The Maya Bust

by E. Chris Ambrose

  Gooney stifled a laugh. “Tell me this isn’t just payback for sleeping with a witness.”

  “You picked a helluva time to find your soulmate.”

  “I don’t believe in soulmates,” Gooney said, but his face softened a little, his lips almost smiling.

  The black eye came along nicely. “Open your eye.” Grant examined him critically. “Good job not sleeping last night. Bloodshot is the perfect complement for the battered look. Close it.” He picked up another brush, something finer.

  “Besides,” Gooney went on, “you’re the one who ditched an op to get married.”

  Grant drew a line of “blood” from the corner of Gooney’s mouth. “We’re not married. An imam with a gun hardly makes for a happy ’I do.’“

  “I dunno, man, Nick tells me she’s quite a looker.”

  “How would he know? He used to think you were a looker.” Grant turned Gooney’s chin to face him, but the green eyes popped open.

  “Now I know you’re shitting me.”

  Grant added a hint of red to the other cheek, a glancing blow. Dropping the brush back into the compact, he snapped the lid shut, toying with the tube of red lipstick he’d been using to indicate blood. Thick and glossy as the real thing. Didn’t have to hold up to close scrutiny, just get them close to the principals. “I think you’re good.”

  “Hey, Casey.”

  Gooney looked clobbered, the sweat and grime sticking his hair out at funny angles. How many times had Grant wanted to pummel his CO just like that. “Should’ve done a before-and-after.”

  “You disavowing me to save my daughter’s life, badmouthing me to my ex,” his voice was a rough murmur. “That’s hardly the worst betrayal I’ve had in my life.”

  “Then you’ve had a shit life,” Grant told him. “But this one was mine.”

  Gooney flashed his teeth. “Speaking of —” he grabbed the eyeshadow palette — “it’s your turn.”

  Grant laughed. “Keep it light, man, remember, I’m the winner.”

  “Maybe this time,” said Gooney as he set to work, “But I don’t go down easy.”

  “I know,” said Grant, closing his eyes to submit to Gooney’s ministrations, “I’m counting on it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  * * *

  The only place large enough to safely land the copter in town was the basketball court. A handful of kids playing fled from the wind and noise as the craft settled down, and the pilot flashed thumbs up, grinning widely, now that he believed Lexi’s mom was an actor/producer. Eleiua said a few more things to him, then they pulled off their headsets and he guided them out of the copter. A nicer landing than her father had, for sure.

  The pilot indicated he’d stay right there, looking vigilant and smoothing back his hair.

  Eleiua pointed up the hill toward the home where Aabo lay. As they walked, the town warily woke up around them, residents disturbed by the helicopter, calling out to Eleiua who smiled and pointed to Mom. Apparently, the story was spreading, and some people did a classic double-take, recognizing Pamela Dionne, who obligingly smiled for their photos, surreptitious or obvious. Lexi’s own rescue mission, her father’s impending sacrifice, had somehow become a photo op. Lexi thought she might be ill again. How had she missed it, all these years, that the sick dynamic in her family wasn’t her father at all, not even his absence.

  Malcolm signed her a question, and she signed back, “I’m an idiot. My mom’s an attention hound. She would have kicked him out of the copter herself if it meant she’d go viral.”

  He gave her a side-hug. “When we know better, we do better.”

  She cocked her head to study him. “You knew, didn’t you? Not about my dad, but about her.”

  Malcolm shrugged. “A feeling.”

  At least her mom was trying now, using the app, doing something to support her father’s quest. Okay, ignoring the app. Lexi trotted up and swiped the phone from her mother’s side pocket as Mom was busy waving to her new fan club. “I’ll watch the tracker,” she signed.

  It wasn’t enough. They would talk to Aabo, and that wouldn’t be enough. She wanted to rush into battle, to pull out the gun she’d taken and be one of the heroes. To at least show her father they had his back. Three women, and one man, and Malcolm didn’t even know how to use a gun. Not much of a posse, not compared with what the enemy could muster.

