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“This one has bite marks on his cheek,” said one of the soldiers while leaning down over one of the corpses.

“Here is a dart,” said another one while pointing to the small object imbedded in a soldier's upper back.

Strokk rubbed the stubble on his chin, swallowing hard. “Damned savages.”

“Over here,” another mercenary said, pointing to branches broken over a moss-slick boulder surrounded by lush ferns. “Look.”

Strokk nodded. “Call the other team. Tell them to come over immediately. There is a change of plans.”

“Ye—yes, sir. Right away.”

The seasoned operative silently cursed his luck. He was not fighting professional soldiers anymore. Strokk's team of mercenaries was being confronted by a new enemy, who didn't follow the rules of engagement that the former Spetsnaz officer had learned to master in the world of independent contractors. In order to not only survive, but also prevail, Strokk had to further alter those rules, define his own strategy, force the savages to react to
his
moves—and do it immediately, while he still could. The enemy had already cut the size of his team in half. At this rate he would run out of men by morning.

5

Moss-draped, the Mayan chief crawled down the rosewood as the last soldier disappeared from view. He gave his victims a brief glance. In less than an hour the first scavengers would arrive. By tomorrow morning only bones and uniforms would remain.

Nothing went to waste in the jungle.

Since he now knew where they would head, Joao chose not to follow them. Instead he took another route to get to the rendezvous point, where his people were already hard at work making the necessary preparations to welcome their uninvited guests.

6

Under gleaming moonlight, Antonio Strokk stood in the middle of a field of ferns surrounded by thick vegetation. Four of his mercenaries were with him. The rest he had ordered to make a wide semicircle ahead of him, in an effort to catch the savages who had left such an obvious trail for his team to follow, undoubtedly to a second ambush. But the natives had chosen the wrong person to mess with this early evening.

Strokk's caution had paid off, measured by the three natives his men had managed to seize while working on making the trail. Two had attempted to escape and had been shot, much to Strokk's detriment. He wanted a prisoner, someone whom he could use not to interrogate, because Strokk doubted the natives spoke any of the languages he knew, but simply to send the rest of the savages a clear message. To his relief, the third one had been captured alive.

Wearing a pair of night-vision goggles, Strokk walked with an air of command as he approached the bruised, half-naked man, young and muscular, perhaps in his early twenties. His back was against the ground as two soldiers grabbed him by the ankles and held him in place.

The native remained silent, dark eyes staring at his captors with an air of defiance. The mercenaries gathered around Strokk and his hostage. Strokk glanced down at the Maya. “Bring a dead one over,” he ordered the man next to him.

“Excuse me, sir?”

“Bring me one of the natives you just killed.”

Two soldiers did, pulling a limp, brown body across the ferns and dropping him next to the live Maya, who glanced over to his dead comrade, eyes widening in mourning.

“Castrate the corpse,” Strokk said, pointing to the dead Indian.

No one in the group whispered a word. One of the mercenaries unsheathed a hunting knife, lifted the dead man's skin flap secured to his waist, and emasculated the body. Blood pooled in between the Indian's legs. The mercenary then tossed the severed member at the live Maya, who jerked back, slapping it off his chest, blood dripping to his abdomen, his gaze shifting between his dead comrade's groin, the bloody knife, and Strokk, who grinned at him.

“Now you're getting the picture, Moctezuma. Pluck out the corpse's eyes.”

Again, one of his men performed the macabre ritual on the maimed corpse, also flinging the eyeballs, attached to the end of long nerves, at the terrified Maya.

“Now,” Strokk said, grinning at his hostage before surveying the faces of his men. “It's time to send these Indian bastards a message.”

7

Joao Peixoto crouched over a thick rosewood branch overlooking a small clearing. The moon hung high in the crystalline sky, its gray light dancing on the leaves as a breeze swirled the canopy overhead. Monkeys hooted in the distance, their raucous mixing with that of a pair of red macaws squawking on an adjacent tree.

The noise abruptly stopped and the birds took flight, their sounds replaced by Joao's own, a warning to his men that their guests had arrived.

The Mayan chief readied his blowpipe, inserting a poisoned dart and bringing one end to his lips while aiming his deadly weapon at the ground below.

Through moss and scattered leaves, he saw the figure of his own man under the moonlight using his hands to feel his way through the jungle. No soldiers were with him. The young Maya tripped on an exposed root and fell, quickly getting up and reaching out with both hands to feel for his surroundings.

Joao felt an anger boiling deep inside of him. His man was blind. Upon closer inspection, he noticed the bloody tracks down his cheeks and neck.

Climbing down from the tree, he reached the moss-slick path next to his subordinate and was horrified at the sight. The soldiers had plucked out his eyes.

Controlling his emotions, Joao emitted a hooting sound.
It's us, your family. You are safe now.

The wounded Indian opened his mouth to reply but could only make guttural noises mixed with bloody froth. The savages had also cut off his tongue.

Enraged, Joao called for his men, who materialized in the jungle moments later, along with several women and the two scientists hauling their backpacks.

Jackie Nakamura looked away in terror, burying her face in her husband's chest as he hugged her.

Joao turned to the women and ordered them to take the maimed warrior to safety. One of the women began to cry, the young Maya's mother, and so did another woman, his sister, but they complied with Joao's order and took the trembling warrior away.

