by Brad Taylor
“Come on. Spit it out. What’s up?”
“Well, don’t laugh, but I don’t think it was a random mugging. I think those guys attacked you for the MP3 player so they could find the temple. So they could ransack it and steal what my uncle rightfully discovered.”
I looked at her like she had a second head. I figured she was going to have some stupid theory on how her uncle had survived and was now being held by terrorists in Beirut.
“Huh? What’re you talking about?”
“While I was held, Miguel — El Machete — told me the story of my uncle finding the temple. He said that a native entered first, but died from being exposed to the contents of some type of sack protecting the entrance. This fits my uncle’s theory exactly. The story had to have come from my uncle, because Miguel wouldn’t know to make that up.”
I didn’t hide my disdain, forcing her to race to get the rest out. “Wait, I know it sounds crazy, but the room where I got my clothes had a Quran and two different passports for the same guy. One passport was from Saudi Arabia with an Arabic name, and one was issued by the United States to some guy named Carlos. Now, you tell me that you were mugged by Arabs in Guatemala. What are the odds of that?”
I considered that. I had thought it just about as strange as getting mugged by a couple of Girl Scouts but put it into the category of “strange things happen.” I knew there was no way that WMD had been created by the Mayans, and even if it had, it wouldn’t have lasted for a thousand years.
“Look, I don’t know why I was mugged by Arabs. Maybe they got stranded and needed some cash. Maybe they thought they were doing their part for the jihad. It really doesn’t matter. We have no proof whatsoever of a giant plot, and even if it’s true, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Why would Machete lie to me? He was about to kill me. There was no reason to lie. Why did the Arabs quit as soon as they got the MP3 player?”
“They didn’t quit because they wanted to, they quit because I was about to rip their heads off. As for Machete, he may believe what your uncle told him, but we have no idea what yarns your uncle was spinning. He lied about the FedEx package for starters, he may have lied about some mythical protection simply to keep Machete from going after the temple. Don’t build this up into some giant terrorist conspiracy. Our first priority is to get back to the U.S.”
“I’m not saying they’re terrorists, but those guys are up to no good. Staying as guests of Machete is proof enough of that. Just think about it some, okay? All I want to do is tell someone. My uncle spent his entire life looking for that temple, only to get murdered when he succeeded. I don’t want a couple of thieves to steal what he found. It’s not fair. If I’m wrong, we only look like kooks, but if I’m right, we might be preventing something bad from happening.”
“Stop. I know you want your uncle’s death to mean something— trust me, I’ve been there — but sometimes bad shit just happens. He got killed by a sick fuck, and we dealt with that. End of story. Let it go.”
She jerked like I had slapped her. “That’s not it. That’s not what I think. Nobody but my uncle believed the temple even existed. Now he’s found it, and it’s probably full of archaeological treasures. People have been trying to determine what happened to the Mayans forever. I’ve had to study about it with two different professors who both had different theories. That temple may hold the truth. It would be priceless, but now that history’s going to be lost to a couple of grave-robbers who’ll destroy the find for some paltry money. I can’t let that happen. All I’m asking is that we consider how we could get the information to the right people.”
I really didn’t give a shit about the Mayans, but a part of me did identify with her determination.
“All right, I’ll mull it over. In the meantime, let’s go get you some normal clothes, get our passports stamped, and get on a ferry. We can’t do anything on the run anyway.”
Two hours later we were on the first ferry headed to Belize and safety. Once under way, I felt a huge weight leave my shoulders. I didn’t want to scare Jennifer, but I had felt we were in very real danger every minute we were in Guatemala. Now that there was nothing to stop us from entering Belize, I felt our chances of survival had gone from about 60 percent to almost 100 percent. I relaxed for the first time in over thirty-six hours, enjoying the sun and balmy weather.
