Remo took her hand. “Thanks for sticking around,” he said.

  “Think nothing—” Her hands flailed in the air and she fell, sprawling. “What was that?”

  The earth moved again. “Another tremor,” Chiun said. “Milder. This time will be easier.”

  The boy scrambled to his feet along with the sleepy Mayans, who blinked in astonishment at the new rumblings.

  “Another chance,” Lizzie said, almost in a whisper. “I can’t believe it. I never thought…” Her words drifted off as her eyes met Remo’s. “Do you want to stay? I’ll stay if you do.”

  “I don’t think we have to this time,” Remo said, watching her eyes flood with relief. “Will the time module work?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” she said, running for the Temple of Magic. “I sent the vase into the future, and then set the controls back, but the vase didn’t return.”

  Remo stopped in his tracks. “It didn’t?”

  “No,” Lizzie said quietly.

  “Something’s wrong. I don’t know if we ought to risk it.”

  “It is time to risk something,” Chiun said, his hand on Po’s shoulder. “I have spent quite enough time in this place, and I wish to return. I will go.”

  “If you go, I’ll go,” Remo said.

  “Well, nobody’s going without me,” Lizzie laughed as she tried to keep her balance on the shifting earth.

  “Okay, everybody in,” Remo commanded, when they reached the temple. “Might as well give this thing another try.” He helped Lizzie into the pod. Imperiously, Chiun followed her in.

  “You too, squirt,” Remo said to the boy.

  Po looked over his shoulder. Footsteps were approaching. Nata-Ah appeared, holding a length of cotton bandage in her hands. Her face fell at the sight of the new gods preparing to depart.

  “I cannot go,” the boy said awkwardly. “Someone must remain to rebuild the city—”

  “For God’s sake, that’ll take years,” Remo said.

  “I have years,” the boy said quietly. “I have my whole life.”

  “Now, I can’t let you—”

  “Please,” Po said. “I belong here now, as I never belonged in my own time. I have come to the end of my journey. As my father predicted, I have walked with the gods, and spoken for them. Now it is time for the gods to go. Let them leave behind their voice.”

  He limped to the doorway of the time module and bowed to Chiun. Nata-Ah was behind him.

  Chiun rose, walked over to the two children, and whispered something in Po’s ear. The boy nodded. Then they both bowed to Chiun and to Remo and to Lizzie with the cool authority of born rulers.

  “Please enter,” the boy said to Remo in a voice that sounded more like a man’s than a boy’s.

  Remo went in.

  With another bow, Po closed the door and threw the switch. “Good-bye, my friends,” he called.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  LIZZIE CAME TO IN DESPAIR. “The log,” she moaned. “I forgot the damned captain’s log.”

  “Not so fast. We may still be there,” Remo said. He opened the door.

  The Temple of Magic was in ruins. Outside the door to the pod lay a freshly broken vase. “Look here,” Remo said, picking up the pieces. “It must have rolled out of the pod. I think we made it.”

  Among the shards of pottery was a small scrap of parchment, grown as fragile as an insect’s wings with the years. On it was a faint message: “I love you, Dick.”

  Remo handed the parchment to Lizzie. “Is this all you were going to tell him?”

  She smiled. “In the end, that was all there was to say.”

  In the outer chamber, Remo found the ancient laser weapon he had saved to take to Smith. “Everything’s just the way we left it.”

  “Is it?” Chiun said, beckoning them back to the wreckage of the plane. In the chamber reserved for the gods’ flaming chariot was a blank space. The Cassandra and everything in her was gone.

  “But—we just came from there,” Remo said.

  Chiun held up a precautionary finger. “You forget, we left five thousand years ago. And five thousand years ago was this machine destroyed.”

  “Who did it?” Lizzie demanded hotly. “Who would have done such a thing?”

  “The only sensible one among you. The boy. It was my last request to him before we left.”

  Remo stared at him in astonishment. “Do you know what you did? What’s been lost?”

