The Alien Element Read online

Page 3


  He held the gun around the corner and shot blindly twice, then dove the other way. He jumped up and squeezed the trigger once, twice, three times.

  All of the bullets went wide. Amon’s throat clenched. The man raised his own gun, training it on Amon, but the gun wavered. Amon tucked, and his shot went wide, too.

  Amon screamed, raising his gun and firing rapidly.

  One of the bullets finally struck the man in the gut. Another squeeze, and another. The man jerked back and his gun slipped from his fingers. Amon lowered the Glock, breathing heavily.

  He waited for a long minute, his own ragged breathing settling as the ringing in his ears receded. Amon crept carefully across the room.

  When he kicked the dead man’s gun back away from the body, the doors were shoved open—it was the two guards from the security checkpoint down the hall. Amon held his hands high over his head. Roger, recognizing Amon, lowered his weapon and waved for the other man to do the same.

  As he waited for them to approach, Amon looked back down at the dead man’s booted feet. Something was off. He wore cowboy boots of nice brown leather, but one of them was facing the wrong direction. Had that happened when he fell? Amon’s eyes swept up the man’s clothes. There was an awkward bulge in the area of his ribs that was not quite right either.

  His face was normal. And it was a face that Amon recognized. It was Montoya, the Hawkwood mercenary who had impersonated an FBI agent after Eliana disappeared last year.

  As if that wasn’t worrisome enough, Amon knew with a rising terror that there was only one way Montoya could have snuck behind the two guards shot them in the back of the head without raising any alarms. And that this method was also responsible for his backward foot and the bulge in his side.

  The guards approached and peered over his shoulder, as Amon used one shoe to lift the man’s shirt, exposing the bulge near his ribs.

  Roger hissed a breath inward. “What in the hell?”

  The other man cursed and turned away. Audrey came up behind Amon, one hand on her head. “Oh, my.”

  Amon grimaced when the shirt was drawn up to reveal a complete knee joint sticking out of the Montoya’s abdomen.

  4

  No Small Action

  His mother didn’t need to tell him to be careful. Rakulo was always on his guard now. But while he was filled with a low smoldering rage at the thought of one of his people being kidnapped in the night, he remained hesitant at the thought of confronting Maatiaak.

  And this made him even angrier. Rakulo never remembered a single instance of his father hesitating as chief. Hesitation showed weakness. His father would have acted—immediately.

  With that in mind, Rakulo stormed out of his house and strode purposefully toward Maatiaak’s place. But as he got close, he thought of something else and circled back toward the field, angrier at himself with every step that carried him away from the conflict.

  Maatiaak had been close to Rakulo’s father. Elder Maatiaak. This man had known him since he was a bare-assed child. He’d watched Rakulo grow up playing games with the other boys, and with his daughter, Citlali, who was faster and stronger than most of them. Maatiaak and his wife were close with Rakulo’s parents. They farmed together and took care of each other’s kids.

  But more than that, Maatiaak’s standing within the village meant that confronting him would cause a ripple effect. Rakulo was not daft enough to believe it was a coincidence that most of the warriors who he’d been training were young men and women. None of the older warriors—Maatiaak’s peers—the downtrodden, conservative men of his father’s generation, took orders from Rakulo. And he knew that those same men had been suspicious of his plan to defy Xucha, and were now doubly dubious about why it seemed to be working.

  Who can know the mind of a god? What did it matter if the ancient god hadn’t retaliated yet? The retaliation would come again because it always had.

  Among these conservative men of his father’s generation, Maatiaak was the most respected. Standing up to him was no small thing.

  And then there was the issue of Citlali. Maatiaak was her father. Before he confronted the elder, Rakulo must warn her. She knew nothing of what his mother had told Rakulo. Would she have found out from Maatiaak? A schism between him and Citlali could lead to a divide among the warriors loyal to him. If he went to Citlali first, he was pretty sure he could get her on his side.

  All these thoughts and more raced through Rakulo’s head as he paced the outskirts of the village, fuming.

