The Last Mayan (The Alan Graham Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking it, too: It was going to be all I could do to get there, much less jump out and disable an able-bodied man.

  “Here,” Santos said and I felt something cold being pressed into my hand. His sheath knife. He was telling me that merely disabling the guard wasn’t an option.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered.

  I crawled behind him, my body rubbing against the ground and my head starting to swim again.

  Don’t worry about how bad the head wound is, about clots in the brain or permanent effects of a concussion. You have an hour to get into the camp, kill the men guarding her, and then get out with her. You’ll probably be killed. Don’t even think about survival.

  What will happen will happen because it is fated, and the cycles of Mayan time are inexorable, grinding the affairs of men into a powder as fine as cornmeal.

  I shook my head to clear it. Get rid of those thoughts. Your mind’s wandering, you’re already giving up. Focus on this moment, not on fantasies.

  So, was the old man who’d helped me a fantasy?

  Ahead of me, in the brush, the movement stopped and I sank to the ground and waited, aware that the thrum of the generator had grown louder.

  A light stabbed out, hit the trees three feet above our heads, and then shifted away.

  “Hombre, que haces?” A man’s voice, maybe twenty yards away.

  “Oí algo por allá. There was something moving over here.”

  “Fue zorro. Olvidate de este. Ven acá.”

  The man with the flashlight shot the light in our direction once more, then gave up and walked away. Santos started forward again.

  As we crept toward the first building I saw lights ahead, flaring and then going dark as men came and went in front of them.

  Santos tugged at my arm. “This way.”

  I dragged myself after him, trying to keep my balance. We were behind one of the ancient temples now, and its bulk cut off the lights in the plaza. I walked like a man underwater, lifting my feet slowly and then carefully setting them down so that I didn’t stumble over a piece of rubble. We came to the corner of the building and I looked over Santos’s shoulder.

  A makeshift lighting system of bulbs attached to wooden poles shed a surreal light on the plaza area, and the leaning monoliths striped the ground with grotesque shadows. A handful of men in jeans and T-shirts milled about, rifles and submachine guns slung from their shoulders.

  “Where is she?” I whispered.

  Santos put his mouth against my ear again. “Allá.”

  He nodded across the plaza to a hill of jumbled stones and I realized that the darker spot in its center was what remained of an ancient doorway.

  As I watched, something in the darkness moved: Pepper.

  But then the form shifted again and I saw it really was a man. One of the guards, squatting inside the entrance.

  “Hay otro arriba,” Santos whispered. I looked up and for the first time realized there was a man seated atop the structure, his back against a tree root, rifle across his knees.

  My hopes crashed. How the hell were either one of us going to get up there?

  Santos seemed to sense my despair, for his shoulders gave a tiny shrug.

  We were still pressed into the shadows, mulling our options, when, over the thrum of the generator, we heard it: It started as a deeper hum, as if the generator were laboring harder, died away, and then emerged stronger.

  “Dios,” Santos swore under his breath. “El avión.”

  The plane was on the way. Early.

  I grabbed his shoulder. “Where’s the generator?”

  “They keep it in a little house they built.” He pointed to the left side of the plaza, where I saw a small box on poles.

  “We have to get to the generator,” I said. “If we can destroy it, they won’t have any lights.”

  “Sí.”

  The hum of the plane’s engine grew louder.

  A man as careful as don Chucho wouldn’t have hacked a runway out of the jungle. The landing strip, wherever it was, had to be well camouflaged. Suddenly I remembered something from the Williams letter.

  “Santos, does Lubaanah have a sacbé, a raised causeway?”

  The Mayan nodded. “Sí, hay. It’s on the other side of the plaza.”

  A sacbé was about fifteen feet wide, not much room for error, so it would have to be widened and the top smoothed, loose stones removed. Still, I couldn’t think of any other answer.

  “That’s where they’re landing the plane,” I said.

  “Puede ser? Can it be?”

  And maybe, just maybe, they’ll have strung lights along the runway to guide the plane in …

  “Can you get to the generator?” I whispered. “That’s the only way we can get to her.”

  “I can try,” he said simply and started forward, but I caught him with my hand.

  “Santos, there’s no way we can be sure of meeting up together afterwards, in the dark.”

  “No.”

  “La doctora and I will try to head north, along the trail we used when we were ambushed. We’ll try to make it back to the village and find the soldiers. But if we don’t, we just have to stay in the jungle.”

  “Claro.”

  “Don’t worry about looking for us. Find your own way back the best you can. Understood?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  “Then vaya con Dios, amigo.”

  I sensed rather than saw his smile as he said a formal Maya farewell: “Bin Xicech yetal yaab hach utz.”

  He removed the machete from the leather scabbard that hung from his shoulder and then he was gone.

  I was alone again. I leaned against the cold stones of the building, trying to keep my focus. There seemed to be more activity in the camp now, the previously milling men alerted by the sound of the airplane. The plane seemed to be circling now and several of the men headed for the far side of the open space. The guard just inside the doorway of Pepper’s prison came out, his submachine gun hanging down like an extension of his arm, and the man above him shifted restlessly on his perch.

