One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [71]
Bakr wondered how Sayyidd had managed to live as long as he had when he deferred all decisions to blind faith. “That may be true, but we still need to be careful. Allah guides the righteous but turns his back on fools. We need to get rid of Miguel’s vehicle and get out of Guatemala City. We need to plan our next move, not simply run into the jungle half prepared.”
With that, he stood up, throwing some money on the table to pay for dinner. Sayyidd followed him outside. They unloaded the Suburban and took a cab to the main bus station in Zona 1. Sayyidd moved to a corner and loaded the GPS data from the thumb drive into the Garmin.
Moving back outside to allow the GPS to see the sky, Bakr waited for it to lock on to the satellite signals. It eventually beeped and showed them their current location.
Bakr went to the waypoint manager and looked at the waypoints now stored in the GPS. They numbered fifteen, without any special labels. He frowned. This gave them the general location, but without knowing which waypoint was the location of the temple, they would be thrashing around the jungle for months.
“This isn’t going to work. We don’t have the time or experience to go treasure hunting.”
Sayyidd took the GPS. “Let me look at something.”
Sayyidd went to the main menu and pulled up “tracks,” a setting on the Garmin that left a bread-crumb trail wherever the GPS went. The latest track stored went generally straight, weaving here and there, passing through all of the waypoints. When it hit waypoint fifteen, it began a looping journey, moving north, then back south, continuing back crazily through the jungle before ending at the start point of the expedition.
Sayyidd smiled. “The boy Eduardo didn’t put a waypoint at the temple, but the professor ran the GPS with the track feature on. It shows everywhere they went. It looks like waypoint fifteen was the last camp where the boys took the GPS. All we need to do is mark another one at the farthest location, where the track loops back onto itself.”
Within seconds he did exactly this, labeling it sixteen. “Now, we simply need to move to this location.”
Sayyidd smiled broadly at his partner.
“We can be there in a day or less.”
43
We’d been driving for close to an hour before Jennifer asked where we were going.
“We’re headed to Belize. I’m going to a place called Puerto Barrios on the eastern edge of Guatemala. From there, we’ll take a ferry to a town called Punta Gorda.”
“What’re we going to do there? Maybe we should just fly out from here.”
“Maybe, but I’ve been to Belize a few times, so I know it better than this place. I don’t want to be in this country when the word gets out about what I did. I’m sure a lot of people lost their livelihood tonight.”
Jennifer leaned over and placed her hand on my arm.
“Hey, I never thanked you for saving my life. I’m sorry that I caused this mess, but I’m glad you were here.” She smiled.
I felt an enormous wash of shame at what I had planned earlier. What was I going to say to that? Yeah, I’m a great guy. By the way, I was within a split second of leaving you to get gang-raped so I could save my own ass. I shook her hand off and told her the truth.
“Look, I’d like to say I came to help you because I’m a nice guy, but I’m not. You were rescued by the memory of a dead woman. I’m not a hero. I thought I was one once, but that stupid fairy tale was killed nine months ago.”
We sat in silence for a moment. An incredibly uncomfortable silence. I wished I hadn’t opened my mouth. Just take the thank-you and let it go.
“You can’t expect me to sit here with that answer. What do you mean? Why’d you come back for me?”
I sighed, debating whether to continue. I decided to get it all out. “Nine months ago I was in a special unit in the military. I had been deployed at war since 9/11. My wife had borne