  He finally stopped when he came across the old hut that Eliana had occupied when she’d been here. Rakulo squatted before the open doorway. In the year since her departure, the hut had returned to its former state of disrepair. The roof sagged in the middle. The dirt floor had been reshaped and muddied by rivulets of water that ran through it when it rained. No one else needed this hut. There were more dwellings than people in the village. This hut and many like it stood empty. One day, Rakulo hoped, there would be more families to fill the huts. One day, he hoped, they would need to build more.

  But not if people continued to vanish in the night.

  Maatiaak either knew something or he didn’t. He was either involved, or he wasn’t. It seemed clear enough. Rakulo stoked his courage, stood up straight and tall, and walked quickly back into the heart of the village.

  Rakulo first made his way to Ekel’s hut, to see for himself whether he was truly gone. The old man was a widower and lived alone. Rakulo knew him to be a messy man since his wife passed—he was a good fisherman, but a poor homemaker. Yet the inside of his hut was clean. A bed of straw in the far corner had been straightened and trimmed, with a woven blanket was folded at its foot. The bare clay floor had been swept clean of dust. A pot of water stood dry and empty by the door, and on the other side, several fishing poles leaned against the wall in a neat row. Rakulo had known Ekel all his life. He was not a neat man. This was not the house of the living man Rakulo had known. This was the house of a man who had prepared to die, a man who had confronted his fate and accepted it.

  His mind made up, Rakulo turned and marched on. He didn’t pause to think about what he was planning to do next until Maatiaak’s house loomed into view. Citlali, who was helping her little brother clean corn in the shade of the porch, set down a half-shucked cob and rose lithely to her feet.

  “Easy, Rakulo.” She placed a gentle hand firmly against his torso, cold fingers bringing him back to himself for a moment. “What’s happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Ekel disappeared while we were gone,” he said. “And my mother told me your father had something to do with it.”

  Citlali made a face like she’d just tasted spoiled fish. “What does that mean?”

  Maatiaak emerged from the house then, his face expressionless and unreadable.

  “If you have something to say, boy, say it to my face.”

  Rakulo stepped around Citlali and strode up to Maatiaak. In his memory, Maatiaak had loomed as tall as his father, high above him. He actually stood a handspan below him now, so that Rakulo could look down at the older man. He stepped so close that he could smell Maatiaak’s breath, like grass and sea salt and smoke leaf, and discern the individual dark pinpricks of the pattern that made up the intertwined tattoos on his upper shoulders and neck.

  “Where did Ekel go?” Rakulo said.

  “How should I know?” Maatiaak said. “I am not his keeper. Ah, but you know old Ekel, he is probably fishing. The best fish come at dusk, he always said.”

  Maatiaak neither stepped back nor pushed Rakulo away. He simply tilted his chin up and returned the younger man’s accusing gaze with apparent indifference.

  “Then why are all his fishing poles lined up in his hut?”

  “Perhaps he acquired a new one.”

  Rakulo clenched his jaw and bumped his bare chest into the older man, forcing him back. Due to the year of training and preparation, Rakulo was not only bigger than the old man, he was stronger, to
o. “As your chief, I demand you tell me what happened to him.” Rakulo clamped his lips shut, but it was too late.

  “Your mother put a bug in your ear,” Maatiaak sneered. “What did she say? Eh?”

  “She told me you and Ekel were seen together.”

  “Did she, now?”

  “You hated him. What were you talking about?”

  “Well, you’d know if you were here, wouldn’t you?”

  Maatiaak stepped away, turning his back to Rakulo and addressing the crowd that had begun to gather during the argument. Looking out at the worried faces of the villagers, Rakulo felt suddenly very silly and fought down the shame that rose like a tide to his cheeks.

  “It seems that our Chief,” Maatiaak said, his deep voice carrying, “has been listening too closely to the rumors of his mother. If you want to accuse me of something, say it in front of everyone.”

  “You didn’t deny it. Tell me she’s wrong.”

