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  "That would mean he is close to the ruling party in Mexico," Zavala said. "No big business, legal or illegal, escapes their attention."

  "Fits in with the way the family operated in Spain and the United States," Austin said. "Has anyone ever mentioned the Brotherhood?"

  'As I say, he was supposedly tied to a Spanish Mafia organization," Yaeger replied. "They could be one and the same, although I don't have confirmation."

  "What about that complex I saw outside San Antonio?" Zavala asked. "What's the story on that?"

  "Owned by one of his corporations. Perfectly legal, according to the local licensing authorities. He's considered something of a nut, but a rich nut, so if he wanted to build his own personal theme park, who's to stop him? By the way, the plans for the complex show the ball court as a soccer field."

  "That wasn't like any game of soccer I ever saw," Zavala said soberly.

  "The locals have heard explosions from time to time and report an unusual amount of traffic, but other than that he's a good neighbor who pays his taxes."

  "Hiram has saved the best for last," Gunn said.

  "It took time, because of the front companies and interlocking corporations and foundations, but Halcon Industries has been spreading all over the Southwest and California. Halcon controls banks, real estate, political figures, newspapers, anything that's for sale."

  "Evidently he's trying to increase his power as well as his wealth," Austin said. "No different from any other corporation with its armies of lobbyists."

  "Interesting that you should use the word army," Gunn said. "On a whim I ran some of Hiram's findings by the ATF. They immediately caught a whiff of something that smelled very bad. They recognized the name of one of Halcon's companies as an outfit that has been buying arms from the Czech Republic and China."

  "What sort of arms?"

  "You name it. Everything from infantry rifles to tanks. Lots of missiles, too. SAMs. Antitank. That sort of stuff. The ATF got a search warrant for the company that was handling the shipments. It was an empty office."

  "Where has all this stuff been going?"

  "Specifically? Nobody knows. Generally, northern Mexico, the Southwest states, and California."

  Arms purchases like the ones you've described cost money, big money"

  Gunn nodded. "Even a billionaire might become strapped spending enough on arms to start a revolution."

  The room became silent as the last word in Gunn's statement hung in the air.

  "Madre mia," Zavala whispered. "The treasure. He needs the treasure to do what he wants to do."

  "That was my take," Gunn said quietly. "It sounds loony, but he seems to be planning some sort of combined military and political takeover."

  Any indication when this is supposed to happen?" Austin said.

  "Soon is my guess. Hiram's sources have detected a lot of money being moved around Europe through Swiss bank accounts to arms dealers. He's going to have to replace that in a hurry if he wants to stay off the bad credit report. Which means. he'll be desperate to find the treasure."

  "What about our armed forces?"

  "On alert. Even if he is stopped militarily a lot of innocent blood will be shed."

  "There's another way to stop him. No treasure, no revolution," Zavala said.

  "Thanks, Paul and Gamay, you and Dr. Orville have done a great job of pointing us in the right direction," Austin said He rose from his seat and glanced at the faces around the table. "Now it's our turn," he said with a grim smile.

  The elegant dining room was largely in darkness except for the center table where Angelo Donatelli sat going over the next day's menu. Donatelli's restaurant was done in a Nantucket motif, but unlike other places with a nautical theme, the decorations did not come from a mail-order house. The harpoons and flensing irons had actually pierced whale flesh, and the primitive paintings of sailing ships were all originals. Antonio sat opposite Donatelli, an Italian newspaper spread out on the spotless white tablecloth. Occasionally they sipped at a glass of amaretto. Neither was aware they were no longer alone until they heard the quiet voice say, "Mr. Donatelli?"

  Angelo looked up and saw two figures standing just beyond the circle of illumination. How the devil did these people get in? He had locked the front door himself. The afterhours visit itself didn't surprise him. The waiting period was weeks for a reservation, and people tried all sorts of stunts to shortcut the process. The voice was vaguely familiar, too, which persuaded him that it might be one of his clientele.

  "I'm Angelo Donatelli," he said with his unfailing politeness.

