Serpent nf-1 Read online

  "About as reasonable as this whole operation," Austin said with a wry grin. Anyone else?"

  "A couple of people showed up with cameras and notepads," Trout said. "Said they were.' reporters or from newspapers."

  "Did they have ID?"

  "We didn't ask. Seemed like a waste of time. If these guys are as organized as we think they are, they'd have phony credentials. We've had lots of sightseers and volunteers, We've told them we're just doing the preliminary stuff, took their names, and said we'd contact them. Everyone's being videotaped by the remote surveillance camera on top of that cactus."

  Austin was thinking about the battle aboard the Nereus when they had to fend off the group of well-armed attackers. As defenders they had the element of surprise and luck But the scars he and Zavala bore testified that events easily could have gone the other way Even these tough ersatz ditch diggers would be quickly overwhelmed by an attack in force.

  "What kind of backup do we have?" he asked.

  "We've got six men in that old gas station just before the turnoff," Ned said. "They can be here less than five minutes after they get the signal. We've timed them." He touched the pager at his belt. "I punch a button, and they're on their way"

  Austin's eyes swept his surroundings then scanned the distant mountains. Strangely, for a man of the sea, he always felt at home in the desert. There were similarities between the two environments, the endless vistas, the potential for violent weather changes, and the pitiless hostility toward human life.

  "What do you think, Joe? What way would you come in if you were attacking?"

  Zavala, who had been giving the subject some thought, answered without hesitation. "The road we drove in on offers the easiest access, so the obvious line of attack is from the desert. On the other hand, they might want us to think desert so they can come in on the road. Depends on their transportation. I haven't forgotten they used a hovercraft in Morocco."

  "Neither have I. A hovercraft might be hard to hide in the open desert."

  "Looks can be deceiving," Carl said. "I've scouted the area around the ranch. The terrain out there has got more wrinkles than Sun City. Arroyos, washes, natural basins. You might not be able to hide an army, but you could tuck away a hit team big enough to make life interesting."

  "And very short, "Austin said. "So we'll take the desert. Have the boys in the general store set up posts on the road after dark. Anyone backing them up?" .

  Ned nodded. "Uhhuh. Chopper and another dozen guys armed to the teeth are camped in a wash about three miles from here. Five-minute ETA for them, too."

  Five minutes can be a long time, Austin thought, but overall he felt pretty good about the arrangements. He looked over at where the Spokane couple were hard at work

  "What about our Time-Quest people?"

  Trout chuckled. "If they're assassins, it's the best damned disguise I've seen. We did background checks, and they're legitimate."

  "I wasn't thinking about that," Austin said. "There should be some plan to protect them if and when trouble starts."

  "No problem," Trout replied. "They're staying in a no-tell motel out on the highway."

  Austin turned to Nina. "Would I be able to persuade you to get a motel room as well?"

  "No," she said emphatically.

  "Why does your answer not surprise me? If you insist on staying, I want you close to Joe and me. And do exactly what we tell you to do. Now, where is this incredible artifact that's supposed to provoke the attack?"

  Nina smiled. "We've got it in the 'vault."

  Ned and Carl went back to their work, and Nina led the way to a metal shed that had been thrown up next to an RV She opened the padlocked door with a key at her belt. There was no electricity, so they lit a gas camp lamp. Two sawhorses had been set up inside with thick planks running crosswise. On the planks was an object covered with a painter's canvas drop cloth.

  Trout said, "It's amazing what modern science can do to add years to something's age. The boys at the NUMA lab cooked up a batch of caliche that would ordinarily take centuries to accumulate." He paused for dramatic effect, then whipped the cloth off. "Voila. "

  Austin and Zavala stared for a moment at the object illuminated in the light from the lamp, then moved in for a closer look Austin reached out and touched the bronze surface. "Is this what I think it is?" he said.

  Trout cleared his throat. "I believe the term its creators used was artistic license. What do you think?"

  A broad grin crossed Austin's face. "I think it's perfect," he said.

