by Larry Baxter
Bird Eater Xcatca knelt for the blessing of Peloc and ran with the runners to the sacbé, spurred on by the cheers of the villagers. Peloc walked slowly to his room in the city, feeling every one of his sixty-five years.
Chapter 26
* * *
Cartegena, November 5, present day
Ernesto's voice was quiet and menacing, "Let me see if I understand this. The two college kids I told you about got in the cave. OK so far. The four of you were somehow able to overpower them, even though they were unarmed. This, too, is OK. Then you handcuffed them to a pipe and called Lopez."
"Sì."
"Didn't call me."
"Lopez, he was closer."
"Uh, huh. They say anything under your relentless questioning?"
"They said they were archaeologists, doctors, looking for a cure for a disease. Bullshit, probably."
Ernesto squeezed off a few more rounds into the target, now shredded to ribbons. "No, true, probably. And we would have owned that cure if you hadn't let them escape and then killed them. Two little blunders, right in a row." He slammed a fresh clip into his automatic and punctuated each word with a shot: "Two. Little. Two. Hundred. Million. Dollar. Blunders."
"I cannot understand how they could have gotten away."
"I cannot understand how you could not have listened to my careful instructions. Let them in, I said. Keep out of their way, I said. Keep an eye on them, I said. I should have told you under no circumstances are you to kill them."
"We didn't mean to kill them, but they were getting away."
Ernesto unscrewed the silencer and emptied the clip into the wall. As the echoes died away he raised his head to the heavens and spread his arms wide. "Lord, please, carve this on their tombstones, 'We didn't mean to kill them, but they were getting away.'"
Chapter 27
* * *
Tulum, November 5, present day
The small blue fishing boat, its motor throttled down to a slow trolling speed, coasted down the long coral reef that curls from Belize to Cozumel. The fertile reef was warmed and nourished by the Gulf Stream running near the coast at this latitude, bathing the reef with nutrients from the South Atlantic.
It had been a long day and a good day, the boat was heavy with the catch: red snapper, grouper, even today one nice mahi mahi. The sun was setting in a clear sky over the Yucatán. At the stern, Miguel tended two rods with surface lures, nudging the motor from time to time to keep his course just to the ocean side of the reef. His teenage son Pépé watched from the bow, looking for the big ones lifting to inhale the first of the evening's black flies.
"Papa! Look!" He pointed to port at a floating object.
Miguel thought it looked like trash floating in the water, but he steered to port.
"Papa! It's people!"
The current rolled the object over to reveal human faces. Not dead faces, marinated in the salt to the greenish pallor; almost alive-looking faces, but quiet, still, not breathing. A man and a woman. Young. Miguel asked Pépé to go far towards the bow and hauled the bodies over the stern so he wouldn't swamp the boat, already low in the water. The woman made a small noise and as he pounded her on the back she coughed up seawater. She was wearing a wet suit, but two of her fingers stuck out at an odd angle and her head was covered in blood.
The man was dead—wearing only a ripped swimsuit—his side bleeding from three or four wounds, his head, too, bruised and bleeding. He lay unmoving in the bilge water in the bottom of the boat with the fish, with the dirty water running in and out of his open mouth as the boat rocked. As Miguel tried to make a splint for the woman's broken hand she saw the man and she screamed, "Robert!" and she slapped at his face and put her head to his chest. "Pulse!" she screamed. "Breathe, you bastard!" She rolled him over with help from Miguel, and they pressed on his back together until a large quantity of water came from his mouth, then they rolled him back and she held his nostrils and breathed into his lungs. "Check his pulse!" she looked at Miguel.
He reached for the man's wrist and found a thin, too slow pulse beneath the cold skin, skin like a plucked chicken. Every three or four seconds, he had never felt a pulse like that one. "Slow," he reported.
She nodded and looked at him with strange colored eyes and he kept his hand on the man's wrist. She breathed into the man's lungs and he could see the man's chest inflating, but when she stopped the chest would go down and not move. "Goddam you!" she said, slapped his chest with her injured hand and screamed in pain, and breathed into his lungs again.
Miguel looked at this woman, angry now, yelling at the man. She had regained color and even though her hair was matted and wet and bloody and her fingers stuck out at a funny angle she had much beauty, a look of purpose and strength. He kept a hand on the man's wrist and when she looked at him, he nodded yes. But the pulse was slower, if anything. He shrugged.
He steered the boat towards the coast where his friend Ricardo had the car; the woman needed a doctor and the long trip to Playa del Carmen would need almost an hour. The man—Robert, she had called him—he didn't know what the man needed. Help from God.
The woman kept breathing the man's lungs full of air. She watched as the man's chest sank and then just before they reached shore his chest slowly rose again, by itself, and again, and again, and she fell beside the man into the bottom of the boat. She made small noises like quiet screams and curled closely behind him to warm him with her body.
On land, Miguel headed up the coast in Ricardo's old Toyota sedan. The woman was riding in the front seat with a temporary splint, fashioned from a cardboard box, supporting her hand. Her bleeding had stopped. The man in the back with Pépé—his side bandaged as well as they could—was still breathing but still was not conscious.
