‘Not in the history books, because we’ve only been recording our history for about 6000 years, but the evidence is there – and it’s right under our noses. The work we’re doing on ice cores from the Arctic and the Antarctic is going to surprise a lot of scientists. Drilling on the bottom of the Ross Sea clearly indicates that 6000 years ago, the Antarctic was ice-free, and deep ice cores are revealing fossilised forests.’
‘So the poles haven’t always been where they are today?’
‘No. And we’re now finding increasing evidence of lost cities on the bottom of the ocean: further signs of a past geographic pole shift. At the bottom of the map you will see side-scan sonar images of what look like ancient roads and pyramids. A team of highly respected marine archaeologists has found evidence of what might turn out to be a Mayan city off the coast of Cuba. And as recently as two years ago marble and stone formations were found in shallow waters off the Bimini islands in the Bahamas.’
‘How long have we got?’
‘A few hours – no more.’
‘I’ll do what I can, Tyler. If I can swing it, are you prepared to brief the President by video link?’
‘Absolutely.’
Rodriguez hung up and put a call through to Andrew Reed’s private cell phone.
‘Jesus Christ, Ellen. Are you guys smoking something illegal down there?’ Reed, none too happy at being woken in the small hours of the morning, or at the discussion being carried out over an open line, was less than sympathetic; but the conversation was interrupted by the sound of gunfire coming from the ancient city.
The bullets missed O’Connor by centimetres, ricocheting off the comb masonry. O’Connor grabbed the gunman’s rifle and took cover. The limestone masonry disintegrated further as the second mercenary switched to automatic and sprayed the top of the pyramid. O’Connor descended a dozen or so large steps and then worked his way round the other side of the pyramid to where he could get a clear view. Pyramid IV was bathed in moonlight and he detected a small movement behind the right-hand side of the comb. He adjusted the butt of the rifle into his shoulder, lined up the crosshairs on the telescopic sight and waited. Suddenly his target leapt out from behind the comb and opened fire on O’Connor. The bullets whined over O’Connor’s head but he ignored them, calmly adjusting the sight. He took the first pressure on the trigger and then squeezed off a single shot. The gunman arched back, still firing bullets into the early-morning sky, a small bloody hole in the centre of his forehead. O’Connor watched as he tumbled down more than a hundred steps and into the jungle below.
O’Connor signalled with his torch and Aleta, backpack on her shoulders and accompanied by four warriors, appeared from the fringe of the jungle and began the ascent. To the east, across the top of the dark jungle canopy that stretched as far as O’Connor could see, the velvet night was beginning to soften. He looked at his watch. The dawn of the winter solstice was barely thirty minutes away. Howard Wiley, awakened by the gunfire, was quietly heading for the ruins.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Aleta said, breathing hard as she reached the top of Pyramid I.
O’Connor levered himself onto the top of the comb and switched on his filtered torch. The limestone was old and weathered, but at the very centre of the comb the faint etching was unmistakeable.
‘Phi!’ Aleta whispered excitedly, pointing to the? that had been carved in the limestone.
‘And it’s surrounded by a groove, which will hold the base of the figurine,’ O’Connor said, feeling the slight indentation in the stone. Aleta scrambled off the comb and retrieved the male figurine from her backpack. She handed it up to O’Connor and climbed back to the top. With the aid of his torch, O’Connor lined up the? on the base of the figurine with the? on the top of the comb and slotted the figurine into position. The crystal glinted in the early-morning light.
O’Connor scanned the eastern horizon. The sky was getting lighter still. He turned to signal the warriors to guard the figurine, but four of them had already taken up their positions, one on each corner of the pyramid summit. O’Connor grabbed Aleta’s empty backpack and together they descended the steep steps to the jungle below. O’Connor took the female figurine and put it into Aleta’s backpack, leaving the neutral in his own. He shouldered the pack and he and Aleta, accompanied by four more warriors, made their way down the jungle track which led to Pyramid IV. They raced up the big limestone steps. Breathing hard, O’Connor scrambled to the top of the comb. It was fainter than the one on Pyramid I, but both the? and the groove were unmistakeable. Aleta handed up the ancient female figurine, and O’Connor aligned the two?s and positioned it into the groove.
