The Snake

by J A Kellman

  “The heart of the holy place! The portal! The spot where ancestors and humans meet and fertility enters the world. I’m sure of it. I can feel it in my blood.” Luis struggled to get a better view from the litter.

  “I hate to break in,” Ochoa finally said after we had a few moments to try to take in the spectacular gallery, “but we can’t enjoy this now. We’ve got to figure out what to do about the company behind us, find out if they’re still there. I haven’t heard anything for a while. Has anyone else?”

  I hadn’t heard anything either but with our scuffing boots, heavy breathing, and scraping, who would?

  We paused, holding our breaths, straining to listen; we heard nothing but water splashing somewhere ahead.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Bill whispered after a few silent minutes. “Let me know if this makes sense. We have to have guards watching people’s backs while some of us try to locate the portal. Then we’ve got to get Luis where he can offer the pectoral to the ancestors. And finally, we’ve all got to get the hell out. What if Jaime and I take over door duty? That means the rest of you can look around without worrying.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Let’s get Luis settled somewhere before we split up,” Ochoa said. “Back there looks good.” He waved toward a breakdown in the rear corner of the gallery that was barely visible in the narrow beam from his headlamp.

  “He’ll be safe if something goes wrong, and we can explore without dragging him around for no purpose. We’ll get him once we think we’ve found what we are looking for.”

  “We’re on it,” Esteban said as he and Francisco grabbed the sled handles and hustled toward the rock pile.

  “I’m going with Luis,” Zoila said, following the men into the inky darkness.

  “Now, the door guards. Someone needs to be behind that big stalagmite near the opening; Jaime, can you tackle it? Maybe Bill behind that breakdown on the other side of the pathway further in?” Ochoa asked as he began to sort things out.

  Bill nodded as he pulled his Sig Sauer out of his backpack and slipped in a magazine. “We have to be cautious. We don’t know who is back there. It may not be Kan and his buddies, after all. Whoever it is may not be a problem.”

  Jaime grunted. “If we can find out who they are and stop any action at the door—” Jaime trailed off as he pulled his Glock from its holster and began to check it over. “There can’t be that many of them. There wasn’t that much noise, and the tunnel is so narrow, there couldn’t be more than a handful. Besides, the Nuevo can’t have that much caving equipment.”

  “We’ve got to be careful we don’t form a two-sided firing squad.”

  Jaime grunted again.

  Ochoa nodded. “Esteban, Francisco, and I will look for the portal. Ann, do you want to join us or go with Zoila and Luis?”

  I hesitated for a minute. Explore the cave, or look out for my friends? Friends won over my usual insatiable curiosity. I turned to follow Zoila into the cold dark.

  “Wait a minute, Ann. Ever used a gun?” Ochoa asked before I had taken a step.

  “I’ve done some target practice with Bill,” I said. “I’m okay, but not great.”

  “Here,” Ochoa, handing me a holstered Glock from his pack. “It’s loaded and ready to go. If worse comes to worse, don’t be afraid to use it.”

  “She’s not bad,” Bill’s voice came from somewhere in the dark to the left of the entry. “She’ll do all right.”

  I headed after Zoila, the holster tucked in my pack.

  My trip across the cave took more time than I had imagined. The floor’s several heaps of breakdowns caused me to scramble and swerve, and artifacts from countless ceremonies made the going rougher than if the Maya hadn’t been here first. By the time I slid down into Luis and Zoila’s hiding place, I’d stubbed my toe a couple of times and turned my ankle.

  “I don’t know what’s going on by the entry, but you and Luis should stay hunkered down till we figure things out. If something happens to me, Zoila, you’ll have to take the sled by yourself. You’ll do okay. I’m going to stand guard up behind the breakdown.” I gestured toward the pile of rocks that sheltered us from the rest of the cave. “I’ll let you know what’s happening.”

  I scrabbled my way up the incline to the heap of collapsed ceiling. Just before I flicked off my headlamp, I took a quick look around to orient myself. On the back of the platform was another stairway, not as wide as the one facing the tunnel, but wide enough for two or three people to use at once.

