Xibalba

CHAPTER 14

The rotor wash stirred the treetops, like a gigantic invisible hand ruffling the nap of a sprawling green rug. The whirlwind revealed a narrow gap in the vegetation, not wide enough to land the helicopter, but just enough to expose the jungle floor, twenty or thirty feet below.

“That’s as close as I can get you,” Kasey called out.

Bones leaned close to Miranda. “I’ll go first so I can catch you.”

She ignored him, but instead of disdain, her face wore a look of concern. “My father is in no shape to be jumping out of helicopters.”

“We won’t be jumping,” Maddock explained. “I rig a line and we’ll rappel down.”

Miranda’s expression indicated that she regarded this solution as little better, but instead of arguing with Maddock, she turned to her father. “Maybe you should sit this one out, Dad. I’ll get video of everything.”

Bell patted her arm. “Miranda, you worry too much. I’m not going to turn back, not when I’m this close.”

“Rappelling is ninety-nine percent mental,” Maddock said, trying to reassure both of them. “I’ll rig two lines so one of us can go down side by side with you.”

Bell just nodded.

Maddock rigged a pair of releasable abseils with 100-foot lines, while Bones got the bags with all their equipment prepped for descent. They both worked quickly, knowing that Kasey wouldn’t be able to hold position for long. Bones went down first, after which Maddock lowered the gear down to him. Maddock then gave a quick refresher course on technique for the benefit of everyone that remained. Angel had done some climbing and rappelling with him, but it was a perishable skill. Miranda listened patiently, then volunteered to guide her father down. Not surprisingly, she knew her way around the ropes.

Eight minutes after arriving at the designated coordinates, they were all on the ground. Maddock pulled the ropes from their anchor aboard the hovering helicopter, and as they fell in coils around him, the aircraft banked away and disappeared over the forest canopy.

Maddock and Bones went to work with the machetes, clearing a landing zone for the helicopter, while Angel and Miranda set up their base camp. Kasey would return in twelve hours, which meant that, regardless of whether they found the City of Shadow, they would be spending a night in the bush, and because tropical rainstorms could strike without warning, shelter was an immediate priority, though given the extreme humidity, Maddock wasn’t sure they would notice a difference. After just a few minutes of hacking away at the vegetation, he was drenched.

While the others were occupied with their respective tasks, Bell started poking around at the perimeter of the clearing, looking for anything that might indicate a Maya presence in the remote jungle, but it was Bones who discovered their first lead when the blade of his machete rang against solid stone, concealed under a dense covering of vines. He scraped away the undergrowth to reveal a stelae, carved with distinctive Mayan glyphs and topped with a full-relief sculpture of a style similar to what they had glimpsed at Copán.

“That’s the lightning dog,” Bell exclaimed. “Just like the image on the guidestone. Miranda, get video of this.”

As she moved in to record the discovery with her GoPro, Bell turned to Maddock. “You were right. The City of Shadow is here.”

“It’s an encouraging sign,” Maddock admitted, trying to temper his own enthusiasm.

Bell positioned himself so that he was facing the stone effigy. “This marker would have stood beside the ancient Maya road.” He pointed to the jungle behind it. “That’s where we need to look.”

They went to work, clearing the free-standing monument and then pushing the trail in the indicated direction. It was slow-going, and exhausting work, but neither of the two former-SEALs was going to admit to fatigue, ringing the figurative bell to call it quits. After an hour however, Maddock was feeling a little light-headed, a sure sign of dehydration, so he swallowed his pride and called for a water break.

Angel stepped forward with a water bottle, but instead of handing it to him, she pointed at the machete. “Trade you.”

As if that was her cue, Miranda approached Bones, one hand extended, palm up. “Hand it over, big guy.”

“What? I don’t get water?”

“Get it from Maddock.”

“He backwashes. If I’m going to swap spit with someone, I’d rather it was you.” Bones gave her a lewd wink.

Miranda shook her head. “And here I thought you SEALs were willing to drink each other’s piss.”

Without missing a beat, Bones turned to Maddock. “We’ve done that, right?”

“Stop!” Angel cried out with a shudder. “Not another word.”

She grabbed Maddock’s machete and went to work, hacking at the underbrush, while Bones just laughed.

The mood turned serious again when Miranda took a step forward and abruptly plunged forward. Her right leg, from the knee down, had disappeared into a hole covered by foliage. She caught herself and withdrew her leg, which was soaked from a complete immersion.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she spat, throwing down her machete.

Bell however, was excited by the mishap. He hastened forward and began clearing away the area around the hole, which turned out to be considerably larger than it first appeared, stretching several yards in either direction before curving away into the forest, out of sight. Yet, despite the fact that it was clearly a pool of water, the surface remained obscured beneath a blanket of floating vegetation, and the limbs of trees growing at its edge reached out to form a canopy that shrouded the area in ominous shadow.

“A cenote?” Maddock asked.

Bell shook his head. “Not exactly. Cenotes are naturally occurring pools, caused when limestone caverns collapse. The geology here is all wrong for that. This is a cistern. A man-made reservoir. The Maya of the Petén region didn’t have lakes or rivers, so they collected rainwater in enormous cisterns called chultuns.”

Bones regarded the pool with uncustomary apprehension. “Do we dive it?”

“We’re the first to find this,” Miranda said. “It’s probably full of sacrificial offerings. Dad, this is exactly what you’ve been looking for.”

Bell gave a patient smile. “There may be some trinkets in there, but unlike the cenotes, the chultuns were primarily utilitarian.”

“So this isn’t an entrance to the Underworld,” Maddock said. “Symbolic or otherwise.”

“Correct. And if this is indeed the City of Shadow, dedicated to worshipping the Lords of Death, then we may actually be looking for a temple.”

Maddock, who normally would have jumped at a chance to dive, felt an unexpected measure of relief at the reprieve.

They cleared a path around the chultun and kept going. Their trailblazing uncovered more artifacts — stone benches and carved blocks that might once have been stelae. Thirty feet or so beyond the cistern, Angel uncovered another stelae, still standing but considerably more weathered than the first.

Miranda moved closer to capture a video record. “Another guide dog?”

Bell reached out for the effigy, but as he did, Maddock saw something moving atop the stone marker. Bones shouted a warning, but before he could do anything else, there was a flash of movement. It looked like a vine — emerald green, flecked with gold — but it was moving, springing toward Bell’s outstretched hand.

And then something else moved, striking even faster. The blade of Angel’s machete slashed through the air between Bell and the stelae, slicing the vine-thing in two. One piece dropped at Bell’s feet, while the rest of it began coiling and writhing atop the standing stone before falling away into the jungle beyond.

For a moment, no one else moved. Bell looked like he might pass out. Then Miranda let out her breath in a long sigh of relief. “That was too close.”

Bones bent down and looked at the severed end of the creature. “It’s a palm pit viper.”

“Poisonous?” Angel asked.

“Venomous,” Bones corrected. “Poison refers to something you eat. Venom comes from something that wants to eat you. And yeah, their venom usually won’t kill you, but since we can’t exactly head to the ER, it’s probably best not to test that theory.” He pushed into underbrush beside the stela, evidently looking for the rest of the snake. “It’s a shame you had to kill it,” he went on. “These things are… ”

There was a sudden noise of branches breaking and then Bones was gone, swallowed by the jungle.