Kline hung back for a moment in the darkened passageway and watched Rourke work. Across the chamber, a statue-like object stood concealed under a blue square of tarpaulin. Kline had only seen under that tarpaulin once, but it had dominated his thoughts, his dreams, ever since.
Rourke lifted his welding mask.
'If you're going to stay back there,' Rourke called out, 'turn your light on and take a look at the carvings. I know you have a fetish for them.'
Kline sighed. He knew I was here the entire time.
'I lost my flashlight back there somewhere.'
Rourke inspected his welding. 'It's at your feet.'
Kline glanced down, saw his flashlight near his boots and picked it up. He weighed the flashlight in his hand, irritated at Rourke’s silly games. 'It's little things like this that freak me out about you, Rourke. We're on the same side, remember? There's no need to sneak up on me in the dark and steal my stuff. That's just weird.'
'I heard a noise and checked it out. Not my fault you're deaf.'
'I was climbing through one of those stupid holes — give me a break. Wait — you heard me from all the way back here?'
Rourke shut down the welder and waved to the floor. 'Those grooves carry the sound somehow. Anyway, it's a good lesson. What would you have done without the goggles if you lost your flashlight?’
Kline tapped the flare tucked in his belt by answer. 'Better than a flashlight.'
Rourke smiled and pointed past Kline to the passageway carvings. 'Behind you is a scene of a man getting dragged backward by his feet. It looks like he's trying to find purchase with his hands on the floor, right?'
Indulge him, Kline thought as he examined the carving. Rourke was right. The fine detail was amazing.
'Look at his body language,' Rourke pointed out. 'The curve of his elbow and the way his hip is turning. It's hard to believe this came from someone's imagination.'
'But what are they all running from?' asked Kline, not really expecting an answer. 'There must be thousands of these carvings, and everyone in them is getting torn apart or dismembered, but you never see what's doing the damage.'
'Now, that's the question, isn't it?' agreed Rourke enigmatically. 'Did you know that artwork was mostly used by early cultures for one of two reasons? Either to record history or predict the future. So I guess the real question is whether these carving are recording what has already happened, or predicting what is going to happen.'
'Or both,' suggested Kline.
The Security Chief seemed to like that answer. He broke off looking at the carving and got back to business. 'So what's the problem?'
Kline remembered the bag. 'I went into the jungle looking for Eli and Carmichael. They didn't come back from their perimeter patrol at 0600.'
Bored already, looking to return to work, Rourke headed back to his welding rig. 'Find them?'
'Not sure.'
Rourke stopped halfway through fitting his welding mask. 'How so?'
'Well, I found their trail. The ground was wet with all yesterday’s rain. Their boot tracks stood out clearly. I followed them about three kilometers until the tracks disappeared. Their boot prints just stopped in a clearing. I found no sign of how they left the clearing.'
'Any shooting?'
'Didn't hear any. I found no shells on the ground. No scuff marks. Nothing looked disturbed. It looks like they disappeared mid-step.'
'Maybe they pulled themselves into the canopy or walked onto harder ground? They might have thought they were being followed.'
Kline had thought of that. He opened the bag. 'No. Just like I explained it. I did find this though. Just outside the clearing balanced in the fork of a tree.'
Rourke looked into the bag, and then pulled out the object. 'A boot. One of ours. So what?'
'Look inside it.'
Rourke flipped over the boot. Inside was a foot, severed at the ankle, still wearing a sock. 'Hmmm… this definitely complicates things.'
Chapter 3
Human sacrifice.
The answer boiled down to people killing other people.
Ethan knew it.
Six hundred years ago, an unparalleled wave of human sacrifice swept across Mesoamerica. Extending for hundreds of years, it colored every part of post-classic Mesoamerican culture. It posed without doubt the biggest unanswered question to arise in Central American archaeology in years, if not ever. The archaeological record provided absolutely no explanation. The cause of the three-fold increase in human ritual killings remained a mystery.
What Ethan did know was the timing.
The wave of human sacrifices started when the Plaza was buried.
The killing spread like a pond ripple extending the breadth of a continent. Ethan couldn't help but feel he stood where the stone had hit the water. The Plaza represented the epicenter. Whatever had happened — something profound enough to change history — it had started here. Then it was buried. The explanation lay here somewhere. All around him. He just needed to coordinate the right intellect and tools to unlock the answers.
Ethan wasn't surprised the answers were so hard to find. To date, their traditional methods of archaeology simply identified which cultures the Plaza didn't belong to. Everything they found was both excitingly new and obscenely obscure.
He couldn't blame their science. His team incorporated cutting edge archaeological methods. Volunteers logged every artifact with a GPS before they left the ground. Abigail was working up a first class pollen analysis. Test pits and trenches riddled the site like an ant farm.
And it wasn't the quality of material they were finding. Ironically, the Plaza remained incredibly well-preserved because it had been hidden and protected from the elements.
The excavation just wasn't turning up the types of artifacts associated with large scale cultural abandonment. Ethan had taught graduate courses specializing in site abandonment, but nothing they found shed any light.
It wasn't famine or war. It wasn't disease or crop failure. It wasn't a natural disaster.
What on earth was left?
A site this large, the most astounding architectural feat of the day, needed a pretty compelling reason to be abandoned. And why take such extraordinary lengths to bury the place? What were they hiding?
Ethan had one other important clue. Subtle changes occurred in cultural relics after the Plaza’s concealment. Depictions of gods became more chaotic and less benevolent. More monstrous and less human. More feared and less worshipped. The pictograms throughout the Plaza were the perfect example.
Ethan pinned high hopes on Joanne's analysis of the east bunker pictograms.
That's why he needed to find her right away.
He had an online lecture to give at 9 am. Hopefully Joe had deciphered more pictograms in the last forty-eight hours. Maybe something fresh and exciting for the last lecture of the season. Unfortunately, Joe's self-confidence prevented her giving the lecture herself. Well, he was working on that too. The Plaza had a way of bringing out the best in people.
Ethan checked his watch and hurried toward the east bunker. No matter how much he planned, the end of season always caught him off guard. He started jogging. He couldn't miss the lecture. Subscriptions to his online lectures helped fund the excavation. He lectured by live feed every Tuesday and Thursday.
Cripes, where’s my cap? Oh, I’m wearing it.
He’d agreed to wear the cap during the feeds. The cap branded him a sellout to his fellow academic, but Ethan didn't care. He got the money he needed to do the research he wanted, and if his contemporaries didn't like his methods, they could sit on it and spin. Public relations were never something he’d thought much about before the Plaza, but he enjoyed lecturing to an ever-widening audience. Why shouldn't archaeology be part of popular culture? His research was exciting. Why should their discoveries be relegated to a twelve second gap filler between the upcoming wedding of some celebrity and the next best way to lose weight fast!