  "I'm afraid you've come too late, the restaurant is closed. If you would call tomorrow the maitre d' will do what he can to accommodate you."

  "You can accommodate me by telling your man to place his gun on the table."

  From his lap, Antonio lifted the revolver he had slipped out of his shoulder holster and slowly placed it on the table.

  "If you've come to rob us, you're too late for that, too," Donatelli said. "All our cash has been deposited at the bank." .

  . "We haven't come to rob you. We've come to kill you."

  "Kill us. We don't even know who you are."

  In answer, the figure stepped forward into the light, revealing a dark-complexioned slender man who took Antonio's gun and tucked it into the belt of his one-piece black suit. Angelo's gaze lingered for a second on the pistol with its barrel extended into a silencer, but it was the man's thin dark features that sent a chill down his spine. It was a face he had seen in a dream. No. A nightmare. A brief glimpse of an assassin who glanced his way deep in the hold of a dying ship. Incredibly it hadn't aged in more than forty years.

  "I saw you on the Andrea Doria, " Donatelli said with wonder.

  The man's thin lips curled into a cold smile. "You have a good memory for faces," he said. "But that was my late father. He told me he sensed someone else was in the hold that night. You and I, too, have a more intimate relationship. I talked to you once on the telephone."

  Now Donatelli remembered the call coming late at night, waking him out of a sound sleep with the threats against him and his family.

  "The Brotherhood," he whispered.

  "You have a good memory for names as well. It's a pity you didn't remember my warnings about what would happen if you couldn't keep your mouth shut. Normally I don't micromanage the everyday operations of my organization, but you've caused me a great deal of trouble, old man. Do you recall what I said?"

  Donatelli nodded, his mouth too dry to reply

  "Good. Let me imprint it in your mind. I warned that if you talked about that night on the Andrea Doria, you would go to your grave knowing that you caused the death of every member of your family we can find. Sons. Daughters. Grandchildren. Every one. The Donatelli family will cease to exist except for a collection of headstones in a family plot."

  "You can't do such a thing!" Donatelli replied, regaining his voice.

  "You have only yourself to blame. There are great forces at work here. No one forced you to talk to NUMA."

  "No." Antonio spoke for the first time. "The family was not part of the deal," he said.

  Angelo turned to his cousin. "What is he talking about?"

  Antonio's battered face was contorted with guilt.

  The man said, "Your cousin didn't tell you that he was working for me. He refused at first, but you have no idea of the pull his homeland had on him. We told him that in return for keeping us informed through you about NUMAs activities, I would solve his problems with the authorities back in Sicily"

  "Si," Antonio said, jutting his jaw out like Mussolini. "But not the family. You get me back to Sicily. That was the deal."

  "I keep my word. I just didn't say that you would be returning home in a pine box. But you first, Mr. Donatelli. Arrivederci. "

  Antonio rose from his chair with a feral cry of rage and threw himself in front of his cousin. The pistol made a thus quieter than a door shutting. A red blossom flowered on the front of An
tonio's shirt, and he crumpled to the floor.

  The gun coughed again.

  With no one to block it this time, the next bullet caught Donatelli in the chest and he crashed over backward in his chair as Antonio reached back and filled his hand with the six-inch Beretta from his ankle holster. He propped himself up on his elbows and aimed the gun at Halcon. Magically, a neat round hole appeared in the center of Antonio's forehead, and he slumped forward onto the floor, his shot going wild.

  The second figure stepped from the shadows, the gun in his hand smoking. He glanced impassively at the man he had just killed. "Never trust a Sicilian," he said quietly.

  "Good work, Guzman. I should have expected treachery. Sitting in an office has made me rusty when it comes to field operations."

  "You're welcome to come along when we take care of the rest of the family" Guzman said, his eyes glittering.

  "Yes, I'd like that. Unfortunately it will have to wait. We have more pressing business." Turning his attention to Angelo, he said, "Too bad you can't hear this, Donatelli. I've decided to spare your family for a little while until we clean up the mess you helped create. Don't despair You'll soon see your loved ones in hell."

