"Morgan, I've got to warn you. Captain Maya Stevenson is a
modern-day woman warrior," Mike Houston said as he sat
down with his boss at a round table beneath a red-and-
white-striped umbrella. "She kicks butt and takes names
later."
Morgan sipped his fragrant Peruvian coffee, his gaze
restless as he looked down the narrow, red tiled walk
toward the entranceway of the India Feliz Restaurant,
where they were shortly to meet the clandestine and
legendary Maya Stevenson. Directly in front of them rose
the massive, loaf-shaped dome of Machu Picchu. It was
December, summertime, and the landscape was dotted with
orchids.
Morgan and Mike had arrived a half hour earlier by
helicopter from Cuzco. Agua Caliente was a small, bustling
tourist town, the closest community to the archeological
wonder that was Machu Picchu.
"She's kind of like a real-life Lara Croft," Mike
continued, using the action heroine and the popular video
game to describe Maya.
"My son, Jason, is in love with Lara Croft, the female
archeologist in his Tomb Raider game." Morgan
chuckled. "He's fourteen years old and plays that game
every chance he gets." Quirking one eyebrow toward Mike,
he said, "A living Lara Croft. That's saying a lot."
Mike, dressed in the typical tourist gear of a Machu
Picchu T-shirt, jeans and hiking boots because he didn't
want to draw attention to himself, grinned and sipped from
his china coffee cup. "You know, for years while we were
out here chasin' the bad guys — the drug dealers — my
soldiers and I would come busting into the area north of
Machu Picchu. We'd fly in with helicopters, then drop down
and start raiding. Our goal was to stop shipments from
getting into Bolivia. Every once in a while we'd get
outnumbered and out-gunned, trapped by the druggies, who
were trying to take us out. I knew there was no help
coming to save our butts. We performed our missions alone,
with the government's approval, but they didn't have the
money to bankroll us like we needed. So if we got into
trouble, we were on our own."
Mike's eyes sparkled. "And out of nowhere would come these
black Boeing Apache assault helicopters. Two of them. And
I mean out of nowhere."
"You've told me about these unmarked black helos coming in
and saving your neck from time to time," Morgan
acknowledged. "Way back when, we didn't know it was a spec
ops — special operations — that was behind them. Now we
do." He looked up at the late morning sky, a pale blue
with thin white clouds silently wafting overhead. Every
now and again a snakelike wisp would coil around the top
of one of the towering mountains that literally surrounded
Agua Caliente. At six thousand feet in altitude, the small
Peruvian town looked to Morgan like a mystical Shangri-la,
hidden deep in the mountainous jungle, in the middle of
nowhere. The roar of the mighty Urubamba river, less than
a half mile away, was clearly audible from the restaurant
patio.
Watching the ceaseless flow of tourists passing the India
Feliz, Morgan heard snatches of German, French, Italian,
as well as British and American accents. It was a Tower of
Babel, quite literally, a baby United Nations.
Morgan had boned up on Machu Picchu and found out that
what drew people from around the world was the spiritual
nature of this old Incan temple complex. It was said to be
the center of feminine energy on the planet, just as the
Tibetan Himalayas, on the opposite side of the globe, were
considered the masculine center. New Agers came here, from
the looks of it — many on some kind of spiritual quest, he
supposed.
"This is a very peaceful place," he murmured.
"And drop-dead gorgeous. Look at the thousands of orchids
clinging to that lava cliff face in front of us. That's
pretty astounding."
Mike grimaced. "Yeah, it is. On the surface it's
peaceful." He pointed at the hazy, mist-shrouded canyon,
where a whole series of mountains nestled shoulder-to-
shoulder along the raging, unharnessed Urubamba. The
mountains looked like soldiers at attention to him. "Go
twenty miles north or east or west, and you're going to
meet drug runners trying to get their cocaine crop across
the Peruvian border into Bolivia, where they know they
won't be pursued by us."
"At least the Peruvian government let Maya come in here
with U.S. support. The records suggest she and her
squadron of women pilots are slowing the trade out of Peru
more than a little. Fifty percent reduction isn't a bad
figure considering what she's up against."
Mike nodded and lifted his chin. "Yeah, she's done one
helluva job on a shoestring budget. Normally, spec ops get
money thrown at them. Millions of dollars, as a matter of
fact. But not her program. It was her idea to start an all-
women squadron hidden deep in the mountain jungles to take
out the bad guys. The only reason the idea took off was
because her father's an army general and backed it. If he
hadn't been, she wouldn't be here today or done the
incredible job she and her band of women rebels have
done." Mike grinned, respect in his tone.
"My wife, Laura, who is a military archivist and history
buff, is very taken with Maya's legend." Morgan waved his
hand. "Not that I've told her that much, but Laura is gung
ho about what she knows, and glad we'll be supporting
Maya's mission now, in place of the CIA."
Rubbing his jaw, Mike sat back and stretched out his long
legs. Two local dogs came up to the table and lay down
between them. One was a black-and-white terrier type and
the other looked like the descendant of a golden retriever
who'd met an ugly mutt in one of the back alleys of Agua
Caliente one night. The dogs sat contentedly near their
feet, hoping for a few handouts. "Personally, I think the
spooks wanted Maya to fail," he stated.
"Of course they did." Morgan chuckled as he finished his
coffee. "She's a woman. And she has a band of women doing
a 'man's job' better, probably, than any male squadron
would do it. Doesn't look good to the Pentagon to have
women outshining men in spec ops, you know?" He smiled
across the white-linen-draped table at Mike, who was also
grinning like a fox.