  “What is there to deny? She is wrong, boy. I don’t know where old Ekel is, but I have no doubt he will surface sooner or later. He was never very reliable as a man, but you can’t say he’s not a survivor, can you?”

  Rakulo felt himself clench his fists. The crowd had grown thicker. If Rakulo backed down now, he would look like the biggest fool that had ever lived. Certainly, the biggest fool ever to call himself Chief.

  Maatiaak stepped closer to him again. A smirk played at his lips. Was the old man enjoying this?

  “Your mother always was a bit of a gossip,” Maatiaak said as he passed him.

  Rakulo pounced on his back. The older man spilled to the dirt, his forehead cracking against a stone bordering the garden of his house. Rakulo’s fists sank into the old man’s soft sides, but the punches were ineffective. He was too close to get the leverage he needed for a solid blow. Maatiaak snarled, wrenched his body around, and spat in Rakulo’s face, momentarily blinding him. The older man managed to draw his knees to his chest. He kicked Rakulo off with powerful legs.

  Strong arms wrapped around Rakulo’s frame and hauled him away while he tried to retaliate. Citlali spun and pushed him so hard he stumbled. He caught himself on a corner beam holding up the roof of a nearby hut.

  “Go!” she yelled at him, making shooing motions. “Get out of here.” She glared at him, the anger evident, but her eyes pleading.

  Rakulo hesitated. He glanced around him, but the faces of the other villagers were stony and unforgiving. When he met their eyes, they looked away or wrinkled their noses at him. An older warrior was helping Maatiaak up off the ground now, brushing him off. Several others stood at his back.

  Rakulo turned and stalked off toward the safe shadows of the forest as the sun sank into the treetops.

  5

  Mayan Monolith

  The plane had barely finishing taxiing when Eliana was out of her seat and collecting her bags to deplane.

  She rented a car like she always did, and was driving on the highway, headed southeast across the Mexican state of Campeche before she dug her phone out of her purse. Remembering that she meant to call Amon at the airport—before she got sidetracked by the photos her team sent her—she decided to fork up the international calling fees and dialed his phone.

  His voicemail picked up. “Amon here. Leave a message at the beep.”

  She shook her head at the familiar voicemail greeting. Never one to mince words, is he?

  “Hey hun, it’s me. I’m sorry I missed you at home, and also bummed that we didn’t get to spend more time together while I was there…but I saw you’d be working late, and so when I got an interesting call from my team, I decided to fly straight back to Mexico. We finally found something, and it’s incredible. Just amazing. I’ll try you again tonight. Hopefully, I’ll know more details then. Love you, talk soon.”

  Well, that was annoying, but it was her fault. She should have called him, but she had been absorbed by the photos her team sent to her email, and she lost track of time. All of a sudden they had been calling her name through the overhead speakers because she’d missed boarding.

  She wasn’t herself with an imminent discovery at her fingertips. In this state of mind, she understood Amon’s tunnel vision when he was working through a sticky problem with the Translocator. Everything outside of her work was no more than a dim reflection, a distant voice, a vague sense of unease. Amon would be sad he missed her, but he would understand.

  After an hour of driving, Eliana came upon a military checkpoint where she had to show her ID and visa to get through—these were common in Mexico, but always intimidating, although her paperwork was up to date, the guns still made her uncomfortable. Another few hours of driving, and she finally turned off the broad two-sided highway and reduced her speed as she bumped onto the cracked pavement of the old back roads. Then she slowed again as she turned onto a familiar, pothole-ridden rough dirt trail.

  It was getting dark when, ahead of her, parked near a small cluster of buildings and a gas station around which a little village had grown up, she spotted the dark green Land Rover. A few locals came out of the taqueria inside the gas station to gawk and stare as Eliana parked and got out of the rental car. They cradled beer bottles in their hands and leaned against the building as they whispered to each other about what the gringa might be doing here. Eliana grabbed her suitcase from the trunk and wheeled it over to deposit it in the rear of the Land Rover, which opened automatically and then closed again. The halogen lights snapped on, and the engine rumbled to life as Eliana climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Hello, Lakshmi,” Eliana said after the door snapped shut.

