Ruins (18 page)

"Men in silver suits could easily be confused for spacemen," he said.

"You're welcome to your opinion, Mulder," she said. "I know it's no use trying to talk you out of it. But we've still got a missing archaeology team to find.

What do Maya gods and ancient astronauts have to do with our case?"

"Nothing, I'm sure, Scully," Mulder said in a voice that said exactly the opposite. He kept his smile to him-self. "Nothing at all."

Xitaclan ruins Monday, 3:10 p.m.

On their way back down the steep stairs on the opposite side of the pyramid, where the steps were more uneven and crumbling, Scully watched as Rubicon pointed out where someone with a clumsy pickaxe and chisel had broken free ornate carvings, alcoves perhaps containing jade artifacts and other valuable objects.

Rubicon, his temper rising, said in disgust, "These artifacts are probably for sale on the black market in Cancun or Mexico City to self-styled pre-Colombian art collectors, or just people who want to own something so no one else may have it. Cassandra may have run into some of these thieves."

"But this area is so isolated," Scully said, following him down the last few steps of the central pyramid. They walked across the flagstoned plaza. "How would the arti-facts be distributed? There would have to be some kind of network in place."

"I wouldn't put it past men like him," Rubicon said, gesturing with a sharp elbow toward Fernando Victorio Aguilar, who bustled up to them, tossing aside the remains of another hand-rolled cigarette.

"Did you find anything up there, amigos?" he said, pandering.

A deeply offended anger burned behind Rubicon's blue eyes. "We'll complete our initial inspection of the area today, but if we haven't uncovered any sign of them by tomorrow morning, we should use Cassandra's trans-mitter and contact the Mexican officials, request immedi-ate assistance. They can send their own inspectors and security forces. National forces, not locals—the locals are probably in on any black-market trade." He scowled. "Many artifacts have already been illegally removed."

Aguilar looked at him, his expression a combination of miffed annoyance and wounded pride. "What you see could have been caused by treasure seekers from long ago, Senor Rubicon. Xitaclan has been unprotected for a long, long time."

Rubicon glared at him. "Mr. Aguilar, anyone with eyes can see the fresh scars.

I know these items have been removed very recently, uh, within months, probably weeks."

Aguilar crossed his tanned arms over his chest, purs-ing his lips. "Then perhaps your daughter's archaeology team removed the most valuable pieces for their own profit, eh? They work for museums back in America, do they not?"

Rubicon leaned closer to Aguilar, thrusting his lower lip out so that his yellow-gray goatee bristled. "My Cassandra and all of her team members would never do such a thing," he said. "They know the value of historical artifacts, especially artifacts that must remain in place for further study."

"I sense that you do not trust me, Senor Rubicon," Aguilar said, tugging on his hat. His voice held a con-ciliatory tone. "But we must work together, eh?

We are isolated here at Xitaclan. We must make the best of it and not become enemies. It could be dangerous if we fail to work as a team."

Scully headed back to their campsite as the discus-sion between Rubicon and the long-haired Mexican guide became more heated. She removed her pack and dropped it beside the tent. Though it was broad day-light, the entire crew of Maya helpers had once again vanished into the jungles, nowhere to be seen. It made her feel strangely uneasy.

Scully stopped by the nearer of the two tall stelae, elaborately carved with feathered serpents. She examined the eroded carving in the bright daylight, noticing a change in the dull weathered limestone—bright red splattered the carvings, dollops of thick crimson like paint that dripped from the fangs of one of the largest feathered serpents. She leaned forward, curious and revolted at the same time.

Someone had rubbed blood inside the stone mouth of the feathered serpent, as if giving the carving a taste ... a fresh sacrifice. She followed the trail of blood droplets down the tall pillar to the buckled flagstones at its base.

"Mulder!" she cried.

Her partner came running with an alarmed expres-sion on his face. Rubicon and Aguilar stood frozen, their faces flushed from their argument, looking to see what had interrupted them.

Scully indicated the bright red streaks on the stela ... and then gestured to the severed human finger that lay in a pool of congealing blood on the flagstone.

