One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [20]
My first thought was that he was pissed that I had altered the plan and taken Azzam without talking to him. I followed him into the office. “Yeah. Sure. What’s up?”
Blaine closed the door. “Pike, I don’t know how to tell you this. It’s about your family.”
After the first sentence I could no longer hear him. All I could hear was my daughter saying I kept the bad men away.
PART TWO
13
Guatemala
Nine Months Later
Professor John Cahill gave an exasperated sigh and sat down, sinking into the fetid jungle soil. Sometimes he felt like he was trying to run a race in knee-deep mud. He was deep within Guatemala’s Reserva de la Biosfera Maya—the Maya Biosphere Reserve—in the northeastern department of El Petén, and for some reason his workforce had decided to quit. He had been doing this sort of excursion into the heart of the Yucatán going on thirteen years now, all in a quest for his mythical Temple of Priests. He had been robbed by bandits, contracted malaria, and almost killed by an asp, but never had his workforce refused to continue.
Once a rising star in the Latin America department of the University of North Carolina, he was now teaching undergrads basic anthropology theory at the College of Charleston, his fall from grace complete. The school itself was a pretty good liberal arts college, but it didn’t have a major in archaeology and didn’t give a rat’s ass about his theories of the Mayan demise, forcing him to fund these expeditions out of his own pocket.
As always, he had hired local Mayan laborers without going through the required steps with the Guatemalan government. Nobody had cared before, and surely nobody would now, but an unhappy labor force could bring unwanted scrutiny. The Biosphere, one of the last remaining uncharted rain forests on earth, was dotted with Mayan archaeological treasures. Because of this, his activities would not be looked upon as a prank. Disgusted, he called over the native leadership, determined to find out what on earth could cause his hires to give up a new set of thirty-cent rubber sandals.
The natives themselves couldn’t articulate to the professor exactly what it was they feared, only that they wouldn’t go any farther on this specific route. In the end, they were torn between their instinct and the bounty the professor represented. They weren’t stupid. They still wanted a new set of rubber sandals. They just didn’t want to pay for it with their lives.
WHILE THE PROFESSOR ARGUED WITH THE LEADERSHIP, Eduardo and Olmec, two of the younger members of the expedition, were having their own parley. Eduardo, a spindly nineteen-year-old, was sure this halt was an opportunity not to be missed. All he had to do was convince his partner.
“Olmec, now’s our chance! The Elders still believe in the old ways too much. We can find this temple, take something of value, then get back here before dark. Tomorrow, at least we’ll have something to show for it besides the professor’s quetzals.”
Olmec, one year younger than Eduardo, but rooted in a much earlier time, responded, “We don’t even know where it is. Only the professor knows. He never tells anyone more than the next hundred meters. There’s no way we’re going to find that temple by ourselves. If we could, why has our village signed on for these trips every year? We’d have done it by ourselves a long time ago. I’ll tell you why—because there is no temple. There’s only the curse.”
Unlike Olmec, Eduardo had lost all semblance of Mayan instinctual heritage and saw such hesitation as complete idiocy. He was one of the few from his village who had made the trek as a migrant worker to the fabled United States. Some said that he did more than simply make the trek, but was in reality tied in to the illegal transport of workers into the United States.
“There is no curse. It’s just an old wives’ tale used to keep kids from wandering away in the jungle. Have you ever heard of anyone dying from some strange ailment out here or disappearing completely? Anyone at all?”
Olmec didn’t say anything, prompting