by Jon Coon
Just as he was about to take his first deep breath, he felt something brush over his legs. He fought the urge to jump and run, and stayed frozen. The big snake paused, raised its head, and stared into his eyes. Then went on about his or her business. From the ground beside him, he heard Angelica softly laugh. “She won’t hurt you. She’s here to protect us. Just stay still.”
From the jungle, in the direction the men had been moving, they heard a scream. Not quite human, but angry enough to have been a wife with a drunken husband. The scream was followed by several shots and then a chorus of jungle sounds. They heard crashing through the trees, men running and swearing. “Jaguar,” she said in a whisper. “Stay still.”
As if hearing its cue to come onstage, the big cat dropped from the trees to the ground in front of them. Instantly aware of them, it lowered into an attack position, snarled, and was ready to pounce. Paul was shaking but held fast. There was a crash behind the cat as one of the men broke into the clearing. The cat spun and lunged, the man fired into the air but was too slow and too startled to have a target. The cat tore out his throat with one swipe and was gone before he hit the ground.
“Move.”
“Yeah.” They grabbed the bikes and cleared the area just ahead of the dead man’s team. She led him back to the trail, and they broke into record speed, away from the shouting.
Dawn was breaking as they entered the outskirts of Tulum. There were several hotels along the road. Angelica picked one, parked the bikes, ditched the bags, and went in. Paul followed. They found a map of the property and the main dining hall. They shed their hoodies, and running her fingers through her hair, she said, “Take me to breakfast.”
They walked into the dining room, gave a fake room number, and filled plates full of steaming food. They were nearly finished when a large man walked to their table and asked to see their room keys.
“We haven’t checked in yet, but we were starved,” Angelica said with a warm smile.
“I think you should come with me,” he said.
“Please, officer, this is just a mix-up. Give me a minute to go to the desk and we will straighten it out.”
“Fine, let’s go.” He waited while they got up and turned toward the door. As they got to the open walkway between reflecting pools, she took Paul’s hand and said, “Run.”
The officer was older and overweight by nearly a hundred pounds. They weren’t. They cleared the lobby and the front doors before he was halfway down the hall. She grabbed their bags and tossed one to Paul. There were tour buses loading for departure in the drive. One had mostly younger folk carrying masks, fins, and snorkels from bins by the bus door. “There,” she said and ran to the bus. They grabbed snorkeling gear and jumped aboard just as the driver was ready to close the door.
The blonde female guide looked confused. “Are you on my list?”
“We just checked in and didn’t want to miss the trip. Please let us stay and we’ll square things up as soon as we get back,” Angelica purred.
“Well, I guess so. But if you don’t, it will be my neck.”
“Don’t worry. Your neck will be fine.”
They found a seat, settled in, and held hands. Paul was still trembling. Angelica looked at him and smiled.
“We’re going to make it,” she said. “We’re really going to make it.”
Chapter 21
THE BUS PULLED INTO A large, gravel-and-shell parking lot at the cenote. Excited passengers began off-loading. The perky blonde guide smiled and said, as she pointed the way, “Your belongings will be safe on the bus. Dressing rooms are in the main building, and I’ll meet you down the steps at the dock.”
“Got any idea where we are?” Paul asked Angelica.
“I was here years ago, before I joined the Army. Some of us from nursing school came.”
“So what is this place?” he tried again.
“Dos Ojos. Two Eyes. It’s the longest underwater cave system in the world. Over fifty miles.”
A passenger behind her heard and corrected her. “A discovery team from the States found a dry passage connecting it to Sistema Sac Actun. It’s over a hundred miles long.”
“Impressive,” Paul said. “Thanks.”
They moved off the bus and toward the desk. As they waited, a military police car pulled in behind the bus. Two men got out and Angelica cringed. “They are from our squad,” she whispered. “We’ve got to vamoose.” She turned and went back on the bus. Paul followed. “Find a phone,” she said. She began looking through passenger’s bags.
