The Aztec Heresy (16 page)

Disregarding automobile wrecks, there were roughly a hundred thousand fatalities from accidents in the United States every year. Of those the majority came from machine accidents, falls, drowning, and suffocation, in that order. There were no large bodies of water nearby for the bishop to drown in, and besides, Sears’s research indicated that the cleric was a powerful swimmer, even at the age of sixty-nine. Given his occupation, there was also little chance of a death by machinery, which ruled that out as well. Suffocation was always a good bet, but in this case it would be difficult to arrange.

Realistically it would have to be a fall. The question was, from where? Indiana was basically as flat as an IHOP waffle. There were several nearby limestone quarries and some tourist caves, but why would a Catholic bishop with a dying mother go to either place?

The options were narrowing. The last time Boucher had visited his mother, Francis Xavier had done a quick reconnaissance of the dying woman’s home. It was the home Boucher had grown up in, a modest place. It was small, one and a half stories, with two bedrooms and a bathroom in an upstairs dormer, and a living room, dining room, back kitchen, and what passed for a den or study on the ground floor. A single flight of stairs led from the upper level to the lower. There was no landing. The hardwood steps were covered with an old paisley runner held taut with brass rails.

It really was the only way. A little on the dangerous side since he’d have to be on the scene to remove the evidence, however. The key to it all, of course, was the fact that there was no landing and no padding under the runner. Francis Xavier estimated the bishop’s height as not quite six feet and his weight at something over one hundred and eighty-five pounds. A fall down thirteen steps to the uncarpeted foyer at the front entrance would almost surely break the man’s neck, and if it didn’t quite do it, Sears would be there to finish the job.

He looked across Courthouse Square and read the old-fashioned sign on the window of the store on the corner: JOSEF KORZENIOWSKI; HARDWARE, STOVES & TINWARE—SINCE 1924. It was the kind of classic place that you’d find in a Ray Bradbury story, full of interesting and potentially lethal items. They’d have everything Francis Xavier needed.

He glanced upward. Above the store there were windows in the redbrick building. A curious crossing of the fates. The three windows belonged to the small apartment occupied by Huggins, the potential whistleblower. Huggins would be easy, though. He drank too much and everyone knew he had high blood pressure.

Twenty cc’s of insulin delivered by a twenty-five -gauge needle inserted into the posterior auricular artery under the jaw would deliver enough of the drug to instantly cause a fatal stroke. Personal observation told Sears that his intended victim had poor skin, was prone to razor burn, and had large, rather oily pores. Even if, for some reason, the medical examiner ordered an autopsy, the needle insertion point would be virtually invisible and the insulin levels would have long since dissipated. Not a perfect murder by any means, but under the circumstances and in this environment, not far from it. There was nothing to connect the deaths of an ambulance attendant who had once been an altar boy to a simple parish priest more than forty years ago and an aging bishop who’d sadly fallen down the stairs in his mother’s house. Problem solved.

Francis Xavier Sears put his head back, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face, listening to the sounds of small-town life go on around him, the soft breeze rustling the leaves of the maple trees in the square. Death was good, but sometimes life was even better.

16

It was almost midnight. The
Noble Dancer
, all sleek 189 feet of her, rode easily in the small chop that ruffled the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The yacht had four decks, its own elevator, and accommodations for up to twenty-five people, including crew. She was powered by two fifteen-hundred-horsepower Caterpillar engines and could achieve speeds of up to eighteen knots.

The massive ship was outfitted for almost anything, including cross-ocean ventures. Her amenities included every kind of electronic toy, ‘‘zero speed’’ stabilizers that gave the vessel enough stability to allow competition billiards in the dedicated games room, a Jacuzzi, a sun-deck, and a baby grand piano. The yacht was a plaything for a billionaire.

The dining room looked as though it had come out of a Hollywood mansion, complete with cabinets full of crystal, Persian carpets on the deck, and an immense rosewood dining table able to seat fifteen guests. Tonight, instead of a sumptuous midnight snack, the table was set for armed combat. Military gear was spread out on the shining, heavily varnished marquetry from one end to the other.

