by J A Kellman
“The Sinaloas built an enormous drug transfer point just over the Guatemalan border in Mexico. Los Zetas are working on something in the Lacandon Reserve, also just over the border to the north.”
“The Sinaloas and Los Zetas are rivals?” Pat asked.
“Yes, and now add in the NM—we call them the Nuevo. They began using the park as a corridor and a place to hide after harassing the Sinaloas, at least part of the time. Tikal is caught in the middle.
“This morning we were informed by headquarters in Guatemala City that the Nuevo attacked the Sinaloas last night. At least we think it was the Nuevo. Really caused damage. They were masked and dressed like commandos; they snuck out of the jungles of Guatemala and into the airport armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, small arms, ammunition. There must have been a dozen of them according to one source. They were trained, too.”
Ochoa paused and took a breath. “The airport personnel fought back, but they were caught off guard. The commandos burned down a drug shed and tried to burn another; they vandalized a couple of planes. Three employees were killed. The depot is going to need some repair before it’s back in business. The attackers faded back into the jungle with no casualties, as far as we know.”
He finished his update and asked, “Questions?” He looked at Bill.
“How do we know?” Bill said.
“The Forest Service has been keeping their eye on the situation since the beginning and so has the border patrol. Local folks who aren’t eager to have a drug depot on their doorstep are willing to report what they see, too.”
“And the Nuevo? Who could tell if they were masked? I asked.
“The local folks probably know them personally, and one or two folks reported seeing tattoos of the outline of a temple on a couple of the guys’ hands. Now how they got that close or saw their hands without gloves, I don’t know. They wouldn’t say.”
Many anecdotes equal data, or at the least some information is better than none, I thought. This gossip was something, but I could understand why people weren’t talking much. They were caught with no place to go. Everyone else could leave. For them it was home.
“Where the hell did those guys get arms, uniforms, training?” Bill asked, “And who’s the leader?”
“This is just rumor, but folks are saying that Los Zetas are funding a private army to destroy competition from other cartels, take over new territory. There are plenty of trainers available in this part of the world—former Special Forces, mercenaries from years of conflicts in several countries, rebels, disgruntled army personnel. If Los Zetas were willing to pay for their services, well—”
“And the leader?” I asked.
“Esperanza’s been poking around in Flores. It isn’t the center of the action, but it is the capitol of the Petén, and there are flocks of tourists to provide cover for all kinds of activity, plus it has easy access to the main road and the airport. She’s talked with everyone—business owners, fishermen, housewives, kids. This is more speculation, but she heard it’s a guy named Kan, K’in Kan.”
I nearly jumped out of my chair. Kan again. K’in Kan, the mural model; Kan the family name of the pudgy Riverview banker’s indigenous wife. How did this tie together? Or did it?
“We’re going to have to be careful,” Bill said. “I heard something similar from a friend of mine in Guatemala City last night—murmurings of open warfare, automatic weapons, real training. It seems that the Nuevo are not just a bunch of wannabes; they’re serious. They may be responsible for Ruston’s and Polop’s kidnappings, too.”
“There are a couple of reasons that might be the case,” I said. “First, the Nuevo want to legitimize their role as First People and rightful lords of the Petén using archaeological material—the steles, the mural—to substantiate their claims—and second, they are eager to remove the blight of drug dealers from their territory. I’m not sure how they feel about the rest of us, but it probably isn’t good.”
Bill and Ochoa both nodded. Luis looked grim. Pat and Zoila shifted nervously in their seats. Now I could understand why Bill was so withdrawn at breakfast. His friend had told him we were walking into an armed conflict, and now, talking with Ochoa, we’d learned it was as dangerous as Bill feared.
