"What did he say?" I asked, not quite catching the burst of rapid-fire Spanish from the cockpit. The explosion of expletives had included the word navegacion. Something about malfunction.
God help us.
Alan Dupre's helicopter reminded me of the disintegrating taxis on Guatemala City's potholed streets. The vibration in the passenger compartment was so violent it made my teeth chatter. My stomach felt like it was in a cocktail shaker, and the deafening roar could have been the voice of Hell.
I was staring out the smudgy plastic window, where less than three hundred meters below I could just make out the top of the Peten rain forest of northwest Guatemala sweeping by beneath us. So this was what it looked like. Dense and impenetrable, it was a yawning, deciduous carpet enveloping the earth as far as the eye could see-if something ten stories high could be called carpet. I'd been in the forests of India's Kerala and seen some of the denser growth in southern Mexico, but this was like another planet.
The main problem was, a violent downpour, the leading edge of the hurricane, was now sweeping across the Yucatan, stirring up the treetops of the jungles below. The rain, which had begun in earnest about ten minutes after we got airborne, had been steadily increasing to the point it was now almost blinding.
This was the risk I'd chosen to take, but let me admit right here: The weather had me seriously scared, my fingernails digging into the armrests and my pulse erratic. And now was there something else? We'd only been in the air for thirty-five minutes, and already we had some kind of mechanical issue looming? What was left to go wrong?
"Some of the lights went out or something." Dupre tried a shrug. "I'm not sure. No big deal, though. This old bird always gets the job done." His pilot, Lieutenant Villatoro, formerly of the Guatemalan Army, had just shouted the new development back to the cabin. "Probably nothing. Don't worry about it."
Don't worry about it! His "tourist" helicopter was a Guatemalan candidate for the Air amp; Space Museum, an old Bell UH-1D patched together with chicle and corn masa. Surely the storm was pushing it far beyond its stress limits.
"Right, but what exactly-?"
"Sounds like the nav station." He clicked open his seat belt. "Something… Who knows? If you'd be happier, I'll go up and look."
I felt my palms go cold. "Doesn't seem too much to ask, considering."
The world down below us was a hostile melange of towering trees, all straining for the sky, while the ground itself was a dark tangle of ferns, lianas, strangler vines, creepers-among which lurked Olympic scorpions and some of the Earth's most poisonous snakes. If we had to set down here-I didn't even want to think about it. To lower a helicopter into the waves of flickering green below us would be to confront the hereafter.
"It's just the lights, like he said." Dupre yelled back from the cockpit's door, letting a tone of "I told you to chill out" seep through. He was peering past the opening, at the long line of instruments. He followed his announcement with a sigh as he moved back into the main cabin. "Relax."
I wasn't relaxed and from the way his eyes were shifting and his Gauloise cigarettes were being chain-smoked he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In his case it wasn't just the weather. He was fidgeting like a trapped animal, giving me the distinct sense he was doing someone's invisible bidding and was terrified he might fail.
"Well, why don't you try and fix it?" Was he trying to act calm just to impress me? "Can't you bang on the panel or something?"
"Okay, okay, let me see what I can do. Jesus!" He edged back into the cockpit, next to Villatoro. The wind was shaking us so badly that, even bent over, he was having trouble keeping his balance. Then he halfheartedly slammed the dark instrument readouts with the heel of his open hand. When the effort produced no immediate electronic miracle, he settled into the copilot's seat.
"Que pasa? " he yelled at Villatoro, his voice barely audible over the roar of the engine and the plastering of rain on the fuselage. Then he looked out the windscreen, at the torrent slamming against it, and rubbed at his chin.
"No se, mi comandante," the Guatemalan shouted back. I sensed he was hoping to sound efficient and unperturbed. Dupre claimed his pilot had personally checked out the Bell and prepped it. Now, though… "Mira. Like I said the lights. On the nav station. Maybe the electrical-"
"How about the backup battery?" Dupre was just barely keeping his cool.
Villatoro scratched his chin. "I'll tell you the truth. The backup is muerto. I tested it before we left, but I couldn't find any replacements in Provisiones. I figure, no problem, but now, amigo…"
I felt another wave of dismay, right into my churning stomach.
