“What are those flat areas I’m seeing? Roads?”
“We think they’re surfaces built to catch the rain and direct it here to the pool. They are all slightly tilted toward the center and they go only a couple hundred yards.”
Sam stood close to Remi and said, “We also think the hills along the sides of the strips are buildings — one of them is quite large.”
“So the site could be a city?”
“Let’s just say they invested a lot of labor on architecture,” said Sam.
“You’ve accomplished your mission,” Selma said. “Congratulations. Well done. Are you coming home?”
“Not just yet,” Remi said. “I think we’ll dive the pool tomorrow morning and see what’s down there. After carrying a scuba rig through a dry jungle, I want to make use of it.”
“I can’t blame you,” said Selma. “I’ll forward the pictures to David Caine right away, along with your description.”
“Good,” said Sam. “We’ll talk to you soon.”
As they hung up, Sam said, “We need to get the rest of the gear here. Do you want to drive the Jeep down or are you still worried about the ghosts?”
“Let’s leave the Jeep where it is and bring the gear. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of trips with the other pack and the dive equipment.”
They pitched their small tent in the enclosure around the pool, collected firewood in the nearby forest, and built a fire to boil a pot of water for their dehydrated food. After they’d eaten, they used the last hour of light to photograph the site from the nearest hills.
As they were about to go to sleep, Sam’s phone buzzed. “Hello?”
“Sam! It’s Dave Caine.”
“Hi, Dave,” Sam said. Then he put the phone on speaker.
“The pictures are fantastic. You’ve proven the codex is an accurate rendering, not a myth or vague historical rumors. From the looks of the place, it could have been a ceremonial center. The stone around it seems to be limestone, and the crumbling by the pool makes that seem even more likely. A sinkhole gets bigger as the limestone dissolves in the water.”
“We’ll get a closer look tomorrow when we dive.”
“Be prepared for a sight,” Caine said. “The Mayans believed that everything depended on their relationships with a complicated pantheon of gods. They will almost certainly have tossed valuables into the pool as sacrifices to Chac, the rain god.”
“Whatever else went wrong here, it wasn’t because of a lack of water.”
“We’ll be waiting to hear.”
“Good night.”
Chapter 11
GUATEMALA
Sam and Remi woke at dawn, and, as soon as they’d had breakfast, began to prepare for exploring the pool. They put on their dive equipment. Each had an underwater flashlight, a net bag, and a dive knife.
“I can’t wait to get down there,” Remi said.
“I’m pretty curious myself,” Sam said. “Don’t get carried away. Remember the buddy system. Stay close no matter what’s down there.”
“Agreed,” she said. “I may lose my enthusiasm if it’s a pile of skeletons.”
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
They lowered their masks and put their mouthpieces in, then slipped into the water. The water was cold and surprisingly clear. Now that the sun was rising higher, it shone deeper into the pool’s depths.
In a short time, they reached the bottom, which was all bare gray limestone. Finding nothing like the objects David Caine had told them to expect, they widened their search, shining their flashlights around them. Sam found a disk, lifted it and brushed the limestone dust off it, and saw that it was made of green jade and was heavily carved. He showed Remi, and bagged it.
Remi caught a glint of something to her left, touched Sam’s arm, and moved in that direction. When she did, she could tell that going that way was easier than it should be, as though there was a faint current. She moved beyond the circle of light from above into an area that was dark.
The first object she found was a wide bracelet made of gold. She held it up so Sam could see, and he nodded. They moved along the limestone bed, picking up objects as they went. There were more carved objects of jade and, farther on, more pieces made of gold. There were disks, masks, necklaces, ear plugs, bracelets, flat chest ornaments.
They continued picking up objects for a time, and then Sam touched Remi’s arm and pointed. The circle of light that had been directly above them at the start was now about a hundred feet behind them. They had moved along, picking up the objects they’d seen, and now they’d drifted farther than they’d thought.
Together, they swam back toward the opening, bringing their net bags with them. When they reached the light, they slowly floated upward toward it, then broke the silvery surface. They took off their masks and held on to the side of the pool. Sam lifted his net bag to the deck above them, then Remi’s. Next, he pulled himself onto the stone and held out his hand to Remi so he could pull her up.
“That was a lot of fun,” she said. “You just dive down and pick up things where they threw them.”
“It reminds me of an Easter egg hunt.”