Twenty-four
Tikal National Park, Guatemala, the Following Day
The mist was still rising the next morning as we set off for the Central Plaza. Pat and Bill, despite the mounting tension outside the park, hurried behind Ochoa, eager for their first glimpse of the ancient city. Luis was mounted on Poncho as before. Zoila and I trailed behind. The sound of the pony’s hooves knocking against occasional stones provided counterpoint to the thin high cries of jungle birds and the chattering of several families of spider monkeys in the nearby canopy. A howler called in the distance, his hoots muffled by the moisture, the trees, and the thick jungle air. By the time we reached the plaza, my shoes were wet with dew. Temples I and II, soaring in the morning fog, fierce, otherworldly, seemed to lean over the plaza, overwhelming the steles, the altars, our little group. Pat and Bill were stunned by their first view of the temples’ enormity and their vast brooding timelessness.
Pat spoke first. “No wonder people are fighting over this place. It feels like the center of the cosmos.”
Ochoa nodded. “It always seems like that to me, too,” he said, as he led us into the center of the plaza. “This is where my world began.”
~ * ~
Hours later, as we settled in a thatched shelter near Temple IV over plates of cold chicken, fruit, and tortillas, we planned our afternoons. Luis and Zoila were eager to get to the library. I was, too. They had scholarly agendas. I hoped to dig up something on Kan’s antecedents. Pat and Bill wanted to see parts of Tikal further from the Central Plaza, to develop a sense of the city’s complexity and its place in a difficult environment of jungle and limestone.
We separated into two groups after we repacked the lunch basket. I untied Poncho from the nearby railing, where he had spent his break drowsing in the shade. He was as happy to follow me as he was to obey Ochoa, especially since we were heading in the direction of his stable outside the park.
“Be careful,” Bill called as we started out. “Keep your eyes open.”
“Don’t worry,” I said and waved as we turned toward the complex of buildings that housed Tikal’s offices and museum.
Jaime’s nephew, sitting in the shade of the museum, was waiting to pick up Poncho as soon as we rounded the corner of Temple I. He’d placed Luis’s wheelchair and walker on the porch before we arrived. So far, everything was going according to plan, though the sky was beginning to darken with an advancing storm.
Later that afternoon, drowsy and stiff from bending over books in the stuffy archives of the museum, Luis wanted a break. I needed one, too. Maybe a short walk would help. I strapped Luis in his chair; the path to the central site was fairly rough, and I didn’t want him sliding out. Zoila remained behind, absorbed in her work.
We’d gotten as far as the path leading toward the Central Plaza when it became clear that something wasn’t right. For one thing, the world was silent: no birds, no monkeys, no insects, nothing. The only sounds came from the early rainy season storm moving in; thunder grumbling in the distance. A branch snapped behind us, to the left of the path, then snuffling, and what sounded like a muffled cough. It sure as hell wasn’t a jaguar, too small, too noisy.
I hurried forward. Maybe it was just an animal creeping through the bushes, sniffing, but I wanted distance between us before whatever it was revealed itself. When the path became rutted, I steered Luis onto the grass and headed toward the Central Acropolis. Pushing him over vegetation turned out to be little short of murder. There’s nothing worse than propelling a wheelchair over rough ground, especially with a bum hand. It’s like shoving a push plow through unbroken sod, and Luis’s chair threatened to overturn every few feet in hidden ruts, forcing me to wrestle it back onto its wheels like a wrangler roping a steer. Lui
s was a trooper, though: he didn’t let out a peep. He just gripped the armrest with his good hand, knuckles white, jaw set.
The storm was over Tikal now, moving fast. The thunder intensified. Rain began to fall: fat drops increased to sheets in a matter of seconds. My glasses streamed like a glass shower door as I turned back toward the shelter of the museum. I peered through the lashing trees and water to see if we had company, hoping we weren’t running straight into trouble.
A few feet further, the chair jerked to the left on the rough ground and into the tangle of low jungle growth that edged our route. My still bum hand couldn’t hold it straight. The bottom dropped out. By the time we came to a stop, Luis was upside down, his face in the mud, and I was sprawled beside him on my back.
“Must be a reservoir,” Luis said when he could finally talk. “You okay?”
“Yeah. You?” I whispered back.
“Yes, though it feels like I ripped off half my face, but so what? Everything else seems fine as far as I can tell,” Luis said wiggling those bits that still worked after his stroke.
