The 39 Clues Unstoppable Book 3 Countdown (5 page)

“We did crash a helicopter in a national park,” Amy reminded him.

Two medics jumped out of the ambulance and checked the kids for injuries. One of them spoke English, and the army captain who oversaw the examinations did, too. “Where is the pilot?” the captain demanded.

“He jumped,” Amy explained.

“And he tried to take the little one with him,” Dan added, gesturing toward Atticus.

The captain’s eyes narrowed in disbelief. “He jumped? Why would he do that?”

“You tell us,” Jake said. Dan caught the dirty look Amy flashed him. They knew why the pilot had jumped — he’d taken a bribe from Pierce to let the Cahills die in an “accidental” helicopter crash.

But letting the Guatemalan army in on their troubles wouldn’t help. For all they knew, Pierce had an in with them, too. His long arm of evil reached all over the world. “We don’t know why he jumped,” Amy said. “You can ask him if you can find him out in the jungle.”

The captain stared dubiously into the thick forest. Dan knew that it grew so fast it could cover a crashed plane in a matter of days.

The medics finished checking Dan, Amy, Jake, and Atticus for broken bones and signs of concussion. “Some bumps and bruises, but they’re okay,” one reported to the captain.

“Good. You may go.” The captain dismissed the ambulance and crossed his arms over his chest. Dan eyed the pistol in his belt. These guys didn’t fool around. “Now, may I ask what you children are doing here in Tikal?”

“We’re tourists,” Amy said as the ambulance drove away. “We just want to see the ruins, that’s all. We have a reservation at the hotel.”

As if to confirm Amy’s statement, a Tikal park ranger drove up in an SUV. He got out, stared at the crashed helicopter, shook his head, and whistled. “I didn’t believe it when the airport called and said you’d landed a helicopter in the
pok-a-tok
court.” He shook his head again. “I still don’t believe it.”

“We’re investigating the crash site,” the captain told the ranger. “You may take these people to their hotel. We’ll be in touch if we need more information.”

“All right,” Amy said. “You know where we are.”

The captain gave her a grim look. “Yes,
señorita
, we do.”

The ranger collected the Cahills’ bags and loaded them into the SUV. The kids piled into the backseat and let the ranger have the front seat to himself. He started the car, then turned and stared at them as if trying to figure out what kind of strange creatures they might be. “You are alive.” It was not a question but an astonished statement. “It is hard to believe.”

Dan didn’t know how to answer that. Jake said, “Strange but true. And we’d really like to get to the hotel and recover.”

But the driver still watched them. “You are the Cahills, yes?” Amy nodded. “
Those
Cahills?”

Obviously, this guy read the tabloids. Dan saw Amy open her mouth wearily as if to answer, but Jake cut her off. “We don’t know what you’re talking about, dude. Can we get going?”

The driver finally turned toward the steering wheel and put the SUV into drive. “You crash a helicopter on a
pok-a-tok
court, you must expect a few questions.”

“What’s this
pok-a-tok
everybody’s going on about?” Dan asked Atticus in a low voice.

“It was a complicated ball game played by the Maya about four thousand years ago. The goal was to get a ball through this stone hoop without using your hands or feet,” Atticus said. “We don’t know much about it, other than that.”

Dan turned and looked out the back window at the ring receding into the distance. It must have been about twenty feet off the ground. “That seems impossible.”

“It was so hard that games went on for days with no score,” Atticus said. “Historians think that the losing team was often executed.”

“And I thought dodgeball was rough,” Dan said.

“Why were they executed?” Amy asked.

“The players might have been prisoners of war,” Atticus said. “They were offered as sacrifices to the gods.” He looked thoughtful.

“What is it?” Dan asked. When his friend got that look on his face, it meant his brilliant mind was working on something important, like pondering the origins of the universe, or programming a whoopee cushion app.

“Nothing . . . just that the carvings on that stone hoop looked familiar somehow.”

The ranger turned down a jungle road, pointing out a tall Mayan pyramid in front of a plaza or town square. Unlike the Egyptian pyramids built of large blocks of cut stone with flat, smooth sides, or the ones in Angkor Wat that looked as if they’d been made of poured wet sand, these were step pyramids, small cut stones forming tall steps that led to the top.

