“So they love the rock and they’re willing to die for it,” Hawker said.
As McCarter watched Hawker’s face, he noticed a subtle change in his demeanor. A new level of guardedness, a slight clenching in his jaw. To McCarter he seemed more disgusted than pleased by their honesty.
“In Africa,” Hawker told them, “you’ll find whole villages of children, most now in their teens, missing hands or arms or legs. It’s because for a decade or so it was fashionable to use what they called butterfly mines, explosives made to look like toys that would be scattered near the enemy’s towns and villages. The theory being, it’s easier to convince someone to blow themselves up if they think what they’re finding is a prize.”
McCarter looked at Danielle. A similar thought had occurred to them in a discussion months before. It was a possibility.
“And that’s why I wouldn’t let you touch it,” Danielle said. “As strongly as I believe they’re meant to do good, I don’t know how much of it is my own conviction and how much of it has been planted there. I figured one of us should remain uncompromised.”
Hawker seemed to appreciate that. He relaxed a little and then looked over at McCarter. “Have you figured out what all that devotion was designed for? I mean isn’t that the end goal here, to decide what these things are going to do in a few days?”
“Draw your own conclusions,” McCarter said. “The books of Chilam Balam tell of the unfolding darkness. The information on Tortugero Monument Six tells us the god of change will descend from a place we are guessing is referred to as the Black Sun, and he will do something catastrophic. And now this, from the Temple of the Initiation.”
He looked at his notes.
“It is written: ‘At the end of the Katun, the eyes of the sky were made blind and the kings of the land waged war, and kings of the sea did likewise and all the malice of time is released, and the children shall be punished for their sins of their fathers.’
“We think the eyes of the sky are satellites,” McCarter said. “Like the ones that got wiped out in this burst a few days ago.”
“There’s only one real reason to take out a nation’s satellites,” Danielle said. “That’s to blind them. And in such a case, military doctrine leans heavily toward using your WMDs or losing them.”
“So darkness falls and everyone pulls the trigger,” Hawker said.
“If darkness falls,” McCarter said. “Perhaps the stones can prevent it.”
“Prevent it?” Hawker said. “In case you forget, the stones are what caused the satellites to fail in the first place.”
McCarter took a deep breath. Hawker’s logic made sense, but he felt it only made sense given their limited data. Like the man who runs into an elephant’s leg and thinks he’s found a tree.
“I dread to see what would happen if all the world’s satellites were swept from the sky at one time,” McCarter said. “But I can’t imagine that being the purpose here.”
By the look on his face, Hawker was imagining precisely that.
“Whatever the case is, we need more information,” Danielle said. “So what do you have for us?”
McCarter went back to his notes. “Glyphs in your underwater temple give us instructions for how to find the next stone, the master stone if I’m reading them right.”
“Where?”
“At a place called the Temple of the Jaguar, somewhere in the mountains.”
They looked on as he smoothed out the map of southern Mexico. Using a straightedge and beginning at the location of the underwater temple, he drew a line calculated from another series of numbers. It stretched across Mexico and into the highlands of Guatemala.
“We take this angle,” he said, pointing to his line. “It leads to the next stone, the Sacrifice of the Body.”
“Where exactly do we stop?” Danielle asked, examining the line.
McCarter looked down at the map. His course cut across low jungle filled with mangrove swamps and up onto the foothills, traveling across the ridges of the Sierra Madre Occidental before continuing out to the Pacific.
To follow that line they’d have to hike through the jungle and then up and down a series of five- and six-thousand-foot peaks. It would take months.
McCarter scratched his head. “I’m not exactly sure,” he admitted. “The glyphs were written in Mayan form, but they read like someone was telling the artisan a story. It says: ‘The Brotherhood shall follow the path of those who were as gods, but moved like men. Frail and mortal, mere fragments of the gods, attempts at the human kind like the Wooden People of old. There was built the Mirror and the Temple of the Jaguar at the end of the shining path, in the footsteps of the gods.’”
“I’m not trying to be unromantic here,” Danielle said, “but that doesn’t exactly help us.”
“Sorry,” McCarter said.
“So what’s the shining path?” Danielle asked herself aloud. “Could it be the Milky Way? What with the Maya and all their astronomy.”
“I thought about that,” McCarter said. “But the glyphs don’t include a time component, or even a season. And like all stars, those in the Milky Way align lower on the horizon in some seasons and higher in others. You couldn’t use that as a reference unless you specified a month or day or at least the general time of year.”
“What then?” she asked.
He shook his head, but from the corner of his eye he saw Hawker grinning.
“I think I know what it is,” Hawker said. “Or at least I know how we can find it. All we need is—”
The house phone rang, interrupting Hawker. He grabbed it.
McCarter heard the front desk clerk shouting vigorously over the line.
“Get out, señor! Get out now! They are coming for you!”
CHAPTER 42
Hawker slammed the phone down.
“Get the kid and the stone,” he shouted as he threw open a closet and pulled out a shotgun.
McCarter grabbed Yuri, while Danielle pulled a backpack from a cabinet in the suite’s kitchen.
Hawker stepped to the door and opened it a crack. There were men coming down the hall, dressed like tourists but definitely not on vacation. Caucasians with grim, pale faces, not even sunburned. They certainly hadn’t been out enjoying the sights. Two stood near the far stairs while three others had stopped just one door down, at the suite Hawker had originally rented.
God bless that kid at the front desk, Hawker thought. He wanted his bonus. If they survived this somehow, the kid would have damned well earned it.
The first of the two men pushed into the neighboring room. And then the third one looked down the hall. Right at Hawker.
Hawker slammed the door.
“Get down!” he shouted, diving away from the door as a flight of lethal bullets ripped it to shreds.
Hawker came up firing, blowing a hole in the wall to the left of the door and then turning to the dividing wall between the two rooms. The concussions from the shotgun echoed as he blasted four gaping holes in the thin plaster. A howl of anguish followed one blast and the sound of something heavy crashing to the floor. He guessed he’d hit at least one of the thugs.
Crouching behind the counter, Danielle shouted to him. “Which way?!”
A shoulder slamming into the door and busting it open gave them the answer. Hawker fired at the shape in the doorway as Danielle led McCarter and Yuri to the balcony. That was their only hope: a twenty-foot drop to the sand below.
Before he could move to a new position a hail of bullets came tearing through the same wall through which he had fired, shattering the plates and glasses and the sliding glass door to the balcony. Hawker fired back blindly and scrambled to a new position. In the moment of calm he turned to see Danielle hurdle the railing, carrying Yuri with her. But several steps behind her McCarter froze.
Hawker could see him looking around for another way.