The Ruins

by Brad Taylor

  “Did they go to the wrong room? We’re looking for a woman anthropologist and a man who apparently just arranges travel for their company.”

  The movie started, the surround sound echoing in the room. Darius picked up the remote and muted the projector. He said, “It was the right room. I saw the woman and the man talking to the police. The woman looks just as advertised, but the man is no travel coordinator.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s what I do. He’s rough, but he still shouldn’t have been able to defeat both of them. That I don’t understand. Those men are ruthless killers, and this wasn’t their first rodeo. I wouldn’t have been able to take them down by myself.”

  Leopold took that in. If asked to describe Darius, he would have used Darius’s own words about being a ruthless killer, and he knew for certain it wouldn’t have been Darius’s first rodeo. To hear the respect he gave the men he’d sent meant whoever had defeated them was good. Very good. But it couldn’t be the archeological company. Could it?

  “So who is he?”

  “I don’t know. He’s a ghost on the web. They have a rudimentary website and an office address, but it’s all new. Within the last month. The girl just graduated with her degree a few days ago. It’s real, but the ink isn’t even dry on her diploma.”

  “So it’s a new company. That’s all. We’re making too much of this.”

  “Maybe, but either those two took down my men—which I doubt—or someone else did. If it’s not them, then who was it?”

  Leopold ignored the question, thinking beyond the immediate confrontation. “What about the men you sent? Will they talk?”

  “No. They have a lot of experience with the Guatemalan judicial system, and the job was based on payment after the fact. If they want their money, they’ll claim it was exactly what it was supposed to look like—a robbery attempt. I’ll grease some palms and they’ll ‘escape’ after a few days. The biggest loss is they’ll have to vanish for a time. I won’t be able to use them for a while.”

  “Good. What about the company? Are they still going on their trek, or did this at least scare them enough to delay?”

  “I have no idea, but we have to assume they will. I’m capturing Diego tonight, while the son is still at home. I’ll impress upon him the need to leave that temple alone.”

  “Are you sure you can snatch Diego without more police involvement? That’s the last thing we need.”

  “I can. It’s almost too easy.”

  “And you think that’ll be enough? Eduardo will follow your instructions?”

  “I do. It turns out Eduardo used to work for a drug cartel here in Guatemala. He’s seen the punishment that can be delivered. He’ll play ball. He has in the past.”

  “What if he doesn’t?”

  “Then he’ll end up being eaten by the jungle, along with the two Americans.”

  Chapter 12

  On day two of our trek we were totally absorbed by the jungle, fully leaving behind any trace of man. The pure rain forest was awe-inspiring, and a little bit intimidating, reminding me that there were still parts of the earth that man had not yet tamed. The trees and undergrowth stoically let us pass, as if they’d reluctantly given permission, while the cacophony of birds seemed to be taunting us for being so foolish as to continue deeper into the jungle’s embrace.

  Man could leverage his technology to destroy the rain forest with bulldozers, open-pit mines, and logging, but one-on-one, the jungle was the apex predator. It let us pass, but if we gave it any reason to decide otherwise, it would swallow us whole.

  We’d been walking for about six hours, making pretty good time, when I called a halt to check the GPS for a signal. The canopy was so thick, the feeble transmission from the GPS satellite constellation was having trouble penetrating, and Eduardo was little help.

  The first day’s walk, while still in the rain forest, had been tainted by the brush of man, as we took a well-worn trail from Carmelitas to the ruins of Mirador. Once there, I’d let Jennifer run about, checking the various ruins, while I conferred with Eduardo, both of us watching his two-mule team set up camp. My GPS was saying we should head straight west, into the jungle, but Eduardo was adamant that we go north, claiming that’s where the temple was located.

  He appeared shocked that I had a grid to the location, thinking that we were solely relying on his previous knowledge to find the temple, and seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown when I said I didn’t think going north was correct.

  In truth, he’d been acting strangely since he’d arrived at our hotel. When we’d first seen him at the bar, he’d appeared chipper and anxious to help, but yesterday, when he’d met us at the hotel, he was sullen. Every question had been returned with a terse answer. He didn’t even care about the attempted robbery, seemingly unsurprised it had happened, looking as sleep deprived as we were. That would have aggravated me, but he also didn’t ask whether I’d received the official documents for an expedition. I certainly wasn’t going to remind him that we were supposed to have them.

  We’d loaded up and begun the drive to the town of Carmelitas, circling around the giant lake of Petén Itzá until we hit the city of San Andrés and Highway 14. The trip had started quiet and uneventful, and I was glad Eduardo didn’t want to talk, because it allowed Jennifer and me to catch a little shut-eye for the two-hour journey.

  We’d rounded the horn of the lake and passed a mansion on the shore, a low-slung one-story that looked like it covered an acre, the entire compound surrounded by a twenty-foot stone wall.

  The front gate was a massive iron structure with two armed guards out front. When Eduardo rounded the corner and came in view of it, one of the guards raced into the road with his arm up, forcing Eduardo to slam on his brakes and flinging both Jennifer and me into our seat belts, waking us up. The iron gate had swung open and two black Land Rovers raced out like they owned the road, speeding past us in the direction we had come.

