The Maya Codex (53 page)

‘What are you like with a rifle?’ he asked, retrieving the second gunman’s weapon.

‘I used to belong to a pistol club, but I can do rifle.’

Leaving four warriors to guard Pyramid IV, O’Connor and Aleta doubled down the hundred or so steps to where Arana and the rest of the warriors were waiting.

‘We’ve got less than ten minutes and Pyramid V’s 500 metres away,’ O’Connor said, shouldering the final neutral figurine.

‘The elders and I will remain in the Great Plaza,’ Arana announced. ‘May the gods of the Maya be with you.’

O’Connor and Aleta set off down the jungle track behind the remaining warriors, their Mayan war paint shining in the misty half-light. A troop of howler monkeys swung noisily through the branches of the strangler figs above, their squat black faces staring down as their predecessors had for centuries. But the group had only gone 300 metres when a burst of machine-pistol fire shattered the mists of the jungle. Two warriors died instantly, and O’Connor winced as a bullet struck his rifle from his grasp.

Instinctively Aleta took cover amongst the buttresses of a strangler fig and dropped to one knee. The fiery red flashes from the gunman’s machine pistol as he raked the track with bullets gave away his position near the base of Pyramid V. Aleta calmly adjusted the crosshairs and squeezed off three rounds.

‘
Aaggghhhh!!
’ The firing stopped and the gunman tumbled onto the track barely fifty metres away.

‘You’re not just a pretty face, are you?’ O’Connor said admiringly, as he retrieved his rifle and emerged back on the track.

‘You’re bleeding! Are you okay?’

‘It’s a flesh wound.’ O’Connor signalled the remaining warriors to move on.

They reached Pyramid V and O’Connor and Aleta bounded up the steps.

‘Two minutes,’ O’Connor announced, and he scrambled to the top of the comb. ‘It’s here!’ The Φ and the groove were just visible. Aleta handed up the neutral figurine, and O’Connor slotted the artefact into the limestone. ‘Lie flat, just in case,’ he said. Together they looked towards the east. The jungle canopy spread like a verdant green carpet as far as the eye could see. Here and there, the distinctive top of a giant ceiba tree soared above its chicle, balsa and buttressed fig neighbours. Howler monkeys swung amongst the vines below, their harsh calls mingling with the squawks of the macaws, the chirps of the hummingbirds and the
kyowh-kyowh
of the orange-breasted falcon. The horizon glowed in a mixture of orange and yellow; the point of the coming winter-solstice sun glowing more fiercely than the rest.

‘Twenty seconds,’ O’Connor whispered. ‘Ten …’

Aleta’s heart began to race. It was as if she were sitting on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

‘Now!’ Rays of light that had travelled at 300 000 kilometres a second, from a sun that was 150 million kilometres away, pierced the mists above the jungle. O’Connor focused his binoculars on the crystal on top of Pyramid I. The male figurine had already energised, and at a precise angle of 287 degrees a powerful laser-like beam of bright-green light deflected towards the top of Pyramid IV, energising the crystal on the female figurine, sending another searing beam of green light to power up the crystal beside them. It crackled and sizzled like a lightning conductor, deflecting yet again. Aleta and O’Connor followed the beam to a point in the ruins just 300 metres away.

‘The Pyramid of the Lost World!’ O’Connor exclaimed, focusing his binoculars. ‘Take a bearing,’ he said, handing Aleta his compass. Aleta ducked under the beam and aligned the compass sight from behind the sizzling, crackling crystal.

‘Two hundred and sixty-nine degrees!’

‘It’s hitting one of the limestone steps of the pyramid a metre or so above the ground.’ As O’Connor mentally marked the spot, the sun rose higher above the jungle and the power in the crystals and the laser beams began to fade. A police siren could be heard faintly in the distance. Close by in his hiding place in the ancient Central Acropolis, Howard Wiley focused his own binoculars and watched Tutankhamen and Nefertiti scramble down Pyramid V towards the warriors waiting at the base of the steps.

