Quintana Roo (13 page)

Nolan Braithwaite was neither the hardest man Buzz Kaplan had ever worked for nor the easiest. However, he was by far the richest. It was a point of pride for Buzz that his reputation had brought him to Braithwaite’s attention. He knew that he was being carefully scrutinized during the interview in Braithwaite’s suite at the Hotel Palacio. He also knew that he would get the job. Buzz Kaplan was as good at what he did as anybody in Mexico and a lot more honest than most.

The flight to Panama had sounded like a pleasant break from his usual routine of short trips in and around Veracruz with men fearful for their money or their lives. It was only going to take three days, so he would not have to be away long from Carmen and the boys. Buzz Kaplan, family man. He sometimes laughed at himself, thinking what the perpetually angry Kaplan of ten years before would have thought of the idea. But he was happy now, and he would not have traded places with anybody.

As was his custom, Buzz let Nolan Braithwaite know early in their relationship that he had no interest in Braithwaite’s business in Mexico or Panama or anywhere else. He did the job he was hired to do. Period. Braithwaite liked that. The fewer people who knew his business, the better he liked it.

The yellow and blue Lockheed Orion was an impressive sight at the small airfield outside Veracruz. Inside, it was equally impressive. The cabin was fully carpeted, the seat cushions extra deep. There was soft music playing from concealed speakers and a bar stocked with the best liquor available. With only Buzz and Braithwaite as passengers, the cabin provided plenty of room to stretch out.

The eight-hour flight from Veracruz to Panama was so smooth it was boring. A couple of times, Buzz climbed up into the cockpit to talk to the pilot, a fleshy man named Wilcox. However, the man’s only interests seemed to be airplanes and pussy, so Buzz retreated to the passengers’ cabin and paged idly through the financial magazines, which were the only reading material available.

The fueling stop in Campeche on the way down gave Buzz a chance to stretch his legs but little more. There was nothing there except a patched-up shed and a man named Gonzales, who was awestruck by the Orion.

In Panama, the pace had picked up somewhat. The city was crowded with foreigners, all of whom seemed to be on mysterious errands of great importance. Buzz enjoyed a sightseeing jaunt with Braithwaite to the canal to watch a Dutch freighter go through the locks. He ate heartily of the rich Panamanian food, though he missed the spicier taste of Carmen’s Mexican cooking. As always when he was working, he drank nothing stronger than mineral water. A drunken bodyguard was as useless as a toothless watchdog.

Nolan Braithwaite’s business in Panama seemed to involve dealing with a number of unsavory individuals. It was Buzz’s job to let them know he was there and alert, then position himself out of earshot but close enough for immediate action, should the situation call for it.

The negotiations, conducted in Spanish, English, and German seemed to involve the transfer of huge sums of money. Buzz ignored the talk and kept an eye out for any suspicious movement on the part of Braithwaite’s companions. Everything went so smoothly, he might as well have stayed in bed.

The only excitement of the trip came when they stopped in Guatemala to refuel on the way back. There a dozen ragged peons showed up with signs denouncing the American capitalist and his exploitation of the world’s poor. Buzz sauntered over and advised them to simmer down. He didn’t want to get rough with the poor bastards; God knew they had enough trouble. Still, they had to learn this was not the way to accomplish worthwhile social change.

After taking off from Guatemala, Buzz had been dozing for an hour or so in the rear seat of the cabin when the engine coughed. The big Pratt & Whitney mill was so finely tuned that the single cough jarred him awake like a gunshot. He sat up, listening. The engine coughed again. Up in the front seat, Nolan Braithwaite leaned tensely forward, his briefcase gripped in both hands.

Buzz pushed his way up the narrow aisle and shoved open the hatch in the ceiling that led to the pilot’s compartment. The engine was sputtering now, and the plane was vibrating dangerously.

“What’s going on?” he asked the pilot.

Wilcox was cursing under his breath while he snapped a toggle switch up and down. “If I didn’t know we just took on a load of fuel, I’d say we were out of gas.”

The engine sputtered again, backfired once, and quit.

Wilcox pounded on the instrument panel with his fist. “Son of a bitch! We
are
out of gas!”

He cut the ignition, feathered the windmilling propeller, and the Orion began to nose downward. Buzz dropped into the seat next to him and stared at the unbroken sea of green below them. A cold lump formed in his stomach.

“What do we do now?” Even as he spoke, Buzz realized how stupid the words sounded.

“Are you religious?” Wilcox asked, wrestling with the wheel.

“No.” Then, without thinking, he added, “My wife is.”

“Well, if you know any of her prayers, you better say them.”