She found several that wouldn’t open without passcodes and replaced them. After eight, she found the one they needed. It opened without a passcode, and she tossed it to Paul. Their guide and the bus driver had been talking with other drivers but had seen them run back on board. Angelica had locked the door and they were banging on it. The ruckus they made drew the attention of the men from Angelica’s unit, and soon they were shouting and making threats.
Paul dialed his grandfather’s cell phone and waited. He got voicemail and shouted in his message. Angelica was in the driver’s seat. She found the key and started the engine. Then she slammed the bus into gear, but a car ahead of them had the road blocked and they were cut off from escape. She cramped the wheel, hit the gas, and started the bus rolling down the hill toward the cave entrance. With their pursuers yelling behind them, she left them in a cloud of dust and drove toward the water.
“Hang on,” she yelled as the bus crashed through the safety cable and plunged down the hill. She pulled open the door just as they hit the water, and the seventy-two-degree liquid flooded the bus immediately. She pulled on her swim mask, cleared it, and looked for Paul. He’d fallen behind the first row of seats. She pulled him out, grabbed his mask and fins, and pushed off for the surface.
Staged for the customers’ next dives, several sets of scuba gear and two underwater dive scooters were sitting on the dock. While Paul put on his fins and mask, she pulled two rigs and two scooters into the water. Their pursuers were close.
She shoved one of the rigs to Paul and wasted no time flipping the other on over her shoulders and into position. She grabbed a scooter and was ready. Paul was right behind. As the men with guns reached the deck and started firing, she and Paul hit full power on the scooters and disappeared into the tunnel.
The water was shallow and clear as gin. Stalactites and stalagmites lined the way, and other than flying in near darkness, it was a thrilling ride. When they had gone about ten minutes, she signaled for them to surface.
“They will be coming. We need to find a place to hide. Hopefully someplace warm.”
“My grandpa will send Gabe and his divers to find us,” he assured her. “We just have to wait for them.”
“Okay, let’s run on the surface and save our air for the tunnels. Keep your eyes open and look for a good place to wait them out.”
Tom awoke to the alarm buzzer on his phone and looked at the time: almost nine. After a nearly all-nighter at the hangar with his team making last-minute modifications to the plane, he’d tossed and turned three hours past his usual morning time. Concerns about Paul, the Benson girls, and the day’s flight had kept him awake most of the night. He didn’t remember setting the alarm. He picked up the phone and saw a call from a number he didn’t recognize. He overrode his first inclination to delete it, put on his glasses, and thumbed play. At the sound of Paul’s panicked voice, he sat up, dropped his feet to the floor, and was at full alert.
“Grandpa Tom,” the message began, “we’ve escaped, but they’re after us. We’re at a park called Dos Ojos and we’re going to try to find someplace to hide until . . .” Paul’s voice was drowned out by the squeal of tires, the crash through the retaining cable, and the bounce and rumble as the bus careened down the hill to the cave entrance. Tom heard several loud crashes and then a splash before the phone went silent. Tom grabbed his pants and went looking for Gabe.
Well ahead of the usual first group of tourists, An
gelica and Paul scootered through the clear water, amazed at the beauty of the caverns. They followed the gold guide line, and the irony was not lost on Paul.
There was light ahead. They were approaching one of the several cenotes, openings from the surface at which ancient Mayan priests had performed pagan rituals. Paul remembered the accounts of virgin sacrifices in National Geographic and thinking, there was another good reason not to be a girl.
As they reached the edge of the cenote on the surface, they heard shouting and then shooting. The pop of handguns above sent bullets zipping into the water around them. They dove into the shadows and passed beyond gun range, safely out of sight. They resurfaced in the tunnel, hidden in darkness. Angelica was shivering. “I’m freezing,” she said. “I’m cramping. You can touch me now. Please.”
In his rescue diver course, Paul had learned the technique for releasing leg cramps. He put her foot against his chest and used her fin to bend her toes toward her knee. He used slow, steady pressure and massaged her calf until she felt relief. Then he repeated the process with her other leg.
