Brian Sadler Archaeological Mysteries BoxSet

by Bill Thompson

  He slowly raised his right arm and gripped the axe handle. Pain shot through his arm as he jiggled it back and forth, finally releasing it from the hole where it was tightly jammed. Now he extended his right arm fully. Tears streamed down his face from the pain as he concentrated on holding on with his good hand. He was eight feet above the ground, his left hand holding a rock above him, his face against the cave wall and his right hand holding a pick. He began to strike the rock.

  Every blow sent excruciating waves of pain through his shoulder. He screamed at the first one but he continued hitting the wall. He began to feel resistance after about five minutes and knew he was making progress.

  God, help me do this. I know I have no right to ask you for anything, but please don’t leave me this close to the top. Please help me get out.

  He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, drew back his arm and struck the hardest blow he could muster. This time it stuck. The tool was once again lodged in the wall.

  Brian tested his weight on the handle of the small axe. At the moment it held. He pulled hard, knowing he couldn’t put his full weight on the handle for fear of breaking it. He had to raise his other foot two feet to the second rock while he held the handle. It was tricky. If he broke the axe handle his plans for rescuing himself were history.

  He gingerly moved his right foot above his left, placing it on the next outcropping of rock. This protrusion was a little wider and he got his foot planted solidly. He used the axe handle to raise himself once more. If he fell from this height he would surely break something; in the back of his mind he prepared so he wouldn’t land on his back or his head.

  The pickaxe held. Brian lifted himself, using his right arm and shoulder. He worked through waves of pain. At the top, he took both hands and placed them on the overhang of the sheer rock. It was chest height, but he didn’t think he could lift himself with only one good arm. He shined his headlamp around until he found what he needed – a small boulder about four feet away sitting on the top of the cliff face. Holding on with his left hand he removed the rope from his belt, knotted it four times about a foot apart then made a lasso. He tried a couple of times to rope the rock. Third time’s the charm. He tossed the rope and it fell behind the rock. He pulled slowly then tugged hard. It held firmly.

  Thank you, God.

  Brian held the rope tightly with his left hand. It would have been so much easier with his right, he thought briefly. He pulled himself up, arm over arm, using the knots he’d made. It seemed like an eternity and it hurt like hell but in a couple of minutes he was over the top, lying on his stomach.

  From here it was merely an uphill walk. He moved with renewed vigor. Light from the surface was pouring in overhead. One last time he yelled the names of all three of his companions. Again there was silence.

  He rounded the final bend and saw the trees that lined the cave opening. He looked at his watch. It had taken him nearly four hours to climb out but he’d made it!

  He scrambled up twenty feet to get out of the hole and yelled, “Nicole! Can you hear me?” He heard a groan on his left. Sam lay on the ground, bound and gagged, bleeding from his nose and a long cut on his forehead. Brian untied him and removed a dirty rag that had been stuffed into his mouth.

  “Sam! What happened? Where’s Nicole?”

  Sam said that two men came to the cave entrance. He had never seen either of them before. One appeared to be in charge. He asked Nicole where Brian was and when Sam told her not to answer he kicked Sam in the face.

  “I passed out, I guess. When I woke up the men and Nicole were gone. I don’t know where Alfredo is either. He went down to the ATV to get more ropes to rescue you but he never came back. I hope they didn’t kill him. The guy in charge was on a mission – he wants you.”

  “Dammit, Sam! What’s going on? We have to find her!” He grabbed his phone but there was no service. “Does your phone work?”

  Sam stood unsteadily. He grabbed the trunk of a tree next to him for support, pulled his phone out of his pants pocket and gave it to Brian. “I don’t know. But when you’re ready I think I’m good enough to start down the hill.”

  “Oh God. What am I doing? I’m sorry, Sam. You’re hurt and I’m thinking only of Nicole. Come on. Let’s get you back to town where a doctor can look at you.”

  “No. I agree we need to find the others. I’ll be OK. Just check my phone then let’s get moving. Let’s see if the ATV’s there and if we can find Alfredo.”

