“I recommend we start with Izapa,” Chac suggested. “Somehow, the pillar ball is the key to all of this. We don’t know where the Kin piece is, but there’s a chance the pillar ball is headed back to where it came from.”
“This feels like another needle in a haystack,” Peet admitted.
“As I recall, Profesor, that’s what brought you to Mexico in the first place.”
Airfield
Peet found the Ladybug amid a cluster of private planes, most of them single engine Cessnas or little two-seater capsules with wings. In fact, aside from a small Learjet parked at the far end, the Ladybug stood out as the largest plane on the lot, its overhead wings spanning above the others like an eagle’s wings embracing a brood of eaglets.
KC wasn’t hard to find either. The ladder erected at the left wing gave her away, and when Peet came around, he found her elbow deep into the Ladybug’s turbo casing, her body gyrating atop the ladder as she ground a ratchet wrench somewhere inside. Peet waited on the ground until she finished grunting and panting from her efforts and descended back down the ladder. She didn’t notice him until she stepped off the last wrung, startled.
“Geez, Peet!” she gasped. “You’ll give a girl a heart attack standing there like that.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled as she continued for the toolbox lying open on the ground.
He waited patiently as she knelt in front of her tools, unsuspecting, snapping the socket from her wrench and exchanging it for a slightly smaller one. “So, did you have a good swim?”
Peet felt himself shifting uncomfortably on his feet and forced control over his waver. “There’s been an…accident,” he said over the rattle of tools as KC fished a rag from the bottom of the box.
“What kind of accident?”
He cleared his throat. “Lori’s dead.”
That caught her full attention. She froze there over her toolbox as the weight of the matter sank in. Peet didn’t know what else to say. He probably couldn’t say it if he did. The awkward silence lingered until KC rose to her feet. She wiped at a smudge of grease on the wrench but the chore was now secondary to the concern washing over her face. Worry suddenly saturated her voice.
“What happened?”
“There was…” Peet struggled. Even he couldn’t quite believe what had actually happened inside the cavern and trying to explain that now demanded too much effort. “There was a collapse,” he said. “Lori didn’t make it out.”
Swiping the rag across her oil-slicked hands, KC stepped into him. Without invitation she pulled his shoulders into her chest. “My God. I’m so sorry,” she said, wrapping her arms even tighter around his neck.
Peet allowed her the moment, draping his own arms uselessly around her waist. He wasn’t sure how to react himself. He felt numb inside, as if the shocking news had injected his own body with anesthesia.
When KC did pull back, her arms maintained their position at his neck while her eyes explored his. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“How about Lori’s partner? What’s his name?”
“Chac,” Peet choked. He swallowed hard. Lori’s partner. It hadn’t been that long ago when those words referred to him. “Chac’s fine. It was only Lori…”
Peet swallowed again at the crack of his own voice. Hot tears threatened the rims of his eyes and he suddenly felt unable to breathe. He felt smothered by KC’s embrace and the closeness of her sympathetic eyes didn’t help.
He spun away. “Something wrong with the plane?” he deflected, glancing up at the turbo prop.
KC took the cue and backed away. “Uh, not really,” she said, quickly turning her attention back to the tool dangling in her hand. “Just a minor timing issue, but I got it handled. Nothing to worry about.”
Peet was grateful for the diversion. He suspected KC was too.
“I need to ask another favor, KC.”
“Where we going this time?” she asked as she scaled back up the ladder.
“Izapa.”
“Where?”
“It’s an archaeological zone in Chiapas. Chac says there’s a town called Tapachula nearby. It has an airport.”
KC buried herself into the turbo again. “Are you sure you need to be going anywhere. I mean, with Lori and all—”
“It’s best that I go,” he said simply.
She must have detected his reluctance for after a brief pause, she went to ratcheting inside the engine again. “What’s in Izapa?”
