shooting? It wouldn’t be the warriors fighting, so it had to be police or army. Were they coming here? Max heard the roaring cries of howler monkeys moving away and sensed rather than saw birds’ alarm as the air beat somewhere above the green tunnel. He had no idea how far they had run, but the ground was clear of any major obstacles. It looked as though it had been cleared by machinery. Then it dropped away, and a vine-covered stone building, most of it below ground level, was just about visible through the undergrowth.
Riga ran his hands over the limestone blocks, then edged round to the side, trying to find the line of the building, but there was nothing else. This wall was all that existed. Anything else must be underground. Max rubbed his hands across a stone lintel. He gazed at the shapes and figures of mountain monsters that had been cut into the building, probably more than a thousand years ago. He did not have to bluff now.
“It’s a temple. An ancient temple,” he said.
“How do you know that?” Riga said.
“It’s in one of my mum’s photographs.” He looked around. “None of this camouflage was here then. There’s an entrance somewhere.” Max’s heart felt a squeeze of regret. The photographs in his pocket were his insurance against Riga killing him. He dared not look at his mother smiling in front of the old temple. She had been right here. On this spot. He could almost feel her.
Max traced his hands along the wall. Behind where his mother had stood, there should have been a small entrance. He thrust his hands into the dense undergrowth.
“Here, pull this away.”
Riga unsheathed his machete and hacked at the ropelike vines that dropped down the temple walls. A small window-sized opening was visible, recessed into the depth of the stone. It was covered in steel mesh.
“I don’t know too much about Mayan culture, but I know they didn’t have windows like that.”
Riga looked at him. “All right. So you know where you’re going. Good.”
He pulled Max out of the way and kicked hard and fast against the corners of the mesh. It gave way on three sides, and Riga pushed his weight against it. The corner snapped, the mesh window dropped, and they heard it clatter onto stone. Riga climbed in. There were steps going down. They were in a dark corridor of an ancient temple, which was obviously unused and which had been sealed to stop anyone clambering through the small window. Riga moved forward, the back of his hand running along the wall to guide him. Max followed. The fetid air made their labored breathing the only sound in the heavy atmosphere. The passageway angled left and right and then opened out into an antechamber. It would have been pitch-black this deep inside the building except for a hairline crack of light seeping around what appeared to be a door. Max reached out and his palms met the smooth texture of a wooden covering.
“Can you smell that?” Max asked.
“Chemicals,” Riga said. “OK. We’re out of options. This is where we go in.” He rammed the tip of the machete’s blade between the wood and stone, forced it back, felt the wood ease slightly. He kept the pressure on it. “Kick it!”
Max twisted his body, balanced on one leg, grunted with effort, side-kicked the door and heard wood splinter.
“Again! Come on! Harder, kid!”
Max put all his power into the kick, and, with Riga’s shoulder aiding his efforts, the wood gave way.
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.
