The Girl in the Glyphs

by David Edmonds

  “Then you must do me the honor of a dance.”

  I took his clammy hand and let him guide me up the steps to the dance floor. The band was playing a slow number. His arms went around me. “Do you have a name?”

  “Carmen.”

  “Where are you from, Carmen?”

  “Costa Rica.”

  “Aha, a tica. I thought I recognized the accent.”

  As a dancer, he wasn’t bad. Wasn’t pushy either. All around us, couples were dancing and having fun. Ricardo and Carla fell into a slow dance beside us, bolstering my confidence.

  “Four hundred cords,” Gonzales whispered.

  I made the calculation in my head and figured about thirty dollars.

  “Oh, come on,” I said, backing away, “that’s insulting.”

  “Okay, five hundred for someone as pretty as you.”

  “I prefer dollars—and not less than fifty.”

  “You better be good,” he said, and pulled me off the floor.

  I nodded to Carla and followed this monster down the steps toward the bar, my confidence growing. This was going easier than I thought. All I had to do now was get him outside.

  Ricardo and Carla pushed around us and stepped through the exit where Alan and Paco were waiting. I headed that way too, but Gonzales pulled me past the door.

  “Not yet,” he said. “Let’s get a bottle.”

  His arms slid around me from the back. In this position, he walked me toward the rear of the bar. I tried to pull free, but his hold was like the grip of an anaconda.

  A door to the back was ajar. He shoved me through it. And just like that, we were outside, on a patio flanked by Oleanders and a high brick wall. Far away from Alan and Paco.

  “Bitch! Did you really think you were going to trap me?”

  His hand clamped over my mouth. Then he was walking me toward a car—not the black SUV, but a small, nondescript vehicle that was probably a Targa rental car.

  The driver jumped out, darted around and opened the back door.

  “Remember Prudencia?” Gonzales said, laughing.

  I clamped down on his hand with my teeth, but it was like biting leather.

  He punched me in the stomach. The air went out of me. My legs collapsed, and I was gasping for breath when he shoved me into the rear seat, climbed in beside me and slammed the door.

  Chapter 97

  Every pothole jolted my insides, every swerve, every slam on the brakes. In the seat beside me, Gonzales twisted around for a look out the back window. “You better hope your friends aren’t following; otherwise, we’ll throw your cute little ass right out into traffic.”

  “Who told you?” I asked hoarsely. “How did you know?”

  “Your boyfriend told me. He works for me.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Is it? Think about it. There was gold in that cave. Millions of dollars worth. You told your boyfriend where to find it. He told me, and now we’re going to share the wealth.”

  Alan a co-conspirator? My Alan, the man of my dreams? No way. But I wasn’t going to dispute him, not sitting there in paralyzing pain with my head resting against the seat in front. Not when my life depended on getting my hands on that pepper spray canister on my belt.

  It was on the right side, same side as Gonzales, only inches away from him. I tried to twist the belt around. Too tight, and I didn’t dare yank on it. Why hadn’t I listened to Alan and let him handle this mess? Now I’d end up like Catherine and the glyphs would be forever lost.

  A pothole jolted me out of my despair, a real axle-buster, and while we were bouncing around in the back seat, and Gonzales yelling at Prudencia to be careful, I managed to twist around the belt to get a better grip on the canister. Yes, now I could get it loose.

  “Where are we going?” I asked Gonzales.

  “To the lake, let you earn your fifty dollars. When I’m finished, Prudencia can have her fun. Then we’ve got a couple guards you can service.”

  “Don’t forget Bruno,” Prudencia said from the front.

  Gonzales roared with laughter. “Bruno’s our watchdog.”

  I hugged my battered body. Better to die on a pot-holed street in a traffic accident than what they had in mind. “Where’d you hide the glyphs?” I asked him.

  “Same place we hid the gold.”

  “Where?”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” Again he laughed.

  “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

  “Let’s just say I put them at a place you know very well.”

  Again, he twisted around and glanced behind us. “Anyone following?” he asked Prudencia.

  “Can’t tell with this traffic.”