"Well, keep your heading north." Dupre's voice was coming from a place of extreme pain. "And if you sight the Rio Tigre, then Baalum or whatever should be more or less due west, according to what I'm assuming. Just keep your eyes open." He paused. "Problem is, with all this rain, the river's going to be tough to make out."
I redoubled my efforts to peer out the window, searching, my breath coming in bursts. Still nothing. Dear God, what now?
Finally Dupre headed back, bracing himself against the firewall as he crouched and passed through the door into the main cabin. When he settled into the seat across from me, he was glaring at me as though everything was my fault. "You know." He was yelling again. "I'm beginning to think maybe we ought to try to find a clearing and just sit out this crap till morning." He leaned over and peered down through the Bell's spattered side windows at the dense tangle of growth below. After a moment he got up and once more moved the toward the cockpit, still with the same troubled look. This time, however, he was beaming as he shouted back.
"There may be a God after all. I think we just intersected the Rio Tigre. We can bear due west now, along the river. We could be getting close, if it's where I think it is."
I turned and stared down again, barely making out the thread of the stream through the rain. Yes! Maybe there's hope. Still, below us the windblown treetops were a solid mass of pastel sparkles, a dancing sea of hungry green… But then I thought I saw something. Hey! It might even be a clearing. I quickly unbuckled and made my way up to the cockpit, hanging on to anything I could grasp.
"Alan, look," I yelled, and pointed off to the side, out through the rain-obscured windscreen. "I think we just passed over something. Back there. See?"
"Where?" He squinted.
"You can still just make it out." I twisted and kept pointing. I was biting my lip, trying to hold together. "There… it looks like some kind of clearing. Maybe… I don't know, but what if we just set down there and let this storm blow over?"
He ordered Villatoro to bank and go back for a look. A few moments later it was obvious there was an opening in the trees.
"Yeah, let's check it out." He then said something to Villatoro and we started easing toward it, definitely a wide opening. The billowing ocean of trees below us seemed to be parting like the Red Sea as we settled in. There had to be solid ground down there somewhere. Had to be.
"What's…" I was pointing. "There, over to the side, it's a kind of hill or something. It's-"
"Where?" Dupre squinted again, his voice starting to crack. Then he focused in. "Yeah, maybe there's something there. Hard to tell what it is, though. But I guess we're about to find out."
He gestured to the lieutenant, barking an order in quick Spanish. While the Bell kept moving lower through the opening, Dupre flicked on the landing lights, and appeared to be muttering a prayer of thanks.
I was staring out, growing ever more puzzled. A "hill" was there, all right. The problem was, it was definitely man-made, topped by a stone building. I could just make it out in the glare of the lights.
"What do you think that is?"
"What do I think?" Dupre studied the scene for a moment longer, and then his face melted into the first smile I'd seen since we left. "I think we are lucky beyond belief. God help us, we may have found it. That could be the damned pyramid or whatever's supposed to be up here." He leaned back. "Yeah, congratulations. Look at that damned thing. Either this is the place, or we're about to become the archaeologists of the year. Cover of Time. The Nobel frigging Prize."
At that moment I almost wanted to hug Alan Dupre, but not quite. Instead I moved farther into the cockpit, trying to get a look out the windscreen. By then we had lowered well through the opening in the trees, the helicopter's controls fighting against the blowing rain, and it felt as though we'd begun descending into the ocean's depths in a diving bell, surrounded by thrashing, wind-whipped branches.
Now, though, I was staring at the ghostly rise of the pyramid emerging out of the rain.
"It looks brand new."
"Yeah, the whole place is 'Jungle Disneyland' remember? Except this deal ain't about Mickey Mouse, believe me. There's plenty of Army hanging out around here."
Lieutenant Villatoro took us ever lower, gently guiding the chopper's descent, and now we were only a few feet above the ground. There certainly was no mistaking what was around us, even with the blowing rain. The pyramid loomed over one side of a large plaza, a big paved area that was mostly obscured from the skies since the swaying trees arched over and covered it from aerial view.
"Okay, we're about to touch down." Dupre was clawing at his pocket, yearning for a cigarette. "So if you still want to get out, move over by the door. I'll disengage the main rotor once we're on the ground."
