no matter what I do they just keep coming… and there’s worse news. Alfie and Sasha followed me into the jungle.”

  “What?! I told them to stay in Acapulco. All of you have to get out of there!”

  “Easier said than done, Rich,” Ben replied, his heart beating hard in his chest. “I’m going to level with you… I don’t think I’m going to make it through this one, so listen carefully.”

  “I’m listening, Ben, but don’t think we’re not going to do everything we can to get you out of there.”

  A brief smile flashed on Ben’s face. This was just like the old man – never leave a man behind and so on – but now wasn’t the time. Behind the ridge he had just tumbled down he could hear the men closing in fast. Alfie and Sasha were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they got away.

  “I think Wade found what he was looking for, Rich – looks like some kind of stone artefact – half a disc and covered in weird carvings. One for Bale I think.” As he spoke, the heavens opened and a torrential rainstorm smashed through the jungle canopy.

  “Your safety is the priority, Ben.”

  “Not this time… I’m shit out of luck, Rich and we both know it. You’ll be able to trace the coordinates of my phone via the GPS so at least that way the mission wasn’t in vain. I’m going to distract Wade’s men to give Alfie and Sasha a better chance.”

  “Don’t be so bloody defeatist, Ridgeley, and that’s an order!”

  Ben smiled again and tipped his head back on the trunk. The rain fell down from the canopy and ran down his nose into his mouth. Closer now, he heard someone fire a burst of submachine gun fire. It was followed seconds later by whoops of crazed joy and a gravelly voice screaming: “He’s over there!”

  Ben considered the options as he let the warm rain wash over his face. If he tried to make another run for it, his knee was going to bring him down in a few hundred yards or less. If he stayed where he was, the men would be on him in just a few minutes. He could only hope Alfie and Sasha had gotten to safety somewhere, and he watched as a parrot, startled by the monstrous approach of his hunters, flew up into the canopy and disappeared into the stormy sky. If only I could fly away too, he thought.

  His thoughts were smashed by the sound of the men hacking their way closer to him. He peered around the trunk and immediately saw the flash of their machete blades as they made their way toward him. Now it was time for him to make his final dash.

  He leaped over the river and his phone tumbled out of his grip as he landed on the other bank in a clearing. He suppressed a scream of agony as his smashed patella pushed into the wounded articular cartilage, but his efforts were in vain. Seconds later he was sliding around in the mud on the far bank and he heard a scream of delight as the men behind saw him and gave chase.

  The men waited on the bank of the river for a while and Ben wondered if he had a chance of escape after all, but then he heard the crack of a gunshot and felt the bullet tear into his good knee. They’d seen his limp and decided to take out his good leg as well. Now they no longer even had to run to catch him, and he watched in agony as they strolled casually over, led by Morton Wade himself.

  Wade approached first and kicked him in the stomach. Ben doubled forward and wheezed, but the pain of his knees detracted from the agony of Wade’s boot as he drove it up into his diaphragm.

  “Who sent you here, boy?” Wade said in his Texan drawl. “The CIA? The FSB? Or maybe the damned Brits?”

  “If you think I’m going to tell you anything you can forget it, Wade.”

  “I hold no expectations other than the imminence of your death.”

  With his hands stuffed casually in his pockets, Wade made a small circle of Ben and surveyed the rainforest beyond the clearing. “It’s hard to believe, is it not, that what today is nothing but trees, bushes and tangled weeds was once a magnificent civilization.”

  “What are you going on about?” Ben struggled against the men’s grip as they held him down but they were too strong for him.

  Wade used a sweeping gesture of his hand to highlight the enormity of the rainforest. “This area here hasn’t always been a mere jungle. A thousand years ago a vast, ancient metropolis stood on this very spot where we’re talking right now. This here would have most likely been a crossroads in the heart of the city, and over there was a central boulevard leading to the most sacred temples. Sadly there’s nothing much left at this particular location.”

  Ben watched as Wade seemed to slip into a strange reverie – perhaps he really thought he was back there in his precious ancient civilization right now instead of here in the rainforest. Ben could only speculate what went through a mind like Morton Wade’s.

  “Whatever you’re planning, you will fail.”

  The men burst out laughing but Wade was more pensive.

  “I admire your optimism but we must agree to disagree on this point. My plans, as you put it, are already done and dusted. Now we are well into the end game – not that you’ll be alive to see it.”

  “What are you talking about? If you’re going to kill me, then just get on with it!”

  More laughter, but when the men saw the look on Wade’s face they soon settled down to a more serious silence.

  The Texan pulled a black object from his pocket. It was twisted and black, mostly smooth but with a few sharp, jagged edges. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Looks like your personality.”

