The Mayan Secrets

Chapter 22

Sam and Remi approached the forested edge of the open plaza and stopped for a moment to exchange a brief embrace. Remi said, “Remind me never to get a chemical peel.”

“I doubt that you’ll forget, but I think his was worse than most,” Sam said.

“Yes. It’s amazing what some men will do for a little extra beauty.”

Sam chuckled. They returned to the great plaza and saw it was dominated by two big CH-47 Chinook troop carrier helicopters that had set down on both ends of the cleared space. Soldiers in battle dress had taken positions in various parts of the ruin, and there was a squad surrounding the sun awning, where Sarah Allersby and her group stood uneasily while Commander Rueda spoke with her.

Sarah Allersby raised her eyes and looked stricken when she saw Sam and Remi arrive, looking a bit disheveled, sweaty, and dirty.

“Hello, Sarah,” said Remi.

“How dare you come back here?” Sarah Allersby turned toward Commander Rueda. “I just had some men escort these interlopers away from this vulnerable site.”

Sam said, “What she means is that she gave two of her thugs her blessing to murder us in the jungle.”

“That’s absurd! Me? That’s laughable.” As though to prove it, Sarah managed an unconvincing laugh.

Commander Rueda said, “Everyone save this conversation for headquarters.” He turned to the lieutenant in charge of the squad. “You and your men search everything — tents, helicopters, every bag, box, or case.”

“You have no right to do that,” Sarah Allersby protested.

“You’ll have your chance to argue with our methods in court.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” she said coldly.

Sam said, “Commander, we left the two men who were supposed to kill us tied up in the jungle. We shouldn’t really leave them like that.”

“Of course,” said Commander Rueda. He turned to the lieutenant again. “Assign three men to go with the Fargos and take the suspects into custody.”

Remi took a step, but Sam held her back. “You’ve earned a rest.” He moved his eyes in the direction of the men searching Sarah Allersby’s campsite.

Remi nodded in agreement, and Sam kissed her cheek. “Nice work back there. See you in a little while.”

Sam walked across the plaza with the three soldiers. As he walked, he noticed that Rueda’s soldiers had lined up the armed guards in a shaded area by the pyramid. Their rifles were stacked in a pile a hundred feet away.

Sam led the men along the path. The distance Ruiz and Russell had taken them came as a bit of a surprise to Sam. On the first trip, he had been trying to make the walk as slowly as possible to give the federal police time to get here. On the way back, he and Remi had been running. This time, the mile of jungle path seemed to take forever. But at last he reached the little valley where Ruiz and Russell had taken them.

Russell and Ruiz were gone. Sam was silent for a moment while the three soldiers looked at him. He pointed at the spot. “This is where we left them tied up. I guess I did a bad job of tying.”

The sergeant said, “Are you sure this is the place?”

Sam pointed. “There’s the grave they had me dig.”

One of the soldiers squatted nearby. “I found something,” he said. “One of them rolled from there to here, where the other one was.” He picked up a strip of leather from the ground and examined it closely. “He chewed through the other one’s leather cord.”

“I should have thought of that and tied them to trees,” Sam said. “Maybe we can pick up their trail.”

The soldier who seemed to be a tracker walked around the perimeter of the clearing, staring at the ground, then touching the foliage. He started into the jungle, then came back, tried another place and came back. “I can’t find any footprints. I don’t know which way to go.”

“They’re barefoot,” said Sam. “We took their boots, so there won’t be any boot prints.”

The sergeant shrugged. “They won’t get far barefoot. They’ll have to go back to the camp or die out here.”

Sam stared at the ground for a few seconds, reluctant to give up. The three soldiers began to move off up the path, and Sam turned to follow. He stopped, walked through the bushes around the clearing but found nothing. Finally, he sighed, then trotted off after the soldiers.

When Sam and his companions returned to the plaza, the army helicopters’ doors were open and people were climbing aboard. Soldiers loaded the two civilian copters with the camera equipment, folded tents, and supplies. The camera crew, Sarah Allersby’s assistants, and the dig supervisors got in.

What caught Sam’s eye was Sarah Allersby in handcuffs, being escorted by Commander Rueda to one of the two big military helicopters.

Remi stood, waiting for Sam, at the field. She ran to meet him. “Where are they?”

“One of them rolled over to where the other one was and chewed through his leather shoelace. They got away.”

“I’ll bet it was Ruiz,” Remi said. “He has beautiful teeth.”

“The sergeant says they’ll never get anywhere on foot. On the other hand, I keep remembering that lots of people in this part of the world don’t have shoes. What’s going on?”

“Rueda said that Sarah had photocopies of the four pages of the codex that made up the map in her suitcase, with this site marked. She also had aerial photos of the same four sites we picked out, and a few more. It’s not the codex, but it’s proof that she at least had the original codex long enough to photograph it.”

“She’s under arrest?”

Remi nodded. “She’s on her way to be booked in Guatemala City for possession of stolen property and for damaging this site. I think Rueda wants to arrange something public, to discourage the other people who do this kind of thing.”

“If we want a ride to civilization, we’d better go retrieve our backpacks,” said Sam.

“I did that while you were gone,” she whispered. “I also went back to retrieve our pistols in the woods. I broke them down and put the pieces in the packs. I’ve already put them aboard.”

“Good thinking. Thanks.” Sam looked around him as the soldiers climbed into the helicopters. A half dozen of them remained near the pyramid, setting up a camp of their own, to guard the site. “We’d better get seats in the chopper before they run out of room.”

