PLAZA

by Shane M Brown

  Also available by Shane M Brown: FAST

  © Shane M Brown 2012

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 1

  Libby blamed her father.

  His love of nature and the endless camping trips with her sister when they were kids. Butterfly nets, ant farms, insect catchers, kiddie microscopes, television documentaries after bedtime when her mother thought she was asleep. Bug books with stickers for every species they found on their daily insect hunts.

  From a young age Libby proudly presented strange specimens to her mother for the shrieks they would invariably elicit. Then her father would dash out, wonder in his eyes. 'Whatcha got, Libster?'

  She'd sit beside him on the couch watching wildlife shows, absorbing his awe about the wonder of nature and the variation in life. Twenty-five years later, it was a rare month that passed when they didn't find time to continue the tradition. Not this month, though.

  Her sister Deborah, two years younger, hadn't shared Libby's enthusiasm. Life led them in different directions, and today they couldn't possibly be more different. While her sister was at home, pregnant with her first kid, Libby was preparing to land a hot air balloon onto some of the most isolated jungle canopy in the world.

  This was where the best insects were to be found, and Libby was an entomologist. Hot air ballooning was the easiest way to get here. It proved close to impossible on foot. The inflatable raft hanging under the balloon gave her three-person team access to some of the most wonderful places in the world.

  The best way to describe the balloon-raft was to imagine a large white water raft hanging under the balloon in place of the traditional passenger basket. The balloon itself was elongated like a football. The raft could settle onto the jungle canopy, providing them a large trampoline-like platform to work from.

  Right now, from where she was sitting, Libby stared over the raft’s edge. She scanned for gaps in the jungle canopy. It was too dark to see the jungle floor. About seventy feet down, she estimated.

  'It's a thick canopy,' she said to Joel. 'We'll have to make a hole to get the gear down.'

  She discreetly snagged the anchor rope while Joel was busy with the GPS. Something must have given her away, perhaps something in her voice, because her long-standing research companion looked up and pointed a finger accusingly.

  'Don't even think about it,' he warned.

  'Don't do what?' shrugged Libby innocently.

  'Not this time, Libb. We're not properly anchored yet.'

  Libby winked and tumbled backwards out of the raft.

  Joel dived across the trampoline, trying to catch her, but he was neither close nor fast enough.

  Libby shrieked as she fell. Her back crashed into the canopy. Foliage collapsed under her weight like spider web under a stone. Greenery flashed in her peripheral vision. She plummeted five, ten, fifteen feet and then - whack - the rope from her climbing harness arrested her fall.

  'Whoooop!' she shrieked in delight, spinning on the end of the rope, hanging in the darkness, looking up through the hole her fall had made. 'Gravity, I love you!'

  Joel scowled over the side. 'I hope you get sap burns. Right, you can anchor us then.' He threw down another rope to her. 'And do it properly this time. The sat-link indicates a wind change this morning. I don't want to be caught off guard. I'm not in the mood for getting dragged across the treetops behind a loose blimp again.'

  Libby yelled up, 'That was just one time. Where's your sense of adventure, Jo-jo?'

  She couldn't see him, but he called back from somewhere on the raft. 'Canopy skipping a hot air balloon for three weeks isn't adventurous enough?'

  'Well, no.'

  He reappeared above her holding the starboard canopy tethers. Libby looked around for a good strong limb to attach the tether.

  She called up through the canopy, 'Wake up Perry. We need him.'

  In place of Joel's shaggy dark hair and long unshaven face, Perry’s bald head looked down over the raft's edge. 'I'm awake already. Who could sleep through all your yelling. I'm dying for a coffee. Are you going down to set up camp?'

  'I'm doing the tethers. Breakfast comes next.'

  Perry looked confused. 'Aren't we tethered yet? What are you doing over the side? Ah...you pulled another canopy dive. No wonder he's throwing things around up here. He hates that, you know.'

  'Oh, calm him down for me, Perry. He needs to relax a bit more.'

