“I will ask Dr. Williams what this is, Fernando, and we will let you know as soon as we figure it out.”
Putting the device in her pocket, she walked back out to the table where Mason sat drawing blood.
“Hey, boss,” she called. “How about taking a short break and drinking some water?” She glanced up at the burning tropical sun. “You don’t want to get dehydrated since we have a long trip tomorrow.”
Mason sighed and wiped his sweating brow with a small towel on the table. “You’re right, Lauren.” He turned to Maria, “Maria, if you would continue to label these tubes with the person’s name I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Of course, Doctor,” she said.
Lauren led Mason to the shade of a large banyan tree and handed him bottled water.
As he tipped it up and began to drain it, Lauren whispered, “Look what Fernando found pinned to Motzi’s shirt when he took it off to wash it.”
Blocking the view from the village, she slipped the small device into his hand. As he replaced the cap on the bottle of water, he glanced down at the device and gave a low whistle.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I think it’s a state-of-the-art GPS transmitter.”
“You know it could only have been put on him by someone at the lab.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “That’s what bothers me.” He pocketed the device and looked around the village. “Why would a member of my team want to do that? They knew where we were going, and they knew I’d stay in touch with them by sat-phone.”
“They knew generally where we were headed, but we and they didn’t know exactly where Motzi’s village was. Maybe they were afraid we’d get lost and they could use this thing to help us find our way out of the jungle.”
He wagged his head. “That doesn’t make sense, Lauren. My sat-phone has a GPS finder function in it so this thing is superfluous.”
He thought for a moment. “Unless one of them is working at cross-purposes to the rest of us, perhaps for someone else, and they wanted to be able to track us without the other members of the team knowing about it.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Remember that wood smoke we smelled the other night? What if the GPS unit was used so that someone else could track us? That way they could follow us without having to stay so close that we would notice them behind us.”
“Of course, that must be it,” he said. He used the motion of taking another drink of water to mask his glance at the surrounding jungle.
He started and immediately looked down at the ground. “Holy shit, Lauren! I just saw the glint of sunlight off of a glass in the jungle on that ridge over there,” he said, casting his eyes toward a ridge a couple of hundred yards from the edge of the village.
Resisting the urge to glance in that direction, Lauren asked, “Do you think someone has us under surveillance?”
“I hope so,” he said. “It’s either binoculars the sun reflected off of or it’s a rifle scope.”
“It’s got to be binoculars,” she said. “Whoever it is has had plenty of opportunities to kill us if that’s what they had in mind.”
“What do you think they want?” he asked, trying his best not to look up at the jungle again.
“Are you kidding?” she asked. “Do you have any idea what a cure of the anthrax plague would be worth? Heck, it’d have to be worth billions at least.”
He shook his head. “I just can’t believe any member of my team would become a traitor for money.”
She shrugged, “Okay then, maybe it’s not for money. Maybe it’s political, or to settle a grudge against America, or hell, I don’t know. It could be anything, and without more data to go on we could guess all day and still might not get it right.”
“You’re right, the reason doesn’t matter right now. What matters is what are we going to do about it?”
“They’ve got to be following us hoping to get their hands on the plague cure, for whatever reason. So what we have to do is figure out how to get back to the lab and get our results to the right people without being stopped.”
He glanced around at the jungle-covered mountains surrounding the village and frowned. “Any ideas on just how we might be able to do that?”
She smiled grimly. “I just might have, but I’m going to have to talk to Motzi first. Now, you get back to drawing blood as if nothing has happened and let’s continue to play dumb and try not to look up at that ridge anymore. Whoever they are they’ve got to be thinking that we’re not going to leave until morning, and they’ve got to believe that we’ll be heading back the way we came. If I’m right, I think we’ll be able to use those beliefs against them.”
Chapter 30
While Mason went back to his blood drawing, Lauren searched out and found Motzi surrounded by a group of smaller boys. He was in the midst of regaling them with stories of his heroic journey back from the dangerous El Norte and how he’d outwitted the treacherous soldados.
“Motzi,” she called, beckoning him to join her as she ambled down the path toward the river.
“Sí, señorita?” he asked, scrambling to keep up with her as she wound her way through the jungle that rimmed the river.
She turned to face him and waved her hand at the river. “Motzi, do you know the river well?”
He glanced at the rapidly flowing water and shrugged. “Sí, I think so.”
She knelt before him and took his shoulders in her hands. “Motzi, I need to tell you something, but it is a very important secret, and you must promise not to tell anyone else in the village… not even your father. Okay?”
“Sí,” and Motzi solemnly crossed his heart as she’d seen American kids do when they made a serious promise.
“Good. Dr. Williams and I have discovered that some very bad men have been following us and are going to try to take the medicine and the blood samples from us when we head back down the trail tomorrow.”
Motzi’s eyes grew large and he hit a fist into his palm. “I knew it!” he exclaimed. “I… I felt like when big cat in jungle is watching Motzi hunt, but I no tell you ’cause I feel you make fun of Motzi.”
“Your feelings were right, Motzi. We think they followed us all the way from the lab to your village.”
He frowned. “Bastardos!” And then he winced and said, “I sorry, señorita. Not mean to say bad word.”
Lauren laughed. “That’s okay, Motzi. I agree with you. They are bastards, and Dr. Williams and I are counting on you to help us escape them.”
Motzi stuck out his chest and grinned. “Hokay.”
Lauren stood and looked up and down the banks of the river. Every so often, small skiff-like flat-bottomed boats were pulled up on the sandy shores. Most were pretty ragged but there were a few that looked to be well-cared-for and in good shape for what she had in mind.
“Do you know where the river goes?”
Motzi thought for a moment, and then he nodded uncertainly. “Motzi never go all the way downriver, but I been told goes around big mountain and comes out in big water near village of Tehuantepec.” He frowned, “But Señorita Lauren, that many, many miles away.”
“That’s okay, Motzi.” She smiled, “We’ll be riding, not walking.”
She began to move back up the trail toward the village. “Now, here’s what I want you to do. Go to Maria and see if she will make us some food that we can carry with us, and it’ll have to last us for at least a week. Also, you’ll need to gather up all of our empty water bottles and fill them with clean water so we won’t get dehydrated on our journey. Do you think you can do that without the bad men who are watching us from the jungle seeing you?”