  Maybe the stairway leads to the ritual area and the portal. It could be a way to get the pectoral back where it belongs without being spotted. I slid down the incline to tell Luis and Zoila.

  Luis got excited the minute I told him about my discovery.

  “We’ve got to get up there. See what’s on top,” Luis said. “If nothing else there has to be a source for the stream, maybe just a small spring, a tiny opening of some sort, but maybe there’s something bigger, a pool maybe. If it is, it has to be the portal we’ve been looking for. We can’t wait forever for things to go crazy or resolve themselves, sit here doing nothing until someone nails us. We’ve got to move now.”

  “The sled is built for varied terrains,” I said. “There are diagrams on its storage bag, one even shows one woman hauling it up a ladder on its little bottom wheels.

  “Zoila, if you push and I pull, we should be able to handle the steps.” I grasped the strap at my end. “Once we’re up there, I can poke my head over the rim and we can go from there.”

  “Ready,” Zoila said, grasping the handle at the rear of the sled. “Let’s do it.”

  The sled worked perfectly at the start—up the incline, around the rocks, along the back of the platform, but then it turned into an implement of torture. Dragging the sled up the sharp-edged steep stairs was nearly impossible. The narrow stone steps seemed to catch against the soft plastic wheels, keeping them from turning and in between them the knife sharp treads scraped the sled’s plastic shell like razors, causing it to slew from side to side.

  I could hear Luis sucking in his breath, but he didn’t say anything. Zoila was silent too, but I could hear her breathing heavily as she pushed.

  I wasn’t much better off. The strap I was using to pull the sled was slicing into my shoulder like steel cable and causing the pectoral to dig into my chest. I felt like I was having a heart attack. My hands, skinned by the rough woven tape, were beginning to cramp, making it hard to grip.

  Just before my head rose over the lip of the platform, I stopped. “Let’s hold it here. Let me check it out before we go over the edge,” I said. “We have some cover this way.”

  “Zoila, can you hold the sled by yourself?” I whispered.

  “I’ll be okay,” Zoila said. “Just don’t take too long.”

  I took a quick peek over the edge of the platform. Turning my Maglite on low with my free hand, I used it in tiny bursts to avoid calling attention to our position.

  The structure was enormous, a round flat stage built to provide the priests and lords a podium on which to perform. In the center, a circular pool, probably the origin of the spillway, shown like black glass in my dim light, its rim lined with broken pots and bits of charcoal. To one side of the pool, a stained flat stone altar and a deep ceramic bowl suggested that other rituals might have taken place—maybe bloodletting and sacrifice, too.

  I murmured a description over my shoulders.

  “I have to see it myself,” Luis said. “Shove the sled up to the edge.”

  Luis’s head and the front end of the sled slowly rose over the lip as Zoila and I strained at the strap and handle. From the other side of the platform, he must have looked like a giant insect rising out of its hole or a creature from another a world. Once we had him positioned, I handed him the Maglite.

  “This is it.” Luis’s low voice came back as he clicked off the light. “Get me to the pool’s edge.”

  Then the world exploded in a shower of shouts, muzzle flashes, and gunfi
re.

  Amplified and echoed by the stone walls of the cave, the sudden barrage was deafening. It sounded like a major battle, each shot repeated over and over by the cave’s rocky interior.

  “We’ve got to get off these steps. Zoila and I can’t hang on forever,” I shouted over the din.

  “Head toward the pool,” Luis said between volleys. “It looked like it has a bank before you reach the water’s surface. If we get down below the edge we won’t be so exposed.”

  Zoila and I grabbed the sled, heaved it over the lip of the platform, and crawled for the pond like war dogs, dragging the sled between us, hoping that no one would notice our activity in the confusion and the explosive bursts from the firefight.

  The trip to the edge of the water was miserable. Broken pottery used to burn incense a thousand years ago cut my hands and knees as I dragged myself along. Zoila couldn’t have been in better shape than I was, but we kept going, stirring up a thousand years of dust and rattling potsherds. Luis picked out our path with the Maglite’s low beam.