As we settled in, the rotor began to cause surface effect, throwing a spray off the paving stones, which now glistened under the cold beam of the landing lights. And looming above us, off to the right, was a stepped pyramid in the classic Mayan style. We all lapsed into silence as the Bell's skids thumped onto the stones. The ex-Army pilot, Villatoro, kept glancing over at the pyramid as though he didn't want to admit even seeing it. Did he know something Alan and I didn't?
This was the moment I'd been bracing for. I was increasingly convinced somebody wanted me to see this place, whatever it was, but now what should I do?
Well, the first thing was to dip my toe in the water, do a quick reconnoiter on the ground. If this really was Baalum, Dupre's Maya Disneyland, could it also be part of Alex Goddard's clinic of "miracles," the location Sarah called Ninos del Mundo? If I knew that for sure, then I could start figuring how to find out if she was here-as I suspected-and get her out of his clutches. Maybe the see-no-evil embassy might even be prodded into helping an American citizen for a change.
"I'm getting out, to look around a little, but not till you turn off the engine. I want to be able to use my ears."
"All right, but don't take all day. This kind of weather, I want to keep it warm." He turned to Villatoro and shouted the order. In the sheets of pounding rain, I figured that no one could have heard us come in. That, at least, was positive.
When the rpm's of the engine had died away, I clicked open the Bell's wide door, slid it back, and looked around. In the glare of the landing lights I realized at once that the stones were old, weathered, and worn, but the grout that sealed them was white and brand new. The plaza was free of moss, clean as the day it was done-which did not appear to be all that long ago. Above me, the pyramid, continuous recessed tiers of glistening stones, towered into the dim skyline of trees.
I stepped out onto the pavement, holding my breath. The plaza was almost football-field in size, reminding me of an Italian piazza. Around me the rain was lessening slightly, and as my eyes adjusted… my God. There wasn't just a pyramid here; through the sparkle of raindrops at the edge of the helicopter's lights I could see what looked like a wide cobblestone walkway leading into the dense growth just off the edge of the square, probably toward the south, away from the river, connecting the plaza with distant groups of small, thatch-roofed houses, set in clusters…
Could Alex Goddard's "miracle" clinic be in some collection of primitive huts? It made no sense.
But I decided to try to get a closer look. I'd walked about thirty feet away from the helicopter, across the slippery paving, when I saw a flash of lightning in the southeast, followed by a boom of thunder that echoed over the square.
At least I thought it was thunder. Or maybe the Army was holding heavy artillery practice somewhere nearby. Abruptly the rain turned into a renewed torrent, and the next thing I heard was the helicopter's engine start up again. Then I sensed the main rotor engage, a sudden "whoom, whoom, whoom" quickly spiraling upward in frequency.
Hey! I told him not to-!
When I looked back at the Bell's open door, Dupre was standing there, frantically searching the dark as he heaved out my tan backback and what looked like a rolled-up sleeping bag, both splashing down onto the rain-soaked paving.
What! For a moment I thought the thunder, or whatever it was, must have completely freaked him. Then what was actually happening hit me with a horrifying impact.
"Alan, wait!"
I started dashing back, but now the main rotor was creating a powerful downdraft, throwing the rain into me like a monsoon. By the time I managed to fight my way through the spray, the rotor was on full power and Alan Dupre and his Bell were already lifting off. I reached up, and just managed to brush one greasy skid as he churned away straight upward into the rainy night.
"You shit!" I yelled up, but my final farewell was lost in the whine of the engine. My God, I thought, watching him disappear, I've just been abandoned hundreds of miles deep in a Central American rain forest.
Then it all sank in. Whoever had gotten to him was playing a rough game. They didn't want me just to see Baalum, they wanted me delivered here. Probably to secure me in the same place Sarah was. Colonel Ramos, or whoever had frightened Dupre into bringing me, had wanted us both. So what now? Were we both going to be "disappeared"? Staring around at the pyramid and the empty square, I could feel my heart pounding.
