Serpent nf-1 Read online

  "My guess is that he'd be quite flattered. He .might have something to say about being memorialized as a mere emperor. And the expression is a bit too benign." He glanced at the blackening sky. "Looks like we're in for it after all."

  The phalanx of dark clouds had broken free from the mountain peaks and was advancing swiftly in their direction. The mountains were now a deep umber. Faint rumbles echoed across the desert. The suns rays were frayed and faded.

  After stopping to turn on the interior illumination of the two RVs parked near the shed, they made their way in the yellowing light toward the adobe nuns of the ranch house where Trout was manning the command post.

  The Wingates, tired from digging and sifting, had returned to their motel early. Ned, Carl, and Zavala had taken up perimeter posts in outbuildings beyond the old corral. Their positions gave them a clear view of the desert stretching out to the horizon. The backup team would move in to secure the road when darkness fell.

  A gust of wind kicked up sand, and giant raindrops slapped the ground as Austin and Nina ducked inside the ranch house. Trout was in the kitchen, the only part of the house that still had a roof. Rain leaked in through a few holes and rapidly created rivulets in the dirt floor, but otherwise the interior was relatively dry and sheltered. The ragged opening where the door had been looked out on the RVs. The gaps between the adobe bricks provided views in every direction like the peepholes in a castle wall.

  The wind and rain were mere preliminaries. A desert electrical storm doesn't simply sweep in and let loose a few desultory bolts of lightning. It picks a spot and hovers over it, unleashing torrents of rain and crooked bolts of lightning seconds apart, or sometimes in multiples. It will pound away with a malevolence more common to humans, battering the earth like an artillery barrage whose intent is to eliminate the enemy or break his will.

  The nearconstant stroboscopic light froze the slashing raindrops. While Trout made visual checks, Austin kept in touch with the guards with a handheld radio. He had to shout to be heard over the thunder boomers and the pounding rain.

  The watchdogs had been instructed to call in at regular intervals or immediately if they encountered something unusual. The men on the perimeter identified themselves by their own names. The six men posted at the old gas station called themselves the A Team. The chopper crew, simply known as the B Team, was to listen and maintain silence.

  Austin's radio crackled with what sounded like static but was really rainfall.

  "Ned to base. Nothing."

  "Roger that," Austin replied. "Come in, Carl.".

  A second later. "Carl. Ditto."

  Taking to heart Austin's warning to keep messages brief, Joe answered, "Dittoditto."

  Then, from the road, "A Team. Negative."

  The storm lasted most of an hour, and when it moved on the premature darkness it had brought with it lingered, broken only by lightning flashes in the distance. The fresh-scrubbed air smelled strongly of sagebrush. Patrol reports continued to come in. All was still quiet until a call came in from the road crew.

  A Team to base. Vehicle coming. Taking positions."

  The team's plan was to use two men to intercept the vehicle, two to cover them. One would watch the backs of the coverers, and the sixth would keep in touch with the others on the radio.

  Austin went to the doorway and squinted toward the road. The headlights were pinpoints in the dark.

  A minute later. "Car signaled to stop . . . stopping. Approaching cautiously"

  Austin held his breath. There was no mason for anyone to visit the site this time of night. He pictured the men advancing from each side of the car with guns cocked. He hoped it wasn't a diversion while the real thrust came elsewhere. He quickly checked in with the other watchers. All was quiet on the desert side.

  The road team reported in after several tense moments. A Team." The voice sounded more relaxed. "Base, do you know anybody named George Wingate?"

  "Yes," Austin said. "What about him?"

  "He's operating the car."

  "Older man. White hair and beard?"

  "Roger that. Says he's working on your dig."

  "That's correct. Is his wife with him?"

  "Negative. He's by himself."

  "What's he doing here?"

  "Says his wife forgot her pocketbook. Left it in an RV bathroom. He would have come back earlier except for the storm. Instructions?"

  Austin chuckled. "Okay, let him in."

  "Roger that. Over and out."

