“Go on.”
“So you make your choice and the host opens one of the other doors to reveal a booby prize.”
“A Ryan,” Scarlet said, deadpan.
“A Ryan,” Alex repeated with a sigh. “So now you know where one of the Ryans is — in this case, one of the wires that trigger the bomb. If you stick with your original choice of the yellow wire you only have a thirty-three percent chance of picking James — the original one-in-three probability from the start when all the doors were shut. This means by not changing your original choice you have a thirty-three percent chance of getting James, and a sixty-six percent chance of getting a Ryan.”
“Someone get me a Tylenol,” Kim said.
“So what if you change your original choice?” Scarlet said.
1:59
Camacho checked the time. “While I’m impressed that you explained all this in less than two minutes, Alex, we can’t afford to wait much longer.”
“This is where the host — or Juana — comes in,” Alex said. “She knows which wire cuts the timer — the star prize — and after you selected yellow she told you the red wire was one of the booby prizes. As I said, you originally had a sixty-six percent chance of picking one of the booby-trap wires and only a thirty-three percent chance of picking the wire that deactivates the bomb, right?”
“Right.”
“But then the host turns up and eliminates one of the doors he knows hides the booby prize, or in our case eliminates one of the wires she knew would trigger the bomb. The analogy is identical.”
“I want vodka,” Scarlet said, her eyes crawling over the sleek, ticking nuke.
1:24
“It’s simple,” Alex continued, wincing at a fresh wave of pain in her legs. “If you get lucky and pick the door concealing James, then the host opens a door concealing one of the Ryans, right? This means if you change your choice you definitely get a Ryan, but — and this is the whole point — if you picked a Ryan first, which is twice as likely, and the host then opens the other door concealing a Ryan, a change of choice means a one hundred percent chance of getting James.”
“Still not with you.”
1:12
“Don’t you see? Every time you pick a Ryan first, a change of door means a higher chance of getting James, and the chances of picking Ryan first are sixty-six percent.”
Kim smiled. “I get it! You’re twice as likely to pick a Ryan first in the first place, so when the host opens the door on the booby prize — the other Ryan — switching doors means you’re much more likely to get James!”
Scarlet put her hand on Camacho’s shoulder. “So it’s simple, go with your gut or go with Alex’s completely incomprehensible statistics.”
“You know what?” Camacho said. “I’m goin’ with Alex.”
He took a deep breath and cut the blue wire.
0:03…
… and the timer stopped ticking.
“Pussy,” Scarlet said, sighing with relief. She recalled Bradley Karlsson’s words back in Tokyo when Ryan deactivated the Tesla device. “Ryan Bale waited until two seconds.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Morton Wade scrambled through the slit in the wall like a frightened rat. As he crawled under, a jagged rock on the top of the aperture caught his back and carved a deep gouge into his flesh. He screamed in pain, but knew there was no time to stop.
When he got to the other side of the slit, he staggered to his feet and felt the blood running down his back. Huitzilopochtli had forsaken him because of his treachery when he started worshipping Mictlantecuhtli, and worse, he now knew he was a coward.
Any idea he’d entertained of ending his own life had vanished like morning mist at the first opportunity afforded to him. He’d led so many to their deaths, and yet now he was running like a common criminal. In his confused, terrified mind one thing was crystal clear: this wasn’t the end of line, and no damned Limey soldier was going to kill him, either.
He ran a few paces and turned a corner. He looked around for a way out, and his mouth went as dry as sand when he realized he’d already been this way. He was just running around in circles, lost inside the God of the Dead’s hellhole Underworld.
And now, what was that noise?
It sounded like something breathing, moving — a sort of shuffling sound.
What was it now?
People.
Not a person — no, the noise was bigger than that. It was a group of people, but there was an unsettling synchronization in the way they were moving… like they were thinking as one. And the breathing was hurried, shallow… desperate.
And then he saw them.
Turning the corner ahead of him to his left was the source of the strange noise. It was the people he intended to sacrifice to Mictlantecuhtli. They were all there, venomous hatred in their pitted eyes as they moved closer to him. In their hands the very same obsidian daggers he was going to use on them. He knew what it meant, and he felt sick. How could it have come to this?
“No iba a hacer daño!” he tried to yell in his broken Spanish, but his voice cracked with fear and the words were no more than a pathetic whisper. He began to walk backwards away from them. “I wasn’t going to hurt you… I swear!”
But still they came.
“I have money. You can have all my money… Tengo un montón de dinero!”
His wretched pleas fell on deaf ears as they moved closer, the blades raised in their hands, trembling with rage.
He turned on his heel and sprinted deeper into the complex. So this was Mictlan, he thought as he pounded through the labyrinthine tunnels… and here I will die — and then he saw a familiar face.
“Silvio! Is that you?”
Mendoza came staggering around the corner but backed up immediately when he saw the danger approaching Wade.
“You know the way out of this shithole, Silvio?”
Mendoza said nothing, but glanced from Wade’s sweat-covered face down the tunnel to the men and women with nothing but revenge on their minds.
“I’ll pay — you know I have the cash. Come on, Silvio!”
Wade wiped the sweat from his face and looked down at his hand. He realized he was still wearing the face paint. “What you got there, buddy?” he said, looking at the idol.
“I know the way out,” Mendoza said, ignoring him.
“Great — let’s get out of here, man.”
“The way out for you,” Mendoza said, stepping closer… “is death.”
Wade felt a savage blow smash into his stomach. He tried to scream but the blade punctured his diaphragm and then he felt the blood pouring out of the wound. He looked down to see Mendoza holding one of the obsidian sacrificial daggers.
“Silvio… help me!” Wade said as he crumpled to the floor.
“Chinga usted, Wade. I help no one but myself.”
Mendoza spat on Wade and turned on his heel.
“You Mexican bastard!” he screamed in his Texan drawl.
As Mendoza’s shadow receded along the wall of the tunnel, Wade turned his attention to the men and women with the daggers. They were almost upon him now, but he was helpless to move, bleeding out through the wound in his stomach.
They grabbed him by the legs and dragged him down the tunnel.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said. He felt his hair scraping in the blood of his wounds as they hauled him along the dirty tunnel floor. “If you’re going to kill me then just kill me!”
One of the men turned a stubbly, sweaty face to him and spoke in Spanish. “We are not going to kill you, Señor Wade. We are going to sacrifice you. It’s quite different as I’m sure you will agree.”