THE MAYAN GLYPH

by Larry Baxter

  "Standoff, here," said Kiraly. "They'll have a point man just around the corner." As if to prove his point, a volley of shots launched a dozen small slugs, screaming up the corridor. "Any ideas?"

  "Here's one," said Robert. "I jump in the river and float downstream underwater. There's that little midstream island maybe twenty yards past them. They won't be looking that way. I'll take a flash-bang and a smoke. Attack from behind."

  "Did you see how fast that current is running? That's suicide."

  The lights went back on in the corridor.

  "I did a lot of swimming in college," said Robert, "I think if I strip down to lighten the load I can make it."

  Kiraly looked at him. "You have no chance to pull yourself out. The stone is slippery. You haven't healed yet."

  "I have one chance. If I time it correctly, I can make it. If I don't, hey, I've been down that road before." He touched the bandage involuntarily.

  "Right, and damn near died."

  "I was weighed down with lead. Any other ideas?"

  Kiraly shrugged and looked at Gabor. Gabor shrugged. Bela said, "That's crazy." Bartok nodded. Robert removed all his equipment except the belt and the grenades, filled his lungs with air and slipped into the water, diving to the bottom. He watched the walls go by in the pale green illumination, estimating the distance carefully, and surfaced twenty-five feet before the island. Just enough time, he thought, as he dove as deep as the river permitted and stroked to the surface. He felt a deep ache in the freshly stitched wounds in his back and hoped he had not ruptured anything vital.

  He broke the water as silently as an eel and stretched both hands up to the outcrop. But he did not have a good grip on the slimy water-smoothed stone, and he slid back down towards the fast moving river, an inch at a time. Christ. Got to do something. His feet swung in midair, no help. One more inch. Too damned slippery, in rock climbing you got nice dry rocks and chalk. One more inch. Try something, anything, not much time left. He flexed his arms to pull his weight up a few inches, grabbed quickly for a new hand hold, and started slipping slowly down again. Good, you've bought yourself another ten seconds. He repeated the move, this time edging sideways by a foot, and this time his frantically searching left hand found a deep crevice. He wedged his right hand in the same crevice, hung there for a moment, and muscled his body up in a single smooth motion. Yes! Never in doubt.

  In seconds he was prone on the cool rock, back throbbing but not dripping blood. Sure enough, there was only one man—barely visible around the curve of the passage—prone in the corridor, holding a short-barreled rifle pointing towards the access cave. But the island Robert was perched on was too far downstream, he was pretty sure he couldn't lob a grenade accurately that distance. With a three second timer, not an impact fuse, it would bounce away before exploding. And he sure didn't want to miss, he had exactly one chance. As he tried to figure it out, the lights came back on. Great. That guy had better not turn around.

  How could he get closer, and quickly? The walkway narrowed and disappeared ten feet upstream from him, too far to jump. He looked on the other bank, no help, he could swim across but he'd never be able to climb the slippery walls. Stymied.

  Then he saw a possibility from his rock-climbing experience, a narrow oblique crack in the ceiling, leading just about to where he wanted to be. It was about four inches across. He reached up a hand, stuck it into the crack, and made a fist. The stone was dry there, and the size of the crack was perfect. He picked up his feet and hung suspended for a second. OK so far, except it feels like someone is stabbing me in my backside.

  Then he swung forward, wedged his other hand in the crack, and released his back hand. Eight more feet. Ow. Goddamn. Please, don't let this crack change size. He repeated the move, gaining about a foot every time, and just as the muscles in his forearm were about to give up the effort, he landed lightly on the walkway.

  Robert gauged the toss: too hard or too soft and the grenade would roll into the water. But he had two grenades, double the odds, which first? The flash-bang. He got it ready and pulled the pin.

  The man on the corridor floor seemed to sense his presence, turning, looking. José! Sonavabitch! He tossed the grenade, closed his eyes, and ducked as the first shots thudded into the rock where his head had been and then the explosion seemed to lift his body a foot off the ground. He got the smoke grenade ready as he refocused but it would not be needed.

  José was out cold or dead, half on and half off the shelf, a large smoldering hole in his shirt revealing a Kevlar jacket that looked a little the worse for wear. Kiraly appeared around the corner; Robert gave him a thumb's-up sign. Bartok looked at him with new respect. Hey, thought Robert, us older guys like to have fun too.