  “Hello, yourself,” said the long-limbed brown woman as she shifted the SUV into gear. She wore a pixie cut, tan-colored pants, and a collared shirt with two buttons open at the neck. “You got down here fast. Didn’t you have a class to teach?”

  “I didn’t want to miss a thing. I left immediately after the lecture ended.”

  “Was Austin any cooler than it is here?” Lakshmi asked. “I feel like I’ve been sweating for weeks.”

  “I thought you were used to the hot weather,” Eliana teased her.

  “Heat doesn’t bother me. But I was wrong, El,” she sighed dramatically. “No one gets used to this humidity.”

  “You could wear shorts, you know.”

  “Are you kidding me? And let the mosquitoes feast on my legs? My legs are far too marvelous to let those hungry little bastards have a single bite.”

  Eliana laughed, and Lakshmi joined in with her deep-throated chuckle. Not that it was a hysterical joke, but they both felt giddy with the secret knowledge of the discovery shared between them.

  When the giggles receded, and she had caught her breath, Eliana turned in the seat to look directly at Lakshmi while she drove.

  “Tell me everything about this monolith you found.”

  The others were asleep when they reached the camp after ten o’ clock, and Eliana had to satisfy herself with Lakshmi’s story and the photos because it was a several-hour hike into the jungle to see the monolith in person. Not a fun or advisable trip in the dark. More than one person had been lost and swallowed by this jungle. It would have to wait until morning.

  She ate chicken leftover from dinner, stretched out on a simple bedroll with mosquito netting draped atop her, and fell asleep in her tent.

  Eliana was awakened by a brown hand holding a steaming mug of coffee through the opening of her tent.

  “Rise and shine,” Lakshmi said in her sing-song voice. Eliana could see her long legs through the door flap of her tent.

  Grinning, Eliana tossed aside the mosquito netting and took the warm ceramic mug into her hands. She didn’t need the caffeine to wake her this morning, but she inhaled the rich earth and chocolate scent gratefully, appreciating the good camping mattress and the slippery feel of the tent fabric under her bare feet as she stood and took a careful sip of the hot coffee.

  Her small team of archaeologists was sitting around a freshly stoked campfire
when she emerged. Lakshmi was scrambling eggs on a grate over the hot coals.

  “Morning, boss,” said Ross in his low baritone without looking up from the mystery novel cradled in his big hands. Despite the camouflage pants he’d purchased at the army navy store—for the many pockets, he said—he was a bookworm at heart.

  “Hey there.”

  “Hi,” said Talia in a smaller voice.

  “Hello!” said Turner, boisterous as always.

  Talia and Turner were twins. They were her study buddies in graduate school and had worked for her company before they lost funding a couple of years back. They had been working caretaker jobs at museums in Philadelphia and New York City, respectively, when she had offered them this job several months ago.

  In fact, they had all quit to come work with her.

  “When are we leaving?” Eliana asked.

  “Breakfast first,” Lakshmi said, handing Eliana a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon and baked beans. “It’s quite the hike.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Turner said. “We never would have found the place if Talia didn’t have a terrible sense of direction.”

  Talia gave her brother a disgusted look. “It was raining!”

  “Yes, but why would you go up the hill?”

  Ross snorted and glanced up, then went back to reading his book.

  “Anyway,” Eliana said, “you found the monolith. So I, for one, am glad you got lost.”

  “See?” Talia said.

  Lakshmi turned off the stove and disconnected the gas canister, then stowed the gear in her tent.

  They finished eating in silence. Ross put his book away, and the twins produced two light daypacks. Eliana took the camera case, Ross took a machete, and Lakshmi grabbed the maps and compasses. They were packed and ready to move out in less than ten minutes.

  The enthusiasm bubbling inside of Eliana waned a couple of hours into the hike as Ross used his machete to cut through thick vines.

  “I would have sworn I hacked those away yesterday,” Turner said. “It’s incredible how fast they regrow.”