  'Tell him yourself. Here he comes.'

  Joel's skinny legs appeared on the opposite side of the raft, descending at a pace that hardly disturbed the foliage as his weight pushed through it. Perry tossed more tethers over either side of the raft. Libby snatched hers, but already knew she needed to move again. There was nothing nearby worth tethering to.

  'I got nothing here to tether,' she called to Joel. 'I'll go down a bit.'

  Joel didn't answer; either he was still genuinely annoyed or focusing on their tricky task. He descended lower too. They both needed to find pretty strong tree limbs further down to tether the raft in place. They generally avoided going too far down the ropes before they tethered. It proved hard to get back up, even if Perry threw down the skinny aluminum ladder.

  She started to call out to Joel, but stopped. Let him sulk. They could hardly blame her for being excited. Fifty feet under her feet was ground that she might be the first human to ever touch. The quicker they set up base camp, the quicker they could start with the sampling. The biodiversity in this region was staggering. After only four nights in the field, they had forty-three insect species that none of them recognized. They couldn't be sure until they were back home, but it was certainly looking like an excellent haul. The area's isolation previously prevented deep penetration, even with a balloon-raft, but that had changed with the Plaza dig. Ethan's site provided the perfect staging point to launch the raft. Instead of short sorties from the jungle’s edge, they had a clear area to launch from right in the middle. As soon as her research allowed, Libby was returning to the Plaza to work as a site volunteer.

  'Hey,' called Joel, pointing. 'There's something stuck in your hair.'

  He didn't sound annoyed any longer.

  Libby flicked the big floppy leaf from her hair and watched it spiral down, down, down to the dark jungle floor.

  It was right about then, as the leaf hit the jungle floor, that everything stopped making sense.

  Perry screamed. But not from the raft. The frantic shrieks were coming further off from Libby's right.

  'Christ!' Joel yelled. 'Perry! Perry, what is it?'

  'Help me!' yelled Perry. 'Oh, God noooooooo!'

  Libby heard a shredding sound, like meaty tearing. She tried to orientate herself on the sound, scissoring her legs midair to turn on the spot. Where was Perry? How had he gotten out of the raft so quickly?

  There. She spotted him. Twenty feet behind the raft the foliage thrashed wildly. Perry couldn't have climbed right over there without a harness. Something had snatched him from the raft and dragged him across the canopy in total silence. What could do that? Nothing, that was the answer. Nothing could move over that much canopy so quickly and quietly.

  There was so much canopy that Libby couldn't even see clearly. Then suddenly she made out two moving shapes, joined together, one
Perry and one obviously much larger than Perry.

  'Something's up there!' yelled Libby. 'Something's got him!'

  Perry’s terrified shrieks abruptly cut off.

  'Shit,' swore Joel. 'I see it. I see it! Christ - it's eating him!'

  Joel had swung himself to a branch to get a better angle on Perry. 'It's right above you, Libby!'

  Libby looked up just in time to see something come thrashing through the foliage towards her. She didn't have time to do anything but shrug her head away from the thing that struck her neck. She glimpsed a hand with a wedding ring. It tumbled off her hip and kept falling.

  She watched the dismembered arm spinning down like the leaf she dropped a minute earlier. Perry’s arm bounced on the leaf litter. Libby touched her face. Blood. Perry’s blood.

  'It's eating him,' Joel hissed again, clinging upside-down and sloth-like to a tree limb, staring immobile at the spectacle above.

  'What is it?' yelled Libby.

  'Shut-up,' hissed Joel.

  'Perry!' yelled Libby.

  Joel's face screwed up. 'Shut up, Libby. I think it heard you.'

  Libby stopped calling out. She peered around herself, spinning slowly, trying to see where Joel was looking.

  Without taking his eyes off whatever was happening above, Joel warned, 'It knows you're there, Libby. It's turning towards you. We need to get down, right now. Shit - it's coming! Now, Libby, now. Go, Libby, get down right now!'