Four members of the incursion team were checking their weapons and survival equipment. They had the hard, practiced look of professional soldiers, which all of them had been at one time or another.

All of them were dressed in jungle fatigues and none of the dappled uniforms showed any sign of rank. All had a small badge on the left breast pocket of their blouses that showed a black hawk on a yellow ground, piped in red.

The symbol had been James Jonas Noble’s single conceit when he formed the security company to protect his many interests around the world. As a boy growing up during the war, Blackhawk Comics had been his favorite, so he had adopted the Blackhawk symbol as the logo for the company of the same name.

Blackhawk Security Consultants had originally been intended as a private security force for Noble Pharmaceuticals, but it had been organized at a time when the use of contracted paramilitary groups was on the rise, and as a consequence the company had grown far outside the limits of a simple security force to guard Noble facilities.

Based in Georgia, it had a huge training facility and offices in every major country in the world, as well as several minor ones. Much of its business was concentrated in Africa, the Middle East, and Central America, including Mexico, where the company provided body-guards, transportation, and intelligence to foreign embassy personnel, as well as a number of high-ranking Mexican government officials.

The four-man team now aboard the
Noble Dancer
were all Spanish-speaking and in previous lives had all taken part in at least one revolution or insurrection in jungle conditions. The leader of the group, Tibor Cherka, a tall, grizzled American in his fifties, had been a member of one of the first incursion teams in Panama and before that had supposedly worked closely with the National Guard’s so-called death squads in El Salvador, although nothing was ever proven. As Cherka’s men prepared themselves in the dining room, Harrison Noble had a final meeting with his father in the pilot-house, one deck above.

‘‘I still don’t approve,’’ said the elder Noble, staring out into the darkness. ‘‘Let Cherka do it—he’s a professional.’’

‘‘I’m not saying he doesn’t know his job,’’ said the younger man. ‘‘I’m just saying that beyond the military aspects he doesn’t know what to look for. I do.’’

‘‘True enough,’’ said Noble senior.

‘‘He’s got enough weaponry to fight a small war—that part of it I’ll leave up to him—but I’ve got to be on-site first. You know that, Father.’’

‘‘And if things go wrong?’’

‘‘They won’t,’’ said Harrison Noble. ‘‘I guarantee it.’’

The older man turned to his son, his features grimly set.

‘‘Where have I heard that before? Screw this up and we’re all going to take the fall—you realize that, I hope.’’

‘‘Of course.’’

‘‘Not a word of this can leak out and you can’t be squeamish. If it all starts to go south, get out of there, but not before you clean up after yourself. No mercy. No survivors. No mistakes like last time.’’

‘‘I realize that, Father.’’

‘‘You know the plan?’’

It was the tenth time they’d gone over it since the
Noble Dancer
had left Miami. Harrison Noble sighed. Sometimes the old man was a right royal pain.

‘‘Yes, I know the plan.’’

The
Noble Dancer
presently stood fifteen miles off the coast, three miles outside Mexican territorial waters. At high tide, in just less than an hour, the yacht would come in three miles to the exact GPS limit and launch the two GTX three-passenger Sea-Doos from the platform on the upper deck where they were presently waiting.

The high-speed jetboats easily had at least an hour of running time at top speed, a solid fifty miles an hour. Cherka, the team leader, estimated they’d reach the beach just east of the small fishing village of El Cuyo at something under ten minutes. The Sea-Doos would then be scuttled offshore to prevent discovery.

If the Nobles’ latest information from Max Kessler was correct, traveling on foot from the village to their destination was expected to take two full days through the tropical rain forest that lay on the edge of the Rio Lagartos National Park, at least twenty-four hours ahead of Finn Ryan and her little inland expedition. Once on-site, Harrison junior would complete his investigation of the temple and the surrounding area, hopefully killing two birds with one stone.

With the job accomplished, one way or another the team would rendezvous at a preselected GPS coordinate outside the tiny village of San Angel, where they would be exfiltrated by a Blackhawk Security Bell JetRanger helicopter in civilian livery, probably that of a fictitious helitour company. From San Angel, their gear abandoned, they would be flown to Isla Mujeres off the coast, where they would then board the
Noble Dancer
, now legitimately berthed in the local marina.

