The Antiquities Hunter

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  “Cruz?” I repeated. “Cruz, for God’s sake—”

  “Gina?” Greg’s voice came from the tunnel unnaturally loud. “Gina, what’s wrong?”

  I stepped reflexively to the right, away from the low opening. “I don’t know. My light went out. Cruz! Where the hell are you?”

  The darkness was slashed by the wide beam from Greg’s flashlight as he pushed it out into the room. His head and shoulders emerged behind it. In the split second it took me to realize he’d drawn his gun (as I should have done) a shot blew the flashlight to shrapnel. I yelped in pain and surprise, my ears ringing.

  There was a moment of intense silence in which I could hear myself breathing above the air-raid siren in my head.

  Then Greg said, “All right, Cruz. You want to explain the game?” When there was no answer, he asked, “Gina, you okay?”

  My weak “Okay” sounded in stereo with Cruz’s sharp “Don’t answer!” which came from so close to my right ear, I literally leapt forward, away from the wall I’d been hugging.

  There was a rush of movement and an arm went around me just below my shoulders, pinning my arms to my sides and forcing me tight against a hard, trembling body. Instinctively, I raised my foot, intending to take out his knee, when cold steel bored up under my jaw, the sharp protrusion of a gun sight biting into my skin. The snick of a revolver’s hammer being cocked sounded as loud in my ears as the earlier gunshot.

  No, whimpered the stunned voice of Denial. How could this be? How?

  My heart wasn’t sure whether it wanted to leap to my throat or sink to my soles. It settled for beating wildly in my chest.

  A slender beam of light hit my face, blinding me.

  “That’s right, Cruz,” Greg said. “We have an impasse. Drop your weapon.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You won’t fire. You might hit Gina.”

  The flashlight beam wavered slightly. “And you,” Cruz said from about eight feet straight away, “won’t fire for the same reason. Shoot her and you’ll be dead before she hits the floor.”

  “Let’s try this then,” Greg countered, shifting his hold on me slightly. “I’ll shoot her someplace that won’t be immediately fatal. She’s light, so I’ll still have a shield. Until she bleeds out.”

  The muzzle of his gun crept down to burrow into my lower back.

  Terror, in case you didn’t know, has a color. The color is blue. The color of glacial ice. The color of an empty sky. The color of the holstered gun that was pinned to my ribs beneath Greg Sheffield’s encircling arm. Terror has a smell too—a metallic smell with a breath of cordite and sweat.

  “Drop your gun, Cruz,” Greg commanded.

  After a mere instant of hesitation, I heard Cruz’s gun hit the hard pack floor and skitter away to my left.

  “Good. Now, your PDA. Turn it on so I can see it.”

  “What about the rest of your team?” asked Cruz. “Aren’t you afraid they’ll blunder into the middle of this?”

  “Considering that they have no idea where we are—no. They really are at Bonampak, by the way, but they’re waiting for instructions . . . and directions.”

  “But the GPS data—”

  “They never got the GPS data. You have it and I have it. I told them the GPS plan failed. As far as they know, what you told me at Palenque was that Revez had gotten suspicious and you were forced to leave the GPS module and the wire behind on your first trip out here. My team was counting on you two being able to find your way back here by sheer cunning. But unfortunately, Revez got wind of what you were doing and got here before I could bring in the cavalry and perform a rescue. . . . The PDA, Cruz.”

  He dug the Ruger GP100’s sharp, nasty little muzzle sight into my kidneys. I tried not to, but I gasped out loud.

  The PDA scooted toward me across the floor, its screen a rectangle of eye-piercing white.

  “Now your phone.”

  The phone skittered almost to my toes.

  “Why are you doing this?” Cruz asked.

  “Do you really need to know that? It won’t matter in the final analysis.”

  “I’d just like to understand why a veteran Park Service agent sells out to the pirates. You have a lot of years of outstanding service to the NPS. Why this?”

  “Because all I got for my ‘years of outstanding service’ was a kick in the teeth and a cost-of-living raise. I’ve read your CV, Dr. Veras. You have no idea what it’s like to work your ass off in the field only to have someone else get the credit . . . and the promotion.”

