The Mayan Secrets

by Clive Cussler

  “There.” Remi pointed at a place in the jungle canopy where gray stone protruded between trees. “It’s right over there.”

  Carmichael brought the Jet Ranger around, tipped at an angle so they could look at the site as he circled it. “I definitely see something the color of limestone,” he said. “It comes right up through the trees.”

  “That’s it,” said Sam. “Let’s find a place to land.”

  Carmichael widened the circles, spiraling outward from the ruins. After a few minutes, he said, “I don’t see anything that looks like clear ground.”

  “No,” Remi said. “It’s all thickly forested.”

  Carmichael went farther out until he found a spot that was empty of trees. It was a patch of jungle that had burned to the ground. Carmichael said, “Finally. That’ll have to do.”

  “It looks like there must have been a fire,” said Sam. “Everything’s charred.”

  “Yeah,” said Carmichael. “Way out here, it was probably a lightning strike the last time it rained. I’m afraid you’ll have a long walk to the ruins, though.”

  “I have an idea,” Remi said. “Is that rescue gear working?” She pointed at the side door in the bay, where there was an electric winch and a cable with a harness.

  “Sure,” Carmichael said.

  “Can you operate the winch while you’re flying?”

  “I’ve got a second set of controls right here. I can set down here, rig you up, and lower you over the site, if you’re up to it. But I have to warn you, that’s a scary ride.”

  Remi said, “I know, but we don’t mind.”

  Carmichael looked at Sam for a reaction. Sam said, “We can rig ourselves up. Do you think you can set us down on the upper part of that gray stone? It seems to be the top of a building.”

  “There’s not much wind today. I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”

  “Remi, want me to go first?” asked Sam.

  “Nope,” she said. “Help me get rigged.”

  Sam and Remi unbuckled their seat belts, climbed over the seats to the back, and then got Remi into the harness. “Okay, Tim, let’s see where we can lower her.” They flew in lower and hovered over the spot where they had seen the gray limestone structure jutting through the treetops. “Ready?” asked Carmichael.

  Sam opened the side door. Remi sat on the edge with her legs dangling out, waved good-bye to Sam, and slid out the door, the rotor wash blowing her ponytail around wildly. “Now,” said Sam. The winch lowered Remi as Sam watched her progress. “Lower, lower, lower. Hold there, Tim. Just hover.” Remi reached the gray stone surface, then freed herself of the rescue gear. “She’s removing the harness. Okay, she’s clear. Raise the cable.”

  When the empty harness came up, Sam slipped into it and picked up his and Remi’s day packs by the straps. He sat on the floor of the open doorway. “Okay, Tim, come back for us at five.”

  “I’ll be here.”

  Sam slid out and watched the top of the pyramid coming closer and closer as the winch lowered him to its top tier. There was a small temple on top, and he had to use his feet to keep from swinging into it, but then he was on the platform and the cable went slack. He slipped it off, then waved to Tim to raise it.

  Tim’s helicopter rose straight up, and he activated the winch to bring the harness up as he flew off to the west toward the burned clearing. Sam and Remi began to look through their packs. Remi said, “Pretty quiet all of a sudden, isn’t it?”

  He put his arms around her and kissed her. “It’s kind of nice to be alone.”

  “It is,” she said. “But if we don’t get this place photographed, we’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

  “Let’s get it done.” Each of them opened a day pack, took out a pistol, stuck it in the bellyband they both wore under their shirts, and then took out a digital camera.

  They worked systematically, taking shots from each side of the pyramid, so that in all four directions they photographed a quarter of the surrounding city complex, which looked like an arrangement of steep hills covered by trees. They went into the house-sized temple atop the pyramid and took photographs of its walls, floor, and ceiling. The temple had two rooms plastered with stucco and then painted with murals that were in fairly good shape. They depicted a procession of Mayan people bringing bowls and plates to a hideous figure who must have been a god.