  Moments later headlights stabbed the darkness as the car made its way along the road. The Wingates' Buick pulled up between an RV and the shed. The door opened, and a man got out. Wingate's tall figure disappeared around the corner of a Winnebago. A minute later he emerged carrying something under his arm. He stopped and did a curious thing. He turned toward the ranch house and waved. Austin was sum it was no accidental gesture. Then he got into his car and drove off. Austin turned to Nina, who'd found an old butcher block to sit on. She must have seen the puzzled expression on his face.

  "Problems?" she said apprehensively

  "No," he said to reassure her. "False alarm."

  A minute later the road team called in. "Visitor gone. A Team out."

  "Thanks. Good job. Base out."

  Trout shrugged. "Maybe tonight's not the night."

  Austin was unconvinced. "Maybe," he said, working a muscle in his jaw.

  Nobody was surprised when Trout's cell phone rang about fifteen minutes later. He had been trying off and on to make contact with Gamay and had left word for her to call him. He pulled the miniature Motorola flip phone from his pocket.

  After a moment he said, "No word? Would you ask the Nereus to let me know as soon as they hear from her? Yes, I'd be happy to talk to him. Hi, Rudi." He listened another minute, his brow furrowed. "Okay. I'll brief Kurt and get back to you."

  "That's odd," he said after he hung up. "Rudi had set up a dummy corporation that was coordinating this project. Phony name with a telephone number at NUMA headquarters. They got a call not long ago from police in Montana. Seems they picked up an older couple wandering down a highway. Fantastic story of being kidnapped."

  Austin was preoccupied with the nonevents of the night, so he was only half listening. "UFOs?" he said.

  "I don't think we ought to pass this one off. They said they'd been held a couple of days, that they were on their way to an archaeological dig in Arizona."

  Austin's ears perked up. "Do the police have a name?"

  "Wingate."

  Austin's reflexes had been dulled by a combination of the storm and the boredom of their uneventful watch. An alarm bell started jangling in his skull.

  "Damn!" he snapped. "Paul, get that chopper out here in a hurry. And pull the A Team into the site." He bolted out the door. He was halfway between the ranch house and the RVs when the shed went up in a yellowish-red ball of flame. He hit the ground belly-first, covered his head with his hands, and buried his face in the wet sand. The propane tanks on the RVs went off in secondary explosions that rocked the earth and turned night into day. Glowing pieces of metal fell from the sky, but the wind left in the storm's wake carried most of it away, and only a few hot sparks singed the backs of his hands.

  The patter of falling debris finally halted. He raised his head and spit out a mouthful of sand. The RVs and the shed had vanished. In their place was a crackling fire. The ground around the blaze was covered with glowing red embers.

  When he was sure the explosions had stopped completely, he got up and walked closer to the burning rubble which was all that remained of the RVs and the shed.

  Trout and Nina came running up.

  "Kurt, are you all right?" Nina said apprehensively.

  "I'm okay" Austin looked at the blazing pyre and wiped a few more grains of sand off his tongue. "But I prefer my fireworks on the Fourth of July"

  Carl, Ned, and Joe arrived seconds later: Then moving shadows materialized from every direction. The A Team was running
in with no attempt to stay out of sight. Their confused yells were drowned out by the whup-whup of the helicopter rotors. The chopper pilot saw the rotors fanning the blaze and scattering sparks, so he hauled off and landed near the ranch house.

  Circuits were rapidly connecting in Austin's brain. "Paul, do you have the number of the motel where the Wingates are staying?"

  "Yes, it's on my cell phone's memory."

  "Give the motel a call. See if they're still there."

  Trout punched out a number and asked to be connected to the Wingates' room.

  He turned to Austin. "I've got the night manager. He says Mr. Wingate paid up, but their car is still there. He'll go down and knock on the door."

  The manager came on the phone again after a few moments.

  "Calm down, sir," Trout said calmly. "Listen to me. Call the police. Don't touch anything in the room."