  What was the old expression for futility? A snowman in hell?

  I looked back over at the generator and I thought I saw a new shadow.

  My hand tightened around the haft of the knife.

  The shadow grew into a form.

  And I realized that if I could see him, so could anyone else who looked in that direction.

  Santos, for God’s sake, be careful …

  It was too late. One of the men in the plaza pointed at the generator and the others turned.

  “Mira, quien está?”

  I saw the gun barrels swing in Santos’s direction.

  And the lights went out.

  There were yells and then shots. I hesitated, then plunged forward, all too aware of my weakness. Halfway across the plaza I collided with someone and heard a grunt.

  “Oye, quien es?”

  I didn’t answer, just kept going toward the spot where I reckoned the doorway to be.

  The somebody turned on a flashlight. I saw its eye flare on my right and then dart about, picking out bodies in motion.

  I tried to hurry before it stopped on me.

  I was too late.

  The beam touched me, fell away, then came back.

  “Allí esta! Tirale!” the man with the flash shouted.

  A body emerged from the gloom in front of me, a rifle in his hands. The rifle came up, leveled at me, and the man gave a gurgling cry as something struck at him from the darkness. He dropped the rifle and went down.

  “Don Alan, appurate. Here.” It was Santos, machete in hand.

  I stepped over the body as the guns opened up.

  Red and blue flames spouted in the darkness, and then a succession of automatic bursts. Hornets buzzed around my head and I heard chips flying from the stone facade. There was more yelling now and gunfire from all sides. Someone cried out and I sensed that one of them had been hit
by his own people.

  “Santos, where are you?”

  “Don Alan, here. Be careful!”

  I wheeled and an avalanche of dirt and pebbles cascaded onto me from above. I jerked my head up in time to see a form grow out of the blackness.

  The other guard.

  I swung my hand upward as his body slammed against my own and as we toppled onto the ground I heard a grunt. I pulled the knife free and crawled from under him, hand shaking.

  The shooting had stopped and other flashlights were probing the darkness. Above the trees I heard the loud throb of the airplane’s engines now as it circled. I heaved myself up, feeling for the doorway of the old structure.

  “Pepper!” No answer.

  My hand touched something solid, and I felt my way along it.

  Then a match flared and I saw Santos’s face.

  “In here, don Alan,” he hissed.

  The match went out, but had been sufficient for me to see the open portal. I ducked through it and recoiled at the odor of human feces and urine.

  “Pepper!”

  The match flamed again and our shadows danced off the walls.

  “Don Alan …”

  He didn’t have to finish.

  The room was empty. Pepper was gone.

  TWENTY-THREE

  We stared at each other in the flickering light.

  “She was here before,” Santos said. “They must have taken her away.”

  The people near that man will be caught up by it and they will suffer, too.

  The vacuum sucked at my soul and I tottered.

  No. Don’t give up. Even if …

  “We have to get to the sacbé,” I said. “If she’s alive, they’ll be putting her on the plane.”

  “Don Alan …” His hand touched my shoulder, gently, telling me that it was a fool’s errand, and that it would be all we could do to get away from here ourselves.

  I shook him off. “Santos, we have to try.”

  “Sí.” There was sorrow in his voice. He turned around, resigned, and headed for the door.

  The beams of flashlights danced through the plaza and I knew it was only a matter of a few seconds before they touched the bodies of the dead guards.

  “Go,” Santos said. “I’ll be behind you.”

  I lurched forward, trying to keep low, hugging the protection of the next slumped ruin.

  The sacbé, the raised causeway, was somewhere in front of me, but there were shapes moving in the night and I would have to either go through them or crash into the jungle and try to get around them.

  A red flame blazed through the trees, and then another.

  Railroad flares. With the generator down, they were going to mark the landing area with flares.

  “Quien es?” someone in front of me demanded and without stopping I answered, “Jorge.”

  “Jorge?”

  Before he could argue, Santos’s machete hacked down and the man gave a little cry.

  We were out of the trees now and I glimpsed stars overhead. Before us, the causeway was a dark wall, with red fires sputtering along its length. The plane’s engines had changed pitch and we stepped back into the cover of the trees.

  The plane was just out of sight now, skimming in low over the treetops, aiming for the double line of fires. Its engines drowned out the tumult on the ground and for an instant all attention seemed focused on it, as its bulk appeared, blotting out the moon, and then whipping past us in a hurricane of prop wash.

  Somewhere out of sight it touched down and I heard the engine pitch change.

  Someone was yelling now, about how they were under attack, and Santos pulled me down as a pair of bodies raced past us.

  The engine noise had almost died away and I gritted my teeth. If we had to go all the way to the end of the causeway …

  But then I realized the engine sounds had changed pitch, were increasing. The plane had turned at the end of the causeway and was taxiing back in our direction.

  But where was Pepper?

  And then a woman screamed.

  Only it wasn’t just a scream, it was a string of curses:

  “You bastards, I’ll kick your goddamn balls off!”

