guests of Machete is proof enough of that. Just think about it some, okay? All I want to do is tell someone. My uncle spent his entire life looking for that temple, only to get murdered when he succeeded. I don’t want a couple of thieves to steal what he found. It’s not fair. If I’m wrong, we only look like kooks, but if I’m right, we might be preventing something bad from happening.”
“Stop. I know you want your uncle’s death to mean something— trust me, I’ve been there — but sometimes bad shit just happens. He got killed by a sick fuck, and we dealt with that. End of story. Let it go.”
She jerked like I had slapped her. “That’s not it. That’s not what I think. Nobody but my uncle believed the temple even existed. Now he’s found it, and it’s probably full of archaeological treasures. People have been trying to determine what happened to the Mayans forever.
I really didn’t give a shit about the Mayans, but a part of me did identify with her determination.
“All right, I’ll mull it over. In the meantime, let’s go get you some normal clothes, get our passports stamped, and get on a ferry. We can’t do anything on the run anyway.”
Two hours later we were on the first ferry headed to Belize and safety. Once under way, I felt a huge weight leave my shoulders. I didn’t want to scare Jennifer, but I had felt we were in very real danger every minute we were in Guatemala. Now that there was nothing to stop us from entering Belize, I felt our chances of survival had gone from about 60 percent to almost 100 percent. I relaxed for the first time in over thirty-six hours, enjoying the sun and balmy weather.
My mind began to drift, thinking about what Jennifer had said earlier in the morning. I still thought the entire WMD scenario was crazy, but I had to admit that the Arabs’ attempt to rob me inside Guatemala City, and the fact that they only took the MP3 player, was a coincidence that didn’t stand the light of day. Coupled with the passports and Quran, I began to think Jennifer was onto something. She simply thought someone was going to rob her uncle of what he had dedicated his life to find, but maybe there was something more.
I hadn’t said anything to Jennifer about what she had seen inside Miguel’s compound, not wanting to build up the conspiracy theory, but the items in the box at the back of the room had all of the hallmarks of terrorist equipment. The 3M respirators were used to protect first responders against inhaled threats, but could be used just as easily to protect terrorists from harming themselves while constructing nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. The garage door opener was benign on the surface, but I had seen it used plenty of times as a triggering device for improvised explosive devices. Put together with everything else, I began to think that Jennifer’s instincts might be right. There was no way that the two guys who ambushed me were on the way to finding a thousand-year-old WMD, but I was beginning to believe that Machete was helping a terrorist enterprise, and that this enterprise was still on the loose.
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 Yucatan 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, we’ll find a place to test it.”
Two hours later, Bakr was bouncing along inside the ancient converted school bus, roasting in the heat. The fan in the roof did little to provide any relief, although the local nationals riding with him didn’t seem to mind. Looking around, he began to get an idea. He asked the man sitting in front of him how far they were from the border, speaking Spanish for the first time. When he heard they were only about ten minutes away, he told Sayyidd in Arabic, “We’re getting off right now. When we stop, let me go up top to get the luggage.”
“Why? We’ll have to walk the rest of the way.”
Bakr pulled out the test tube he had filled in the temple. “We’re going to test the weapon right here, while the bus is still out in the middle of nowhere.”
