The Mayan Codex (50 page)

‘You.’ Alastor pointed at the first Mexican. ‘Are you left-or right-handed?’

The man was still struggling to regain his breath. He shook his head, unable to string two words together.

‘Okay. You held the Glock in your right hand. I’ll assume that one’s the master. Berith, cut off this guy’s right hand. Just below the elbow will do.’

The Mexican began to scream.

Berith pulled a machete from the trunk of the car. ‘I’ve been sharpening this bastard thing all afternoon and I still can’t get a good edge on it. Why can’t they sell these things pre-sharpened? It wouldn’t take much, you know.’

‘What are you trying to say?’

‘What I’m trying to say is that I’m not sure I can make the cut in one. I might have to chop a few times. Three maybe. Otherwise I won’t make it through the bone. I’m sorry, friend.’ He said this to the Mexican. ‘But you can see my problem, can’t you?’

The Mexican, with one of his legs still dead from the baton blow, was trying to lever himself underneath the car.

Asson grabbed both his legs and yanked him out. Then he strolled over to one of the fallen men who was struggling to get to his feet and smashed in the back of his head with a backhand blow of his baton. He checked on the other man. ‘You killed this one clean, Ali. Heck of a shot. Did you really get them both at once? Or did you one-two them? Be honest now.’

‘Left and right. Just like a brace of pheasants. They should have a social club for people like me. Dinners once a year. Designer blazers with crossed batons on the pocket. Two witnesses needed or you don’t get in. They’ve got one like that in London I hear – only it’s for left and rights at woodcock. I’m going to suggest they expand their remit.’

‘What do you want from me?’ The Mexican was quieter now. Now that the two freaks – the fat one and the thin one – were talking amongst themselves, he was starting to think that maybe he could save his arm.

‘We’ll ask you after the amputation. Berith. Go to it.’

‘No. No. No. I tell you where everything is.’

‘What? You mean the rest of our order?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. We were going to fulfil it. We only wanted to check you hadn’t come armed.’

‘What? You mean armed like you three guys?’ Alastor pretended to think. ‘How were we going to come armed? We came to you to buy weapons, not to discharge them, you moron. Cut off his arm, Berith.’

The Mexican thrust both his hands under his armpits like a child having a tantrum. ‘No. Listen to me. We got a warehouse. Just one guy guarding it. No alarms. I take you there.’

‘You’re not taking us anywhere. You’re going to be bleeding to death.’

‘It’s only ten kilometres from here. At Xbolom. You take the turning from Chandok. There’s a sign saying
Agave Azul – El futuro de Yucatan
. You turn off down there. The barn is two hundred metres on the right. Corrugated iron with a
Juano
palm roof.’

‘You’re sure of this? If you’re lying, I take both your hands off.’

‘No. No. I’m not lying. You go there and check it out. Take anything you want.’

Alastor picked up the Glock and shot the Mexican in the head. ‘Don’t worry. We will.’

‘This place is perfect.’ Abi looked around himself. The warehouse stood by itself down a country track, surrounded by a field of blue agave. Rifle, shotgun, pistol and ammunition cases were stacked haphazardly throughout the building. ‘Nobody will hear anything that goes on here. When we get hold of our three little piggies, we can take our own sweet time with them. What have you done with the stiffs?’

‘They’re in the car.’

‘And the watchman?’

‘He’s outside. He’s got a broken jaw, but he can still talk.’

‘Get him in here.’

Oni brought the watchman in. The man was bleeding from his mouth.

‘You got a cenote around here? You must get your water from somewhere. And it surely isn’t the national grid.’

The man ducked his head like he couldn’t believe what he’d been asked.

‘Hit him, Oni.’

Oni raised his hand, but the man slithered out of his grasp and tried to make a run for it.

Abi raised the Glock and shot the man’s leg out from underneath him. ‘Oni. Go outside and ask Berith if he heard that shot.’

‘Okay.’

Abi waited. The watchman was writhing around on the floor of the warehouse. A viscous pool of deep-crimson blood was oozing from his leg.

Oni came back. ‘No. You can’t hear anything out there.’

‘Good.’ Abi shot the man in his other leg. ‘Now look here, my friend. It’s obvious you’re not going anywhere in a hurry with both your legs smashed. I’m going to shoot you in the arm next. Then in the stomach. Each time you don’t answer a question, I’m going to shoot you someplace else. You understand my Spanish?’

The watchman nodded. His face was pale and his eyes were fluttering. It was clear that he was going into shock.

‘The cenote. Where is it?’

The watchman indicated with his head. ‘North. Through the woods. About six hundred metres.’

‘Who else knows about it?’

‘Nobody comes here, if that’s what you mean.’ The man could hardly get the words out through his broken jaw. ‘Nobody dares. Bad people own this place.’

‘Yeah. And now they’re dead.’

The watchman shook his head. ‘No. There are more. They come to get you. You people will die.’

‘How many more?’

The man hesitated.

Abi raised the Glock.

‘Six. Maybe eight. I’m not sure.’

‘Where are they now?’