  Trout clicked off and turned to Austin. "The manager knocked on the Wingates' unit but didn't get an answer He tried the door. It was unlocked, and he went in. Then: was a body in the shower. A woman. Mrs. Wingate."

  Austin's jaw hardened. Any sign of Mr. Wingate?

  "No . The manager says he must have hitched a ride with somebody."

  "I'll bet he did."

  "What's going on?" Nina said.

  "Can't explain now. We'll be right back."

  Leaving Zavala to see if he could create some chaos out of order, Austin and Trout dashed for the helicopter. A minute later the chopper was airborne again. They flew out to the highway, followed it to the bright neon motel sign, and came down in the parking lot.

  The police had already arrived and were checking the room. Austin flashed his ID, identifying himself vaguely as being with a federal agency, hoping they would think he was FBI. Explaining what NUMA operatives were doing at a murder scene would have been a long story. The police didn't look too closely at his ID, impressed as they were by his sudden arrival from the heavens flanked by a tough looking SWAT team.

  Mrs. Wingate's body was crumpled in the shower stall. She was wearing a pink terrycloth robe as if she had just come from the shower when she was killed and shoved back in the stall. Although there was no blood, her head was at an odd angle. Austin went outside where Trout was talking on his phone to NUMA headquarters again.

  "The Wingates sent in photos with their original application," Trout said.

  "The motel must have a fax," Austin said.

  They went to the office, and Trout introduced himself as the one who had originally called him on the phone.. The manager said he had a fax, practically brand new, and gave Trout the number. He relayed it to NUMA, and within minutes the pictures came through. The elderly couple in the photos bore no resemblance to either Wingate, dead or alive.

  Austin and Trout quizzed the manager, a plump balding man in his fifties. He was still shaken but turned out to be a good witness. Years behind a desk dealing with people had given him a sharp eye for detail.

  "Saw the Wingates come back late in the afternoon and go into their room," he said. "Then came the storm. Wingate's car left as the rain was letting up. Then it came bark after a while. Wingate went to his room and a short time later dropped by the office and paid. Cash. Almost didn't recognize him," the manager said.

  "Why is that?" Austin said.

  "Hell, he had shaved off his beard. Don't know why he'd do that. You could see his scar."

  "Make believe I don't know what you're talking about,' Austin said.

  With his finger the manager drew an imaginary line down his cheek from his eye to the corner of his mouth. A long one, from here to here."

  Austin and Trout talked to the manager until the police came in to question him. Then they got into the helicopter, and at Austin's direction the pilot made a sweep of the roads around the excavation site. They saw dozens of headlights, but it would have been impossible to know which vehicle Wingate was riding in. Or even whether he was in a vehicle. They headed back to the ranch, where the glow of the fire could be seen for miles.

  Austin filled Nina and Zavala in on the scene back at the motel, Mrs. Wingate's murder, and her husband's disappearance.

  "I can't believe Mr. Wingate was one of them," she said.

  "That's why he got away with it. It only took him a second to plant the bomb in the shed. Cool customer, whoever he is. He did it right under our noses."

  She shuddered. "But who was that poor woman?"

  "We won't know for a while. Maybe never." He paused. "I've been thinking about Wingate or whatever his name is. He gave that `come get me' wave just before the bomb went off. There's something else. He didn't have to shave off that beard right away. He could have left in his disguise and done it later. It was almost as if he were taunting us. Or showing his contempt."

  Zavala tried to put the best fare on the situation. "At least the admiral won't hear we were playing fast and loose with his noble profile."

  "He probably already knows, Joe."

  "Yeah, I guess you're right." Zavala put his hands on his hips and surveyed the glowing ashes. Now what?"

  "The others can keep an eye on this place. We'll head into Tucson and flop somewhere. Then fly back to Washington in the morning."

  "These boys were a lot smarter and more organized than we gave them credit for," Zavala said. "They learned from the bloody nose we gave them on the Nereus."

  "Tie score." Austin's eyes gained their glacial coldness. "Let's see who picks up the match point."

