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“You are under arrest,” said the pretend president. “There are many crimes you are guilty of, including the murder of federal agents, military officers, and the terrorist bombing of the airport in Bozeman, Montana. But the fact that you are here with the intent to harm the sitting president of the United States is a serious enough charge that we’ll stop right there before tallying up any further charges, Mr. Calakmul.”
This was not how Jacob had expected it would go. He’d walked into a trap. He took a deep breath, regaining some composure. The agitation inside his body was troubling. It was fear, the weakest emotion. But he would not succumb to it. Fate had brought him here for a reason. The prophecy would be fulfilled.
“Once again, Mr. Roth has proven an adept opponent,” Jacob said, his throat dry. He tried to master his tone, struggling for a moment, but it became stronger. He looked at the others—probably FBI agents disguised as the cabinet—gathered to apprehend him. It was an elaborate ruse. He’d known the FBI and CIA had impressive disguise capabilities. He’d seen what he was expecting to see—what he’d been meant to see.
“My name is Mr. Brower. In order to complete the ruse, only the president and vice president and select members of Congress knew about the real threat. The real cabinet is being briefed at this moment in a secure location. The Department of Defense has sent a strike force to the Yucatán. Your little vendetta is over, Mr. Calakmul.”
Jacob nearly laughed in his face. “Is that what you think this is?”
“I know you think this is about a prophecy scrawled on a bit of bark centuries ago,” Brower said with just enough disdain to be mocking. “The German authorities would like to interrogate you for your people’s involvement in their country as well. But we get you first.”
Jacob held his hands out palms up, in a gesture of submission. “Very well, Mr. Brower. You’ve won, clearly. I am in your custody. Does that satisfy you?” Jacob wanted to rip the synthetic mask off the man’s face. He glanced at the other agents who were beginning to push away from the table. None of them were holding firearms. They’d learned how ineffective bullets were from their people’s previous experience with jaguar priests. They were prepared to take him down by hand.
Brower pushed back from the table and rose. He was a tall man, taller than Jacob. “Put your hands behind your head and get down on the floor.”
“You want another act of submission?” Jacob said, chuckling. “I think I will keep you alive, Brower. Until I carve out your heart on an altar dedicated to my god Huracán!”
“You talk a brave game, Calakmul,” Brower said flatly. “But you are just a man.”
“Am I?” Jacob countered. He summoned the magic of his ring, which started to glow.
“You are leaving here in handcuffs,” Brower warned, “or zipped in a body bag. I don’t care which.”
“We’ll see,” Jacob said. With the magic, he shorted the power in the fluorescent lights, plunging the room into darkness. With a thought and the silent command k’äjirik, he shattered every monitor, every tube of glass in the ceilings, even the glasses of water on the serving table.
Dropping into a low squat, Jacob used the table as a shield and transformed into a jaguar. The transformation was his most vulnerable moment. He wouldn’t have dared it if any of them had drawn weapons.
In the chaos that ensued, some reached for cell phones to create light. In his jaguar form, Jacob snarled, shrieked, and leaped at the nearest agent, raking claws against his chest. Chairs were thrown aside, shoved back. People stumbled. They shrieked in terror.
Some had guns and finally drew them as the flickering cell phone light revealed the huge jaguar in their midst. Foolishly, someone fired at him, but Jacob had already summoned his shield. The bullet turned back on the agent shooting it, striking him in the chest and slamming him back. He coughed in surprise, but the sound of the bullet slamming home suggested a bulletproof vest.
Jacob killed a woman next, then another man. The man who’d been seated on the left side of the table ran to the door to try to escape, but the kem äm hurled him across the room. Glass was everywhere, crunching, crackling.
“Don’t shoot!” Brower yelled. “Box him in with chairs!”
Chairs! Jacob wanted to laugh but could only let out another ferocious scream. He jumped up on the table and roared against the agents on the other side. He slashed at them, his claws ripping through their costumes. The smell of ozone was strong in the air.
“Agent Buzz! Agent Buzz!” Brower shouted.
With his heightened senses, Jacob realized they’d unleashed a chemical into the room. It was probably something that would make him—or all of them—fall asleep or become disoriented.
Jacob invoked another bit of Maya magic—uxlabinik—which allowed him to hold his breath for longer than a mortal person could. An agent tried to smash a chair into him, but he caught it with his powerful jaws, wrenched it from the man’s grasp, and flung it across the room. He leaped at his attacker, going for the jugular, and killed him. Agents were scrambling to put on gas masks, which they’d concealed beneath the table.
It was pandemonium. Someone was crying in fear. Literally weeping. At least twelve federal agents, all heavily trained, against one jaguar priest, but they were terrified, disoriented by the dark, and tripping over themselves in the maelstrom. There was no escaping the killing room. Jacob ravaged them all, except for Brower, who had backed into the corner of the room, barricading himself with discarded chairs, trying to hide. He cowered like the coward he was.
Jacob transformed back into his human form, and with a boost of energy given by the magic, he flung aside the chairs one by one, puncturing the plaster and drywall. Motes of kem äm illuminated his arms and made his eyes glow.
As he hurled aside the final barrier, he saw the terror in Brower’s eyes. Jacob grabbed him by the necktie and hoisted him up before slamming him into the wall, pinning him there. With his other hand, Jacob tore the gas mask off his face. With it came bits of the disguise mask he wore, but most of it remained. Good enough. He would fool some witnesses at the Jaguar Temple before he died.
Jacob held him there, savoring the feeling of helplessness in the man’s eyes. His agents were all dead or unconscious from the incapacitating agent. A few, perhaps, feigned death.
“You, I keep,” Jacob muttered.
Brower was gasping involuntarily and kept breathing in the drug until his eyes rolled back in his head. Just to be sure, Jacob removed a needle from his pocket and jammed it into Brower’s thigh. It was a far more potent dose. No matter that he’d intended it for a different man. Brower looked passably like the president, and it was only the show that mattered. The pomp and ceremony.
Now that Brower had gone totally limp, Jacob hoisted him onto his shoulder and carried him to the door. The cameras in the room would reveal little of what had happened in the dark, but they would, of course, find the destruction left in Jacob’s wake. And they’d realize that no matter how they prepared, they were no match for the magic and power of the jaguar priests. He’d been like a young jaguar going through sheep. None would deliver them.
He released the webbing on the door and invoked another word to cause it to fly off its hinges and smash into the far wall. Then he covered himself and Brower with invisibility and a protective web and started down the corridor.