Mulder bent down to look at the amputated finger. The expression of disgust flickered for only an instant on his placid face.

Aguilar and Rubicon finally came up and stared down without words at the blood, the severed digit.

"It looks fresh," Scully said. "No more than an hour or so."

Mulder touched the tacky blood. "Just barely starting to dry. It must have happened while we were up on the pyramid. I didn't hear any screams, though.

Aguilar, you were down here."

"No, I was out in the jungle." He shook his head in dismay and took off his ocelot-skin hat, as if in reverence for a dead friend. "I was afraid of this, very afraid." He lowered his voice, looking around furtively. He nar-rowed his eyes, as if concerned the Indians might be watching from the fringes of the jungle, spying on their potential victims. "Yes, very afraid."

Aguilar walked around the stela, as if searching for other evidence. "The Maya religion is very ancient. Their rituals were celebrated for a thousand years before white explorers ever came to our shores, and they became much more violent when they mixed with the Toltec. People don't forget their beliefs so easily, eh?"

"Wait a minute," Scully said. "Are you saying that some of the Maya descendants still practice the old reli-gion? Cutting out hearts and throwing people into sacrifi-cial wells?"

Scully felt a sense of dread as she began to piece together a scenario that even Mulder would believe— how Cassandra Rubicon and her team had become vic-tims in a bloodthirsty sacrificial ritual.

Rubicon said, "Well, some of the people still remember the ancient Toltec chants and observe the festivals, though most have been Christianized ... or at least civilized. Some few, though, continue to practice the Woodwork and self-mutilation. Especially out here, away from the cities."

"Self-mutilation?" Mulder said. "You mean one of those Indians cut off his own finger?"

Rubicon nodded, touching the pattern of blood on the limestone pillar.

"Probably with an obsidian knife."

Scully tried to imagine the religious fervor required to take a splintered stone knife and hack away a finger, sawing through sinew and bone without making so much as a cry of pain.

Rubicon seemed more detached, as if the possibility of his daughter and her companions becoming a blood sacrifice had not yet occurred to him.

"The Maya and Toltec rituals shed a great deal of blood, both their own and that of prisoners and victims. At the holiest of festivals, the high king would take a stingray spine and reach under his loincloth to pierce his own foreskin."

Scully saw Mulder swallow hard. "Ouch."

"Blood is a very powerful force," Aguilar agreed.

"The blood that flowed out dribbled across long strips of mulberry-bark paper, tracing patterns of red droplets. Some of the priests could divine the future from these patterns." Rubicon looked up at the sky. "Afterward, the strips of blood-spattered paper were rolled up and burned so that the sacred smoke could send messages to the gods."

Scully looked grimly at the fresh blood. "If one of those Indians just chopped off his finger with a stone knife," she said, "he requires medical attention.

With this kind of crude amputation, the man could easily get gan-grene, especially in a tropical climate such as this."

Aguilar found a bent and mangled cigarette in his pocket and tugged it out, sticking it between his lips with-out lighting it. "You will not find him, Senorita, never," he said. "The man would have run away, far from Xitaclan. He has made his sacrifice to the guardians of Kukulkan— but now that we know his true religion, we will not see him again. The Maya people here have a long memory. They are still deathly afraid of the white man and perse-cution. They remember one of the first white governors here, a man named Father Diego de Landa. A butcher."

Rubicon grunted in agreement, his face showing an expression of distaste. "He was a Franciscan friar, and under his guidance temples were torn down, shrines smashed. Anyone caught worshipping an idol was whipped, their joints stretched with pulleys, boiling water poured on their skin.

Aguilar nodded eagerly, as if glad to have the old archaeologist back on his side again. "Si, Father de Landa found Indians who could still read old writings, and he attempted to translate the heiroglyphics. But to him it was all against the Christian Word of God, eh? Cursed. When they showed him a cache of thirty books bound in jaguar skin, many filled with serpent draw-ings, he decided they contained with falsehoods of the devil. So he burned them all."

