One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [78]
PART THREE
47
Abu Bakr opened the door to their hotel room in Flores, completely spent from their ordeal. It had taken two days to get in and out of the jungle, much more time than he had thought. He was dehydrated, hungry, sliced up, and sore, but still felt a sense of urgency. He didn’t know how long they had before Miguel’s men found them. Being inside Guatemala was downright dangerous, with the risk increasing every minute.
They packed up hurriedly, checking out and taking a cab to the airport. Inside one of their pieces of luggage was the fruits of their jungle trek: a Tupperware container secured with duct tape and plastic sheeting. It protected the material they’d found next to a dead native boy deep in the jungle; something bad had happened out there, Bakr was certain. Something that might be the result of the weapon they dreamed of, and Bakr was looking forward to finding out.
They were about to purchase tickets on one of the local small planes when Bakr pulled Sayyidd out of line.
“What’s wrong?”
“Take a look at what they’re doing to the bags. They’re putting each one through an X-ray.”
“So? That’s a result of our glorious victory against the Great Satan. We have no weapons. The X-ray will show a container of dirt. What are you afraid of?”
“I saw a man’s bag searched after the X-ray. They weren’t looking for weapons. They’re looking for artifacts. This isn’t for security; it’s to prevent looters from taking treasure from the country.”
“I say again, who cares? We have a bag of dirt.”
“We can’t chance it. Our package will look like a blob on X-ray. They’ll be forced to check it out. We can’t risk having them open the container, releasing the weapon. We can’t fly out of here.”
“What do you want to do? What else can we do?”
“We need to get to another country, where there’s less security. Either Mexico or Belize. Let’s get out of here and find a bus station.”
Catching a cab, they made the short trip to the Santa Elena bus station. After a brief investigation, they found a bus heading to the Yucatán in Mexico at four in the afternoon, and another one heading to Melchor de Mencos on the Belizean border within the hour. Finding out that they could take a further bus into Belize City, and from there an airplane out, they bought the ticket.
Bakr, not sure if Sayyidd would remember, asked, “You have your American passport, right? Without that, you’ll need a visa to enter Belize. I don’t want to be embarrassed.”
Sayyidd scowled, saying, “Yes, chosen one, I have the passport. I traveled the long way to get here as well. I haven’t forgotten what to do.”
“I meant no disrespect. I’ll continue to ask questions, the same way I did in battle. It’s why I’m still alive. I would expect the same from you. Please, let’s talk about the mission.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve been thinking,” Bakr said, “and I believe we need to test the weapon. Now. Before we fly out. We don’t even know if it’s deadly. I put a sample in a test tube, hoping maybe we’d get a chance to analyze it with our specialists before we employ it, but really there’s no reason for that. We test it here, and we’ll know.”
“You told me you saw the dead boy in the temple. Isn’t that proof enough? Why risk letting the weapon out now?”
“Yes, I did see the boy, but we don’t know what killed him. He might have had a heart attack or something else. I know it’s a small chance, but we should be sure that the effort we’re going through will be rewarded. We need to know the weapon is real. On top of that, I need to see how the weapon works. That’s the only way I’ll be able to determine the optimum method of deployment. Otherwise, I’ll just be guessing.”
They heard their bus being called. Getting up, Bakr said, “When we get off at the Belizean border,