The Mayan Secrets

“And can you be seen from the air?”

“We’re standing on top of a Mayan pyramid. Tim lowered us on a rescue cable, and he was going to pick us up the same way.”

“I’m going to come get you myself. But I don’t have a chopper here with that kind of equipment on it right now. Is there a place I can land and get you?”

“We’ll have to walk to the place where Tim landed. Everywhere else in any direction seems to be covered with vegetation.”

“If that’s the only option, okay. But do it carefully. Don’t count on the idea that anybody you meet out there is okay. There are a lot of criminals in the wild country, where the police and the army can’t find them. I’m bringing two men with me and we’ll be armed.”

“Thanks for the warning. We’ll do our best not to make contact with anybody. We’re heading for the landing site right now.”

“We’ll probably get there about the same time. See you there.”

As Sam and Remi scrambled down the side of the pyramid, they oriented themselves to the west, where Tim Carmichael had gone to land.

Remi said, “I hope Tim didn’t catch a rotor on a tree branch or something and crash.”

“I hope he didn’t either,” said Sam. “I couldn’t see any smoke from up on the pyramid, but there’s no guarantee there would be a fire. Anything could have happened.”

“I hate to get all worried when we’re too far away to even know what to worry about.”

“I’m withholding my anxiety,” Sam said. “But only to the extent that I’m leaving the first aid kit in my pack and the safety on my pistol.”

As Sam and Remi began to be sure of their footing, leaving the base of the pyramid, they sped up. They trotted when the path was clear and walked at a strong, steady pace when the vegetation was thick. They navigated by walking toward the glare of the late-afternoon sun on the tree leaves. They estimated that, over a long period, their walking and trotting probably averaged three miles an hour, and so they kept at it for a half hour before they stopped to check their GPS position.

They sat on a stone outcropping, drank water, and caught their breath while they reoriented themselves. They had come about halfway, and they agreed that this time they would go for fifteen minutes before they stopped again to check their position.

They ran steadily in single file, still using the reflected sun to navigate. They concentrated on making progress, but, as time went on, they began to pay more attention to making as little noise as possible. They knew that Tim Carmichael wasn’t the type to simply show up late or to take them into the wilderness in an aircraft that wasn’t well maintained and fueled to capacity. He had a radio in the helicopter as well as a satellite phone. There was no way to know what had gone wrong until they got to the landing spot, but neither imagined the story would be a happy one. Their thoughts centered on the hope that Tim wasn’t dead.

At the end of their third leg of silent jogging, they were very close to the patch where Tim Carmichael had said he’d land. There was no helicopter sound in the air, which meant that Art Bowen was not yet close with a second helicopter. The silence was thick and ominous.

Sam and Remi stood cheek to cheek so that they could whisper in each other’s ears to keep their conference silent. They agreed on a plan of approach, drank more water, and moved on.

They walked, staying low and alert, until they reached the burned land. They peered out of the thick foliage that had been spared by the fire and saw Carmichael’s Jet Ranger. It had landed in the cleared field, far from any trees that could have interfered with its rotors. The land was quite level, and the helicopter sat evenly. There was nothing out of place and there were no bullet holes. But there also was no sign of Tim.

Slowly, Sam and Remi moved along the perimeter of the cleared area. When they had gone about a hundred yards, they stopped suddenly and listened. There were voices. At first, they wondered if they were hearing the helicopter’s radio. These were male voices speaking Spanish. The voices came from behind them.

Sam and Remi turned to face the sounds coming from the forest. They were between the grounded helicopter and a group of men. They could see a path that had been trampled in the brush recently. The bent and broken plants still had green leaves.

Remi gestured to Sam that she would go around the men to the right. Sam nodded and began to make his way to the left so he and Remi would be positioned on both sides of the group. They both stayed well back from the group, where they could not easily be seen and where any noises they made might be lost in the men’s conversation.

Sam made a ninety-degree arc around the sounds, then stopped and waited. He knew Remi would already be in position. Her sure-footed fencer’s body could move through vegetation better than his. And he knew that when he moved in, he could initiate the most frightening close-in attack while Remi, the pistol champion, could do much more damage from a moderate distance. He took the pistol from his belly and began to crawl toward the voices. It sounded to him like six men and they seemed to be close, arranged in a circle. Maybe they were sitting around a fire — no, he would have smelled a fire. Around a circle anyway. What were they doing way out here?

And then he saw them. There were actually five men in their twenties, unshaven and wearing jeans, khakis, bits of old military uniforms, T-shirts. On the ground in the center of their circle they had laid out an olive drab plastic tarp. Spread on it were Tim Carmichael’s belongings — his satellite phone, all three sets of earphones, the maps from the helicopter, his wallet, his keys, pocketknife, sunglasses.

Set on the ground beside each of the five men was a Belgian FN FAL 7.62mm military rifle. Sam moved closer, searching for some sign of what had happened to Tim Carmichael, and then he saw him. Tim was a few feet off, at the edge of the thicker vegetation.

Carmichael was standing, his hands tied behind his back, his ankles tied. He had a noose around his neck, the rope thrown over a thick limb of the tree above him and then securely tied to the trunk. If he got tired, he still had to stand. If he leaned, the noose tightened around his neck. His left eye was black and swollen, he had scrapes on his face and grass stains on his clothes, and his hair was stuck together on top of his head from drying blood from a blow to the skull.

Sam worked his way around the clearing at a distance, trying hard to avoid discovery. When he was directly behind Carmichael, he slowly crawled to him through the thick jungle vegetation. Staying hidden by the trees and Carmichael’s body, Sam reached out with his knife and sawed through the rope at Carmichael’s wrists, then his ankles. He took out his second pistol, switched off the safety, and placed it in Carmichael’s right hand. Then he crawled a few feet farther and cut the rope from Tim’s noose where it was secured to the tree trunk. He tucked an inch of the rope end into the remaining loop of rope behind the tree so it would look the same.

Sam crawled backward, retreating deeper into the brush. He took his time, selecting a spot where he, Remi, and Tim would have the men in a perfect cross fire. Now and then, one of the men around the tarp would turn and glance at Carmichael and see that he was still standing with his hands behind his back and the noose around his neck.

When Sam judged that he, Remi, and Carmichael were each a hundred twenty degrees apart on the circle, he raised his pistol, stepped close to the circle, placed his body behind the trunk of a tree, and showed only his right eye and his gun hand. “You!” he shouted in Spanish. “Leave those guns on the ground and step away from them!”

The men were startled and jerked their heads toward Sam’s voice. One started to raise his rifle, but Sam fired, and the man collapsed backward.