  More than a little grumpy at the sharp ending of my nap, I’d asked, “Who the hell lives there? Why does he get to stop traffic?” I saw Eduardo hunched over, like he was hiding his face.

  He said, “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” I turned and studied the house, saying, “He’s got to be the most famous man around here. Is it some celebrity?”

  He’d become agitated, snapping, “I don’t know! Just because I live in Guatemala doesn’t mean I know everyone.”

  I’d let it slide and gone back to sleep, figuring Eduardo must have received some troubling news since we’d first met and was dealing with it. Earlier, Jennifer had noticed the change and had wanted to confront him—well, really comfort him—but I’d told her to let it go. It would be better to let him sort out whatever was eating him on the drive. If he wanted to talk, he would. If he didn’t, fine. He was the hired guide, and that was all.

  We’d eventually reached Carmelitas and parked at a trailhead. Waiting for us were two older men, each with a mule. They didn’t look like farmers or other local townsfolk. They looked more like the roughnecks who’d tried to break into our room.

  One was a big guy, about six feet, with a beer gut falling over his belt. He had a flat pan face, pinched eyes, and a ponytail. The other was shorter and wiry, with a pockmarked face and three teardrop tattoos below his right eye.

  Eduardo parked and I said, “Those are the guides?”

  “No. I’m the guide. They’re just the mule team. Helping us with camps and things like that.”

  “They don’t look like they work in the jungle.”

  Eduardo opened the door, saying, “Let me deal with them. This is what I do.”

  He left and I turned to Jennifer, saying, “This seem a little off to you?”

  She nodded but said, “I’m not sure we’re qualified to say what’s off or not. It’s our first expedition. Maybe they were on my
uncle’s expedition as well.”

  Eduardo returned and said, “Are we ready?”

  “Sure, but you’re not going to introduce us?”

  “They don’t speak English. Like I said, they’re just the mule team. I wouldn’t introduce you to them any more than I would the mules.”

  I retrieved Jennifer’s backpack and handed it to her, then dug out my own, saying, “Okay, I guess no big ceremony. Let’s get going.”

  Everything had been fine until the morning we’d woken up at the Mirador ruins, ready to start the second day of our trek. With our planning, we should reach the temple by day three. We’d spent the night on the edge of the ruins, and it had actually been pretty exciting, with Jennifer in her happy place scurrying about, notwithstanding the bucket of slop the “mule team” had made for dinner. I would have rather had an Army MRE.

  We’d woken up and broken down the camp, and Eduardo had started heading north. I’d stopped him, and we’d had another heated discussion. He claimed his memory was better than any GPS grid, but what I had loaded was from his very own expedition to the temple, courtesy of a drug lord I’d killed. It was accurate, and Eduardo seemed to know it.

  He’d put up one last fight, and I saw his eyes water at my command, presumably because I didn’t trust him. I told him he’d earn his money either way, but we were following the GPS. We entered the rain forest for real, leaving behind any human contact as assuredly as if we’d taken a time machine to the past.

  We’d been walking most of the day when I took another GPS reading. That involved waiting for the signal to lock on, in some cases with me tying the GPS to a line of 550 cord and hoisting it up into the trees, then lowering it again.

  I called a halt and repeated my technical solution for the lack of signal, throwing a rock up into the trees with the 550 cord attached. When it came back down, I hoisted the GPS into the air as high as I could, clearing the first and second layer of canopy. I left it hanging there for a moment, going to Jennifer.

  “Hey, how are you holding up?”

  The path to Mirador had been like a four-lane interstate compared to what we were walking through now, and she was carrying her own pack, which weighed more than forty pounds.

  She brushed her hair aside and said, “I’m good. I wouldn’t be much of a partner if I couldn’t carry my weight on these trips.”

  I smiled and said, “I know it’s not easy. If you want to transfer something to my pack, you can do that. I’ve been humping a ruck for most of my life.”

  She grinned and said, “I think you should be worrying about the mule team. Those guys aren’t carrying shit, and they’re about to fall out.”

  She was right. The supposed “jungle walkers” were having a hell of a time keeping up, the big guy sweating so hard that his shirt over his beer gut was soaked, and the smaller man huffing like he only had half a lung. I said, “They probably only do the Mirador route on the path. This is probably new to them as well.”

  Eduardo was sitting against a tree trunk, his head in his hands. Still pissed I hadn’t listened to him. But if this grid didn’t work out, he’d said we had water and food for a week, so we’d just shift, backtracking to Mirador and letting him lead. Either way, if we found the temple, he was going to make a hefty payday.

  I brought down the GPS and saw we only had about two klicks to the temple. Well, two klicks to the grid that was supposedly the temple.

  I looked at my watch and saw we had about three hours of sunlight left. It would be a race to find it today, but we had a good shot.

  I said, “Get everyone up. We need to move faster. We can’t continue this slow pace anymore.”

  Jennifer told Eduardo, and he came to me, saying, “The mule team can’t move that fast. We need to slow down.”

  I said, “Leave them here. Tell ’em to make camp. I’ve marked this grid, and I don’t want to be slowed down.”

