AVP: Alien vs. Predator

“I presume you know how bad we need the money,” Lex replied. “But tomorrow is going to be a problem. It will take me a week to get back to the world.”

As she spoke, Lex continued to climb. Just a few feet above her was the Khumbu summit, the icefall’s highest point—a frozen river that formed a flat, icy shelf the size of a tennis court.

“I told Mr. Weyland that,” said Stafford.

Lex swung the axe, kicked in the crampon, and hauled herself up on the rope.

“What did he say?” she said between pulls.

“He said we didn’t have a week.”

Throwing her arm over the edge of the icefall, Lex pulled herself up to the summit—and found herself staring at a perfect pair of brown Oxford Brouges. Still dangling, Lex looked up into the face of a handsome black man wearing light-cold-weather gear. Behind him, a Bell 212 helicopter sat waiting, its door open.

Lex unhooked her safety line and took the man’s proffered hand. With surprisingly little effort he lifted her off the ledge and placed her onto the ice.

“Right this way, Ms. Woods,” Maxwell Stafford said, gesturing toward the chopper, which immediately began revving up.

Speaking loud enough to be heard over the engine roar, Stafford took Lex’s arm and led her to the aircraft.

“Mr. Weyland is quite eager to get started.”

CHAPTER 4

The Pyramids at Teotihuacan, Mexico, Present Day

Thirty miles from Mexico City, at the base of the towering Temple of the Sun, under the chiseled stone gaze of the Aztec sun god Uitzilopochtli, hundreds of men and women toiled in the sweltering heat.

Perspiring day laborers gouged the ground with picks and shovels, tossing clots of earth into sifters—large barrels with wire mesh bottoms used to separate out rocks and pebbles, bits of metal or pottery, and anything else larger than a Mexican peso. Archaeologists and graduate assistants scrabbled on their hands and knees, picking at the ground with garden shovels to unearth shards of broken pottery and blobs of lead fired from the guns of conquistadors 400 years before.

The founder of this excavation project, Professor Sebastian De Rosa, observed the controlled chaos from the fringes of the site. De Rosa was an athletically built man with a face that reflected both the olive-skinned warmth of his Sicilian mother and the chiseled, patrician angles of his Florentine father. It was to his father, a steely pilot who’d flown for Mussolini in World War II before becoming a successful businessman, that Sebastian owed his tenacity and nerve. From his mother came his remarkable composure, patience and charm—attributes admired by most of his students and many of his peers.

As the professor walked the perimeter of the site, however, an approaching limousine with a Republic of Mexico seal set Sebastian’s characteristic cool on edge. Waving off a bandana-clad site manager, the professor changed the direction of his stroll to coincide with the arrival of the vehicle.

The black limousine, grimy from the road, was heading for an area beside the main site that had been established as a staff camp. Tents were pitched, and a bank of portable plastic outhouses had been erected downwind. There was a mess hall with a kitchen and a makeshift shower made from a barrel suspended over a square of water-stained plywood planks.

Beyond the camp, a dusty clearing was overrun with battered pickup trucks, grimy Land Rovers, dented Jeeps, and three faded yellow school buses used to transport the day workers to and from the surrounding Mexican towns. Those laborers—carpenters, electricians, diggers—ranged in age from energetic teenagers to weather- beaten old men. All spoke Spanish, smoked American cigarettes, wore dusty jeans, and drank cervezas from the early afternoon until late at night.

As Sebastian passed the tents to meet the limo, he waved to a group of graduate students taking a cerveza break themselves. All were young, enthusiastic and American. They wore fashionable, name-brand gear—Banana Republic shorts, L.L. Bean boots, J. Crew vests and jackets—and as “associates” and “archaeological assistants,” they were handed the worst jobs on the site, which was, of course, the academic order of things. As one grad student had put it on a sign over his tent, in that typically blunt American fashion: “Grunt Work Is Our Fate.”

It wasn’t easy being a neophyte, and Sebastian well remembered the arduous, eternal centuries of paying his dues. But before basking in the glories of published papers, private grants, and Good Morning America appearances, this uber-educated breed had to earn its chops through painstaking study and tedious labor at archaeological digs.

Higher on the excavation’s pecking order were the specialists: computer experts, technicians, archaeologists, anthropologists and site managers, all under Sebastian’s direct supervision. As he continued moving to approach the limousine, they continually approached him with questions, demands or proposals. He slipped past them all with the serene calm and soothing apologetic words that usually salved the bruised egos of Type A professionals whose demands were either denied or ignored.

Unfortunately, Sebastian’s brand of cool charm registered zero on the efficacy scale of the slightly wrinkled government suit who climbed out of her limousine strangling a sheaf of papers in one manicured hand.

“Ms. Arenas, how delightful to see you,” Sebastian began, relieved to see that it was not her boss, Minister Juan Ramirez, who was paying a visit. He smiled with sincerity as he strained to find a few pleasant aspects of the woman’s demeanor on which to concentrate.

One of the more valuable things he’d learned growing up in the long shadow of his father, the gregarious, highly driven, and deceptively easygoing head of his own import-export business, was to concentrate on the positives during human interactions. In Ms. Arenas’s case, Sebastian settled on her lovely, somewhat intelligent eyes and admirable hygiene.

“I see you’ve received my report,” he pleasantly told the woman, glancing curiously at the choking fist she’d made around his perfectly innocent papers. “Have you had the time to read it yet?”

“This is very troubling, Dr. De Rosa. Very troubling indeed,” said Olga Arenas, the assistant minister of the interior for the Republic of Mexico. “You have been promising results for three months now, but so far we have seen nothing. This report only confirms your failure. When the minister reads this, he will be furious.”

“We’re close,” Sebastian lied smoothly. “Very close.”

The woman frowned. “You’ve been ‘close’ for a year and a half.”

Perspiring, Ms. Arenas tugged at the lapels of her slightly wrinkled business suit and squinted up at the hot afternoon sun. Sensing her anger, Sebastian thought it best to put the woman’s negative energy to better use. Hoping his “motion spends emotion” lecture to his students worked equally well in application, he began a brisk walk right through the debris-strewn center of the busy site. Ms. Arenas trailed him, stumbling unsteadily on high heels as she crossed the broken ground.

“Archaeology is not an exact science,” Sebastian told her.

Ms. Arenas opened her mouth to speak, but her reply was drowned out by the sudden roar of a gasoline- powered motor, followed by loud cheers.

Dr. De Rosa waved his encouragement to the men who’d managed to get the generator started—two electrical engineers and a retired electronics expert from the United States Navy. They had set up an experimental sonar device that was—theoretically—capable of detecting underground buildings, tombs, ruins or other solid structures buried by the passing of centuries. But testing their device had been impossible because the gasoline- powered electric generator had been broken for days.

As the generator’s juice now flowed to the sonar device, the navy man threw a switch, and the sonar screen sprang to life. The triumph was short-lived, however. In a shower of sparks and a blast of black smoke, the generator exploded. Tongues of fire leaped into the sky until a quick-thinking bystander doused the machine with an extinguisher.

At this sight, Sebastian frowned. And Ms. Arenas scowled.

“I don’t see any science here at all, Professor,” said the woman, her lovely eyes hard, her hot tone apparently