  The Yucatan, Mexico

  18 GAMAY WAS REGRETTING HER STAR Trek comment. The HumVee hurtled along the narrow two-lane road at warp speed. Chi seemed to navigate with an advanced type of radar. Since he was too short to see over the top of the steering wheel, there could be no other explanation for the ease with which he whipped the wideframed vehicle around potholes and suicidal armadillos. The woods on both sides were a verdant blur.

  Trying a ploy to slow him down, Gamay said, "Dr. Chi, how is your Mayan dictionary coming along?"

  The professor attempted to talk over the loud whir of the heavytreaded tires and the rush of air around the boxy vehicle. Gamay cupped an ear with her hand. Chi nodded his understanding. His lead foot came off the accelerator, and he switched on the AC.

  Refreshingly cool air flowed from the vents. "Don't know why I didn't do this before," he said. "Thank you for asking about the dictionary. Unfortunately I've abandoned work on the project for the time being."

  "I'm sorry to hear that. You must be busy at the museum."

  His response was an amused glance. 'My duties at the museum are not what I'd describe as demanding. As the only fullblooded Mayan on the staff I rate a sinecure. I believe they call them 'noshow' jobs in your country. In Mexico these are timehonored positions that command great prestige. I'm actually encouraged to be out in the field away from the office."

  "I don't understand, then. The dictionary?"

  "Must play second fiddle to the greater need. I spend most of my time fighting the looters who are stealing our heritage. We are losing our historical artifacts at an alarming rate. A thousand pieces of fine pottery are taken from the Mayan region every month."

  A thousand," Gamay said with an uncomprehending shake of her head. "I was aware you had problems, but I had no idea things were quite so bad."

  "Not many people do. Unfortunately it is not only the quantity of the stolen goods that. is frightening but the quality. The traffickers in contraband don't waste their time on inferior work They take the very best. Codexstyle ceramics of the Late Classic period, A.D. 600 to 900, command top dollar. Beautiful pieces. I wouldn't mind having some myself."

  She stared out the windshield, lips pursed in anger. "That is a tragedy."

  "Many of the looters are chicleros who work the chicle plantations. A very tough breed. Chicle is the sap used to make chewing gum. In the past when Americans chewed less, the chicle market dropped, the workers turned to looting, and we lost more of our culture. But it's worse now"

  "In what way, Dr. Chi?"

  "The chicle market doesn't make a difference now. Why break your back working in the fields when you can sell a good pot for two hundred to five hundred dollars? They've become used to the money. Looting is organized. Groups of fulltime looters are hired by traffickers in Carmelita, in Guatemala. The artifacts are channeled there, loaded on trucks, and taken across the border to Belize: Then by ship or air to the U.S. and Europe. The artifacts bring thousands of dollars in the galleries and auctions. Even more from museums and private collectors. It's not difficult to provide source documentation."

  "Still, they must know many of these artifacts are stolen."

  "Of course. But even if they suspect this, they say they are preserving the past."

  "That's a lame excuse for erasing a culture. But what can you do about it?"

  "As I said earlier, I'm a 'finder.' I try to locate sites before they can belooted. I make their location known on
ly when the government can assure me that the sites will be guarded until we get the artifacts out of the ground. At the same time I use my connections in the US. and Europe. The governments of the affluent countries are the ones who can bring the traffickers to jail, hit them where it hurts by confiscating their property."

  "It seems almost hopeless."

  "It is," he said gravely. And dangerous. With the stakes so high violence has become commonplace. Not long ago a chiclero said instead of sending Mayan artifacts out of the country, leave them alone where they are and bring the tourists in to see them. It would mean more money for all."

  "Not a bad idea. Did anyone listen to him?"

  "Oh yes." His mouth curled in a dark smile. "Someone heard him loud and clear. He was killed. Whoops!"

  He hit the brakes. The HumVee decelerated like a fighter jet deploying a drogue chute and swung to the right in a twelve-G turn.

  "Sorry!" Chi yelled .as they bumped over the shoulder and plunged toward the trees. "I get carried away Hold on, we're going in!" he shouted over the din of snapping branches and the roar of the engine.