Peet wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question. What did he expect to find there? A stolen pillar ball? Matt Webb perhaps? Maybe John? Then there was the strange Kin piece carved right out of the cavern wall. Might that be there too?
“What good is a stone gear?” he mumbled to himself.
“What’d you say?” KC called down.
Peet hesitated, but decided to ask anyway. “What would a stone gear be used for?”
KC extracted herself from the engine casing with a twisted look on her face. “What kind of gear?”
Peet shrugged. “Just a regular run of the mill gear, I guess.”
“How big?”
“Oh, I’d say maybe fifteen centimeters across—”
KC shook her head. “You gotta speak in layman’s terms.” She lifted her wrench into the air. “The only metrics I use are in fractions, if you know what I mean.”
Peet retracted. “I’d say it’s about six inches in diameter, maybe an inch or two thick.”
“And it’s made of stone?”
He nodded.
“How wide are the teeth?”
Peet shrugged again. “Considerable,” he said. “Seems to me like there were only eight or ten teeth total.”
KC grinned, but checked the humor from it, perhaps a nervous residue from the news about Lori. “Sounds like a child’s building block to me,” she said.
“Is there any practical application for a stone gear?”
This time it was KC’s turn to shrug. “Like any other gear,” she guessed, “it’s probably good for turning other gears. But I can’t think of any mechanical use for it. It’s just too simple.”
Peet had guessed as much himself. From the moment he laid eyes on the gear-shaped hole in the cavern, he had to assume the stone that filled that shape was more coincidental than functional. Nevertheless, his mechanical knowledge was restricted to primitive uses—wheels, levers and the like. If anyone knew anything about gears, it’d probably be the person holding the wrench.
“I’m sure it isn’t useful with today’s technology,” Peet pressed, “but can you think of any elemental mechanics that might involve a simple gear?”
KC shook her head. “I tend to leave the primitive stuff to you historians. I’m more familiar with the complex systems, like planetary gears and the like.”
“Planetary gears?”
“Yeah. Like this turbo, for example. The turbine shaft operates with planetary gears. That means there are several smaller planet gears that mesh with one larger central sun gear.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“Maybe. Planetary gears can offer a lot of torque for tractors and heavy equipment but there are simplified versions that are used in bicycles, pencil sharpeners, even combination locks. I highly doubt your ten-toothed rock was ever used in this way though.”
Peet sighed, wondering why he was still interested in the Kin piece after all that had happened. He still had to find John, after all. But there was something about that mysterious Kin piece that demanded some sort of answer, if only to explain why the bomb had been set, and why Lori had to die.
The sound of KC’s feet descending the ladder once again caught his attention, reminding him that she’d been watching him. When he looked up she was right there again, drawing close with those softened eyes.
Before she could gather him into another hug, he asked, “Do you think you can have this plane ready to go soon?”
KC’s lips shifted apologetically, wrapping comfort
and compliance into one sympathetic grin.
“It’s already been done,” she said.
Tunkuruchu
Voices drifted through the darkness—distant and flat, and incomprehensible. There were only two of them, one a woman and the other a child. They spoke to each other in hushed tones, and in a foreign language.
Then the voices stopped.
Lori blinked her eyes open to a flat, ribbed ceiling only eight feet above her. A dormant medical lamp hung above, but there was nothing more. Her eyes followed the long, metal roofline to a blank, square wall on her immediate left. The ceiling extended far to her right, past another hanging lamp, to an opening just as large and as square as the wall beside her. The room was nothing more than a large, rectangular box. A shipping container.
And she wasn’t alone.
Between her and the open doors stood a young boy, his dark, black head a round silhouette against the square sunlight. His square little body was at an angle, but his face was turned toward her, watching her with wide, dark eyes. Sitting on a stool in front of him was a rail-thin woman with straight, shoulder-length hair. She was putting the finishing wraps of a bandage on the boy’s arm.
