More cable was paid out and then Harry appeared. He had tied a loop of cable around his waist, and instead of coming down to the branch he began to climb up on top of the helicopter canopy. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I shouted.
‘I want to look at the tail assembly,’ he said, breathing heavily.
‘For Christ’s sake! You’ll have the whole bloody thing coming down.’
He ignored me and climbed on hands and knees towards the rear. As far as I could see, the only thing holding the helicopter in position was one of the wheels which was jammed into the crotch formed by a branch and the trunk of a tree and, even as I looked, I saw the wheel slipping forward infinitesimally slowly.
When I looked up Harry had vanished behind a screen of leaves. ‘It’s going!’ I yelled. ‘Come back!’
There was only silence. The helicopter lurched amid a crackle of snapping twigs, and a few leaves drifted down. I looked at the wheel and it had slipped forward even more. Another two inches and all support would be gone.
Harry came into view again, sliding head first back towards the canopy. He climbed down skilfully and let himself drop on to the branch. It whipped as his boots struck it, and I caught him around the waist. We’d have made a good circus turn between us.
He manoeuvred until he, too, was astride the branch facing me. I pointed to the wheel which had only an inch to go. His face tautened. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
We untied the machetes and water-bottles and put the sling around our shoulders, then hauled the rest of the winch cable out of the chopper. ‘How long is it?’
‘A hundred feet.’
‘It ought to be enough to reach the ground.’ I started to pay it out until it had all gone. I went first, going down hand over hand. It wasn’t so bad because there were plenty of branches lower down to help out. I had to stop a couple of times to disentangle the cable where it had caught up, and on one of those stops I waited for Harry.
He came down and rested on a branch, breathing heavily. ‘Imagine me making like Tarzan!’ he gasped. His face twisted in a spasm of pain.
‘What’s the matter?’
He rubbed his chest. ‘I think maybe I cracked a couple of ribs. I’ll be all right.’
I produced the half-empty water-bottle. ‘Take a good swallow. Half for you and half for me.’
He took it doubtfully. ‘I thought you said go easy on the water.’
‘There’s some more here.’ I jerked my thumb at the scum-covered pool in the recess of a rotting tree. ‘I don’t know how good it is, so I don’t want to mix it with what’s in the bottle. Besides, water does you more good in your stomach than in the bottle—that’s the latest theory.’
He nodded, and swallowed water convulsively, his Adam’s apple jerking up and down. He handed the bottle to me and I finished it. Then I dipped it into the murky pool to refill it. Tadpoles darted away under the surface; the tree frogs bred up here in the high forest galleries, and lived from birth to death without ever seeing ground. I rammed the cork home, and said, ‘I’ll have to be really thirsty before I’ll want to drink that. Are you ready?’
He nodded, so I grasped the cable and started down again, getting a hell of a fright when I startled a spider monkey who gave a squawk and made a twenty-foot leap to another tree, then turned and gibbered at me angrily. He was a lot more at home in the forest than I was, but he was built for it.
At last we reached bottom and stood in the humid greenness with firm ground underfoot. I looked up at the cable. Some Maya or chiclero would come along and wonder at it, and then find a use for it. Or maybe no human eyes would ever see it again. I said, ‘That was a damnfool stunt you pulled up there. What the devil were you doing?’
He looked up. ‘Let’s get out from under the chopper. It’s not too safe here.’
‘Which way?’
‘Any goddamn way,’ he said violently. ‘Just let’s get out from under, that’s all.’ He drew his machete and swung it viciously at the undergrowth and carved a passage through it. It wasn’t too bad—what Fallon would call a twenty-foot forest, perhaps, and we didn’t have to work very hard at it.
After going about two hundred yards Harry stopped and turned to me. ‘The chopper was sabotaged,’ he said expressionlessly.
‘What!’
‘You heard me. That crash was rigged. I wish I could get my hands on the bastard who did it.’
I stuck my machete in the earth so that it remained upright. ‘How do you know this?’