  Sam’s phone also had no signal so they started walking. They had to leave Sam’s backpack; in his condition he couldn’t both carry it and maneuver down the steep hill.

  Brian picked up two long sturdy sticks to use for balance. He gave one to Sam and took the other for himself. With his shoulder throbbing he couldn’t grip with his right hand so the stick stayed in his left. He walked close to Sam, grabbing him once when Sam stepped on a root and lost his footing. Later they both fell on a patch of slippery moss but kept on going. Even with their injuries the trip down was easier than the ascent.

  As they walked Brian asked Sam to tell everything he remembered. “We have to figure out where they could have taken her. I have to find her. This is all my fault!”

  Sam struggled to recall details. “There were two guys – the one with a thin mustache was the boss. The mustache guy did all the talking. When he kicked me the party was over. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I don’t know any more than that.”

  “No worries. I just need to get to a phone and call the police. How are you feeling?”

  Sam said he was doing better and asked Brian how he escaped from the cavern. An hour later they heard rustling in the underbrush next to them. Brian used his stick to move aside the thick growth and they saw a pair of legs bound at the ankles. They pulled Alfredo from the bushes, tied up and gagged as Sam had been. He was stiff and sore and had a lot of insect bites but he wasn’t hurt.

  “I was heading down the trail when I came upon two guys going up. They asked where you were, Brian. I told them I was alone but they knew exactly what they were doing. I think they followed us out here. I’m so sorry. They pulled a gun and threatened to kill me. Where’s Nicole? Is she OK?”

  “We don’t know. Are you OK to head to the ATV?”

  Alfredo was fine. As they walked he described his attackers and Sam confirmed they were the same men who’d taken Nicole. Finally they came to the rough path they’d walked earlier.

  “The ATV’s a half mile away,” Alfredo said. “Let’s move it.”

  They stepped up the pace and covered the remaining distance quickly. They spotted the fallen tree and could see the ATV on the other side.

  When they reached it they found all four tires slashed. Brian said, “Shit. What the hell do we do now? We’re a million miles from civilization.”

  Alfredo and Sam looked things over. The only damage was to the four tires. The ATV started fine and the fuel gauge showed half a tank.

  Brian tried his phone again but he was still out of range. “Can we take the tires off and drive on the wheels?” he asked. “Would it work?”

  Alfredo shook his head. “We wouldn’t get far.”

  “All we have to do is get back to one of the farms we came through after we left San Antonio. Someone has a landline phone. We could even walk it in two or three hours. I have to do something.” Brian’s voice broke as he struggled to get the words out. “I have no idea what’s happened to Nicole but the more time that passes the more danger she could be in. I have to help her.”

  Night would come quickly; the trees around them cast deep shadows as the sun fell ever lower in the sky. The time of day was the primary danger to Sam’s suggestion. An unarmed man walking in the jungle is no match for the creatures that come out after dark. It would be pitch black by the time they got to a farmhouse.

  Alfredo said, “I’m willing to try to drive on the ruined tires as long as we are on dirt roads. If we can make it to a farmhouse or close enough to San Antonio that our phones work we
can call for help. There’s no way I can drive on pavement but this might work. At least it will get us closer to a house. We can’t walk in the jungle at night. There are dangers out here you can’t imagine. Brian, you don’t know what we might find but Sam certainly does.”

  They piled into the ATV and Alfredo started it. He backed up and turned around as the tires slapped the dirt path noisily. The ride was so rough they could go less than ten miles an hour. While he could see, Alfredo frequently checked the wheels but suddenly darkness descended like a curtain. Within seconds, they could see nothing except the rutted path in their headlights and trees brushing both sides of the ATV.

  Their trip into the jungle had taken almost two hours on the rough back road. Now they were simply bumping along. They could probably have walked faster, but even though it offered no protection from predators the ATV was safer than going on foot.

