Plague Lords (Empire of Xibalba, #1) Page 16

  Their bug-bit prisoner looked woeful and desperate. There was something practiced about his pathetic, pleading expression. When he batted his eyelashes, it made Mildred’s skin crawl.

  Nobody else was buying it, either.

  “He’s still got his hidey-hole,” Ryan said. “Let him jump back in it.”

  A bright flash and big puff of smoke from the forward deck of the middle tugboat caught Mildred’s eye. Ryan and Krysty saw it, too. A fraction of an instant later similar flashes and puffs of smoke appeared on the bows of the other two tugs. Before anybody could shout a warning, a full four seconds before the hollow whump of the reports rolled over them, mortar shells were already screaming down on the island.

  A trio of HE explosions rocked the ground. The detonations were thunderclap loud, and Mildred felt the concussions in the center of her chest, like the beats of an alien heart. Two of the mortar hits fell one hundred feet to either side of the distant machine-gun emplacement, their blast rings overlapping; the third landed a fraction of a second later, in the middle of the roof, blowing out the sidewalls and collapsing the ceiling.

  Needless to say, the machine-gun fire abruptly stopped.

  “Shit!” Tom said. “Shit, come on!” Then he took off running back the way they had come.

  The companions followed him, triple time. Mildred brought up the rear, keeping tabs on the injured J.B. who, despite her concern, seemed to be moving along just fine. Behind her, the roar of the tugs’ engines grew louder and louder as the ships advanced on the now undefended shore. She and the others skidded, stumbled and slewed down the loose sand of the dunes, scrambling to reach the beach and harbor.

  When the mortars resumed firing, the explosions started walking north, taking giant steps up the island’s spine, toward the ville. The first three explosions fell behind them. The second three leapfrogged the dunes and landed ahead and below, between them and the shantytown. The shells detonated on the flanks of the slope with brilliant flashes and plumes of flying sand and smoke. The concussions that rolled uphill felt like snapkicks to the gut. Even though Mildred ran with her stomach tensed, they almost knocked the breath out of her. Hot shrapnel sizzled and whined all around, snicking into the sandy hillside, and the acrid stink of burned Comp B filled the air.

  There had to be more than just the three bow mortars firing, Mildred thought as she struggled to keep up with J.B. There had to be at least a half dozen cutting loose simultaneously. The companions were caught between the dunes at their rear and the high explosives in front. There was no cover ahead, but there was no going back.

  They couldn’t stop running.

  More mortar shells screamed overhead, raining down on the ville. The pirate gunners had it zeroed in. The shantytown came apart before her eyes, pounded by a concentrated barrage of HE. In the wake of blinding flashes, sheet-metal roofs and plywood walls cartwheeled skyward, as did an ever-widening column of dust and smoke. The explosions started triggering the Claymore booby traps, which unleashed thousands of ball-bearing projectiles.

  They were running straight into a meatgrinder.

  The route to the Tempest was cut off.

  “We’ll never make it to the beach!” Ryan shouted at Tom’s back. “Go right! Turn right!”

  Tom led them away from his ship, and their only hope of escape, away from the harbor and certain death. He raced along the lower slopes of the dunes, heading for the grounded freighter. It was the only way open.

  Then the explosions in the ville suddenly stopped. The pirate mortars went silent for a moment.

  Hearing a grunt of effort behind her, Mildred glanced over her shoulder and saw the Fire Talker was right on her heels.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chewing the stub of an unlit cigar, barefoot Commander Guillermo Casacampo leaned out over the rail of the bridge deck of his flagship, called the Ek’-Way in Mayan—the Black Transformer, in English. Casacampo’s dreadlocks stood piled atop his head in a ten-inch-high, lopsided beehive. The stacked coils of felted hair were interlaced with gold bracelets and necklaces, and his long beard had been braided into stiff, six-inch-pigtails, which were bound at the ends with close wraps of brightly colored thread. Ground-in dirt and oil blackened his cheeks and forehead; the eyeliner that rimmed his eyes gave them a sunken, raccoon-like appearance. The commander of the Matachìn fleet wore red longjohns with a sewn-on chest pocket, and a parrot-green scarf knotted at the side of his very short, very thick neck.

