The man immediately resumed walking and Maria made no further effort to dissuade him. It would take him hours to reach the highway, if he did not collapse along the way. By that time, the army would have the road blocked to enforce the quarantine. She got back in the Land Cruiser and continued to the village. She found the house with the four patients who were showing advanced-stage symptoms, and began gathering as much data about them and the progression of the disease as she could. She took blood samples, even though there was no way to test them, and started IV fluid infusions for all but the sickest man — the one who was swollen like a bloated corpse and closest to death. More fluids weren’t going to help him. When she palpated his organs, they felt mushy, as if partially liquefied. His breathing was erratic with long breathless episodes of apnea, followed by rapid, labored inhalations.
She doubted he could survive until nightfall.
After a while, more patients were brought in, all of them feverish and coughing blood, some babbling incoherently. At first, Maria ignored their ravings, but then she realized that all of them kept repeating the same phrases, or at least making the same incomprehensible sounds.
On an impulse, she took a closer look at the symbols scribbled on the floor by the other patients. They weren’t identical, but the similarities were nonetheless astonishing. They also looked familiar, though she couldn’t say where she had seen them before. As she attempted to sketch a rough facsimile of the symbols, it occurred to her that she was now doing the same thing as the infected.
The sickest man let out a long, rattling exhalation that seemed to go on forever, like a balloon deflating completely. His head lolled to the side and dark blood dribbled from his mouth and nose. Maria knew he was dead. She crossed herself, and then rose to check his vitals just to be sure but before she could, the woman standing guard on the porch called out to her.
“Curandera, someone is coming.”
For a moment, Maria thought the woman meant more infected patients were being brought in, but then she heard the noise of helicopter rotors beating the air.
She ventured outside and saw, not one but several large dual rotor helicopters approaching from the south. Four of them had what appeared to be military-style Humvees dangling beneath them.
Evidently the president had not wasted any time mobilizing the army.
Within just a few minutes, the first of the helicopters — one that was not carrying a slung vehicle — settled on the road. Even before it was down, a squad of men — presumably soldiers — wearing full environment suits and carrying assault rifles jumped from a lowered cargo ramp in the rear of the aircraft. The helicopter took off quickly, making room for the next aircraft to perform a similar touch-and-go landing.
The Humvees came next. The vehicles were painted black, like the helicopters, with no markings. Maria watched, dumbfounded, as hazmat-suited soldiers climbed into the Humvees and drove off down the mountain road in both directions. When the road was clear, the helicopters began setting down, one in front of another, like a line of school buses. Their rotors continued to spin, hot exhaust pouring from their turbines. The rest of the soldiers, too many for Maria to count, fanned out through the village in small groups. One of the groups seemed to be heading straight for her.
She stepped forward to identify herself, but the soldiers brandished their rifles at her and she froze. A suited figure stepped out of the group, but it was only when the person was standing right in front of her that Maria saw it was a woman — a light-skinned woman with red hair.
“Are you in charge?” the woman asked. She spoke Spanish, but her accent marked her as from somewhere outside Honduras.
“I don’t know if I’m in charge,” Maria said, “but I am a doctor with the Ministry of Health. I called for the quarantine.”
Behind the Perspex face shield, the woman’s expression was unreadable. She nodded to the house behind Maria. “Are there infected inside?”
“Yes. One just died. Three more are in an advanced stage. The others are less advanced but still critical.”
The woman turned away without acknowledging Maria, and addressed the soldiers. “We’ve got multiple subjects in here. Secure them for transport.”
Maria gasped in surprise when she heard the woman speak in English. “Are you from the American CDC?” she asked haltingly in the same language.
“Something like that,” the woman turned away as the soldiers pushed past Maria, moving into the house.
Further down the road, the soldiers were rounding up groups of villagers by the roadside even though they did not appear to be showing any signs of infection. Maria knew she ought to feel relieved by the swift and overwhelming response, but instead she was frightened, and not just because of the strange disease.
After a few minutes, a pair of soldiers emerged from the house, carrying one of the late-stage infected patients on a litter between them. The woman in the hazmat suit stopped them and after a quick assessment, signaled for them to continue. The soldiers took the patient to the helicopter and disappeared inside. One by one, the rest of the infected were brought out on litters, along with the body of the recently deceased man.
Maria approached the woman again. “Where are you taking them?”
The woman held up a hand to silence her, and Maria realized she was speaking to someone using a telephone or radio headset. Maria couldn’t hear either side of the exchange, but after the last of the patients was transferred to the waiting helicopter, the woman called out to one of the soldiers. “We've got what we need. Clean it up.”
CHAPTER 6
Xibalba was a name Maddock did recognize. It was the ancient Maya version of hell — the afterlife, land of the dead, etc. It wasn’t a real place, and he had told Charles Bell as much.
“That may be true,” Bell had replied with the same solemn tone. “But the City of Shadow is real. The golden plate Miranda found in the cenote proves it.”
Maddock had not pressed for more information. The artifact was real enough. He’d seen it in the video footage from Miranda’s GoPro. Whether it proved the existence of the City of Shadow or Xibalba or anything else was ultimately irrelevant. Tam Broderick had asked him to assist Bell, and right now, that meant helping the archaeologist recover the golden disk from the cenote, which was why he and Bones were now geared up and ready for a plunge into the depths. Unfortunately, Bell’s daughter had insisted on joining them.
“I know exactly where it is,” she had told them. “Honestly, you don’t even need to go. Just loan me a tank and I’ll bring it back inside of twenty minutes.”
“Why do you need one of our tanks?” Bones asked. “Come to think of it, why didn’t you bring it out on your first dive?”
“He’s right,” Maddock said. “Diving alone was foolish. You’re lucky you made it back. Be grateful for that gift and don’t push it.”
“Fine,” she snapped. “I’ll let you tag along.”
“You’ll let—”
“I know where it is. The longer we’re up here arguing about who goes, the more likely it is that those thugs will come back to finish what they started.”
That was something that weighed heavily on Maddock’s mind. He had only gotten a glimpse of one man of the pair that Bell and his daughter claimed had threatened them. The guy hadn’t looked particularly threatening — he had been in full retreat mode before Maddock and this friends had shown up — but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t be back.
He turned to Bones. “Maybe one of us should stay topside. Just in case.”
Angel broke in. “I think I can handle things for twenty minutes without a bodyguard.”