The Ruins

by Brad Taylor

  I gave Eduardo’s name and said, “He’s good at this sort of thing, and there’s nothing saying tourists can’t go exploring, right?”

  He slowly nodded, then said, “But you’ll just go to Mirador?”

  “Yes. Unless we get lost. I’ll let you know.”

  I took Jennifer’s arm and turned to leave. We exited the office, and he followed, saying, “You can only go to Mirador! Other places are dangerous. You don’t want to wander around the biosphere. It’s not safe.”

  I turned to him and said, “Duly noted. I won’t blame you, I promise. But trust me, I can handle a little danger.”

  We left with him spluttering in the hallway, me chuckling because I’d outsmarted his stupid bureaucratic bullshit.

  Chapter 8

  Leopold tapped his pen and said, “So you think taking this Diego Quelex is the way to go?”

  “Yes,” said Darius, “He will be the key. I did some digging, and he’s the one who organized the rabble you saw this morning. He dictated the signs they carried and was the one who got them to travel here from Carmelitas. He even organized a funding drive to do it. We get rid of him, and we get rid of the problem. There’s nobody else who understands the danger we pose, and certainly nobody with the backbone to get things done.”

  “You know where he lives?”

  “Yes, on the outskirts of town in a shack. Taking him will be nothing. He has a son, but apparently he’s going to be in the jungle for the next week guiding someone. The only threat is a dog and his wife, and I can handle both.”

  “Okay, but like I said before, no statements. I don’t want his bloody body found as a warning or anything. Just make him disappear. I don’t want to create a martyr that others will rally around. All I want is his operation disrupted.”

  Darius nodded and said, “Will do. I have just the men for this.”

  Leopold heard a quick knock; then his secretary stuck her head in, saying, “Mr. Gonzales has returned. Should I show him in?”

  What now?

  “Yes. Show him in.”

  Gonzales entered, still clutching his hat like he was wringing a dishcloth. Leopold waited a beat, then said, “Well, speak.”

  “Sir, the Americans came in, and I did as you asked. I told them they didn’t have permission and that it would be four to six weeks before CONAP could look at their application.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “The man was upset, but his partner calmed him down. The man—Pike Logan is his name—said that as long as they had flown down, they’d go see Mirador as tourists.”

  Leopold waited, and Gonzales paused yet again. Leopold rolled his hand and said, “Spit it out, man. Why do I care?”

  “I don’t think they’re going to Mirador. I think they’re going to search for that temple, claiming they ‘got lost’ in the jungle.”

  Darius leaned forward, saying, “Why?”

  “Just the way they acted. The have a guide. Eduardo Quelex. He’s a native from Carmelitas, and he knows the jungle.”

  Darius said, “Quelex? As in Diego Quelex? The man you told me about this morning?”

  “Yes. It’s his son, and he’s not like the other locals. He’s worldly. Rumor has it he used to work as a coyote for a drug cartel, running a human smuggling network to the United States.”

  Leopold said, “And now he’s a guide?”

  “Yes. He helps his father build his tourism business.”

  Darius looked at Leopold and said, “Perfect. We can kill two birds with one stone.”

  Gonzales showed confusion and Leopold said, “Not now.” He turned to Gonzales and said, “Thank you for the information. Do you know where this Pike Logan is staying?”

  Gonzales nodded and said, “Yes. A hotel in Flores. Why?”

  “None of your concern. Leave the hotel information with my secretary on your way out. We’ll take it from here.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  Leopold waited until Gonzales had closed the office door, then said, “What do you have in mind?”

  Darius said, “We take the father just as before, but tell the son that if he finds a temple, his father is dead. I can put some men on his little expedition who can ensure failure if it comes to that. They go into the jungle and don’t come out.”

  Leopold considered the idea, then said, “That’ll be a backup plan. Can you stage a robbery tonight? Make it look like a crime?”

  Darius smiled and said, “When you said you wanted ‘no statement’ about Diego, I thought you were squeamish. Not like your father.”

  Leopold said, “You underestimate me. I am my father’s son. This time I want to make a statement, if just for the police. Use all the violence you can, and leave the bodies for the police to find.”

  Chapter 9

  I saw the size of the small room and felt a little squeamish, unsure of what to say. It had one queen-size bed and about three feet of space on the left and right. With a small dresser housing an old tube television at the foot, there was nowhere on the floor to sleep.

  I looked at Jennifer and saw her squint. She thinks I did this on purpose.

  After our meeting with Mr. Gonzales, we’d come back to our hotel, the afternoon sun telling me that surely our rooms were ready now. They had been. Well, at least one of them had been. We’d loaded our luggage into the single room and gone out for dinner, Jennifer probing me yet again to reveal who the sponsor was for this little excursion. Of course, I couldn’t tell her that it was the Taskforce, and that I was building a clandestine infiltration capability courtesy of the United States government.

  Or that I wanted her to attempt Taskforce Assessment and Selection. I’m sure she wondered why every time we got together it was for some sort of training cloaked in “fun,” but so far she hadn’t questioned it. I’d taught her the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat and had given her more firearms instruction than most civilians who owned a gun ever received, and she’d proven to be a good student.