Buzz’s thoughts jumped back to the stern, bearded God he had pictured as a child. A remote and vengeful God ready to smite down little boys who grew careless in their attendance at temple. Carmen’s God was a different sort, more like a kindly grandfather to whom Carmen spoke on comfortable intimate terms. Self-consciously, Buzz tried making the sign of the cross, the way Carmen had showed him, but he couldn’t make his hand move the way it should. Probably it was too late to do him any good now, anyway.

The rush of wind rose to a howl as the Orion dived more steeply. The hatch banged open, and Nolan Braithwaite’s head appeared. Even in this emergency, his wavy silver-white hair was in place, his silk tie knotted, his voice calm.

“What is it, Wilcox? Are we in trouble?”

“We’re out of gas, sir. Something’s wrong with the number-two tank.”

“How can that be?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Braithwaite, but you’d better go back and strap yourself into your seat. We’re going to hit pretty hard.”

Braithwaite nodded. His head disappeared below the hatch, and he lowered the cover into place.

Buzz fastened the buckle on his own seat belt. “Is there anything I can do?”

Wilcox shook his head. Moisture trickled down the pilot’s plump cheeks. Buzz could not tell whether it was perspiration or tears.

The jungle rose swiftly to meet them. Wilcox tugged back on the wheel and managed to level off their glide path somewhat before they went in. The first of the treetops brushed almost gently against the underside of the plane. Then something boomed like a cannon. The wing on Buzz’s side vanished with a scream of tearing metal. The instrument panel rose up and hit him in the face, and the world blew up.

• • •

The smell was his first sensation when Buzz regained consciousness. Raw, metallic, feral. A smell he knew. Blood. He opened his eyes and looked down at himself. He was covered with fragments of glass from the shattered windshield. Gingerly, he raised one arm, then the other. They seemed to work all right. The blood was not coming from him. He turned to look at Wilcox.

The pilot was smashed against the back of his seat, the bent steering wheel pushed deep into his chest. Wilcox’s eyes were open and bulging, but he was not looking at anything. A spear of glass had gone in just under his chin. The jagged point protruded from the back of his neck. Wilcox wore a scarlet bib of his own blood.

Something thumped against the hatch behind him. Buzz unbuckled his seat belt and started to get up. That was when the pain hit him. It felt like he had stuck his right leg into a meat grinder. For a moment, his vision fogged over. He almost passed out again but willed himself back. His right foot was caught in ragged metal jaws that held him as securely as a bear trap. His boot had been torn away, and his dead white toes pointed off at an impossible angle. The shattered ankle bone showed pink and white through the torn flesh.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

With a bang, the jammed hatch came open, and Nolan Braithwaite stuck his head up into the cockpit. “Wilcox. Kaplan. Are you all right?”

“Wilcox is dead,” Buzz said in a voice that was unnaturally calm. “I seem to be caught here.”

Braithwaite pulled himself up into the cockpit. His hair was messed now, the tie loose, and there was a mouse growing under one eye. He looked at the bloody hulk that was Wilcox, then down at Buzz’s mangled foot. He turned away and vomited.

“Sorry,” Braithwaite said when he had emptied his stomach.

“Forget it,” Buzz said. “Can you help me get out of here?”

“I’ll try.”

Taking a deep breath, Braithwaite squeezed down under the instrument panel for a closer look at Buzz’s foot. He pushed and pulled at the jagged ends of metal with no effect. When he looked up, the bad news showed clearly in his eyes.

“The foot is lost, isn’t it,” Buzz said.

“I’m afraid so.”

Buzz felt giddy. “I can’t just sit here. Have you got a knife?”

Braithwaite shook his head.

“There’s one in my suitcase. A heavy-bladed Bowie. Would you mind bringing it up to me?”

Braithwaite started to say something but changed his mind. He nodded briskly and went back down through the hatch. In five minutes, he returned with the knife and a bottle of cognac. Buzz’s leg was on fire.

“I thought the brandy might help,” Braithwaite said.

“Good idea.” Buzz drank deeply and let the warmth of the brandy spread through his body. His leg still hurt like fury, but at least he had the strength now to do what he had to.

“You don’t have to watch this, Mr. Braithwaite.”

“No, I’ll stay. There might be something I can do to help.”

Buzz took another swallow of the brandy, then pulled his blood-soaked pant leg up over the knee. Tendons that had been torn loose from his foot twitched in the open air like blinded worms. Buzz probed with the point of the knife until he found the joint of the ruined ankle. He worked the knife in, alternately prying with the point and sawing with the edge of the blade.

It took twenty minutes, and he passed out twice, but at last it was done. The pulpy, bloody thing still caught in the metal jaws was no longer part of him. With Braithwaite’s help, he wrapped the ragged stump of his leg in gauze from the plane’s first-aid kit. As long as the brandy lasted, he could keep the pain down and close his mind to the ugly reality of what lay ahead. If he had to die there, at least he would not go out like a rat in a trap.