  Wade ignored the comment. “This is obsidian. Volcanic glass which is formed naturally when felsic lava is forced out of a volcano and then cools very quickly. Its significance to Mesoamerican culture cannot be underestimated, especially in Pre-Columbian civilizations.”

  “In that case I’ll take two and can you gift-wrap them please. There’s a good chap.”

  Wade drove his boot into Ben’s stomach again and he howled in agony.

  “They used them for all sorts of purposes – making jewellery, blades, even religious idols and figurines.” Wade held the black obsidian to the sky and looked at it with reverence for a few moments. “Have you heard of Huitzilopochtli?”

  “Of course,” Ben said, still struggling to g
et his breath back. “But I’ll only eat it with guacamole.”

  “Silence!” Wade barked. “You blasphemer! Huitzilopochtli was a magnificent deity.” He stared at the black glass again, mesmerized. “Only your total ignorance allows you to mock the mighty Huitzilopochtli, the great god of war… the creator of the sun, but soon you will tremble before him.”

  Ben strained against the men’s grip, staring up at Wade with confused eyes. “You damned coward!”

  “The Aztecs were highly creative when it came to sacrificing humans to the gods. If I desired to offer you to Tezcatlipoca, I would give you a mock weapon and force you to fight the Jaguar Knights. If I were going to offer you to Huehueteotl you would be burned alive, and then there was the Huitzilopochtli ritual…”

  “And what does that involve?” Ben said, stalling for time. “Being tickled to death with a feather duster?”

  The self-satisfied smirk dropped from Wade’s face. “Typical smart-ass Limey – always with the gags. If you have to know, Limey, those sacrificed to Huitzilopochtli were laid on a slab of stone and had their hearts ripped out while they were still alive.”

  “So definitely no feather dusters then?”

  Wade barked more orders in Spanish and the men began to chant and whoop. They lowered their guns and pulled strange wooden swords from their belts. Wade emptied a Glock pistol and put the magazine in his pocket. “Some of my men see themselves as Jaguar Knights, serving Tezcatlipoca, others as Eagle Knights serving Huitzilopochtli. They will fight you with their macuahuitl, a kind of sword made from obsidian. It makes a terrible wound… more than enough to incapacitate you for the ritual.”

  “You’re out of your mind!” Ben said, his heart sinking when he saw Wade’s men dragging Alfie and Sasha out of the jungle. They threw them down in the clearing at gunpoint. They had found their hiding place.

  Wade dismissed Ben’s sentiment with a casual wave of his hand and then ordered his men to kill Alfie and Sasha. Ben watched in horror as a hail of bullets drilled into the two former police officers and cut them to ribbons. Seconds later their bodies sank down into the undergrowth and the sound of the cicadas returned.

  “You murdering piece of scum, Wade!”

  Wade nodded as if he was in agreement, but then his face turned sour. “I’ll see you in the next life. Attack him!”

  The men piled in on him, stabbing him all over as he tried to fight back with the butt of the empty, useless gun. He felt the jagged blades of the macuahuitls tearing into his flesh all over his body, and then the strong taste of blood rising in his mouth.

  He tried to flee but collapsed to the ground, and now they pounced like animals. He felt their steel toecaps driving into his body and head, striking against his ribs and skull. He felt and heard the sound of his own bones cracking under the relentless pressure and screamed out in terrified agony as the vicious assault of Wade’s thugs beat him into a stupor.

  In the final moments of his life, he was only dimly aware of Morton Wade as he approached him, muttering some dark incomprehensible incantation. Then he saw the Texan raise his obsidian blade above his head, the tip pointing at Ben’s chest and he screamed for him to stop.

  But Morton Wade didn’t stop. Still mumbling the chant, he plunged the blade down.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Ten Minutes Earlier

  Alex Reeve took one more look at the sunset and strolled slowly back along the jetty toward the HQ building. She felt safe here in the knowledge that no one even knew the island existed – being here meant dropping off the grid completely.

  The evening was warm and humid as ever, but not oppressively so. The trade winds – what the original French inhabitants of the island had called les alizés – brought invigorating breezes across the sea from the northeast and kept the climate stable and pleasant. The occasional hurricane swept across the island from time to time, but the ECHO complex was designed to withstand them, and then normal tropical island paradise was resumed. Tonight was no exception.

  Except for the shadow that was following them all around.

  The Athanatoi, or Immortals.

  None of them knew who they were, or what they wanted. All Alex knew was their medicine… their magic had helped her walk again after years in a wheelchair. But every time she felt the stabbing, electrical pain in her legs she wondered for how much longer. She knew the immortals’ black magic was wearing out and soon she would be back in that damned chair.