  The steady, rhythmic beat of the coxswain’s drum drifted up to him from the stern, and thirty oarlocks creaked in counterpoint as human power inexorably levered the massive ship forward.

  Looking down the starboard flank of the flat-black–painted tug, Casacampo couldn’t see the conscripts from Browns ville and Matamoros ville. They were hidden from view beneath a crude, corrugated steel awning that ran over the scuppers, fully two-thirds the length of the one-hundred-foot boat; a similar structure shaded the port side of the ship. The awnings protected the bare-headed, bare-shouldered captives. The Matachìn didn’t give a damn about the comfort of their galley slaves; the slaves just lasted a little longer if they were shielded from the sun and rain.

  If the commander couldn’t see the tightly packed ranks of rowers below him, he couldn’t miss their long oars, dipping and stroking in unison to the metronomic beat of the drum. There were fifteen oars on either side of the ship, and three rowers were assigned to each.

  A total of ninety prisoners working in chains.

  Sleeping in chains.

  Eating in chains.

  Shitting in chains.

  All of them doomed.

  Two members of Casacampo’s crew paced along the inside edge of the awning, closely monitoring the performance of the starboard “propulsion unit.” Because they were mere grunts and not line officers, their dreads weren’t piled high. Instead they hung like nests of flattened snakes to the middle of their wide backs. What gold the crewmen had glittered and flashed around the ankle tops of their heavy-soled boots, garlands of chain that had been taken from nameless, faceless victims as trophies of conquest. The crewmen’s hands rested on the pommels of scabbarded machetes and on the butts of hip-holstered, knock-off Government Colts—.45-caliber Obregons and Ballester-Molinas—relics from Mexico and Argentina, respectively. Braided leather quirts, short but effective motivational tools, were tucked under their belts.

  As the commander watched, the third oar from the stern suddenly seemed to lose its steam. Because it didn’t move forward quickly enough, its paddle hooked on the shaft of the oar behind. Instead of immediately untangling and reestablishing the stroke rhythm, the two oars remained locked, which tipped the balance of thrust to the port side and caused the ship to veer off course to starboard.

  The problem was easily fixed.

  As easy as changing a fouled spark plug.

  The commander hand-signaled the coxswain and the drumming stopped. When the drumming stopped, the slaves on both sides of the ship stopped pulling on their oars. Break time.

  The Matachìn crewmen quickly unchained an exhausted rower from the third starboard oar and dragged him out from under the awning. The slave didn’t fight them. He was a spent force, his shoulders welted and bloodied from strokes of the lash, as weak as a kitten after so many nonstop days of effort. As the crew manhandled him aft, toward the stern’s low transom, he made shrill and unpleasant noises, pleading for his life.

  Commander Casacampo took the cigar stub from his mouth, then hawked and spit a viscous yellow gob a remarkable distance downwind.

  In the grasp of the crewmen, the slave craned his neck around, looking up at the pirate leader. His expression communicated his mortal fear: he knew what was coming.

  There was no thumbs-up or thumbs-down from the bridge deck.

  Show no mercy was a given.

  The Matachìn threw the slave belly-down across the stern gunwhale. While one held him pinned from behind in a double armlock, the other unscabbarded a machete. T
he top of the sixteen-inch blade ended in rear-pointing hook, a crescent moon of razor-sharp steel. Originally designed to facilitate the cutting of sugar cane, the hook was even more efficient at unzipping human guts.

  Wielded by a powerful arm, the machete caught the sunlight as it flashed up, then fell in a blur. There was no hesitation. No “would you like a blindfold?” No “do you have any last words?”

  If anything, it resembled the killing of a chicken.

  In a single strike of the blade’s main edge, with a precise application of force, the pirate hacked open the back of the slave’s neck, stopping short of completely severing his spine. The horrendous blow energized its helpless target. It set the still-living man to squealing and kicking as the gaping wound spouted geysers of blood. The two Matachìn held him trapped and bent over the stern while his rich red ch’ul—his “soul stuff”—poured over his face and head and into the hungry sea. After no more than minute, the piercing cries faded to silence and the slave went limp in their grasp. His chillers then grabbed him by the ankles and launched him headfirst into the water.

