The Navy cameras refocus, the images revealing the being’s face—that of an enormous alien viper. The mammoth skull, adorned in featherlike scales, is as large as a billboard. Two crimson eyes blaze like luminescent beacons, the reptilian pupils—vertical slits of amber, narrowing in the morning light. A set of bizarre jaws opens, individually stretching and extending two ungodly ebony fangs, each tooth easily five foot long, the rest of the distended mouth filled with rows of scalpel-sharp teeth.

A gargantuan reptilian gasp sends thick layers of oily, scalelike emerald green feathers bristling along the alien’s broad back.

Sharp spines along the creature’s belly grip the iridium surface as the alien rears up in the manner of an immense cobra--the beast gazing skyward for the briefest of moments, as if analyzing the atmosphere.

With lightning speed, it plunges headfirst into the sea, its monstrous girth disappearing beneath the waves.

The president and his Joint Chiefs stare dumbfounded at the monitors.

“Good God … was that thing real?” Chaney whispers.

A shaken communications specialist listens to an incoming message in his headphone. “Admiral, the Scranton reports the E.T. is moving through the thermocline, its last recorded speed … Jesus—ninety-two knots. Course is south by southeast. Sir, the life-form appears to be heading directly for the Yucatan Peninsula.”

Chichén Itza

An agitated crowd of more than two hundred thousand zealots has gathered in the parking lot of Chichén Itza, chanting and throwing stones at the heavily armed Mexican militia, as they attempt to force their way through the blocked main entrance of the ancient Mayan city.

Inside the park, four American M1-A2 Abrams tanks have taken up defensive positions along each side of the Kukulcan pyramid. In the surrounding jungle, two squadrons of heavily armed Green Berets lie in wait, hidden among the dense foliage.

Just west of the Kukulcan pyramid is the Great Ball Court of Chichén Itza, an immense complex erected in the shape of the letter “I,” enclosed on all sides by walls of limestone block.

The eastern wall of the ball court is composed of a three-story structure known as the Temple of the Jaguars, its columned entrance sculpted in the form of plumed serpents. The structure rising along the ball court’s northern border is called the Temple of the Bearded Man. The façade along both of these vertical walls features engravings of the great Kukulcan emerging from the jowls of a plumed serpent. Other scenes depicts Kukulcan, dressed in a tunic, lying dead, being engulfed by a two-headed serpent.