  “Take an extra lap around the circle, just to be sure.”

  We were almost at the last traffic circle in Managua, beyond which lay the Masaya Highway. If I was going to act, it had to be now. I unclipped the canister and said a silent prayer to the God of my father and the spirits of my mother, and I begged forgiveness for my sins and promised to be a better person if by some miracle I survived this night.

  “Want to know how I killed Fuentes?” I said to Gonzales.

  “What?”

  “Your pig of a friend, Fuentes. I killed him with this.”

  I ripped off my trinket belt and flung it to the floor.

  “What the hell?”

  He leaned forward to pick it up, and while he was fumbling around on the floorboard, his face at my right elbow, I blasted him with pepper spray.

  Industrial strength.

  He screamed and slapped at his face as if it were on fire. An awful burning came over me as well, but I kept spraying, now aiming at Prudencia in the driver’s seat.

  The car careened out of control. Tires screeched. Horns blared.

  We struck something, bounced off, and slid to a stop.

  By then, my lungs were on fire, eyes and nostrils burning. Couldn’t see or scream. Had to get out. To run. Jump into a lake. I grabbed the door handle. Locked.

  In the front seat, Prudencia was also struggling to get out.

  The door opened. Fresh air. Someone pulled me out.

  “Jen, are you all right? Jen.”

  Alan’s voice.

  “Pepper spray,” I mumbled.

  He yelled for water, led me off the street, and sat me in grass. Traffic buzzed around the circle, horns blowing. I heard shouts, people talking in excited tones. Someone poured water over me. And there was Carla, handing me tissues.

  She helped me into the back seat of the Land Rover and we were soon roaring along the pot-holed streets again, windows open, fresh air in my face.

  “Will someone please tell me what happened?” I said.

  “You wrecked,” Alan answered from the driver’s seat.

  “I know that, but where is Gonzales?”

  “Ahead of us, with Luz Maria and the comandante.”

  I looked, but saw only a blur of taillights and oncoming traffic.

  My eyesight got better, the burning less intense. We slowed, took a right turn and swung into the entrance to the Masaya Volcano National Park, stopping at a security gate. In front were two other vehicles—the comandante’s SUV and the little car in which I’d been kidnapped.

  “Aren’t we going to the dungeon?” I said to Alan.

  “Hell, no, the dungeon’s too good for them.”

  A guard stepped from the shadows, swung open the gate, and waved in our little three-vehicle convoy. Carla shivered beside me. I was terrified too, but tried to mask my fear by wondering aloud who had betrayed us. “We’ll soon find out,” Alan said.

  At first, we drove beneath shade trees and passed a series of buildings that served as the tourist center. The trees ended, the road turned sharply upward, and soon we were laboring along in low gear, turning this way and that, transmission whining, headlights catching plumes of steam.

  More hellish still were the flames shooting out of the ground, one here, another there, giving the illusio
n of a hundred campfires.

  The road ended at the crater. The comandante drove his SUV to the edge.

  Ricardo and Paco stopped behind him in the car in which I’d been captive.

  Alan stopped a safe distance behind, pulled out his pistol, and chambered a round.

  “Wait here,” he said above the roar of the volcano. “This could get ugly.”

  Chapter 98

  Volcán Masaya

  Alan climbed out and conferred with the comandante, who by then was standing on the platform that had once been a final stop for condemned prisoners. They had a short conversation, nodded agreement, then marched to the smaller car and dragged out Prudencia.

  She struggled and kicked.

  Beside me, Carla cried, “Oh, my God, oh, my God. They’re going to throw her in.”

  I hopped out and trudged over to the crater. The stench of sulfur reignited the fire in my eyes. Heat rose around me. The volcano roared. Swirling gases gave off an orange glow, now bright, now dim. “No,” Alan said, and grabbed my arm. “Get back in the car.”

  I jerked loose. Flocks of little green parrots flew over my head, and in one of those inexplicable quirks of nature, darted in and out of the gases like junkies going for a fix. I stepped to the edge and looked down. Below me, a hundred feet or so, the hellish pit called Boca del Infierno was spewing gases and flames like a giant flame-thrower.