  Kiraly tossed a smoke grenade through the open door to the workroom they'd abandoned before, then a flash-bang grenade. They heard shouts in Spanish, only two or three different voices this time, and automatic weapons fire, wildly impacting the rock walls and screaming away in harmless ricochets. Kiraly fired a short burst through the door and they heard a scream of pain.

  Finally a voice spoke, in Spanish, "We give up. Don't shoot."

  "Throw your guns through the door," said Kiraly, in the same language. "Carefully. Safeties on. I don't want to see anybody's face just yet."

  Several rifles slid through the opening.

  "Now the pistols."

  Half a dozen pistols followed.

  "Now the grenades. With the pins in."

  A dozen grenades appeared.

  "Good. Now lie on your stomachs. I will appear with a grenade in each hand with the pin out. Shoot me and we all die. Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt."

  "Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt," said Bartok in a whisper. "Class act."

  Kiraly glanced back in irritation and pulled the pins on two flash-bang grenades. He walked through the door. Robert's back itched in sympathetic apprehension.

  Kiraly looked around, apparently liked what he saw, and motioned for the team to join him. Robert was next into the room. Four men were on their stomachs and two more on their backs, wounded. The room was the bunkroom, half a dozen cots and a couple of mattresses. Low-class accommodations. Gabor produced the nylon line and started tying people up until Robert remembered the handcuff supply—steel reinforced wire ties—located them in a drawer in the workroom and handcuffed the survivors to the pipes.

  "Hey! What's happening?" said Sarah, in their headsets.

  "Yeah! Me too!" said Teresa.

  Kiraly checked his troops. "Anybody hurt, besides Robert?" he asked. Robert couldn't understand what he was talking about until he followed his glance and found a shallow gash in his good side, dripping blood. In the excitement, it had gone unnoticed.

  "ROBERT!" screamed the headset.

  "It's just a flesh wound," he said.

  "But, what wound isn't?" said Bartok.

  "Good one," said Bela.

  Gabor ripped a piece of cloth from a bed sheet and bound it up.

  "Sarah, see if the local cops are up yet," said Kiraly. "Almost six thirty, somebody should be stirring. Ping 'em on the ship-to-shore. We need gendarmes with SCUBA gear, let us know if you raise anyone. Teresa, any sign of Goldstein?"

  "Here he comes, hang on a second. Yes, three bodies. Hang on. Two are alive, one unconscious, one groggy. They're pretty beat up."

  "Leave 'em in the Zodiac. Have Goldstein stand by with a gun. Ask for a cop boat for those bad boys. Is the sun up yet?"

  "We have a pretty sunrise up here."

  "Enjoy."

  They began a search of the facility and soon turned up a tunnel leading upwards from the workroom. It looked like a recent addition with the rough surface of recent excavation, just big enough for the forklift truck. Climbing the gentle slope, they found a well-hidden entrance in the scrub brush, concealed from prying eyes with a vegetation-covered steel door and big-leafed trees. Kiraly punched up Sarah on the radio again, "Sarah, did you find cops with SCUBA?"

  "I found
cops but no SCUBA yet."

  "Good enough, they won't need it. Send 'em to the brush about half a mile south of Tulum, three quarters of a mile inland. We'll station a man to guide them in. Two should do, with the wagon for the prisoners."

  Gabor waited by the entrance to direct traffic. Two hours later, after a complete inspection of the caves revealed no new secrets, and after a police boat took custody of the men on Bolero, a police squad joined them in the caves. Robert asked for Colonel Muñoz and was told he never started work before 10:00 A. M. They showed the police the torpedoes, one still open and half-loaded with plastic bags full of white powder.

  An officer found a wrench and started to unbolt the access hatch of another torpedo when Kiraly spoke. "Officer, I wouldn't do that. That would be a good place for the booby trap."

  The cop dropped the wrench as if it were a coral snake. "Let's look at the open one." Kiraly and the officer unloaded bags from the open torpedo and looked inside the hatch opening. A large block of brown plastic was fastened to the inside surface near the access hatch and wired to the threaded boltholes.