  On the screen, the blue dot seemed to be in the same place, an undistinguished patch of empty ground. She unpinched out to where she could see the trail they must have taken to get there, then scrolled the map around a little. She recognized the pattern of roads around the plantation where they had spent time the last couple of days of her vacation-turned-nightmare. The cluster branched off from the larger road, actually marked as a road and not a footpath, that led to Eleiua’s hacienda. Mom was tiring, falling a little behind as they climbed a set of stairs that turned into an alley. Lexi paused, tapping Eleiua. She pointed to the map, then brought up an app for notes. Her thumbs slid over the on-screen keyboard. Only then did she realize how much she’d been missing this means of communication. “The branch of the road that leads up to where they are, can we stop the other trucks? Can we make sure the ones from your house don’t join Raxha?”

  Eleiua read the note, blinked, and gave a quick nod. She tapped a response. “I call the co-op and tell them to park the tractors and wagons. Anything they can.”

  Malcolm spoke with her, but she said, “Go on.” She waved them up the hill, gesturing toward the corner as she brought out her own phone.

  Coming around the corner, Lexi recognized the small parking lot where she and Raxha had been, where the policeman abandoned his partner to the drug princess and the tender chomp of Dante’s pet. She pushed through the door off the parking lot, and the receptionist looked up, saying something. Malcolm came up next to Lexi to talk to the woman behind the desk, but she was already nodding and smiling, gesturing toward the stairs.

  “She says you made Aabo so happy,” Malcolm told Lexi. Her mother trailed along, nose wrinkling at the smell of cleaning fluids and old people. Lexi climbed the stairs to the second floor veranda, and found Aabo outside, occupying one of the hammocks. He spotted her, and his face brightened. Immediately, his hands got to work, forming signs she didn’t recognize.

  Touching her mother’s sleeve, she asked for writing things. Mom pulled open her voluminous shoulder bag and rooted around, coming up with a pen, and some printouts of travel arrangements. It would do. Malcolm pulled up a chair for Lexi before Aabo could lever himself out of the hammock. Already sketching, she sat down. She pointed to what she had drawn, a simple version of the cup, with some squiggles to represent the glyphs. Aabo’s gaze dropped to the sketch, and his brow furrowed. He shook his head fiercely, then clutched it in one hand as if it pained him. Scars showed through his stubby hair and across his arm on that side. She thought of the angry groove of the bullet carving across her father’s arm.

  Malcolm squatted, talking to Aabo, presumably in Spanish, patting the air, trying to get him to slow down. To Lexi, he started to sign, “He says no, don’t look for this, don’t … don’t do this? Go there?” He sighed. “This is hard.”

  She nodded. Aabo’s reaction made his attitude clear. She set down the pen, and spoke to him gently, showing her concern. “My father goes there, to try to protect us. I need to know how to protect him.”

  The old man’s glance flicked from her to Malcolm for the Spanish interpretation, and back, his fingers working into his scalp, his face screwing up with concern. He signed a little more in his own language, then reached out toward her hand. She hesitated, then took his hand in hers. His fingers felt like twigs wrapped in old parchment. He spoke again, but this time very carefully, as if to be sure they were listening. Eleiua appeared and she and Lexi’s mother hovered nearby, looking concerned. Probably sounding concerned as well.

  Lexi willfully ignored them, keeping her eyes on Aabo’s face. She swallowed hard, and signed emphat
ically, “I have to.”

  His head wobbled and he sank down into the colorful cloth of the hammock. He made brushing movements, as if he wanted to get rid of her.

  “Is he upset? Did I make him angry or hurt him?” She addressed Malcolm who signed his own confusion.

  Aabo lurched to sitting so fast the hammock tossed back and forth, and Malcolm put out his hands to catch the old man if he fell. Instead, Aabo snatched the pen and pages from Lexi’s lap. His hand shook less when he drew, a series of straight lines. He stared at her imperiously, and jabbed the pen. A pyramid, with another monument outside, a stela? Her heart raced and she leaned closer.

  “See this, this is … the place?” Malcolm interpreted, opening his hands in apology or confusion.