  Gamay was sure they were headed for a crash, but Chi's sharp eye had seen what she hadn't, a barely discernible opening in the dense forest. With the professor hanging on to the steering wheel like some mad gnome, the lumbering vehicle crashed through the woods.

  They bounced along for nearly an hour. Chi followed a route that was entirely invisible to Gamay, and she was surprised when he announced they were at the end of the track. The professor maneuvered the vehicle around, taking down at least an acre of vegetation, pointed out, and switched off the motor.

  "Time for a stroll in the woods."

  Chi exchanged his straw hat for a Harvard baseball cap, worn with the visor facing backward so it wouldn't catch on branches. While he unloaded the packs Gamay changed from shorts into jeans that would protect her legs from thorns and briars. Chi slipped his arms through the straps of the rucksack holding their lunch, slung the shotgun over his shoulder, and hung the machete from a scabbard tucked into his belt. Gamay carried a second pack with the camera and notebooks. With a quick glance at the surfs position to get his bearings, he set off into the woods in a groundcovering scuttle.

  Gamay had an athletic figure with long legs, small hips, and medium bust. She was a tomboy as a girl, always running with a gang of boys, building tree houses, playing baseball in the streets of Racine, Wisconsin. As a grown woman she became a fitness nut, deep into holistic medicine, and running and biking and hiking during family fourwheeling trips into the Virginia countryside. At five-ten, Gamay was nearly a foot taller than the professor. As lithe and fit as Gamay was, she had trouble keeping up with Chi. He seemed to melt through branches she had to push aside. His quiet passage through the forest made Gamay imagine she must sound like a cow crashing through the bushes. Only when Chi stopped to hack away with his machete at vines barring the way did she get a chance to catch her breath.

  On one such halt, after they had climbed up a small hill, he pointed to broken pieces of limestone layering the ground.

  "This is part of an old Mayan road. Raised paved causeways like this run between cities all over the Yucatan. Good as anything the Romans built. Traveling should be easier from now on."

  His prediction proved true. Although the grass and bushes were still thick, the solid underpinning made for easier walking.

  Before long they stopped again, and Chi indicated a low line of fallen stones that ran through the trees. "Those are the remains of a city wall. We're almost there."

  A few minutes later the forest thinned, and they broke out of the trees into the dear. Chi slid the machete into its sheath.

  "Welcome to Shangri-la."

  They were at the edge of a plain about a half mile in diameter, covered with low bushes and broken here and there by trees. It was unremarkable except for odd-shaped, steep-sided mounds hidden under dense vegetation that rose from the grass between where she and the professor were standing and the tree line on the far side of the field.

  Gamay blinked in the abrupt change from shade to bright sunlight. "It's not quite how I pictured utopia," she said, wiping the sweat from her eyes.

  "Well, the neighborhood has gone downhill in the last thousand years or so," Dr. Chi lamented. "But you must admit it's quiet."

  The only sound was their own breathing and the drone of a million insects. "I think the term is deathly quiet."

  "What you see is the area immediately around the main one-acre plaza of a fairsized settlement. Buildings stretched out for three miles on each side with streets in between. Once this place bustled with little brown-skinned people like me. Priests in feathered regalia, soldiers, farmers, and merchants. Wood smoke hung in the air from hundreds of buts no different from my house. The sound of, infants crying. Drumbeats. All gone. It makes you think, doesn't it?" Chi's gaze was fixated as if the visions in his mind had come alive. "Well," he said, pulling himself back into the present. "I'll show you why I dragged you into the wilderness. Stay right behind me. There are holes all over the site that drop down to old dome-shaped cisterns. Some of them I've marked. I might have a hard time pulling you out. If you keep to the paths you'll be fine."

  Warily eyeing the waist-high grass to either side of the rough trail, Gamay loped after the professor as he made his way across the field. They came to the foot of a mound covered with thick tendrils of vegetation. It was about thirty feet high and sixty feet at the base.

