David Gilman - Blood Sun

Marty Kiernan had spent a few hours on the telephone. The British government might well have a training team of specialists in the jungles of Central America, but to use them for a live operation could cause a diplomatic incident. If there was a chance to save Max, and if there was fighting to be done, then Marty knew who to call.

Over the years, British soldiers who had trained others in the specialist art of jungle warfare had stayed in the area, married local women and settled down to raise families in the environment that was second nature to them. Most had served fifteen to twenty years in the army and now received a modest pension to supplement whatever work they did. In the modern world of warfare, they would be considered too old to go on active duty-but when the call came from Marty, each of the dozen men went to that special place in his home where he kept his well-oiled and trusted weapons hidden.

Charlie Morgan winced. It was a ragtag army that arrived at the rendezvous point Ridgeway had instructed her to reach. Battered old pickup trucks, ex-army Land Rovers and a quad bike cut through the mud and bush. Some of the men were still close friends; others hadn’t seen each other for a few years, but the more she looked, the more she realized that these were hard-nosed veterans, their skin tanned mahogany from years in the sun. They might have been older than your regular squaddie, but she could see that the men had an understated, deadly efficiency about them. By the time they’d introduced themselves, made a few passing cracks about her being young enough to be their daughter and then started asking for tactical assessments of the target, she knew she was in business. These were the men who had taught others how to fight.

Charlie Morgan, ever practical and self-confident, believed she now had the resources, no matter how meager, to take on the gunmen and whatever else lay in that forbidden zone. Now all she had to do was find Max Gordon in that twisted jungle that ensnared its secrets like a poisonous spiderweb.

Like startled birds, two of the children ran. Somehow they had freed themselves. They ducked and weaved as warriors threw their spears and gave chase for a couple of hundred meters. The kids sprinted for some boulders where bushes hid what must have been a way through. Cries of encouragement turned to alarm, and then screams. Tree Walker and Setting Star tried to break free in their anxiety, but a Serpent Warrior yanked the rope round their necks and pulled them back in line.

“Why have they stopped chasing them? What’s wrong?” Max asked Flint.

“There’s a hummingbird god up there. These kids are too young to know about it.”

Tree Walker gave a final scream of warning-but it was too late.

Max saw the two escaping children suddenly thrown to the ground as if a massive invisible hand had slammed them down. Everyone fell silent.

It made no sense. What had killed those children? He stepped forward; the warriors threatened him with their spears, but he continued walking slowly. They kept him encircled but moved with him, calling for instructions from their warrior leader.

“Don’t be crazy. Boy! You ain’t no jungle god! They’ll kill you if they have to,” Flint warned him.

The Serpent Warrior’s leader ran forward and shouted a command. The spears jabbed closer. Max stopped. He had pushed his luck far enough. But now that he was closer to the children, he could hear a gentle hum of something in the trees.

The children’s bodies were scorched. Red welts across their arms, chests and legs. Max realized that the hummingbird god was an electrified fence hidden from sight. There was a power source somewhere, fueled by what? Was a generator powerful enough? Maybe there was something hidden underground or in one of those caves he could see. Whatever it was, it had nothing to do with ancient superstitions-this was modern-day technology being used.

Hours later, after stumbling along pathways hidden by the high canopy, a broad expanse of cleared forest, trapped on each side by mountains, opened up before Max and the others. Layers of mist and smoke hung in the air, seeping upward to escape the treetops. Shafts of sunlight angled into a collection of pyramid-like buildings. Max had been pushed through the trees into a lost city.

He scanned the ground as quickly as possible. How to escape when the time came? Water channels that led down from the mountainside to irrigate fruit and vegetable gardens seemed the best bet. Get across those, through the trees and climb! Young legs, fear and desperation could take you a long way in a hurry.

As the procession of captured children was stopped by the warriors, they saw women-also tethered-tending the vegetable garden and looking at the war party’s victims with expressionless faces. Their half-raised eyes told Max they dared not look too closely. It was fear that kept them under control.

Like bullying nightclub doormen, the guards chivied the children toward an overgrown entrance, an archway that looked like a short tunnel. Its stonework was intact, but, like an unrelenting virus, the jungle clawed at every stone, slithering across the limestone buildings, strangling them in a relentless embrace.

Max was still surrounded by his captors, so he was first through the archway, followed by Flint, Xavier, Tree Walker and Setting Star. Younger children were crying but were being comforted by the older ones. Max could hear the gentle, soothing tones of the Mayan language, which suddenly stopped as the prisoners emerged from the tunnel.

The main area was bigger than a couple of football fields. To the left and right were sloping stone walls, dotted with scowling gargoyles: squashed faces of ancient gods that reminded Max of the totem pole he had climbed in the British Museum-a couple of lifetimes ago, it seemed. Above these walls, steps rose up to create a low, flat-topped building. At the end of the field was a stepped pyramid that Max reckoned was fifty or sixty meters high. Smoke curled from the top, obscuring the summit. There were other buildings, most of them so ancient they were little more than ruins. The complex must have once been very impressive, with its brightly painted colors on smooth lime-plastered walls, but they were now worn away to reveal the underlying blocks, the structures subdued by the elements and the jungle. He could not recognize any of them from his mother’s photographs. Despair squeezed his insides. He had to shake off any soul-destroying depression, or he would be helpless. There must be other buildings he had not yet seen.

Howler monkeys bellowed their supernatural-sounding cries from the dense vegetation that skirted the buildings, like gatekeepers to hell welcoming the condemned.

Max kept looking, scanning each building, each frieze or sculpture depicting scenes from ancient life. He wanted one of the stone-frozen figures to point out where his mother had stood, had her picture taken-had smiled.

The prisoners were brought to a halt. Max’s guards moved away, leaving him separated from the main body of children. Flint was close to him and spoke quietly.

“These were sacred cities. All these buildings were aligned to the heavenly bodies so they could pinpoint planetary cycles. Y’see that smoke up there? That’s where the Vision Serpent is. That’s where they make sacrifices. They spill enough blood, it releases the ch’ulel . Then the shaman goes into a trance and sees the smoke take shape. He summons up one of their gods from the underworld.” He took a wheezy breath. “The Maya sacrifice prisoners of war by cutting their hearts out.”

Max gazed up. A figure stood at the top of the pyramid’s steps. Iridescent feathers plumed out from his clothing, swathed in bands of color. He held a staff of some kind from which swung an incense-laden censer, like a priest in a church. A dull ache spread across Max’s chest. He had brought this on himself in an effort to find the truth; now it stared him in the face-he was going to die.