During the days that followed, Buzz drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes lucid, more often dreaming. Nolan Braithwaite tried, but he fought a losing battle against panic. He foolishly used up their ammunition firing Buzz’s gun at the
zopilotes
, ugly scavenger birds that appeared overhead almost before the dust of the crash had settled. Buzz tried to tell him that the birds were just following their nature, but Braithwaite was beyond reason. He continued to fire and scream obscenities as the birds squeezed their feathered bodies into the cabin to tear at Wilcox’s flesh.

To give the man credit, Nolan Braithwaite did what he could to make Buzz comfortable. He fashioned a bed in the aisle for him, and he prowled the surrounding jungle to bring back coconuts for them to eat. Buzz continued to fade in and out of consciousness. When he was awake, his leg throbbed as if somebody were hammering the exposed nerves. It also began to smell, which meant that gangrene was setting in. Buzz kept thinking what a really shitty way this was to die.

On the fourth or fifth day — he couldn’t be sure which — the Indians came. Buzz recognized them immediately as Mayas — short in stature, almond eyed, light brown skin, and silent as stone. Nolan Braithwaite, in his hysteria, thought they had been saved. Buzz knew better and tried to hold the man back, but he ran babbling into the midst of the Mayan party as though they were lodge brothers.

Naturally, the Indians didn’t understand a word Braithwaite said. Or if they did, they gave no sign. They grabbed him and trussed him up like a chicken before he knew what was happening. Buzz they treated with more respect, maybe because of his missing foot or maybe because he struggled upright in a futile attempt to fight. He was, of course, too weak to punch a dent into a paper bag, and they carried him off as they might a baby.

• • •

“That was the last I saw of your husband, Mrs. Braithwaite,” Buzz concluded. “In fact, that was damn near the last I saw of anything until” — he pulled out a stick on which notches had been carved and ran his fingers over it — “twenty-nine days ago.”

“Then Nolan is alive.”

It was impossible for Hooker to tell from Connie Braithwaite’s tone whether she was thrilled or disappointed by the idea.

“He
was
alive,” Buzz Kaplan said. “Remember, it’s been almost a year since I saw the Indians carry him off. I wouldn’t want to bet any money that they kept him healthy.”

“It looks like they did all right by you,” Connie said.

“Well, yeah, I guess you could say that.”

“So what happened?” Hooker asked. “What are you doing back here?”

“After they picked us out of the wreck, the Indians carried us for almost a day along trails that go by just a few yards from here but might as well be invisible if you don’t know where to look. I wasn’t feeling too hot, but I tried to keep track of where they were taking us. By the sun, I judged it to be generally south by southwest. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, we came to a city.”

“A city?” Hooker said. “Out here in the jungle? Don’t you mean ruins?”

“I don’t mean ruins; I mean a city. With buildings and people and goats and a sewer system better than some I’ve lived with. There was a wall around the whole thing twice as high as my head and a square in the center with a cultivated garden. They had a temple that must have been three stories high. Ruins, my ass.”

“Iztal,” Alita said in a hushed tone.

“What’s that?” Hooker said.

“Iztal, the great lost city in the jungle. The holy capital of the Mayas before the white men came.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Hooker said, “but I thought it was just another legend.”

“Legends sometimes come to life.”

“I’ve noticed that lately,” Hooker said wryly.

“Believe me, pal, this one is real,” Kaplan said with feeling. “Not that I had much time to look around. They brought me in and dumped me in one of those Indian huts made out of stakes and palm leaves. They fed me and treated my leg with some of the foulest-smelling junk you can imagine.”

“Turtle fat,” Connie said.

“Worse. But it did the job. The infection disappeared in a couple of days, and the wound started to heal.”

Hooker pointed at the carved wooden foot attached to Buzz’s leg. “Where did you get that?”

Kaplan knocked the end of his cane against the foot. “The Mayas made it for me. Not bad, huh? I’m not going to win any races wearing it, but at least I can get around.”

“It sounds like they took good care of you,” Hooker said.

“That’s what I thought. At first. I got plenty to eat; I had my own hammock; they patched up my leg. I even came out with a new suit of clothes.” Buzz spread his arms to display the white pajamalike shirt and pants he wore. “Not fancy, maybe, but I know they made it special ‘cause Mayas don’t come in my size.”

“And all the time you were there you never saw Nolan?” Connie asked.

“Not once. Until the last day, I was never left alone, and nobody ever talked to me. Not that I could have understood their lingo if they did, but they acted like talking to me was against the rules. In that society, nobody breaks the rules.

“The only exercise I got was when they took me out of the hut for a walk. Two mean-looking Indians always went with me, one on each side, carrying spears. We’d walk around the outside of the city wall, about two miles, I’d judge, then back to my hut. Not what you’d call a real exciting life. Then I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see, and everything changed.”