  The body floated away spread-eagled and facedown.

  The coxswain rolled aside his timekeeper’s drum and raised the hatch in the stern deck. It opened onto the wide, windowless hold where the replacement slaves were stowed until needed. Kneeling on either side of the hatch, the other two pirates bent over, reached down, and hauled up a blinking, dazed and terrified slave by the armpits.

  The man was in his early twenties and had a wispy brown chin beard. Already stripped to the waist, his suntanned arms, face and neck were a stark contrast to his fish-white belly. Before the crewmen chained him to the oar, they used their quirts on his back, to make sure they had his attention.

  Although the replacement rower looked plenty strong and reasonably well nourished, there was no telling how long he would last pulling an oar. Sometimes the strongest-looking ones died first, and the weaker-looking ones kept going and going.

  The coxswain glanced down into the hold. Pointing with his finger he counted its occupants, one by one. He held up his hand to the bridge.

  The commander pulled a little leather-backed notebook from the chest pocket of his longjohns. As he chewed the butt of his cigar, he corrected the tally with a pencil stub. One down, five to go. He was pleased at the attrition rate. They were running out of replacements just as they prepared to take on a new batch from Padre Island. When the island was theirs, his crew would evaluate the remaining survivors from Browns ville. Those who weren’t worth feeding and watering would be dispatched by machete. The entire process was very well organized. It had to be due to the nature of the expedition. Limited space onboard a relatively small number of ships meant that stores were restricted, which created a balancing act between acquisition and consumption and miles traveled.

  Because the Matachìn had been employing slave galleys for almost a century, and had used them extensively in their northerly expansion up from the Lantic side of the Panama Canal, the basics of care and feeding had been worked out by trial and error, what in the twentieth century would have been called a cost-benefit ratio. How many days did galley slaves actually have to be fed? What was the minimum amount of water required to sustain them at peak efficiency? A precise schedule dispensed food and water, and the dispensation was scrupulously kept track of in a logbook. Of course there were no rowers on the sailboats, which meant there was room for the stowing of fleet supplies, and of course, the accumulated booty.

  New slaves were the best cost-benefit: they brought their own energy reserves with them, which could be drained for days without replenishment. The number of arms and backs necessary to move the tugs depended on wind and tide, as well as the combined strength of the rowers. But generally speaking, if there were fewer than twenty-five rowers to a side it overtaxed the entire system, simultaneously providing meager headway and wearing out the individual component parts too soon. A full complement of healthy, minimally fed slaves could last as long as a couple of weeks, again depending on natural factors: wind, tide and sea state.

  The commander put the dog-earred notebook back in his longjohn pocket and waved at the coxswain to resume his drumming. When the beat started up, the oars dipped lively, in time, and in perfect unison. They were soon making excellent speed against the light wind. Close to ten knots, Casacampo guessed. There was nothing like a summary execution to put the slaves in the mood for exercise.

  Every once in a while they needed a graphic reminder that they were an expendable commodity.

  If for some reason, the commander wasn’t able to find replacement slaves en route, he did have a quantity of diesel to burn. But he watched his fuel gauges with as much care as his food stocks. Unlike the case of food, there was nowhere to get more diesel in the six hundred miles of coastline the search and destroy expedition had covered. If he’d been able to fill up the Ek’-Way’s three thousand gallon tank before he’d left port, his range under engine power would have averaged somewhere close to five thousand miles. But a fill-up was not in the cards. Accordingly, he saved his precious store of diesel for maneuvering during battle and for emergencies. The three tugs under his command had a total fuel load of just under a thousand gallons. Enough to get them all the way home from Tierra de la Muerte, but if they returned to Veracruz on fumes, the fuel burned would deduct from the success of the expedition. The Lords of Death valued economy in all things, except of course human life. People were a self-generating resource.

