One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [21]
Two years ago, while Eduardo was away, working in the U.S., a Presbyterian church from Santa Fe, New Mexico, had sent a “mission” to their village, spending a month building houses, wells, and sewage. One of the gringos was a scoutmaster. He loved his scouting job, and spent his evenings teaching the village boys scouting skills such as using a map, compass, and GPS. Olmec had paid attention.
Eduardo knew he was close to hooking his superstitious friend. All he needed to do now was convince him of the simplicity of the idea.
“I’ve been watching where the professor puts his GPS. I’ll go take it. He won’t miss it now, since we aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. The maps too. He doesn’t keep a good watch on either, because he thinks nobody knows how to use them.”
Olmec sighed, then said, “If you get the equipment, I’ll lead the way.”
Eduardo slipped off, returning in minutes with a map, compass, and GPS.
Olmec reluctantly turned on the GPS and took a little time orienting the map.
“According to this, we’re only five hundred meters from the temple, basically due north.”
Eduardo said, “Let’s get going. We’ve got about an hour of daylight left.”
With Olmec leading, the young men slipped into the jungle. After thirty minutes of fighting through the foliage, Olmec called a halt. He had been diligently keeping his pace count, a method to measure distance by counting the number of times his left or right foot hit the ground, and had hit four hundred meters.
“We’re pretty close to the professor’s spot on the map,” Olmec said. “Keep your eyes open from here on in. If the temple’s here, we could walk right over it and never know.”
They continued for no more than five minutes when Olmec hissed at his friend. He saw something in the jungle. A hump that didn’t fit. A tangle of vines and shrubs that didn’t seem natural. The gathering gloom was making him jumpy, like a child in bed at night who imagines the towel on the rack is a burglar. He was ready to return to the camp.
“We’ve gone far enough,” he said. “Let’s go back.”
Eduardo nodded in agreement. “Okay. Let’s just fan out a little and see if we can find anything.”
Olmec had walked less than ten feet when he heard Eduardo trip and fall. He saw him sitting down next to a rectangular stone.
“Look!” Eduardo said. “This is man-made. The temple is here!”
Olmec, once reluctant to continue, became infected with the thought of discovery. He quickened his pace toward the hump he had seen. It was about eight feet tall and appeared to be a solid mass of earth. As he got closer, he saw that draping vines gave an illusion of mass, but that it was actually some sort of cave. Setting down the GPS and map, he moved the vines aside. A few meters inside the opening, just at the edge of light, was a gallon-sized sack made of woven grass encased in stucco.
“Eduardo! Get over here! I think we’ve found what we were looking for!”
“What is it? Is it gold? Jade? What?”
Olmec moved toward the sack, sure that it contained something of wealth.
14
The professor grew tired of the back-and-forth discussion among the men in the local Mayan dialect.
He addressed the shaman, who acted as the villager’s spiritual leader. “Speak in Spanish. What’s the problem?”
“There is no problem. We simply will not go any farther. The area you’re leading us into is full of blackness and death.”
This was the third time the shaman had made such a statement, without any elucidation of what he meant. The professor was about to explode into a tirade when it struck him that this could be proof of the temple’s existence. He wished he had asked thirteen years ago where they didn’t want to go.
He had always been fascinated by the Mayan civilization, and was convinced that all theories of their demise were incorrect. The Maya had reached their height at about 900 A.D., and had a civilization that rivaled any in Europe, the Middle or Far East. For reasons known