“I figure we’ll feel like hell tomorrow, but maybe we lucked out, nothing broken,” I said, shifting my legs and arms.
We froze in place, listening. The overhang of sod and undergrowth shielded our location from anyone above, but in between the sounds of thunder and pounding rain, intermittent scuffling could be heard from various spots on the edge of the reservoir.
“Where’d they go?” a man shouted in Spanish through the storm.
“Don’t know. Maybe they fell into the reservoir,” another man called as he pawed the bushes that formed our cover. “I don’t see anything in it though, not even skid marks, but its dark, and this rain—”
No surprise about the missing marks since we’d dropped straight down. But now we’re trapped like mice in a larder with a prowling cat. No way can I get Luis upright and out of the reservoir without being seen.
Luis slowly turned his head sideways so he could breathe more easily; otherwise neither of us changed position. They wouldn’t be able to see us unless they looked under the overhang from the other side of the cistern, but if they came down into the reservoir, they’d see us immediately.
“They’re from the Yucatán,” Luis said quietly.
“How do you know?” I asked in a whisper.
“Some of what they’re saying is in Yukatek.” He squirmed slightly to get more of his face out of the dirt.
A third voice called in Spanish from further along the path. “I don’t think we’re going to find them in this rain. They could be anywhere by now. We need to try again when we have the old man alone.”
“I’ll check over here just to be certain,” the man on the far side of the pit shouted over the storm.
There was crashing in the undergrowth on the rim across from us, as if someone forcing his way to the edge, rain or no rain, just as the storm redoubled its efforts.
“Nothing. I can’t see a thing,” the man on the far side yelled through the downpour.
Finally, the sound of searching stopped. The calling faded. Maybe we were safe, but I wasn’t going to chance trying to see over the rim. They could be biding their time under a nearby ledge. Who knew?
~ * ~
There was nothing to do but huddle, silent, wet, and chilled under the dripping overhang of sod, hoping someone would find us. I unfastened Luis’s safety belt and lifted the chair to the side. I pulled him further under the overhang…at least he would be more comfortable. There was no way I could get him out of the cistern; the rain made the muddy sides slick as glass. And I wasn’t going to leave him to go for help. We crouched together, trying to stay warm under his sodden red and purple blanket, trying not to call attention to ourselves in case the men were still somewhere overhead.
It must have been another half an hour before the rain began to taper off. I could hear sounds from the direction of the museum and library, faint at first then, then growing louder as Bill, Ochoa, Jaime, and a couple of men whose voices I didn’t recognize drew closer, tracking us, reading the few signs of our flight, the broken bushes, and the blundering path made by our circling pursuers.
“Look, the grass is chewed up here,” I heard Ochoa call from somewhere near the rim of the cistern, “looks like the chair slipped on the edge of a rut.”
We were safe. No one would grab Luis now. “We’re down here!” I shouted. “In the reservoir.”
Getting out of the pit was harder than getting in. It took two hours, if you count the time it took for the rescue crew to arrive and the interval needed to raise Luis and his chair to the surface. Getting me out was nothing—a safety harness, ropes, and two men pulling— in a matter of minutes I popped over the rim like a rodent out of a hole.
We weren’t in great shape. My teeth were chattering, and my hand was killing me; Luis was blue, drowsy, and confused. The rescue crew had blankets and coffee in the emergency vehicle. They swaddled us for the ride to the hotel, where Zoila and a doctor were waiting. I sipped a mug of hot coffee on the way, but Luis was too far gone to swallow.
~ * ~
Everyone, including the hotel staff, crowded into Luis’s room, tracking mud, grass, and water across the clean tile floor as the EMTs slid him onto his bed and pulled off his wet clothes. “What’s this around his neck?” one of them asked as he removed the last of Luis’s shirts. He held up a soft green jade pectoral. It was the vulture.
“He needs that,” I said quickly. “It’s holy. I’ll keep it for him till he’s better.” Zoila nodded in assent, and the tech handed it to me without a word as the other EMTs piled Luis with blankets.