  “What has been lost? The opportunity for others to walk yet again in the footsteps of Kukulcan, bringing their modern ways to an ancient world? Oh, they would come with good intentions, these others, just as we did. And like ourselves, they would bring confusion and violence to their land. No, Remo. It is a mistake to inflict our time on another. We have left Po as our ambassador. Trust him.”

  They walked outside. The overgrown jungle was back to replace the village square of Yaxbenhaltun.

  You will be as dust in the wind of the sea, Remo remembered. Quintanodan’s prophecy had come true; the splendor of the Maya was no more. “Do you think the Olmec won, after all? Are they still around, calling themselves the Lost Tribes?”

  “We’ll never know,” Lizzie said. She tramped through the high grass to the east of the temple. “There’s no volcano,” she said. “Bocatan’s gone.” Something on the ground fixed her attention. “Remo, look here.”

  A mound of blackened, moss-covered rock protruded from the earth beside her. “This wasn’t here before.”

  “It’s just a rock.”

  “No,” she said excitedly, scratching at the moss with her fingernails. “That’s stone. Cut stone. This was built.” Her eyes flashed. “Another temple, maybe. Or, better yet, a tomb. Maybe the city was reorganized after the earthquake. Oh, God, I’ve got to get a team together.”

  “How about your friend Dick Diehl?” Remo suggested. “He might be interested.”

  “He might,” Lizzie said. “Think I could go with you as far as the first town with a telephone?”

  “If you must,” Chiun said.

  Lizzie looked up at the old man. He was smiling.

  · · ·

  “What am I going to tell Smitty?” Remo lamented as he and Chiun walked through the double doors of Folcroft Sanitarium. Under Remo’s arm was a box marked “Fragile,” which had flown with them from Guatemala City.

  “Tell him the truth.”

  “But there’s no evidence anymore. The plane’s gone, the time module’s gone, even Cooligan’s log is gone.”

  Chiun tapped the box. “You have the gun.”

  “Yeah. And the flowers. I brought some of the white flowers.”

  Smith opened the box and sifted through a pile of greenish metallic powder covering some rotting greens. “What is this supposed to be?”

  Remo looked inside. The weapon had disintegrated during the flight. “It used to be a laser gun,” Remo said, feeling foolish as he spoke. “We found them, just the way Dr. Diehl described…”

  “This isn’t funny, Remo,” Smith said acidly. “Now, I realize that you may have cause to feel angry, but this sort of practical joke goes far beyond the limits of good taste. This could have been a matter of national security, and I’m sure that when you’re calm you’ll realize that not every assignment turns out to be terribly interesting. Nevertheless—”

  “Hold it, hold it,” Remo said. “Not interesting?”

  “I’m referring to Dr. Diehl, of course. I did try to reach you as soon as I found out this morning, but by then you were already en route back from Guatemala. There was nothing I could do.”

  “What about Dr. Diehl?”

  “He’s changed his story. Practically admits he was lying. ’Strain,’ he calls it. Now that he’s no longer suffering under this so-called strain, he’s confessed to a certain confusion about the lasers he thought he saw. The CIA is convinced that they never existed. So am I. Just some hostile Indians, no doubt.”

  “What about the Red Cross transmissions?”

  “Garbled. They were probably panicking because of the impending crash of their helicopter. We’ve sent in rescue squads for the bodies. Your work, I suppose, excavating them from the wreckage?”

  “All but Elizabeth Drake. She was alive.”

  “So I’ve heard. The rescue team looked for the two of you for some time. Where did you go, by the way?”

  “Oh—”

  “We continued on our training expedition,” Chiun chimed in. “The jungle was ideal for our purposes, O Illustrious Emperor.”

  “That’s good,” Smith said absently. He was leafing through the most recent batch of computer printouts on his desk. “Er—anything else?”

  “I guess not,” Remo said.

  “Then leave. You’re not even supposed to be here at the sanitarium,” Smith said.

  “He thought that laser weapon was a joke,” Remo fumed as they headed toward Folcroft’s front entrance.

  “It did look more like a joke than a gun,” Chiun said, chuckling. “Besides, emperors usually discard the truth. Otherwise, politics would be impossible to understand.”

