Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

“I just overheard an agent say the dude that ordered the hit on the driver of the load was at this address.”

“Senor Snake has my money.”

“Yeah. He’s the lion in this bunch of jackals.”

An agent stormed up the basement steps and shoved by Jase, hand over mouth, throat working, face pale and sweating. He made it out the back door before he threw up everything but his toenails.

“Oh, this will be fun,” Jase said, turning toward the basement.

Hunter followed.

On the way down the stairs, they passed a female agent headed up. She was pale but otherwise fine.

“How is Chuy?” she asked.

“He made it outside,” Jase said.

“If you can give the basement a pass, you’ll sleep better,” she said through pale lips.

“Wish we could,” Jase said, “but thanks.”

She nodded and went to check on her partner.

Halfway down the stairs, Hunter knew why someone was out in the back puking. The smell of death was thick enough to cut and serve at a demon brunch. Hunter started to breathe through his mouth. So did Jase. It didn’t help much, but it was all they had to fight the smell.

While Jase went to talk to the lone agent protecting the scene, Hunter made himself invisible in the shadows near the stairs.

A fluorescent lantern held by the agent revealed the basement in slightly swaying arcs that matched the man’s careful breaths. There were racks of unlit candles and stands for larger torches. The floor was concrete, worn smooth in places, cracked in others, gleaming dully. There were patches of what looked like oil, so dark that they sucked up and swallowed any light. The splotches were mute testimony to something so revolting that the only thing left to do was bolt for fresh air and throw up.

Hunter’s hackles rose. He’d seen death sites before, but not like this. This basement told him why people believed in evil.

The radio feeding information into the agent’s ear crackled and the lantern jerked. Then it steadied at a different angle, revealing something in the far corner of the room. A pale stone table glistened in the light. The legs were carved to look like a large cat’s paws, ending in sharp claws that dug into the concrete floor itself. Given the context, Hunter assumed that the paws were meant to represent a jaguar, the sacred animal of Maya royalty. Blood had dripped down, wrapping around the legs like snakes. It had happened so often that the legs looked black. But for all the evidence of past bloodletting, only a small amount had ended up on the basement floor near the altar.

Jase mentioned another bloody crime scene, but the table was missing, Hunter though grimly, remembering the killing house his friend had described. Don’t really want to know how many people died on that stone altar, here or there.

The smeared darkness on the floor made sense, now. Bleeding bodies had been dragged off the table, across the cement, and ignored until it was time to dispose of them.

Jase swore, his ugly words fitting the basement like the smell. Then his voice dropped again as he and the agent holding the lantern continued their conversation in the low tones of people who don’t want the devil to overhear.

As the lantern swayed, Hunter memorized every bit of the room that he could see. The stone face mounted on the wall over the altar was as carefully made as the jaguar table itself. Savage and grim, the face was that of a god who would never be appeased, no matter the quantity or quality of blood sacrifices that came to its hungry table. The face proudly displayed the features of Maya nobility, topped off by a crown of lightning or claws or knives that scored deep into forehead and temples. The gently swaying light made the wounds appear to bleed.

Whatever that artifact’s age, the stone face was genuine in a way that had nothing to do with provenance and everything to do with the darkest side of human nature.

Ignoring the slow crawl of his flesh, Hunter stared at the face. I’ve seen something like this before. Was it in Tulum? Cancun? A roadside shrine?

The god’s features were broad and strong. Like the table, the craftsmanship was surprisingly fine. The eyes were empty yet stared through him, through the basement, through the world to a different reality Hunter really didn’t want to share.

The lantern swung as the agent turned toward the stairs. A pool of darkness became a tarp someone had pulled aside to reveal what was beneath. A single look told Hunter more than he wanted to know.

No head. No hands. No feet. A black gash where the heart should be. Blue glyphs, the paint blurred by sweat before death. A wad of clothes the body didn’t need anymore.

The gold DeWatt logo gleamed as light passed over it.

After a few more minutes of low conversation, Jase left the agent and walked quickly through the gloom to where Hunter waited.

“Need to see anything more?” Jase asked very softly.

“No.”

“The chicken will hit the fan real soon. Let’s get out of range.”

With the attitude of men on a mission, they climbed the stairs and strode to the van.

The eyes of the prisoner they had dubbed Snake followed them across the weedy yard.

“Hope somebody shanks that reptilian son of a bitch,” Jase said as they got into the minivan.

“I’d like to talk to him first.”

“In your dreams.” Jase cranked the engine hard. “He’s already lawyered up.”

“Anybody we know?” Hunter asked.

“The biggest narco defense lawyer in Texas.”

“Adios, information.”

“That’s the way the game is played. Mopes die, lawyers get paid, nobody cries.”

Jase drove away from the rotting house, handling the controls with an edgy speed that didn’t suit the minivan.

“The stone face and the table,” Hunter said. “Could they have been taken from that other killing house you told me about while I looked at your photos yesterday morning?”

“Good catch. I’ll tip the sheriff. Always good to play nice with local law. You see anything else?”

“A DeWatt logo on the clothes in the corner.”

“Damn, I knew there was a reason I brought you,” Jase said, smiling.

“Did your schmoozing pay off?”

Hunter had never known anyone who could suck out information like Jase. He could walk through a half- empty parking lot and come up with three new friends and enough street information to fill a telephone book.

“There’s an ICE Special Detachment agent back there,” Jase said. “He’s out of Brownsville. They’ve been on both houses for a while. They think the mopes we bagged are LDX.”

“Los de Equis?”

“He called them Los de Xibalba.”

“Xibalba. That’s the Mayan word for the underworld. For hell.”

“Figures.”

“Are these guys involved in the artifact trade?” Hunter asked.

“No such luck. They’ve taken a lot of ancient Maya imagery for their tats and jewelry, but all ICE knows for sure is that they’re narco terrorists of the worst kind. LDX is used as an elite enforcement arm by the Q Roo cartel. Killers every one.”

“So they’re like the Zetas? Only they haven’t branched out into their own business yet?” Hunter asked.

“Yes and no.” Jase found an opening in city traffic and shouldered into the flow. “The Zetas started out as a Mexican military unit that was meant to take apart the cartels. Then some Zetas cut loose and went to work for the narcos.”

“So they started as hired guns and finished as head of their own cartel,” Hunter said. “Can’t trust an assassin long enough to blink.”

“But LDX doesn’t seem to have profits as their driving force,” Jase said. “ICE is going nuts trying to get inside