Deity (42 page)

Complete
with the Talking Cross.

It
stood alone, shaped less like a crucifix and more like a mathematical sign. It
contained no ornamentation at all, no gilding of precious stones or metals. It
looked little more than a lump of knotted firewood, and yet, it somehow
reminded Father Ruiz of the humble cross of Jesus.

“I
don’t understand. Why did the Zapatistas stop fighting if you had the power of
the Talking Cross among you all this time?”

“Simple.
We took a lesson from the Cruzob. When they discovered that they could not
defeat their oppressive landlords and an ignorant caste system, they wisely
turned their focus to their own preservation. Their decision was echoed
throughout most Maya groups across Mexico. Just like those who
suffered in the days of the conquest, a silent movement was created to preserve
Mayan heritage. But instead of creating sacred books, the Cruzob focused on the
irreplaceable relics left behind by their ancestors. Thirteen different groups
joined the cargo alliance commissioned with gathering their last sacred objects
and accumulated them into one safehouse, this room. But they left clues to its
location, clues they thought only the Maya people could decipher.”

Chac
casually traced a finger over the relief carving adorning the lid of a large
stone box. Father Ruiz recognized it as the one-of-a-kind volcanic stone vessel
stolen from a cave in Guatemala
six years ago. Its theft had made national headlines and was presumed to have
been lost to the black market. Chac’s face fell as his eyes blankly inspected
the artifact.

“This
place has been the single biggest secret in all of Maya history—that is, until
the Zapatista war-lord leaked its existence to Abdullah in his desperate
attempt to finance the revolution. When Abdullah continued to hang around after
the revolution simmered down, we tried fooling him with a date in which the
calendar and cross would function. Someone jokingly suggested the end of the
world, so December 21, 2012 was chosen.
In 1994, that date
seemed far enough into the future for Abdullah to forget.
We grossly
underestimated his patience and persistence. When we did finally realize just
how far we’d come to jeopardizing everything the Cruzob had protected, we
decided that our remaining resources would be better spent protecting what we
still had, not what we didn’t.

“With
some of Abdullah’s own money we took extreme measures to ensure he would never
find this room. Since he already believed there was power in an original Long
Count Calendar, we built the decoy wheel and incorporated the decoy cross that
the Cruzob surrendered. We also made this place far more secure. The Cruzob
originally locked the Calendar Room using a combination pillar but as you saw
outside, we replaced the pillar with a more sophisticated security system.”

“What
happened to the pillar?”

“We
engineered it into the decoy calendar wheel.”

“Sounds
like a lot of trouble to go through to hide your secrets from one man.”

Chac
gave the Guatemalan vessel a parting tap with his finger. “That’s the price
we’ve paid for trying to gain by deception. But by tomorrow, none of it will
matter anymore.”

Father
Ruiz shook his head. “You hypocrite!” he said. “Here all this time you
complained about the misinterpretations of 2012 and yet, you manipulated the
Long Count Calendar’s end date yourself.”

“Is our use of the date any worse than the rest of the
world’s use to doom themselves?” Chac asked. “We just never thought Abdullah
would get past the decoys. Now I’m not so sure.”

“But
Abe seems to be taking the bait. Why did you bring me here if he’s busy
tinkering with your decoy calendar? Aren’t you afraid someone may have followed
us?”

Chac
sighed heavily. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take. It’s a gamble. For Peet’s
sake, it’s a gamble.”

Chamber

“What’s
going on?” Lori demanded above the echoing gunfire now drowning the low hum
inside the chamber. “Why isn’t the wheel spinning?”

Peet
double-checked the pillar ball. It was well seated onto the pillar. So why
wasn’t it doing anything? He spun the ball clockwise once more.
Still nothing.

He
swallowed hard. It was time to make a desperate move. With Lori no longer tied
to the pillar he just might be able to pull her around to the other side before
Abe and his men could fire off a shot. It would be risky, but then what? They
could dive into the pool and swim to the other side but it wouldn’t take long
for Abe to catch up. It’d be like shooting fish in a barrel. Then again, if
there might be some sort of underwater outlet…

“Wait!”

Peet
jumped at the sound of Lori’s voice. Given the intensity of the gunfight
outside and the obvious impatience of Abe’s anxious pacing, his nerves were on
edge.

“Spin
the ball again,” Lori said.

“It
isn’t working,” Peet protested.

“Just
spin it.”

Peet
turned the pillar ball one more time with no result.

“The
clicking,” Lori said. “Don’t you hear the clicking?”

Peet
lowered an ear to the pillar and spun the ball one more time. Sure enough, just
as the ball completed its full rotation there was a slow click.

“It
is doing something,” Lori announced. “Keep spinning it!”

Peet
needed no further prompting. His hands began furiously working over the ball,
spinning it atop the pillar and listening to the clicks as it rotated. The ball
spun and spun until he was nearly convinced there was nothing to them, and
that’s when the ball jammed to a stop.

A
loud, earthen rumble
trembled
the chamber and the
calendar wheel they were standing on.

“Look!”
Lori exclaimed. A massive slab door fell from the ceiling of the tunnel
entrance, sealing them in.

“Oh my God!”
Lori gasped. “That was
our only way out of here!”

For
a brief moment the chamber was shocked into silence. The thunder of the slab
slamming to the chamber floor seemed to rattle the very air inside before
dissipating into the stone walls. The noise from the fighting outside was
suddenly blocked out while Abe and his surprised men found themselves suddenly
locked in.

“Open
that door!” Abe roared from his position near the Calendar Deity. “I’ve got a
bead on Lori’s head.”

It
only took a glance to see that Abe wasn’t kidding around. He was indeed
sighting through a rifle he must have torn from one of his men’s hands, and the
gun was aimed directly at Lori.