“This happened twenty-nine days ago?” Hooker “said.

“Yeah. I was just starting out for my walk with the two nursemaids when we heard a big commotion from another part of the city. I don’t know what was going on, but there was a lot of yelling, and somebody started beating on a gong of some kind. Whatever it was must have been a big emergency, because my guards forgot about me for the first time since I’d been there and started running toward the noise.

“At first, I just stood there, feeling kind of lost. Not knowing what else to do, I started after my guards. They weren’t a whole lot of fun, but at least they were familiar faces. As I hobbled past the rear of the temple, I saw there was a door open. From inside, I heard kind of a moaning, singsong chant. Then a woman screamed. Like a damn fool, I went in to see what was going on.”

“Seventh Cavalry to the rescue,” Hooker said.

“You’ve got to understand I wasn’t thinking straight. I’d been kept in that hut for months with nothing to do and nobody to talk to. So, with a chance for some action, like a damn fool, I grabbed it.”

“I think you are very brave, Buzz,” Alita said. Then, with a frown at Hooker, she added, “And so does he, the big faker.”

“Well, thanks, honey,” Kaplan said, “but a man can be brave and still be a damn fool. Anyway, I went into the temple and down a twisty corridor that was lit by oil lamps on posts sticking out of the walls. At the end of the passage, I came to a big room with a ceiling that must have gone all the way to the roof three stories up. There were two rows of men in white robes standing on both sides of an aisle leading up to a slab of stone that looked like an altar. Standing behind it was a Mayan priest or something in a fancy outfit. He was holding a long knife over his head. Stretched out on the altar was a girl of maybe fifteen. She must have been the one who screamed, but I could see by the blood running out of her throat into a big clay bowl that she wouldn’t scream anymore. I turned around to get the hell out of there, and that’s when the guy with the knife saw me. He yelled something, and the jokers wearing the robes turned around to look at me.”

Kaplan paused in his story to look at the faces of the others. “Hooker, I know you’re not going to believe this, but those people were dead.”

“You mean the ones in the robes who turned around to look at you?”

“That’s what I mean. Their faces were empty; their eyes were staring. There was nothing behind them. Zombies.”

“Muerateros,”
Alita whispered.

Hooker looked at her sharply, but he did not contradict her.

“But let me tell you, those characters could move,” Buzz continued. “They started coming toward me, and with my wooden foot, I was sure as hell not going to outrun them. I hobbled back up the passage, knocking down the oil lamps as I went. That slowed them down enough to let me get out of the temple. I made for the wall and somehow clambered over the thing and dropped into the jungle. I dug in under a thorn bush and stayed there all night while the crazy Indians ran around looking for me.”

“Kaplan,” Hooker said, “you do get yourself into the damndest scrapes.”

“You’re telling me? I figured if the Indians caught me, I’d wind up taking the girl’s place on the slab. Or worse, I’d be wearing one of those white robes and looking out of empty eyes. When it was daylight and they were off looking in another direction, I lit out by memory on what I hoped was the trail that led back here. Lucky for me, it was the right one, and I found the wreck. I figured if anybody was going to come looking for Nolan Braithwaite, they’d start with the airplane.”

“And you’ve been here alone for the last month?”

“Most of it. A couple of times the Mayas came sniffing around, but they don’t like to get too close to the plane. I think Wilcox’s bones up in the cockpit make it some kind of a taboo.”

“How did you live?” Connie asked. “What did you eat?”

“Coconuts. Iguana. Once a wild pig. I got pretty good with a Mayan spear. I stayed off the trail, because I can’t move very fast, and there was always the chance of running into my pals the Mayas. Then I stumbled on the river that wasn’t supposed to be there, and I started building the raft.”

“I’d like to have a look at that,” Hooker said.

“The hell with it. All I want to do is get out of here, and with you to give me a hand, the fastest way for us to make it is on foot.”

“You’re right,” Hooker said. “We’ll put together some kind of a litter for you and get moving. By sundown we ought to — ”

Hooker never completed the thought. There was a soft
whoosh
followed by a thump. Standing a few feet away, Manuel grunted. The shaft of a Mayan spear stuck out like a mast from the center of his chest. He grabbed at it feebly while the blood pumped out of him; then, without another sound, he fell to the ground and moved no more.

Hooker looked toward the trail and saw a Maya looking back at him. Then another, and another. His hand went to the butt of his pistol, but Connie held his arm.

“Don’t, Hooker. They’re all around us.”

He turned in a slow circle and saw they were indeed surrounded. Several of the Indians held their spears aloft, ready to throw. Hooker let his gun hand relax, and the Mayas moved in.