  "That's enough plastique to blow us all into Guatemala," said Kiraly. "There's probably some sequence of bolt removal, or some special tool. Better leave this one for the experts." The policeman nodded agreement energetically, found a roll of cloth tape and a felt tip pen, and fastened a sign, "Muy Peligroso!!!" to each torpedo hatch.

  The team, starting to slow down after thirty-six hours of activity, climbed up through the tunnel to the surface. They emerged, blinking, into a bright sunny day and picked their way carefully across the sharp coral rocks in their bare feet. The little parking lot was overrun with vehicles, most of them with flashing lights, along with a news truck, some tourists trying to find out what was going on, and little kids selling serapes.

  Phil Schwartz was sitting in a huge Cord Phaeton in the parking lot, sipping a tall drink with an orange slice over the rim. As they approached, he pulled out a cooler of beer and tossed them all a can. He grinned. "And when it's time to relax, one beer stands clear, beer after beer…"

  "Hi, Phil," said Robert. "What's happening?"

  "Hey, you guys are what's happening! The Yucatán hasn't seen so much action since the Spanish Invasion!"

  Chapter 32

  * * *

  Cartegena, the same day

  "Sonavabitch!" screamed Ernesto Porfirio Raoul Diaz as he kicked furiously at a wooden desk. A leg broke off and the desk listed to starboard as computer disks and notebooks fell to the floor. He paced back and forth in front of the now-frightened communications technician. Diaz crumpled the printout in his large hand and kicked the books against the wall. "I don't fucking believe this!" he said, and uncrumpled and reread the paper to see if the words had changed.

  Scramble code: *36*

  To: Ernesto Diaz, Cartegena

  From: A. Lopez, Tulum

  Date: 27 Oct. 2010

  Subj: Invasion

  The Tulum facility was invaded early this morning by a well-armed superior force. At least 17 soldiers with smoke and grenades attacked by surprise at approximately 3:00 A.M.

  One man was one of the two people we thought we had killed last week.

  We fought valiantly but we were outmanned and overpowered. One is confirmed dead, three missing and presumed dead, two are injured. We have no confirmed kills of the opposition but one confirmed injured.

  Myself and Carlos are unhurt, we escaped through the back tunnel.

  The opposition force and the police now occupy the facility. We are not sure about the status of the equipment or the inventory of product.

  Myself, Carlos, José and Elisio are now located in the Akumal house. We are communicating this message on the CDMA transceiver at 1090.3 MHz. We will monitor this frequency and await instructions.

  "Who the fuck are these bastards?" screamed Ernesto. "Garcia is paid off, the D.E.A. aren't allowed in country, there are no goddam independents operating anywhere near the Yucatán. Tell 'em this. Tell 'em to find out who the fuck it is without blowing cover. Tell 'em not to fucking screw up again."

  He rammed a fresh clip into his Glock and put three rounds into the listing desk, sending it to the floor. "Tell 'em to put a man in Tulum to listen for fifteen pounds of plastique blowing." He punctuated each word with a round into the cinder block wall. "If those fuckups left a Remora open where the goddam D.E.A. can find it we're gonna lose the sweetest little transport gimmick we ever had. Our only hope is that they open one up and blow the whole fucking cave sky fucking high."

  Ernesto got on the phone to the cop he owned in Tulum and got a few more scraps of data. An hour later, he was talking with his security chief, Antonio Rojas, and a half dozen of Rojas' lieutenants.

  "Smartass college medics!" he screamed. "Goddamn smartass college medics! Fucking dirtbag archaeologists!"

  "OK, OK," said Rojas. "Calm down. We'll blow little pieces of smartass college kids into the sea. Let's just figure out how to save the inventory, and how to do it without pissing off our remaining friends, if we still have any."

  "The cop, Muñoz, is still in our pocket. At least he says he is. Our inside guy says the D.E.A. is watching but they haven't dealt themselves in. Yet. Looks like these guys are just college types, diggers, and we were in their way. And they smoked us."

  "Don't make sense. Where do college boys get soldiers?"

  "There's gotta be somebody heavy backing 'em," said Ernesto. "D.E.A., Mafia, Asia, Palestinian terrorists, who knows? But whoever it is, they're way the fuck out of their territory."