  They slowly descended the pyramid, taking photographs of it, of the steps, of the monumental buildings in every direction. Much of the time, each of them included the other person in the photograph to establish scale and to prove that they had been there.

  When they reached the ground level, they walked a quarter of a mile in each of the four directions from the pyramid, still photographing everything they could see. At the end of the afternoon, they returned to the foot of the pyramid and stopped on the east side. Sam took a foot-length section of PVC pipe, capped and sealed on both ends, from his pack. Inside were rolled papers, printed statements in English and Spanish. They said that Remi and Sam Fargo had been at this GPS position on this date to explore and map these Mayan ruins. There were also telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, and street addresses for contacting the Society for American Archaeology, the World Archaeological Congress, and the Society for Historical Archaeology, all of which had been notified of the discovery, as had the Guatemalan government. Sam dug a hole and buried the pipe in front of the eastern steps and then marked the spot with a small red plastic flag, like the ones that gas companies use to mark gas lines.

  “So much for that,” said Remi. “I feel a little like the old-time explorers who used to plant flags on other people’s property and say they owned it.”

  “Let’s just settle on the idea that we were here and registered it with the people who are qualified to study it and learn more about it,” he said. “That’s enough for me.”

  “And this is our fifth city,” Remi said. “Four major cities in ten days.”

  “We must be the world’s greatest tourists.”

  Remi looked at her watch. “It’s after four. Let’s climb up on our perch and get a phone connection with Selma’s computer so we can send her our photographs.”

  As they moved up the enormous work of earth and stone, they could see trees nearly as tall on all sides. At the top, Remi turned on her satellite phone, connected it to her camera, and sent her cache of photographs to Selma’s computer in San Diego. They had arranged at their first site that Selma would save all of the material and then forward it to David Caine at the university. He, in turn, would notify all of the international organizations that another previously unknown Mayan city had been found, partially mapped, and photographed.

  When Remi had transferred her photographs, she took Sam’s camera and transferred his. She looked at her watch again, and said, “It’s almost five. Didn’t Tim say he was coming at five?”

  “Yes.” Sam took his satellite phone and called Tim Carmichael. He heard the sound of ringing for a minute, then hung up. “He’s not answering.”

  “He’s probably flying, and he can’t hear the phone with the earphones on.”

  They waited about ten more minutes, listening for the sound of a helicopter, and then Remi said, “Nothing.”

  Sam called again, then hung up. He called the office of Cormorant 1 Air Charter in Belize and put on the speaker so Remi could hear.

  “Cormorant, Art Bowen.”

  “Mr. Bowen, we haven’t met. This is Sam Fargo. Tim Carmichael took us to a spot in the highlands of Guatemala. He was supposed to pick us up at five, but he hasn’t. He’s not answering his satellite phone. I wondered if you could please get him on the radio and check to be sure he’s all right.”

  “I’ll try,” said Bowen. “Hold on.”

  Bowen went away from the phone for a minute. More time passed, and Sam and Remi could hear low voices in the background. B
owen might have been on the radio or he might have been talking to someone in his office. After a few more minutes, he was back. “He’s not answering his radio either,” said Bowen. “We’re going to send another helicopter out there and see what’s up. Can you give me your exact position?”

  “Hold on.” Sam handed the phone to Remi, who had their notes in her day pack. She read the coordinates to Bowen, then repeated them. She gave him her satellite phone number and Sam’s. “Tim was going to wait for us about five miles due west of our current position, on a flat space that looked as though it had been recently burned.”

  “And can you be seen from the air?”

  “We’re standing on top of a Mayan pyramid. Tim lowered us on a rescue cable, and he was going to pick us up the same way.”

  “I’m going to come get you myself. But I don’t have a chopper here with that kind of equipment on it right now. Is there a place I can land and get you?”

  “We’ll have to walk to the place where Tim landed. Everywhere else in any direction seems to be covered with vegetation.”