Doctor Gomez tried to shoo us out as soon as she arrived, but no one moved. “Hypothermia,” she said as she examined Luis and dressed his cheek. “He’s old and frail, and that makes it worse. Keep him warm. Keep him quiet. Call me if he doesn’t begin to improve in a couple of hours. I’ll check on him again later tonight.”
One of the hotel staff took Luis’s chair to clean it.
Then Dr. Gomez turned to me. “Nothing much wrong here, at least nothing that couldn’t be cured by getting warm and dry. The only other damage, aside from being cold, is a skinned left shin and a couple of bruises where the wheelchair hit you on the way down.”
After the doctor gave me the go ahead, Pat took me to my room for a warm shower and a change of clothes.
An hour later Bill, Pat, Ochoa, and I settled down in the dining room, so I could have something hot and tell my story at the same time. The soup was good. Between it and my several sweaters, the shaking faded as I told them everything I could remember, including Luis’s remark about the attackers’ language.
“We’ve learned a couple of things from this adventure,” Ochoa said. “Someone is watching Luis, but we’d guessed that before, and clearly some of them are Yucatekan,” Ochoa continued. “The attempt on Luis was feeble, but if we add that to the attack on the drug depot, it looks like things are hotting up.”
“Feeble? It depends on your perspective, I’ll bet. Just ask Ann,” Pat said, biting into a piece of bread she’d been worrying since we sat down.
Ochoa nodded. “It seems there are two groups—clumsy kidnappers and not too bad insurgents—stupid as that description sounds. Of course, there’s word Los Zetas are behind the insurgency part, and a guy named Kan is the leader of indigenous Yucatekans, but are they running the kidnapping operations? And there’s the Sinaloas as well.”
“There’s nothing solid about how everything fits together?” Bill asked. “Is it one group? Two? Three?”
~ * ~
An afternoon in the bottom of a wet pit had finished me off. I’d been fading throughout the conversation and missed half of what was said.
“Bed?” Pat asked as she rose from her chair.
I nodded as she took my arm and steered me out of the dining room.
I was gone as soon as my head hit the pillow.
~ * ~
I woke late the following morning, fee
ling like dirt. Everything hurt, as if someone had beaten me with chains. The fall must have done more damage than I thought, or maybe I was getting old. I eased out of bed and crept to the bathroom. Maybe a hot shower would help. I turned the water on full. It wasn’t much, but today it was more than the usual drizzle. I stayed in as long as I could, then reached for a towel. More bruises had appeared since last night. I looked like one of those awful contemporary fabric prints that resemble random paint splashes on a garage floor.
I am getting tired of the ancestors, the relentless search for who knows what, I thought as I toweled myself off. Is this probing going to get us anywhere? Ruston was dead, Polop half nuts, Luis recovering from an afternoon in the bottom of a reservoir, my hand hurt, and I looked like hell. What next?
Just as I was pulling on my pants, something clicked. The answer hit me that had been under my nose the entire time. It was like the fabrics I hate so much. If you laid pieces of the material side by side, sooner or later its pattern would repeat itself. Maybe the Maya/Tikal problems were like that, bits and pieces that eventually form a discernable arrangement.
The Mayan scholars, for example, could fit in this way: an epigrapher to explain the boundary markers, an art historian to interpret an ancient mural, and an anthropologist/literary expert fit it all together. Not so silly after all. It was a carefully crafted attempted to make meaning, to describe a world.
Then there was the water thing that seemed to create a matrix. No water, no hope of inhabiting Tikal and environs again. What was done in the past could suggest solutions in the present, and the ancient symbols, the vulture for example, pulled it all together—the past and present—and verified the power of the Mayan leader, a new Vulture Lord.
The vulture pectoral was the key, and the Nuevo were after it. The cartels, well, they formed a subplot, as they manipulated the Nuevo to their advantage.
An idea, that had flitted into and out of my mind ever since our rescue, solidified. The pendant had to be put somewhere safe, somewhere the Nuevo, or the cartels wouldn’t be able to touch it, somewhere casual violence couldn’t reach it. Where that might be, I wasn’t sure. I needed to think.