‘I did the day-to-day maintenance myself, and I knew every inch of that machine. Do you know how a helicopter works?’
‘Only vaguely,’ I said.
He squatted on his heels and drew a diagram in the humus with a twig. ‘There’s the big rotor on top that gives lift. Newton’s law says that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, so, if you didn’t stop it, the whole fuselage would rotate in the opposite direction to the rotor. The way you stop it is to put a little propeller at the back which pushes sideways. Got that?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘This helicopter had one engine which drove both rotors. The rear rotor is driven by a long shaft which runs the length of the fuselage—and there’s a universal coupling here. Do you remember that bang we heard just before the crash? I thought it was the rear rotor flying off. It wasn’t. It was this coupling giving way so that the shaft flailed clean through the side of the fuselage. Of course, the rear rotor stopped and we started to spin.’
I patted my pockets and found a half-empty packet of cigarettes. Harry took one, and said, ‘I had a look at that coupling. The retaining screws had been taken out.’
‘Are you sure about that? They couldn’t have broken out?’
He gave me a disgusted look. ‘Of course I’m goddamn sure.’
‘When did you last inspect that coupling?’
‘Two days ago. But the sabotage was done after that, because I was flying yesterday. My God, we were lucky to get ten minutes’ flying without those screws.’
There was a noise in the forest—a dull boom from overhead—and a bright glare reflected through the leaves. ‘There she goes,’ said Harry. ‘And we’re damned lucky not to be going with her.’
II
‘Ten miles,’ said Harry. ‘That’s a long way in the forest. How much water have we got?’
‘A quart of good, and a quart of doubtful.’
His lips tightened. ‘Not much for two men in this heat, and we can’t travel at night.’ He spread out his map on the ground, and took a small compass from his pocket. ‘It’s going to take us two days, and we can’t do it on two quarts of water.’ His finger traced a line on the map. ‘There’s another cenote—a small one—just here. It’s about three miles off the direct track, so we’ll have to make a dog-leg.’
‘How far from here is it?’
He spread his fingers on the map and estimated the distance.
‘About five miles.’
‘That’s it, then,’ I said. ‘It’s a full day’s journey. What time is it now?’
‘Eleven-thirty. We’d better get going; I’d like to make it before nightfall.’
The rest of that day was compounded of insects, snakes, sweat and a sore back. I did most of the machete work because Harry’s chest was becoming worse and every time he lifted an arm he winced with pain. But he carried both water-bottles and the spare machete, which left me unencumbered.
At first, it wasn’t too bad; more of a stroll through pleasant glades than anything else, with but the occasional tussle with the undergrowth. Harry navigated with the compass and we made good time. In the first hour we travelled nearly two miles, and my spirits rose. At this rate we’d be at the cenote by two in the afternoon.
But suddenly the forest closed in and we were fighting through a tangled mass of shrubbery. I don’t know why the forest changed like that; maybe it was a difference in the soil which encouraged the growth. But there it was, and it slowed us up painfully. The pain cam
e not only from the knowledge that we wouldn’t get to water as quickly as we expected, but also very physically. Soon I was bleeding from a dozen cuts and scratches on my arms. Try as I would I couldn’t help it happening; the forest seemed imbued with a malevolent life of its own.
We had to stop frequently to rest. Harry started to become apologetic because he couldn’t take his turn with the machete, but I soon shut him up. ‘You concentrate on keeping us on course,’ I said. ‘How are we doing for water?’
He shook a bottle. ‘Just a swallow of the good stuff left.’ He thrust it at me. ‘You might as well have it.’
I uncorked the bottle, then paused. ‘What about you?’
He grinned. ‘You need it more. You’re doing all the sweating.’
It sounded reasonable but I didn’t like it. Harry was looking very drawn and his face had a greyish pallor under the dirt. ‘How are you doing?’
‘I’m okay,’ he said irritably. ‘Drink the water.’
So I finished off the bottle, and said wearily, ‘How much further?’
‘About two miles.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s taken us three hours to do the last mile.’