  The Yucatan, Mexico

  20 THE PRESSURE AGAINST GAMAY'S ears told her internal depth gauge she was more than thirty feet under the black water. She swam back and forth like an aquarium fish foraging for food, moving higher with each zigzag traverse. Her hands explored the slimy surface of the unseen wall, touch substituting for sight.

  The previous year she had taken up free diving as a change from scuba. She enjoyed the unfettered feeling of diving without cumbersome scuba gear and had built up her lung capacity to more than two minutes.

  The limestone face was pitted with ruts, cracks, and small holes. No opening big enough to offer a way out. She surfaced, swam across the pool, and pulled herself up on the edge to rest and catch her breath.

  Chi read the disappointment in her face. "Nothing?"

  "Mucha nada. Please pardon my Spanish." She wiped the water from her eyes and looked around the cavern. "You said there are some passages off this chamber"

  "Yes. I've explored them. They are all dead ends, except for one which is blocked by water."

  "Do you have any idea where the waterfilled tunnel leads?"

  "My guess is that it is like the others, ending in small basins that fill or not according to the water table. What were you looking for in the pool?"

  Gamay pulled her hair back and wrung out a half pint of water. "I hoped to find an opening that might lead to another cave or come out above the water level.

  "I'll be right back" She rose and padded to the stairway that led to the cave entrance, quietly climbed the stairs, and disappeared over the top. A few minutes later she returned. "No chance of sneaking up on the guard," she said, chagrin in her voice. "They've blocked up the entrance with boulders. Nothing we couldn't move, but he'd hear us if we tried."

  With her hands on her hips, Gamay again inspected their prison, her eyes finally coming to rest on the shaft of light shining through the ceiling hole high above the pool.

  Chi followed her gaze. "The ancients dug that hole to lower buckets into the cenote. It saved them going up and down the stairs every time they wanted to whip up a bowl of soup."

  "It's offcenter," she noted, and indeed, the opening was close to one wall.

  'St. They had no way of knowing when they dug from above where the exact center of the pool was. It didn't make any difference as long as they were able to lower a rope and fill their buckets."

  Gamay walked to the water's edge and peered up at the opening. Vegetation had grown around the hole and worked its way into the chamber, cutting b
ack on the light.

  "That looks like a vine dangling down."

  Chi squinted at the dome-shaped ceiling. "There may be more than one vine. My eyesight isn't what it used to be."

  It was Gamay's turn to squint. The professor was hardly ready for a white cane, she decided. Even with perfect vision she could barely see the second vine. She lowered her eyes. Much of the wall was in shadow. No reason to assume that it was any different from the underwater wall she had explored.

  "It's hard to tell in the poor light, but from here that wall looks easier than some of the rock faces I've climbed in West Virginia. Too bad we don't have some crampons and a pickax." She laughed. "Heck, I'd even settle for a Swiss army knife."

  Chi stared thoughtfully into space for a moment.

  "Maybe I have something better than a Swiss army knife."

  He reached under his shirt, slipped a leather thong over his head, and handed it to Gamay. In the dim light the pendant dangling from the cord looked vaguely like the head of a bird of prey

  Gamay cradled the object in her palm. The green eyes sparkled even in the faint cavern light, and the white beak seemed to glow. "Beautiful. What is it?"

  An amulet. Kukulcan the storm god. He was the Mayan equivalent of the Aztec's Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent. The head is made of copper with jadite eyes, the beak of quartz. I carry it for good luck and to cut cigars."

  The round base fit her hand. She fingered the short blunt beak

  "Tell me, Dr; Chi, how hard is limestone?"

  "It's made of calcium carbonate and ancient seashells. Hard but crumbly as you would expect."

  "I was wondering if I could chip hand and footholds in that wall. Enough to get me within reach of those vines." She wasn't sure what she would do once she escaped from the cave, but she'd think of something.

  "It's possible. Quartz is almost as hard as diamond."

  "In that case I'd like to borrow this little birdsnake for a while."

  "Be my guest," he said. "The power of the gods may be necessary to free us from this dungeon."