  It was so absurd, I almost laughed. “You went to the Dark Side because Ellen Robb got the job you wanted?”

  “The straw, Gina. The camel’s back was already sagging. Did you know that Sommers has what they call ‘special acquisitions clerks’? On paper they look like any other clerk in the organization. Paper-pushers. Little better than accountants who get the added perk of handling acquisitions. And on paper, they’re paid like any other clerk. Do you know what one of those people really earns?”

  “No.”

  “At least twice as much I do. Plus bonuses for locating and facilitating the purchase of especially good lots. They troll for NPS agents, Gina. They poke and they prod and they sniff anonymously around. Rose could tell you. They’ve been sniffing around me for years, and I’ve been shutting them down. Going so far as to report them so our people can follow their back trail. That all stopped when I got passed over. I thought I’d see what they had to say. If I didn’t like it, I could still turn on them, make a good bust, look like a hero. Maybe even prove myself to whoever the hell needed more proof.”

  “But?” prompted Cruz when Greg lapsed into ruminative silence.

  “But, I liked it. And all they wanted was a shill and a dodger. Someone who could play both sides against the middle, keep their guys out of serious trouble, make sure we never got too close to anything important.”

  My stomach lurched. “Did you make sure Rose didn’t get too close?”

  He jerked as if I’d hit him with a cattle prod.

  “I didn’t shoot Rose.” He said it directly into my ear, biting off each word as if it were foul-tasting.

  “But you know who did,” Cruz guessed.

  “Yes.”

  “An associate?”

  “Only in the sense that he was paid by the same people who pay me. They were protecting their Central American interests. I had nothing—” He swallowed convulsively. “I had nothing to do with that.”

  “Nothing?” repeated Cruz. “Not even looking the other way during that cocked-up operation at the headlands?”

  I gasped aloud, only now making the connection.

  Greg’s grip tightened. “It was meant to scare her. To warn her off,” he growled, his voice sounding strangled.

  “And Ted Bridges? Did you have nothing to do with that?”

  Greg was trembling again, as if all this Q and A was really getting to him. The gun pulled back marginally, its muzzle quivering.

  “I told them what happened . . . at the sting. That he’d brought an item from the new site, that Rose Delgado had seen it and known it for what it was. I thought they were only going to get the stuff away from him so we couldn’t trace it. I didn’t know they were going to kill him.”

  Cruz gave a short, mirthless laugh. “I find that hard to believe. You seem more than willing to kill us.”

  “Willing? I seem willing? Believe me, I’d do just about anything to not—” He took a deep breath. “I don’t have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice.”

  “No. They made it very clear after Bridges. He was my first screwup, you see. I recruited him and he turned out to be a renegade and an idiot. If I could have controlled him, I’d have earned their trust. But I couldn’t. I failed to reel him in when he first hooked up with Revez. Hell, I couldn’t even get him to tell me who his source was. That was my first strike. Then I failed to keep Rose away from him. You know how that turned out. Strike two. Then
I botched cleanly cutting the connection to Revez.” He laughed harshly. “I completely purged the files in Bridges’s office. But you, Gina, had to go and find that brochure. And here you are. Letting you get this far is just one more failure.”

  “Turn yourself in,” Cruz told him. “Turn your contacts in. You’ll get protection. Provide the evidence that will bring these people down and you could certainly cut a deal . . . with both our governments.”

  “Then what? I go to prison? Someday I get out? And do what for a living? Become a rent-a-cop? The location of this site is a treasure in and of itself. Sommers doesn’t know where it is. The NPS doesn’t know where it is. When this is over, Revez and his most loyal men will be the only other people who know, and I’m betting he can be convinced to work with me. That’s a big deal. That’s more control than I’ve ever had over anything in my life to date. What’s your alternative? No control. My life goes on permanent hold . . . or worse. You think I’ll get protection? How well protected was Rose?”

  The tears were so swift I had no way to stop them. At least no one knew they were there but me.

