Rob Jones
The Aztec Prophecy
For My Family
PROLOGUE
Joe Hawke crouched in the darkness and waited for a bank of cloud to move in front of the moon. It was full tonight — a blue moon — and lit up the landscape like a stage light. In the distance somewhere behind him he heard the sound of a stream, and further away was the long, low bellowing of a stag. But tonight he wasn’t hunting any red deer. His quarry was something altogether grander.
There was a bleak beauty up here in the Scottish Highlands that appealed to him, but sometimes it could push you hard, and tonight was one of those times. For days now, a heavy storm had blown in from the Atlantic and lashed the area with rain and howling winds. He had spent those days lying in a trench he’d dug out in the small hours of the first night, monitoring the security.
The trench ran north to south to minimize the summer sun which even up here could be a problem during the day. Using fallen branches from the woods as support beams he’d covered it over with peat and moss. The rest was nothing more than a waiting game — whatever the weather. He hadn’t once considered delaying the mission because of the weather — the SBS didn’t do things like that — but all the same he was glad when he woke that morning and saw the storm had blown out.
He pulled a Glock 22 from a holster inside his camo jacket and flipped the thumb lever to release the magazine. Making sure it was fully loaded he pushed it back inside the grip and pulled the slide back. As the spring-loaded action moved forward into position it automatically pulled a round into the chamber from the top of the mag. Now the weapon was cocked with a live round ready for business. There was no safety catch on the Glock once a live round was in the chamber, so now it was Showtime.
Exploiting a gap in the CCTV, he climbed over the perimeter wall with ease and lowered himself gently down onto the gravel on the other side. He was now standing on the outer rim of an impressive box-hedge maze which adorned the east topiary lawns of Earlskeep Castle. This was the ancestral home of James Stewart Sinclair Matheson, the former British Foreign Secretary, and just like the parabellum in the oily chamber, Joe Hawke had business to do.
He criss-crossed silently through the topiary lawn and skirted the maze until he reached a smartly maintained croquet lawn. After waiting for a cloud to obscure the moon once more, he jogged across the lawn and reached an old dovecot which looked like it had been converted into a small guesthouse for visiting friends or family.
How nice.
From here he ran into an expansive apple orchard which gave him cover all the way to the outbuildings within the inner grounds of the castle.
The castle was an impressive example of sixteenth century architecture, built in 1545 by Sir Robert Sinclair, and had over its long, winding life hosted many major figures of British history, from Mary, Queen of Scots to Edward VIII who had visited once for a weekend of stag hunting and baccarat. None of this mattered to the former SBS operative as he crouch-walked along the outer perimeter of the Victorian kitchen garden. He had only one thing on his mind as was ever the case with these missions — get in and get out.
Yes, it was impressive, but if James Matheson thought these castle walls could protect him from his fate then he was more deluded than Hawke thought. As the English former Special Forces man weaved silently through the shadows and drew ever closer to his target, he tried hard not to think about his wife, Liz, and how Matheson had ordered her murder. He tried hard not to think about how the old man had her gunned down on the streets of Hanoi on their honeymoon… about how this wicked old bastard had snatched away their happiness before it even arrived… but no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t keep the ghosts out of his head. This was as personal as it got, and he was here to settle the account.
The final hurdle was a broad moat, full of water but merely decorative. Covered in Apache beads and water lilies, its defensive days were long gone and Hawke jogged easily along the narrow bridge to the main walls of the castle.
Smashing a small window on the outer wall, he climbed inside and found himself in what looked like former servants’ quarters but was now one of the kitchens. He saw a large table loaded with crockery and the remains of a roasted turkey sitting in a metal tray on top of the stove.
How cosy.
Hawke knew where he had to go. As soon as he found out that Matheson had quit government and retired to his Scottish estate, his research work had begun in earnest. It hadn’t taken long to track down floor-plans of the castle from various planning applications made over the years, and then a short reconnaissance of the property over the last few days from his trench had revealed which lights were put out last at night.
Easy as pie.
Peering around the door, he saw a long empty corridor. This he knew would ultimately lead to the small room used by the security Matheson employed. It was far enough from the kitchens so they wouldn’t have heard the window breaking, but close enough that he was there in less than three minutes, moving silently along the sombre Persian rug-lined corridors.
There were only two men in the security office. They were both snoozing, soft bellies in soft chairs — one with a plate of beans and chips on his lap while the other was wearing Apple earbuds. Hawke sympathized with how boring it must be up here from a security angle and reflected on how this made things easier for both him and them. They wouldn’t enjoy being incapacitated by a former SBS man, and getting hurt in defense of a piece of crap like Matheson would have made it so much worse.
He wished them sweet dreams and continued on his path along the corridor until he reached the bottom of the servants’ stairwell. Treading on the sides of the steps by the wall to avoid making them creak under his weight, he made his way slowly to the top floor where he knew Matheson’s private apartment was located.
As he approached he could see the warm, cosy light of a flickering fire projecting under the apartment’s door, and from inside he heard the sound of avante-garde jazz music. So this was how James Matheson got down on a Saturday night…
He readied the Glock, deftly screwing a suppressor to the barrel and took a breath. He had waited a long time for this, and many people had died along the way — many decent, innocent people. Tonight they would all be avenged, but this was really about his wife — the woman he had met at Paddington while she was waiting patiently for a train… the woman he married on the coast in a small family ceremony… the woman he watched get killed in Vietnam on the first day of their honeymoon — and all because the monster behind this door had ordered her death.
Now it was payback time.
He kicked the door open and stormed into the room with the gun raised. He immediately saw Matheson — he was sitting in a leather wingback chair by the fire with a tartan blanket over his legs.
“What the hell?” the old man said, twisting uncomfortably in the chair. “Guards!”
“Forget about them, and forget about this shit music as well.”
Hawke aimed the gun at the stereo and fired a single shot at it. The bullet blew the top off the machine and after a puff of white smoke and a shower of sparks there was a new silence in the room.
Hawke gently closed the door behind him and stepped closer to Matheson. “Hands where I can see them right now or I take out a kneecap. Your men are asleep on the job and they won’t hear you even if you shout for help.”
“I very much doubt that!”
“You can always try it. It will be interesting to see if those two overweight bozos downstairs can climb five flights of stairs before I can squeeze this trigger and blow your head off.”