The Maya Bust

by E. Chris Ambrose

  Turning back to him, Lexi said, “I just want to send some messages, to let my friends know I’m okay.”

  He frowned, glancing at the bedside as if at a clock, but there was only the lamp. “Not done?”

  How long had she been sitting there? She stared at the phone on the pillow, and then told him, “I’ve been thinking about him, too. My father.”

  Malcolm rolled over and curled around her, his knees in front of hers, his hand stroking her back.

  She tapped out Denise’s number. It would be the middle of the night — whatever. They didn’t have to be awake. >Denise it’s Lexi. Lost my cellphone. Malcolm and I had a little adventure. Understatement of the century. She added a “wow” face and a laughing one. >Tell you all about it when I get home. And a series of kiss-emojis. Similar messages to Kaitlyn and Shari. Malcolm’s hand went still, and he was snoring softly as she rolled to her side, flicking off the light and snuggling into him. He mumbled something and shifted his arm, wrapping it around her. She kept the phone on vibrate, under her pillow in case her friends replied, then tugged the blankets awkwardly around them.

  The vibration woke her in full darkness. She stilled herself, hoping she hadn’t woken Malcolm with her sudden alert. Pulling out the phone, she saw the message was from her own number. Weird. She entered her mom’s passcode — it was Kyle’s birthday, of course — and opened up the thread. The first thing was an image of herself, her terrified eyes and gagged mouth, her arms stretching above her head, and a knife hovering near her throat. The picture Juan had taken shortly before her father’s dramatic entrance. Underneath this, a fresh message had appeared. Time stamp 3 am.

  >you did not listen. We said no cops

  Raxha still had Lexi’s phone. Her throat went dry.

  >your husband is one, we know

  >we know what he did — do you?

  An image of a body on the ground outside the church. Another one slumped against a wall. The lighting was too flat, making them look like stills from a horror film. A picture of Juan himself, looking more peaceful than the others, his dead open eyes staring skyward. Then the man without a face.

  Lexi’s stomach clenched, a full-body shudder.

  >we just want the cup or some money

  >we don’t ask for this

  Every twitch of the phone as it received a message sizzled like a live wire through her palm straight to her brain. She sat up, the blanket mussed in her lap.

  >you brought this

  >you made this happen

  Malcolm stirred behind her, and she clutched his arm. He jolted awake, sitting up behind her. He tapped her shoulder to ask for her attention, but she shook her head, pointing at the screen. Malcolm scooted in close to press her back to his chest, his arm wrapping her waist, trying to warm her. He looked down over her shoulder.

  >we also make things happen

  >share with your daughter

  >she tells he is gone

  >she lies

  >but he will be

  She knotted her fingers through Malcolm’s against her belly, trying to stop the tremors that ran up her arm.

  >this for when we get him

  >and we will

  Then a loading symbol that circled and circled. Malcolm was humming against her cheek, a soft, sweet thing that usually soothed her, but not tonight. The cold light of the tiny screen dimmed as it waited for the upload. A video. Close-up of a man’s terrified face, a gag cutting into his mouth, sweat beading on his forehead. Pull back to his full torso, arms outstretched and straining against bonds she couldn’t see. Then the knife. Lexi flinched, dropping the phone into her lap as she covered her mouth, anticipating the slash across his exposed throat. It didn’t come.

  Malcolm picked up the phone with his free hand, but he had stopped humming. The knife bit into skin carving downward — then a caption marched across the screen.

  >I make English so Lexi reads

  The camera pulled back a little more. The man lay on his back, spread-eagled, naked to his underwear, on some kind of stone. No, on an altar.

  >you know what Maya do with prisoners?

  Violently, Malcolm started shaking his head, pulling the phone away. Lexi grabbed his arm. Horrified to know, horrified not to.

  On screen, another hand removed the gag, and the knife thrust upward beneath his rib cage. His mouth tore open, screaming, bloody spittle flying, his head thrashing side to side, gasping a breath, screaming again.

