Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

After twenty seconds, they heard, “Team One, advance to Checkpoint Two.”

The three of them moved down the left side of the hall at a half jog. They passed a gift shop, then came to a foyer that boasted a large staircase made from marble and polished silver. They moved to a door that had a black silhouette of a woman on the front and slipped through it.

“Team One at Checkpoint Two.”

“Hold.”

Another thirty seconds passed; then came the words they hadn’t anticipated. “Oh, shit.”

“Report,” Walker said, wondering about the depth of trouble they were in now.

“Guard is coming your way.”

“Female?”

“No, male.”

Yank motioned for Walker, Jen, and Hoover to find a stall. While they did so, Yank used the knob and the transom to climb to the ceiling, where he wedged himself between the edge of the transom and the corner of the room.

The sound of a man whistling grew louder and louder.

Guildenstern counted down from ten, leaving the last three numbers for the team to count beneath their breaths. Walker did so, and as he got to zero, the door opened and a museum security guard strolled in, whistling. He carried a thirty-eight in a holster on his waist. Keys and a flashlight dragged down the other side, leaving his stomach pressing precariously at the beltline. He was about the same height as Jen, but twice the weight. He entered the room oblivious to Yank hovering in the corner above him. The guard selected the stall at the end and spent several minutes doing his business. All the while he whistled, the sound reverberating off the tiles in the bathroom. No one dared say anything, much less shift their stance.

The whistling stopped for a moment. By the jangling of the keys, they knew he was tucking his shirt in and cinching his belt. As he exited the stall, he began to whistle again.

The man washed his hands, then went to the door. This was the moment that made Walker the most nervous. Heading straight to the door, all the guard had to do was look up and he’d see Yank. The problem was, what would they do if he saw him? The guard was a noncombatant and none of them wanted to see him harmed. Thankfully he opened the door and went back into the foyer.

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief… until the whistling suddenly stopped.

Yank leaped from his perch, landing on the bathroom floor. He hurried to the stall the man had used. Jen and Walker were already there. Walker hissed for Hoover, who tore around the corner and joined them. They closed the door. Walker got up on the porcelain and squatted. Yank and Jen climbed up on either side of him, counterbalancing with their weight. Yank and Jen lifted Hoover off the floor by grasping either end of the dog’s vest.

The bathroom door swung open.

“ Qué aquí ?” the guard asked.

He shuffled around the entry for a moment, then opened the first three stall doors. Each time the slam of the door against metal made Jen jump. When he was at the final door, he stopped. They heard him laughing to himself. Then he turned, his keys jingling in his wake as he resumed whistling.

They’d reached the subbasement and were poised before a bright and shiny steel door. Once more the ESED gained them entrance.

“Bet I could sell this puppy in Compton,” Yank said with a twinkle in his eye.

Walker and Yank attached QuadEyes to the front mounts of their helmets and set them in place. He told Jen to hold on to his rear vest. Then all three of them stepped through the door. Walker closed it behind them, plunging them into a completely new environment. Gone was the antiseptic cleanliness and stark smell of the museum, replaced by the heady scent of old earth and animal musk.

The darkness was absolute. Both Walker and Yank keyed their AN/PEQ-2s on their HK416s to the fifth setting, sending high-power illumination with the targeting laser, and their universe turned bright green in their QuadEyes. Jen placed her own AN/PNS-7s on her helmet and turned it on, just as she’d been shown. All four stared into the green.

They’d passed through the Museum of Natural History and into its subbasement. Part of it was situated over the underground complex, but the rest was directly beneath the Templo Mayor Museum, which was situated over much of the underground complex, and included many original icons as well as some of the monoliths that had been unearthed beneath the Zócalo. The museum was adjacent to the surface excavations, but through vicissitudes of five hundred years of earthquakes, cave-ins, and poor construction, much of the temple area still remained buried. Several hundred meters beneath the museum was a different story. Although the excavations were continuing, these weren’t visible to the public, nor would they be. Rumor from Laws’s sources was that the Catholic Church had become involved and was unwilling to provide the old iconography for possible worship. Whatever the reason, much of the excavation was carried out in secret, and in secret was where archeologists made some of their greatest discoveries.

Rosencrantz had revealed that in 2008 the funding for the excavation had changed from public sources to private, the largest of which was a charity that, after being traced back through several shell corporations, led to Lee Treviño Morales, aka Z-1, the leader of the Los Zetas. The team could only figure out one reason why a narco-criminal drug cartel was funding a public undertaking: Whatever had been discovered beneath the city was of such importance and such power that the Zetas were willing to pour billions of pesos into the endeavor.

Twenty minutes earlier, according to the reports from Rosencrantz, the Zetas who’d been gathered in the hotel had marched across the plaza, and had entered the Templo Mayor Museum, probably taking the archeologists’ route into the main excavation site nearly a hundred meters beneath the surface. The earth above was supported by metal beams and wire mesh and the area was lit by phalanxes of halogen lights. Triple Six wouldn’t know what was down there until they saw it for themselves, but if it was something worth keeping secret, it was something worth their time.

Their chosen route was through the subbasement in the Museum of Natural History. Early in the excavation there had been a second entry-exit point in the event something happened to the other. By all reports, this avenue of egress hadn’t been used since 2008. The newness of the lock on the door said otherwise.

Walker took point. They tried to check in with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but their location beneath the surface wouldn’t allow it. Neither would it let them contact the other team, which meant they must still be in the sewers. The path, about five meters wide and ten meters high, wound down and past foundations and pipes. The walls were hand-cut from stone and dirt. Lights dangled from wires running the length of it, but they weren’t activated.

They moved inexorably down for about five minutes before Walker began to experience an odd feeling. The exhilaration of the mission was being replaced by something else, something he had felt on a mission only once or twice. Butterflies began to crash-land in his stomach. The feeling worked its way outward until tingly fingers had grabbed hold of his torso, his legs, and his arms. He found himself not moving and looked down at his own arms.

“What’s wrong?” Jen asked.

He wanted to say that he couldn’t feel his own body anymore, but he found that he couldn’t speak.

Hoover growled low.

Jen whispered, “Is that—”

Yank moved up beside Walker.

Walker fought to look up. It was as if his head were traveling a hundred miles and the effort it took was like trying to shrug free from the gravity of irrational fear. When his gaze came level, he saw what the others saw—an apparition.