The Aztec Code (2 page)

‘Like the way they just cut the charge around the entrance,' panted Patch, close behind him.

‘Uh-huh, and when they do that, this little surge goes through the whole system. That's why I waited till then before hooking up.'
Twenty-five seconds
. ‘It causes a spike in the current – but since a single mom in a trailer park sees more maintenance than this fence system, if they notice they should put it down to wear and tear.'

‘Let's hope so,' said Jonah, last to haul himself over.

‘Ten seconds, geek!' hissed Motti. ‘C'mon, move it!'

Jonah hit the ground and flattened himself against it.

‘Main gates should be closing any moment,' whispered Motti. Sure enough, a rattling clang sounded from the entrance. The floodlights died, plunging the periphery of the complex back into moonlit shadow. ‘And the power's running back into the fence any time …'

‘… Now!' Patch concluded, as the ominous hum of the electric fence resumed.

‘Nice work, Motti,' breathed Jonah.

‘Whatever,' he said gruffly. ‘The fence may have been left to rot, but getting inside the containment vessel's gonna be way harder.'

‘You don't say.' Patch sighed and shook his head. ‘I can't believe we're raiding the core of a nuclear reactor.'

‘It ain't been used for years,' Motti pointed out.

‘But it could still be radioactive! Our bums could be glowing bright green by the time we get out of here!'

‘Cool. Yours'll be easier to kick in the dark.' Motti booted it now for good measure. ‘Now get us inside that containment vessel.'

Jonah had raised his head and was looking all around. ‘Coast seems to be clear.'

Motti nodded. ‘With any luck, the guards'll go check out those two babes who just showed out of nowhere.'

‘Good for us,' Jonah agreed grimly. ‘Bad for Tye and Con.'

The bone-rattling ride to the guardhouse seemed to
take for ever, but at least conversation was impossible over the jeep's spluttering engine. In the headlights' glare, Con could see the whole complex was decaying like some vast industrial corpse. Long grass was growing up through the cracked asphalt. Rusting forklifts and rotting pallets littered empty yards. Abandoned buildings were falling into disrepair.

The jeep pulled up at the guardhouse that adjoined the main reception. Once it must have looked impressive, but the mirrored glass was now cracked and cobwebbed, divided by rusting steel strips. Con supposed only one area would be well maintained – the containment vessels that had once enclosed the reactor core.

Now they held a secret treasure. The thought of the cash it could earn her was making her heart race. It was worth the danger. It was worth anything.

She checked out the guards and was unimpressed. If you could scrub away the dirt, sweat and tattoos you'd find ‘mercenary' written all over them. There was nothing wrong with that, of course – Con would hardly be here herself if not for the hard-cash incentive – but this lot must be pretty low-grade if they were stuck on guard duty in a place already so well defended. The owner must know that any self-respecting thieves would be mad to enter here.

Unless they're thieves like us
, thought Con.

‘Get inside,' the driver told her in Spanish.

‘May we use your phone?' she asked. He just laughed in her face, his breath stale and spicy, and shoved her out of the jeep. Tye had already been bundled out by her two towering escorts.

‘Not very friendly, are they?' whispered Tye. ‘Can't you turn up the charm a bit?'

‘Please, we've been walking for hours,' Con told the driver meekly. ‘All we want to do is rest and then –'

‘Inside,' the driver insisted, opening the door to the guardhouse.

What had once been the gleaming hub of security here was now a large, grotty living space, hazy with cigarette smoke. The stained floor was strewn with litter. Few of the spotlights in the ceiling still worked; more light came from the CCTV screens showing views of the complex in flickering black and white. A poker table had been squeezed into one corner, cards and chips scattered round half-empty bottles of tequila and whisky.

A wiry white man in a swivel chair spun round from the monitors to size up the newcomers. Con nodded to him politely. He looked greedily between her and Tye like a kid trying to decide which present to tear open first.

The two big black men from the jeep stood blocking the way out behind them, and the driver barred the way ahead. Intimidating assholes. Con did her best to look scared, watched them get off on it with quiet loathing.

‘Take off your shoes,' said the driver quietly.