  The comandante marched back in forth in front of Prudencia. “You have a choice,” he yelled above the roar. “Talk and all you get is prison. Don’t talk and it’s the volcano.”

  “Don’t tell them a thing,” Gonzales cried through the open back window of the SUV.

  The comandante stalked over to Gonzales and punched him in the face. Then he came back to Prudencia. “Who betrayed us? This is your last chance.”

  Prudencia’s lips moved as if in prayer. The comandante whipped out a pistol, aimed it at her, and then handed the gun to Paco. “You do it, Paco.”

  I grabbed Alan’s arm. “Don’t let him do it.”

  “Goddammit, Jennifer, stay out of this.”

  A shot went off. Prudencia fell backward.

  “Son of a bitch,” Alan yelled, and yanked out his own pistol.

  Luz Maria also drew her pistol. The comandante snatched his pistol away from Paco.

  “Idiot! What is wrong with you? It was a bluff. You knew that.”

  Paco shrugged as if he’d committed no greater crime than running a traffic light. He took Prudencia by the legs, dragged her to the crater, and pushed her over.

  The comandante turned to Ricardo. “Get the other one.”

  Nausea swept over me. I retreated to the steps that led up to a lookout and barely made it to my knees before it all came out: a nasty purge of fear and revulsion, everything I’d eaten that day. When I finally looked up, the volcano was still roaring and shooting out flames, little green parrots still darted in and out of the gases, lights still twinkled from a thousand houses in the valley below us. And the comandante was marching back and forth in front of Gonzales.

  “Who betrayed us?”

  Gonzales spat on him. The comandante punched him in the gut and kicked him when he fell. Then he marched over to Alan and pointed at the winch on the bumper of his Land Rover.

  “Hook him up and drop him over the ledge. Let him cook until he talks.”

  Carla bounded out of the Land Rover and darted off like a frightened rabbit. Alan drove to the edge of the crater and waited for Paco to fashion a harness out of a section of rope. Then, with me looking on horrified, and Ricardo looking sick himself, they hooked Gonzales to the cable and shoved him over, letting the weight of his body drag out the cable.

  “That’s far enough,” Luz Maria yelled. “Let him roast.”

  Carla burst into tears. Gonzales screamed and twisted on the cable.

  How long they left him on the cable, dangling and screaming, I do not know, but at last came the order to reel him in. The winch strained and whined on the pulley. Up came Gonzales, crying and coughing, his clothes smoldering, his face black.

  With the exception of Fuentes in my nightmares, I’d never seen a more dreadful looking creature. They unhooked him from the harness and sat him on the ground with his back against the Land Rover’s front tire. “Water!” he begged. “Please.”

  “Not until you talk,” said Luz Maria.

  He didn’t answer. The comandante turned to Paco. “Hook him up again.”

  “No,” Gonzales pleaded. “I’m a soldier. I want to die like a soldier.”

  “All you have to do is talk,” the comandante said, “and you’ll die like a soldier.”

  Gonzales raised his shackled hands and pointed at Paco. “There is your Judas.”

  “Liar,” Paco raged. He backed toward the edge of the crater. “He’s lying.”

  “You’re the liar,” Gonzales sputtered. “Why were you so quick to shoot Prudencia? So she wouldn’t talk. You wanted to shoot me too, so you’d have the gold for yourself.” He looked up at the comandante. “Check his bank balance. Yesterday I gave him ten thousand—”

  Paco reached for his pistol. I dove to the ground. Everyone around me fired at once, a hellish staccato of flashes. When I glanced up, Paco was falling backward into the abyss.

  We were still looking, speechless, when Gonzales bounded to his feet and got his manacled hands over my head. “Bitch, didn’t I say you’d pay?”

  He drew the chain of the cuffs into my throat, his face tight against mine, his chokehold suffocating. I smelled his burning flesh. Then this half-alive, half-dead monster was dragging me toward the precipice. “We’ll die together, dulce, just you and me.”

