The Aztec Heresy by Paul Christopher

Author:Paul Christopher [Christopher, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: General, Fiction, Suspense, Archaeologists, Women Archaeologists, Suspense Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Detective and Mystery Stories, cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 9780451224521
Google: 4h176NzlMtQC
Amazon: 0451224523
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2008-06-30T23:00:00+00:00

14

At the end of the fifteenth century, Cabo Catoche was at the end of the world; in fact, beyond it. A few years later a Spanish galleon was shipwrecked there, and a few years after that a ship finally anchored there on purpose, the expedition headed by one Francisco Hernández de Córdoba, with a mandate from the governor of Cuba to find slaves for the local sugarcane plantations.

Not surprisingly the locals didn’t take too kindly to enslavement and fought back, but their slings, bows, and padded cotton armor were no match for Spanish muskets, cross-bows, and swords. Spaniards one, Mayans zero, including the pillaging of some gold and copper idols plundered from their temple by the Spanish Brother González, a Dominican, and effectively the Inquisition’s ‘‘political officer’’ on the voyage, fully capable of deeming any natives or even Spaniards heretics, and ordering them tied to the stake and burned. A lot of clout for a supposedly humble friar.

Cabo, or Cape, Catoche is the Spanish transliteration of the Mayan word catoc, which simply means ‘‘our houses,’’ or ‘‘our place.’’ It is located on the northernmost tip of the Yucatán Peninsula approximately thirty-three miles north of the resort town of Cancún. Most of the area, once the Mayan province of Ecab, has been totally uninhabited for the past five hundred years and is virtually inaccessible by road or air. In the mid-1990s it was designated as a nature preserve, although some efforts, all of which have failed, have been made to develop the coastal area. The closest place is the nearly abandoned village of Taxmal, a few ragged thatch-roofed huts that was all that remained of a once thriving market town on the edge of the jungle east of Kantunilkin and north of Leona Vicario.

It had taken Finn Ryan almost a month to get there, the speed of light by Mexican bureaucratic standards. The fact that her father and mother had been well-known archaeologists in the Yucatán speeded things up a little, and so did her own background. The media coverage she’d received from her previous exploits recovering stolen Nazi art and her recent adventures in the South China Sea didn’t hurt either. She and Billy spent two weeks in Miami equipping themselves for a jungle expedition, then crossed the Gulf of Mexico and dropped anchor in the old port town of Progreso.

They left Run-Run McSeveney to his own happily obscure devices on board the Hispaniola along with Briney Hanson, and hired a truck to take them and their equipment into the nearby city of Merida, the capital of Yucatán province. They spent another week in Merida at the local Hilton, organizing last-minute permits, then headed off in several rented Toyota Land Cruisers on the overland trip to Taxmal.

There they had arranged to meet their so-called archaeological consultant and their escort. The archaeological consultant was usually an official from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, which, from Finn’s experience, meant a quasi-cop attached to the expedition to make sure that the

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