  Brian was lost in thought, running every possibility over in his mind. Where is Nicole now? If they’re using her to get to me surely they’ll keep her safe. But what if they’ve already killed her? He had to find out if Odette had heard from Nicole. His hands shook as he desperately tried to keep calm. I can’t lose her. I just can’t.

  Suddenly a large cat darted across the path directly in front of them. His green eyes shone as he looked directly into the headlights for a second before disappearing into the dense jungle. “Tiger cat,” Alfredo said quietly. “Hope he’s not hungry. Or curious.”

  Sam added, “That’s what we know in the States as an ocelot. They’re nocturnal, on the endangered list in Belize and usually they steer away from humans. Out here at night in his territory I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to whether he’d be afraid of us. My initial thought, I doubt it.”

  They drove for half an hour, making slow progress. Finally the right front tire had enough. In one large piece it tore away from the wheel and flew into the bushes. The ATV lurched sideways and Alfredo stopped immediately. The forest was totally black. Only the gleam of the vehicle’s headlights provided any light.

  Alfredo said, “Unless we took off all four tires I don’t think we could continue in the ATV. And I don’t think we could get them off. There’s not enough room on the sides of the path to get to the tires. I wish I’d brought my rifle, guys. I didn’t think it was necessary on a short day trip. I hate to say it but we have to walk. It’s not safe but neither is staying here.”

  Brian asked how long it would take to get to the farmhouses. They figured maybe a half hour if everything went fine. He tried to remain calm. Dread filled his mind as he imagined Nicole out here somewhere, the captive of men who wanted God knew what from her. Would she be the same person after they were through with her? Would he ever even see her again?

  Chapter Five

  In 1953 the Alta Vista Consortium moved men and equipment into the eastern Guatemalan jungle in the area known as Montanas Mayas, the Maya Mountains. The company constructed a very basic camp two thousand feet up a mountain. Local workers built six buildings and dug a mine to extract tungsten. A hundred natives at a time lived in a communal structure, ate in a common dining hall and slept in barracks constructed of lumber and thatched roofs. It was a lonely outpost and they were the only humans for hundreds of miles.

  The consortium closed the Montanas facility in 1990, having taken as much tungsten as was commercially feasible to extract from the mine. The site was abandoned and soon was reclaimed by the jungle. After several years only a handful of people remembered that the place had ever existed. The site was so remote that no one ever came to see if anything was left of the old mining camp.

  Today the place was being used again. With machetes a clearing had been made and three of the old buildings repaired. Inside the former dining hall, a round hut fifty feet in diameter, a single metal table stood in the middle of the building’s only room. They’d welded an iron pipe to each corner of the five-foot square table. It was heavy and the pipes made it easier to move around.

  Nicole was tied on the table, face up and totally naked. Her arms were lashed to the iron pipes in the upper corners, her legs to the lower ones. Netting stretched across the room a few feet above her and thirty feet above that was a small hole in the center of the peak of the domed, thatched roof. She could see daylight through it and also through open window holes high in the walls.

  Nicole remembered very little of her kidnapping. The three of them had made it out of the cave without incident. They stayed at the cave’s entrance while Alfredo went back to the ATV for equipment. He’d retrieve his pack of ropes and come back in half an hour.

  She and Sam had yelled down the cavern’s entrance every few minutes, hoping Brian could hear them. They knew it was fruitless since he was seven hundred feet below but it made them feel better to try.

  After awhile they heard someone coming up the trail. Sam looked at his watch. “Wow, that was fast. Alfredo made better time than he figured. I guess he’s in a hurry to get the rescue over with and eat lunch!”

  In a few minutes they saw two strangers come around a bend. They were dressed in fatigues and had packs on their backs.

  “Hola,” a man with a pencil mustache said, raising his hand and smiling at them.

  “Hello,” Sam responded. “Did you happen to see our guide when you were on your way up?”