‘What are you like with a rifle?’ he asked, retrieving the second gunman’s weapon.
‘I used to belong to a pistol club, but I can do rifle.’
Leaving four warriors to guard Pyramid IV, O’Connor and Aleta doubled down the hundred or so steps to where Arana and the rest of the warriors were waiting.
‘We’ve got less than ten minutes and Pyramid V’s 500 metres away,’ O’Connor said, shouldering the final neutral figurine.
‘The elders and I will remain in the Great Plaza,’ Arana announced. ‘May the gods of the Maya be with you.’
O’Connor and Aleta set off down the jungle track behind the remaining warriors, their Mayan war paint shining in the misty half-light. A troop of howler monkeys swung noisily through the branches of the strangler figs above, their squat black faces staring down as their predecessors had for centuries. But the group had only gone 300 metres when a burst of machine-pistol fire shattered the mists of the jungle. Two warriors died instantly, and O’Connor winced as a bullet struck his rifle from his grasp.
Instinctively Aleta took cover amongst the buttresses of a strangler fig and dropped to one knee. The fiery red flashes from the gunman’s machine pistol as he raked the track with bullets gave away his position near the base of Pyramid V. Aleta calmly adjusted the crosshairs and squeezed off three rounds.
‘ Aaggghhhh!! ’ The firing stopped and the gunman tumbled onto the track barely fifty metres away.
‘You’re not just a pretty face, are you?’ O’Connor said admiringly, as he retrieved his rifle and emerged back on the track.
‘You’re bleeding! Are you okay?’
‘It’s a flesh wound.’ O’Connor signalled the remaining warriors to move on.
They reached Pyramid V and O’Connor and Aleta bounded up the steps.
‘Two minutes,’ O’Connor announced, and he scrambled to the top of the comb. ‘It’s here!’ The? and the groove were just visible. Aleta handed up the neutral figurine, and O’Connor slotted the artefact into the limestone. ‘Lie flat, just in case,’ he said. Together they looked towards the east. The jungle canopy spread like a verdant green carpet as far as the eye could see. Here and there, the distinctive top of a giant ceiba tree soared above its chicle, balsa and buttressed fig neighbours. Howler monkeys swung amongst the vines below, their harsh calls mingling with the squawks of the macaws, the chirps of the hummingbirds and the kyowh-kyowh of the orange- breasted falcon. The horizon glowed in a mixture of orange and yellow; the point of the coming winter-solstice sun glowing more fiercely than the rest.
‘Twenty seconds,’ O’Connor whispered. ‘Ten…’
Aleta’s heart began to race. It was as if she were sitting on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
‘Now!’ Rays of light that had travelled at 300 000 kilometres a second, from a sun that was 150 million kilometres away, pierced the mists above the jungle. O’Connor focused his binoculars on the crystal on top of Pyramid I. The male figurine had already energised, and at a precise angle of 287 degrees a powerful laser-like beam of bright-green light deflected towards the top of Pyramid IV, energising the crystal on the female figurine, sending another searing beam of green light to power up the crystal beside them. It crackled and sizzled like a lightning conductor, deflecting yet again. Aleta and O’Connor followed the beam to a point in the ruins just 300 metres away.
‘The Pyramid of the Lost World!’ O’Connor exclaimed, focusing his binoculars. ‘Take a bearing,’ he said, handing Aleta his compass. Aleta ducked under the beam and aligned the compass sight from behind the sizzling, crackling crystal.
‘Two hundred and sixty-nine degrees!’
‘It’s hitting one of the limestone steps of the pyramid a metre or so above the ground.’ As O’Connor mentally marked the spot, the sun rose higher above the jungle and the power in the crystals and the laser beams began to fade. A police siren could be heard faintly in the distance. Close by in his hiding place in the ancient Central Acropolis, Howard Wiley focused his own binoculars and watched Tutankhamen and Nefertiti scramble down Pyramid V towards the warriors waiting at the base of the steps.
Rifles in hand, O’Connor and Aleta moved down the jungle track leading to Mundo Perdido, the Pyramid of the