I looked at the thick green tangle. This was Fallon’s fourfoot forest, and it had been steadily getting worse. At this rate it would take us at least six hours to get to the cenote, and possibly longer. ‘Let’s get on with it,’ I said. ‘Give me your machete; this one is bloody blunt.’
An hour later Harry said, ‘Stop!’ The way he said it made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, and I stood quite still. ‘Easy now!’ he said. ‘Just step back—very quietly and very slowly.’
I took a step backwards, and then another. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Back a bit more,’ he said calmly. ‘Another couple of steps.’
So I went back, and said, ‘What the hell’s wrong?’
I heard the sigh of his pent-up breath expelled. ‘There’s nothing wrong—now,’ he said. ‘But look there—at the base of that tree.’
Then I saw it, just where I had been standing—a coiled-up horror with a fiat head and unwinking eyes. One more step and I’d have trodden on it.
‘That’s a bushmaster,’ said Harry. ‘And God help us if we get bitten by one of those.’
The snake reared its head, then slid into the undergrowth and vanished. I said, ‘What a hell of a place this is,’ and wiped the sweat from my forehead. There was a bit more wetness there than my exertions had called for.
‘We’ll take a rest,’ said Harry. ‘Have some water.’
I groped in my pocket. ‘I’ll have a cigarette instead.’
‘It’ll dry your throat,’ Harry warned.
‘It’ll calm my nerves,’ I retorted. I inspected the packet and found three left. ‘Have one?’
He shook his head. He held up a flat box. ‘This is a snakebite kit. I hope we don’t have to use it. The guy that gets bitten won’t be able to travel for a couple of days, serum or no serum.’
I nodded. Any hold-up could ruin us. He took a bottle from his pocket. ‘Let me put some more of this stuff on those scratches.’ Harry cleaned up the blood and disinfected the scratches while I finished the cigarette. Then again I hefted the machete but a little more wearily this time, and renewed the assault on the forest.
The palm of my hand was becoming sore and calloused because sweat made the skin soft and it rubbed away on the handle of the machete. This was bladework of a different order than I was used to; the machete was much heavier than any sporting sabre I had used in the salle d’armes, and although the technique was cruder more sheer muscle was needed, especially as the blade lost its edge. Besides, I had never fenced continually for hours at a time—a sabre bout is short, sharp and decisive.
We continued until it was too dark to see properly, and then found a place to rest for the night. Not that we got much rest. I didn’t feel like sleeping at ground level—there were too many creepie-crawlies—so we found a tree with out-spreading branches that were not too high, and climbed up. Harry looked inexpressibly weary. He folded his hands over his chest and, in the dimming light, again I saw a dark trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth.
‘You’re bleeding again,’ I said, worriedly.
He wiped his mouth, and said, ‘That’s nothing. Just the cuts in my mouth where the teeth broke.’ He lapsed into silence.
The forest at night was noisy. There were odd rustlings all about, and curious snufflings and snortings at the foot of the tree. Then the howler monkeys began their serenade and I awoke from a doze with a sense of shock, nearly falling out of the tree. It’s a fearsome sound, like a particularly noisy multiple murder, and it sets the nerves on edge. Fortunately, the howlers are harmless enough, despite their racket, and even they could not prevent me from falling asleep again.
As I dozed off I had a hazy recollection of hearing voices far away, dreamlike and inconsequential.
III
The next day was just a repetition. We breakfasted on the last of the water and I drank the noisome dregs with fervent appreciation. I was hungry, too, but there was nothing we could do about that. A man can go a long time without food, but water is essential, especially in tropic heat.
‘How far to the cenote?’ I asked.
Harry gropingly found his map. All his movements were slow and seemed to pain him. ‘I reckon we’re about here,’ he said croakingly. ‘Just another mile.’
‘Cheer up,’ I said. ‘We ought to make it in another three hours.’
He tried to smile and achieved a feeble grin. ‘I’ll be right behind you,’ he said.
