Guatemala
46 'HOW OLD DID YOU SAY THIS PLANE was?' Austin shouted over the cockpit noise from the single engine.
About fifty years, give or take a few,' Zavala yelled back. 'The owner says it's got all its original parts, too. Except for the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, maybe.' Seeing the alarm in Austin's face, Zavala grinned. 'Just kidding, Kurt. I checked. The engine's been overhauled so many times it's practically new. Hope we'll be in as good a shape when we get this old.'
'If we get to be this old,' Austin said skeptically, glancing out the window at the inhospitable terrain below.
'Not to worry, old chap. The De Havilland Beaver was one of the finest bush planes ever built. This crate is as tough as a tank. Just what the doctor ordered.'
Austin eyed the plastic statue of St. Christopher attached to the control panel by a suction cup, sat back in his seat, and folded his arms. When he suggested to Zavala that they find something unobtrusive to fly, he hadn't envisioned the antique Beaver with its quaint boxy lines, two-blade propeller, and blunt unaerodynamic nose. He simply wanted an alternative to an army helicopter that couldn't violate the airspace of Mexico's neighboring countries without permission. Even a NUMA aircraft, with its turquoise paint job and big official lettering, would have raised eyebrows.
They found the Beaver hidden by a painter's canvas drop cloth in the dark corner of a dilapidated out-of-the- way hangar at the Belize City airport. Zavala's eyes lit up like Christmas luminarias. He rubbed his hands together, itching to get them on the controls. Only one other plane would have elicited a stronger reaction, Austin thought. Luckily the Wright Brothers' invention was in the Smithsonian, which is where this plane belonged.
Like Shakespeare's Cassius, the Belizan who owned the plane had a lean and hungry look. He talked barely above a whisper and often glanced over his shoulder as if he were expecting unwanted visitors. He had been recommended to Austin by a former CIA colleague who served in clandestine operations helping the Contras fight the Sandinistas. Judging from his prudent suggestions about cargo handling and discreet landing areas it was evident he thought his two American customers were drug smugglers. Given the CIA's shady operations in Central America, that came as no surprise. He asked no questions and insisted he be paid what he called a security deposit, big enough to buy himself a Boeing 747, in dollars. As he carefully counted every bill to make sure he wasn't being cheated, he warned them to keep in mind Guatemala's territorial claims over Belize and do whatever they could to blend into the background. Austin observed that might be impossible with the bright mustard-yellow paint covering the old plane. The man shrugged and disappeared into the shadows with his wad of bills.
Austin had to admit the plane was better suited for the job than a newer and flashier aircraft would have been. It wasn't exactly the Concorde. Yet with a cruising speed of one hundred twenty-five miles per hour it ate up distance and was slow enough to serve as an ideal flying observation platform. Moreover, it was designed for short takeoff and landing on water or land.
Zavala was keeping the plane below three thousand feet. They were flying over the Peten, the thickly forested northern part of Guatemala that juts squarely into Mexico. The territory below had started as flat terrain and worked itself up to low rolling hills broken by rivers and their tributaries. It was once thickly settled by the Maya who used the rivers for intercity commerce, and several times they had glimpsed gray ruins through the trees. The distant peaks of the Maya Mountains rose from the haze off to the south. Austin marked their progress on a clipboard that held a map with the grid overlay on acetate. He referred constantly to the compass and the GPS finder.
'We're coming up on the junction point, where the jaws meet,' he said,. pointing to the map. He glanced at his watch. 'Another thirty seconds should put us there.' Austin peered out the window again. They were following a squiggle of river that meandered back and forth like blue Christmas ribbon candy and widened into the small lake dead ahead. Seconds later Austin pointed at the shimmering water. 'That's it. The jaws of Kukulcan.'
'We should have brought the mini-sub,' Zavala said.
'Let's make a few runs around the lake. If we don't run into ack-ack fire we'll set her down.'