Small details began to take shape as Lori lay there watching them. She noticed the bench with transparent containers filled with swabs and tongue depresses. A blood pressure cuff lay next to a stethoscope. A scale stood against the wall behind the boy. An empty cot with white sheets sat nearby and above it, a sheet of paper had been taped to the metal wall that read CRUZ ROJA MEXICANA.
The woman finally stood and released the boy who immediately escaped through the square opening of sunlight. Lori turned away as pain shot through her head. Her eyes found comfort in the dark shadows of the wall beside her. But that didn’t eliminate the sound of the woman’s firm footsteps approaching her cot.
Lori felt the woman’s strapping frame standing over her. When she turned her head to look, the woman smiled warmly.
“¿Lo que es su nombre?” she asked.
Lori merely blinked back at her dark, curious eyes, waiting for the cloud to clear from the edges of her mind.
“¿Su nombre??” the woman repeated, but when Lori didn’t respond, she switched tactics. “¿Habla Español?”
Lori focused on the ribbed ceiling above the woman’s head. The shadows seemed welcoming there, or at least that was where her eyes wanted to rest.
“Do you speak English?” the woman persisted.
Lori shifted back to the woman’s drawn face and she smiled again.
“So you do speak English. That’s good. My name’s Tarah. Do you have a name?”
Lori detected a slight accent, but it wasn’t Spanish that filtered through the woman’s English. It sounded more…Arabic. A touch Middle-Eastern anyway.
Lori suddenly became aware of an ache along her back and hips, the pressure of having lain in one position too long. She needed to move but just as she tried to reposition herself her head suddenly pounded and stars assaulted her vision.
“Whoa there,” Tarah said, firmly pushing Lori’s shoulders back down. Tarah’s hands were unexpectedly strong. Her movements seemed more disciplined toward control than hospitality. Then again, Lori suspected her own perplexity was making her overly sensitive. After all, the woman’s soothing voice did seem to round out her hardened edges.
“There’s no need to be moving so fast with that nasty bump on your head,” Tarah added.
Without the strength to fight the woman’s commanding will, Lori laid her head back on the pillow. Tarah lifted the sheet back over her and that’s when Lori realized, to her embarrassment, that she was completely naked underneath.
Lori licked her dry lips. “Where am I?”
Tarah reached for a bottle of water sitting on a plastic crate next to the cot. “Currently you’re in a mobile hospital courtesy of the Red Cross. We’re parked in the village of Tunkuruchu. It isn’t much to speak of, but it’s a far cry from where we found you.”
She offered Lori a drink. Lori gulped the cool water as though it were her first drink in years. She would have finished off the entire bottle had Tarah not kept it to a measured flow.
“Do you have a name?” Tarah asked.
“Lori.”
“That’s a nice name.” She pulled the crate closer and sat down on it, much to Lori’s dismay. At least with Tarah standing, her face was backed by the soothing shadows of the trailer’s ceiling. Now, with her sitting, Tarah was backlit by that piercing sunlight coming through the trailer’s door. Lori’s head pounded each time she looked at her.
“So, Lori, what were you doing in that cenote anyway?”
“I was in a cenote?”
“Don’t you remember? You’re lucky we found you. You could have drowned without your air tank.”
Lori tried to recall what the woman was telling her, but she couldn’t pull anything from her sluggish memory. “I had an air tank?”
“You were wearing a wetsuit so I’m assuming you had a tank too. In this climate there’s no need for thermal diving gear if you’re only surface swimming. I suppose the rock that fell on you must have knocked off your air tank. We never did find it.”
Lori closed her eyes. She couldn’t recall a wetsuit or an air tank let alone a cenote. Surreal images of the beach and a cruise liner flashed through her mind like stills from an island movie.
“What were you looking for, Lori?”
Lori searched her memory again but the only thing she could pull from its sticky void was her original purpose for coming to Mexico. She looked up at Tarah. “I’m looking to disprove evidence of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl’s landing in Yucatan. I don’t remember diving in a cenote though.”