Joao Peixoto tried to focus on his predicament, shoving the scourging anger aside. Two of the elders were dead. The third was still unconscious. He had no one but himself to consult, to review his plan prior to implementing it. But like his father, and his father before that, Joao Peixoto's blood carried the genes of the region's finest warriors, the ones who proudly and bravely defended their land against wave upon wave of invaders, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

The Mayan chief wondered what had happened to the soldiers. Why weren't they following his man, who in spite of being blind had managed to reach the clearing? Did they realize that they were headed for a trap and decided to send Joao a message? Did they return to the temple of Kinich Ahau?

Joao was convinced that he was up against a dangerous and ruthless adversary, but nevertheless he gathered his men and laid out his plan of attack, determined to purge his land from such creatures.

8

The numbers in the laptop browsed down the screen as a custom C++ script tried to find the mathematical formula defining the order of the numbers in the array of mosaics carved on the far wall of the temple's terrace. Susan sat by the edge of the steps, beneath the corbel arches, the laptop resting on her thighs, the light from the pulsating screen mixing with that of the hissing lantern next to her. Cameron worked on the reliefs carved on the left wall of the terrace, with the assistance of another gas lantern, its yellowish light washing the ancient inscriptions. Petroff stood guard at the bottom of the steps, by the stone pillar on the left side of the large limestone edifice, his concerned expression matching Celina's. Something was very wrong, but the terrorists kept it to themselves while ordering the scientists to continue their investigation.

So far her search for a pattern in the number sequence had been in vain. She couldn't make any sense of them, and the more she tried to reorder them before restarting the sequence-matching algorithm, the less they made any logical sense. She returned the screen to their original order, staring at them with diminishing confidence.

“Find anything?” Cameron asked, kneeling next to her, his rugged features softened by the moonlight. He dimmed his lantern and set it next to hers.

“Just more geometrical relationships,” she said, tapping the screen. “Each quadrant, as defined by the rows and columns of number twenty, is almost a mirror image of each other. Beyond that, my mathematical models detected a few sequences, but they don't propagate beyond a few numbers before becoming erratic, random. Any luck on your end?” She saved her work and closed her laptop.

“Lots of pictorials but very little meaning on the surface. There's enough new data here to keep the likes of me occupied for the next decade.”

Susan Garnett checked her watch. “I was afraid you would say something like that.”

“Why?”

“Because we only have fourteen days to figure it all out.”

Chapter Eighteen

010010

1

December 17, 1999

Standing at the edge of the cenote with Cameron by her side, Susan Garnett gazed up at the evening sky, star-filled, majestic. Moonlight diffused through the mist rising out of the water hole, gaining a sublime presence, a glowing life of its own. Grayish beams waltzed with the fog, gently swirling to the rhythm of a light breeze sweeping across the lowlands of the Petén, to the sounds of insects clicking, distant monkeys howling, birds chirping.

Susan watched it with intrigue, but could not bring herself to enjoy it despite its mystic overtone because of the dark cloud veiling her life for the past day, since the Russian brutes had arrived. For a moment she had held some hope, when the team led by Strokk had taken longer than planned to return to the site. She had hoped for a miracle, for a supernatural force to come in and make the mercenaries vanish, leaving her biding her time, waiting for the right moment to use the Walther PPK still tucked in her shorts, by her spine. But the Russian terrorists had returned to the jungle, albeit short five men.

She sighed, staring at the moonlit, swirling haze, alive with fluttering moths. Perhaps a small miracle did occur, for the Russian commander seemed angry, disturbed, concerned, shouting orders to his men, deploying them to the surrounding jungle, out of sight, leaving her and Cameron once again alone with Petroff and Celina.

“It's time,” Cameron said, pointing at his watch and then at their gear.

She nodded. “Let's do it.”

2

The night breeze sweeping through the thick jungle caressed Joao Peixoto's face and neck with the same tempo as the moss swaying overhead. Joao, his skin glistening with sweat, moved across the terrain quietly but swiftly, his senses tuned to its sounds, easily imitating them. He walked in a deep crouch, moving through the dense bush with ease.

Joao stopped, closing his eyes, moving his head in every direction, scanning the area, listening, moving forward again, slower now as he closed in on his target.

He continued his stealthy advance for fifteen more minutes before stopping by a large, moss-draped ceiba, backlighted by the pulsating glow from a distant fire streaming through the jungle. If he listened very carefully, he could also hear voices no more than a thousand feet away. The ceiba's opulent trunk fenced one edge of a small clearing, layered with animal bones, mostly mammals, but also a few reptiles—all unfortunate to have come within the killing zone of the cartiga ants, their large mound, resembling a mud obelisk, standing six feet tall next to the ceiba, almost hidden from view.

Joao carefully stepped around the clearing, unwilling to trigger the mound's alarm. Cartiga ants were as fast as they were voracious, capable of skinning a deer in minutes. He continued his advance, moving only when the breeze picked up and rustled the branches and enshrouding moss, stopping when it died down. His callused feet provided him with added friction, reducing the stress on his muscles as he worked his way around the edge of the clearing, spotting a man in dark olive fatigues hiding in the thick brush holding an automatic weapon.

Joao unsheathed the knife belonging to one of the soldiers he had killed at the village, firmly curling the fingers of his right hand around its rubber handle. The stranger turned the weapon in his direction as Joao dropped to the ground behind a mahogany tree and let a curtain of moss shield him.

The sentry, his face darkened by the night and also by camouflage cream, remained still in the tangled brush bordering the courtyard end of the sacred site, twenty feet away, looking almost directly at Joao, but keeping the weapon pointed to his right, toward the flickering specks of light filtering through the dense jungle.