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  "Martin Brogan thinks they'll make their move tonight."

  "My intelligence agrees with Mr. Brogan's timetable." The General hesitated before asking the fateful question. "any change in orders, Mr. President? I'm still to stop them at any cost?"

  "Until I tell you different, General."

  "I must state, sir, you've placed me in a very awkward situation. I cannot guarantee my men will cut down women and especially children if so ordered."

  "I'm in sympathy with your position. But if the line is not held in Roma, millions of poor Mexicans will see it as an open invitation to pour into the United States unhindered."

  "I can't argue the point, Mr. President. But if we let loose a wall of modern firepower into half a million people jammed shoulder to shoulder, history will convict us of committing a crime against humanity."

  Chandler's words triggered the horror of Nazi vileness and the Nuremberg tnals in the President's mind, but he stiffened his resolve.

  "Repugnant as the thought is, General," he said solemnly, "the consequences of unaction are unlikely. My National Security experts predict that a wave of self-preservation hysteria will sweep the country, resulting in the formation of vigilante amiies to beat back the flood of illegal immigrants. No Mexican-Americans will be safe. The death toll on both sides could climb to astronomical proportions.

  Conservative legislators will rise up and demand Congress vote a formal declaration of war against Mexico. I don't even want to think about what happens after that possibility."

  Everyone in the room could clearly see the confusion of conflicting thoughts and emotions that were swirling through the General's mind.

  When he spoke it was in a quiet, controlled voice.

  "I respectfully request we stay in close communication until the incursion."

  "Understood, General," agreed the President. "My National Security advisers and I will gather in the Situation Room shortly."

  "Thank you, Mr. President."

  The image of General Chandler was cut to a closeup of a small barge being pulled into the water on rollers by nearly a hundred men using ropes.

  "Well," said Schiller, shaking his head as if marveling at it all,

  "we've done all we can to contain the bomb but failed to keep the explosion from becoming irreversible. Now all we can do is sit by and be consumed."

  They came an hour after dark.

  Men, women and children, some barely able to walk, all held lighted candles. The low clouds that lingered after the rainstorm glowed orange from the spraw g ocean of flickering flame.

  They came in one gigantic swell toward the shoreline, voices slowly rising in an ancient chant. The sound grew from a hum to a loud drone that rolled across the river and cau windows to vibrate in Roma.

  Country refugees and city poor, who had abandoned their mud hovels, corrugated tin shacks and cardboard carton shelters in destitute villages or noxious slums, came as one. They were galvanized by Topiltzin's pro se of a new dawning of the once-mighty Aztec empire on former lands in the United States. They were desperate people on the bottom rung of wrenching poverty, driven to grasp at any hope for a better life.

  They moved at a snail's pace, one short step at a time to the waiting fleet of boats. They came down the roads that were muddy and puddled from the rain. Small children whined in fear as their mothers carried or led them onto unstable rafts that dipped and bobbed during the boarding.

  Hundreds were fo into the river by the crush behind.

  Frightened cries came from a multitude of young victims as they were pushed into water over their heads. Many went under or drifted away with the current before they could be rescued, a nearimpossible job, since most of the men were grouped farther to the rear.

  Slowly, in disorganized confusion, the hundreds of boats and rafts began to pull away for the opposite shore.

  The American Army's floodlights, joined by those of the television crews, brightly illuminated the turmoil swelling across the river.

  The soldiers stared in uneasy fascination at the tragedy and the human wall advancing toward them.

  General Chandler stood on the roof of Roma's police station in the center of the bluff. His face was gray under the lights, and there was a look of despair in his eyes. The scene was far more appalling than his worst fears.

  He spoke into a small microphone clipped to his collar. "Can you see, Mr. President? Can you see the madness?"

  President stared fixedly at the huge monitor in the Situation Room.

  "Yes, General, the transmission is coming in clearly."

  He sat at the end of a long table, flanked by his closest advisors, cabinet members and two of the four Joint Chiefs of Staff. They all gazed at the incredible spectacle that was displayed in stereophonic sound and vivid color.

  The fastest boats had touched shore, and their passengers quickly scrambled out. Only when the first wave was fully across and the fleet on its way back for the next passengers did the mob assemble and press forward. The few men who had crossed over were walking up and down the shore with bullhorns, encouraging and urging the women forward.

  Clutching their candles and their children while chanting in the Aztec language, the women began scrambling up the bluff like an army of ants gathering around a rock in expectation of joining again on the other side.

  The terror-haunted looks of the children and the determined faces of their mothers as they stared into the muzzles of the guns were shown by the cameras. Topiltzin said his divine powers would protect them, and they fervently believed him.

  "Good lord!" exclaimed Doug Oates. "The entire first wave is made up of Women and little kids."

  No one commented on Oates's alarming observation. The men in the Situation Room watched with growing dread as another crowd of women began to lead their children across the bridge and toward the tanks and armored cars solidly blocking their way.

  "General," said the President. "Can you fire a volley over their heads?"

  "Yes, sir," replied Chandler. "I've ordered my troops to load blank rounds. The risk of hitting innocent people beyond the town is too great to use live ammo."