Tarah winked, but there was something less friendly in her eyes. Lori hesitated. Was that a measure of disappointment in her expression?
“That’s understandable,” Tarah said, making a friendly recovery. She dampened a rag from what remained of the bottled water and placed it over Lori’s forehead. The damp cloth was refreshingly cool, a brief but welcome pain soother.
“You suffered a mild concussion,” Tarah continued. “You’re lucky that’s all you had. How that boulder didn’t land squarely on top of you I’ll never know.”
“But you said I was in the water. How did I not drown?”
“Another miracle. Somehow, the very rock that nearly crushed you was concave enough to capture a pocket of air beneath it. That’s where we found you. Under water but very much alive. Frightens me to think of how close to death you were.”
Lori considered her ordeal too, though to her, it all hid behind a black veil in her memory. The last thing she remembered was standing on a beach. She recalled slapping a pair of fins into a man’s chest.
Then she remembered Chac. Chac had been there. Dr. Peet too.
Dr. Peet.
Oh God!
“What about Dr. Peet?”
“Who?”
“Dr. Peet. I remember now. We were diving together. Did you find Dr. Peet?”
Tarah shook her head solemnly. “We only found you, dear.”
“You didn’t find Dr. Peet?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are talking about.”
Lori’s heart sank with the news. She could only assume the worst. Something had gone seriously wrong with the dive. Lori may have survived whatever happened, but Dr. Peet may not have been so fortunate. Had he escaped he would have surely come looking for her.
Lori’s head began to ache again. She draped an arm over her eyes but it wasn’t the pain she was focused on. It was Dr. Peet.
Could he be dead? It didn’t seem possible. Despite their recent difficulties, Lori still admired her former professor. A relationship had developed over their years of work and study. Lori didn’t know what it was exactly. They knew each other—she knew things about him and he knew things about her that may not have ever come to light were it not for the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl. If the excavation hadn’t brought them close together,
then surely recovering it from a deranged thief six months ago had. Lori dared to say they were as close as a professor and student could get.
Until Dr. Peet turned cold.
And now he was dead. Lori would never know why he suddenly abandoned her research. She’d never understand why he avoided her over the past semester. No matter his motivations, he certainly didn’t deserve to be cheated out of life this way.
“Rest now, Lori,” Tarah said. “You need to build your strength.”
Lori was only partially listening. She didn’t bother to remove her arm from her face. The thought of Dr. Peet lying somewhere in the depths of a cold, dark cenote was too shocking to comprehend. There was too much to absorb.
She didn’t even hear Tarah leave the trailer.
Talking Cross
The next time Lori awoke, she thought she’d felt a stiff nudge. A patient stillness followed as she struggled to open her eyes. Evening was coming on given by the soft light coming through the trailer door, beckoning her to succumb to her sleep once more.
Until a voice startled the drowsiness out of her.
“Hello, Lori.”
Lori snapped her head around, a punishing movement that sent her vision momentarily swirling. When she settled again, she found Tarah smiling at the side of her cot, holding a bowl of soup in her hands. “How’s the head?” she asked.
“Feels like a lead weight,” Lori said as she groggily sat up, hugging the top sheet to her breasts. The ratty length of her hair tumbled down her bare neck and shoulders. Her body ached for more sleep and her mouth felt sticky and dry.
Tarah set down the soup to help prop a spare pillow behind her. “You’ve been asleep all day. We thought you might like something in your stomach.”
We?
Lori shifted her gaze to the foot of her cot where the harsh facial lines of a man quietly watched from the heavy shadows. Lori pulled the sheet tighter around her. He took a step into the light towards Tarah, his countenance suddenly softening. His eyes were calm, his smile warm, his skin a mild brown.
“Call me Abe,” he said, his Arabic accent slightly heavier than the one that plagued Tarah’s English.
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