“There’s a bit of a current down there, though. The jewelry and things had all been moved downstream.”
“If this place was abandoned at the end of the classic period, everything has been down there awhile. A bit of a current can make a difference in a thousand years.”
“I’ll bet some of the jewelry moved out of sight as it fell,” she said.
“That’s possible. When the people looked down and the gifts were gone, I’ll bet they thought the gods had accepted them and been pleased.”
They laid out all their finds on the limestone surface and photographed them, then sent the pictures to Selma. They secured the finds in a zippered bag, placing them in Sam’s pack.
“We haven’t found everything that’s down there,” Remi said. “Don’t you want to dive again this afternoon?”
“Whatever this place is — city, fort, ceremonial center — we’re not going to find everything or learn everything about it in one trip. The archaeologists will be at it for years. The best we can do is verify what we can and get out.”
“You’re right,” said Remi. “This is about the codex, not about the two of us finding all the treasures in Guatemala.”
“I think we should spend the rest of today and tomorrow mapping, measuring, and photographing the complex. The next day, we should get out of here before we run low on supplies.”
“There are tapirs in the jungle. I can make you a nice tapir sandwich.”
“I’m afraid that in another day tapir will start to sound good.”
After changing, they walked the length of each flat strip of land. It was nearly evening when they found a pair of stone pillars at the end of the third strip, placed like gateposts. They were about eight feet tall and carved, one of them a male figure, with the feathered headdress, shield, and war club of a king, and the other a female, in a dress, with a basket at her feet and a jug in her hands. There were Mayan glyphs in all the spaces around the two figures. Remi photographed the two from every angle, and sent the photographs to Selma.
She looked up from her phone. “We’re losing the sun. I’ll take a couple of flash pictures just to be sure the writing is clear.”
She took two flash photographs of each pillar, and then Sam grabbed her arm and pointed. “Remi, look!”
Up the hill, on the trail that Sam and Remi had followed to reach this site, they could see a line of men approaching. There seemed to be about fifteen of them, and they were still a quarter mile off but coming down the last gradual slope before the ruins. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I guess the flash was a bad idea.”
“I don’t know. Certainly not as bad as leaving the Jeep out in the open for anyone to see,” he said. “I can’t tell if they’ve seen us, and I don’t know if they’re friendly or not. Maybe we can get back to the cenote and out of sight before they get here. That way, we can avoid finding out.”
They began to trot, moving steadily toward the shelter of a stand of trees that had grown up in the center of the strip. As they did, Remi looked back. One of the men had stopped on the hill and was bringing a rifle up to his shoulder. “Sam! Run!”
There was the crack of a bullet as it passed over their heads, and, about a second later, the sound of the rifle shot reached their ears. The next sound was the explosion of the Jeep, a gasoline fireball lighting the evening sky. Sam and Remi were running hard now, weaving to keep the trees and brush between themselves and the men. They had the advantage of a level surface and a clear path, where they could sprint without fear of tripping, while the men on the slope had to move along the hillside at an angle to avoid building up too much speed and tumbling down.
Sam glanced over his shoulder as a second man stopped and shouldered his rifle. “Another one. Take cover!” They both went low and ducked behind a cluster of trees. There was another shot, and the bullet pounded into one of the trees, sending a shower of bark chips in all directions. Sam peered around the trunk and saw the man adjusting his telescopic sight. “Go!”
Sam and Remi ran, working their way up to a full sprint as they approached the high wall surrounding the cenote. They ran around it to the far side and between the two layers of overlapping wall into the entryway. Sam began to pile loose stones in the narrow way to block it while Remi went to their backpacks and retrieved their four pistols, spare magazines, and boxed ammunition. Each of them checked to be sure the guns were loaded.
“I can’t believe this,” Remi said. “Who could they be?”
“Nobody we want to know. They seem to have tracked us, following our trail, then opened fire as soon as they saw us.”
“Who can they think we are?”
“Future dead people.” He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Let’s see if we can use this wall to stay alive.”
“I’ll go up to the walkway and see what they’re up to.”
“Keep your head low,” he said.
She pulled her baseball cap lower on her head. “Unfortunately, we’ve been in these situations before.”
“If we live through this one—”
She put her finger on his lips. “Shh. I know, bubble baths and spa treatments. We’ve already made each other all the promises we need.” She took a pair of pistols and climbed to the walk along the top of the wall, found her way to a spot where the wall had crumbled a bit and left a small dip, then rose enough to survey the strip of land the men were approaching.