  >we will have your father’s blood

  >we will strip his skin

  Lexi’s mouth burned with bile. One more message seared into her eyes before Malcolm hurled the phone away.

  >we will rip out his beating heart

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  Leaves and branches smacked the sides of Raxha’s truck as they rocked along the muddy road toward her father’s camp. Still her father’s, though he’d been dead for a dozen years and more — it would always be her father’s. The truck’s jacked-up suspension and enormous, knobbed tires shielded its passengers from the worst of the road, and she could imagine what it would be like with any ordinary vehicle. For now, she imagined herself driving over his body, over and over and over again, those giant tires grinding her enemy into a bloody pulp.

  Broad, leathery leaves reached out from the lower stories, along with hanging lianas and air roots dangling in a hundred tentacles to entangle her and slow her momentum, but she would not be stopped, not now. The headlights bounced and leapt with every jolt over the rutted road. Atop the cab of the truck, additional lights flared into the gloom up head, and even then, the curves lashed out from the darkness, the trunks of giant mahogany and fir loomed suddenly into the light like attempted suicides that jumped away at the last moment. Gleaming eyes stared from the canopy or vanished into it. Bats swept and wheeled over the track, reminding her of the glyphs on the cup, her father’s attempt to guide her to the treasure he’d left behind. Would they find the bat’s home? Would bats like these lead her to the tomb of the princess and the legacy she sought?

  She rocked the truck around the final turn, and the lights swarmed over the cinderblock and corrugated tin of the compound. As a child, when he’d brought her out here, the grunge of moss and mold enhanced the structures, clutching them with an undeniable masculine appeal: grim, gritty, standing up in spite of anything that happened. Strong and full of purpose. The camp disgusted her mother, the idea of Raxha going there, even for a party or the barbecue after a successful hunt, disgusted her mother.

  A chain link fence surrounded the place, and two of her men rushed up at their approach, pulling the gate out of the way. The ride smoothed immediately into the hard-packed gravel and short grass of the yard. The central building, a single-story square with a courtyard inside, began as two others, the traditional covered outdoor dining area, and a bunkhouse, joined now by two more sides to increase her living space and provide for her personal gym. At the back of the compound, the garage loomed tall, with a mechanical lift to work on the vehicles, a chance to get grease under her fingernails and feel dirty in a way that gave peace instead of more tension. This region had been named for war by the first Spanish to arrive, trying to conquer the residents. When the next wave of Conquistadors spread out, the priests who arrived here saw the name as a challenge, luring the locals to salvation until they could change the name to Alta Verapaz. High Truth and Peace. A grim joke with the descendants of the men they converted to Catholicism, who learned from the Spanish exactly how lucrative lies and war could be.

  The low thrum of engines greeted her as she spun the truck around, facing outward and ready for the next move. The cup rocked in its cubby between the front seats. Dante jumped down on his side, Raxha opened her door, and stood up out of it, taking advantage of the extra height as she turned around. Four trucks awaited, already full of her men. In the garage, more engines started up with snarls like wild creatures excited to be let out. She hadn’t changed since leaving the church. She had
not washed, and her only concession to this moment had been making sure her hair was tied back out of the way before she performed the ritual for their little video message. The dead man’s blood cooled and cracked on her hands and arms. It armored her chest, plastering her canvas shirt over her breasts like a holy warrior.

  Fourteen years ago, blood sleeved her hands and arms just like that. She wore her ball gown, the one they had flown to Mexico City to choose. Tiny puffs of pink tulle glittering with silver capped her shoulders that day, until she found herself on her knees, clinging to her father, screaming and sobbing, and trying to hold back the rivers of blood that gushed from his throat his chest his stomach.

  Her hands knotted into fists, and bit of the caked blood crumbled away. She imagined it were his: Lexi’s father, as if she had performed his sacrifice by proxy. She raised one of those fists over her head, and her men blared their horns and shouted their hunger. She swept her arm and pointed to the gate. Engines revved, but they waited for their vanguard. From the garage, one of the larger engines snarled and surged forward. An armored ex-military vehicle, left by the Americans during the Civil War they had supported, or maybe bought from them for los Zetas’ private wars, its prow resembled a boat hull, peaked and armored, ready to sheer through any obstacle.