  “Give me back the light and hang on, Luis,” I said as we reached the pool. “We’re going to push you over the rim. The sled floats, so you will be okay if you slide into the water.”

  We dropped our handles and shoved the sled sideways over the edge down a three-foot drop to the narrow shore that lined the water, black as obsidian, smooth as a sheet of glass.

  The gunfire and shouts died; the silence was broken only by the sound of voices and an occasional groan. Who knew what the hell has happened, I thought as I slipped down the embankment and squirmed in next to Zoila on the ceramic strewn ground. Luis bobbed nearby, Moses in his basket, safe for now. I couldn’t bear thinking about Bill, Ochoa, Jaime, and the other rangers. Had Kan and his mob blasted their way into the cave, leaving everyone dead or injured? If they had, what then? What chance did we have to get out alive?

  Shuffling sounds broke the silence at the top of the small back stairway.

  “They’ve gotta be up here,” someone said. “Let’s try the pool; it’s the only place we can’t see from here.”

  It sounded like Kan. There was no escaping the SOB—first he kills Ruston; then he chases us into the reservoir behind Temple I, and Luis nearly dies of hypothermia; then his thugs kidnap us and hold us hostage in a remote farm somewhere in Tikal and now this, caught like rats in a granary by the bastard. He was persistent as hell.

  I slipped my Glock out of its holster and squirmed into a comfortable firing position. And what did he mean the pool was the only place they couldn’t see? I couldn’t see anything anywhere in the absolute darkness unless I turned on my headlamp, Maglite, or the light on my gun.

  I quickly swept the low beam of my Maglite over the edge of the pond’s bank. My question was answered. Two men stuck their heads over the lip of the drop off into the pond wearing infrared night vision goggles. No wonder they’d gotten this far into the gallery without trouble. They were next to invisible if they remained hidden from our group’s headlamps, and they could see all of us plain as day.

  I had no way of tracking them. All I had was my flashlight and gun to pick out their dark shape. I would only make our situation worse if I turned the flash full on, it would be like a solar flare on the black backdrop of space. The headlamp wouldn’t be better. It would light me up for an easy shot.

  “There’s that little prick floating on the pond like a rubber ducky."

  “Give me the pectoral, Luis,” Kan said. “Now, or I’ll kill you.” He fired into the water to underline his point.

  They must have been so concentrated on Luis that they didn’t see Zoila or me, or if they did, they didn’t think we mattered. Was he going to kill Luis outright, shoot him while he was helpless in the pond strapped to the sled?

  Kan fired again. Luis yelped.

  I looked at the gun in my hand, my last resort, and began to shiver with nerves. Luis was helpless. Luis would die, then Zoila, then me. Kan was going to kill us all unless I did something.

  The detached feeling from the farmhouse swept over me again. I was being dragged out of myself, lifted out of my skin by an alien force. My body tensed, humming with rage and fierce, focused energy, aware only of the gun in my hand and the two men looming over the rim.

  Using the light on my gun to aim, I shot Kan and then shifted to the man next to him, practicing everything I remembered from the range—aim for the center of the mass, slowly squeeze the trigger, take three shots.

  The men dropped from view one at a time.

  I scrambled up the bank, illuminating my path with the light on my gun, just as a third man appeared at the top of the stairs. I rolled into a firing position, raising my gun, but before I could pull the trigger, the man disappeared with a jerk, clattering down the stairs, shouting as he fell. The sounds of a scuffle below the platform were followed by silence.

  “Ann, it’s me,” Bill yelled from the stairs. “It’s okay. The guy is done. Put down your gun. I’m coming up.”

  Bill appeared over the rim, his headlamp searching.

  I closed my eyes. Bill was there. Then Zoila. I couldn’t understand what they were saying though: I was numb.

  Through my fog, I spotted Ochoa and Jaime pulling Luis over the embankment to safety at the edge of the pool.

  ~ * ~

  I don’t know how much time passed. I was shivering, exhausted. Ochoa wrapped me in a blanket. Bill gave me a bottle of water. Zoila held my hand when she wasn’t fussing with Luis, next to me on his sled.