  "This is the center of the plaza. Probably a temple to a minor god or king. The summit collapsed, which is what has saved the site from being discovered. The ruins are all below tree line and don't stick up out of the forest. You really can't see this place unless you're standing right on top of it."

  "It's lucky you were hunting in the vicinity" Gamay ventured.

  "It would be more dramatic if I stumbled out of the woods onto these ruins in pursuit of a partridge, but I cheated. I have a friend who works for NASA. A spy satellite mapping the rain forest saw a vague rectangular spot. I thought it looked interesting and took a closer look. That was nearly two years ago. I've been back a dozen times. On each visit I clear away more paths, and vegetation from the monuments and buildings. There are other ruins in the surrounding woods. I think it might turn out to be an important site. Now if you'll come this way"

  Like a guide conducting a museum tour, Chi led Gamay along the path to a cylindrical structure that had been hidden behind a heavily grown mound. "I've devoted my last two visits solely to clearing away this building." They walked around the edifice, which was built of finely fitted brownish-gray stone blocks.

  Gamay peered up at the rounded roof that had partially collapsed in on itself.

  "Unusual architecture," she said. Another temple?"

  Talking as he worked, Dr. Chi cut away the snaking vines that were boldly trying to reclaim the building. "No, this is actually a Mayan celestial observatory and time clock. Those ledges and window openings are. laid out so that the sun and stars would shine in according to the equinoxes and solstices. At the very top was an observatory chamber where astronomers could calculate the angles of stars. But here. This is what I wanted to show you."

  He brushed away new vegetation from a frieze about a yard in width that ran around the lower part of the wall, then stepped back and invited Gamay to take a look. The frieze was carved at Mayan eye level, and Gamay had to bend low: It was a nautical scene. She ran her long fingers over a carving of a boat. The vessel had an open deck and a high stern and bow. The stem was elongated into what looked like a pointed battering ram. Billowing from the thick mast was a large square sail. There was no boom, the rope braids holding the top of the sail fastened to a permanent yard, lines sweeping fore and aft to the overhanging stem, a double steering oar. Seabirds flew overhead, and fish leaped from the water near the bow.

  The craft bristled with so many spears it resembled the back of a porcupine. The weapons were in the hands, of men wearing what looked like
football helmets. Other men rowed with long oars that were angled back along the side of the ship. There were twenty-five rowers, which meant there would have been a total of fifty, counting those on the side not visible. What appeared to be a row of shields hung off the rail. She used the human figures to estimate the approximate size of the craft at more than. one hundred feet.

  Moving along the frieze she saw more warships and what appeared to be merchant vessels with fewer soldiers, the decks crowded with rectangular shapes that could have been boxes for goods. Men she assumed were ship's crew stood in the yardarm hauling on lines to trim the sail. In contrast to the helmeted men, they wore odd, pointed headgear. The motifs were varied, but this was clearly a flotilla of merchants being escorted by armed protectors.

  Chi watched her walk around the building, an amused gleam in his dark eyes, and she realized he never intended to show her carvings of marine life. He wanted her to see the ship scene. She stopped at one ship and shook her head. On the bow of the boat was a carving of an animal.

  "Dr. Chi, doesn't this look like a horse to you?"

  "You asked me to show you sea life."

  "Have you dated this?"

  He stepped forward and ran his finger along the inscribed border.

  "These carved faces are actually numbers. This one represents zero. According to the hieroglyphics that are carved here, these ships were pictured about a hundred and fifty years B.C."

  "If that date is even remotely correct, how could this ship be carved with a horse's head? Horses didn't arrive until the fifteen hundreds when the Spanish brought them in."

  "Yes, it is certainly a puzzle, isn't it?"

  Gamy was looking at a diamond shape in the sky over the ships. Hanging from it was the figure of a man.

  "What on earth is this?" she said.

  "I'm not sure. I thought it was some kind of sky god when I first saw it, but it's none I recognize. This is a great deal to absorb all at once. Are you hungry? We can come back and look at this again."

  "Yes, fine," Gamy said, as if coming out of a daze. She had trouble pulling herself away from the carvings, but thoughts were buzzing around in her head like a swarm of bees.