She looked at him blankly. ‘Why?'

‘You've been walking for hours, you say? Let's see your feet!'

Not so stupid, then
. Con shrugged over at Tye and did as she was asked. Luckily, they
had
been tramping for some time through the rough terrain beyond the
complex, so as not to be observed. Her feet were chafed and red, almost as blistered as Tye's. She promised herself a pedicure the second she got back to base.

The driver peered down at their feet, then seemed to relax a little. ‘So, the two of you just happened to find your way here, huh?'

‘We saw your lights from the hillside,' said Tye in halting Spanish. ‘These guys picked us up on the main road, said they would give us a ride to Livingston.'

‘Is that so?' the driver sneered. He turned to his bozo buddies guarding the door. ‘Take Samuel and Kristian and search outside the grounds. Start with the main track. If you find anyone hanging around, bring them here. In one piece or several – Kabacra won't care.'

‘Who are you people?' Con affected horror, though there had always been a chance this would happen. At least Motti and the others would have fewer guards patrolling
inside
the complex to worry about. ‘What is this place?'

‘And who's Kabacra?' Tye added, glancing round as the men disappeared back through the doorway.

‘You want us to let you go, right?' The driver showed his broken teeth in an unpleasant leer. ‘So just shut up till you're spoken to.' He poured some tequila into a filthy glass. ‘José, watch them.'

The man in the chair gave a dirty chuckle. ‘Man, I
am
watching them.'

Be my guest
, thought Con coldly, as behind him on one of the fuzzy grey monitors three dark figures flitted past.

* * *

Patch skidded to a halt at the sound of deep voices calling to each other in some foreign language. He dropped swiftly to the ground and Motti and Jonah followed suit. They held themselves still as stone till the voices moved away.

‘What was that about?' Patch wondered.

‘The guards may not believe the girls came alone,' Motti hissed in his ear. ‘If they've figured it's a distraction tactic, they'll be looking for trouble.'

Jonah swore under his breath. ‘But if they find your box hooked up to the power supply –'

‘So let's get going, huh? Patch, the door we need open is right across the courtyard.' Motti gestured to a dark, towering building that kept a vast swathe of stars from sight. ‘The door recess ain't well lit, so chances are the CCTV won't catch you. You just gotta get there quick, don't make no sudden moves, and get us inside.'

Patch glared at him. ‘You don't have to treat me like a kid.'

‘You're fourteen, you
are
a kid.'

‘Technically, maybe.'

‘So go get technical before I poke you in the eye.'

Patch flipped up his leather patch, reached under his eyelid and plucked out his glass eyeball with a soft sucking noise. To his delight, Motti cringed and nearly gagged.

‘God damn it, you cyclops freak,' he gasped. ‘Will you quit with the “utility eye” crap!'

‘Jonah thinks it's cool, don't you, mate?' Patch unscrewed the top half of the false eyeball to reveal a
soft squishy blob inside.

‘Plastic explosive?' asked Jonah.

‘Play-Doh,' Patch replied. Then he flipped down his eyepatch and sprinted for the doorway. His nerves ebbed away as he studied the barriers to opening the door. Fingerprint scanner – from the make and model, Patch guessed it was maybe two years old – linked to an older numeric keypad with eight-character capacity.

Piece of cake.

He pressed the Play-Doh against the 1 key on the keypad. Bound to be an impression there, it hadn't been cleaned since for ever. He daubed the squashy blob against the scanner plate. OK, so the match might be muddy, but after so long exposed to the elements the plate would be less sensitive and –

A green light winked on as the fingerprint was accepted. ‘Bob's your auntie,' Patch muttered to himself, sticking the squishy blob back in his false eye. ‘Now for the keycode.'

‘C'mon, cyclops!' Motti hissed from across the overgrown courtyard.

‘Gonna have to use the bit-buster.' So saying, Patch pulled a little gadget the size of a TV remote from his back pocket, raised its little backlit screen, and attached it to the keypad. Numbers streamed across the display in blurring columns. The bit-buster used a wireless link to interrogate the keypad's chip and find the last successfully input code. Sometimes it took a while for the two little computers to hook up, but –

With a beep of quiet pride, the bit-buster finished its digital chat. Now its screen displayed eight numbers.
But were they the right numbers?

