CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY WASHINGTON, DC

SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

WASHINGTON, DC

January 10

Monica tapped her comms. “Backup, engage now! Hostile, repeat, hostile!”

The jaguar priest tilted his head back and forth, his frown turning to a malicious smile as he advanced.

Jordan drew his weapon.

“That won’t work here!” Monica said to him. They were all backing up.

Roth felt a surge of panic. He had to protect his boys. They had to get out of there. A slight diversion. Maybe that’s all they needed to escape.

“Federal agent!” Monica shouted, alerting everyone to the danger. “Get to the nearest exit. Now!”

Some bystanders looked confused, but the ones who saw Jordan’s weapon started to scream and run. Confusion and panic ensued. Children scattered. Some started to cry.

“Stay back, bro!” Jordan warned, aiming the gun at the man’s face.

“I’ll stall him. Get the Roths out of here,” Monica said.

“No way,” Jordan countered. “Four against one are better odds. The other two guys I saw are yours, right?”

“Right. Jonathon, run!” Monica said.

The jaguar priest rushed them.

Roth grabbed the boys by their shirts and pulled them away. Both of them resisted at first, their faces taut with fear—they cared about Jordan, and they all knew the jaguar priests to be ruthless and efficient at killing. It pained Roth too. They didn’t know how to use the kem ?m, so they wouldn’t be able to withstand his power. Still, both Jordan and Monica had been trained for combat situations. Roth hadn’t. The boys certainly hadn’t. And despite Jordan’s shoulder injury, he wouldn’t give up without a fight.

“Hurry!” Roth urged, hastening the boys deeper into the exhibit, which he hoped would loop around to another exit. There were openings leading to other parts of the hall to the right and left and another one farther ahead with fossils on display.

“What about Jordan?” Lucas said, his voice catching with worry.

Roth heard the crack of multiple gunshots. He looked back and saw Jordan firing into the ceiling lights above them. Glass from the shattered bulbs came crashing down.

The jaguar priest leaped forward in the hail of glass, aiming a kick at Jordan’s leg. A loud snap could be heard. Jordan let out a howl of pain. Worry twisted in Roth’s gut, but he had to focus on the boys. Had to. He dragged them to the first opening on the right and went through it. He could see part of the action through the glass walls as he pushed the boys lower down and crouched to get out of sight.

“That way!” he murmured, pointing to the left. He wanted to get out into the main hall where the crowds would be larger.

He saw the jaguar priest grab Jordan around the neck, but Monica attacked him fearlessly. She wrapped her arm around the jaguar priest’s neck, trying to leverage him across her hip and choke him.

The priest let go of Jordan and pivoted, wrenching Monica’s arm away from his neck effortlessly. He headbutted her in the face with his forehead and then waved his hand in a glyph. Monica flew away from him, hitting a glass display and shattering it. She groaned in pain and slumped to the floor.

“Monica!” Jordan raged. Even with a broken leg, he attacked, hoisting himself up on his arm and grabbing the priest by the belt. He dragged him down and started punching him in the face, blow after blow.

“Go, go, go!” Roth urged, pushing the boys toward the exit. For a moment, he thought Jordan might actually win the fight.

A powerful fist struck Jordan in the throat. His eyes bulged with pain, but still he fought. He tried grappling the man in a jujitsu maneuver, but the priest was bigger and stronger and broke his hold. He broke some of Jordan’s fingers too, wrenching them back hard. Another bark of pain before the priest grabbed Jordan by the back of the neck and slammed him face-first into the ground with all its glass shards.

An FBI agent ran up, knocking the jaguar priest back with a scissor kick. The other agent hurried into the fray, spraying the bear spray at the jaguar priest. Two against one again.

Roth and the boys reached the entrance to the Deep Time exhibit, but there were so many people struggling to get out that there wasn’t room for them.

“Police!” roared a voice, trying to clear a path through the crowd. Screams filled the audience hall beyond. People were running toward the exits on both sides.

Gunshots. The two agents were taken down by the jaguar priest. Monica was also lying on the ground, bleeding profusely. It pained Roth’s heart to see the devastation.

A single officer entered the fray, holding a Taser. He aimed it at the jaguar priest. “Hands in the air! Hands in the air!”

The jaguar priest snorted and started toward him. The officer didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. The leads shot out of the Taser but ricocheted off an invisible barrier. The jaguar priest raised a pistol and shot the officer.

An opening had appeared in the crowd, so Roth maneuvered his boys and started running again. They made it into the large rotunda, which echoed with shrieks and the wail of sirens. Police and security were directing the crowd toward the exits. There were so many people, it would be hard for the jaguar priest to find—

A sting of pain struck Roth’s neck. Reflexively, he reached back and felt the dart sticking out of his skin. He yanked it out, realizing with horror what had happened. He’d seen how fast Eric Beasley had been brought down by a similar dart. He only had seconds.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, thrusting it at Brillante. Roth’s legs lost their strength, and he couldn’t run. He couldn’t even stand.

