Invisible City

by M. G. Harris

  When I open my eyes, I see nothing but stars. I stay on the ground, trying to protect my head from the blows I’m sure are about to rain down on me. He takes something out of his pocket, holds it up to show me. It’s the cell phone from Ek Naab.

  “It’s from Ek Naab, correct? You’ve been there, I know it. Well, I promise you, before I’m done with you, you’re going to tell me every goddamn thing you know about that place.”

  He leans over me, sticks the gun in my face, and speaks very clearly.

  “Josh, I want you to listen to me real careful. You’re, what, thirteen, fourteen? This thing you’re involved in is way beyond you. Doesn’t end with me; I answer to a boss.”

  I say nothing. Madison sighs and then kicks me in the ribs. I crumple once again, gasping in agony. He waits for my groans to subside. “I need to know if we understand each other. Do we?”

  I nod and in a tired voice reply, “Yeah.”

  “That’s good. That’s excellent. Because the people I report to, they don’t play nice and reasonable like me. I don’t enjoy hitting kids, but in this regard, well, hell, you don’t qualify.”

  By now tears are welling up. I’m terrified, sick with my own fear.

  This guy killed Camila. And unless I do something soon, he’s going to kill me too.

  He pulls me to my feet, leans me against the car. “Okay, Josh. The combination for the case.”

  I shake my head. I don’t dare to speak in case my voice cracks. He waits, biting his lip.

  With his left hand, he begins to hunt around in his pockets. “If that’s your final answer, Josh, then I’m gonna have to cut you out of it. I don’t think you’ll have to lose your whole hand. If I take your thumb, I’m pretty sure I can slip the case off. Course, I’ll have to tie you down. That bone takes some sawing through. It’s none too quick.” He chuckles, adding, “And there’s gonna be some blood.”

  I’m frozen to the spot, just like in those dreams where you’re being chased but your legs won’t move. I try to flex my fingers, testing to see if I’m really paralyzed or what. Madison looks annoyed. What the hell is he doing? He smiles suddenly. I peer over his shoulder, catch a glimpse of steel through the glass. A hunting knife, on a bed of coiled climbing rope. I can hardly breathe.

  “Listen, kid. With or without your help, I’m taking that case. Then me and my associates, we’re going to Ek Naab. And we’ll do something that should have been done five hundred years ago: we’ll destroy them. Superior little smart-aleck half-breeds, they think they can keep all those secrets to themselves? We’re gonna teach them a lesson. And, kid—that’s starting with you.”

  I struggle to take in what he’s saying.

  Madison knows all about Ek Naab. How?

  Chapter 34

  As Madison opens the car door, I make my decision. When his attention is momentarily distracted, I throw myself forward into a handstand spin, knocking the cell phone out of his hand with my kick. The phone flies into the air and lands a couple of feet away. When I land, I run for it. But this time, I head down toward the sea, ducking to pick up the phone on the way.

  I sprint down the sand, holding the briefcase behind my head as a shield. A second or two later, I leap into the surf. A couple of bullets zoom past my ear—one even hits the brief-case—and I’m zigzagging, hoping that it’s true what they say about hitting a moving target. By the time he decides to swim after me, I’m already underwater.

  I hear him shout things like, “Where do you think you’re gonna go, punk?”

  I dive under the first line of waves, put my head down and keep going. I swim hard until I’m disoriented, tossed around by the waves, pulled under by the riptide. The bigger waves come in on the third line. Each wave picks me up and slams me down. I hit the sand, roll, but keep swimming.

  By the time I surface and turn to look around, I can see that the sea has dragged me out beyond the fourth wave. Madison has stopped behind the third, which I guess is where the undercurrent hits him. He’s treading water, shouting, “Come back, dumbass. You’re gonna drown. Get back here and we’ll cut a deal for the case.”

  I’m fighting to stay put, resisting the pull of the waves that threaten to tug me farther out. I stare at him defiantly, daring him to come out farther, risk his own life to grab me.