  "A sound decision," said General Metcalf of the Joint Chiefs. "Curtis knows what he's doing."

  General Chandler turned to one of his aides. "Give the command to fire a blank salvo."

  The aide, a major, barked into a radio receiver. "Blank salvo, fire!"

  The thunderous roar spat a wall of flame into the night. The concussion came like a gust of wind, blowing out many of the candles held by the throng. The ear-splitting clap from the tank cannon and the crackle of small-arms fire reverberated throughout the valley.

  Ten seconds. Ten seconds it took between the commands to "fire" and

  "cease fire," and for the rumble to echo back from the low hills behind Roma.

  A paralyzing silence, pierced by the pungent smell of cordite, fell over the stunned multitude.

  Then the screams of the women shattered the quiet, quickly joined by the shrieks of the terrified children. Most dropped in horror to the ground while the rest remained standing, frozen in shock. A great outcry followed from the other side as the men, held back from crossing with their wives and children, feared the fallen were dead or wounded.

  Pandemonium erupted, and for the next few minutes it looked as though the immigrant invasion had been stopped dead in its tracks.

  Then spotlights from the Mexican shore blazed to life and were beamed to a figure standing atop a small platform supported on the shoulders of several men in white tunics.

  Topiltzin stood with arms outstretched in a parody of Christ, shouting through speakers, ordering the women who were hugging the ground to rise up and press forward. Slowly the shock diminished and everyone began to realize there were no bloody, mangled bodies. Many laughed hysterically to find they were neither injured nor dead. A rolling cheer went up that turned deafening as the throng mistakenly thought Topiltzin's powers had miraculously swept aside the destruction and shielded
them from harm.

  "He turned it against us," said Julius Schiller ruefully.

  The President shook his head sadly. "Just as it's happened so many times in our nation's history, our humane efforts backfire."

  "Chandler's in for it," said Nichols.

  General Metcalf nodded very slowly. "Yes, it all falls on his shoulders now."

  The time for the fateful decision had arrived. There was no dodging the agonizing issue any longer. The President, sitting safely deep in the basement of the White House, remained strangely silent. He had deftly passed the time bomb to the niiliL-uy, laying the groundwork for General Chandler to become the sacrificial scapegoat.

  He was between the proverbial rock and a hard place. He could not allow an army of foreigners to simply storm across the borders unhindered, but neither could he risk the downfall of his entire administration by directly ordering Chandler to slaughter children.

  No President ever felt so impotent.

  The chanting women and children were only a few short meters away from the troops entrenched a short distance back of the shoreline. Those at the head of the snakelike column of candles crossing the international bridge were already close enough to look up at the gun muzzles of the tanks.

  General Curtis Chandler had a long and illustrious military career to look back upon, but nothing to look forward to except a guilt-stricken conscience. His wife had died the year before from a long illness, and they had no children. A onestar Brigadier General, he had no more rank to attain in the short time before his retirement. Now he stood on the bluff watching hundreds of thousands of illegal inunigrants flood into his nativ land and wondered why his life had cruelly culmanated at this place and time.

  The expression on his aide's face bordered on frantic. "Sir, the order to fire."

  Chandler stared at the little children nervously clutching their mothers' hands, their candles revealing their wide, dark eyes.

  "General, your orders?" the aide implored.

  Chandler mumbled something, but the aide couldn't hear it over the chanting. "I'm sorry, General, did you say 'Fire'?"

  Chandler turned and his eyes glistened. "Let them pass."

  "Sir?"

  "Those are my orders, Major. I'm damned if I'll go to my grave a baby killer. And for God's sake don't even say the words 'Don't fire,' in case some dumb platoon commander misunderstands."

  The Major nodded and hurriedly spoke into his microphone. "To all commanders, General Chandler's orders; make no hostile move and allow the immigrants to pass through our lines, repeat, stand down and let them through."

  With immeasurable relief, the American soldiers lowered their weapons and stood stiff and uneasy for a few minutes. Then they relaxed and began flirting with the women and, kneeling down, playing with the children and gently cajoling them to wipe away their tears.

  "Forgive me, Mr. President," said Chandler, speaking into a camera. "I regret I must end my military career by refusing a direct order from my Commander-in-Chief, but I felt that under the circumstances .

  "Not to worry," replied the President. "You did a magnificent job." He turned to General Metcalf. "I don't care where he stands on the seniority list; please see that Curtis receives another star."

  "I'll be more than happy to take care of it, sir."

  "Good call, Mr. President," said Schiller, realizing the President's silence had all been a bluff. "You certainly knew your man."

  There was a faint smile in the President's eyes. "I served with Curtis Chandler when we were Lieutenants of Artillery in Korea. He would have fired on a vicious, out-of-control, armed mob, but women and babies, never."

  General Metcalf also saw through the facade. "You still took a terrible chance."

  The President nodded in agreement. "Now I have to answer to the American people for the unopposed invasion of their land by masses of illegal aliens."

  "Yes, but your show of restraint will be a strong bargaining chip for future negotiations with President De Lorenzo and other Central American leaders," Oates consoled him.