“Can we walk to the top of one of those pyramids?” Dan asked. The sooner they started looking for the crystal, the better.

“Certain ones are open to tourists, yes,” the ranger replied. “Tikal was one of the prime centers of Mayan civilization,” he told them, “inhabited from the sixth century
B.C.
to the tenth century
A.D.
The ancient city has been mapped out. It covered over six square miles and was comprised of over three thousand structures. The whole park area is about two hundred twenty-two square miles. A lot of archaeological treasures are still buried under vegetation.” The ranger waved his hand at a dense green grove with a few piles of stone just visible through the brush. “There are thousands of ancient structures buried in this jungle, and we’ve only excavated a fraction of them.” Dan’s spirits sank. How were they supposed to find one piece of quartz in all of that?

They drove through lush green jungle. Suddenly, the trees parted and a beautiful ancient city appeared before them. A step pyramid rose two hundred feet at one end, with a long gray staircase up the front. It was surrounded by what looked like houses or palaces around a green village square. “It looks like another planet,” Jake said.

“It looks like Yavin,” Dan said. “You know, like from
Star Wars
?”

“That’s right,” the ranger told them. “George Lucas filmed scenes from the first Star Wars movie here in 1977.” He drove on. In the distance, the gray stone tops of other ancient temples poked up through the green, and beautiful exotic birds chattered in the treetops. Dan spotted a funny-looking animal with raccoon eyes and a long, ringed tail scampering down a jungle path.

“A coati!” Atticus said.

“Very good, little boy,” the ranger said to Atticus’s obvious annoyance. “You’ll see coatis all over the place here.”

They passed a very tall tree — maybe one hundred feet tall — with large thorns covering the trunk. The upper branches spread over the road like a canopy. “A
ceiba
,” the ranger told them. “Sacred tree of the Maya. They believed its roots reached into the underworld and its branches held up the sky. The souls of the dead climbed its branches to get to the heavens.”

A truck passed by with four men riding in the back, axes and shovels over their shoulders. The ranger frowned. “Tikal is also an important rain forest reserve for protected plants, birds, and animals.” He glanced at the truck as it disappeared in his rearview mirror. “We patrol the area as well as we can, but unfortunately a few poachers manage to slip in from time to time.”

“Poachers? What do they steal?” Amy asked.

“They hunt crocodiles, pumas, and jaguars for their skins, harvest endangered flowers, or chop down rare trees for the valuable wood,” the ranger replied. “Sometimes we find secret poacher logging camps deep in the forest. They’re almost impossible to spot under the cover of the jungle.”

“Have you ever heard of a riven rock, or riven crystal, being found in one of these temples?” Amy asked.

“Or shocked quartz?” Jake added.

The ranger shook his head. “The temples are made of local limestone. Not much quartz is found in this area, unless the Maya traded for it.”

They spent the rest of the drive in silence.

They checked into their hotel and headed for their rooms. Amy opened her backpack to make sure the serum flask had survived the crash. She held the flask to the light. The poison-green fluid — undiluted, full-strength — was as deadly as it looked. It imparted awesome power to the person who drank it — for a week. And then it killed them. She shuddered and put the vial back inside her pack.

She took a shower and changed, then went next door to meet the others in Dan and Atticus’s room. Jake was there, hanging out with the other boys. Dan was losing to Atticus at chess. The TV was on, tuned to an international news channel. Dan’s T-shirt was smudged from the bumpy trip, a big footprint stamped on the front.

“What’s that footprint on your shirt?” Amy asked.

Dan glanced down at it. “Must have been from that dirtbag pilot, when I was holding his leg trying to keep him from bailing on us.”

Amy sighed. “Aren’t you going to take a shower? Or at least change?”

“Why? Are we meeting with the queen of England or something?” Dan asked.

“Speaking of the queen . . .” Jake turned up the volume on the TV. The footage showed a handsome man shaking hands with Queen Elizabeth, his airbrushed blond wife curtsying beside him.

