And somewhere in all that were two of his closest friends.
The chopper approached the clearing and the pilot slowed to a hover fifty feet above the jungle canopy. After what had happened to the two choppers back at the plantation the Government weren’t taking any chances and seconds later Hawke rappelled down from the Puma into the jungle below. The others followed behind him.
When they were on the ground, Gonzalez gave a signal and the Puma rose into the air, beating the canopy and anyone still underneath it with the chunky downdraft of the four powerful composite rotor blades.
With the sketchy information they had about the complex layout, the ECHO team and the Mexican Special Forces had planned their assault as best as they could, and now Hawke led the first wave against the complex’s western perimeter.
He stepped over the crumbling ruins of the outer wall and drew his gun, ready for the battle ahead and was suddenly aware how different this had now become to a regular ECHO mission. This time both the Mexican and US Governments were actively involved in the pursuit of Wade, and he felt the heavy eye of international scrutiny weighing on his shoulders as he led the soldiers forward into the complex. He knew Eden preferred to keep things under the radar, and even to this day Hawke still didn’t know exactly how much the British Government knew about Elysium, but this mission had changed when Jack Brooke got involved. Now a mistake could mean international disaster.
Moving across what had been a wide courtyard at the front of the main temple, they emerged from the jungle into the area Wade had ordered his men to clear and Hawke almost took a step back when he saw the temple up close for the first time. Its sheer size staggered him, and he was amazed to think such a structure could hide in the jungle, evading the eyes of the world for so long.
Jungle vines and plants clasped at the base of the monument and wound up its stone steps on their way to reach more light. Hawke crunched on them as he began to climb the steps on his way to the top, joined at his side by his friends and the Mexican soldiers.
“That’s what used to be the sacred precinct,” Gonzalez said. “You can tell because the outer wall is decorated with serpent heads. Those steps leading up the side of the main pyramid lead to the Great Plaza. At the top will be the shrines to the House of the Jaguar and the House of the Eagle.”
“Where they sacrificed people?” Hawke asked.
Gonzalez’s brief nod was the only reply.
Climbing the steps, he was able to see that the actual Temple of Huitzilopochtli was situated at the very top behind an expansive flat square. This is where Ryan had told him people would gather to watch the sacrifices.
Hawke glanced at his flanks to ensure all the forces were in position and then ordered the assault to move forward. At first, their passage across a second, smaller courtyard was uninterrupted, with Hawke leading the way closer to the ancient temple. He smiled inwardly as he pulled the slider on the Sig and moved closer to danger, but then he saw the piles of bones littered at the bottom of the pyramid.
“What the hell?”
“There must be dozens of skeletons here,” Reaper said, staring in disbelief at the sun-bleached bones, picked clean by the incessant teeming of tropical insects.
“Oh my God…” Lea said sadly. “The missing people…”
Lexi covered her mouth in horror. “All dead.”
“Wade’s sacrifices,” Hawke said. “He must have killed them up there and kicked their corpses down the steps like the Aztecs used to do. Let’s get this bastard.”
Less than halfway up the structure Delgado and Garza appeared at the top of the steps with the Jaguar Knights. It looked like they had replaced their blow pipes with carbines and wasted no time in opening fire on them.
Hawke and Lea dived for the cover of a stone ledge which ran around the sides and rear of the temple, while Reaper, Lexi and the Mexicans followed suit but on the other side of the steps.
Delgado, Garza and their men took advantage of the situation and the superiority offered to them by their elevated position and fanned out before advancing slowly toward them. They kept up their barrage of fire, blasting stone chunks out of the masonry all around the ECHO team’s defensive position.
“This ain’t gonna be easy, Joe,” Lea screamed as she dodged a bullet.
Hawke had a feeling she was on the money.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The jets of the Citation were still whirring when Alex Reeve and Scarlet Sloane landed at San Francisco International Airport. They crossed the apron to climb into the Eurocopter Lakota that was awaiting them. Following up the rear were Kim Taylor and Jack Camacho.
Now, Alex was running the tactical side of the operation through her mind for the tenth time as the chopper rose up over South San Francisco and speeded toward the Financial District. Alex knew the area well — after her father had walked out on her mother the two of them had relocated to the city. She had spent part of her childhood here. She clenched her jaw at the thought of all it being turned to a radioactive wasteland of broken buildings and melted glass.
Down there in those busy streets, eating at the cafés and walking in the parks were her friends and her family — all unsuspecting of the terrible danger hanging over their heads. Her father was down there too, preparing to give the biggest speech of his life. All of this would be gone when Wade’s ‘new sun’ exploded in the city, and now she was the one charged with bringing this madness to an end. She kept calm… she had a lot of experience, and it meant she could do it.
Thanks to her father she’d spent half her life around generals and soldiers. She’d learned how to keep her nerve, and the CIA had trained her well. Now it was time to put all of that to the test because if she failed — if her team failed — San Francisco would be reduced to burning ash and Wade would have won.
She cleared all that from her mind — she knew the way to win the war was to focus on each separate battle, one at a time… just as her father had taught her. It was time to put that into practice.
“Is it true they can’t deploy the army?” Scarlet asked.
Alex turned to the Englishwoman. “You mean the Posse Comitatus Act?”
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. “The what?”
“It means the power of the country, and to answer your question — yes and no. The Posse Comitatus Act signed by President Hayes in 1878 limits the deployment of federal forces in a law enforcement capacity by Washington, but the states can still use troops to enforce the law within their own jurisdictions. Just look at Kent State when the Ohio National Guard were ordered to control protests against the Cambodian Campaign and ended up killing four students.”
“Do you have any idea, Alex,” Scarlet said deadpan, “just how boring the boy would have made that reply?”
“Hey, we’re almost there,” Camacho said through the headsets, interrupting the banter.
Alex looked down and saw the busy city streets rushing up to meet them as the chopper made its way down to land. She prayed they would get there on time. The sun was low on the horizon. It wouldn’t be long now until Aurora Soto, Jorge Mendoza and the other members of the Sixth Sun on Alcatraz activated the bomb.
And that meant millions of lives were hanging on a thread.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Bullets and grenades rained from the sky like never before as the unholy alliance of Mexican cartel men and Sixth Sun cultists unleashed their own brand of hell on the ECHO team and their allies. Hawke’s mind was suddenly filled with a flashback of war. Memories of the joint SBS-CIA search and destroy mission he had done in Afghanistan’s Nakar Valley now flew through his mind like hot lead.