  "In the meantime," added Mercier, "our military and law enforcement agencies will be quietly rounding up Topiltzin's followers and herding them back across the border before the threat of vigilante warfare breaks out."

  "I want the operation to be conducted as humanely as possible," the President said firmly.

  "Haven't we forgotten something, Mr. President?" asked Metcalf.

  "General?"

  "The Alexandria Library. Nothing stands in the way now of Topiltzin's looting the artifacts."

  The President turned to Senator Pitt, who had been sitting quietly at the end of the table. "Well, George, the Army has struck out, and you're the last man at bat. You care to enlighten everyone on your stopgap plan?"

  The Senator looked down at the table. He didn't want the others to see the uneasy apprehension in his eyes. "A desperation long shot, a deception created by my son, Dirk. I don't know how else to describe it. But if everything goes right, Robert Capesterre, a.k.a. Topiltzin, won't lay his hands on the knowledge of the ancients. However, if all goes wrong, as some critics already suggest, the Capesterres will rule Mexico and the treasure will be lost forever."

  Thankfully, the outpouring of religious zeal and Topiltzin's maniacal grab for power did not end in bloodshed. There was no death by misunderstanding. The only real tragedy was that of the young victim who had drowned during the first crossing.

  Unbound, the massive crowd flowed past the army units and through the streets of Roma toward Gongora frill. The chanting had faded and they shouted slogans in the Aztec tongue that all American and most Mexican observers could not comprehend.

  Topiltzin led the triumphal pilgrimage up the slope of the hill. The Aztec god unposter had carefully planned for his role of deliverer.

  Seizing the Egyptian treasures would give him the necessary influence and forcing aside the long reigning Institutional Revolutionary Party of President De Lorenzo without the inconvenience of a free election.

  The head of Mexico was within four hundred meters of falling into Capesterre family hands.

  News of his brother's death in Egypt had not yet reached him. His close supporters and advisers had deserted the communications truck during the excitement and missed the urgent message. They walked behind Topiltzin's hand-carried platform, driven by curiosity to see the artifacts.

  Topiltzin stood erect in a white robe with a jaguar-skin cape draped on his shoulders, clutching a raised pole that flew a banner of the eagle and the snake. A forest of portable spotlights were aimed at his platform, bathing him in a multicolored corona. The glare distracted him, and he gestured for some of the lights to sweep the slope ahead.

  Except for several pieces of heavy equipment, the excavation seemed deserted. None of the Army Engineers was evident near the crater or the tunnel. Topiltzin didn't like the look of it. He spread his hands as a signal for the advancing mob to halt. The order was repeated through loudspeakers until the forward wall of people slowly came to a stop, every face turned toward Topiltzin, reverently awaiting his next command.

  Suddenly, a bansheelike wail rose from the summit of the hill and increased in volume until its shrill pitch forced the crowd to cover their ears with their hands.

  Then, an an aray of strobe lights sparkled and flashed across the sea of faces. A light display with the magical dazzle of the northern lights danced in the night sky. The people stood rooted, gazing entranced at the extraordinary sight.

  The light show grew to an indescribable intensity while the shriek whipped the air around the countryside with the eerie timbre of a sound track from a science-fiction movie.

  Together the flashing lights and the eerie sounds built to a breathtaking crescendo, and then the strobe lights went out and the silence struck with stunning abruptness.

  for a full minute the sound rang in everyone's ears, and the lights skyrocketed in their eyes. Then an unseen light source very slowly highlighted a lone figure of a man s
tanding on the peak of the hill. The effect was startling. The light rays shimmered and glistened off metallic objects surrounding his body.

  When the man was fully revealed, he was seen to be wearing the fighting gear of an ancient Roman legionary.

  He wore a burgundy tunic under a polished iron cuirass. The helmet on his head and the greaves protecting his shins were shined to a high gloss. A gladius-a double-edged sword-hung at his side, clasped to a leather sling that went over the opposite shoulder. One arm held an oval shield while the opposite hand gripped an uptight pilum thrusting spear.

  Topiltzin stared with curious fascination. A game, a joke, a theatrical hoax? What were the Americans scheming now? His immense horde of believers stood in hushed silence and stared at the Roman as if he were a phantom. Then they slowly turned back to Topiltzin, waiting expectantly for their messiah to make the first move.

  A bluff born of desperation, he decided finally. The Americans were playing their last card in an effort to block his superstitious, dirt-poor followers from approaching the treasures.

  "Could be a trick to kidnap and hold you as a hostage," said one of his nearby advisers.

  There was contemptuous speculation in Topiltzin's eyes. "A trick, yes.

  But a kidnap, no. The Americans know this mob would go on a rampage if I was threatened. The ploy is transparent. Except for the envoy whose skin I sent back to Washington, I've denied all appeals for talks with their State Department officials. This theatrical production is simply a clumsy attempt at a final face-to-face negotiation. I'd be interested to learn what offer they've thrown on the table. "

  Without uttering another word and without listening to further warnings from his advisers, he ordered the platform lowered to the ground, and he stepped off. The spotlights stayed on him as he advanced up the hill alone and arrogant. His feet did not show beneath the hem of his robe and he appeared to glide rather than walk.