  “Of course we did.” The man smiled again, and pulled a handgun from his pocket. Sam started to get up and the man said, “Perhaps you had better keep your seat, Mr. Adams. There’s no need for you to get hurt and it’s not you we’re after.” He turned to Nicole. “Where is Brian Sadler, Miss Farber?”

  “Don’t tell him, Nicole,” Sam yelled. The second man took a few steps to where Sam was sitting and kicked him hard in the face. Sam fell backward and lay motionless on the ground.

  Nicole felt her heart racing. “What…what’s going on?”

  The man with the gun smiled again. “There will be plenty of time for talk, my dear. One last time, where is your boyfriend?”

  “Until you tell me what you’re doing I’m not saying anything.”

  The mustached man nodded at his companion, who was standing behind Nicole. Suddenly she felt him reach around her and clamp a dirty cloth over her nose and mouth. She remembered nothing else until she awoke in this room, tied to the table. She had an overpowering thirst and a violent headache.

  “H…help.” Her tongue felt thick and her lips were parched. “Help!” she said loudly. Making the word was difficult. She must have been drugged.

  Nothing happened and no one came to see about her. There were no sounds except buzzing insects and the loud cries of birds. She had no idea where she was.

  She pushed waves of fear out of her mind. I have to be calm. I have to think. I can survive and I will.

  Still in a fog, she attempted to reconstruct what had happened. She had a misty recollection of being carried on a gurney and dumped in the back of some kind of truck but that might have been a dream. She raised her head, looking for her clothes, but the part of the room she could see was empty. She laid back on the table and closed her eyes.

  Maybe she’d slept. Maybe not. When she opened her eyes there was a man standing next to the table. The man with the mustache.

  Ah, I see you are finally awake,” he said in accented English. “I hope you aren’t too uncomfortable.”

  Nicole studied him. He was the man who’d taken her – tall and lanky, dressed in khaki trousers, a jungle shirt and a Panama hat. He didn’t look like a kidnapper. He looked like a businessman.

  “What do you think you’re doing? Why have you brought me here? Brian won’t stand for this, you know. He’s already getting the authorities and they will find you.”

  The man laughed. “Enough questions, little lady. You need to lie still and not worry so much about things. You need to know only this. Mr. Sadler is looking for something that my associates want very much. I’ve been asked to ensure he finds it and gives it to me. Now that you are my guest I believe he will be very wil
ling to cooperate. I expect he will hand over what he finds with no qualms whatsoever. Don’t you?”

  “I…I don’t understand. What do you mean, something he’s looking for? He’s looking for a man, not a ‘thing’. And why do you have me spread eagled on this table? Give me my clothes!” Her voice became frantic as she twisted and tugged at her restraints.

  “My dear, don’t fight. You’ll just use up your energy for no reason. Your boyfriend is actually looking for a ‘thing’ – something I myself have spent a lifetime seeking. And now another man wants it even more than I. He is very wealthy and is willing to pay a fortune for the chance to own something so dear. He’s hired me to get it for him. And I’ve retained you, so to speak, to help Brian. I will let your boyfriend know that not only am I interested in his finding it but you are as well.

  “Now to your second question. Why are you naked? You have me to thank for that, actually. I made that decision myself. There are several reasons. The primary one is so you understand who is in control. It is I, not you, who will determine everything about your life for the next days or weeks. Second, if you should ever try to escape you will not get far, naked in the jungle. Third, it is a special treat for my guards to get to see a perfect American woman in her natural beauty. Just so you know, I have told them they are forbidden to touch you as long as you behave. But they may look all they want. So if you get far more than idle glances you may blame me for that. You are extraordinarily attractive all over your body,” he said, looking from head to toe. “But surely you know that already.”

  He laughed heartily. “Enough for now. Here is what you need to know. Listen to me closely.”

  The man explained that Nicole would be released from her constraints twice a day to eat and use the bathroom. Her toilet was simply a corner of the room, and the guards would watch her at all times to ensure she didn’t escape. When she was not eating or using the toilet she would be tethered to the table’s four corners.