Doomsday Match (The Dresden Codex), page 1
PRAISE FOR DOOMSDAY MATCH
“A fast-paced and enthralling thriller that blends ancient history, magic, and action. Once I started this book, I couldn’t stop—and loved every single scene. A masterpiece of story and setting. Highly recommend!”
—New York Times bestselling author A. R. Torre
“Fans of James Rollins and Dan Brown will love this stunning new thriller from Jeff Wheeler. Doomsday Match is utterly engrossing, a dark and complex tale filled with ancient secrets, adventure, and betrayal. You won’t be able to put it down.”
—#1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh
“Jeff Wheeler knocks it out of the park with his supercharged thriller Doomsday Match. From the very first scene, you know you’re in for an incredible thrill ride full of constant danger and relentless twists—set against a jaw-dropping conspiracy background. Just when you think you’ve figured out Wheeler’s game, he artfully rips the rug out from under the reader, shaking up the plot. If you’re a fan of fast-paced, devious conspiracies with a little more than a touch of magic and mysticism, Doomsday Match is for you!”
—Wall Street Journal bestselling author Steven Konkoly
ALSO BY JEFF WHEELER
The Dresden Codex
Doomsday Match
The Dawning of Muirwood Trilogy
The Druid
The Hunted
The Betrayed
The First Argentines Series
Knight’s Ransom
Warrior’s Ransom
Lady’s Ransom
Fate’s Ransom
The Grave Kingdom Series
The Killing Fog
The Buried World
The Immortal Words
The Harbinger Series
Storm Glass
Mirror Gate
Iron Garland
Prism Cloud
Broken Veil
The Kingfountain Series
The Poisoner’s Enemy (prequel)
The Maid’s War (prequel)
The Poisoner’s Revenge (prequel)
The Queen’s Poisoner
The Thief’s Daughter
The King’s Traitor
The Hollow Crown
The Silent Shield
The Forsaken Throne
The Legends of Muirwood Trilogy
The Wretched of Muirwood
The Blight of Muirwood
The Scourge of Muirwood
The Covenant of Muirwood Trilogy
The Banished of Muirwood
The Ciphers of Muirwood
The Void of Muirwood
Whispers from Mirrowen Trilogy
Fireblood
Dryad-Born
Poisonwell
Landmoor Series
Landmoor
Silverkin
Other Works
Your First Million Words
Tales from Kingfountain, Muirwood, and Beyond:
The Worlds of Jeff Wheeler
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Otherwise, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2023 by Jeff Wheeler
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781662505546 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 9781662505553 (digital)
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
Cover image: © Cesar Dussac / Shutterstock; © Weredragon / Shutterstock; © PRILL / Shutterstock
To Robert
CONTENTS
MAP
CHAPTER ONE MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE XMAKABATÚN, GUATEMALA
CHAPTER TWO UNITED FLIGHT 1119 BOZEMAN, MONTANA TO CANCÚN, MEXICO
CHAPTER THREE CARR TRANSVERSAL COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER FOUR VILLA SARA DE CALAKMUL COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER FIVE VILLA SARA DE CALAKMUL COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER SIX VILLA SARA DE CALAKMUL COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER SEVEN VILLA SARA DE CALAKMUL COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER EIGHT VILLA MAYA NATURAL RESERVE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER NINE VILLA MAYA NATURAL RESERVE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TEN VILLA SARA DE CALAKMUL COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER ELEVEN JADE CENOTE, NATURAL RESERVE AREA COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TWELVE TEZCATLIPOCA TEMPLE, VILLA MAYA NATURAL RESERVE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER THIRTEEN TEZCATLIPOCA TEMPLE, VILLA MAYA NATURAL RESERVE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER FOURTEEN TEZCATLIPOCA TEMPLE, VILLA MAYA NATURAL RESERVE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER FIFTEEN UNDERGROUND RIVER COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER SIXTEEN SAN GERVASIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL ZONE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN NOHOCH NAH TEMPLE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN SAN GERVASIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL ZONE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER NINETEEN SAN GERVASIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL ZONE COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TWENTY SAN LORENZO OUTSKIRTS COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE HUELLAS DE PAN COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO COZUMEL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE HUELLAS DE PAN COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR HUELLAS DE PAN COZUMEL, MEXICO
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE YUCATÁN PENINSULA
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX JAGUAR TEMPLE CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN JAGUAR TEMPLE CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT JAGUAR TEMPLE CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE JAGUAR TEMPLE CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY GRAN ACROPOLIS CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE THE ARENA CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR THE ARENA CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE RESIDENTIAL COMPLEX CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX THE ARENA CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE 12:01AM
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN THE ARENA CALAKMUL BIOSPHERE RESERVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT CANCÚN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT CANCÚN, MEXICO
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE VILLA SARA DE CALAKMUL COZUMEL, MEXICO
EPILOGUE ROTH RESIDENCE BOZEMAN, MONTANA
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
MAYA BIOSPHERE RESERVE
XMAKABATÚN, GUATEMALA
December 20
The roar of the twin propellers made shouting the only way to be heard, even with the headsets. As it soared over the jungle lowlands, the plane bucked and dipped, causing various components of the LiDAR equipment to rattle, although they were secured with thick straps. The pilot’s face was dripping with sweat, which leaked beneath his sunglasses and into his scraggly beard.