  Voices were coming from outside the restaurant where Antonio's shot had caught the attention of passersby. Halcon took one last look at the still bodies, then he and his scarfaced companion melted into the darkness.

  Guatemala

  46 "HOW OLD DID YOU SAY THIS PLANE was?" Austin shouted over the cockpit noise from the single engine.

  About fifty years, give or take a few," Zavala yelled back. "The owner says it's got all its original parts, too. Except for the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, maybe." Seeing the alarm in Austin's face, Zavala grinned. "Just kidding, Kurt. I checked. The engine's been overhauled so many times it's practically new. Hope we'll be in as good a shape when we get this old."

  "If we get to be this old," Austin said skeptically, glancing out the window at the inhospitable terrain below.

  "Not to worry, old chap. The De Havilland Beaver was one of the finest bush planes ever built. This crate is as tough as a tank. Just what the doctor ordered."

  Austin eyed the plastic statue of St. Christopher attached to the control panel by a suction cup, sat back in his seat, and folded his arms. When he suggested to Zavala that they find something unobtrusive to fly, he hadn't envisioned the antique Beaver with its quaint boxy lines, two-blade propeller, and blunt unaerodynamic nose. He simply wanted an alternative to an army helicopter that couldn't violate the airspace of Mexico's neighboring countries without permission. Even a NUMA aircraft, with its turquoise paint job and big official lettering, would have raised eyebrows.

  They found the Beaver hidden by a painter's canvas drop cloth in the dark corner of a dilapidated out-of-the-way hangar at the Belize City airport. Zavala's eyes lit up like Christmas luminarias. He rubbed his hands together, itching to get them on the controls. Only one other plane would have elicited a stronger reaction, Austin thought. Luckily the Wright Brothers' invention was in the Smithsonian, which is where this plane belonged.

  Like Shakespeare's Cassius, the Belizan who owned the plane had a lean and hungry look. He talked barely above a whisper and often glanced over his shoulder as if he were expecting unwanted visitors. He had been recommended to Austin by a former CIA colleague who served in clandestine operations helping the Contras fight the Sandinistas. Judging from his prudent suggestions about cargo handling and discreet landing areas it was evident he thought his two American customers were drug smugglers. Given the CIA's shady operations in Central America, that came as no surprise. He asked no questions and insisted he be paid what he called a security deposit, big enough to buy himself a Boeing 747, in dollars. As he carefully counted every bill to make sure he wasn't being cheated, he warned them to keep in mind Guatemala's territorial claims over Belize and do whatever they could to blend into the background. Austin observed that might be impossible with the bright mustard-yellow paint covering the old plane. The man shrugged and disappeared into the shadows with his wad of bills.

  Austin had to admit the plane was better suited for the job than a newer and flashier aircraft would have been. It wasn't exactly the Concorde. Yet with a cruising speed of one hundred twenty-five miles per hour it ate up distance and was slow enough to serve as an ideal flying observation platform. Moreover, it was designed for short takeoff and landing on water or land.

  Zavala was keeping the plane below three thousand feet. They were flying over the Peten, the thickly forested northern part of Guatemala that juts squarely into Mexico. The territory below had started as flat terrain and worked itself up to low rolling hills broken by rivers and their tributaries. It was once thickly settled by the Maya who used the rivers for intercity commerce, and several times they had glimpsed gray ruins through the trees. The distant peaks of the Maya Mountains rose from the haze off to the south. Austin marked their progress on a clipboard that held a map with the grid overlay on acetate. He referred constantly to the compass and the GPS finder.

  "We're coming up on the junction point, where the jaws meet," he said,. pointing to the map. He glanced at his watch. "Another thirty seconds should put us there." Austin peered out the window again. They were following a squiggle of river that meandered back and forth like blue Christmas ribbon candy and widened into the small lake dead ahead. Seconds later Austin pointed at the shimmering water. "That's it. The jaws of Kukulcan."

  "We should have brought the mini-sub," Zavala said.

  "Let's make a few runs around the lake. If we don't run into ack-ack fire we'll set her down."