My mind began to drift, thinking about what Jennifer had said earlier in the morning. I still thought the entire WMD scenario was crazy, but I had to admit that the Arabs’ attempt to rob me inside Guatemala City, and the fact that they only took the MP3 player, was a coincidence that didn’t stand the light of day. Coupled with the passports and Quran, I began to think Jennifer was onto something. She simply thought someone was going to rob her uncle of what he had dedicated his life to find, but maybe there was something more.
I hadn’t said anything to Jennifer about what she had seen inside Miguel’s compound, not wanting to build up the conspiracy theory, but the items in the box at the back of the room had all of the hallmarks of terrorist equipment. The 3M respirators were used to protect first responders against inhaled threats, but could be used just as easily to protect terrorists from harming themselves while constructing nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The garage door opener was benign on the surface, but I had seen it used plenty of times as a triggering device for improvised explosive devices. Put together with everything else, I began to think that Jennifer’s instincts might be right. There was no way that the two guys who ambushed me were on the way to finding a thousand-year-old WMD, but I was beginning to believe that Machete was helping a terrorist enterprise, and that this enterprise was still on the loose. Maybe I’ve destroyed more than a simple criminal syndicate. The only question was whether the two Arabs still had the capability and the will to do anything now that El Machete was dead.
PART THREE
47
Abu Bakr opened the door to their hotel room in Flores, completely spent from their ordeal. It had taken two days to get in and out of the jungle, much more time than he had thought. He was dehydrated, hungry, sliced up, and sore, but still felt a sense of urgency. He didn’t know how long they had before Miguel’s men found them. Being inside Guatemala was downright dangerous, with the risk increasing every minute.
They packed up hurriedly, checking out and taking a cab to the airport. Inside one of their pieces of luggage was the fruits of their jungle trek: a Tupperware container secured with duct tape and plastic sheeting. It protected the material they’d found next to a dead native boy deep in the jungle; something bad had happened out there, Bakr was certain. Something that might be the result of the weapon they dreamed of, and Bakr was looking forward to finding out.
They were about to purchase tickets on one of the local small planes when Bakr pulled Sayyidd out of line.
“What’s wrong?”
“Take a look at what they’re doing to the bags. They’re putting each one through an X-ray.”
“So? That’s a result of our glorious victory against the Great Satan. We have no weapons. The X-ray will show a container of dirt. What are you afraid of?”
“I saw a man’s bag searched after the X-ray. They weren’t looking for weapons. They’re looking for artifacts. This isn’t for security; it’s to prevent looters from taking treasure from the country.”
“I say again, who cares? We have a bag of dirt.”
“We can’t chance it. Our package will look like a blob on X-ray. They’ll be forced to check it out. We can’t risk having them open the container, releasing the weapon. We can’t fly out of here.”
“What do you want to do? What else can we do?”
“We need to get to another country, where there’s less security. Either Mexico or Belize. Let’s get out of here and find a bus station.”
Catching a cab, they made the short trip to the Santa Elena bus station. After a brief investigation, they found a bus heading to the Yucatán in Mexico at four in the afternoo
n, and another one heading to Melchor de Mencos on the Belizean border within the hour. Finding out that they could take a further bus into Belize City, and from there an airplane out, they bought the ticket.
Bakr, not sure if Sayyidd would remember, asked, “You have your American passport, right? Without that, you’ll need a visa to enter Belize. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”
Sayyidd scowled, saying, “Yes, chosen one, I have the passport. I traveled the long way to get here as well. I haven’t forgotten what to do.”
“I meant no disrespect. I’ll continue to ask questions, the same way I did in battle. It’s why I’m still alive. I would expect the same from you. Please, let’s talk about the mission.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Bakr said, “and I believe we need to test the weapon. Now. Before we fly out. We don’t even know if it’s deadly. I put a sample in a test tube, hoping maybe we’d get a chance to analyze it with our specialists before we employ it, but really there’s no reason for that. We test it here, and we’ll know.”
“You told me you saw the dead boy in the temple. Isn’t that proof enough? Why risk letting the weapon out now?”
