Down in the yard, the men with knives broke into a sprint toward the brothers. Don’t bring a flick-knife to a heavy machinegun fight, Carlos thought. He could only guess how much money these men had been paid to kill him if they would continue their mission in these circumstances. Yet this was no time for complacency; those blades would slice him open just as fast whether there was a helicopter above him or not.
“We must go, brother!” Miguel said, tugging at his brother’s arm.
“I know.” He curled his lip and shouted at the men. “You will die for your attempt on my life. Dogs!”
Carlos and Miguel sprinted across the yard toward the chopper. As they drew nearer, the terrific noise of the whirring rotors combined with the electric-motor driving the Minigun’s rotary breech to produce an almost impossibly loud roar. Carlos ducked his head as he reached the helicopter. As he stepped up onto the skid, a hand shot out of the cool, dark interior and grabbed him, pulling him up into the cabin. Miguel was next, deftly hopping up over the skid.
Carlos laughed. “It’s good to see you, Luis!”
“And you, Los.”
When both men were inside, Luis called through the comms. “All onboard, get us out of here.”
Carlos felt the Bell JetRanger lift up and then lurch over to the right as it caught a gust of wind coming off the high desert to the west. The pilot levelled off and pulled up sharply, crossing the yard and swooping over the main prison wall. Below, the guards emptied their weapons at the chopper, but the man at the Minigun raked them once again, cutting their bodies to ribbons.
“Good work, Héctor,” Carlos said. “I see you have not lost your sense of purpose.”
Héctor shrugged. “I just like killing people.”
“I know you do, my old friend. I know you do. But now I need to use your toy.”
“Be my guest.”
The three assassins had aborted their mission when the brothers had reached the chopper, and now they had dropped the knives and were sprinting across the yard with their hands in the air, desperate for the guards not to take them out.
The surviving guards were focussing on the chopper but Carlos had the assassins in his sights. Swivelling the powerful Minigun around, he opened fire. The bullets ripped into the ground behind the fleeing men, effortlessly catching up with them, the rounds pocked the yard and kicked up tiny clouds of dust. Seconds later, the bullets found their target and ripped all three men to pieces, punching great, thick bloody holes in their backs and legs.
Carlos swung the gun around, took his hand off the trigger and called out to the pilot. “Go.”
The chopper lurched away and swooped down over the outer wall.
Turning to his brother, he said, “Are you scared, Mico?”
Miguel shook his head. “Are you?”
“No. I am excited.” He held out two gnarled, leathery hands. “Soon, Tarántula will have the power of the gods in his grasp and we will be right there beside him. Then, entire governments will fall to their knees and beg us for mercy.” He licked his lips and watched the high desert scratch past beneath the speeding chopper. “But I am sad, Mico, for I have no mercy to show them.”
Miguel looked at his brother, and felt his skin crawl.
2
Yuriria Convent, Guanajuato, Mexico
Professor Selena Moore of the London Museum of Archaeology stepped out of the day’s blistering heat and into the shade of the convent’s shadowy porteria. Slipping off her sunglasses, she dropped them in her pocket, loosened her linen blouse and glanced up at the crumbling plaster above her head.
Every inch of the honey-colored stonework around her was a testament to the quality of the four-hundred year-old religious building’s quality and grandeur, as were the flagstones she walked on, worn smooth by centuries of use. Turning to her father, Professor Atticus Moore, the two of them shared an excited smile.
“I can’t believe this is happening, Dad.”
“Believe it, Lena,” he said. “And you deserve it, too. You’ve worked hard for this moment.”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “So have you.”
“We’d better hurry along,” he said, quickening his pace. “Otherwise poor old Pepe will have another attack of the vapors.”
She giggled, looking ahead at Dr Felipe Acosta as he rushed one of the convent’s officials along the barrel-vaulted cloister. To their right, a bright green central courtyard surrounded by flourishing tropical pot plants was filled with the chatter of exotic, colorful songbirds.
“There are two floors,” Acosta said casually. “On the ground level are the common rooms and then above them are the living quarters.”
Selena gazed about at the sunlight on the far side of the Gothic arcade. “It’s beautiful.”
“The weather helps,” Atticus grumbled. “I checked the BBC before we came out and there’s another week of rain planned for London.”
“I like the rain,” she said defensively. “But this really is beautiful.”
“Like a paradise on Earth,” Acosta ventured. “And remember, much of this place was badly affected by a great fire in the early nineteenth century, including much of the interior. Many of the murals were ruined forever at the time, so what you see is only a part of the true magnificence that once was. Come, the best is through here!”
With the rich call of a mockingbird behind them in the courtyard, they moved inside the monastery and Selena was struck by the beauty of an enormous fresco adorning the far wall. Acosta