The man sighed. It was as if he knew that he was coming to the end of his life. ‘You going to kill me?’

‘Where are they now?’

‘Up at the US border. They got a big consignment of weapons coming in. They away for maybe six days. Pepito was just working something on the side when he
made the deal with you guys. The boss left us here to watch this place. Pepito shouldn’t have left me alone here. But he said he’d pay me a hundred dollars if I watched the warehouse for an hour or two.’ The watchman was losing consciousness. His voice was fading away. ‘You going to kill me?’

‘Break his neck, Oni.’

‘Break his neck? Why should I break his neck? It’s hard to break somebody’s neck. Why don’t you just shoot him?’

‘Because I need you to keep in practice. That’s why. Okay?’

Oni smiled. ‘Okay.’

The watchman closed his eyes. He was pleased now that he’d lied to the gringo. Pleased that he hadn’t told him the truth about the boss, and the consignment, and how many people the boss had, and the number of days they would be away.

When Oni broke his neck it was almost a relief.

Abi stared down at the cenote. You got to it through a thick stand of pampas grass. The sinkhole was maybe sixty feet wide, and situated fifty feet straight down, with sheer walls on all sides. It was shaped like a cylinder. Trees grew up from the vase of the cenote, and trailed their fronds in it, but none of them reached anywhere near the lip. Around midday the pool would probably be bathed in sunlight, but now, nearer to
eight o’clock in the evening, it looked like the entrance to hell.

A pipe had been let down one side, feeding a series of pumps that took water to the warehouse. Aside from the pipe, there was no way up or down to the cenote. What went in stayed in.

‘Strip the four stiffs and burn their clothes. Then put the stiffs in the Suzuki. Crack the windows about fifteen centimetres – enough to let the water in, but not enough to let anything leak out. Then drive it here and dump it in the cenote. Try not to disturb the grass too much.’

‘But the stiffs will spoil the water, Abi.’

‘We’ll drink bottled water while we’re here, Vau. We won’t be staying long enough to require baths.’

‘Okay. You’re the boss.’ Vau hesitated. ‘Are you going to bring Sabir, Lamia, and Calque out here to the warehouse?’

‘Yes. We’ll sweat everything out of them soon enough. Sabir will crack the moment we start in on Lamia. That’s what true love does to you, Vau. Makes you vulnerable. Some people admire that about it. I think it stinks.’

Abi watched Vau negotiating his way through the pampas grass and back to the warehouse via the track alongside the agave field. He shook his head. Things couldn’t have fallen any better really. They’d lucked into the perfect base. They had more weapons than the CRS and the Foreign Legion combined. And they had the aquatic equivalent of a batch incinerator to get rid of any inconvenient cadavers that turned up as a result of collateral damage.

‘Collateral damage’. How it rolled off the tongue. Abi loved American euphemisms. When he was really bored, he would make up new ones, like ‘inadvertent blood donors’ and ‘residual throw-downs’. But ‘collateral damage’ was still the best. He’d never come near matching that one.

Now all Abi needed to make his happiness complete was Madame, his mother’s, okay to go in and snatch Lamia, Calque, and Sabir and whatever else he could get his hands on, including the mestizo’s book and the crystal skull. Which, given the Countess’s recent form, would be easier said than done.

Abi called up Athame’s cell phone. He knew that her position might be compromised if she answered the phone at the wrong moment, so he let the phone ring twice only, and then hung up. She would feel the vibration through her clothes and know that he wanted to speak to her.

He sat on the lip of the cenote and stared down into the pool, waiting.

When his cell phone finally rang, it took him a moment to respond. Dusk had fallen. The forest all around him was alive with the furtive movement of animals.

‘Can you talk?’

‘It’s fine. There’s so much noise coming from over by the temple that I could bellow like a bull and they wouldn’t hear me.’

Abi smiled. The thought of the dwarf-like Athame bellowing like a bull tickled his sense of the absurd. ‘What’s happening?’

‘They’re holding some kind of ceremony.’

‘Can you make out what it’s about?’

‘I can’t get close enough. You could try Aldinach for that. She’s up in a tree, over on the other side of the site. She might have a better view. I don’t know where Dakini and Nawal are hiding. It was a brilliant idea of yours to use us girls. If we get caught, they’ll just think we’re a bunch of New Age gringas trying to cop a view of the ceremony.’

‘What do you figure is happening?’

‘You want my guess?’

‘Yes.’

‘I think they’re discussing what to do with the skull and the book. They’ve got my sister and her two boyfriends up there with them on top of the pyramid. Maybe when they’ve made up their minds they’ll cut their hearts out and offer them up to the jaguar god? Then someone could dress up in their skins and go cavorting about the sanctuary like in the good old days. That would save us all a lot of trouble.’

‘Who’s running the show?’

‘The High Priest. If we can keep tabs on him, we’ll know where to find the book and the skull.’

‘Stay where you are. I’m coming over to join you with Vau, Asson, Alastor, and Rudra. I’m leaving Oni and Berith here to watch the warehouse.’