Then I tripped over the rolled sleeping bag and sank to my knees there in the middle of the rain-swept plaza, soaked to the skin and so angry I was actually trembling. Up above me, Alan Dupre, king of two-timers, had switched off his landing lights, and a few moments later the hum of the Bell was swallowed by the night sounds of the forest-the high-pitched din of crickets, the piercing call of night birds, the basso groan of frogs celebrating the storm.
And something else, an eerie sense of the unnatural. I can't explain it. Even the night songs of the birds felt ominous, the primeval forest reasserting its will. It was haunting, like nature's mockery of my desolation. I pounded the sleeping bag and felt… shit, how did I let this happen?
Get a grip. I finally stood up and looked around. Maybe when God wants to do you up right, She gives you what you want. You used Alan Dupre just like you intended: He got you here. But there's more to the plan of whoever's holding his puppet strings. So the thing now is, don't let yourself be manipulated any more. Get off your soggy butt and start taking control of the situation…
That was when I sighted a white form at the south, forested edge of the plaza. What! I ducked down, sure it was somebody lurking there, waiting to try to beat me to death as they had Sarah. Did Ramos intend to just murder me immediately?
But there was no getting away. If I could see them, they surely could see me. And where would I escape to anyway?
I dug my yellow plastic flashlight out of my backpack and my hand shaking, flicked it on. The beam, however, was just swallowed up in the rain. All right. I strapped on the pack and taking a deep breath, threw the rolled sleeping bag over my shoulder and headed across the slippery paving toward the white, which now glistened in the periodic sheets of distant lightning.
Meet them straight on. Try and bluff.
When I got closer, though, I realized what I was seeing was actually just the skin of a jaguar, bleached white, the head still on, fearsome teeth bared which had been hung beside the paved pathway. Thank God.
But then, playing my light over it, I thought, Bad sign. My first encounter at Baalum is with a spooky, dead cat. It felt like a chilling omen of… I wasn't sure what.
I studied it a moment longer with my flashlight, shivering, then turned and headed quickly across the plaza toward the pyramid now barely visible in the rain. If there were jaguars, or God knows what else, around I figured I'd be safer up at the top.
When I reached the base and shined my light up the steps, I saw they were steeper than I'd thought, but they also looked to be part of some meticulous restoration and brand-new, probably safe to climb. And there at the top was a stone hut, complete with what appeared to be a roof. Good. If there hadn't been anything taller than it around I think I might have just climbed a tree.
On the way up I began trying to digest what the place really was. The pyramid was "fake"… or was it? A hundred years ago the eccentric Brit archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans whimsically "reconstructed" the Palace of Minos on Crete with his own money, and it's still a tourist highlight. So why couldn't somebody do the same with a reclaimed Mayan pyramid in Central America? Still, this was different, had the feel of being somebody's crazed obsession.
As I topped the steps, I realized the building that crowned the pyramid was also a "restoration" like everything else, including a decorated wooden lintel above the door that looked to be newly lacquered. Bizarre.
I moved through the door and unloaded my gear, then extracted my water bottle, now half-empty, for a pull. Finally I unrolled Alan Dupre's sleeping bag on the (dry) stone floor, removed and spread out my wet clothes, peed off the edge, then took a new pair of underpants, jeans, and shirt out of my backpack, donned them, and uneasily crawled in. I was shivering-whether from the soaking rain or from fright, I didn't know-and my teeth were trying to chatter. Was I hidden away enough to be safe? I didn't know. All I did know was, I was in something deeper than I'd ever been in my life, and I had no idea how I was going to get out. And I was both scared to death and angry as hell.
Sarah was here, though, I was certain. Like a sixth sense, I could feel her presence, out there somewhere in the rain. For a moment I was tempted to just plunge into the storm looking for her, but a split second's reflection told me that was the stupidest thing I could do. Instead, I should try and get some rest, till the storm cleared, and keep periodic watch on the plaza in case somebody showed up. Then, the minute there was light, I'd hit the ground and go find her.
I suppose nothing ever happens the way you plan. My mind was racing and my nerves were in the red, but I was so exhausted from the teeth-rattling trip in the Bell I couldn't really stay alert very long. In spite of myself, I eventually drifted off into a dreamless doze, a victim of the narcotic song of wind in the giant Cebia trees and the insistent drumming of forest rain on the roof.