The Spirit Banner. Alex Archer

to keep the wounded man from accidentally driving them deeper into his body.

      After that, there wasn’t anything to do but wait.

      The snow had continued to fall and the entrance to the cave was half-covered from the heavy accumulation. Curran didn’t mind, as it served to keep the heat from the fire trapped in the cave, warming him and his unconscious companion, while still allowing the smoke to escape.

      Unable to sleep, Curran took out his worn leather journal and began to write, recording the events of the past several days in as much detail as possible to ensure that there was some record of what had happened to him should he not make it back to Karakorum. He’d been doing the same thing since his mission had started many months before, and what had once been an annoying chore had turned into a soothing balm for his spirit.

      At the very least, it gave him something to think about other than the pain in his injured leg, he thought ruefully.

      It wasn’t long before Tamarak, delirious with fever and pain, began raving aloud. At first Curran ignored it, knowing there was little he could do for the man, but then something Tamarak said caught his attention and he listened more carefully.

      What he heard amazed him.

      If it was true, he was being given the secret of the ages!

      I really need a miracle now, Lord, he prayed, as he turned to a clean page of his journal and began writing frantically, trying to get it all down just in case the good Father decided to deliver on his request.

       2

       Mexico

      Annja Creed was knee-deep in sacrificial victims when the shooting started.

      At first, there was only a single gunshot, which was easy enough for her to ignore. After all, the sound of isolated gunfire was relatively common at a dig site this deep in the jungle. Someone fired off a weapon at least once a week. The reasons for doing so varied, but they usually had something to do with the local wildlife. Just last week, Martinez had found a twelve-foot python in his bed and had fired off four shots before he managed to hit the thing. A few days before that, the cook—a guy by the name of Evans—had used his shotgun to drive off the howler monkeys he’d caught raiding the food larder. The monkeys still managed to get away with the chocolate bars he’d been hording.

      But when the first couple of shots were followed by an entire volley of gunfire from several different weapons, Annja knew something was seriously wrong.

      For the past three weeks, Annja and the rest of the dig team working on behalf of the Bureau of Cultural Studies had been carefully excavating the ruins discovered at Teluamachee, about a hundred and fifty miles outside of Mexico City. A recent earthquake had cut a swath through the jungle, knocking down trees and natural earth formations with equal abandon, exposing a set of long forgotten ruins hidden in a narrow valley deep in the jungle. A scout for a local logging company had discovered the site and, thankfully, had enough respect and admiration of his heritage to report the location to the bureau rather than selling that information on the black market. The bureau wasted no time in assembling a team of experts—including Annja—asking them to come down and take a look at what they had found.

      Annja had been in between assignments when the call had come in and she’d wasted no time in agreeing to join the team.

      The main dig site consisted of a large three-story temple complex in the standard step pyramid formation, with several smaller buildings lining the east and west sides of the courtyard extending south from the base of the pyramid itself.

      A few hundred yards to the west of the main structures was the site’s cenote, a deep, water-filled sinkhole that the Mayans considered a link to the rain gods, or Chaacs. Sacrificial victims and precious objects had been tossed into the sacred well as offerings during the site’s heyday as a way of protecting the populace and bringing good fortune. To the dig team’s delight, the earthquake that had uncovered the primary dig site had also drained the cenote, exposing its secrets to the light of the sun for the first time in centuries.

      Annja was down in “the hole,” as they had come to call it, erecting a grid made of nylon rope and stakes across the entire area. This would allow them to record the precise depth and location of every object they removed from the muck-covered bed at the bottom of the sinkhole. That information would then be fed into a 3-D simulation program that would provide them with a computer model to work with in analyzing the artifacts.

      It was important work, which was one of the reasons Annja had volunteered to do it, despite the ankle-deep puddles and stinking muck that covered the bottom of the cenote. From where she stood she could see the skeletal remains of at least five different individuals and more than a handful of ceremonial objects, such as knives, bowls and statuettes. The items they recovered from the cenote would probably tell them more about daily life at the site than the ruins themselves. It was like a window into the past, one she looked forward to peering through.

      But right now she needed to forget about the past and focus on the present.

      She looked up toward the rim of the cenote, expecting to see Arturo, her partner for the afternoon, peering over the edge and frantically signaling for her to come up, but there was no sign of him.

      Had he run off? Gone for help? She didn’t know. Thankfully, the rope she’d used to climb down into the hole was still where they had left it, hanging against the interior wall of the cenote. It was tied off at the top around a nearby tree trunk and so Arturo’s help wasn’t required for her to get back to the surface. It would have been helpful, but not necessary.

      She slogged over to the far wall, being careful not to step on any of the remains scattered about her feet, and took hold of the rope. Planting one foot against the interior wall of the cenote, she began to pull herself up hand over hand, walking her feet upward as she went.

      She hadn’t gone more than a few steps up the wall when a shadow blotted out the light from the setting sun above. Startled, Annja looked up. She was just in time to see Arturo hurtling down toward her, his arms and legs flailing wildly, his mouth open in a silent scream.

      Annja let go of the rope, dropped the few feet to the bottom of the cenote, and flattened herself against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible.

      Arturo’s body missed her by mere inches and then hit the bottom with a loud, mud-filled splash. His sightless eyes stared back at her, accusing. So, too, did the bullet hole in the center of his forehead that was leaking a thin stream of blood into the muddy water where he lay.

      She could hear voices above, shouting in Spanish. She couldn’t make out everything that was said, but the word cenote came through loud and clear a few times and she knew they were headed her way, either to see if Arturo had been alone or to be certain he was dead.

      If they looked in and caught her here…

      Annja didn’t need to finish the thought to know she was in deep trouble. She had only seconds to find a place to hide. Any moment now someone was going to stick their head over the edge and see her.

      Her chances of surviving for even a few minutes after that were slim to none.

      Without hesitation she took a deep breath and threw herself down into the water at her feet, burrowing into the mud and muck beneath and throwing it over her body, trying to cover herself up as much as possible. There wasn’t anywhere else she could hide. The dark fatigue pants and top she was wearing would help, she knew, as would the deep shadows accumulating with the close of day near the walls of the cenote itself. If she could just stay out of sight for a few moments, she might be all right.

      For the time being, at least.

      She kept one ear turned to the side, listening, and just as she suspected, she heard two voices talking together somewhere above her. An argument ensued for a moment, the voices rising and falling rapidly, and then they fell silent.

      Annja didn’t move from her place of concealment. She was unable to tell if they had left or not and didn’t want to take the chance of being caught unexpectedly