who made the
earth swallow him:'
'Devil woman?'
'Si. He says she broke his nose.'
'What happened to this woman?'
'He doesn't know. He was down in the hole.. He heard a lot of shooting. Then quiet. He says his friends abandoned him. I ask if these amigos are chicleros. He says no.' Morales grinned without mirth. 'He's a stinking liar.'
'Tell him we're going to take him up in the helicopter and throw him out if he doesn't tell the truth.'
The man looked at the granitehard expression on the face of the giant gringo and decided he wasn't joking.
'No!' he said. 'I talk. I talk.'
'You understand English.'
Poco,' the man said, holding his thumb and finger slightly apart.
In halting English, using Spanish when words escaped him, Ruiz admitted he was with a gang of chicleros who came here to steal antiquities. They found the woman and the little old man and locked them in the ground where there was no way they could escape. But they burrowed out of the earth somehow and threw him into the hole. The other chicleros gave chase. They never came back to look for him. He didn't know what happened to the man and woman.
Trout pondered the report briefly.
'Okay, get him in the chopper.'
Morales handcuffed the man gingerly, trying not to touch him, then used the toe of his shoe to persuade Ruiz to stand. They stuffed him into the rear bench seat, and Morales got in beside him. The man exuded a stench so vile the pilot complained. Morales laughed and said if it got too bad they'd throw Ruiz over the side. Ruiz didn't think it was funny, and his eyes grew wide in fear as the helicopter lifted off the ground. He wouldn't be giving them any trouble. They circled the site a couple of times, then picked up the gleam of the river. It was barely visible through the trees, but with three sets of eyes they were able to trace its course.
Trout couldn't wait to tell Gamay her new sobriquet. Devil woman. He hoped that she was still alive to hear it.
26 THE BUZZ OF THE ANCIENT OUTBOARD motor was so loud Gamay didn't hear the helicopter until it was practically overhead. Even then it was Chi's upturned face that alerted her to the arrival of company. She jammed the tiller over and aimed the pram toward the shore, bumping into a grassy bank under a protective canopy of overhanging branches. From the air the boat would be almost impossible to see through. the thick greenery. Gamay took out extra insurance and nudged the pram into a huge fern bush. She didn't want the early morning sunlight reflecting off the aluminum hull.
An instant later the air overhead was filled with the slashing of rotors. Flashes of a shiny red-and-white fuselage came through openings in the dense foliage as the helicopter skimmed the treetops. It never dawned on Gamay that within hours of learning she was missing her husband would return to the Yucatan, commandeer a helicopter, and now be hovering a few hundred feet above her head. Since arriving in this place she'd had her hair almost pulled out by the roots, been threatened with rape, been stuffed into a cave to die, crawled through dark and practically airless tunnels, and been used for target practice. There was no reason to believe the people who had treated her so badly had not brought in air support to increase her misery. She breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of the helicopter receded in the distance, and moments later they headed out into the river again.
After disposing of Yellow Teeth, Gamay and Chi had bolted for the woods, dodging the bullets that whizzed around them, and scrambled down the slope to the river. Finding three battered aluminum prams lined up side by side on shore, they shoved two boats adrift, then piled into the third, got the outboard motor going, and made a dash for safety.
Traveling an entire day without incident, they spent a quiet night pulled over to the side of the river and got an early start the next morning. The helicopter made Gamay realize their smooth escape and peaceful passage had lulled them into a false sense of security. Now they kept a sharp eye on the sky, and Gamay steered dose to the river's edge. There was no further sign of the helicopter, but the propeller tangled in vegetation, and she had to angle the boat into shore to clear the blades of weeds. The job should have meant no more than a minute or two of delay. When Gamay went to restart the motor it played hard to get. She couldn't figure it. The antique fifteen- horse-power Mercury didn't look like much with its sandblasted engine housing. Yet it worked fine before they turned it off. She was trying to figure out what the problem was when they heard voices in Spanish coming from upriver.
Nothing on the face of the earth is more frustrating than a cranky outboard motor, Gamay thought, especially when the recalcitrant hunk of metal is all that stands between you and disaster. Gamay braced her foot against the transom. Hoping to placate the malevolent spirit inhabiting the machine, she smiled prettily, whispered 'Please,' and pulled the starter cord with all her might.
The motor responded with a soggy poppop, an asthmatic gasp, a wet sigh, then silence broken by Gamay's cry of pain as she fell back and scraped her knuckles on the hard metal seat. She unleashed a stream of blasphemies that turned the air blue as she called down the furies on dumb, stubborn machines everywhere. Professor Chi was in the bow, clutching an. overhanging branch so the pram would not drift out of control with the lazy current while Gamay fussed and fumed over the outboard. Sweat dripped off her chin. With her mouth set in a square of anger, snakelike tendrils of dark red hair framing her features, she could have modeled for an ancient Greek sculpture of Medusa. What's worse, she knew how gorgonish she looked. Primping would have to wait.
Their crude attempt to sabotage their pursuers had apparently failed. They couldn't have known that setting the boats adrift wasn't enough, that one pram would catch on a mot, that the other would drift back to shore. Now the first of those boats was coming around a bend, emerging from the morning mists, followed seconds later by the second. There were four men in each boat, including the two she had dubbed Poncho and Elvis. Poncho was leading the assault, standing in the bow of the lead boat brandishing a handgun. It was clear from his excited shouts that he had caught sight of the quarry.
The boats were drawing nearer. She willed her eyes back to the motor and discovered the choke had been pushed in. She pulled out the plastic knob and yanked the cord again. The motor stuttered then caught when she adjusted the throttle slightly. They pushed off into the river, aiming for the middle where it was deepest, although it was also where they'd be most vulnerable. She looked back again. The boat in the lead was breaking away from the other. Maybe it had more horsepower or possibly its motor could be running smoother. It began to inch closer in an agonizing slow-motion pursuit. Before long it would be close enough for the riflemen kneeling in the bow to pick them off.
Smoked puffed from a gun muzzle. Pancho had feed off a couple of quick shots more for show than effect. Either his aim was off or they were out of range, because the bullets never came near. Then she lost sight of their pursuers around a bend. It was only a matter of time, minutes really, before they would be literally dead in the water.
Hack!
Gamay whipped around at the unexpected noise. Chi had found his trusty machete in the bottom of the pram. He was using it to cut down a large branch from the, bowers arching low overhead. Another silvery blur of steel. Another branch fell into the river. Chi swung his machete like a madman. More branches fell in a great tangle to either side of the boat, then drifted together in a floating dam of interlocking branches. The improvised floating breastworks fetched up on a midriver sandbar.
The helmsman on the lead boat didn't see the intertwined boughs until it was too late. The pram came around the curve at full tilt. He tried to turn aside. Instead the boat slammed sideways into the blockage. A chiclero leaned out to push off and discovered Newton was right when he said every action had a reaction. His body was stretched between the boat and the branches. He splashed into the water. There were loud shouts and confusion as the second boat slammed into the first. A gun went off sending a wild shot into the forest. Startled birds darkened the sky in a chittering, chattering cloud.
'Yes!' Gamay yelped triumphantly. 'Nice move, Professor.'
From the nascent smile on the Mayan's otherwise poker face, it was clear that he was pleased with both the effect of his labors and the praise. 'I knew my Harvard education would come in handy one day,' he said
