One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [76]
Dawn was starting to break. I slipped silently out of bed and went to our small bathroom. I splashed water on my face and stared in the mirror for a half minute. Well, I’m up now. What to do?
I went to the door and looked at Jennifer’s slumbering form again. The twinge came back, making me feel uncomfortable. Making me think about Heather. Like a magnet repulsed, I wanted out of the room, away from the feeling. I went through the sliding door to our little outside courtyard, watching the sun break the horizon.
I sat down, enjoying the view for no other reason than it allowed me to focus on something else. I lost track of time and was startled out of my reverie by the sliding glass door opening. Jennifer came out, still dressed in the long-sleeved cotton shirt and sweatpants. She’d cleaned up the blood but still looked pretty ragged.
“How’re you feeling?” I said.
“Better than I would have been, I’m sure.”
She stood there for a moment, then said, “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”
“Okay . . .”
She said nothing, clearly wrestling with the issue in her mind.
“Well? You have to speak if you want to talk to me.”
She hesitated a second more, then said, “I think something bigger is going on than just us running from El Machete. I meant to bring it up last night on the drive, but it slipped my mind.”
I walked to the door of our room. “What do you mean?”
She said, “Uh, well, how do you know that Arabs took the MP3 player?”
Please. Not this again. She must have really loved that thing. “I thought we were dropping that. I’ll buy you a new one.”
“No, no. It’s not that. I just think that something’s going on. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy, and maybe it’s nothing.”
I shrugged. “I heard them talking. They spoke Arabic. No doubt in my mind. Now, what’s the big secret?”
Jennifer hesitated, like she was embarrassed to say what was on her mind.
“Come on. Spit it out. What’s up?”
“Well, don’t laugh, but I don’t think it was a random mugging. I think those guys attacked you for the MP3 player so they could find the temple. So they could ransack it and steal what my uncle rightfully discovered.”
I looked at her like she had a second head. I figured she was going to have some stupid theory on how her uncle had survived and was now being held by terrorists in Beirut.
“Huh? What’re you talking about?”
“While I was held, Miguel—El Machete—told me the story of my uncle finding the temple. He said that a native entered first, but died from being exposed to the contents of some type of sack protecting the entrance. This fits my uncle’s theory exactly. The story had to have come from my uncle, because Miguel wouldn’t know to make that up.”
I didn’t hide my disdain, forcing her to race to get the rest out. “Wait, I know it sounds crazy, but the room where I got my clothes had a Quran and two different passports for the same guy. One passport was from Saudi Arabia with an Arabic name, and one was issued by the United States to some guy named Carlos. Now, you tell me that you were mugged by Arabs in Guatemala. What are the odds of that?”
I considered that. I had thought it just about as strange as getting mugged by a couple of Girl Scouts but put it into the category of “strange things happen.” I knew there was no way that WMD had been created by the Mayans, and even if it had, it wouldn’t have lasted for a thousand years.
“Look, I don’t know why I was mugged by Arabs. Maybe they got stranded and needed some cash. Maybe they thought they were doing their part for the jihad. It really doesn’t matter. We have no proof whatsoever