  Tonight wasn’t the time to tell her about my plan, so I parried all of her questions, and she quit trying, moving on to something I never liked talking about: our relationship.

  I didn’t know what she wanted. I didn’t even know what I wanted, but I certainly didn’t want to talk about it. Wasn’t being together enough? Just enjoying each other’s company? Why did women always want to ruin things with talk?

  She’d seen me closing down and had backed off. We’d returned to the hotel and found out they’d accidentally given our other room away to someone else, and now the hotel was booked. There were only twenty-four rooms in the place, and they seemed confused about why we needed two.

  This place is a clownfest.

  And now I was staring at a closet I was supposed to spend the night in. With Jennifer.

  She looked at the bed, then at me, and said, “Where are you going to sleep?”

  I honestly didn’t know. I supposed I could squeeze in at the foot of the bed, in front of the television, if I scooted the dresser to the corner.

  She walked to her suitcase and said, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you planned this. Like running out of gas on a date.”

  Mortified, I said, “I . . . I didn’t plan this. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  She walked around the bed, put her suitcase on it, and said, “How will I get to the bathroom?”

  I started to say something, and she grinned. Is she fucking with me?

  * * *

  • • •

  Jennifer watched the emotions play out across Pike’s face and couldn’t help but tweak him a little bit. If there was one chink in his level III armor, it was dealing with her. She used to think it was cute, but lately it was growing wearying. Did he really want her as a business partner because of her bare-bones anthropology degree? She
knew that was preposterous, but she believed he had convinced himself of that.

  She understood that deep down inside his quagmire of confused emotions, Pike had feelings for her, like she did for him. She just didn’t know if he’d ever realize it. Their conversation at dinner was proof enough. He acted like a child in denial, not wanting to broach any discussion about their connection, personal, business, or otherwise.

  She studied him, out of his depth in the small room, thinking that if anything was going to happen, it would be on her to make the first move.

  Pike mistook her expression, saying, “What? I promise I didn’t know they were going to sell our other room. I’ll sleep downstairs in the lobby or something.”

  She said, “I know you would. I remember in Bosnia when I asked you to share my bed. You said no then. And it was the right thing.”

  He nodded, his face showing confusion. She saw he wanted to say something. But he was too conflicted. He hadn’t taken her up on the offer in Bosnia because the loss of his wife had been too close. Too raw. And she had been just as confused, having experienced a near-death event, and convinced she would, in fact, be killed the next day. They had both been damaged goods then, but this was different. She hoped.

  She walked out on the limb, feeling it bend under the weight. “But the offer still stands. You don’t need to sleep on the floor.” When the words penetrated, she saw his mouth open slightly. She continued, “And this time I’m asking without the thought that I’m going to die tomorrow.”

  She went to him, watching him shuffle from foot to foot, uncomfortable with the conversation. She leaned in and gently kissed him on the lips. A light brush.

  And waited to see what happened, now worried about her own rejection.

  He took a step back, shocked. He stammered, “You don’t want me to sleep on the floor?”

  She said, “I want whatever you want. As you wish.”

  And she saw a small grin leak out, the confusion gone. They habitually battled for the remote whenever watching television together, but the one movie they both loved was The Princess Bride. He knew exactly what those words meant.

  He cocked his head, the grin still there. He said, “Does this mean you’re my girlfriend now?”

  She took his hand and led him to the bed, saying, “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

  And someone knocked on the door.

  Chapter 10

  Things were happening so fast I was having trouble keeping up, which was saying something, because I could keep situational awareness with bullets snapping by my head. One minute I was blocking a conversation about our relationship at dinner, and the next minute, Jennifer was kissing me. Toying with me?

  No. She doesn’t have that in her. “As you wish” was sacrosanct.

  I had been half joking about her being my girlfriend, deeply afraid of the answer, and now she was leading me to the bed.

  This is really happening.

  Deep down, I had wanted this day to come, but my greater fear was that I’d see Heather in my mind’s eye. My ethos was torn between betraying my wife and moving on with my life. Which was a betrayal in and of itself. Moving on would mean leaving the memory of her, and I was afraid she’d appear just as I was about to betray her trust—letting me know it was wrong.

  I used to dream about her nightly, but that had faded during my trials with Jennifer last year. It was a little bit melancholy, because those dreams were all I had left of my wife—even as those same ephemeral moments were torture.

  Jennifer turned around, looking at me expectantly.

  I hesitated, but Heather didn’t make an appearance.

  Maybe she approves.

  I tested the theory, leaning in and kissing Jennifer on the lips, the first time I’d ever attempted to do so. She broke it early and I took a step back, confused. She said, “The door. Someone’s knocking on the door.”

  I glanced behind me and said, “Who cares? Ignore it.”

  I returned to her, waiting on some signal to continue. She said, “It might be the front desk. Maybe they found a room.”

  Which confused the hell out of me. I backed up farther, getting space, and said, “Is that what you want?” The knocking became more insistent.