  He said, “They won’t stay here. They work for me, and they won’t separate.”

  I shook my head and said, “Then tell ’em to keep up.”

  Chapter 13

  Two hours later the gloom was beginning to grow on the jungle floor. I broke out into a small open area about thirty meters across, a strange piece of grass-covered land that the jungle had refused to claim for whatever reason. Jennifer was still beside me, but we’d left Eduardo and the mule team behind us by about a hundred meters. They were just moving too slowly.

  I looked at the sky for the first time today and said, “You want to wait for them here? We’ll make camp and I’ll go conduct a recce. See if I can pinpoint the temple, then come back. We can spend the night here, then get cracking first thing in the morning.”

  She said, “You think you can make it there and back in daylight?”

  She had a point. When the sun set, the jungle was black as sackcloth. Even in a locked closet there’s still ambient light interrupting the darkness, but the jungle is the one place I’d ever been where pitch black was real, and disorienting. If the sun went below the horizon before I returned, odds were good that I’d be sleeping on the ground by myself. Stumbling around in the jungle during the night was asking to get hurt.

  My GPS was saying the temple was only three hundred meters away, so I figured I had a shot. I said, “I’ll go thirty minutes in. Wherever I am at the thirty mark, I’ll turn around and come back.”

  She dropped her pack and said, “Okay, but don’t push it. I don’t want to go searching for you in the dark.”

  I handed her a small walkie-talkie, a family radio we’d purchased at an electronics store, and said, “Call when Eduardo makes it here. I definitely don’t want to go hunting for that slow crew in the dark.”

  I got a radio check with her, then jogged to the end of the open patch of land, reentering the jungle. I saw an edge of light in the distance, possibly another small field. I moved to it and almost fell off a fifteen-foot cliff. I grabbed a vine, caught my balance, then squatted down to peer below.

  It was a small river, about twenty feet across, but deep. There was no way I was putting that in between me and our camp. The temple would have to wait until tomorrow.

  I returned to the field to see Eduardo and the mule team coming into our small clearing. I hollered, “Camp here tonight,” and dropped my ruck, breaking out our little MSR two-man backpacking tent.

  If last night was any indication, the mule team would build a small fire, throw up a tarp, and sleep right on the ground. Eduardo would string up a hammock, which meant both would have to stay inside the ring of the rain forest to anchor the tarp and hammock. Which was fine by me.

  Jennifer approached and dropped her pack, pulling out the poles to the tent while I laid it out. She said, “Sort of sending a signal with this location?”

  I said, “Not on purpose, but I’d rather be over here, out of earshot.”

  She grinned and said, “Oh, really? Because you bought a couple of lightweight mummy bags. Two people can’t fit in them.”

  I felt my face redden at her comment and studiously laid out the tent base in the grass, saying, “Are you trying to push my buttons? We’re out here to find a temple, not on a beach vacation.”

  She said, “Is that why this tent is called the Hubba Hubba model?”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. The tent was, in fact, an MSR Hubba Hubba NX, but I didn’t name the damn thing. I bought it because of its weight and features, knowing how much it rained in the jungle and how light it was to carry.

  I stood up and said, “You finish putting it together. If you can’t, then you can carry the whole thing tomorrow. I’m going to talk to Eduardo.”

  I saw her grinning as I stomped away. I really wanted to one up her, but I wasn’t capable. She owned that terrain—and she damn well knew it.

  I crossed the field, seeing Eduardo talking in Spanish to the two mule-team members, and the one with the tattoos
snarled something at him. They heard me approach, and shut up. Tattoo guy glared at me, and I saw something dangerous. Eduardo turned and I thought I saw fear in his eyes, making me wonder about the argument.

  I said, “Eduardo, can I see you for a minute?”

  He stood up and I walked away. He’d said the mule team only spoke Spanish, but I wasn’t taking any chances. When I was far enough away, I said, “What’s going on? What’s the fight about?”

  He hesitated, glancing away. I grabbed his arm and said, “Look at me.” He did so. I said, “I’m not Jennifer’s uncle. I’m something different. We’re going to find that temple tomorrow, and if either of those clowns interfere—if they think they’re going to eliminate us as competition so they can loot it—I’ll kill them.”

  His face blanched at my words. I continued. “You let them know that. They can get an honest paycheck with a bonus tomorrow. We’ll be across the field. You guys just stay here on this side. “

  He looked like he wanted to say something but remained quiet. I said, “What is it?”

  He said, “The argument was over the choice of campsites. There’s a river at the edge of this field, and it’s used by predators for water. This area has jaguars. They just didn’t like the campsite. That’s all.”

  “Well, tell ’em to keep the fire going. I’m not worried about any predators.”

  “That’s because you haven’t seen what they can do.”

  “No. It’s because I’m a predator, too.”

  Chapter 14

  The sun dropped below the canopy and the blackness closed in. It wasn’t as dark as last night because we had our little spit of open area, the feeble light of the stars allowing me to actually see the proverbial hand in front of my face, but it was still disconcerting. Jennifer had a small LED lantern on the floor of our tent, spilling out enough light to make you realize just how dark the jungle was. I crawled into the tent to see her eating from a bag of beef jerky.