David Gilman - Blood Sun

They gazed down three meters into what looked like a hospital laboratory. A polyethylene tent took up most of it, but Max and Riga could see the main room had a sliding metal door opening to the outside. In the enclosed area, two men in biohazard suits were loading spill-proof vials of blood-colored liquid into specially padded containers.

Half a dozen suitcase-sized boxes were being manhandled outside the tent by two men wearing jeans, T-shirts and bandannas. AK-47s were slung across their backs. This was some kind of cleanup operation. Like flash photography, it was a frozen picture of shock and fear as Riga and Max smashed through into the room and jumped down. Then the gunmen dropped the containers, and one of the men in biohazard suits screamed at him. His voice was muted by the visor, but clearly they did not want whatever was in those cases to be damaged. Their reaction was a natural response to something terrifying.

One of the gunmen leveled his AK-47. Riga shoved Max aside and pounded toward the two men. Rolling on the ground, he dived beneath the spray of gunfire. For a moment Max thought thunder was reverberating across the valley. It was no gathering storm Max had heard: the other gunman had fled outside and hauled the metal door closed behind him, trapping them all inside.

A man yelled, then screamed. By the time Max got to his feet, the remaining gunman was down on the ground and unmoving. Riga sheathed the bloodied machete and reloaded the dead man’s weapon. He yanked one of the doors-padlocked. There was no way out.

“Get out here,” Riga commanded the laboratory workers. The men stepped out of their polyethylene tent, zipped the area behind them and pulled off their head covers. The clatter of gunfire from outside grew closer as Riga grabbed one of the bareheaded men. “How toxic is this stuff?” It was obvious Riga was wary of getting too close to the containers. And it was obvious to Max that he thought it was something that demanded enormous respect.

Max lifted a line of cord off the ground. He let it slip through his fingers as he moved forward; then he saw the packed blocks of plastic explosive. “They’re going to blow the place up!” he yelled at Riga. “We have to get out of here!”

Riga threatened the men. “What is it back there?”

“Genetically modified bacteria,” one of them said nervously.

Riga looked at Max. “That’s what your friend died of; it has to be some kind of slow incubator.” He turned back to the men. “High voltage or fire destroys it, right? That’s why this place is wired.”

The men nodded. Riga raised the submachine gun.

“Don’t kill them!” Max yelled. “My mother was here! Years ago. Was she infected? Did this stuff kill her?”

The man babbled, desperate to save his life. “It’s nothing to do with us! Mr. Cazamind took everything. He has all the data.”

“Cazamind is here?” Riga demanded. He grabbed the man. “Where?”

The scientist could barely speak for fear. “Helipad. A kilometer north of here.”

Max barely listened. His attention was fixed on the metal doors as he desperately tried to yank them open. The man had barely finished speaking when a shock wave threw them all to the ground. This was the most severe yet. The unstoppable force of nature whiplashed the room. Part of the wall collapsed. The metal doors buckled and screeched as they were torn from the walls. The lab men ran for their lives. Riga let them go-he was looking at the damaged laboratory. Even high-security containers could not withstand that kind of tremor. One had fallen from its cradle and was spilling liquid. Just how lethal was it? Riga backed away. Aftershocks made the ground shudder.

Max was almost shoulder to shoulder with Riga as they made a break for the open door. Explosions followed almost immediately as a chain reaction of powerful detonations came from somewhere in the jungle, ricocheting toward them. The timed demolition ripped the forest apart. A vast area of hillside erupted, dirt exploded, trees disintegrated-the shock wave sucked the moisture from their throats, pounded their ears and flung them to the ground. A ten-meter wall of fire raced down the tree line and reached the temple, which erupted in a massive explosion. There must have been other chambers below, because as the temple disappeared in the debris, the ground collapsed and absorbed most of the shock wave. If it had not, Max and Riga would have died then and there.

Riga was getting to his feet, searching groggily for the AK-47, but it had been blown out of sight. Max choked and spat out soil; his eyes stung, and his eardrums hurt. Deafened by the blast, he staggered uncertainly for a couple of steps, then fell again. Like an old man, he managed to get himself onto his knees. They had been lucky. Ash and dirt caked their skin, and rivulets of sweat tracked through the grime on their faces, creating grotesque masks. Their shirts, already snagged and ripped by the flint blades, now snared fragments of earth and leaves. They looked like creatures from hell, and the inferno that swirled around them was the devil’s playground.

The explosive chain reaction had wrenched the ground apart, exposing a long wall of mountainside. Even Riga stood momentarily stunned at what came pouring down the sheer rockface toward them. A lava flow had erupted from beneath the surface and was incinerating everything in its path.

Max’s ears popped. His hearing came back. That was when he heard the unmistakable sound of a helicopter’s blades starting up. But he was almost too exhausted to care. The air thundered with a raging fire that swept across the edge of the forest. Smoke and dirt swirled; it felt as though the world were ending.

Riga yelled at him above the firestorm. “You want the man who let your mother die? He’s getting away. Get up!”

Max could not move. There was no strength left to fight with. The explosions had battered him. He tried to drag himself to his feet.

Riga grinned. “You know you won’t make it out of here.”

“If you don’t stop me, I will.”

“You just never give up, do you, boy? OK. It’s not over yet,” Riga said. “Here. You need a weapon.” And he tossed the machete toward Max.

Max stared at the man paid to kill him. He was giving him the final piece in the puzzle about his mother’s death. “I want him; you want him. And he’s here,” Riga said.

The assassin extended his hand to help him up. Max knocked it away and staggered to his feet unaided.

He had to see this through.

Riga looked meaner than Max had ever seen anyone look before. There was a beastlike quality to his face. It scared Max more than he thought possible. Riga nodded at Max in unspoken admiration for his determination.

“Payback time, kid.”

Cazamind sat in the helicopter, with the pilot waiting nervously to see which way the flames would turn in the wind that blew unpredictably from different directions. Two muscular bodyguards, men from eastern Europe, stacked the last of four sample cases into the helicopter’s hold. These were Cazamind’s own people, brought in to make sure that he had the best chance of survival should those in power doubt his ability to keep matters under control.

Cazamind’s chewed and torn fingernails hurt. He had no idea whether Max Gordon had reached the ancient Mayan site or whether he had perished in the jungle. But he had every reason to be fearful. Riga was still on the loose. Between him and the boy, Cazamind’s life had taken a turn for the worse. He had ordered the usual thugs from the City of Lost Souls to secure the area, had offered them a huge bonus to kill anyone who tried to get through the supply route. He could hear that the gun battle was now little more than sporadic gunfire, a mopping-up operation. But who were the attackers? And who had won the battle?