  A sweating man rushing into the sanitarium whizzed by, narrowly missing a head-on collision with Remo.

  “Hey, watch it, fella.”

  “’Scuse me,” the man said, smiling twitchily. “I was in kind of a rush there.”

  “It is quite all right,” Chiun said graciously.

  The man appraised the frail-looking old Oriental in his yellow gown. “Say, I know you two.”

  “No, you don’t,” Remo said.

  “Sure. Don’t you remember?”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Remo whispered in Korean. As it was, they had left too many witnesses through the years. Remo was not supposed to exist. For him to be recognized was unthinkable.

  “No, really,” the man insisted. “It was out at Edwards Air Base. I ejected from a burning F-24 and got a streamer for a chute. You saved my life.”

  “Oh,” Remo said, forcing a casual smile. “Well, just forget that, okay?” He backed away.

  “That’s what you said before. But I’ll tell you, if it wasn’t for you, I’d have never gotten to see my kid. Oh, here.” He fumbled in his pockets for two cigars and thrust them at Remo and Chiun.

  “It’s a boy,” he said proudly. “I’m just coming to tell my pop he’s a grandpop. He’s a patient here.”

  “That was thoughtful,” Chiun said.

  “Nah. When they got empty planes over at the base, we can use them, long as none of the brass finds out.” He laughed. “Hey, you got kids?”

  Remo shook his head.

  “It’s the greatest feeling in the world. I feel like it’s the first time old Mike Cooligan ever did anything just exactly right. Man, this baby is a born flyer.”

  “Cooligan?” Remo repeated.

  “Yeah. Irish from way back. My pop’s name is Kurt. That’s what we’ve named the kid. Kurt Cooligan, after his grandpop. The old man’s going to love that.”

  “Kurt Cooligan,” Remo whispered, choking on the sounds. “Going to be a pilot too, huh?” He smiled weakly.

  “The best. I tell you, this kid’s going to know all the basics of every fighter ever made by the time he’s twelve. He’s going to go to military school, and then a good college, Harvard, maybe, so he gets every chance I never got. Hell, with Harvard he could be president if he wants to. An astronaut, even. Geez, listen to me foam at the mouth. The kid’s not even a week old.” He laughed and slapped Remo’s back heartily.

  “Uh, I dunno,” Remo ventured. “Maybe flying wouldn’t be such a good idea…”

  Chiun elbowed him hard in the ribs.

  “Oof.” Remo doubled over.

  “My associate means to say that we congratulate you on your good fortune but, alas, we must take our leave.”

  “Sure,” Cooligan said. “Say, is your friend all right?” He gestured to Remo, who was trying to refill the oxygen supply that had so suddenly left his lungs.

  “It is nothing,” Chiun assured him.

  “Would you mind giving me a little warning next time?” Remo complained once they were off the Folcroft grounds. “I don’t know why you always take me by surprise.”

  “Because you are a trusting and foolish white man,” Chiun gloated.

  “I mean why you’d want to,” Remo objected.

  “That is because your mouth usually contains more material than your brain.”

  “Just because I told that nut—”

  “Fortunately, you told that nut nothing. If, by chance, your words had succeeded in dissuading Mr. Mike Cooligan from forcing his son to be a pilot, the history of the world might be changed.”

  “So what?” Remo said. “I’ve been hearing this history-of-the-world crap until it’s coming out my gazoo. I don’t care about history. I read Cooligan’s diary. That poor guy gave up his life for some dumb Air Force mission that never even happened.”

  “I too read the diary,” Chiun said. “Kurt Cooligan did not give his life for a mission, but for a world. And that world was better for him. Does that not make his life worthy in your eyes?”

  “Kukulcan,” Remo said. “I guess it’s something to become a god.”

  Chiun grunted. “If one cannot be the Master of Sinanju, it is acceptable,” he said.

  “It’s funny, thinking of Cooligan the way he was in the captain’s log, and knowing that right now he’s just a baby.”

  “It is as the Mayans say. The past and the future are one.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Remo said. “I mean, if that were true, you’d be able to read my future, right?”