“Yes, I did see the boy, but we don’t know what killed him. He might have had a heart attack or something else. I know it’s a small chance, but we should be sure that the effort we’re going through will be rewarded. We need to know the weapon is real. On top of that, I need to see how the weapon works. That’s the only way I’ll be able to determine the optimum method of deployment. Otherwise, I’ll just be guessing.”
They heard their bus being called. Getting up, Bakr said, “When we get off at the Belizean border, we’ll find a place to test it.”
Two hours later, Bakr was bouncing along inside the ancient converted school bus, roasting in the heat. The fan in the roof did little to provide any relief, although the local nationals riding with him didn’t seem to mind. Looking around, he began to get an idea. He asked the man sitting in front of him how far they were from the border, speaking Spanish for the first time. When he heard they were only about ten minutes away, he told Sayyidd in Arabic, “We’re getting off right now. When we stop, let me go up top to get the luggage.”
“Why? We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
Bakr pulled out the test tube he had filled in the temple. “We’re going to test the weapon right here, while the bus is still out in the middle of nowhere.”
He moved to the front, gave out a lame excuse to the driver, and convinced him to pull over. Climbing on the roof, he pretended to mess with their luggage, passing one bag down, then pretended to struggle with the other. The driver killed the bus, not wanting to waste the gas, something Bakr was waiting for. Working swiftly, he securely taped a piece of twine to the test tube, then measured out the length of one of the fan blades in the roof of the bus. He cut the twine, tied the loose end at the hub of the fan, then laid the test tube on the edge of the mount. Now, once the bus started back up, the fan would jerk the tube off the mount and smash it against the frame, shattering the vial. Once that happened, Bakr hoped the poison would be blown into the bus by the rotation of the fan.
He retrieved his bag, climbed down, and called the driver to him — wanting to make him walk back to the bus to give them more time to increase their distance before it was started. He gave the driver a tip and thanked him, then began walking back the way they had come. The driver shook his head and moved back to the bus, muttering about crazy foreigners as he went.
Bakr and Sayyidd were walking as fast as they could when they heard the bus start up. Turning around, they watched it begin driving away. It moved about forty yards down the road before it began weaving back and forth. Then it lazily crashed into the wood line on the edge of the road, never getting up over twenty miles an hour. Nothing happened for a long five seconds, then the back door exploded open and two people fell out, clawing at their necks and writhing on the ground as if they were trying to scrape off ants covering their bodies. From the inside of the bus Bakr could hear what sounded like a group of pigs grunting, and could vaguely see arms and legs thrashing about, like a nest of snakes.
“Allah the Merciful,” Bakr said in a subdued whisper. “It works better than I would have ever dreamed. And faster too.”
48
Jennifer and Pike checked into their rustic villa in the small village of Punta Gorda, Belize. With Pike gone to sniff around the town, Jennifer was finally able to take off the filthy clothes she’d stolen. She filled the sink with cool water, soaked a rag, and blotted her face. She felt a sharp sting on her right cheek. She jerked her hand away like she’d touched a hot stove. Damn, that hurt. She leaned forward and looked at her cheek in the cracked mirror above the sink, seeing two small gouges ripped out, each about the size of a popcorn kernel. She had no recollection of how she’d sustained them, and hadn’t even noticed the cuts when she’d cleaned off at the hotel in Guatemala last night. She leaned in closer. Shit… that’s going to leave a scar. Matches my nose.
She was the only one who could still see the small white line across the bridge of her nose, a trophy from her childhood of competing with her older brothers. She thought of the tree she had fallen out of. Like lightning jumping from pole to pole, her thoughts went from that summer day, to her brothers, to her mother, ending with her uncle. And what had happened to him.