  The agonized thought of it made her head swim, and yet she had kept the full extent of her concerns to herself, not wanting to burden the others at such a critical time. Instead, she threw herself into her own research, poring over Dr Henry Donovan’s mysterious files, and even testing and retesting the last precious drop of the sacred elixir, but so far she’d found nothing in Lea’s father’s research except the erratic scribblings of a man possessed… and nothing in the elixir itself except strange electrical properties that none of them had yet decoded.

  As she meandered her way back to the shore, she saw Lexi Zhang walking out from the complex. The Chinese assassin waved her hand in the air to get her attention.

  “What’s the matter, Lexi?” she asked, noticing the look in her eyes.

  “It’s the old man – something big is going down.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but he wants everyone together in a hurry.”

  Alex knew something was wrong by the look on Lexi’s face and followed her back to the compound. As they stepped into the main area, Scarlet Sloane and Vincent Reno were walking through from the kitchen.

  “What’s all this about?” Scarlet asked. “Vincent here was just about to show me his andouillette.”

  Alex looked at Vincent. “Is that what they call it in Marseille?”

  Before Scarlet could answer, her eyes widened like saucers. “Ooh – I know! Is this about Captain Kidd?”

  “The pirate?” Alex said, bemused.

  Lexi rolled her eyes. “Please don’t get her started. All I’ve heard for days is pirates and sunken treasure.”

  Scarlet nodded and smiled, failing to catch the sarcasm in the Chinese assassin’s voice. “Now that’s excitement!” she continued. “Fleeing from English men-of-war he stashed treasure all over the place, including Gardiner’s Island as he hid in Oyster Bay… but the real kicker is the treasure they never found.”

  “Sure,” Alex said nodding. “His story is so notorious it inspired stories like Poe’s God-Bug and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  “So romantic,” Vincent said.

  Scarlet gave him a sideways glance. “I was thinking more of the treasure, Reap – and that’s why I’ve been researching it.”

  “Vraiment?” he raised his eyebrows with respect. “You and research are like chalk and peas, no?”

  “Cheese.”

  “Sorry, like cheese and peas.”

  Scarlet let it slide. “Either way, I think there’s a lot more to his story than just gold – in fact it could have something to do with what we’ve been fighting. It’s a bloody trail leading all the way to Madagascar and some serious loot. I mentioned it to Rich the other day. Maybe I’ll get Bale on it after we finish cataloguing the Valhalla treasure – it’s worth our time, I know it.”

  “Tell me more!” Alex said, officially interested. “I always wanted to go to Madagascar.”

  “Captain Kidd was a privateer who…” But before Scarlet could finish, Sir Richard Eden descended the central stairs with a look of grave concern on his face. None of them had ever seen him like this before, not even the former SAS woman.

  “It’s Ben Ridgeley,” Eden said distractedly.

  Alex felt a wave of fear rush over her at the mention of Ben’s name. She didn’t know him well – since she’d joined the team he’d spent much of his time in Mexico tracking Morton Wade, but they’d shared some good times – not least the night they’d failed to stop Lexi from taking everyone out and reaching her mission objective of ‘ass
assinating’ Sir Richard.

  “What’s happened?” she asked.

  “He’s in trouble,” Eden continued. “Worse than that, Alfie Mills and Sasha Harding followed him into the jungle and now it looks like they’ve been rumbled by Wade. He must have dropped his phone and the camera’s sending a live feed.”

  “So not Captain Kidd then…” Alex said, disappointed.

  “No,” Scarlet said with disgust. “The romance of privateer treasure-hunting just got barged out of the way by an American software billionaire.”

  “By day maybe,” Eden said, “but a certified nutcase by night.”

  “Why do you say that?” the Frenchman asked.

  “We’re not entirely sure,” Eden continued. “One of my sources indicated I might like to pay Wade closer attention so I sent Ben, Alfie and Sasha over to see if there was anything worth looking at. The rumors are that he’s close to uncovering something of enormous archaeological importance from the ancient Aztec civilization.”

  “So he’s interested in archaeology?” Scarlet asked, her voice the epitome of naïve innocence. “Same can be said for a lot of nerds… what’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong with it is that there are other rumors about Mr Wade… very unsavory rumors about how he likes to spend his spare time.”

  Vincent fixed his eyes on the old man. “What rumors?”

  “Before he fell from grace, Wade’s business empire was massive – for a time he was of the richest men in America and had subsidiary companies all over the Western hemisphere. These included several sweatshops in Mexico, not to mention rumors of a sprawling coffee plantation somewhere in Guerrero but we’re not sure where that is.”

  “But not exactly Vlad the Impaler then,” Scarlet said, arching an eyebrow.

  Eden was silent for a moment, clearly wrestling with how much to say. “People associated with Wade have been going missing. A lot of people. We don’t know what’s happening to them but clearly something unpleasant is going on. Not only that but we know he’s expanding some kind of warped sun-worshipping cult.”