  “If that’s the only option, okay. But do it carefully. Don’t count on the idea that anybody you meet out there is okay. There are a lot of criminals in the wild country, where the police and the army can’t find them. I’m bringing two men with me and we’ll be armed.”

  “Thanks for the warning. We’ll do our best not to make contact with anybody. We’re heading for the landing site right now.”

  “We’ll probably get there about the same time. See you there.”

  As Sam and Remi scrambled down the side of the pyramid, they oriented themselves to the west, where Tim Carmichael had gone to land.

  Remi said, “I hope Tim didn’t catch a rotor on a tree branch or something and crash.”

  “I hope he didn’t either,” said Sam. “I couldn’t see any smoke from up on the pyramid, but there’s no guarantee there would be a fire. Anything could have happened.”

  “I hate to get all worried when we’re too far away to even know what to worry about.”

  “I’m withholding my anxiety,” Sam said. “But only to the extent that I’m leaving the first aid kit in my pack and the safety on my pistol.”

  As Sam and Remi began to be sure of their footing, leaving the base of the pyramid, they sped up. They trotted when the path was clear and walked at a strong, steady pace when the vegetation was thick. They navigated by walking toward the glare of the late-afternoon sun on the tree leaves. They estimated that, over a long period, their walking and trotting probably averaged three miles an hour, and so they kept at it for a half hour before they stopped to check their GPS position.

  They sat on a stone outcropping, drank water, and caught their breath while they reoriented themselves. They had come about halfway, and they agreed that this time they would go for fifteen minutes before they stopped again to check their position.

  They ran steadily in single file, still using the reflected sun to navigate. They concentrated on making progress, but, as time went on, they began to pay more attention to making as little noise as possible. They knew that Tim Carmichael wasn’t the type to simply show up late or to take them into the wilderness in an aircraft that wasn’t well maintained and fueled to capacity. He had a radio in the helicopter as well as a satellite phone. There was no way to know what had gone wrong until they got to the landing spot, but neither imagined the story would be a happy one. Their thoughts centered on the hope that Tim wasn’t dead.

  At the end of their third leg of silent jogging, they were very close to the patch where Tim Carmichael had said he’d land. There was no helicopter sound in the air, which meant that Art Bowen was not yet close with a second helicopter. The silence was thick and ominous.

  Sam and Remi stood cheek to cheek so that they could whisper in each other’s ears to keep their conference silent. They agreed on a plan of approach, drank more water, and moved on.

  They walked, staying low and alert, until they reached the burned land. They peered out of the thick foliage that had been spared by the fire and saw Carmichael’s Jet Ranger. It had landed in the cleared field, far from any trees that could have interfered with its rotors. The land was quite level, and the helicopter sat evenly. There was nothing out of place and there were no bullet holes. But there also was no sign of Tim.

  Slowly, Sam and Remi moved along the perimeter of the cleared area. When they had gone about a hundred yards, they stopped suddenly and listened. There were voices. At first, they wondered if they were hearing the helicopter’s radio. These were male voices speaking Spanish. The voices came from behind them.

  Sam and Remi turned to face the sounds coming from the forest. They were between the grounded helicopter and a group of men. They could see a path that had been trampled in the brush recently. The bent and broken plants still had green leaves.

  Remi gestured to Sam that she would go around the men to the right. Sam nodded and began to make his way to the left so he and Remi would be positioned on both sides of the group. They both stayed well back from the group, where they could not easily be seen and where any noises they made might be lost in the men’s conversation.

  Sam made a ninety-degree arc around the sounds, then stopped and waited. He knew Remi would already be in position. Her sure-footed fencer’s body could move through vegetation better than his. And he knew that when he moved in, he could initiate the most frightening close-in attack while Remi, the pistol champion, could do much more damage from a moderate distance. He took the pistol from his belly and began to crawl toward the voices. It sounded to him like six men and they seemed to be close, arranged in a circle. Maybe they were sitting around a fire—no, he would have smelled a fire. Around a circle anyway. What were they doing way out here?