Uncle John’s dead. Up until now, she hadn’t had the luxury of dwelling on his loss. The thought hammered home for the first time. She felt the grief roil her like a wave, fighting to take control. She closed her eyes and leaned forward, resting her head on her arms. Not now. Later. Think about this later, when you’re home. She took off her sweat-soaked undergarments and washed them in the sink, a mindless chore to keep her busy. She then stepped into the shower, trying to keep moving to prevent her mind from returning to the sorrow. Ten minutes later she toweled off and put on the simple floral print dress and leather sandals she had purchased. Picking up the stolen pants and shirt, she turned to throw them in the trash when a small bit of paper fluttered to the ground. Curious, she picked it up.
* * *
I came back from exploring the town and entered our room, calling out to Jennifer. She came out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed and wearing her new clothes. I was a little surprised by the transformation. She had a couple of cuts on her cheek and a little swelling around her left eye, but she certainly wasn’t ragged anymore. Huh. She’s a damn hammer. How’d I miss that before?
“What’re you looking at?”
“Uh… nothing. I was just surprised to see you without those Arab rags on.”
“Well, speaking of Arabs, have you thought about what we talked about earlier?”
And she’s crazy…. What is it with her family and conspiracy theories?
“Man, you’re like a dog with a bone. I told you I’d think about it, but we can’t do anything until we get to the U.S. anyway. Let’s focus on that right now.”
“I found something in the shirt. A bunch of e-mail addresses and passwords. I think we need to tell someone sooner rather than later. They may have already robbed the temple and smuggled out the artifacts.”
I paused, torn because I wanted to stomp this latest request, but intrigued by the find.
“How many addresses?”
I knew that terrorists used hundreds of e-mail addresses to communicate, a move and countermove continually fought between intelligence agencies and Al Qaeda. AQ switched addresses so frequently it made me wonder how they knew which ones to use, but somehow they did.
“Six different addresses, with six different passwords.”
“Well, that will be something we want to turn over to whoever we talk to in the States. When we get there.”
“Pike, please, I think this is important. We need to tell someone now. Can’t we go to the U.S. embassy? Won’t they do something with it?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately, no. They would listen to us, bu
t they wouldn’t do anything with the information. It’d be put into some report and buried in a ton of other information. You wouldn’t believe the amount of reports that embassies get on crime and terrorism. We’ll get quicker action by flying to the States first.”
I could tell she didn’t believe what I’d said. “Nobody in the embassy deals with crime? Who gets called when an American citizen is a victim of something?”
“The legal attaché. He’s the representative of the FBI at the embassy, and if we go to him, he’s going to be more concerned with the death and destruction we’ve done than any story of a temple vandalism. They’d listen to us for about five seconds. Then they’d put us in handcuffs. Remember, we don’t have any proof of what you think. The only thing we have in concrete is that I’ve killed folks both in the U.S. and in Guatemala. Going to them isn’t going to get the action you want. It’s just going to get us in trouble.”
“Well, couldn’t we talk to the CIA? Wouldn’t they listen to us?”
“Jennifer, trust me on this. I have a lot of experience working with country teams. We wouldn’t even get in to see the CIA. They won’t have a sign out front saying, ‘Spying Done Two Doors Down.’ They aren’t acknowledged publicly. If we went to the embassy and said, ‘We’d like to talk to the head spy,’ we’d be shown the door.”
“Look, how about this? We go to an Internet café and check out these e-mail addresses. If we see something in them that leans toward some type of illegal activity, we take that to the embassy. How does that sound?”
I gave up. “Okay, fine. We’re safe here. We can either take some time out walking the beaches and seeing the sights, or we can waste our time trying to figure out this giant conspiracy theory. First can we get some lunch?”
“Sure. I’m hungry.”
We practically ran to the first taco stand Jennifer could find, where I watched her suck down fish tacos like she was in some kind of competition. We finished in fifteen minutes, with Jennifer tapping her foot while I paid the bill. A little later, we found a tourist store with two ancient computers in the back. For the small price of twelve U.S. dollars per five minutes, we were allowed access. Sitting down, Jennifer went to the first e-mail account listed, at Yahoo.com. Putting in the password, we saw that the account was empty. Looking in the sent file, Jennifer saw one entry. She clicked on it, pulling it up.