“That’s the last run!” the pilot shouted. “Time to head back to the airport!”
Dr. Estrada shook his head, planting his palm on the cockpit dashboard to brace himself against a sudden lurch. “Let’s go a little farther. We have enough fuel.”
“Eh?”
“Head north!”
“We did the runs already. It’s time to go back.”
“We have fuel. North. Now!”
Dr. Estrada felt the sweat dripping down his ribs. The twin-prop plane was flying at an altitude of two thousand feet. That was within the ideal range for the LiDAR equipment. But it made for a choppy ride, and the blazing sun was certainly as hot at their altitude as it was down in the jungle below. The LiDAR equipment generated plenty of heat too. The strapped boxes had cables running through the plane like spiderwebs. A hole had been set into the bottom of the stripped-out plane so that the lasers pointed down at the jungle below—a tangle of cedar, ceiba, and cojon trees meshed together, so dense it was impossible to see beneath the canopy.
Data had proven that LiDAR was the next breakthrough in archaeology, capable of digitally stripping away the trees and revealing man-made structures that had been abandoned by the Maya centuries before.
Dr. Estrada was on the leading edge of the research in a joint partnership with UC San Diego in California. The lab, funded by a giant semiconductor company, processed the terabytes of data produced by the equipment in the plane. It would take a hundred years to sift through the vast amounts of data—except thanks to Moore’s Law and the miniaturization of circuits, the servers were getting faster and faster, allowing the data to be mined and mapped much faster as time went on. He was excited about the work. Half of archaeology was knowing where to dig, and LiDAR provided an accurate map of what lay beneath the jungle’s growth and was more dependable than the human eye.
Through the windows, he could see the scenery of the Guatemalan jungle whip below them. The plane had to avoid the occasional blizzard of startled macaws.
The pilot, Miguel Santos, had adjusted course north. The additional time meant more money for him.
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“Where we going, boss?”
“We’ll be there soon.”
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long we going north? We’ll reach the border of Mexico in minutes!”
The northern border of Guatemala was a straight line that ran through an enormous, uncharted jungle in the Yucatán Peninsula. The ruins they’d studied at Xmakabatún were on the eastern border shared by Belize, but that government didn’t care if a plane wandered over the arbitrary line out in the middle of nowhere. The Mexican government, on the other hand, was a bit more testy about sharing their airspace. They looked down on Guatemalans. They didn’t care that the current borders were a modern construct so steeped in history and civil war that they no longer seemed to make sense.
Two thousand years ago, the entire Yucatán Peninsula was ruled by the Maya. The vast jungle below had been ruled by a people who knew about the orbit of planets centuries sooner than their European conquerors did. They’d left behind extensive ruins, many of which had yet to be discovered. An archaeologist’s dream come true.
The plane dipped again, making Dr. Estrada’s stomach lurch, and he slammed his palm against the dashboard.
“We should turn back to La Libertad, sir. I don’t want to get in trouble.”
Flying as fast as they were, they’d probably crossed into Mexican airspace already. Miguel wiped sweat from his mouth and began to angle the plane.
“A little farther. I just want to map one other thing while we’re here.” He’d studied the topo maps for years and had always been intensely curious about a certain location in the heart of the jungle. Satellite images showed very little because of the tree cover, but a curious mound rose from the jungle. A mound like that was not natural. The lowland jungles were typically flat. Mounds were man-made, the sign of a pyramid built centuries, or even a millennium, ago.
Estrada believed there was an even bigger pyramid concealed beneath the jungle, the kind of prize that could make a man’s career and ensure his legacy.
“I’ll get in trouble!”
“You won’t. I will. I’ll throw in a bonus. C’mon. We’re almost there.”
“How much bonus?”
“Enough that you won’t regret it. We’ll just say we got lost.”
The pilot didn’t seem appeased by the thought. “Air traffic control at Cancún can probably already see us.”
“We’re flying too low for radar to pick us up.”
Miguel scratched an itch on his chin and flared his nostrils. “I don’t like this, boss.”
“I don’t pay you to like it. Angle northwest. Toward that mound.” He could see it now, and his heart sped in anticipation.
A hiss of breath came through the pilot’s teeth. “We shouldn’t be here!”
Miguel was right. They’d already entered the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, a huge swath of jungle in the southeast corner of the state and municipality of Campeche. The towns in the area were primarily along the coast. Only one highway went through the jungle, farther north. The area they were flying over was a jungle preserve, heavily wooded and almost impossible to reach by land.
