The Mayan Secrets

Sam took Remi’s arm and began to back away into the jungle. They could easily outrun the men, who were hundreds of yards away, but others on the pyramid repeated the alarm, and men who were only a few yards from Sam and Remi heard and dashed toward them.

“Ditch your gun,” said Sam, and they both dropped their guns in the brush and covered them with a thick layer of leaves.

“Now what?” asked Remi.

“Now we can arrive for a peaceful surprise visit with our pal Sarah instead of a shootout with thirty guards.”

Sam and Remi walked out of the jungle and onto the ground that was once the great plaza. They walked toward the pyramid with open, smiling faces, pointing up at various features and commenting to each other. Remi said, “So what do we say to them?”

“Whatever comes to mind. We’re taking up time until the cavalry arrives.” He pointed up the long staircase, and said, “That temple really is incredible, though, isn’t it?”

“Maybe we can arrange to be sacrificed instead of shot and improve next year’s harvest.”

Just as they were approaching the shallow dig, Sarah Allersby glanced up at the commotion and saw them. She threw down her brush, bobbed to her feet, and stood with her hands on her hips, her face contorted with rage. She stepped up out of the dig just as the armed men arrived to surround Sam and Remi.

The Fargos simply stopped and waited for Sarah Allersby to push through the ring of men from the other side.

“You two!” she said. “What does it take to make you leave me alone?”

Sam shrugged. “You could give back the codex or we could surrender it to the Mexican government with your good wishes. That would probably do.” He turned to Remi. “How about you? Would you be satisfied if she gave the codex back?”

“I think I would,” Remi said. “Of course I don’t agree that we’ve been bothering you, Miss Allersby. How could we possibly know in advance that you would be here today?”

The armed men who were standing by were exchanging dark looks. It wasn’t possible to be sure which ones understood English, but they seemed to see that whatever Remi had said had enraged their employer.

Sam said, “Since we’re all here, would you like to show us around the site? We’d be interested in seeing what your men have uncovered so far. Since you’re busy filming, maybe we could just walk along behind the crew.”

Sarah Allersby was so angry that her jaw muscles seemed to be flexing over and over. She stared down at the ground for a second, raised her head, and shouted, “Russell!”

From somewhere behind her, among the film people, came a voice. “Yes, Miss Allersby?”

The man who appeared had a bright red face. From the roots of his hair to the neck of his shirt, his outer layer of skin had been removed. It seemed so tender and inflamed that it hurt to look at it. Over the red skin was a thick, shiny layer of Vaseline. He wore a hat with a wide brim to keep any hint of direct sunlight off his face.

Sarah Allersby said, “These visitors want to be taken on a tour. Can you please take them on a tour?”

“I’ll be happy to, Miss Allersby.”

The man turned and gave Sam a hard push on the back to send him stumbling toward the jungle across the plaza. As a second man took a step toward Remi, she turned and caught up with Sam. The second man called out something in Spanish, and about ten of the armed men came along too.

The man with the red face wore a .45 pistol in a holster and he kept his right hand beside it as he walked, occasionally brushing the handgrip with his thumb as though to reassure himself that it was always in reach.

One of the armed escorts spoke in Spanish to the red-faced man’s companion. The man called to his friend, “Hey, Russ? He said they’re bored. If you don’t want to do it, they will.”

“Thanks, Ruiz. Tell them they can go back now. I’d like to finish this ourselves.”

“What for?”

“There are some things I like to do myself. If you don’t feel up to this, why don’t you go back with them?”

“No, I’ll stick with you.” Ruiz turned and dismissed the others in Spanish. One of the men handed him an entrenching tool, a short handle with a shovel blade. He took it, and said, “Gracias.” The group went back toward the pyramid while Sam, Remi, and their two captors continued walking.

“Maybe you should have let those guys do it,” said Sam. “It’s a lot easier to rat out two men than ten.”

“What are you talking about?” said Russell.

“You just got Sarah’s permission to kill us,” said Remi. “Once you do, then anybody who knows about it owns you. That includes all of those men who just left.”

“No,” said Russell. “They own you if they see you do it.”

“Oh come now,” said Sam. “You march us off, they hear gunshots, and only you come back. Not exactly the perfect crime.”

“Keep walking,” said Ruiz.

Remi said, “We’re a bit too well prepared to be the sort of people you can just kill and nobody asks questions. The United States Embassy knows the exact GPS position where we were going to be today.”

“Don’t worry about us,” said Russell. “We’ll manage.”

“By the way, what happened to your face?”

“You did.”

“Really?” said Sam. “How did I do that?”

“Your little booby trap in Spain. The blue ink didn’t come off, so I had a chemical peel.”

“Does it hurt?” asked Remi.

“Of course it hurts. But it’s feeling better every second. Pain is easier to take when other people feel it with you.”

He led them into the jungle, and they walked on a path that took them through thick stands of trees and across a couple of ditches that must have been streams during the rainy season. When they were a mile or more from the archaeological site, they reached a secluded valley with a dry streambed at the center of it. Russell said to Ruiz, “Give him the shovel.”

Ruiz kept his distance and tossed the small olive drab tool at Sam’s feet.

“Dig,” said Russell.

Sam looked at Russell and Ruiz, never at Remi. He was begi

She was a slim, delicately beautiful woman. She was also very smart. Now Remi was waiting for the proper moment to do what she had always done in athletic competitions: match her superior reflexes, speed, balance, flexibility, and coordination against an opponent who didn’t dream that her advantages even existed and who was — only for the moment — living under the mistaken impression that all the advantages were his.

Sam dug. He was right-handed, and he pushed the shovel’s blade in with his right boot, lifted the dirt and tossed it to his left, the side where their captors stood. He didn’t look directly at them or at Remi, but he could see that she had already picked out the right kind of stone. It was at her feet, and she had worked it free as she’d sat there, looking weak and weepy.

As he dug, Sam thought he heard the faint sound of a helicopter. No, he thought. It’s more than one this time. The sound was deeper and throatier, and, as they approached, he became sure they weren’t Sarah Allersby’s helicopters.

Ruiz looked up in the air, but the tall trees formed a roof above them. Ruiz observed, “That noise could help cover a gunshot.”

As Sam and Remi both instantly knew he would, Russell reflexively turned to look in their direction while he considered Ruiz’s suggestion.

Sam moved his shovel in exactly the same arc as he had fifty times before, except faster and higher, and propelled a few pounds of fine, sandy dirt toward Russell’s raw, wounded face. Then he charged out of the shallow hole, swinging the shovel toward Ruiz’s legs.