  I see him spit mouthfuls of water before eventually he yells, “All right, jerk. We’ll do this your way. I’ll wait for you to drown; then I’ll come in and cut the case from your freakin’ dead body. It’s all the same to me.”

  And he turns, swimming back to shore.

  In the relative calm of the outer waves, I think through my options. Up the coast, tall gray limestone cliffs block access to the road for several hundred yards. In the far distance I can see the clifftop ruins of Tulum. Even if I could make it to an inaccessible beach, I’d be trapped. There’d be no guarantee that he wouldn’t be able to follow.

  In the other direction there’s a tiny chink of hope; jagged rocks rise from the sand out into the sea, but only for a short distance. If I can make it out beyond, I’ll maybe have a chance to swim around the rocks to the next beach. That beach also seems inaccessible from the road. If Madison tries following me, he’ll definitely be risking his life. And we might both be trapped.

  Either option looks grim. The briefcase bobs in the water next to me. Luckily, it’s very slightly buoyant, from the trapped air in the packing foam, I guess. I’m still clutching the cell phone from Ek Naab in my right fist. It’s probably ruined by the sea, but I open it up anyway, hoping that their technology can make phones waterproof. It can’t—the phone is dead. I drop it into my front pocket and work on treading water.

  Making the decision to ditch the case is tough, but I know that to stay alive that little bit longer, I’ll have to sacrifice it. I dial the combination on the handcuff and release it. I try to use it as a float in front of me, but it just sinks immediately under my weight. Slowly, I open the case and remove all the gadgets, dropping them one by one into the sea. They’re safely destroyed. The only thing that can be useful now is the phone—if it can ever be made to work again.

  I study the rocks to the left. Looks as if they stretch about a hundred yards into the sea. I know that once I set out to go around the rocks, there’s no turning back. If I hit exhaustion too soon, that’ll be it. I have to make it around the rocks and in as far as the third wave. After that, I should be able to ride the waves onto the shore. I’ll be beached, bedraggled, but hopefully still breathing.

  I gaze back toward the beach. Then I see something that almost paralyses me. Madison is walking back from the car, carrying what looks like scuba-diving equipment. Up on the beach, he’s suiting up.

  That’s when I know I have to get moving. Stay where I am and he’ll find my body—and the phone—no problem. If I move out beyond the rocks, the constant pull of the open water might take my body out too far for him to ever find me. If I do drown, at least I’ll be taking the secrets of Ek Naab with me.

  So, I turn around, face the horizon, and begin to swim.

  I’m already tired when it occurs to me that the rocks actually stretch more than a hundred yards out to sea. I’m sure I’ve swum much more than a hundred yards, but the rocks appear to be just as distant as before. The waves hadn’t looked significant from where I started the swim.

  After another exhausting few minutes, I’m feeling the first real sense of being defeated. Plan A is not going to work. There’s no way I can swim back, either. The tide is pulling me hard into the rocks. Clearing them has to be the priority. I need a Plan B.

  I ease into a slower rhythm, not trying to go over the choppy waves but letting them pass over me. It’s closer to drowning but I feel more in control, less like I’m fighting a losing battle against the sea. I’m about ten yards from the rocks, another ten from the end point, the head. I know I’ll have to swim at least another ten yards past the end or risk being pulled into the rocks and injured, probably fatally.

  I count every y
ard, think about nothing else. My muscles already know the truth. I don’t let my brain go there. Not yet. I have to keep moving.

  I stop hearing any sound except the waves and my own breathing. When finally I clear the rock head safely, I turn around. I’m shocked to see that I’m probably two hundred yards out to sea. At least Madison and his car are almost too far away to see.

  I can’t see what he’s doing, but I’m guessing that he’s livid. I manage a tiny chuckle. Leaning my head back, I rest for a few minutes. I wonder what might be going through his head, watching the prize slip through his fingers. I hope then that the people Madison works for show him no mercy. I hope they’ll get medieval on him.

  I try to persuade myself that I’ll just rest here a while and then start the swim back to shore. Part of me believes it. But in my arms and legs and lungs I know that it’s over. The sea is too rough. Staying away from the rocks is just too much work. The minute I turn in toward the shore, I’ll be battling the currents forcing my body against the rocks. I need to swim a lot farther away—so far that I’ll probably never make it back to shore.