Peet
quickly spun the pillar ball counter-clockwise, his hands working frantically
over the stone as it clicked with each rotation. Finally, it jammed to another
stop and just as it did the constant humming they’d all but come to ignore by
now, suddenly changed pitch.

“Maybe
it’s gearing up to lift that door,” Lori offered hopefully.

“No,”
Peet said slowly. “We’re moving.”

* * * *

Abe’s
finger was on the trigger ready to pull when he felt something brush against
his thigh. Without lowering the rifle from his shoulder he quickly glanced down
to find a date symbol etched into the rim of the wheel inch by.

The
Calendar was in motion!

That
scientist knew what he was doing after all! Suddenly forgetting about the
tunnel door and the
mujahedin
fighting off the Zapatistas outside, Abe finally handed the rifle back to
Sonjay and anxiously watched the date symbols creep ever so slowly by. He
quickly recognized a pattern to them and anxiously calculated the symbol for
the thirteenth Baktun to arrive in alignment with the next giant wheel spoke.

He
waited and watched as the anticipated spoke painstakingly swung toward him. The
moment he’d been waiting for was taking its sweet time getting there, but it
was on its way nonetheless. As hard as he tried, Abe couldn’t lick the smile
from his lips. All the expense, all the work, all those years—it was all about
to pay off.

The
thirteenth Baktun was coming.

It
was within reach.

It
was right there in front of him!

The
giant wooden arm came with the day’s correct sign, just as he expected, but it
didn’t stop. It spun right by without slowing. In fact, the wheel seemed to be
speeding up!

Abe
reached out to stop it, to set the calendar on its correct date, but despite
its tiresome pace, there was no stopping the enormous wheel. Grabbing onto it
was like trying to stop time itself—the calendar just kept spinning onward.

“Stop
the wheel!” Abe howled, exchanging the FN Scar for his Sig Sauer. “Stop the
wheel or the girl dies!”

Lori
was no longer facing him directly from her position against the pillar. The
wheel had spun her a few degrees, but she was still within his line of sight. It
wouldn’t be difficult placing a bullet through that pretty little head of hers,
and the scientist had to know that. With satisfaction, Abe watched as Peet
resumed work on the pillar ball behind her.

“Stop
the calendar NOW!”

The
wheel continued to gain momentum. The chamber now hummed with the whir of
machination. That’s when Abe noticed the date carvings had disappeared. The
massive wheel was still moving slow enough for the eye to catch each passing
symbol, but to Abe’s astonishment, there were no more symbols to see. The wheel
was incomplete! And that’s when it hit him.

The
calendar was a trap!

“Chac,
you son-of-a-bitch!” he bit between his teeth. No wonder the Mayan refused to
enter the cave.

How
could Abe not have seen this coming?

Furious,
he aimed his pistol at the wheel’s hub.
The pillar.
Lori
had not yet revolved out of harm’s way.

“Open
fire!” he barked.

Abe
pulled the trigger and a volley of rifle fire immediately followed.

Eschaton

Lori
flew around to the backside of the pillar, aided tremendously by Peet who had
grabbed her and pulled her around the stone just as Abe and his men open fired.
Together, they huddled behind the pillar as bullets zinged around them, ricocheting
off the pillar and plunking into the water. Meanwhile the wheel continued to
turn.

“We’re
as good as dead,” Peet growled as he ducked beneath a spray of bullet-shorn
rock. “Even if there is a way to swim out of here, they’re going to shoot us
before we ever find it.”

“Maybe
not,” Lori said. “There may still be another way out.”

Peet
shot her an incredulous look. “You know something I don’t?”

“The
pillar—it’s a combination. I’ve been counting the clicks each time you spin the
ball. There were twenty clicks that closed the tunnel door. It took eighteen
clicks to start the wheel in motion and the next twenty clicks sped it up. Do
you recognize a pattern here?”

Peet
thought a moment. “The Long Count is the combination,” he said.

“Exactly!”

Lori
knew he’d catch on. There were twenty Kins to a Uinal, eighteen Uinals to a
Tun, twenty Tuns to a Katun, twenty Katuns to a Baktun and thirteen Baktuns
completed the Long Count cycle.

“We
still have to spin for the Katun and Baktun combinations,” she said. “Perhaps
one of them will trigger another door.”

She
waited as Peet considered. He didn’t take very long. “I guess we don’t have
many options,” he said. He peered over the pillar. A bullet zinged just past
his ear and he ducked back down again. Keeping his head low, he grabbed onto
the pillar ball. “I sure hope you’re right because they’re coming after us.”

“What?”
Lori gasped.
“While the wheel is still moving?”

She
peeked around the pillar to confirm Peet’s worry. Both of Abe’s men had climbed
onto the wooden wheel. With more balance than Lori would have given them credit
for, the men were halfway down a spoke beam and fast approaching the pillar. But
it was Tarah that worried her the most. She chose the long way, following the
outer rim to get around to the pillar’s backside.

The
side Peet and Lori now hid.

Peet
spun the pillar ball. Those twenty clicks couldn’t count down fast enough as
Lori watched the men slip into position. The ball stopped on the last click,
triggering the wheel mechanism into high gear. With a jolt, the wheel suddenly
picked up speed.

The
first man on the spoke was caught off guard by the sudden shift and clumsily
fell a mere foot away from the waterline. It didn’t matter. With only inches
between the wheel and the ground, the man hit the earth just as the very spoke
beam he’d been walking on slammed into him and swept him unconsciously into the
water. His body skidded along the surface until the water was deep enough for
him to sink beneath the beam. When he popped up again, it was only to meet the
next spoke beam that chopped him back down again.