Rifles in hand, O’Connor and Aleta moved down the jungle track leading to Mundo Perdido, the Pyramid of the Lost World. Early archaeologists were struck by the great pyramid soaring above jungle teeming with dangerous and exotic wildlife, the sight evoking a comparison with Conan Doyle’s primitive world of the same name. Cautiously, O’Connor and Aleta approached the lower steps of the pyramid. O’Connor signalled for the warriors to post sentries and keep watch. The police siren was getting louder.

‘There’s a burn mark on the limestone, see? Above the first step.’ Aleta pointed to a spot still glowing softly on the weathered stone.

‘A hidden chamber?’ O’Connor wondered aloud.

‘The ancients were superb engineers. There may be a mechanism embedded in the step.’ Aleta took an archaeologist’s chisel and hammer from her knapsack. She chiselled around the still softly glowing green spot and suddenly she hit metal. ‘It’s a lever!’ she exclaimed, as she deftly removed the surrounding masonry. O’Connor extended his hand towards the bronze lever, which was in the shape of a jaguar.

‘No!’ Aleta commanded, grabbing his wrist. Arana’s words rang in her ears:
The codex itself is fiercely protected … even more so than the figurine that you discovered in Lake Atitlán
. ‘We need your rope.’

Aleta fastened one end around the neck of the jaguar lever and they retreated to the ten-metre extent of the cord. Aleta pulled at the lever, but it didn’t budge and O’Connor swung on to the cord with her. Together they dug their boots into the soil and the lever slowly moved towards them. Suddenly the side of the temple shook, and four massive steps disappeared, revealing a shaft at the base of the pyramid, immediately below where Aleta and O’Connor had been. Ancient dust drifted up from the tonnes of rubble that had fallen six metres to the bottom. O’Connor anchored the rope to a nearby tree and dropped it into the shaft. Using his boots as a brake, he slowly lowered himself down the rope towards the fallen steps. Once he reached the bottom, Aleta followed.

‘Look! More steps and a tunnel leading further into the pyramid!’ Aleta exclaimed, pointing past the rubble. O’Connor threw a large limestone rock down the stone steps, wary that another yawning chasm might open in front of them. The sound of the falling rock echoed down a passageway that had been sealed for over 1200 years. Aleta followed him down the steps and into the tunnel. Protected from the weather, the limestone walls were painted a bright salmon pink, and the ceiling was high, coming together in a typical Mayan pointed arch.

‘The original colour of all the pyramids,’ Aleta observed. ‘Red cinnabar, the colour of the east … the colour of life.’

‘And the hieroglyphics?’ Every few paces, the ancients had embedded a jade tablet into the walls.

‘I can’t decipher them all immediately, but this one is very clear,’ Aleta replied, a shiver running down her spine. ‘ “Death will come swiftly to he who, without authority, disturbs the resting place of the codex.” Curtis! It’s here!’

Above them, the Flores police car roared up the jungle track to the Mendez Causeway and screeched to a halt just short of the Great Plaza, the siren dying. Howard Wiley emerged from his hiding place in the Central Acropolis. He skirted the Great Plaza and moved down the track towards the Pyramid of the Lost World. Ellen Rodriguez followed Wiley at a distance, taking up a position amongst the three small pyramids to the east of the Lost World Pyramid; each aligned with the equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices. Wiley approached the exposed shaft on the Lost World Pyramid and Rodriguez watched as he scanned the surrounding area. Wiley checked his pistol and climbed down the rope into the shaft.

58

O
’Connor used his powerful torch to probe the red-cinnabar walls of the stone passage and its high arched ceilings. The gradient grew steeper as he and Aleta descended deeper and deeper into Mundo Perdido. Nearly sixty metres further on they were confronted with steps leading down to what appeared to be a stone wall with a huge jade calendar-wheel embedded in the centre. Beside it a smaller jade wheel with an even smaller inner wheel meshed with the larger one like gears in a gear box. At either side of the top of the steps, two polished wooden poles were fixed to the walls, each topped with an ancient oil lamp. O’Connor took one of the poles off the wall and began to probe the steps. Aleta removed the other one and did likewise, wary that the steps might open and swallow them both, but the steps held firm.