  Lexi nodded vigorously, and signed her enthusiasm. Then, Aabo scribbled on the pyramid he had drawn, and she winced. He was just defacing the work, trying to discourage her. No. Drawing trees all over the top, and adding a couple of other markings to the surrounding area.

  Under the pyramid, he drew a square, linking it to another square, then a wobbly shape that trailed off the edge of the page. If she hadn’t seen the surety of his previous strokes, she would assume this was a mistake, the wandering line of an old man’s hand. It must be a natural feature, a cave of some sort, connected through a room in a line to the room under the pyramid. In the first square, Aabo made a glyph, carefully traced, staring at his hand as it he could make it even more deliberate. In the second square, he drew a pile of dollar signs and a few other shapes. In the last one, the cave, he made another glyph — rather a copy of the first one, or nearly so.

  He pointed to square in the middle, the treasure chamber, and flared his eyes, then spoke a single word, in English, unless she misunderstood, but no, his drawing included round circles, a classic image from every cartoon show, each complete with a little tail and a lighted fuse. “Bombs,” he said. “Bombs.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Calling out directions to her men, sending each team to a ceiba tree, Raxha got down to the real work. They should be near the top, as should the entrance. There would be a false entrance at the bottom, the commisario had said, and a staircase from the temple at the top, but a thousand years of leaves and dead fall obscured the shape of the pyramid, who knew what condition the temple would be in? Clearly, her father and his men had found their way in, so must she. Besides, they may well have made their own entrance, concealed by such a tree and not actually at the top. Better to be careful, as her father would have been.

  Taking back the machete now that they were above most of the new growth, Raxha used it to probe beneath the roots of the nearest ceiba tree. Tempting to simply use one of the automatic rifles to blast the roots and send any bats fluttering out, or down to Xibalba. No matter, the roots of this tree grew too close together for someone to slide in between. She stalked diagonally up the slope to the next tree, a larger, more promising specimen. Darkness lurked between the thick roots.

  “You want me to go in? You hold the cat.” Dante offered her the thin chain, but she shook her head.

  Taking a deep breath, Raxha stepped beneath the arch of vines and glanced around, probing again with her blade. She pulled her phone with the other hand and tapped the flashlight on, illuminating the mix of dirt and stone where the tree grew out of the mound. Something pale caught her eye, and she replaced the blade in its thigh scabbard to reach for the bone emerging from the rough soil. A human jaw. Likely one of the sacrifices made to sanctify the temple. At the top stood the altar where the priests would remove the victim’s heart, and sometimes decapitate him, then his body would be pushed down the steps, smearing the path with blood. She walked now on holy ground. Ducking back out into the overcast day, she tossed the jaw to Dante.

  “We’re getting close. This could be the stairway going up.”

  Dante held the loose jaw next to his own, and moved it like he was chewing, then tossed it aside. “There’s another ceiba tree up here.” He pointed, and she followed, tracking in a spiral higher up.

  The next tree rose above as if on a stilted platform, buttressed by its many roots. Thick branches stretched toward the sky and to all sides in a spreading crown suggesting the tree had grown a long time with little competition. An acrid smell assailed her as she approached. Disgusting, but encouraging: bat guano. “You have a flashlight?”

  Finding one from a pocket, Dante handed it over, a big, black model heavy with batteries, very rugged. Perfect. Pocketing her phone, she flicked on the proper flashlight, and aimed the beam among the thicket of roots. The leaf litter showed no signs of disturbance, but also fewer shoots than the last tree. Squatting a little, she shuffled inside.

  Rustling and soft chittering pattered from above. She risked a glance, and found little clusters of bats clinging among the arched roots. They wriggled and swayed, their leathery wings twitching to enclose themselves and each other. A few gleaming eyes stared back at her. She thought of asking Dante if he had a flamethrower in one of those pockets, and, for a moment, imagined Eleiua’s voice in some lecture about how important bats were to the ecosystem. Maybe she could take a flamethrower to Eleiua, too, once she’d re-established her town’s prosperity and the people didn’t depend on her father’s whore any more.