Sam watched her bring her arm up to rest in the chink in the wall and begin to think through aiming her pistol. He had seen her do that before at competitions. Sam had been a respectable shot since the days when a member of a highly secret force had spent a month at a covert base instructing him in close-range shooting and sniper techniques. But Remi was in a different league. She had been shooting competitively since she was twelve, a champion for whom the term “nail driving” was not a figure of speech.
Sam stood below her and spoke quietly. “Get down, and stay there until you hear shooting.”
Sam moved to the entryway, climbed over the barrier he’d built, sidestepped along the ten-foot overlap in the walls, and ran to the nearest stand of trees. He moved through the trees beside the level strip, getting closer to the space where the men would pass if they approached the walled pool. As he went, he studied the places he passed, aware that soon he would be running past them in the other direction. He took a position in the thick brush within an arm’s length of the strip but outside the causeway, where the plants had grown in fully.
The men came at a run, carrying their rifles across their chests. They ran like they were chasing game, not like men who were about to meet an armed adversary.
Sam crouched and waited. He had estimated fifteen men, but he could see only twelve. They wore khaki pants and short-sleeved civilian shirts and T-shirts. A few of them carried bolt-action hunting rifles with scopes — probably 4 power, because, in these thick jungles, long shots across open space had to be rare. There were two men carrying shotguns, a weapon that probably put food in their bellies. Two had pistols in holsters, and the others carried assault rifles that Sam identified as American AR-15s, probably weapons that had found their way here during the civil war.
The man closest to Sam carried a hunting rifle. He raised it and took aim at the top of the wall around the pool. Sam was sure the man couldn’t see Remi, but he was getting ready for her to stick her head up.
A man who carried only a pistol stood by a tree and shouted in English, “We know you’re in there. Come out now and we’ll make it easier for you.”
Sam turned his head away from the men and called into the hills, “We mean you no harm. Go away.”
Three of the men half turned to see if someone had gotten behind them, and one turned around entirely, his gun ready.
The spokesman said, “We’ll never go away. Come out and we’ll let
Sam aimed his pistol at the nearest one, the man pointing his rifle at the top of the wall, waiting for a target to appear. The spokesman waved an arm, and the men moved forward toward the wall. Sam began to move with them to avoid being cut off from the entrance.
The man near him sensed something and swung his rifle toward Sam and Sam shot him in the chest, then dove into the low area beyond the brush. The man fell down, unconscious and gravely wounded. The others had seen him fall, and each fired in the direction he guessed the shot might have come from. Only two of them guessed right, and Sam’s thicket was peppered with bullets.
When Sam looked up, he saw that another man had fallen, one of the few carrying AR-15s. Remi must have shot him while the others were firing wildly, having picked him out as a high priority.
The leader trotted over to the man’s body, took the rifle and the man’s pack. He aimed the rifle at the top of the wall, but Remi kept down, knowing the men all expected her to pop up and fire again.
But Sam had a new problem. A man with a rifle was walking toward his thicket to see if Sam’s body was lying there or if he needed to be finished off. Now the man’s feet were breaking sticks in the thicket. Sam located the sound and fired three times. The man’s rifle went off, and Sam heard him fall. Sam crawled to him, his pistol ready, and found him lying, with an entry wound in his forehead. Sam took the rifle, cycled the bolt, pulled himself to the edge of the thicket, and pushed the brush aside with the barrel.
A man with a shotgun was moving along the foot of the wall. Sam aimed and fired, and the man fell dead. Sam cycled the bolt again and searched for another target. There was a man with a scoped rifle on a sling, climbing a tree so he could get a vantage into the walled enclosure. Sam aimed and fired, and the man went limp and fell ten or twelve feet to the ground. He wasn’t moving.
Sam cycled the bolt again and realized that after one more shot he would be out of ammunition. He crawled toward the body of the man he’d taken the rifle from. But, as he did, another man spotted him and cried out to the others. Sam was out of time. He fired, took the rifle with him, and ran into the jungle. He didn’t stop, circling toward the walled enclosure around the pool. He couldn’t hear any running footsteps behind him. As he ran, he removed the bolt from the rifle and tossed it into an impenetrable patch of low plants. A hundred feet on, he threw the rifle into another patch, and kept moving.