  “Oh, but I can, I can,” Chiun said mysteriously.

  “You can?”

  “Yes. In your future is a long training expedition.”

  “A what? We just came off one of those.”

  “You were inadequate. We will have to begin anew.”

  “Oh, no,” Remo said. “No more North Pole. No more desert. No jungle, no, sir.”

  “You see? You know the details already. You are a born prophet, my son. Which way is north?”

  “That way. Toward the motel. I’ve got eight quarters for your vibrating bed. And I’ll send out for room service.”

  Chiun’s eyes narrowed. “Duck a l’orange?”

  “I’ll kill the duck myself if I have to,” Remo said.

  “Cable TV?”

  “All night long.”

  “A swimming pool, perhaps?”

  “Kidney shaped.”

  Chiun put his bony arm around Remo. “Ah, well, there is time for the training expedition tomorrow, I suppose. Would you like me to recite one of the Ung poems of the great Wang? It is very short, only six hundred stanzas.”

  Remo swallowed. “Love it,” he said.

  The old man beamed. “Sometimes, Remo, you are not so bad for a white boy.”

  EPILOGUE

  LOS ANGELES TIMES

  PROGRESSO, GUATEMALA (API)

  The husband and wife team of Elizabeth and Richard Diehl, both archaeologists at UCLA, have unearthed what could prove to be the oldest intact tomb in the western world.

  Dating from the third millennium, B.C., it is the tomb of one of the first kings of the Classical Period in ancient Mayan civilization.

  Named simply Po, the occupant of the tomb was known as the Lame King. According to the inscriptions on his sarcophagus, King Po did so much to make the Mayan empire the advanced society we regard it today that he was called “the voice of the gods” by his people. Next to the king’s remains was uncovered the sarcophagus of his only wife, the beautiful and just Queen Nata-Ah.

  Lining the walls of the tomb were many precious artifacts and sculptures, including a magnificent rendition of the famous white god Kukulcan, adorned with the traditional serpents and feathers found on other statues of the Mayan deity.

  Two other statues, also found in the tomb, are currently causing lively speculation in archaeological circles. Previously unidentified in Mayan findings, the statues depict two human males. One is an old man of obviously Oriental features. The other is younger, possibly a warrior. The features of the statue are unimpressive except for a pair of exceptionally thick wrists.

  Excerpt

  If you enjoyed Time Trial, no one’s gonna stop you from leaving a nice review with some stars attached. Cheesy? Yeah, but it really helps. That’s the biz, sweetheart.

  And if you did like Time Trial, maybe you’ll like Last Drop too. It’s the next novel in the Destroyer series, and should be available wherever truly fine e-books are sold.

  Last Drop

  HIS NAME WAS REMO and he was racing a truck. On foot.

  And winning.

  The truck was a pickle truck, and the toll collectors at the George Washington Bridge passed glances at one another as the six-foot-tall blur whizzed past them down the inside inbound lane into New York City.

  “For a second, I thought it was a guy,” one of the toll booth operators said to his companion in the next lane.

  “Yeah, me too. Must be the light.”

  The first operator looked at the twilit sky and nodded uncertainly. “Must be.”

  “This work can get to you,” the second operator said, and they both laughed, because the blur had been barreling along at sixty miles an hour through the toll gate, and had actually sped up once the pickle truck behind it moved through its gears. And now the blur was in front of the truck, seeming to turn into a ball. The ball was rising off the ground and rolling over the truck’s cab and onto its canvas roof and over the length of it and disappearing down the back, tucking neatly inside the back end of the pickup.

  Remo came out of the spin near the end of the bridge, landing on both feet. He’d almost blown it when he caught a glimpse of the driver’s face as Remo rolled with the wind up onto the hood of the cab. The driver’s mouth had opened and he had begun to yell something to his partner in the cab, and then Remo had halted the momentum of his spin to stick his head inside the driver’s window.

  The passenger, a lanky fellow whose features had turned gray instantaneously, screamed. The driver only stared, his eyes glassy and his lips forming a rubbery “o” at the apparition on the hood of his truck.