  Pointing ahead, the light found stone just behind the screen of roots and nearly the same shade of golden-beige tinged with green. Her breath came in short gasps as she moved forward, able to stand now, and still be clear of the bats overhead. She slid sideways between a pair of roots, moving toward a deeper darkness that drank in the beam of her flashlight like the thirsty underworld devouring the blood of an enemy. Moving carefully, Raxha stepped up to the darkness and swept her beam in a series of arcs.

  Deep red, the caramel of naked skin — jolted, she froze, then pushed the beam back and up, illuminating a painting from floor to ceiling. A priest with a feathered headdress stood in profile, an oval knife in one hand, the other upraised. A second set of hands dangled back from his own, and his back had the lumpy texture the Maya used to depict a flayed skin worn as a cloak. An entire procession of figures followed him: a woman enthroned, drawing blood from her own tongue with a spiked thread, smaller figures of captives or supplicants, depictions of the Hero Twins alongside other gods. Toward the front, three openings in the stone walls gave onto the roots and the dim light of the day beyond. Here, the paintings crumbled into nothing, consumed where they had been exposed to the elements. Beneath the drapery of roots, a low stone lump must have been the altar itself, in front of the temple where the populace would be able to witness the priestly rites.

  Beyond the opening, figures whose feet had dissolved with time resumed the spectacle, leading her eye to a death’s head with its jaws wide open, a hybrid jaguar-monster with sharp teeth to welcome the guests to Xibalba, the final resting place: A dark, narrow path leading down.

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  Both rifles slung across his back, pistol in hand — palm a little slicker than he’d like — Grant kept his other hand at the back of Gooney’s neck. Couldn’t decide which of them carried the greater tension. A loose gag contained Gooney’s native belligerence. Shoelaces taken from Gooney’s boots wrapped his wrists and forearms, but using twists instead of true knots, his hands tucked lightly at his elbows across his back. Bound like a Maya captive, in deference to their enemy. A hard shrug and he’d be free. Twin pistols strapped to his ankles under the tactical pants. How many shots? Not enough — not nearly enough. No matter that back in Arizona this was the guy who’d killed four targets when they’d given him only one bullet.

  Gooney stumbled as they walked, not trying to account for the jungle floor, developing a limp on the left. Real or feigned? At this point, Grant could do nothing about it, both of them helpless by necessity, and hating every minute of it.

  From the screen of trees just ahead, the ratchet of a rifle slide.

  “Necesito a ver Rax
ha!” Grant called out. “Ahora!” He pushed Gooney ahead of him, half on display, half human shield, as if he were concerned Raxha’s men would open fire on him, the muzzle of his pistol pressed to Gooney’s throat.

  “Who the hell are you?” Someone called back in Spanish from behind the trees.

  “I’m Zorro. Dante knows me — he’s still alive, right? Tell her I’ve got her fucking American.”

  “Zorro?” A man sidled out of his hiding place, keeping them in his sights. “Cover me,” he said to someone unseen. How many others? Another question with an increasingly irrelevant answer.

  The man jogged uphill, panting already, and calling out. He cut between trees and vines, then disappeared beneath the spreading roots of an enormous, broad-leafed tree a few dozen yards above. They’d gotten close before getting a challenge. She didn’t have much manpower on site yet. Gooney’s head hung low, slightly tilted, almost nestling against Grant’s weapon, as if he took some comfort in the threat from a friend. Only a few months ago, Gooney held a gun on him, ironically at the behest of white men trying to clean up guys like these: foreign and dangerous. Flashbacks to Arizona, and not the happy kind, not that Grant had a lot of happy back there, but he was working on it.

  The man emerged again, hollering, “Bring him up!”

  Grant pushed Gooney ahead of him, propelling both of them, by inevitable steps, toward the next phase of the plan. That was all it was. Can’t get wrapped up in emotions. Just two operators, pulling off their next phase. Get through that, to the one after. Gooney stumbled, and Grant sneered, smothering all instinct toward humanity. As far as the men around them were concerned, not to mention the woman they were going to see, this American slaughtered twelve of their number and deserved everything he was about to receive.