  Luckily my brain is still in charge. It orders the lazybones muscles to take me farther out, at least thirty yards beyond the rocks. But then the body takes over. And I stop swimming. I float up onto my back, my eyes closed. Rest—that’s what I need. Every fiber of my body screams out for it.

  I know now that I’ll go under very soon. The power of the sea to sap my energy so quickly comes as an abysmal shock. I become aware, floating on my back, of a sense of intense unease at the depths of water underneath me. Most people simply aren’t dumb enough to put themselves at this kind of risk. In the open water of the Caribbean, I might as well be a tasty shark biscuit. One thing I know about shark attacks—you don’t see them coming. The fish swim deep below and launch a speedy attack from directly underneath. Watching out for a fin is pointless. By the time I knew what was happening, my legs would already have been ripped off.

  I’d rather drown. I wonder how that first lungful of water will feel; I think about the grief that’s heading straight for my mother, about all the things I’ll never do, and about the stupid fact that this happened because I wanted to see my friends.

  I resort to a bargain with the God I stopped believing in two years ago.

  Save me and I’ll save your precious world.

  I promise: I’ll do everything in my power to find the Ix Codex. Then it occurs to me that maybe He doesn’t want to save us. Maybe the disaster of 2012 is His way of wiping the slate clean and starting over: Flood 2.0.

  Finally, I wonder if there really is an afterlife and if I’ll ever see my father again. In waters of the deepest turquoise blue I’ve ever seen, I prepare to drown.

  Chapter 35

  Someone must have been listening to my last few thoughts before I slip under the waves. I glimpse arms reaching down to pull me out of the water. They drag me over the edge of a boat. Even without looking, I can tell that it’s Tyler and Ollie. Opening my eyes, I see Ollie standing behind us as Tyler holds me upright.

  Ollie stares at me.

  “Why? Why did you swim so far out? Where’s your briefcase?”

  I start to answer, but can’t speak. I collapse then, I think.

  Some time later, I come around, still lying in the bottom of a small speedboat that is beached under the shade of a palm. Tyler opens a cooler and passes me a bottle of Fanta that’s already sweating on the glass. Fingers trembling, I clutch it.

  Ollie leans on the side of the boat. For the first time I notice that they are both dressed in pajamas.

  “We knew something was wrong, you know. Right from the start. Camila wasn’t entirely straight with us, was she? She knew that those men from the NRO were following her. And she didn’t warn us.”

  Tyler and Ollie are furious about what happened to them. My disappearance made it worse for them; they were held for questioning even longer because of it. When they were released, it came as something of a surprise.

  “Thought they’d never let up,” Tyler says. “But then, they let us go. Something to do with a phone call from the British Embassy.”

  I’m relieved to hear that—my advice to Mom must have worked.

  Earlier this morning, Tyler and Ollie woke to my phone call.

  “Somehow, I knew you’d be back. And that you’d be in trouble,” Ollie tells me, grinning.

  Our meeting in the doughnut shop only increased their suspicion. So they followed me down to the beach parking lot. They arrived just in time to see Madison shoving me into the trunk of his car and disappearing down the coast road. A taxi driver was just picking up his morning doughnuts and coffee when they pounced on him and begged him to hightail it down the coast with them in search of Madison.

  Luckily for them, he was game.

  “This is a first for me,” the driver told them. “I’ve never actually gotten to ‘follow that cab.’”

  Tyler held his coffee and doughnuts while he broke the speed limit to catch up with Madison. Once they had the car comfortably within sight, the taxi settled at a discreet distance, always just out of sight.

  “Don’t think he didn’t complain, though,” Tyler comments. “Saying, ‘I don’t take credit cards’ and ‘We should have agreed on a price’ and ‘Where are we going, all the freakin’ way to Cancún?’”

  When they saw the car pull off the road, they stopped too, arriving in time to see Madison shooting at me as I escaped into the sea. If I’d decided to head for the road—and them—instead of the sea, maybe they’d have been able to stop everything then and there.