  "But why? Diggers don't get excited like this. It must be something fucking amazing that they're digging for. Maybe something we could use."

  "Shut up a minute," said Ernesto. He balled both hands into fists and banged them together. "OK, do this. Number one. We can't let our organization get whacked like this, it's not fucking professional. Two. We want our inventory back. Three. If these guys are digging for something fucking amazing, we want it. Rojas, you know about stuff like this, these diggers, they ever dig up, like, gold or anything?"

  "Yeah. All those Indians used to bury piles of gold. That's what the Spaniards came for."

  Ernesto then remembered the gimmick he thought was long gone, picking up the cure to the virus. The news from Texas was all bad, anybody with a fix for that sucker could charge whatever they wanted. Maybe it was worth a billion, U.S. And if the medics were in fact not dead, they were back in the drug business. The street legal drug business. Mother would be proud. The cartel would be proud. Cartels, he'd bring in the other guys on this. And bring in Alejandro—El Presidente—cut him in for, say, a hundred million to get the government on his side.

  "So, number four. Here's the beauty part. Maybe we're back in the medical business. Take a week, find out what they're after. Grab a college boy, do a little interrogation. Break his fingers, cut off his balls. Whatever it takes. Find out. The timing's tricky, we gotta wait until they find the formula but we gotta get 'em before they take off. Then we move in big."

  "How big?"

  "Big. I'll head up there now with some muscle, reconnoiter, talk to Muñoz. You take twenty-five guys. They'd stick out like a whore convention at a flower show, in town, so bring sleeping bags and tarps and stay in the bush. Make sure at least five guys are the types that can get along in town. Better if they know some English. Go with 'em. Get yourselves in place in thirty-six hours. Make sure you got good paper: passports, visas, credit cards, licenses. Supplies for ten days. Grenades, semi-automatics, explosives, flak jackets, night vision goggles, gas masks, radios, sleeping bags, boy scout crap—the whole fucking deal. I'll set up a float plane so we can scoop the medics and get back here quick. You got thirty-six hours. Questions? OK, move."

  Rojas was ready for the assignment. He relocated moved five men from Mexico City, from their normal task of making sure that the wheels of illegal commerce were appropriately greased. He moved ten men from Tijuana, San Diego, Juarez, and El Paso, from their
usual work of supervising the border crossing activities. And he recruited the remainder from the permanent staff in Medellin, checked their papers, briefed them, equipped them and booked them on two separate commercial flights to Mérida.

  Rojas then checked out the weapons from one of the Medellin armories, loaded them on a Remora in Cartegena, and, sacrificing stealth for speed, loaded the Remora on the ancient float-equipped Grumman for a quick trip to the sea off Akumal.

  Ernesto walked down to the first floor and found Hector Estevez, the best muscle man in Cartegena. If the muscle pool in this organization was a car pool, Hector would be the Rolls Royce, surrounded by a fleet of Ford Fiestas. He was about the height of a Rolls and damn near the width. Hector was not overly talkative, had a twisted sense of humor, was not overburdened by excessive brainpower and smelled like a pig farm, but he was everybody's first choice for muscle.

  Ernesto smiled to himself as he remembered the time Hector had found his dented old pickup truck blocked by an Isuzu on the waterfront. He had simply picked up the rear end of the Isuzu, swung it over the low railing, over the Atlantic, balancing the car delicately, and driven off. Ernesto had watched the car sway in the breeze until it finally overbalanced and splashed wheels-up into the ocean twenty feet below.

  Ernesto told Hector his new assignment, to accompany him to Cancún for a discussion with the police contact, Muñoz, and an interview with Lopez. Hector grunted.

  Ernesto was careful to assign Hector a seat on the Cancún flight about six rows behind him, more for olfactory relief than for deception.

  * * *

  Ernesto looked out the airplane window at the Cancún peninsula, the narrow strip of sand appearing in danger of capsizing with the weight of the twenty-something-story hotels. The plane wheeled into the landing pattern. Muñoz would need persuasion, he thought, in case the D.E.A. or some other scumbags had bent him. No telling what kind of cash they would come up with, and he didn't need a goddamn bidding war. What he needed, he needed Muñoz in his pocket, nice and quiet and obedient.