  Zavala breathed on his aviator-style sunglasses, wiped the lenses on a sleeve, and adjusted them on his nose. He gave the thumbsup sign and banked the plane so the horizon . tilted sharply. Zavala brought the same flying techniquea combination of F16 jockey and fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants barn-stormer to whatever vehicle he controlled, whether it was a submersible or an airplane that was built when Harry Truman was starting his first term as president.

  The lake looked like a huge staring eye from the air. It was oval in shape and had a small island about where the pupil would be. It was small, about half a mile in length and half as wide. The river shot off at a sharp angle and curved around the lake until it intersected with water flowing from an outlet at the other end. Austin decided the lake must be replenished by springs or streams hidden by the trees.

  The Beaver wheeled twice around the lake, but they saw nothing out of the ordinary. With the way apparently clear, Zavala pointed the plane down as if he wanted to drill a hole in the water. At the last moment he pulled the nose up like a dive bomber and leveled off nicely until the white floats kissed the surface. The plane skimmed along like a flat stone, throwing off twin rooster tails before finally coming .to a rolling halt about midway between shore and island. Austin kicked open the door as the propeller spun to a choking halt. With the engine stopped a palpable silence enveloped the cockpit. Zavala radioed the ship with a position report, and Austin scanned the lake, the low cliffs, and the island with his binoculars, taking his time until he was sure, as far as possible, that they were alone.

  "Everything looks fine," he said, lowering the binoculars. He squinted toward the middle of the lake. "Something about that island bothers me."

  Zavala leaned over Austin's shoulder and pulled his baseball cap lower over his forehead to shield his eyes against the sun sparkle. "It looks perfectly okay to me."

  "That's the problem. The placement is too perfect. If you drew lines shore-to-shore from north to south and east to west, that island would be at the intersection, like a target in the crosshairs of a rifle scope. Exact center."

  Zavala restarted the engine and gave the propeller enough power to pull them along at a couple of knots. Then he cut throttle and let the plane drift closer to the island. They threw an anchor over the side and estimated from the length of the tethering line that the lake was more than one hundred feet dee
p. They inflated a rubber raft, climbed into it from the plane's pontoons, and paddled the short distance to the island, pulling the raft up onto the grasscovered mud. Austin estimated the island at about thirty feet across. It looked like the misshapen shell of a giant turtle, rising quickly from the water to a roundish summit about fifteen feet high. Undeterred by the thick growth of ferns and succulents, Zavala climbed up the slope. Near the top he let out a yell and stepped back as if recoiling from an invisible punch.

  Austin's body tensed and his hand went to the pistol at his hip. "What's wrong?" he shouted. His first thought was that Joe had stumbled onto a nest of adders,

  Zavala's peals of laughter startled a flock of white birds into the air like confetti blown in the wind.

  "The island is occupied, Kurt. Come up and I'll introduce you to the landlord."

  Austin quickly climbed the small hill and peered at the toothy skeleton jaw grinning behind the bushes, He pushed the leaves aside to reveal a grotesque stone head about twice life size, carved into the lintel over a squared-off opening. The opening was set into the side of a block-shaped structure that was buried in loose soil almost to the top of its flat, crenelated roof and decorated with a border of skulls similar to but smaller than the one they first saw. Using a sheath knife, Austin dug away at the dirt and enlarged the opening so Zavala could get his head and shoulders in.

  Zavala flashed a light around inside. "I think I can squeeze in." He wriggled through the opening feet first.

  Austin heard a loud sneeze, then Zavala saying, "Bring a Dust Buster with you." Austin worked to enlarge the opening, then he followed Zavala inside.

  He looked around. "Not exactly the Hilton." His words echoed.

  The box-like space was the size of a two-car garage. The walls were thick enough to repel a direct hit from a cannon. Austin's head almost touched the low roof. The plastered walls were plain except for dark blotches that covered most of their surface and four floor-to-ceiling portals like the one they had just come through. The doorways were clogged by rootbound earth that was as hard as cement.