Remi climbed in, and Sam followed. There were seats of crisscross nylon netting along both walls. They selected a pair, strapped themselves in, and a minute later the engine growled to life and then lifted the big chopper into the air.

Jerry Ruiz looked up at the sky. First one, then another, then the last two helicopters soared overhead. He judged that they were moving southward toward Guatemala City.

“It’s safe to head back to the pyramid now,” Russell said. “Two of those were definitely the big troop carriers.”

“Okay. Let’s go,” said Ruiz. “Keep your eyes open to see where Fargo threw our boots.”

Russell walked for a few feet, then stepped on a sharp stone, hopped on one foot, and landed on a pointed stick in the path. “Ow! Ah!” he said, sat on the path, and stared at the soles of both feet, then got up again and moved ahead gingerly. Russell’s already red and painful face now looked worse. Much of the sandy gravel that Sam Fargo had thrown in it had been stuck to his raw skin and was held there by the Vaseline, and when he’d been hog-tied on the ground, his face had also picked up more dirt, grass, and small sticks.

Ruiz wisely said nothing. There was no need to remind Russell of his face or to warn him that the path was treacherous and studded with sharp stones or that the low brush on both sides had thorns. Russell had already sworn about it six or seven times in the last ten minutes.

Ruiz had trouble walking too. The shovel had left a shallow cut and a large bruise on his leg just above the knee, his right hand hurt, and his breathing was labored because of some damage to a rib or two. Nevertheless, he had managed to roll over to where Russell lay and chew his way through Russell’s leather bonds. It had not been easy, but he’d known that they had to get free or they’d be dragged into the Guatemala City jail and charged with attempted murder. And even if the soldiers didn’t find them, they could easily die out here.

Ruiz had been raised in a remote village in Mexico. He knew that two bleeding, helpless men could hardly go unnoticed by the jaguars that patrolled the jungles at night. He also knew that the worst dangers didn’t always look the worst. Fatal malaria, Chagas’ disease, or dengue fever could come from the bite of a tiny insect. So he had done what was necessary to free them. They’d lain still in the jungle, covered with fallen leaves, while the soldiers came and went. Maybe now all would be well. But he was concerned about Russell, who had gotten a little crazy since he’d been painted blue. He was in a constant state of rage, goaded on by the pain in his face and the pain of his anger.

Ruiz was worried. Poor judgment was a vulnerability. Mistakes one could shrug off in a city would kill a man out in the jungle. Ruiz hobbled off the path and selected two five-foot saplings from a stand of little trees growing where a big one had fallen and broke off the branches to make two walking sticks. “Here. This will help.”

Using their sticks, they moved on in silence for a time. Leaning on the sticks kept them from stepping down too hard on sharp stones and gave them enough balance to avoid some of the worst spots. It took them about an hour to reach the ancient city. While they were still on the edge of the jungle, they could see that the whole site had been evacuated except for a half dozen soldiers, who loitered by the great pyramid’s steps. They had built a small fire and pitched three two-man tents.

Russell stepped toward the open area, but Ruiz held him back. “Wait,” said Ruiz. “They’re soldiers.”

“I can see that.”

“What if they’ve been left here to wait for us?” asked Ruiz.

Russell stopped and thought, but he didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

Ruiz prompted him. “The Fargos must have told the soldiers we tried to kill them.”

Russell said, “All this is beside the point. We’re a hundred miles from anywhere. We don’t have shoes, water, or food. They do.”

“They also have guns. Assault rifles, full auto,” said Ruiz.

“We can wait until they’re asleep, crawl up, and cut their throats.”

“There are six — two in each tent. Even if each of us could kill two men in a tent with a knife we don’t have, the one would yell while the other was being killed. There would still be two in another tent who would hear it and open fire on us.”

“We can’t walk out of here barefoot,” said Russell. “It’s too far to civilization.”

“Wait,” said Ruiz. “Look over there. They left the sun awning up. We can wrap our feet in the canvas and walk out.”

Russell’s expression made him look like a wounded animal, but when he saw what Ruiz was talking about, he seemed to calm down. “Okay. Let’s try it. I don’t want to get into a fight with six men any more than you do.”

Ruiz was relieved. “I’ll go get the canvas.” Without waiting for an answer, he started off in the jungle outside the open space. The rough, unpredictable ground tortured his feet, but he got there. He looked in the direction of the pyramid to be sure the soldiers by the steps couldn’t see him. Then he used the sharp end of one of the aluminum poles to cut a hole in the canvas, tore a large swatch of the fabric off, rolled it up, and carried it with him.

When he reached Russell, they tore four squares, put a foot in the center of each, and used the remnants of their leather shoelaces to tie the canvas around their ankles. They looked at the late-afternoon shadows of the buildings on the plaza to judge the compass points, took up their walking sticks, and began to hobble off into the jungle toward the south.

“Next time, I won’t fool around with neatness,” Russell said. “No grave digging, no taking them off somewhere else so nobody ever knows. If I see them, I’ll open fire. If there are witnesses, I’ll shoot them too.”

As Ruiz and Russell made their way along the jungle paths, Ruiz had to listen to a constant, unending litany of complaints. Each time Russell started up again, he promised to kill Sam and Remi Fargo in more elaborate and time-consuming ways. Ruiz walked in silence. Some might have advised that talking would have eased the pain in Ruiz’s feet, ribs, and hand. But the pain served to take his attention away from Russell’s complaints, and that was enough for now. Later on, if he and Russell ever made it through this green prison and Ruiz kept the use of his limbs, he would be happy to talk about the killing.