Rubicon looked pained just to hear of the loss. "De Landa tortured five thousand Maya, killing nearly two hundred of them before he was summoned back to Spain for his excesses. While he awaited trial, he composed a long treatise detailing everything he had learned."

"And was he convicted for his appalling behavior?" Scully asked.

Aguilar raised his eyebrows and barked a laugh. "No, Senorita! He was sent back to the Yucatan—as a bishop this time!"

Rubicon looked contemplative as he knelt in front of the bloodstained stela.

Scully bent over to pick up the severed finger. It still felt faintly warm and rubbery. The thickened blood at the end did not drip off. She saw the ragged stump, where the stone knife had hacked through the flesh and bone.

If some of these people still practiced their violent religion, she wondered what other . . . sacrifices they might have made.

Yucatan jungle, Belize border Tuesday, 0215 military time The jungle was the enemy, an obstacle, an object to be defeated—and Major Willis Jakes had no doubt that his hand-picked squadron would succeed in conquering it. That was their mission, and that was what they would do. The ten members of his covert infiltration squad wore jungle camouflage uniforms and night-vision goggles. After being landed in secret on an uninhabited shore at the northern border of Belize, they had struck off over-land through the jungles in a pair of all-terrain vehicles.

The most difficult part had been immediately upon landing, dumped off at the edge of the bay, Bahia Chetumal, crossing a few night-deserted roads and the bridge over the narrow Laguna de Bacalor, and then plunging into the trackless Quintana Roo wilderness.

Negotiating a path through the rain forest, they fol-lowed a digitized map, choosing a course that avoided even meagerly inhabited areas as they made a beeline for their destination. Much of the area showed no sign of human settlement, no roads or villages whatsoever . . . just the way the major preferred it.

Jakes's team had to maintain a good pace to put them well past all roads and the populated coastal areas before daybreak. They could not afford to rest but had to pro-ceed, always bearing in mind that they must reach their target—the source of the high-power encrypted signal— sometime during the following night. Under cover of darkness, they hoped to accomplish their mission. Before they could go home, the secret military base must be completely destroyed.

Their narrow-bodied all-terrain vehicles chewed up the offending tangles of foliage, crushing an obvious path through the forest . . . but in a place where no one would ever look. Even if anyone spotted Major Jakes's team, the commandos would be long gone before any organized response could find them.

The heavily inflated, armored wheels of the ATV trampled the undergrowth, each axle pivoting on its own gimbal to allow the utmost flexibility in negotiating the terrain.

Half of Jakes's team rode in the vehicles, while the other half strode briskly behind, keeping up the pace across the newly cleared path. Every hour, they would switch, so that the first group of riders walked and the hikers rode. He had learned through experience that this was the most efficient way to bring his team overland under cover, without requiring bureaucratic permission or right of clearance from any foreign government. This covert operation did not officially exist... any more than did the secret weapons cache or the undocumented mili-tary base deep in the Yucatan jungles.

Major Jakes didn't worry about the implications of such things. His orders were straightforward ... not sim-ple by any means, but at least clear-cut. He didn't ask questions unless they pertained to the mission, and his team members asked for even fewer details than he did. They knew better.

Intensified by the night-vision goggles in front of his eyes, greenish residual light made the landscape look alien and surreal. Major Jakes knew how to handle it. He and his team had infiltrated and destroyed many other illegal installations that technically did not exist. Certainly, they existed no longer.

He rode in the lead all-terrain vehicle. Beside him his driver, a first lieutenant, moved along at the best speed he could manage. The driver shone a bright mer-cury spotlight in front of them, always keeping his eyes open for insurmountable obstacles. So far, they had managed to minimize their backtracking and continue on a very satisfying forward pace.

Get it right the first time, his father had always said— and young Willis Jakes had learned to follow that credo. He could think of few things worse than being forced to repeat a chore, or homework, while his father paced in the background, a stern taskmaster and absolutely unfor-giving.

"The world is never forgiving," he had told his son. "Best you learn that early in life." Jakes had spent hours upon hours standing motionless against a wall, contem-plating his grades or his test scores. He had learned how to focus utterly on a goal ... how to get it right the first time.