‘It’s the
Haab
, the Mayan long-count calendar, and the sacred
Tzolk’in
, the short-count calendar,’ Aleta observed excitedly when they reached the wall. She ran her hand over the exquisitely carved wheels, each embedded with hieroglyphs and the Mayan numbering system of dots and dashes denoting the days and dates. ‘The long-count is based on the cycles of the earth and the smaller short-count is based on the cycles of the Pleiades star cluster in the Taurus constellation,’ she explained. ‘Together, they not only give the day and date in any one year, but the precise date in three other cycles: a 52-year cycle, the longer sun cycle of 5125 years, and the great cycle of 25 625 years. We’re now in the end times. The fifth great cycle of the sun will end on 21 December 2012 – a rare meshing of the calendar gears.’

O’Connor probed the stone masonry with his torch beam. ‘Trouble is, we seem to be at a dead end.’

Aleta shone her own torch on the hieroglyphs on the wheels. She grabbed O’Connor’s elbow. ‘I don’t think so. The calendars are meshed on 4
Ahau
, 8
Cumku
– today’s date! There’s a mechanism behind these wheels that’s been keeping perfect time for over 1200 years. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

O’Connor nodded. ‘Perhaps there is a setting that might open the wall?’

‘Exactly. The Mayan system of cyclical meshing calendars could predict dates four, forty or 40 000 years in advance, so I’m wondering if the setting we’re looking for is 21 December 2012?’ Aleta pocketed her torch and placed her hands either side of the
Haab
wheel. She applied pressure and the great wheel began to rotate of its own accord – slowly at first, then moving more quickly. Aleta stepped back as the jade hieroglyphs and dots and dashes meshed in perfect synchronicity, the days, weeks and months speeding by. The wheels began to slow until the
Ik
and
Kank’in
teeth on the great
Haab
and the sacred
Tzolk’in
, together with the dots and dashes on the inner wheel, meshed in a flash of energy. Aleta gasped. ‘21 December 2012!’ A mechanism deep within the pyramid began to rumble and the stone wall with the embedded sacred calendars slid slowly into a stone recess.

‘Duck!’ O’Connor picked up the vicious swinging ball in his torch beam and he tackled Aleta to the ground. From high in the ceiling of the tomb, a huge bronze ball embedded with razor-sharp spikes whistled over the prostrate forms of Aleta and O’Connor and smashed into the stone steps beyond. Aleta’s face was white as she got shakily to her feet. ‘Thank you. Once again, you saved my life,’ she said in a whisper.

‘One good turn deserves another,’ O’Connor replied, but he knew it had been close. Together they played their torches into the gloom of the vast rectangular cavern beyond. Aleta put her hand to her mouth at the sight of the inestimable riches. The cavern was filled with hundreds of priceless jade artefacts. Lidded tripod vessels, engraved with images of the rain god, the sun god and cormorants and turtles, lined the walls. In the centre of the cavern stood a large raised stone tomb, covered by a massive red-cinnabar capstone engraved with the
Haab
and
Tzolk’in
calendars. The tomb was surrounded by necklace beads, anklets and bracelets made from different shades and hues of jade.

O’Connor and Aleta approached cautiously and Aleta stifled another gasp.

‘What’s wrong?’ In the reflected torchlight, O’Connor could see the colour had drained from Aleta’s face.

‘The body inside that tomb is that of Princess Akhushtal,’ Aleta replied, focusing her torch beam on a set of hieroglyphics engraved below an exquisite jade mortuary mask at the top of the capstone. ‘She was the daughter of King Yax Ain II, and the calendars on top of the tomb are set at Friday 21 December 2012.’

‘Vandenberg control,
Looking Glass
, ready.’

‘
Looking Glass
, you are cleared for immediate departure on Runway 30; contact departures when airborne.’

‘
Looking Glass
, thank you and good day.’

Air Force Colonel Bill Glassic lined up the Boeing 707 E6-Mercury command and control aircraft on the centre line, applied the brakes and advanced the throttles to sixty per cent, allowing the engines to spool up. Satisfied, he released the brakes and slowly pushed all four throttles forward.

‘EPR set, eighty knots,’ the first officer called. ‘Vee-one.’ Glassic removed his right hand from the throttle levers and concentrated on the runway ahead.
Looking Glass
had passed the point where the flight could be aborted.