Forty minutes after the conversation, Harrison Noble, now dressed in a roomy, dark blue dry suit over his jungle fatigues, boarded one of the pair of heavy, unmarked jet-black Sea-Doos winched down into the sea beside the gently swaying yacht. Cherka, in the lead Sea-Doo, gave the signal, and the two-hundred-fifteen -horsepower Rotex engines burst into life, the jet pumps spitting out a burbling stream of water.

Cherka, two of his heavily equipped men on the molded seats behind him, clicked the transmission into Forward, twisted the throttle hard, and headed for the invisible coast a dozen miles away. On the second watercraft, Harrison Noble, with a single passenger and more equipment loaded behind him, turned his own throttle and followed.

William Hartley Mossberg, Special Assistant to the Assistant Deputy National Security Advisor to the President of the United States, was late. He stepped out of his broom-closet office next to the lobby in the West Wing of the White House and then walked out through the canopied side entrance to the street, a section of Executive Avenue closed off to anything but White House traffic and effectively turned into a parking lot.

He looked at his watch. It was a fifty-dollar Indiglo with the stars and stripes on the dial, just like the one stolen from the president on his last trip to Albania. Prior to purchasing the light-’em-up Indiglo he’d worn a six-thousand-dollar Patek Philippe knockoff that was a twin to the sixty-grand original one the president of Russia wore, but the president had noticed it in passing one day and told him to get rid of it since it made him look like a ‘‘Jewish banker.’’ Thankfully there had been no one nearby to hear the ill-advised and unfortunate comment, but Mossberg got rid of the knockoff and picked up the hard-to-find commemorative Indiglo on E-bay. So far Tumbleweed, as the Secret Service code-named his imperial prezship, hadn’t noticed, but you never knew. Ambassadorships had been handed out for less. Through devious old-boy back channels Mossberg had learned that he’d been hired on the basis that his name reminded Tumbleweed of the shotgun manufacturer and not, as he’d initially presumed, because he’d gone to Yale, graduating 1,287th out of a class of 1,400.

In the end, of course, William Hartley Mossberg couldn’t have cared less how he’d reached the White House; the fact was he had arrived there and he was going to do his best to stay. All he had was a lousy master of studies in law degree, but after four years in the White House it would easily be enough to get him some kind of nonlawyer schmooze job at a big firm in Fort Smith, and failing that he could run for any office he wanted in his hometown of Arkadelphia. Best of all, if he could somehow swing it he might even be able to land something here in D.C. as a junior lobbyist. Which was why it didn’t do to be late for a late-night meeting with Max Kessler.

Mossberg reached the end of West Executive Avenue, picked up a cab outside the security booth, and gave the driver the address for Harry’s Saloon at Eleventh and Pennsylvania. He could think of other places he could be heading for at this time of night, Apex in particular, up on Dupont Circle. But that was another story, one that had gotten him into the trouble he was in and another very good reason for saying, ‘‘How high?’’ when Max Kessler said, ‘‘Jump.’’

The cab took a turn around Lafayette Park, came back out onto Pennsylvania Avenue beyond the eastern security barrier, and headed toward Eleventh. Harry’s was located in an office building directly across from the ESPN Zone sports bar and catercorner to the Old Post Office Building, now gutted and turned into an upscale shopping mall.

The cab let him out on Pennsylvania Avenue and he turned the corner onto Eleventh. He pushed through the door and stepped into the long, high-ceilinged room. It was still going strong even after midnight, populated mainly by tourists and people who’d just come out of the Warner Theater down the street.

Kessler, alone as always, was seated at a table halfway down the room, fastidiously eating a dripping hamburger with a napkin tucked into his collar. He was watching the CNN roller on one of the half dozen televisions set high above the long bar. There was no sound. Even if the volume had been turned up it would have remained unheard over the steady humming din of the patrons. It was a lesson Kessler had explained to him shortly after they first met: a noisy room was a secure one. If everyone else was talking it meant that no one else was listening to you.

‘‘I had them put some blue cheese dressing on the hamburger. It’s quite good actually— you should try one. Fry?’’ Kessler asked, holding up a crispy length of potato.