  Libby hit the release switch on her harness descender. She dropped fast, but looking up it didn't seem fast enough. Joel was right. Something was tracking her descent, wildly disturbing the foliage. Large branches shook. Walls of leaves thrust aside.

  All she could see were leaves. She should be able to see something, but there was nothing but leaves.

  Libby hit the forest floor, frantically unclipping her descender. Joel hit the forest floor twenty feet away. He snapped off his descender and yelled, 'Run, Libby, run!'

  Libby ran.

  #

  Ethan March sprinted for all his life was worth.

  Pieces of ruined Plaza masonry whipped through his peripheral vision. Thankfully, his safety officer wouldn’t catch him running. From any point among the ruins, a dozen different angles of architecture obscured a person's line of sight. Steps leading nowhere. Dangerously leaning half-arches. Rows of columns supporting invisible ceilings of open air. Ethan wasn't sure if the Plaza resembled some monumental piece of abstract artwork or the result of a god-child's gravity-defying tantrum.

  In fact, he remained largely unconvinced that anything more substantial than jungle vines held the place together.

  He shouldn't be running, but some things were worth running for. Like gold coins emerging on the last dive of the season.

  Even as he ran, his mind raced faster. It operated three steps ahead of his body. According to his wife, Maria, this was not an uncommon state of affairs for him.

  Gold coins? It didn't make sense. Metal currency wasn't used by early post-classic Mesoamerican cultures. And certainly not gold coins. But Claire's radio message sounded emphatic. Marco had found gold coins in the submerged bunker. He was bringing them to the surface right now.

  A crowd waited on the bunker steps. Faces from both the dig and the dive teams. In fact, it looked like everybody. How could he be the last to arrive? He wasn't that far away.

  Ethan skidded to a pace more suitable to his position as site leader. He managed to maintain the slower pace for all of three seconds. Who am I kidding? He started running again. Reaching the crowd at the bunker’s entrance, he tried to regain what dignity a breathless man could muster. Very little, as it happened.

  'Make a hole!' someone yelled, noticing Ethan’s approach. A human-lined passageway parted ahead of Ethan, down, down, down the steps into the flooded bunker.

  More people crowded at the bottom. Yep, everyone was here. Volunteers, staff, security people, his safety officer...only one person was missing. Ethan searched the faces for Joanne, but she was either still on her way or lost in the crowd.

  Watching his step over the power cables, Ethan reached where the narrow stairwell fanned out into the first antechamber. The only dry chamber in this underground section of the bunker was usually one-third filled with lighting and diving equipment. On the last dive of the season, most of the equipment was already packed up. The twenty-five or so people on the stairs could have squeezed into the antechamber, but they held back. After three years, something about these underground chambers still made people uneasy.

  Arms crossed, feet apart, intently watching the water's surface, only Claire Hudnell shared the antechamber with Ethan. Claire had called Ethan on the radio.

  Of all the serious faces searching the water, hers watched most intently.

  ‘Does anyone have a camera?' Ethan called back up the stairs.

  'Here.' A digital video camera came hand-over-hand forwards.

  'There!' declared Claire. She pointed to the first little disturbance on the surface. A bubble.

  A second later, bubbles patterned the surface in overlapping ripples.

  Marco and Patrick were emerging from their penetrative dive.

  Claire picked up the diving log, checking her watch as she ran her eye down their dive plan.

  Ethan said, 'Tell me they're not making an emergency ascent. I don't care if he's found the Holy Grail, they still need to decompress.'

  Murmurs rippled up the stairs behind Ethan.

  Claire checked the bezel on her dive watch. Under the peak of her Red Socks baseball cap, green eyes calculated the three 'D's: depth, duration and decompression. 'No, they’re well within our safety limits. They've not been down that long. Marco's a pro. We'll hear his dive computer holler if he screws his ascent.'