Holding his breath, Patch tapped in the sequence: 1-5-3-0-9-0-1-5.

The door clicked loudly as it unlocked and opened, but still Patch held his breath, staring warily into the pitch darkness beyond.

What was waiting for them in there?

A smear of dark movement on the screen told Tye that Patch was going to work on the door to the containment vessel. Con had seen it too and was holding eye contact with José, smiling coyly, making sure he kept his attention only on her.

Tye decided to play a game she was better equipped for. She cleared her throat and once she had the driver's attention she tilted her head to one side. ‘Look, we're sorry if we trespassed. We honestly didn't know. You do believe us, right? You will let us go?'

He hesitated for less than a second. But Tye could read body language like Patch could read comics, and this doofus had licked his lips, glanced over at his friend and shifted on the balls of his feet before he'd even drawn breath – classic signals that he was about to tell a point-blank lie. ‘Sure. I'm just taking precautions. Whatever happens, you'll be OK.'

Uh-huh. Right
. ‘Thank you.'

‘Keep watching them, José. I gotta pee.'

Yes. Go on, go
. Tye willed the driver not to look back round at the screens before he left. Luckily he was too busy scratching his crotch. Once he'd gone, she spoke to Con quietly in English. ‘He's lying, and
he's pretty sure that we are too. We're dead if we hang around here for too long.'

‘Or sooner if he sees that the door's been opened,' Con murmured.

Tye glanced up to see a dark figure – it looked like Patch – move cautiously through the now-open doorway.

Con smiled. ‘I'd better get to work.'

‘What're you saying?' asked José, suddenly suspicious.

‘My friend was wondering which of us you like best. I think you like
me
. Look into my eyes, José. Into my eyes.'

‘No tricks,' he warned. ‘Not from either of you.'

‘No tricks,' Con agreed in a lower voice, soothing and exotic. ‘Just look into my eyes, José, and forget about her. Forget about anything else.'

Tye caught a flicker of movement on the screen. Another figure had come into shot and glanced nervously up at the security camera. Through the fuzz she saw Jonah's sweet face, lined with worry.

The same second, some instinct made José break eye contact with Con, turn in the chair and spy Jonah too.

With a roar he leaped up from the chair and pointed a handgun at Con. She threw herself aside as he fired. Tye picked up one of her walking boots and hurled it like a missile. The steel toecap cracked into the man's forehead and he fell backwards over his swivel chair. He didn't get back up.

‘Thanks, sweets,' Con said shakily, picking herself up from the filthy floor. But Tye could hear running
footsteps. The driver returned, face twisted in anger, his flies gaping open. Leaping forwards, Con landed a karate kick there with vicious satisfaction. He doubled up with a hoarse squeak. Tye punched him in the jaw and sent him crashing back into the poker table, which collapsed under his weight.

Con crouched beside the driver and slapped his face lightly to try and revive him. ‘God, Tye, did you have to hit him so hard?'

‘Can you put the 'fluence on him?' Tye asked anxiously.

‘It's not voodoo magic, Tye,' said Con curtly. ‘It's
mesmerism
. And I can't work it when the subject is out cold.'

Tye bit her lip. The way Con could hypnotise just about anyone into doing just about anything
was
magical to her. And the plan had been to get at least one of these guys under Con's 'fluence so he could steer the rest of security well away from the thieves' planned exit. Now, when the mercenaries in the grounds radioed back in, there would be no one to answer them – and something very nasty would hit the fan.

Con pulled out her mobile phone and hit the speed-dial. ‘Motti? You'd better move things along in there, yes?'

Jonah followed Patch up a flight of concrete steps that led to a blast door. Predictably it was locked – another fingerprint scanner.

Patch was already getting busy with his Play-Doh. ‘Where's Motti?'

Jonah looked behind him nervously. ‘Mot?'

‘Right here,' he hissed, scaling the steps soundlessly. ‘Con just called. We don't got long.'