"I think she'll be happy to hear that her squadron has
been transferred over to you."
Raising his thick black brows, Morgan said, "I hope so.
You've met her, right?"
"Yes, a number of times."
"Anything I should know so I don't put my foot into it
with her? I'd like to get off to a good start with Maya,
since I'm going to be her new boss."
Mike smiled hugely. "She doesn't suffer fools gladly or
for long. She shoots straight from the hip, doesn't waste
words. She was raised an army brat, flew civilian
helicopters when she was just a teenager, and went
directly into the warrant officer program the army
offered. Took her training in Apache combat helicopters at
Fort Rucker, Alabama, which is where everyone takes their
training to fly an assault helo. When she volunteered for
this spook spec ops, she suggested a very provocative idea
to the head honchos — let her choose a band of trained
women Apache pilots, hand-pick the crews, and come down
here to stop the cocaine drug trade from getting into
Bolivia. They promoted her from the warrant ranks and made
her a captain because she was going to be C.O. —
commanding officer — for this mission. She makes Indiana
Jones look like pabulum compared to what she and her women
pilots do down here."
"And why does she have such determination to do this?
That's what I don't understand," Morgan murmured. "It's
the one piece of her background I can't integrate." He
gazed over at Mike. "Do you know why she would scuttle a
potentially brilliant army career and go into a spec ops
mission like this?"
Mike moved uncomfortably. "I know some of it. The rest,
you'll have to ask her." He propped his chin on his folded
hands and placed his elbows on the table. "I know you have
Maya's personnel records. She was adopted as a baby.
General Stevenson was an attaché in São Paulo, Brazil, for
the U.S. ambassador. At that time, he was a light colonel.
He and his wife hadn't been able to conceive a child.
They'd tried everything and nothing worked. One day, a
Brazilian Indian woman came to the embassy asking for
Eugenia Stevenson. She carried a baby girl no more than
two weeks old in her arms. When Mrs. Stevenson came to the
back gate to see the Indian woman, she found the baby
lying on the walk, alone. That's how Maya was adopted —
she was dropped on the U.S. Embassy's doorstep. Eugenia
fell in love with her, and they went ahead with formal
adoption, giving her the name Maya, which means 'mystery."
Mike smiled a little. "No one knows Maya's real origins.
I'd say she was part Brazilian Indian and part Portuguese
aristocracy, judging from her features and skin color."
"So, Maya has a stake down here in South America because
of her bloodlines?"
"Yes, I'd say so. Just like bloodhounds need to hunt, she
needs to be down here with her people, would be my guess."
"That makes sense with what I know. From what I
understand, Inca is her fraternal twin sister," Morgan
said. "They were born in the Amazon. Somehow, Maya was
taken to the city, while Inca was left behind in the
jungle to be raised."
"Yes, and Inca didn't know she was a twin until just
recently, when you worked with her on that drug mission in
the Brazilian Amazon jungle."
"Which is how we learned of Maya and her spec ops," Morgan
murmured. "If she'd never shown up that night after Inca
got wounded, we'd still been in the dark about her and her
mission."
"I think we got lucky," Mike said. "Fate, maybe."
"What else can you tell me about her?"
"I think you know that Inca belongs to a secretive
spiritual group known as the Jaguar Clan?"
"Yes. Does Maya, too?"
"Yes and no. She's a member of the Black Jaguar Clan, a
branch of the main clan."
"What does that all mean? I know you have Quechua Indian
blood running through your veins, and you're more educated
about this mystical belief system than I am."
Mike avoided Morgan's incisive gaze. He knew more than a
little, but he wasn't willing to bet the farm that Morgan
was ready for the bald truth. Mike's wife, Ann, had had
enough trouble grasping what it meant to be member of the
Jaguar Clan, when she'd learned her husband was one. Mike
hedged. "As I understand it, genetically speaking, there's
a strong spiritual mission bred into the people who belong
to the Jaguar Clan. They're here to help people. To make
this a better world to live in. The Black Jaguar Clan is
the underbelly, so to speak. They do the dirty work with
the ugliness of our world, handle the confrontations in
the trenches."
"And you think that's why Maya sacrificed her army career
to become a pain in the ass to the drug lords down here in
Peru?"
Chuckling, Mike nodded. "Would be my guess."
"She's more like a laser-fired rocket," Morgan
murmured. "Almost a zealot or fanatic."
"Isn't that what it takes to be successful at something
like this?" Mike questioned. "And aren't you a little bit
of a fanatic yourself? Didn't your own background, your
unsavory experiences in Vietnam, turn you into a do-gooder
for those who couldn't fight and win for themselves?"
Lifting his hands, Morgan said, "Guilty as charged. I'm
the pot calling the kettle black."
"Glad you can see that you and Maya have the same jaguar
spots." Mike chuckled. "It takes one to know its own kind."
Morgan raised his chin, suddenly alert. "Is that her?"
Mike cocked his head, his eyes narrowing. There, turning
into the entrance of the French restaurant, was a woman
who stood six foot tall. Her long black hair, slightly
curled from the high humidity, swung loosely about her
proud shoulders and full breasts. She wore khaki-colored
shorts and hiking boots with thick black socks peeking
over the tops. Her dark brown T-shirt had a picture of a
cream-colored Condor, its wings spread wide, across it.
Over her left shoulder hung a fairly large olive-green
backpack. A pair of sunglasses on a bright red cord swung
between her breasts.
"Yeah, that's her," he told Morgan in a low tone.