Dr. Estrada had petitioned the Mexican government for permission to use the LiDAR lasers to scan the biosphere reserve. His request had been denied with no explanation. A wealthy family funded the research of the area. And since Dr. Estrada was Guatemalan, they’d not even given a sniff before saying no. The Calakmul biosphere contained a great treasure, he was certain, and the Calakmul family was keeping it a secret.
So much was concealed beneath the canopy of the jungle. Satellites couldn’t see anything through the maze of trees and vegetation. Not even drones could penetrate the thick jungle. The LiDAR made all the difference. He’d seen plenty of evidence of it in the work he’d done finding the ruins of Xmakabatún. Even when he and his team were within fifty meters of the location, it was still invisible. But the technology had revealed the ruins from above—dispassionately, a series of light refractions bouncing back to the plane and revealing shapes that were clearly made by man, not by nature.
In some ways, it was like putting together a treasure map, because the Maya rulers had been buried with a wealth of jade, gold, silver, and obsidian. They were like the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, only, the Maya had disappeared one day, leaving behind clues for those who were discerning.
He had a feeling one of the richest finds would be in the Calakmul reserve. According to his research, it had once been one of the powerful kingdoms of the Maya—before the jungle had swallowed it. Besides, it was in such a remote location that any ruins were likely well preserved, untouched by modern civilization.
“Boss!”
Dr. Estrada had been lost in thought, imagining what they’d find. One pyramid temple could house untold treasures and reveal information about the Maya that had been lost for centuries. Years after Hernán Cortés had conquered the area, a group of Spaniards gathered up all of the Maya documents they could find and burned them. A few precious codices had been preserved—a small handful out of hundreds—and sent back to major cities in Europe. Like Paris, Madrid, and Dresden.
It was Estrada’s dream that one of these ruins might contain an original codex even older than those that had been preserved. One that could help them fully decipher the ancient hieroglyphs. A Rosetta stone for Mayan, if you would.
“What?” Estrada looked at the pilot. Miguel’s arm was outstretched, his index finger quivering.
“There’s something down there,” he said.
There was a gap in the jungle. They were flying low enough that Estrada could see the stone courtyard below. The light revealed ancient structures, a series of ruins hidden beneath the canopy of the jungle. Excitement bubbled inside him.
“I knew it!” he gasped. Then louder: “Fly directly over it. The LiDAR will map this place. Fly directly, then turn around for another pass.” They’d need to make multiple passes so the lasers could produce enough data for the supercomputers to then unscramble. Millions of dots of light were hammering down at the trees below. Some, a small percentage, pierced the edges of the leaves and touched the ground. The varying height of that ground was what would reveal the shape of the structures. Only this time, he didn’t need the LiDAR to see that something was down there. Something the Calakmul family was probably hiding and excavating without anyone else knowing.
“Turn around, make another pass!” Estrada repeated, thrilled with the discovery.
The plane banked sharply and turned, coming around for another sweep of the area, heading south again. It was a beautiful day. Perfect weather to be capturing the data. Not a cloud in the—
The plane bucked. A rumble of thunder came. Colorful jungle birds began to flee the canopy of trees as if startled by a predator.
Estrada peered out the side window of the plane. A swirl of dark clouds was gathering over the surrounding jungle, coalescing above the spot of open ground. Sudden thunderstorms were common in these jungles, but the thunderheads shouldn’t be gathering this fast. The hot afternoon sun, which had been baking them in the cockpit earlier, was now blocked by the anvil-shaped clouds. In the mass of darkness ahead of them, a few flashes of lightning were already starting.
“There’s someone down there!” the pilot shouted.
Estrada rubbed his eyes and saw a man standing in the middle of the courtyard. He was dressed like one of the ancient Maya, like the locals who spent their days in costume at the ruins at Chichén Itzá to pose with tourists for a price. Except there were no tourists.
“Climb, now!” Estrada said, feeling his gut clench with fear. The storm had come out of nowhere, and they were flying straight toward it. The wind shear alone could be fatal at their low altitude.
Miguel was struggling with the controls, his mouth and scrappy beard twisting with frustration as he yanked on the yoke.
The craft gave a sudden lurch, much more dangerous than the previous ones. It felt like something from the jungle had reached up and snatched their plane. Both men shouted in fear.
The yoke shook violently. Miguel gripped it hard, trying to turn, but it seemed he was wrestling a crocodile. A force was inextricably bringing them closer to the heart of the gathering storm. Thunder boomed and rain began lashing against the cockpit window.
“Turn! Turn!” Estrada shouted. “Get out of here!”
Miguel began to shout a prayer. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Nngghh . . . Blessed art thou amongst women!” The sunlight had vanished behind bulging black clouds. The plane rocked and dropped again. The rain sounded like bullets against the windows. Another dip made both men gasp. The jungle. If they went into the jungle, no one would ever find them. It would swallow them whole.