"Where are you taking us?" she asked.
"Playa del Carmen, little hospital."
"My name is Teresa. That's Robert, in the back seat. He saved my life. I was dead. He saved my life."
"You saved his life, too. I am Miguel, that is my son Pépé. We are happy to help." Fairly happy, that robber Ricardo had demanded the mahi mahi in return for lending the car and getting his fish to market for him.
"Can you take us to the hospital in Cancún, instead?" she asked.
"Sí, better hospital there."
"Not only that, but the people who shot us will be looking to make sure we're dead. If they find us alive, we'll be dead. Does that make sense? I'm a little groggy. Talk to me, Miguel. I have to stay awake. You speak good English. Were you born around here?"
"Sì, I worked many years in the hotels and I learn the English good. It is not so easy a life…but it is better than most to have at least the job. Cancún, there they have the fancy hotels and the turista think that Mexico, it is a beautiful country, but there in Cancún City two miles away it is the place where the staff lives, with big rats in the trash all night and sometimes the bad diseases. But I learn to tend the bar and make the drinks—Piña Colada, Margarita—smile a lot, make good tips. And I learn not to like the turista, but secretly, for the turista must feel you like him if he is to give the tips."
"Uh-huh," said the woman, softly.
"Then I move with Rosa and little Pépé to Playa del Carmen and I am more of a free man, and in the town lives the staff and the turista both and you cannot tell which of them is which, and nobody cares if the streets are made of dirt and the dogs lie in the sidewalk, and the turista see that Mexico is not always so beautiful and yet they love it as I do, and the sea is there with the soft friendly blue water, and the reef and the fish and the long sunsets. And they do not so much need to be the big boss and need me to be the servant person, and I find turista are like Mexicans, some good, some bad, most regular people."
The woman said "Ummmmm," and rested her head on the windowsill. "And then I move to Puerto Aventuras where the big boats with the gringo fishermen tie up and where the sidewalks are cleaned every hour and the bar is full with big shots, and the staff is in a junkhole town acros
s the big road where they burn the trash and the rats live with us and the turista are never, never supposed to go. But I do not care, as the tips are big and I think I can buy finally a boat and a motor, too. Now I have it, the boat, sixteen feet long, with the stainless steel Yamaha motor and the sail I use when the wind is good to save the gas, and Pépé is grown big and plenty strong and we take the boat to the reef and fish for yellowtail and snappers and eels and we sell them to the chefs at the fancy hotels and we don't make the tips but it is a good life. And I teach Pépé the English, so he speaks now three languages, he is smart boy, he speaks Yucatec, Spanish, and English. Better even then me, the English, hey, Pépé?"
"Father, you are much better than I at speaking English."
He looked at the woman to see if she understood, but she was asleep.
Chapter 28
* * *
Cancún, November 7, present day
The hospital was a two-story cinder block building on the edge of Cancún City. It had four small rooms on the second floor, each with two beds. The walls were two-tone green, decorated with last year's calendar and a poster of cliff divers at Acapulco. Glass brick windows admitted light from the morning sun but kept out the views of the unlovely city.
The place smelled strongly of disinfectant. An elderly Mexican lay in one white-painted metal bed, snoring loudly. A needle in his arm connected to tubes ran from a plastic bag half full of liquid. Opposite, Robert Asher lay quiet and unmoving in a corner bed, also connected to tubes from a glucose drip. His eyes were closed and his head bandaged.
Teresa Welles sat beside the bed—dressed in street clothes but with a plaster cast on her left hand—holding Robert's hand. "The man said his name was Miguel, he rescued us both. We will meet him again after you recover, you'll like him, he's nice. He and his son were in the boat. He told me all about what it's like living down here, for the locals. Such a different life from Cambridge, it's hard to realize."
A nurse entered with a bouquet of flowers and handed them to Teresa. "These just arrived. There is a card. I put them in a bottle, we have no vase."
"Thanks, they're lovely. Who sent them?" She looked at the card. "They're from Dr. Teppin, Robert. He says you should get better. No, actually, he said he insists that you recover."
"More than a day, now, and he has not moved, he cannot hear you," said the nurse. "It could be weeks, months, who knows. I know it is difficult, but you may have to leave here soon."
"No, he knows I'm here, he needs me. He saved my life. He held me up to the air, I didn't even know it was there. I will stay here."
"For a while, if you wish," said the nurse. "I will pray for him."
"For who?" said Robert. His eyes fluttered open.
"¡Caramba! Gracias a Dios!" The nurse ran out.
"Well, hi, sleepyhead," said Teresa, a sudden strong ache in the back of her throat. She turned her head so he could not see her tears.
"Hi, Teresa," he spoke slowly and quietly, "Where is this? What happened?"
"This is a hospital in Cancún. Do you remember the SCUBA trip to the cave?"
"Sure. And getting untied, and getting shot at." He thought a minute. "Nothing after that. Did I get hit?"
"Well, yes, a few times. One went right through, two ricochets got stuck in you but they got the slugs out cleanly and nothing important got dinged. You were hit in your side. And your right hip. You saved my life. You lost a lot of blood, and you got a concussion. How do you feel?"