  “And this is worth our lives?” Cruz asked softly.

  The muzzle of the Ruger answered emphatically. I bit my lip and tried not to sob aloud.

  “End of psych session,” Greg said. “Cruz, I want you to put the flashlight down and move away from it. Don’t think about trying to blind me. I’ll shoot her. Don’t doubt it for a minute.”

  The flash beam lowered as Cruz moved to obey.

  “Just out of curiosity,” Greg said, his breath fanning my ear, “how did you know . . . about me?”

  I didn’t, I thought wildly. I didn’t know about you. Not until I felt that gunsight biting into my neck and heard the revolver being cocked. Cruz’s Glock was a semi-automatic with a smooth, square muzzle.

  “The tip to Revez,” Cruz answered. “The most likely candidate was an NPS agent well on the inside of the sting.”

  Cruz’s voice moved, but the flashlight remained stationary, apparently where he’d set it down as Greg had ordered.

  “It could have been one of Revez’s people. In Villahermosa, at the airport . . . Someone assigned to follow you.”

  “One of Revez’s people would have wanted to be recognized and rewarded,” Cruz said from a point to my far left. “That the tip was anonymous, seemed significant to me.”

  “That’s all?”

  Cruz didn’t answer.

  “Cruz!” Greg said sharply. The gunsight bit further into my back just below my shoulder.

  “You were alone,” I said, on a wave of epiphany. “No backup. An agent never goes into the field without backup. Especially an agent who’s been warned of a possible hostile presence.”

  I felt Greg’s attention shift to me, felt him adjust his grasp. His right hand gave up its bruising grip on my upper arm, moving to lift the Taurus out of my shoulder holster. It wasn’t much, but it might be the only opportunity I got.

  I let my body go limp, dropping to a crouch on the sandy floor. The moment I hit bottom, a camera flashed, flooding the small chamber with dazzling white light.

  Greg swore and fired wildly. I brought one leg around in a sweep, catching the side of his left knee. The joint didn’t buckle, so it wasn’t enough to bring him down, but he grunted in pain and staggered back against the wall, off-balance. I dove toward the center of the room, then rolled up like a pill bug. The flashlight blinked out and I ended my tumble in darkness, colliding with a clutter of objects that tumbled noisily around and over me like mismatched bowling pins.

  Hands gripped my shirt, pulling me forward and up, then lifted me bodily and shoved me into a narrow stone slot. Before I could orient myself, Cruz wedged in behind me. His hands found my waist and lifted me again, straight up.

  Reflexively, I stretched out my arms and found what amounted to a window cut into the rock nearly six feet from the floor. My flailing hands found the electrical cabling draped over the sill.

  I knew where I was now, and scrambled to gain purchase on the window ledge. A shove from behind put me up and in. I wriggled away on my belly toward the nether end of the shaft, following the cables. Faint light from the antechamber filtered through the hole through which they connected to Revez’s batteries. I prayed to Saint Damasus and anyone else who was listening that the shaft didn’t dead-end there.

  It didn’t. It ended abruptly about five feet from the pile of fill. I sat on the ledge listening to the sounds from behind me—Cruz dragging himself through the shaft and Greg swearing imaginatively while he no doubt searched for a working flashlight.

  Cruz reached me as I was discovering that my gun was gone, lost when I dropped from Greg’s grasp. He wordlessly clicked on his flashlight and aimed the beam at the floor below my dangling feet. I took the six-foot drop, landing lightly on the uneven floor below. Cruz followed, shining his flashlight around the small space. It was no bigger than an elevator, but it did have one important feature. There was a narrow doorway cut into its eastern wall.

  Cruz crossed to the doorway and aimed the flashlight beam into it. “Tunnel,” he murmured, then shot a glance back over his shoulder at the raccoon hole. “Could you squeeze through there?”

  “Maybe. But you couldn’t.” I breathed the words so softly even I barely heard them.

  He turned and took a step toward the pile of debris. I knew he was going to suggest I escape without him.

  I stopped him with a lie. “Joking. I’m small, but not that small.”