  And then he saw them. There were actually five men in their twenties, unshaven and wearing jeans, khakis, bits of old military uniforms, T-shirts. On the ground in the center of their circle they had laid out an olive drab plastic tarp. Spread on it were Tim Carmichael’s belongings—his satellite phone, all three sets of earphones, the maps from the helicopter, his wallet, his keys, pocketknife, sunglasses.

  Set on the ground beside each of the five men was a Belgian FN FAL 7.62mm military rifle. Sam moved closer, searching for some sign of what had happened to Tim Carmichael, and then he saw him. Tim was a few feet off, at the edge of the thicker vegetation.

  Carmichael was standing, his hands tied behind his back, his ankles tied. He had a noose around his neck, the rope thrown over a thick limb of the tree above him and then securely tied to the trunk. If he got tired, he still had to stand. If he leaned, the noose tightened around his neck. His left eye was black and swollen, he had scrapes on his face and grass stains on his clothes, and his hair was stuck together on top of his head from drying blood from a blow to the skull.

  Sam worked his way around the clearing at a distance, trying hard to avoid discovery. When he was directly behind Carmichael, he slowly crawled to him through the thick jungle vegetation. Staying hidden by the trees and Carmichael’s body, Sam reached out with his knife and sawed through the rope at Carmichael’s wrists, then his ankles. He took out his second pistol, switched off the safety, and placed it in Carmichael’s right hand. Then he crawled a few feet farther and cut the rope from Tim’s noose where it was secured to the tree trunk. He tucked an inch of the rope end into the remaining loop of rope behind the tree so it would look the same.

  Sam crawled backward, retreating deeper into the brush. He took his time, selecting a spot where he, Remi, and Tim would have the men in a perfect cross fire. Now and then, one of the men around the tarp would turn and glance at Carmichael and see that he was still standing with his hands behind his back and the noose around his neck.

  When Sam judged that he, Remi, and Carmichael were each a hundred twenty degrees apart on the circle, he raised his pistol, stepped close to the circle, placed his bod
y behind the trunk of a tree, and showed only his right eye and his gun hand. “You!” he shouted in Spanish. “Leave those guns on the ground and step away from them!”

  The men were startled and jerked their heads toward Sam’s voice. One started to raise his rifle, but Sam fired, and the man collapsed backward.

  Carmichael shouted, “Drop the guns!”

  Some of the men looked and saw he was suddenly free, aiming a gun at them. They set their rifles back down. One man saw this as unacceptable, pivoted with his rifle to aim at Carmichael, but Carmichael was no longer visible. He had slipped into the bushes. The man raised his weapon to aim, but a shot was fired from Remi’s side of the circle. It hit his arm and made him drop the rifle on the ground.

  The remaining men moved back from their rifles and put their hands on their heads. Sam came out from behind his tree, knowing Remi and Carmichael were covering him. He kept his gun on the men as he took each rifle and tossed it to his side of the clearing so they formed a pile.

  When Sam had the rifles, Tim Carmichael showed himself, holding Sam’s second pistol on his captors. Sam said, “Are you hurt?”

  “Just a little. None of these clowns shot me anyway.”

  “Do you know who they are?”

  “They’re as talkative as a bunch of crows, but they never said anything to reveal that. I guess they’re just a bunch of guys who saw the helicopter, knew it was valuable, and tried to take it.”

  “Is your helicopter all right?”

  “It’s fine. I thought I’d get out of it and take a nap in the shade. When I woke up, I had already lost a fistfight.”

  The sound of a helicopter in the distance drew their attention. The roar grew louder, the leaves on trees began to whip back and forth in the wind, and the helicopter hovered. Looking up, Sam and Remi could see through the treetops that there was a man in an open doorway holding an M16 rifle.

  “Maybe you’d better let them see you, Tim,” said Sam.