Robert was quiet for a while. "Not bad, I guess, considering. My backside feels as if somebody's doing acupuncture with railroad spikes. Probably something to do with the slugs?"
"Yep. Anything else?"
"Well, lemmee see. My mouth feels like it's full of crushed gravel and there's a violin playing my right ear, one long high note. When I move my head there's a funny sloshing sound, maybe there's still water in my ears. But, all in all, not too bad."
He closed his eyes slowly and was silent for a minute, then seemed to awaken again. "Are you all right?" he asked. "What happened to your hand?" Robert placed his hand on top of her good hand.
"We fell into the underground river and got washed out to sea. You saved my life. Then I got smashed into a rock and it broke two fingers, but they say it'll heal quickly." Was she letting her hand linger a little too long for a professional relationship? Probably.
"How did they get your hand into a cast so soon? How long have I been out?"
"Two days."
"Wow. Have you been here all that time?" She moved her hand away.
"I just stopped in to see if you were going to get back to work."
"Not too soon, I think," said the doctor from the door. "His wounds are still healing, and we need to keep him here for at least another day in case the concussion has more bad effects." The doctor turned to Robert. "Your pulse is low, forty or forty-one. Is that normal, or an effect of the concussion?"
"That's normal, I get a lot of exercise."
"Fine. You are lucky you are in excellent condition, you came close to death." He wiped a film of perspiration from Robert's forehead. "Is the pain bad? I would think the wounds would be quite uncomfortable."
"I have some pain. I can live with it."
"I'll get codeine pills."
"Maybe later. I need to think clearly right now."
"As you wish. Also, the police would like to talk to you."
"And I would like to talk the police," said Robert. "Can you contact Colonel Muñoz?"
* * *
Teresa was still sitting near Robert a few hours later when Colonel Muñoz walked into the hospital room. He carried a black swagger stick that he banged on the metal bed frame. "So, Asher, you are awake. You are more than just an archaeologist, I think. Do you have any professional contacts you would like to tell me about? CIA? DEA? KGB?"
"Hello, Colonel. I am a medical researcher and Dr. Welles and myself were tracking down a reference to an antiviral medication. We need to find this medication, the virus is very dangerous and many people will die. We can work through our governments if we need to, but it will take too much time."
"You will forgive me if this sounds unusual," said Muñoz. "Medical research is done in laboratories in the city. And, as your colleague has told me, you were in a cenote in the Yucatán."
"Yes, it's unusual, but we have done nothing wrong. We did not expect the cenote to be occupied. And the crime is not ours; it was committed by the people we encountered in the cave with guns. I believe I would like to swear out a complaint for attempted murder."
"That would be unwise. You have no proof. I have done all I can to help you, but you must now give up and go home before you are killed and we all have a big problem. The hospital removed two thirty-caliber high velocity slugs from your body, slugs that would come from an AK-47 assault rifle. Another slug went right through you. They said it was a miracle that no organs were hit. Leave this to us, we are the professionals."
"We must find the clues to the antiviral medication. We must. We need to go back to Tulum, but we may be able to avoid that same cave."
"Then you take your chances. Make sure you pay your insurance first. If you get in the way of the policia you will be jailed. If you get in the way of the people with the AK-47s you will probably be killed." He turned and left the room.
He looked at Teresa. "Is this a little bizarre? What's going on here? Does this man go hot and cold in a heartbeat or what?"
"We could ask Phil."
"Good idea. Except I bet I know what he'd say, Muñoz is working both sides of the street."
"That makes sense. If that's what's happening, we won't get any help getting those guys out of the cave."
"We have three choices," said Robert. "We find another way in that bypasses their installation. We talk to them or their bosses and do a deal. We get help with heavy artillery."
She thought about the options. She didn't like any of them. Why wasn't get out of town on the list? "What do you think?"
"Um. Good point. What do you think they do with the rockets?"
"There were fragments of sea grass on the one I looked at," said Robert. "It grows underwater after a month or two. Those rockets look like underwater cargo carriers. Ingenious. Almost risk-free. If they know we know, they'll be strongly motivated to make sure we keep the secret. Maybe we'd be down to five minutes to live."
"Uh-huh. What's your next plan?"
"Got the videoconference system? We can ask Dr. Teppin if he has any contacts with heavy artillery."
She went down to the van to get the videophone, then set it up in the room and made the connection. Teppin's face appeared on the small display screen. "Well, Robert, rejoin the ranks of the living. Good to see you with your eyes open. We were all pretty worried. How do you feel?"
"Oh, not too bad," said Robert. "A little lighter without the lead slugs, and the violin music has almost stopped."
"How is he, Teresa?"
"A few hours ago he was still in the coma. He awoke like somebody turned on a light. He seems good now, I guess the bullet wounds are not too serious, but the doctor is worried about concussion and wants to keep him here for at least another day."
"That is excellent news," said Teppin. "In normal circumstances, I would encourage you both to spend a few weeks sipping piña coladas on the beach, but the curve of virus deaths vs. time continues to accelerate. We will send help, but we need you back quickly, as soon as the doctor releases you."