roads leading into the interior of the jungle go no more than a few thousand feet before they dead-end. After that there is nothing but jungle for as far as I can see.
We fly for almost twenty minutes with nothing until I see a road that looks unpaved winding below us. Trekking its way through the bush, it goes a few miles and ends. What it is doing there I haven’t a clue. From this altitude, no more than maybe five or six hundred feet, there are no signs of life on or near the dirt track. I suppose small houses, concrete mud huts, could be tucked away under the trees along the edge of the road, but if they are I can’t see them.
We fly on farther another ten minutes when I see a paved road in the distance. The pilot leans his head back toward me and yells above the screaming engine: “ Es the Tulum-to-Coba highway.”
I nod. I wonder how far we are from Coba.
He pushes the little plane forward until it crosses the ribbon of pavement below us. I watch as our winged shadow follows the road west.
I begin scanning the green velvet jungle below, looking for anything that might qualify as a large facility with an antenna array. There is nothing, only a few bald areas where the jungle has been scraped clear for structures that are no longer there, mostly right along the highway. There are a few houses and ramshackle buildings, small settlements.
A few miles farther on I start to see them: the line of cellular towers reaching out into the distance casting their tall shadows over the top of the green canopy, what I remembered from my last trip along the two-lane highway from Coba.
“You see the lake in the distance?” he yells back at me. “That is Coba. We are almost there. I will do a flyover. You want to take some pictures?”
I nod. I have the little camera in my hand, but so far nothing to shoot.
He begins to descend a little. I tell him no, to maintain altitude. This way I can see farther into the distance, my eyes straining for any break in the jungle.
“You scared?” He glances back toward me.
“No.”
He notices that I am looking in a different direction. “What are you looking for?” He yells back. “Something special?”
“I’ll know when I see it,” I tell him. “Have you flown in this area before?” I ask.
“Not often. A few times,” he tells me. “People who do the digs on the ruins sometimes like to get pictures from the air. That way they know where to dig. You see over there?” He points off to the right. “Those little hills?”
“Yes.”
“They are not hills,” he says. “They are Mayan ruins under the jungle. Some perhaps temples or ball courts, maybe palaces. May have been there a thousand years. Covered over by the jungle.”
“When was the last time you flew here?”
He shakes his head a little. “I don’t know. Maybe three… four months. I don’t come here often.”
“I am looking for a place that is supposed to have a large antenna array. You know antennas, like television. Perhaps a big dish. Supposed to be a new facility of some kind here in the jungle.”
He looks back at me over his shoulder, squinting his eyes. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
“Tourist,” I tell him.
“That is no place for turistas, ” he tells me.
“You know where it is?”
He nods.
“Take me there.”
He shakes his head no.
“I just need to see where it is,” I tell him.
He points off to the northwest. As we approach the area over the archaeological park at Coba, he banks to the right and flies for a few seconds until we find ourselves back out over the highway. It crosses an intersection, another paved road going due north. “There are many cenotes there. There used to be a small village. The landowners, the people with homes, have all been driven out. It is the cartels,” he says. “They cleared the jungle and made a landing strip, put up a big metal building of some kind. And what you call plato, umm…” He makes a cup with the open extended fingers and the palm of his right hand. He turns it up toward the sky and holds the flight stick with his other hand.
“A satellite dish?”
He nods. “There are three of them. Very big. Bigger than any I have ever seen before. One of them is the size of a large building. It’s no television?” he says.
“No. We could fly just a little ways up that road,” I tell him, “then we could turn and go toward the coast if you like.”
He shakes his head. “If I had known what you were looking for, I would not come,” he says. “Why do you want to go there?”
“I was told about it by someone.”
“Who?”
“A man in Paris,” I tell him. “Do you have any idea what they’re doing there?” I ask.
“No. And I don’t want to find out. Last time I flew over it, it was by mistake. They shot at me from the ground. No small stuff,” he says. “No pistols or rifles. Machine guns spitting out bullets of fire.”
“Tracers?”
He nods.
“Antiaircraft fire.”
“ Jess. They hit my wing. Punched holes in the fabric. Almost set it on fire. I was lucky to escape. I had to dive down just above the trees. I will not go near there again,” he says.
“How far up the road?” I ask.
He shakes his head as he starts the turn toward the coast. “You crazy if you go there,” he says.
“How far?”
“Kilometers, maybe twenty, perhaps a little more. Like I say, they forced the people from their homes. There is nothing there now except the big metal building and what you call the antennas. I am told that no one drives up that road any longer unless they are bringing materials or supplies. A man I know went up there in his truck a few months ago. He never came back.”
“Why doesn’t your government do something?” I ask.
He just shakes his head. “I don’t ask,” he says. “Sometimes it is best not to know.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Sedrick Fowler was a political party animal, the kind Thorpe detested most. Managing partner of a powerful law firm in Boston and courtier to three presidential administrations, Fowler and his connections in national politics went back forty years.
Those who knew him well called him Foul behind his back. His religion may have been liberal, but he didn’t slum in the wards with the unwashed masses.
His law firm had a long list of billionaires and gold-plated corporate clients. Between stints doing good works in government, and for a substantial fee, he could get regulatory agencies to bend and the IRS to genuflect. The mere mention of his name could seal an international trade deal and give your company a generational monopoly on government contracts. The by-product of all this nuclear influence was a radioactive amount of political cash. It fueled the revolving door to power, kept the donkey greased between campaigns, and fed the illusion of the party of the poor, money available for Foul’s friends and benefactors.
To Thorpe he was just a high-class fixer and bagman. But for the moment, none of that mattered. Fowler was now the gatekeeper, and there was no way to get around him. He was hardwired into the White House as the president’s chief of staff. He had Thorpe on a string like a yo-yo coming and going from meetings, railing at the