“Dad!” Lucas shouted. “Run!”

“Hide!” Roth urged his boys. “Hide! Don’t let him catch you!”

His body was overcome with spasms.

“Dad!”Brillante roared, staring at the phone that had been shoved into his hand.

Roth tried to speak, but he couldn’t say anything. The drug had immobilized him, but he was fully alert. He could hear the screams of his boys and the crowd. Could feel the twins trying to drag him away.

He tried to warn them again, but no sound came through his lips. He slumped down on the marble floor of the rotunda, unable to scratch the itch that was radiating from the back of his neck where the needle had struck. Helpless. He was totally helpless.

Brillante looked back and then grabbed Lucas, who was sobbing, and the twins raced away. Roth watched them go, relieved when they joined the crowd of students because surely, they’d blend in. He felt the shuddering of the stone floor from the stampede of people. But vibrations, heavy ones, were coming toward him. A very strong man heaved Roth up onto his shoulder without even a grunt of effort.

“FBI! Freeze!”

The jaguar priest turned, and Roth, dangling from the man’s back, saw their FBI jackets. At least a dozen agents were there. They were all unarmed but in fighting stances, encircling Roth and his abductor.

The jaguar priest pivoted again, looking at the officers. Then he swung Roth off his shoulder and set him down on the floor.

“You sure bullets don’t work against this guy?” one of the agents said.

“You know what happened the last time someone tried,” said another. “Take him down.”

Roth could hear the sounds of fighting, the groans of pain, but he could only see what was in front of him—the elephant statue. A body skidded past Roth and struck the base, the man’s eyes still open even in death. Roth stared at him, unable to move, to speak, to scream for help. He hoped his boys were outside by now. He hoped they were tucked into the crowd and would keep their heads down and keep running.

“Backup! We need more backup!”

A shot was fired. Out of frustration or some other reason. But it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. It only took a few minutes before they were all down, dead or incapacitated. Roth thought about Jordan and Monica. Were they dead? He hoped not. The last he’d seen, Monica was bleeding, and Jordan had been incapacitated. Had the priest broken his neck too? Roth didn’t know.

His heart clenched with dread as the jaguar priest hoisted him up again over his shoulder. He heard a word whispered in ancient Mayan, and then his captor began to walk. Bouncing against his back, Roth saw a SWAT team storm into the rotunda with assault rifles. What good were they against such a man? Even knowing that weapons were useless, they couldn’t quell the learned instinct to use them. It would be the same way with the military too.

Roth saw more SWAT teams rush in from the other direction. In fact, the jaguar priest must have walked right past them. They were converging in the rotunda.

“Where is he? Where’s the target?”

The jaguar priest kept walking, moving past escalators and the café entrance, and Roth couldn’t do anything as he bounced against the man’s muscled back like dead weight. They entered another exhibit. One marked “Hall of Human Origins.”

There was no one left inside. No, Roth saw a mom with two kids and a stroller, huddled against the wall in the corner, shivering in fear. The jaguar priest either didn’t see them or didn’t care. He just kept walking. Roth heard echoes from the SWAT team as they continued their search of the building. They wouldn’t find him. He was invisible to them. Cloaked in a magic that was thousands of years old.

Roth didn’t know what happened next. One moment, he could see the floor bouncing, and then suddenly they were engulfed in odorless black smoke. He felt a tugging inside him, a premonition of dread, and then they were in a darkened room. It was humid and smelled of stone.

Roth saw an arrangement of black obsidian mounted on the walls. The pieces were circular, rough cut, and gilded in gold embedded with jade.

Other men were gathered in the room, and they began to chant in Spanish, almost gleefully. “Mataré. Mataré. ?Mataré!”

Roth knew the word. It meant something about killing.

The jaguar priest carried Roth out of the chamber. There was a grinding of stone, and then the priest had to crouch to get past a barrier of some sort. Roth saw a final glimpse of the room with the obsidian mirrors. His mind shot to the legends of Kukulkán’s brother. How images of him showed an obsidian mirror for a foot. Now Roth understood. The followers of Huracán, the wicked brother, could travel between the mirrors. That was how Jacob had reached Washington, DC, and other capitals around the world. It wasn’t just a random teleportation, but a connection from mirror to mirror, bound through the magic.

That meant they were back in the Yucatán. Roth was so disoriented from being carried on the man’s back that he couldn’t tell which way they’d gone, only that they were in a maze, perhaps within the great pyramid of the Jaguar Temple itself. He was in enemy territory. And the US military was about to attack.

Roth realized that he was going to die. And not just any death. He’d be sacrificed on an ancient altar in front of a crowd.

Jacob Calakmul would have his revenge at last.