  Over the noise, she shouted, “The big American with the jade-green eyes — I want him alive! Or I want you to bring me his eyes!”

  Horns and cheering, the pumping fists and eager eyes of thirty men. It resembled that other party in so many ways, save the meaning of that American phrase, “dressed to kill.”

  She waved her hand in a circle, and aimed up the road toward their destination, where the American coward went to ground with his family and her father’s whore. The caravan ground past her: Five vehicles. Three more waited to provide her escort. Not since that night had she been so feted, so treated like royalty. High above, the stars still wheeled, but the Feathered Serpent faded with the slow return of dawn, the sun god coming back from the underworld.

  “Dante!”

  He spun about. “Princessa! What’s your command?”

  She laughed and grinned down at him. “Fetch Chica — we’re going for a ride.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  * * *

  Awake before the knock on his door, Grant let in Lexi and Malcolm, then sat on his narrow bed and watched the video in stony silence to its horrific end. No need to turn the sound on. God. Nobody needed that, and these poor kids had been on the receiving end. Malcolm held Lexi in his arms, rocking her gently. They carried the faint smell of vomit. Grant couldn’t blame them. “We need everybody up. We need that copter.”

  Malcolm nodded eagerly. “Oh, yeah. Big time.”

  Another knock: two raps, silence, a third.

  “Come in, Gooney.”

  He filled the doorway. “What’s going on?”

  “Death threats, and worse. We need to move.” Behind Gooney, the sky already grew brighter. Plenty of light for a copter, especially if they fired up all the perimeter lights around the hacienda.

  “What’ve you got?” Gooney marched in, flicked a glance to his daughter and her boyfriend, and put out his hand imperiously. Like Grant, he’d slept in his clothes.

  Alerted by the floorboards, Lexi looked up, shaking her head wildly, grabbing her father’s arm.

  Grant stood up, sliding the phone into one of many pockets. “Trust me, it’s bad. They think you’re solely responsible for the deaths at the monastery, they’re looking for vengeance, you know the routine.”

  Gooney folded his arms. “Trust you. Yeah, right. Everybody else seems to, why else, if I’m getting death threats, do they go to you first? Show me the threat. I gotta know what I’m up against.”

  In Grant’s vision, the video overlaid Gooney’s powerful physique, the knife carved open his skin, plunged under his ribcage, his blood spurting — He met Gooney’s eye. “No.”

  Into that word, he put the weight of every year they’d known each other, every op they’d ever run, and every time either man had saved the other’s life. Gooney’s lips parted, a little gasp, as if he’d seen something in Grant he had never seen before.

  “This you do not need.”

  The big guy managed a little snort of derision. “Whatever.” He shook his head, then raked his fingers through his hair. “I’ll pack up.”

  He turned for the door, and Grant called after him, “Don’t forget to re-load. The big guns. Anything we got.”

  That lifted Gooney’s head and squared his shoulders. “I’ll lay out a pattern for the chopper, tell ’em where to land.”

  “Copy that.”

  He shoved through the door.

  On his own device, Grant brought up the number of the chopper company. To Malcolm and Lexi he said, “Get ready to go. Get your mother up, Eleiua, everyone.”

  After he made the call, he pulled up the video again, listening this time, for any intel he could gather beneath the man’s agonized screams. Not watching, not again. Satisfied he’d gotten all he could from it, Grant prepared his own things.

  As he waited for the party to assemble in the great hall, he lined up the guns along the table, the ones they’d bought in Guatemala City and those they’d taken from the monastery. Eleiua, the first to arrive, had taken one look, and said, “You’ll need ammo.”

  “Flashlights, bandages, water and food — a go-bag. You know what that means?”

  She nodded briskly and took off again.