  “La doctora,” Santos breathed.

  “La doctora,” I said and lunged forward.

  The plane appeared now, moving slowly toward us, an all-black, strange-looking machine with an upjutting tail and two motors mounted on a high wing, and I realized from the whistle of the engines that they were turboprops. Its side door was open and I glimpsed a man hanging out through the opening. He was yelling something and the men on the ground were yelling back, but the engines drowned out their voices. The pilot must have seen commotion below and lights flashing and, being a cautious sort, wasn’t going to cut the engines while he was on the ground and vulnerable.

  Then I heard Pepper yell again.

  I reached the first man in the little group and plunged my knife into his back. He twisted, gave a cry, and stumbled away, taking my knife with him.

  The others turned.

  And for the first time I saw her, between two of them, her hands tied in front of her.

  “Alan.” She mouthed my name and I saw the others raising their weapons.

  I was still ten feet away and the rifles were coming up.

  And then one of the men gave a cry and went to his knees, and the other two wheeled in surprise as another bale of something hard landed on them from above.

  The men on the plane were off-loading their cargo, unaware of what was happening below.

  I reached Pepper and pulled her to me, just as one of the men on the ground raised his head.

  “Puto,” she spat in Spanish and kicked his chin like a football.

  But by now the man in the cargo door knew something was going on. I saw the moonlight gleam on something metallic and a spatter of bullets hitting the ground sent dust into my face.

  The rest of the gang was running toward us from the forest now.

  “Don Alan!” It was Santos’s voice and I realized he was between us and them. “Corre! Get away!”

  The roar of the engines was punctuated again by gunfire and Santos slumped to the ground.

  I shoved Pepper back against the embankment, under the aim of the man in the plane.

  The flares bathed the night with a red glow, as if we’d descended into the inferno. Frantic, I looked around.

  And thought about the flares.

  I reached up, grabbed one from the edge of the causeway, and then stepped out and into the line of fire. I threw it as hard as I could at the black hole of the open cargo door.

  There was a yell and I pulled Pepper to the ground. Bullets from the onrushing men hummed over us and the white beam of a light picked us out.

  Slowly, I raised my hands.

  Would they put us aboard the plane and drop us in the ocean or just kill us here on the ground?

  “I’m sorry,” I heard myself saying. “I’m sorry.”

  But I don’t know if she heard it over the engines.

  I couldn’t tell how many of them there were because their lights were blinding me, but I guessed there were at least five. Not that it mattered.

  I waited for the thud of the bullets, trying feverishly to think of a way to make them change their minds, to explain that it had all been my fault, not hers, and that if someone had to be killed it ought to be me.

  Or maybe, I thought, as the light burned into my retinas, I was already dead.

  Then the light shifted away.

  For an instant I was staring at a circle of bright dots, where the lights had blinded me. But then I realized the attackers were yelling and pointing at something over our heads.

  Over the roar of the engines I made out the words as one of them yelled, “Esta incendido!”

  And, as if to lend emphasis, something went flaming past us, a fireball with arms and legs that landed between us and the men. The fireball, who had once been the man in the cargo door, crawled forward, screaming
, but the prop wash only fanned the flames. The men in front of him leapt back as if he were a demon, and I forced myself up, grabbing Pepper by the arms.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  We staggered for the jungle and almost made it. But just feet before the first shadowy fronds the men behind us started firing and I heard her give a little cry.

  She stumbled, then plunged forward, falling to her knees just inside the trees.

  “Alan …”

  I reached her and she stretched her bound hands toward me.

  “Pepper …”

  “I’m okay.”

  A light probed, hit the trees just feet away, then went dark.

  “My God, look …”

  I glanced back toward the causeway.

  Flames were streaming out of the cargo door, carried backward by the wind from the propellers. The men were yelling now, pointing, while the thing on the ground that had once been a human being burned itself out.

  “Come on.” I helped her up and we stumbled forward.

  A limb slapped my face and as I stumbled, my hand jerked away from her arm.

  “Hurry …” It was her voice, urgent now, with a note in it I didn’t recognize.

  “Where are you?” I called, trying to keep my voice low.

  “In here,” I heard her say and wondered why her voice was so loud.

  I realized it was because the sound of the engines had stopped. The pilot, afraid of the fire, had cut the motors.

  I thrust my hand out to guide me, felt cold stone, and then, below it, an opening. She tugged me forward, into a tiny opening. I ducked inside and found myself swallowed by a darkness more total than any I could remember. A musty odor gagged me and I heard Pepper cough.

  We were in another of the ancient buildings, one in a part of the site we hadn’t seen before.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  This time the tremor in her voice was unmistakable. I stretched out my hand, felt along her shirt, and stopped when she gave a little cry. My fingers touched a stickiness.

  “Hell of a thing after this,” she said. “We’re almost out of here and I have to go and get shot.”

  “It’s not bad,” I said.

  “No.”

  Men were crashing through the undergrowth now and a light blazed at the opening to our shelter.