“Thanks, that’s better. But it won’t last. I’m just too cold.”
“Let’s look for a way out. Maybe we could drop the scuba gear and join a snorkel group.”
“Yeah, if they are letting any of the groups in the water.”
“It’s worth a shot. Let’s keep going.”
“Okay.” She pulled the trigger on the scooter and dropped only deep enough to see the gold nylon cord beneath them. She knew the rush of the water created by the scooter was pulling her heat away, so she slowed a bit and felt slightly better.
They followed the line another two hundred yards, and the light above increased again. Then they surfaced well back from the opening and heard laughter ahead. Girls’ voices reverberated from the cavern walls. Perhaps this was the break they needed. Staying well back in the shadows, they approached the light. There was a wooden stair coming down from the surface and a group of boisterous snorkelers playing in the shallows.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” Paul said.
Angelica nodded, and with frozen fingers, pulled at the buckles on her BC. “I can’t,” she whispered. Paul moved in and helped her. They dropped the rigs and scooters and edged their way toward the dock.
Paul looked carefully for the men who had followed and shot at them. Not to be seen. He held Angelica’s hand and could feel her shivering. He moved quickly to the swim ladder and was about to help her out when he saw two men start down the stairs above. He dropped from the ladder and pulled her beneath the floating deck. At the point at which the deck was anchored to the shore, there was a small opening of dry sand. He pulled her forward until they were able to roll out of the water, still beneath the deck, and surface on the cool sand. Angelica grabbed him and wrapped her arms around him, pulling tight. Her shivers bordered on convulsions, and she was crying softly. “Hold me. Hold me, please. I’m so cold.”
Above them, Paul heard the men asking if anyone had seen two divers with scooters.
“Do you mean the crazy gringos who drove our bus into the water?” someone asked. There was laughter.
“Yeah, those are the ones.”
“No, amigo, we have not seen them.”
“There’s a phone at the top of the stair. Please call the office if they turn up.”
The men left, and Paul wondered if he could use that phone to call Tom or Gabe. But how to get past the crowd in the water?
Angelica was still shivering and whimpering quietly. He held her and tried to be as comforting as possible. But he had to get to a phone.
Chapter 22
AT NOON, THREE HEAVYSET MEN walked into the hangar where Tom’s red Beechcraft Bonanza sat loaded, fueled, and ready. Tom was casually finishing his walkaround, checking tires, flaps, and tabs. As the men approached, Tom turned and smiled. “Hola,” he said cordially, as if greeting old friends.
The man in the center stepped forward, opened his coat, and let his shoulder holster be plainly seen. “I will be flying with you, Captain. And so you know, I’m a pilot too. So no tricks. I can fly this plane and I can land it. With or without you.”
“That’s good to know, señor. But, sadly, you won’t be going anywhere today. You and your friends here are going to have a chat with my friends there at the door.”
The hangar door closed behind them, and as it did, six armed agents, each holding a full-auto machine gun, filled the room. Tom’s phone rang as the three were taken prisoner.
“Hola,” Tom answered. It was a familiar voice.
“Why did you close the hangar doors?”
“We are just securing your load in the plane. We didn’t need any extra eyes seeing what you put under the tarp.”
“Open the doors now and let me speak with Jose.”
“Of course.”
“Is everything ready, Jose?”
Tom stuck a .45 under Jose’s chin and smiled.
“Si, patrón. Everything is ready.”
“Bueno. Have a safe flight. Remember, no radio and no cell phones unless I call you. Comprende?”
“Si, patrón.”
“All right. Our men will be waiting for you. You know what to do.”
“Excuse me,” Tom said as he took back the phone. “I’d like to talk to my grandson.”
“When you land, amigo. He’s not available right now. But I assure you, he is all right.”
“As you say, but I’ll want to know he’s all right before I release this load. I hope you understand.”
“No problemo. I’ll make certain he’s right here when I call you to confirm delivery.”