“American media mogul J. Rutherford Pierce met with Queen Elizabeth at a reception yesterday on the last leg of his European tour,” the news announcer reported. “Pierce has been meeting with world leaders in a clear indication that he’s preparing to run for political office. Pundits are expecting him to throw his hat into the ring in the race for US president very soon.”

“President Pierce,” Dan said. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“It does have a sinister ring to it,” Amy agreed.

“The way Pierce operates, it’s a short step from president to dictator,” Dan said.

Amy watched Pierce’s wife, Debi Ann, who hovered in the background. The contrast between her and her husband was striking. She looked dull and bleached out next to her vibrant, glowing husband, almost like a different species of human.

Because he’s taking the serum
, Amy realized.
And Debi Ann isn’t.

Pierce took a modified version of the serum, a very weak, diluted dose. Enough to enhance his power, but not enough to kill him. “What do we know about his wife?” she asked Jake.

“Not much. Wait — they’re cutting to an interview with the two of them now.”

The news showed a clip from an interview taped in the Pierces’ elegant home in Boston. Debi Ann sat beside Pierce on a blue silk sofa, smiling and nodding mechanically. “What about you, Debi Ann?” the interviewer asked. “I read that you grew up in a family of scientists. What was that like?”

Debi Ann nodded. “We had a chemistry lab in the basement.” She smiled at the memory. “That was our playroom. We Starlings were all talented scientists.”

Dan and Amy jumped at the same time. “Starling?” Amy gasped. “Did she say
Starling
?”

“Did you see the look on Pierce’s face when she mentioned it?” Dan said. “He was furious!”

Amy had noticed a flash of anger cross Pierce’s serenely tanned face at the mention of the name Starling. Although it’d mean nothing to 99 percent of the audience, he clearly didn’t want Debi Ann to mention that very important fact. The Starlings were related to Amy and Dan. If Debi Ann was a
Starling
, it could only mean one thing. She was a Cahill, too.

“She’s Pierce’s link to the serum!” Dan exclaimed.

“He must know all about the family, the branches, and everything, through his wife,” Jake said.

“But I researched her,” Amy protested. “Both her and Pierce, relentlessly. I scoured the Internet and no Cahill connection ever came up. How could that be?”

“Ask Pony,” Dan said. He dialed Attleboro, putting his phone on speaker.

A smooth British voice answered. “Dan? You made it to Tikal, I see.”

“Yes,” Amy cut in. “We all made it. Just barely.”

“Amy, so glad you’re all right,” Ian purred. “Everyone else present and accounted for? Dan? Atticus? That other one . . . what’s his name? Joke?”

Amy turned red, her eyes involuntarily cutting over to Jake, who scowled. “That’s beneath you, Ian,” Amy said. “Listen, we need you to put Pony on a deep search for information about Debi Ann Pierce. Try searching for Deborah Starling as well.”

“I’m on it.” More purring. This time it wasn’t coming from Ian but from an actual cat. “Ugh, get away from me, you filthy feline!” Ian grumbled.

“Hi, Saladin!” Dan called out.

“Meow!” the Egyptian Mau replied.

“Are Ian and Hamilton feeding you well?” Amy asked. “Ian, is Saladin getting enough red snapper?”

“We’re not pet-sitting here, you know,” Ian grumbled. “We’re actually busy helping you save the world, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“And we appreciate it,” Amy said. There was a knock on the door. “We have to go. Tell Pony to get on the Debi Ann thing stat.”

Jake opened the door to a tall, dark woman in a safari skirt suit.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Dr. Casanova. An Amy Cahill arranged to meet with me?”

“Come in.” Jake stepped aside to let her through. “We’ve been expecting you.”

“Thank you.” She nodded, glanced around the room, and sat down in the one chair that didn’t have boys’ clothes strewn over it. “I’m not usually available for private consultations, but when El Presidente asks for a favor . . .” Amy had pulled some Cahill strings to get a private meeting with Guatemala’s leading expert on Tikal, hoping to make quick work of locating the riven crystal. “I understand you have some questions about one of the temples here?”