Zavala breathed on his aviator-style sunglasses, wiped the lenses on a sleeve, and adjusted them on his nose. He gave the thumbsup sign and banked the plane so the horizon . tilted sharply. Zavala brought the same flying techniquea combination of F16 jockey and fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants barn-stormer to whatever vehicle he controlled, whether it was a submersible or an airplane that was built when Harry Truman was starting his first term as president.
The lake looked like a huge staring eye from the air. It was oval in shape and had a small island about where the pupil would be. It was small, about half a mile in length and half as wide. The river shot off at a sharp angle and curved around the lake until it intersected with water flowing from an outlet at the other end. Austin decided the lake must be replenished by springs or streams hidden by the trees.
The Beaver wheeled twice around the lake, but they saw nothing out of the ordinary. With the way apparently clear, Zavala pointed the plane down as if he wanted to drill a hole in the water. At the last moment he pulled the nose up like a dive bomber and leveled off nicely until the white floats kissed the surface. The plane skimmed along like a flat stone, throwing off twin rooster tails before finally coming .to a rolling halt about midway between shore and island. Austin kicked open the door as the propeller spun to a choking halt. With the engine stopped a palpable silence enveloped the cockpit. Zavala radioed the ship with a position report, and Austin scanned the lake, the low cliffs, and the island with his binoculars, taking his time until he was sure, as far as possible, that they were alone.
'Everything looks fine,' he said, lowering the binoculars. He squinted toward the middle of the lake. 'Something about that island bothers me.'
Zavala leaned over Austin's shoulder and pulled his baseball cap lower over his forehead to shield his eyes against the sun sparkle. 'It looks perfectly okay to me.'
'That's the problem. The placement is too perfect. If you drew lines shore-to-shore from north to south and east to west, that island would be at the intersection, like a target in the crosshairs of a rifle scope. Exact center.'
Zavala restarted the engine and gave the propeller enough power to pull them along at a couple of knots. Then he cut throttle and let the plane drift closer to the island. They threw an anchor over the side and estimated from the length of the tethering line that the lake was more than one hundred feet deep. They inflated a rubber raft, climbed into it from the plane's pontoons, and paddled the short distance to the island, pulling the raft up onto the grasscovered mud. Austin estimated the island at about thirty feet across. It looked like the misshapen shell of a giant turtle, rising quickly from the water to a roundish summit about fifteen feet high. Undeterred by the thick growth of ferns and succulents, Zavala climbed up the slope. Near the top he let out a yell and stepped back as if recoiling from an invisible punch.
Austin's body tensed and his hand went to the pistol at his hip. 'What's wrong?' he shouted. His first thought was that Joe had stumbled onto a nest of adders,
Zavala's peals of laughter startled a flock of white birds into the air like confetti blown in the wind.
'The island is occupied, Kurt. Come up and I'll introduce you to the landlord.'
Austin quickly climbed the small hill and peered at the toothy skeleton jaw grinning behind the bushes, He pushed the leaves aside to reveal a grotesque stone head about twice life size, carved into the lintel over a squared-off opening. The opening was set into the side of a block-shaped structure that was buried in loose soil almost to the top of its flat, crenelated roof and decorated with a border of skulls similar to but smaller than the one they first saw. Using a sheath knife, Austin dug away at the dirt and enlarged the opening so Zavala could get his head and shoulders in.
Zavala flashed a light around inside. 'I think I can squeeze in.' He wriggled through the opening feet first.
Austin heard a loud sneeze, then Zavala saying, 'Bring a Dust Buster with you.' Austin worked to enlarge the opening, then he followed Zavala inside.
He looked around. 'Not exactly the Hilton.' His words echoed.
The box-like space was the size of a two-car garage. The walls were thick enough to repel a direct hit from a cannon. Austin's head almost touched the low roof. The plastered walls were plain except for dark blotches that covered most of their surface and four floor-to-ceiling portals like the one they had just come through. The doorways were clogged by rootbound earth that was as hard as cement.