  I didn’t hear the gunshot that killed him. All I know is there was a spray of crimson. Gonzales slumped, taking me to the ground with him. At the edge of the precipice.

  Alan pulled me up and wiped my face. My ears rang. I was shaking. No one spoke for a long time. It was as if we were too stunned to absorb what had happened.

  At last, the comandante pushed the body over the ledge. Then he kicked the tire on Alan’s Land Rover. “What a fiasco! Now we’ll never know what he took from the cave.”

  He ranted some more, then calmed down and gathered everyone around him. “Nothing happened here tonight. You saw nothing. You heard nothing. You were not here. Understand?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “I’ll tidy up and get rid of the car. Everybody go home. Go! Vete!”

  We set off down the mountain in a fury, Alan and Ricardo in the front cursing our luck, Carla beside me in the back, helping me towel blood and brains off my face.

  I leaned forward and tapped Alan on the shoulder. “I know where they hid it.”

  Chapter 99

  The Isle of Thieves

  It was three in the morning when we arrived on Ana Maria Island—bleary-eyed, shocked, and looking like refugees from a war. I stripped down to my underclothes and plunged into the lake. Alan stripped naked and plunged in after me. Ricardo and Carla did the same.

  In time, we got soup and coffee into our stomachs and developed a plan. Carla wanted to go with us, but we convinced her that someone had to remain in the cabin with a cell phone and assault rifle. Then Ricardo, Alan and I climbed back into the boat for the short crossing to the Isle of Thieves, the same island on which I’d stayed with Niro and Tan.

  Alan cut the motors about halfway out and let the drift carry us in.

  We eased out and lashed the boat to the same tree Gonzales had used for his boat. Then we crept toward the cabin like commandos on a mission, Alan planting weapons as we went—an AK-47 at this boulder, a Glock at the next. “Just in case,” he whispered.

  When we reached the mango tree with its spreading limbs, we squatted down for a conference. Ricardo got Carla on the phone and told her we’d landed and all was quiet. Alan turned to me. “Wait here. We’ll have a look.”

  “No, Alan. I’m going with you.”

  “Damn it, Jen. Somebody has to stay here.
It could be a trap.”

  “I’ll stay,” Ricardo said in disgust. He handed me his pistol. “It’s a Glock. Loaded. No safety. All you have to do is pull back the slide.”

  Alan and I eased through the mangos, ducking and pushing limbs out of the way.

  “Cover me,” Alan said.

  “Wait, I know where they keep an extra key.”

  I dashed to the flagpole, lifted a stone, and pulled out a jar. The key was inside.

  With pistols drawn, bending low, we crept to the cabin and listened.

  No sounds of movement. No barking dogs. I slipped the key into the lock and turned it.

  Alan eased the door open. It creaked and popped on its hinges. I smelled cigarettes. Then that annoying little security ding went off with the intensity of the liberty bell.

  “Shit,” Alan said, and charged inside.

  I followed with my pistol. From the bedroom came movement, people scrambling about.

  “Get down,” Alan hissed.

  A burst of bullets tore through the door from the other side, lighting up the cabin. I flattened myself. Splinters and debris flew all around and I had the horrible feeling that Alan had caught the full burst. Then I felt his hand on my arm. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine, what about you?”

  “I’m good. Sonofabitch couldn’t hit a barn.”

  From the outside came Ricardo’s voice. “Hey, guys, what’s going on?”

  Alan shouted back to him in Spanish. “Tell the men to watch the back.”

  “They’re already there, all ten.”

  A suffocating smell of gun smoke and dust hung in the air. I couldn’t see a thing, but I heard movement in the bedroom. “Hey, you in there,” Alan yelled. “Come out with your hands up. Otherwise I’m going to throw in a grenade.”

  A woman’s voice answered, “Don’t shoot, I’m coming out.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Nobody. I’m alone. You scared me.”

  “Light a candle. I want see you when you come out.”

  There was movement, the click of a cigarette lighter, and through the broken door came a glow. The door opened a crack. I aimed my pistol and waited. Out came a woman silhouetted against the candlelight, a young woman dressed in a white T-shirt and nothing more.