  “Luis, what happened?” I asked when I finally was able to talk.

  “I got hit when Kan fired the second time,” Luis said.

  “It’s a flesh wound,” Jaime said. He finished bandaging Luis’s arm. “It’s gonna ache, but that’s probably all. The doctor will do a better job when we get back to headquarters.”

  “It could have been worse,” Luis said. “It’s my paralyzed arm. I’ve been trying to ignore it since my stroke, so what’s a little more inconvenience on that side? The main thing is we’ve got to return the pectoral before something else happens.

  “Can someone get me to the edge of the water so I won’t miss my throw? Ann, come with me; can you hand me the pectoral when I ask for it?”

  I followed Bill and Jaime as they dragged the sled to the edge of the pool and oriented Luis so he could toss the pendant without trouble. I tried not to watch Esteban and Francisco as they hauled two bodies toward the stairs.

  When we reached the pool’s bank, I unpinned the purse from my bra and removed the jade vulture I’d found in Ruston’s study...years ago it seemed.

  In the light of my headlamp, the pectoral glowed green in my hand, the color of a sunlit sea or young corn. The vulture stared up, alien, inscrutable.

  “Here,” I said, tucking it into Luis’s good hand. “It’s time to send it where it belongs, back to the ancestors.”

  Cradling the pectoral in his good hand, Luis began to chant, quietly at first, then louder, as if he were communicating with someone on the far side of the pool, or another time and place; he tossed the vulture toward the center of the water.

  ~ * ~

  The slog back out of the cave must have been like the way in, though this time I had something else on my mind besides caving—the fact that I was responsible for two of the five bodies that had been brought to the front of the gallery while we were regrouping for the hike out.

  Unlike the journey in, there were two Nuevos with us, too, both with wounds—one shot in the shoulder, the other in the hand, if their bandages meant anything. Their functional arms were cuffed to their belts, and they were tied between Esteban and Francisco with caving rope. They were quiet for the most part in the narrow tunnel, with only an occasional groan or intake of breath when they tripped on something in the half-light of their captors’ headlamps.

  There was another difference as well. It was most obvious when we reached the first gallery. Water was pouring in: rivulets down the walls, showers from the ceiling,
pools in most of the hollows, and a small stream that wound toward the tunnel leading to the outside.

  “Has it been raining the whole time we’ve been in here?” Ochoa asked as we paused to catch our breath and stretch before we began the push through the final tunnel. “Let’s get going. We don’t want to get caught if the tunnel floods.”

  Luis looked pensive, chewing on his lower lip, his brow furrowed.

  “What is it?” I whispered. “Why the water? Why now?”

  I had to lean over the sled to hear him.

  “This whole thing has been about water from the very beginning—water for Tikal and the city on the coast—for crops, for drinking, for everything else. The vulture was the symbol of water and fertility, it still is—farmers burn their fields, the vultures come to feast on the remains of the animals caught by the fire, the rains come, the corn grows—and the vulture pectoral was the symbol of K’utz Chman, who controlled both rain and fertility. It was an image of his power. Now the pectoral has been returned to the ancestors, but not without pain, bloodshed, and battles with men with murder in their hearts. And you, hermanita, have been made to suffer as well, though you will heal with time.

  “The water is a sign, a warning. Tikal must be cleansed. The Nuevo who have perverted Mayan ways must be eradicated. This world is not meant for them or the cartels either.”

  We moved off into the tunnel, Ochoa in the lead, Bill bringing up the rear. The water grew deeper as we walked. It was over the tops of my boots, and we splashed, not scuffed, through dirt and stones.

  There seemed to be a growing cold wind at our backs, too. It had begun as a whisper, but then it had increased to a serious steady draught, as if a glacier were exhaling in the depth of the cave behind us.

  Something wasn’t right. I dropped back to tell Bill what Luis had said about cleansing. With the water and the gusts of air, it felt as if the ancestors had already started in on it.

  I’d just returned to my place in line when I heard a roar from deep in the cave. The wind became a gale.