So we set off again, but our pace was much slower. My cuts with the machete didn’t have the power behind them and it was a case of making two chops when only one had been necessary before. And I stopped sweating, which I knew was a bad sign.
Four hours later we were still not in sight of the cenote, and the bush was as thick as ever. Yet even though I was leading and doing the work I was still moving faster than Harry, who stopped often to rest. All the stuffing seemed to be knocked out of him, and I didn’t know what was the matter. I stopped and waited to let him catch up, and he came into view almost dropping with exhaustion and sagged to the ground at my feet.
I knelt beside him. ‘What’s wrong, Harry?’
‘I’m all right,’ he said with an attempt at force in his voice. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘I’m worried about both of us,’ I said. ‘We should have reached the cenote by now. Are you sure we’re heading the right way?’
He pulled the compass from his pocket ‘Yes; we’re all right.’ He rubbed his face. ‘Maybe we should veer a bit to the north.’
‘How far, Harry?’
‘Christ I don’t know! The cenote’s not very big. We could quite easily miss it.’
It dawned upon me that perhaps we were lost. I had been relying on Harry’s navigation, but perhaps he wasn’t in a fit state to make decisions. We could even have overshot the cenote for all I knew. I could see that it would be up to me to make the decisions in the future.
I made one. I said, ‘We’ll head due north for two hundred yards, then we’ll take up a track parallel to this one.’ I felt the edge of the machete; it was as dull as the edge of a poker and damned near useless for cutting anything. I exchanged it for the other, which wasn’t much better, and said, ‘Come on, Harry; we’ve got to find water.’
I carried the compass this time and changed direction sharply. After a hundred yards of hewing, much to my surprise I came to an open space, a sort of passage through the bush—a trail. I looked at it in astonishment and noted that it had been cut fairly recently because the slash marks were fresh.
I was about to step on to the trail when I heard voices and drew back cautiously. Two men passed within feet of me; both were dressed in dirty whites and floppy hats, and both carried rifles. They were speaking in Spanish, and I listened to the murmur of their voices fade away until all was quiet again.
Harry
caught up with me, and I put my finger to my lips. ‘Chicleros,’ I said. ‘The cenote must be quite near.’
He leaned against a tree. ‘Perhaps they’ll help us,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it. No one I ever heard has a good opinion of chicleros.’ I thought about it a bit ‘Look, Harry: you make yourself comfortable here, and I’ll follow those two lads. I’d like to know a bit more about them before disclosing myself.’
He let himself slip to a sitting position at the bottom of the tree. ‘That’s okay with me,’ he said tiredly. ‘I could do with a rest.’
So I left him and entered the trail. By God, it was a relief to be able to move freely. I went fast until I saw a disappearing flick of white ahead which was the hindermost of the chicleros, then I slowed down and kept a cautious distance. After I’d gone about a quarter of a mile I smelled wood smoke and heard more voices, so I struck off the trail, and found that the forest had thinned out and I could move quite easily and without using the machete.
Then, through the trees, I saw the dazzle of sun on water, and no Arab, coming across an oasis in the desert, could have been more cheered than I was. But I was still careful and didn’t burst into the clearing by the cenote; instead I sneaked up and hid behind the trunk of a tree and took a good look at the situation.
It was just as well I did because there were about twenty men camped there around a blue and yellow tent which looked incongruously out of place and seemed more suited to an English meadow. In front of the tent and sitting on a camp stool was Jack Gatt, engaged in pouring himself a drink. He measured a careful amount of whisky and then topped it with soda-water from a siphon. My throat tightened agonizingly as I watched him do it.
Immediately around Gatt and standing in a group were eight men listening attentively to what he was saying as he gestured at the map on the camp table. Four of them were obviously American from the intonation of their voices and from their clothing; the others were probably Mexican, although they could have come from any Central American country. To one side, and not taking part in Gatt’s conference, were about a dozen chicleros lounging by the edge of the cenote.
The Golden Keel / The Vivero Letter Page 49