  She saw my change in demeanor and grinned, saying, “No, dummy. If it’s the front desk, they’ll have a key to this room. You want them barging in?”

  Whew.

  I said, “Okay, okay.” I went to the door preparing to punch whoever was behind it out of pure aggravation. The hotel was pretty cheap and hadn’t invested in a peephole, forcing me to open the door.

  I cracked it, seeing two rough-looking Hispanic men, one with a two-day beard, the other with a Fu Manchu mustache, both dressed in dirty jeans and ratty T-shirts. Definitely not the front desk.

  I got out “Can I help—” and the bearded one shoved a pistol in my face, kicking the door open. Like a flash of lightning in the night sky, I recognized the threat he held before he could even line up his sights.

  I snapped my hands forward, grabbing his wrist and elbow and slamming his arm into the doorjamb hard enough to crack the ulna bone. The pistol skittered into the room and I continued my forward momentum, hammering his cheek with my elbow and cutting off his scream of pain.

  I saw the mustache guy bringing something up and knew I needed to get the first man out of the way to eliminate the threat behind him.

  I jammed my knee into the bearded one’s groin, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him into the room, shouting, “Jennifer!”

  I didn’t even bother to look behind me, knowing she could handle the guy after I’d tuned him up. The man behind him held a wicked-looking bowie knife in his hand, the blade a good eight or nine inches long. He swung it in an arc and I leapt back through the doorway, away from the blade. He advanced, and so did I, wanting to use the narrow doorframe to my advantage. If he made it into the room, he’d have freedom of movement and be much more dangerous.

  Surprised that I wasn’t retreating, and unable to swing the knife because of the doorway, he stabbed forward with the blade like he was holding a sword. I dodged the first attempt and prepared for the second. When it came, I dodged again, then threw my arm over his wrist, trapping his knife hand against my rib cage. Controlling the blade, I rotated around, jammed my hip into his groin, and flipped him over my back, slamming him into the floor.

  Holding his wrist with the blade in my left hand, I jackhammered a straight punch into his temple, colliding his head against the hardwood floor. Once, twice, three times, my arm working like a piston.

  The knife fell to the floor and I released his wrist. It dropped, lifeless, the fighter unconscious beneath me.

  I heard, “Pike! Help me!”

  I turned and saw Jennifer holding the first man in a joint lock, his arm extended fully to his front, Jennifer holding his palm in two hands, the target’s hand twisted around and facing the man’s chest with Jennifer pressing against the joint in his wrist. The guy was grimacing and slapping his other hand on the floor, trying to stand up, but held in place by the pain.

  Her eyes wide, she said, “It worked! It was just like the gym!”

  I stood up and said, “Did you think I was teaching you magic tricks? Of course it worked.”

  She said, “What do I do now?”

  And then I remembered what these assholes had interrupted. What I had lost. There was no way tonight we were ever going back to the time before the door knock. Maybe never. I feared it was a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

  It’s not fair.

  I strode toward him, gaining speed, cocked my leg, and punted his face like I was kicking a soccer ball across a field. His head snapped back, his nose exploding in a spray of blood.

  Jennifer shouted, “Pike!” The body fell over and she released his hand, saying, “Was that necessary?”

&n
bsp; She was giving me her disapproving-teacher glare, convinced I’d simply succumbed to a spasm of rage, like I had in the past. But that kick was coldly calculated.

  I said, “Yeah, that was entirely necessary. We’re going to be spending the rest of the night talking to the police. We aren’t getting any sleep.”

  And it dawned on her why I was upset. She smiled and said, “I might still be your girlfriend. Maybe.”

  I heard the words but didn’t believe them. I said, “Let’s get the circus going. Call the front desk and have them alert the cops. Seven A.M. is going to come quicker than we think.”

  Chapter 11

  Leopold hit play, watching the credits begin for the latest Quentin Tarantino film. His favorite director. He’d been pleasantly surprised that the house his assistant had found actually had a media room complete with theater seats. He’d been expecting to rough it with nothing more than HDTV in his bedroom out here in the hinterlands of Guatemala.

  He heard the bell ring at the door to the theater. Good. Just in time.

  He was waiting patiently on a couple of prestigious local women. Apparently, finding some up to his standards was harder than it had been in Guatemala City. The local fare was slim pickings, but after yelling at his assistant today, he was sure she’d find someone suitable.

  He bounced out of his chair and opened the door, his smile fading like ice on a hot sidewalk.

  “Darius, what are you doing here? It’s nearly midnight.”

  “Sir, we have a problem.”

  Leopold said, “Problem?”

  “Your plan failed. The men sent to the hotel are in police custody for attempted robbery.”

  “What? How?”

  Darius pushed past him, causing Leopold to take a step back as he entered the room. Leopold took notice of the action, wondering yet again who was in charge in Guatemala—him or his father. Darius clearly didn’t fear him.

  Darius said, “I have no idea. They went to the room as ordered, and then I got a police report that they’d been arrested. Both pummeled like they’d run into a group of bikers.”