  “No choice, then. The tunnel. Hold onto my belt. I don’t want to lose you.”

  I uncrossed my fingers. “Don’t want to be lost, thanks.”

  We moved into the tunnel following the narrow beam of yellow light, defenseless and clueless. I glanced back at the shaft we’d just exited as I stepped into (or under) terra incognita. In the otherwise stygian gloom, I could just make out the shape of the window, softly illumined by light coming from the Treasure Room.

  Chapter 23

  A Night Trip into the Underworld

  The corridor was unusually constant. We’d gone thirty or forty yards before we found its first branch. The notches indicated we should go straight. Well, straight isn’t exactly right, because the tunnel seemed to veer slightly to the right—south, on my handy compass.

  “Where do you think this goes?” I asked.

  “On a wild guess, I’d say to the second pyramid.”

  “The Mama Bear one?”

  “What?”

  “The medium-sized one.”

  “Ah. Yes.”

  “That one hasn’t been excavated at all. What are we likely to find when we get there?”

  “At this point, Gina, your guess is as good as mine.”

  My guess wasn’t good. It was depressing. It was also right. Notches notwithstanding, the first southern passage we tried to take ended in a solid pile of rock and dirt. There wasn’t a hole even a mouse could squeak through.

  We moved on with more care, veering southwest down a tunnel we guessed ran beneath the face of Pyramid Two, not knowing if the path ahead would be booby-trapped or not. At least I didn’t know.

  “Cruz,” I asked at length, “all that stuff about Revez’s man losing a foot in a booby trap and the notches being unreliable. Was that all for Greg’s benefit?”

  “Mostly. I wanted to make sure we made it all the way to the Treasure Room. We were more likely to do that the stronger his incentive was for keeping us alive.”

  “He could have shot us both and taken your PDA,” I observed.

  “At that point,” Cruz admitted, “I was hoping he hadn’t noticed my PDA.”

  “He noticed,” I said. “Now he can come and go at will . . . or can he?”

  Cruz stopped at another left-or-straight “T” junction, and looked back at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Did you ever fill in that missing turn? The one after pig tail stair?”

  The smile he gave me was slow and utterly evil. “Alas, I neve
r had the time.” He looked up at the stone ceiling. “We need to get back to the surface. Do you still have your phone?”

  I patted my pockets and came up with it. The so-called high-impact case was cracked, but the touch screen was functioning.

  “No signal though,” I said. “We’re in too deep.”

  “Please, no puns.”

  He slipped around the corner to the left, moving as quickly as he dared, flashing his light ahead of us.

  We were met by another pile of fill. I climbed to the top of this one and poked around. The earth near the top was loose and I was able to roll a few chunks of rock down the other side. Dust rose up to make me sneeze.

  “It’s possible we could dig through here,” I told him, lying back on the steep, uneven slope. “But do we want to?”

  “Assuming that the corridor we’ve been following connects all three pyramids, the answer is probably no. Let’s go.”

  He pulled me off the pile and hurried me back out to the tunnel. We turned left and began moving again more briskly than before, reasoning that if the intent of the passage were to link the three temples, it was unlikely to contain any booby traps along the main thoroughfare. We stopped to listen occasionally and to peer down our back trail.

  We had gone some distance without encountering any side tracks at all when we first heard sounds of pursuit. They were subtle—Greg wasn’t likely to come screaming after us like a demented ax murderer—but they were there: something scraping stone, a heavy footfall.

  When the gloom behind us went from darkest night to a flickering twilight, I started to get really and truly scared. We were heading due west in the no-man’s-land between Pyramids Two and Three. And there were no alternate routes to be had. We began to run. Unsafe, but considering the alternative, prudent.

  Right about the time I decided that I wasn’t imagining that Cruz’s flashlight was starting to wane, we almost literally ran into a peculiar feature. A log as big around as a man’s thigh stuck out across the tunnel from left to right. It did not completely bisect the passage; it stopped shy of the outer wall by about six inches. The other end of the log was buried in an oddly uneven patch of masonry.