  “What is going on?” Pam breezed in, circles under her eyes, probably hung over, utterly pissed. She dragged her wheelie bag and propped it by the table. “What are you doing, having a yard sale for gun nuts?”

  “I called in the helicopter ASAP. It’s gonna cost us.”

  “I’ll take it out of your fee.” She managed a smile, and a teasing tone, almost flirtatious, and so far beyond his mood that it hit like water on a grease fire.

  He slammed down the magazine he’d been checking and braced his knuckles on the table. “I don’t give a damn about the fee.” Not fair. She didn’t know what they were up against.

  She flinched at his language. “A joke, that’s all. I should treat you like a professional.”

  Five lives, at least, depended on him right now. They depended on him being a professional: calm, cool, collected, good under fire. He’d been striving to be a professional ever since he got this job. Seven guns on the table in front of him. Eleiua could handle a pistol at least, certainly a rifle, maybe not one of the big automatics. He or Gooney could take the sniper’s nest, watch for the chopper or for the gang. Coming to turn Gooney into a human sacrifice.

  No, they would not. Center, center, center, center, center. He drew a deep breath and let it out slow. Drew another one, and finally lifted his eyes from the assembled firepower.

  “At least you’re planning to come?” Pam ventured. “You’re not staying behind for my ex-husband’s s idiotic macho quest for redemption. Clearly we are still in danger.” She drew herself up as if she were about to sing, but her skin shivered. “You’re contracted for our safety until we get home. I expect you to fulfill that contract.”

  The way she blamed Gooney for the collapse of their family, for the sickness that left their daughter deaf. “Is that why you hired me? To take the blame if anything goes wrong?”

  Lexi and Malcolm emerged from the hall, looking a bit less shaken.

  “I’m glad you’re here. I need some witnesses.” Grant stalked forward, and Pam held her ground, though her nostrils flared and her chin pulled back as if she wanted to run. Lexi signed her confusion, and Malcolm made some reply.

  “I hereby quit this contract. I’ll do my level best to get everyone home safe, but I am no longer beholden to you.”

  “You’ve done what you agreed to — Lexi is free — all you need to do is tie a bow on it,” Pam’s confusion grew. “For what, so you can chase down the drugs? So you can find the tomb?”

  So he could protect the one pers
on the contract explicitly told him to shut out. Grant was keenly aware that his equilibrium was shot. He drew a deeper breath, working back toward peace.

  She folded her arms and deepened her scowl. “I thought we were coming to know each other, Mr. Casey, and now I’ve no idea who you are. You’re planning to just, what, abandon us? That’s why you got me up in the middle of the night?”

  She was babbling, his demeanor scaring her, even if she’d never say so. Malcolm watched and listened, trying to sign for Lexi, frowning and shaking his head. He flexed his hands, and tried again, with clear effort.

  With an effort, Grant made himself a well of calm, easing back on his own fears to stop fueling hers. Put it away, set it aside. They had no time. “I give you my solemn oath —” he turned, including Lexi and Malcolm in his words — “that I will get you out safely or die trying. And that includes your ex.”

  Pam shook her head. “He’s only part of this because something went wrong on your end. Granted that he’s been quite effective since he got here —” she put up her hands — “and surely that means he can take care of himself. Your job is to take care of us.”

  And he was acutely aware he didn’t have enough assets to do the job right. “If you want to sue me for breach of contract, feel free.”

  “What did I miss?” Gooney strolled in.

  “I just resigned. One of us should take lookout.” He pointed toward the ladder fixed to the wall in one corner of the big room, looking like a piece of western decor, and leading to the roof.

  “We still need you, Mr. Casey, I haven’t accepted your resignation,” Pam insisted.

  Grant shot her a look. “I wasn’t asking.”

  At Lexi’s insistence, Pam supplemented Malcolm’s efforts with her own signs. Grant had no way of knowing how much they shared of the rapid-fire exchange. He wanted to slow down, to make sure Lexi understood everything; there wasn’t time, and she knew that, too.