“You failed me today, Rafa. Your mistake is unforgivable.”
He fired a second shot into his chest. The explosion was like thunder, but this time the bullet blasted out of his back and buried itself in the oak door behind him. A third, fourth and fifth shot followed, each one spraying blood out across the room.
Tarántula remained calm as Brolo hit the floorboards and started moaning in agony. Blood poured out onto the polished wood around him.
“What if this goes wrong, and these people find the Stormbringer before us? Now, the Snake King might lose his only chance to possess the power of the ancients. You know how that makes me feel?”
Moans and whining from Brolo. A mumbled plea for mercy was cut short by Tarántula pointing the Colt 2000 at the dying man’s legs and firing off shots six, seven and eight. The deafeningly loud explosions rocked the room, but Tarántula was not done yet.
“It makes me feel angry but also sad. Angry that one of my oldest friends could not understand how important this is to me, but so sad that now I am forced to do this.”
“Please…”
Tarántula knew his weapon. He had cherished it since the day his father had given it to him when he was twelve. He had killed many men and women with it. Every night, he made sure it had a fresh, full magazine of fifteen rounds just before he slipped it under his pillow and went to sleep. José had taken two of those rounds, and now Brolo would take the other thirteen.
“Incompetent fool!”
Shots nine, ten and eleven into the unconscious man’s abdomen.
“Liar! Traitor!”
He fired the last two rounds into his head, finally putting him out of his misery. Then he hit the mag release, dumped the empty magazine and smacked a fresh one from his desk drawer back into the gun. Then he picked up his phone.
“Get in here, Diego.”
Moments later, a large man with a thick moustache and long black hair pulled into a ponytail opened the door. Despite his face being mostly covered with gang tattoos, he couldn’t hide his horror when he registered the sight of the two dead men on the floor.
“I heard the gun, but I thought it best to leave you alone,” he said.
“You a smart man, Diego Novarro. If you had come in here, I might have killed you, too.”
Now, Novarro saw the hairy spider crawling over José’s stomach. “What do you want me to do?”
“First, I want you to get this garbage out of my office. Take it down to Benicio’s scrap metal yard and process it in the normal way, in the car crusher.”
“Got it.”
“Then, I need you to get the jet ready. Diablo says there was a team of foreign archaeologists at the convent. They’re flying in a vintage plane and they just took off for Xunantunich ruins, so we still stand a good chance of beating them there if we leave at once. My jet is much faster. I feel the Snake King’s eyes crawling all over me, the way this spider crawls on José’s stomach.”
Novarro nodded. “Yes, boss.”
As Novarro began dragging Brolo’s bullet-ridden corpse out of the door, Tarántula slipped his Colt into his holster, reached down and scooped up the tarantula, now crawling on José’s leg. He cradled the fat, hairy spider in his hands for a moment and then spoke, lowering his voice to the gentle whisper of a father soothing his troubled child.
“Sorry you had to go through that, my darling. But it will all be worth it in the end. Papa is going to be much more powerful soon. Papa is going to possess the power of the ancient gods. Then, the whole world will change forever.”
7
Xunantunich Ruins, Western Belize
Decker teased the throttle and brought the Avalon’s engines to idle. Less than two hundred feet above the narrow Maya Flats runway and he could barely see it thanks to a powerful storm which had blown in from the sea, bringing a viciously heavy downpour onto the land. As rain streaked across the windshield and a strong gust buffeted them from the side, he struggled to bring the old plane smoothly down.
“What the hell happened to paradise?” Riley called out. He was standing in the cockpit door looking down at Decker and Selena who were strapped into their seats.
“It got lost,” said Selena. “Now sit down before you fall down.”
Decker sighed. “Damn it, Riley! I told everyone to sit down and buckle up. Do it now.”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!”
He got to his seat seconds before the aircraft’s gear touched down on the slick wet runway and Decker put the two powerful engines into reverse. They revved and roared in response and a low, loud grumble vibrated through every panel and rivet onboard.
He slammed on the brakes and brought the heavy aircraft to a thundering, juddering halt right at the very end of the runway with just inches to spare. Using the engines and rudder to turn in a giant arc on the grass, he turned the plane away from the runway, pulled the throttle back to idle and cut the power.
Riley’s face appeared once again in the cockpit door. “That was a real brown trouser job, Mitch!”
“I got us down alive, didn’t I?” he said. “What more do you expect?”
Selena was still wincing. “And thanks for the imagery, Riley.”
Riley slapped them both on the shoulder and peered out through the cockpit window. “Is that your mate over there by the Jeeps?”
Decker looked across the airfield. A filthy portacabin beside a small car yard with LOPEZ’S JEEPS written above it waited in the rain.
“Yes, that’s Mauricio’s place.”
“Doesn’t exactly look like he as a great choice,” Selena said disapprovingly. “I can only count one.”