  Instead, they watched in horror as I turned out to sea, swimming into what was obviously a deadly situation. From up high they saw more accurately than I that the rocks went out way farther than anyone could swim in high waves and ebb tides.

  From that moment, they knew that every second would count.

  “Your pal is going to drown,” said the taxi driver. “Unless we can find a boat.”

  Then the driver really stepped on it. He raced to the next village. It was one of those places with nothing but a fish restaurant and snorkel-rental stall on the beach.

  But they did have a boat.

  Ollie threw money at the speedboat’s owner until he agreed to sail them down the coast to look for me. By the time they’d both piled into the boat, twenty minutes had gone by. Down south, I was now approaching the end of the rocks, turning around, and realizing what a huge mistake I’d made.

  It took another fifteen minutes for them to get to the beach where they’d last seen me. They scanned the sea for any sign of me. Luckily, they knew more or less where to look. Even so, the waves were choppy enough to hide me until they were almost on top of me. By then I really didn’t have much fight left.

  I’m itching to check the cell phone from Ek Naab. How dry would it have to be to work again? Or has seawater shorted the circuitry beyond repair? Afraid that my frustration will show, I concentrate on sipping Fanta and watch as two Mexican guys stand chatting nearby.

  Again Ollie asks me: what happened to the case—the one I had strapped to my wrist when they met me at the doughnut shop?

  Tyler says, “Yeah, man, where’d you get that anyhow?”

  I don’t answer. I can’t betray the secrets of Ek Naab. And anyway, why are Tyler and Ollie suddenly so interested in the briefcase?

  Every now and then the two Mexican guys throw our little group a glance. Tyler notices me looking. “Hope you got some cash, man. Speedboat Guy and el taxista—in case you hadn’t guessed, you owe them big-time.”

  Chapter 36

  As we drive back down the coast to Chetumal, Tyler and Ollie tell me about their interrogation session.

  Those NRO guys already know quite a bit. They know that Becan hides a secret entrance to some hideout. From what Tyler tells me, they’ve got it in their heads that there’s some underground, Bond-villain-type setup down there.

  It actually makes me smile, remembering my first imp
ression of Carlos Montoyo.

  “Where is the secret entrance to Ek Naab?” they’d been asked, and “Who has been feeding you information?” All the NRO guys managed to get out of Tyler and Ollie was some vague memory of the inscription on the Calakmul letter. Luckily, it was very vague, infuriatingly so. When they couldn’t agree on the text, the NRO guys gave them a long rant: “We’ll find out who you’re protecting and put them in jail” and “We’ll extradite you to Guantánamo, you jerks—all we have to do is call you terrorists and then we can do whatever we like.”

  “So is it true?” Ollie asks, looking deep into my eyes. “Is there a secret hideout under Becan?”

  I hesitate for just a second before saying, “Yes.” Well—I always said I’d be loyal to my family. These guys are like my family. I can’t deal with lying to them, but I can limit what I tell them.

  They both gasp. “Aw … you lie!” Tyler says, giving me a shove. But he can tell I’m serious.

  “Dude, if this is for real, then you’ve got to come clean with it,” he says. “Those NRO idiots—they’ll never leave us alone. They’ve got our names and addresses; they’ve copied our passports, our tickets. We can’t leave the country without them knowing.”

  “They said that?”

  Ollie gives a reluctant nod. “Actually, they did.”

  “I can’t tell them anything,” I say. “Not a thing.”

  Tyler looks astounded. “Well, I’ve had enough of this! We come out here for some fun and to support you with your emotional problems, and what happens? We end up spending the night in a Mexican slammer—with toilets that would make you actually barf, mind you—with some really scary American agents who think we’re involved in some big drug-lord operation …”

  “They said that?” I interrupt. “‘Drug lord’?”

  “They mentioned drugs, they mentioned arms dealing, I don’t know what they think is going on.”

  Ollie is uncharacteristically quiet. “They think this is about gangsters?” I ask her. She looks away without replying.