Black Sun

“So darkness falls and everyone pulls the trigger,” Hawker said.

“If darkness falls,” McCarter said. “Perhaps the stones can prevent it.”

“Prevent it?” Hawker said. “In case you forget, the stones are what caused the satellites to fail in the first place.”

McCarter took a deep breath. Hawker’s logic made sense, but he felt it only made sense given their limited data. Like the man who runs into an elephant’s leg and thinks he’s found a tree.

“I dread to see what would happen if all the world’s satellites were swept from the sky at one time,” McCarter said. “But I can’t imagine that being the purpose here.”

By the look on his face, Hawker was imagining precisely that.

“Whatever the case is, we need more information,” Danielle said. “So what do you have for us?”

McCarter went back to his notes. “Glyphs in your underwater temple give us instructions for how to find the next stone, the master stone if I’m reading them right.”

“Where?”

“At a place called the Temple of the Jaguar, somewhere in the mountains.”

They looked on as he smoothed out the map of southern Mexico. Using a straightedge and begi

“We take this angle,” he said, pointing to his line. “It leads to the next stone, the Sacrifice of the Body.”

“Where exactly do we stop?” Danielle asked, examining the line.

McCarter looked down at the map. His course cut across low jungle filled with mangrove swamps and up onto the foothills, traveling across the ridges of the Sierra Madre Occidental before continuing out to the Pacific.

To follow that line they’d have to hike through the jungle and then up and down a series of five- and six-thousand-foot peaks. It would take months.

McCarter scratched his head. “I’m not exactly sure,” he admitted. “The glyphs were written in Mayan form, but they read like someone was telling the artisan a story. It says: ‘The Brotherhood shall follow the path of those who were as gods, but moved like men. Frail and mortal, mere fragments of the gods, attempts at the human kind like the Wooden People of old. There was built the Mirror and the Temple of the Jaguar at the end of the shining path, in the footsteps of the gods.’”

“I’m not trying to be unromantic here,” Danielle said, “but that doesn’t exactly help us.”

“Sorry,” McCarter said.

“So what’s the shining path?” Danielle asked herself aloud. “Could it be the Milky Way? What with the Maya and all their astronomy.”

“I thought about that,” McCarter said. “But the glyphs don’t include a time component, or even a season. And like all stars, those in the Milky Way align lower on the horizon in some seasons and higher in others. You couldn’t use that as a reference unless you specified a month or day or at least the general time of year.”

“What then?” she asked.

He shook his head, but from the corner of his eye he saw Hawker gri

“I think I know what it is,” Hawker said. “Or at least I know how we can find it. All we need is—”

The house phone rang, interrupting Hawker. He grabbed it.

McCarter heard the front desk clerk shouting vigorously over the line.

“Get out, señor! Get out now! They are coming for you!”

CHAPTER 42

Hawker slammed the phone down.

“Get the kid and the stone,” he shouted as he threw open a closet and pulled out a shotgun.

McCarter grabbed Yuri, while Danielle pulled a backpack from a cabinet in the suite’s kitchen.

Hawker stepped to the door and opened it a crack. There were men coming down the hall, dressed like tourists but definitely not on vacation. Caucasians with grim, pale faces, not even sunburned. They certainly hadn’t been out enjoying the sights. Two stood near the far stairs while three others had stopped just one door down, at the suite Hawker had originally rented.

God bless that kid at the front desk, Hawker thought. He wanted his bonus. If they survived this somehow, the kid would have damned well earned it.

The first of the two men pushed into the neighboring room. And then the third one looked down the hall. Right at Hawker.

Hawker slammed the door.

“Get down!” he shouted, diving away from the door as a flight of lethal bullets ripped it to shreds.

Hawker came up firing, blowing a hole in the wall to the left of the door and then turning to the dividing wall between the two rooms. The concussions from the shotgun echoed as he blasted four gaping holes in the thin plaster. A howl of anguish followed one blast and the sound of something heavy crashing to the floor. He guessed he’d hit at least one of the thugs.

Crouching behind the counter, Danielle shouted to him. “Which way?!”

A shoulder slamming into the door and busting it open gave them the answer. Hawker fired at the shape in the doorway as Danielle led McCarter and Yuri to the balcony. That was their only hope: a twenty-foot drop to the sand below.

Before he could move to a new position a hail of bullets came tearing through the same wall through which he had fired, shattering the plates and glasses and the sliding glass door to the balcony. Hawker fired back blindly and scrambled to a new position. In the moment of calm he turned to see Danielle hurdle the railing, carrying Yuri with her. But several steps behind her McCarter froze.

Hawker could see him looking around for another way.

“Jump!” he shouted, just as heavy automatic fire began shredding the room again. Plaster and bits of wood flew through the air like confetti and Hawker dropped to the ground and crawled on his belly toward the balcony.

“Jump!” he shouted again.

McCarter looked back at him, one leg over the railing, frozen like a deer in the headlights. If one of the gunmen made it to the adjoining balcony from the suite next door, McCarter would be dead.

Distracted by McCarter, Hawker missed as one of the attackers kicked the remains of the wall in and fired.

Bullets hit around him, one scraping his forearm, as he spun and fired back.

His own shot was wild but the burly, dark-haired man who’d come through the wall dove to avoid it. With the shotgun empty, Hawker swung it like a club, knocking the assault rifle out of the man’s hand. As it clattered across the floor, Hawker lunged for it. But the assassin grabbed him and pi

Hawker rolled and tried to throw the man off but was unable to free himself. The man was reaching for a shoulder-holstered pistol.

Hawker threw his hand out, desperately grabbing for an object to use as a weapon. His hand landed on a long shard of glass from the door. He gripped it, swung it forward, and plunged it into the man’s neck.

The man fell backward, clutching at his throat. Hawker scrambled away and ran for the balcony, launching himself through the air and tackling the wavering professor right off the edge of the railing.

They crashed into the sand, with Hawker on top of McCarter.

“Are you all right?” Hawker said.

“I will be,” McCarter grunted. “If you get the hell off me.”

“Look out!” Danielle shouted.

Hawker rolled defensively as she fired a handgun at a figure above them, hitting him just before he was able to fire down on them.

Hawker helped McCarter up and noticed McCarter’s clothes covered in blood.

“Your hand,” McCarter said.

Hawker looked at his hand as the four of them raced along the beach. Blood was flowing from a straight line cut by the shard of glass. He made a fist and tried to hold it against his side as they moved.

Fifty yards down they found a breezeway that cut underneath the structure, from the beach side of the hotel out to the street side. It was a maintenance access route. They ducked into it and raced through, breaking into a storage room while they were there.