The hangar doors opened, and the plane taxied out onto the tarmac. It went to the end of the field, and the engine came up to full revs. The brake released, and in a very short space, the powerful little plane was airborne. Cruising high above, a P-8A Poseidon submarine surveillance aircraft followed, masked from local radar and elevated enough to be well out of sight. The hangar doors closed, and inside a large delivery truck, Tom sat with the three cartel goons handcuffed in chairs welded to the floor.
“I’ll make this simple,” Tom began. “The first one who talks, lives. I don’t have time for a dog and pony show. Start talking or I’ll kill you right now. Where are those girls?”
There was a moment of silence. Tom screwed his silencer into the barrel of a Colt Woodsman, an assassin’s gun, and fired the first shot. The target slumped over in his chair with blood running down from a small hole in the center of his forehead. Tom turned to the other, who was sitting beside Jose, aghast. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”
The two men looked at each other in fear and confusion. Neither spoke.
“Too bad,” Tom said and raised the gun again.
“No, señor, whatever you want. I will tell you,” Jose said.
“Puta,” his partner snarled.
“That wasn’t very nice,” Tom said and shot him in the knee.
Gabe and two Rangers pulled into the parking lot at Dos Ojos and saw the gathering of Mexican police and security from the park standing on the hilltop, looking at the trail of destruction leading down to the partially submerged bus.
“If Paul did this, I’m impressed,” Gabe chuckled. “Now how do we get past these guys?”
“Got it,” the shorter Ranger with Hispanic features, named George, said. “Just hang back and pretend to be Mexican.”
Gabe, who was Cajun by birth and had a chestnut complexion, nodded. “Bet I could pass. But my Spanish sort of sucks. Oh well.”
Gabe and the second Ranger, Mike, hung back while George approached the police. Flashed a badge and began asking questions. In a few moments, he returned. “It was Paul and an older girl. Men from the Zapatista Army were looking for them, and they jumped back in the bus, got it started, and ran it down the hill. They grabbed dive gear off that dock down there and disappeared into the cavern. It’s been four hours and no sign of them. The Army guys were shooting at someth
ing in one of the cenotes, but the search divers didn’t find anything. Oh, they stole dive scooters too, so they might have covered a lot of ground. The real cops are here now, so the Zapas are leaving,” George said.
“What was that badge you showed them?” Gabe asked.
George produced a Mexican PFM badge, the Ministerial Federal Police. “The government just dissolved their FBI and formed this new unit. It’s good for us because nobody knows who is and who isn’t. We just got these badges a couple days ago. When in Rome, I guess.”
“Got any more of those?” Gabe asked.
“Fix you up. No problem.”
“Getting back to business, that water is year-round seventy-two degrees,” Gabe said. “Unless they had suits, they’re going to be frozen by now. We need to find a place where they might have gotten out but stayed hidden. See what you can find out,” he told George. “We’ll go to the dive shop and get some gear. Meet us down on the dock.”
Gabe and Mike, who also dove, quickly got the gear they needed, including wet suits and scooters. The staff were friendly and anxious to talk about the excitement of the morning. With a ton of gear in hand, they rejoined George and prepared to dive.
“The next exit point is over a mile,” George informed them. “It’s been searched above and below, and nothing turned up, so they might not have gotten that far.”
“Anything on who the girl is?” Gabe asked.
“No one here has seen her before, and the Zapa Army wasn’t talking.”
“Okay, let’s go find them. We’ll meet you at that exit point. Give us an hour or so.”
“Roger that. Dive safe.”
Mike and Gabe dropped beneath the surface, completed a safety check of their gear, and headed into the tunnel. They both had bright cave lights and backups just in case. They were able to light up the tunnel and follow the gold line at a rapid pace. They looked in every corner, crevice, and crack—anywhere large enough to have hidden two frozen divers. They passed the first two cenotes and saw bullets spent and fallen harmlessly to the bottom. Half an hour passed and then another fifteen minutes. Gabe checked his air and was surprised that he’d only used just less than half the tank. He held his gauge up for Mike to see, who in turn responded in kind. They were good for at least another hour at these shallow depths.