  Blunt as ever. That's what Ethan liked about his safety officer. She radiated an aura of practical self-confidence that perfectly suited her job. She never complained about living in a tent. In fact, she seemed to thrive on camp life. Her attractively freckled face was tanned from endlessly striding around the Plaza. Tall and broad-shouldered, the constant physical activity kept her lithe and muscular. Her straight blond hair was always under a cap.

  And she was right about the divers. There was no hyperbaric chamber in the middle of the jungle, no way of effectively treating a case of the bends, so there was no margin for error. Claire Hudnell ran a very tight shift, including long-hand dive plans to manually check her computer simulations. If anyone got the bends, it was because they weren't listening to Claire. No one would be that stupid.

  She nodded to the water. 'Heads up, Prof. We’ve got divers on the surface. I think they want you.'

  Ethan crossed to where six hundred years ago the now submerged stairs would have led deeper underground. This was the only entry point into the flooded bunker. The divers, Marco and Patrick, were emerging up a section of flooded stairwell. Reaching halfway up the top stair, the water lapped under Ethan's sneakers.

  Marco emerged first, hands cupped, lifting his arms. Although Ethan couldn't read the expression behind his dive mask, Marco's body language was crystal clear.

  Take this from me.

  Ethan cupped his hands under Marco's and felt several small objects patter down into his palms. The golden color was unmistakable. The size and shape were right. Ethan held his breath. It can't be. This just doesn't make sense. Gold was one of the few items that didn't need immediate treatment after recovery. The inert metal wouldn't react with the air in any detrimental way anytime soon. It was one of the few artifacts they could find underwater and bring straight to the surface without a chemical preservation bath standing by.

  It should also be heavy.

  After studying the objects in his hands for a few seconds, Ethan dropped his chin to his chest and laughed quietly. When he looked up, Marco's dive mask was off. He was finning slowly in the water with a massive grin.

  Finning behind Marco, Patrick raised one eyebrow and winked mischievously. 'So, are we rich,
boss?'

  Everyone behind Ethan, up the stairs and now moving into the antechamber, waited for Ethan's reaction.

  This is the last dive of the season after all.

  Ethan stood and faced the waiting crowd. He called up the steps, 'Gold coins, huh? Well, maybe we should be looking for a time-machine, because apparently the original inhabitants were minting the Mexican coat of arms four hundred years early!'

  He unwrapped the gold foil from the chocolate coin and bit dramatically into the confectionary. 'And I think we can safely say that the codex is a recipe for the best chocolate either side of the border.'

  Laughter peeled off the stone walls, bouncing back from every direction.

  Ethan's face reddened. 'OK, you all got me. Very nice. You got me good.' He tossed the chocolate coins into the crowd. 'Treasure for all!'

  Barely keeping the smirk from her face, avoiding eye-contact with Ethan, Claire clapped her hands and waved the crowd back up the stairs. 'OK, people. That's the last dive of the day. Let's pack it up. We all got hot showers waiting.’

  Ethan squatted to help Marco from the water. 'Whose idea?'

  Marco held his hands up innocently. 'Hey, my lips are sealed, chief. You heard the lady. Last dive of the day. I'm officially off the clock. Can't help you.'

  'Coward,' Ethan said. 'Besides, there's only one person you'd cover for.'

  Marco's eyes glanced to the woman herding everyone up the stairs.

  Ethan followed Marco's gaze, not surprised by who had orchestrated the practical joke.

  The sheriff strikes again. Claire Hudnell, his safety officer. Only she could have done this. How could someone so by-the-book in every other regard be such a prankster? They called her the 'Sheriff' because she was constantly on the prowl, looking for safety breaches.

  Claire came to stand with Ethan, waving at Marco and Patrick. 'I don't suppose you two found all our missing steel cable down there, did you?'

  Patrick rolled his eyes. 'No joy, I'm afraid. Keep looking, Sheriff.'

  Claire finally met Ethan's gaze. 'I can look after these two trouble-makers. I'm sure you still have some packing to do. And tough luck about the gold, huh? Maybe next time.'