In the main cabin, Diana gasped and grabbed onto Riley’s arm as the aircraft bobbed about on the surface of the lake. As the one working prop slowed down above them and the roar of the engine settled down into a much quieter whine, Charlie looked through the window and took in the jungle surrounding the lake. “So when they said this place was remote, they actually meant unbelievably bloody remote.”
“Yes,” Decker said. “Yes, I think they did mean that.”
They climbed out of the Avalon and waded through the shallow water around the aircraft, passing their packs of gear from one to the next until it was on the shore. They stacked the heavy backpacks, full of camping equipment, ropes, glow sticks, food and water, into a big heap and watched the old seaplane bobbing up and down, smoke from its damaged engine rising above them in the moonlight. It drifted above the lake for a few seconds and then the breeze picked it up it was gone over the tropical canopy. They listened as the sound of the engine quietly faded, to be replaced with the relentless chirping of cicadas and croaking of marsh frogs.
“Well…” Riley said, reaching down for his pack. “Welcome to the —.”
“No,” Selena said. “Do. Not. Say. It.”
He laughed and hoisted the pack up over his shoulders. “You know me too well, Professor Moore.”
Decker was surprised to see a smile on Selena’s face which she had tried to hide by turning away and pulling her pack out of the pile. No matter what she said, he knew there would always be a special place in her heart for Riley Carr.
Decker waded back into the lake and started examining the aircraft’s control surfaces. After a short search, he laughed bitterly in the night. “Son of a bitch! I was right – someone definitely shot us. These are gunshots. Unmistakable.”
“But how can that be?” Diana said. “No one can possibly know we’re here.”
“Local tribes?” Riley asked.
Acosta shrugged. “Perhaps, but highly improbable. The local tribes in this area are certainly some of the most remote in all of Middle America, but they are not known to be hostile.”
Decker was wading back to the shore. “Well, someone sure as shit is hostile. My goddam plane is trashed. That’s going to take hours to repair, and that’s presuming I have the necessary parts in the back of the plane.”
“Damn it,” Selena said. “This is really going to slow us down.”
Atticus said, “If you ask me, it was Tarántula and his men. They took the seal, and someone has clearly translated it for them. They got here before us because they left Xunantunich before us. The rest is history.”
“Agreed,” Decker said. “And that means they’re already here and ahead of us.”
“How the hell did they get out here?” Riley asked.
“There are some locations where a chopper can land,” Acosta said. “Not many because of the density of the forest. There have been calls to make new clearings but there are many regulations about deforestation here. This is a very special ecosystem and each clearing takes a long time to justify. So, I guess they flew out on a chopper and landed in a clearing somewhere.”
“So, how far away is Flower Mountain?” Diana asked.
“Can I see the picture of the seal you took, Charlie?” Selena said.
He handed it over and she frowned. Then, Atticus and Acosta gathered around her and all three of them studied the picture in the beam of a flashlight. “Unfortunately, quite far away,” Acosta said at last. “We need to head in this direction.”
A gunshot ripped through the night.
“Everyone take cover!” Decker said. “Looks like whoever shot the plane out of the sky isn’t done with us yet!”
17
The sound of gunshots cracked in the night, sending countless scarlet macaws flapping out of the canopy above their heads. Decker and Riley had already drawn their weapons and were firing back, but blindly. There was no way to tell where the shooting’s point of origin.
Charlie drew his gun and pulled up beside the Australian. “You know where they are yet?”
“Not a clue, mate.”
Decker cleared some foliage away from his face and searched the dark jungle. “And now they seem to have stopped shooting.”
Riley nodded. “They don’t want to give their position away.”
“So what now?” Selena said. “We can’t just wait here all night waiting to get shot at. They might be surrounding us or something.”
Diana stared into the trees. “I don’t like this at all.”
“We can’t wait here,” Riley said. “We might not know their position, but they know ours. We should get the packs and get started into the jungle. Keep quiet and put some distance between us and this place as fast as poss.”
“Sounds good to me,” Decker said. “Let’s get the rest of the packs.”
The journey south through the Lacandon Jungle punished the crew members hard. Pathways through the jungle were hard to find and the last three miles of track was pitted with ruts and grooves and other scars of the unforgiving tropical climate. Hours passed and dawn broke quickly, shattering the black night with soft rays of golden sunlight.
They marched on. Most of the way, the jungle closed in over the track, but now they broke through into an exposed section. The difference in temperature was stark. Gone was the humid, cloying grip of the jungle, replaced instead by the merciless torture of a white hot sun, already high in the sky. It pitched down on them with an intensity that felt personal, and Selena began struggling with it straightaway.
“This is as hot