  Casacampo turned away from the stern and looked into the wind, toward the low island. His four pursuit craft were streaking away hard to the southeast under full sail. Soon they would be looping around the far end of the island with the wind behind them. They would contain any attempts at escape by ship to the north.

  A cluster of distant, muffled explosions made him look in the direction of the island. He watched as a column of smoke coiled up from the other side of the ridge of dunes. Before the smoke could climb high in the sky, the prevailing wind bent it horizontal and sent it scudding toward him.

  Casacampo grinned around the gooey stump of his cigar. It was clear whose side the gods were on.

  Without haste, the commander ducked into an archway in the steel superstructure. Directly ahead was the riveted steel door leading to his quarters. He climbed the short, steep flight of metal steps on the right, up to the pilothouse on the third story above the tug’s main deck. Standing at the helm of the Ek’-Way, in front of the windshield and wraparound instrument panel, was his second in command, Captain Roberto Dolor.

  The tall, leanly muscled, caramel-skinned man turned as Casacampo entered and gave him a respectful nod of greeting. Dolor had a wandering left eye that never tracked with its opposite number. At times—when he was either very happy or very angry—Dolor look utterly and dangerously insane. Because he was a Matachìn officer of lower rank, his pile of dreads was less spectacular. Three coils of felted hair, instead of Casacampo’s seven. And it was laced with fewer golden trinkets.

  Dolor had already donned his ribbed black, chest, hip and shin-boot top armor. Back in the day it had been made in Tampico from Kevlar and tempered steel trauma plate.

  The final touch of Dolor’s battle dress, a seam-split garment stained with blood, semen and tears, lay draped over the back of the navigator’s armchair. Into every fight the captain wore the dead woman’s shift. He wore it pulled over his chest armor; it was so short on his body that it looked like a long shirt. To his opponents in combat its feminine cut and faded floral print, and its awful stains were animalistic obscenity. To the pirate captain, the ruined dress was yet another badge of status, symbolic of having seized and taken the sustaining and nourishing spiritual force, the itz, of a defenseless victim.

  The Matachìn had their own set of standards. They were judged not by the heights of their good deeds, but by the depths of the bad.

  Tucked into niches and crannies in the low, pilothouse ceiling, in the niches and crannies between the cluste
rs of exposed power conduit and electronic cables were a wide assortment of Central American fetishes. There were amulets made of feathers and human small bones stripped of flesh and sinew and bleached dead-white. There were brightly beaded pouches of copal incense. And dangling by their ornate little head dresses, flesh-colored, molded plastic statuettes of the Lords of Death.

  Fanged.

  Snarling.

  Squatting like pink toads over the hieroglyph for yol, the secret gate of Xibalba, the Place of Awe.

  In their left hands the Lords brandished ceremonial stone cleavers, which dripped hand-painted, enamel blood down their forearms. In their left hands they held severed human heads by the hair; the ragged neck stumps were also hand-painted red. The doll collection represented Atapul the First through Atapul the Tenth. The statuettes were virtually identical, except for the raised Roman numerals on their gold-painted breastplates that identified them individually.

  The Mayan legend of the Lords of Death was older than recorded time. From their kingdom in the Otherworld of Xibalba, rumored to exist somewhere beneath the earth, they held dominion over human sickness, starvation, fear, destitution, pain and ultimately death. The other residents of the Otherworld—spirits, ghosts of ancestors, goblins—were compelled to rise up and carry out the will of these dark gods on the surface. According to the ancient myth, the Hero Twins, Hunuhapu and Xbalanke, succeeded in tricking and killing all twelve of the Lords of Death. Which left their avatars of sickness and disease stranded and without direction in the mortal plane.

  In the Mayan legends, resurrection was not unheard of; indeed, the promise of same was how the Hero Twins fooled and destroyed the Lords of Death. After watching the Twins restore life to a dead dog, a person and themselves with their magic dance, the Lords asked the Twins to kill them, too, then bring them back. The Twins slaughtered the Lords, all right, but they left them dead. For five thousand years the Lords of Xibalba stayed that way, until the Armageddon of El Norte resurrected them.