“Of course, that’s just a hypothesis,” he added sheepishly.
“Okay,” Professor said. “Let’s say I buy that. How does that explain what we found under the pyramid?”
Jade considered this for a moment. “Okay, we know there’s no trace of a Phoenician presence in the Americas, aside from this.” She gestured at the sphere. “And a handful of artifacts of suspicious provenance. Whatever they tried to do here didn’t work out. Maybe the locals wiped them out, took the Omphalos, and headed north, where they folded it into their own religious worldview. The Omphalos became the Great Goddess.”
Professor wagged his head uncertainly, then grinned. “Well, it’s not a bad start, but there are a lot of holes in it. If you were one of my students, I’d tell you to prove it.”
“Your students hated you,” she retorted. “That’s why you’re not teaching anymore.”
But she knew he was right. She was still trying to think of a better answer when Professor suddenly turned his head sideways and peered off into the jungle. “Do you hear that?”
Jade listened. She could make out the croaking of frogs and scattered birdsong, fainter still the sound of surf pounding the rocks, but after a moment, she too heard the sound that had caught Professor’s attention, the whine of a distant engine and a faint rhythmic thumping sound.
Professor turned away slowly, as if merely curious to see what was causing the noise, but after taking just a few steps, he broke into a run. Jade started after him, then almost as an afterthought, shouted back to Dorion, “Come on!”
She caught up to Professor just a short distance away, on a rocky point that jutted up from the landscape like a broken tooth and gave an almost unrestricted view of the entire island. He motioned for her to take cover, and she pulled Dorion down behind a tree, but not before she caught a glimpse of two dark shapes out over the water, moving in from the east.
Helicopters.
It took less than two minutes for the two aircraft to reach the island. They were civilian birds, big enough to hold several passengers, the sort that might be used for island hopping with groups of tourists, but it was immediately clear that the men inside were not day-trippers.
With the two aircraft hovering just a few feet above the water, the side doors slid open, and bodies began pouring out, at least ten men from each helicopter. They wore military style fatigues and tactical gear, and carried a variety of weapons — mostly assault rifles outfitted with various scopes and other attachments. The total lack of uniformity suggested they were almost certainly hired guns, and the question of who had hired them was answered when, even at a distance, Jade recognized one of the men splashing up onto the beach, rifle at the ready.
“Hodges?” she asked.
“Hodges,” Professor confirmed. “I guess you didn’t see that coming.”
TWELVE
Professor drew his pistol as if just having it in his hands gave him the confidence to meet this new overwhelming threat. It didn’t.
“Take Paul and head for the eastern side of the island. Find a place to dig in. I mean that literally. Cover up and stay hidden. Our only chance is to hold them off long enough for someone to come investigate.”
Jade drew her own gun. “No.”
“Damn it, Jade, this is no time for a pissing match. I have experience with this sort of thing.”
“You have experience with twenty-to-one odds?” She shook her head. “No way. We stick together.”
Professor growled under his breath. “Will you at least follow my lead?”
“Sure. You have experience with this sort of thing.”
He let that pass without comment. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”
Hodges flinched as the report of a Kalashnikov echoed across the beach. He had only just waded up onto the sand and already the first shots had been fired. He raced toward a cluster of the hired gunmen to see if they had, by some lucky chance, taken out Chapman or one of the others. They had not. The men were gathered around the bullet-riddled corpse of a park ranger.
A man holding an AKS-74, smoke curling from the muzzle, shrugged. “No witnesses, right?”
Hodges frowned, but nodded his assent. He wasn’t happy about having to utilize this ad hoc collection of mercenaries that Gutierrez had foisted on him. Some of them, he knew, were former Mexican Army and federales — at least he assumed they were “former” — while others were contract killers who ran errands for the narcotraficantes. It was a motley collection, but evidently the paycheck Gutierrez had promised was more persuasive than former loyalties. Although Hodges was nominally in command, they responded to his directions about as well as a pack of wild dogs.
The helicopters had moved away from the drop zone and were circling the island to provide aerial surveillance. Not that it would do much good; the forest canopy afforded good cover, and Chapman was, after all, a former SEAL. He was in his element.
If, of course, he was here at all.
Hodges had to give Gutierrez credit. While he had been cooling his heels at Teotihuacan, the Mexican multi-billionaire had cast a wide net, just in case the targets had somehow escaped the fuel-air bomb. Sure enough, an informant had reported seeing people matching the description of Chapman and Jade Ihara, boarding a flight to Costa Rica. Hodges had been dubious about the report; informants made their money by telling people like Gutierrez what they wanted to hear, regardless of whether it was factual. Nevertheless, it was a lead that couldn’t be ignored, and Hodges had headed south to see if, by some miracle, Chapman and the others had survived.
He had not yet attempted to contact Tam Broderick, and if Chapman really was alive, his cover was already blown. Worse, Broderick would know that the organization had been infiltrated. Still, it couldn’t be helped. This was war, and sacrifices had to be made.
More shots rang out of the jungle, not the crack of supersonic rounds from an assault weapon, but the throatier bark of a handgun report. The pistol shots were answered by semi-automatic fire, and Hodges hefted his own AR-15 and headed in the direction of the battle.
Well, that answers one question. Chapman had survived. If there was even a chance of salvaging his cover, it would depend on a swift resolution to the immediate situation.
He charged up a trail leading into the interior of the island and soon found the body of a fallen mercenary. There was more scattered shooting from up ahead but no more pistol shots. The mercenaries didn’t have a target. Hodges kept going.
He soon caught up to two more of his men. They were scanning the area, focusing their attention on a slope that rose above the trail.
“Did you see them?”
The nearest man shook his head and spat indignantly. “The bastard ambushed us. Killed Raul and ran. We never saw him, but I think he’s up there.”
“Then let’s—”
A shot rang out from above and the mercenary spun half around in a halo of red. Hodges bolted for cover behind a nearby tree as did the surviving mercenary, but no more shots came. Hodges leaned out from behind cover, just far enough to sweep the hillside.
Chapman was probably already gone. Outnumbered as he was, hit and run tactics were the only way the man could hope to stay alive, and if he had enough bullets, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the former SEAL might actually win the fight, or at least stay alive long enough to put one of those lucky shots through Hodges skull.
Swift resolution, he thought. “Pete! Can we talk about this?”