Sam worked his way around the clearing at a distance, trying hard to avoid discovery. When he was directly behind Carmichael, he slowly crawled to him through the thick jungle vegetation. Staying hidden by the trees and Carmichael’s body, Sam reached out with his knife and sawed through the rope at Carmichael’s wrists, then his ankles. He took out his second pistol, switched off the safety, and placed it in Carmichael’s right hand. Then he crawled a few feet farther and cut the rope from Tim’s noose where it was secured to the tree trunk. He tucked an inch of the rope end into the remaining loop of rope behind the tree so it would look the same.
Sam crawled backward, retreating deeper into the brush. He took his time, selecting a spot where he, Remi, and Tim would have the men in a perfect cross fire. Now and then, one of the men around the tarp would turn and glance at Carmichael and see that he was still standing with his hands behind his back and the noose around his neck.
When Sam judged that he, Remi, and Carmichael were each a hundred twenty degrees apart on the circle, he raised his pistol, stepped close to the circle, placed his body behind the trunk of a tree, and showed only his right eye and his gun hand. “You!” he shouted in Spanish. “Leave those guns on the ground and step away from them!”
The men were startled and jerked their heads toward Sam’s voice. One started to raise his rifle, but Sam fired, and the man collapsed backward.
Carmichael shouted, “Drop the guns!”
Some of the men looked and saw he was suddenly free, aiming a gun at them. They set their rifles back down. One man saw this as unacceptable, pivoted with his rifle to aim at Carmichael, but Carmichael was no longer visible. He had slipped into the bushes. The man raised his weapon to aim, but a shot was fired from Remi’s side of the circle. It hit his arm and made him drop the rifle on the ground.
The remaining men moved back from their rifles and put their hands on their heads. Sam came out from behind his tree, knowing Remi and Carmichael were covering him. He kept his gun on the men as he took each rifle and tossed it to his side of the clearing so they formed a pile.
When Sam had the rifles, Tim Carmichael showed himself, holding Sam’s second pistol on his captors. Sam said, “Are you hurt?”
“Just a little. None of these clowns shot me anyway.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“They’re as talkative as a bunch of crows, but they never said anything to reveal that. I guess they’re just a bunch of guys who saw the helicopter, knew it was valuable, and tried to take it.”
“Is your helicopter all right?”
“It’s fine. I thought I’d get out of it and take a nap in the shade. When I woke up, I had already lost a fistfight.”
The sound of a helicopter in the distance drew their attention. The roar grew louder, the leaves on trees began to whip back and forth in the wind, and the helicopter hovered. Looking up, Sam and Remi could see through the treetops that there was a man in an open doorway holding an M16 rifle.
“Maybe you’d better let them see you, Tim,” said Sam.
Carmichael stepped into the area by his helicopter and waved both arms while Sam and Remi kept their guns on their prisoners. The radio in Tim’s helicopter squealed. “We see you, Tim. You all right?” It was the voice of Art Bowen.
Tim snatched the microphone. “Yes. The Fargos are here with me. We’ve got five prisoners, two of them wounded.”
“Sit tight. We’re coming in.”
The helicopter landed, and three men came running, carrying M16 rifles. The middle-aged, stocky man piloting the helicopter came more slowly, but he was also armed with an M16.
As Sam and Remi walked with Tim Carmichael to watch Art Bowen and his men load the five prisoners into the helicopters, Remi said, “I’ll bet Tim would like to take a few days off after this.”
Carmichael climbed into the pilot’s seat and put on his just-recovered sunglasses. “You know, I just might. When I was listening to those five talk, I realized that the only reason I’m alive is that, without me, they couldn’t move the helicopter.”
Chapter 25
Sarah Allersby walked from the pair of parked helicopters into the thick Guatemalan forest. The brush had grown over this trail a thousand years ago, so it would be difficult to demonstrate to her guests that this was a Mayan trail, although she was sure it was. She hacked her way along with a machete, watching her feet to find a spot that would be clear enough for the revelation.
She glanced back along the trail. There were fifteen journalists, all of them carrying complicated camera equipment and recorders and satellite phones. But they were all chattering away with one another about God knows what. They weren’t paying attention to the special place where she had brought them.
Sarah looked down and stopped, then called for their attention. “Look, everyone. We’re on a Mayan thoroughfare. It’s a paved foot road.” She stepped aside to let the journalists come forward to take pictures of the pavement. A few listlessly snapped the ground, with its layer of whitish cobbles, but more were inclined to take photographs of Sarah hacking through the overgrowth. That, she reflected, was all right too.
She pushed ahead, then looked back beyond the photographers at the longer line of armed men she had brought into the jungle, carrying their Belgian rifles. It was costing her a great deal of money, but this time she was going to be sure she had the manpower to keep everything under control. After the disappearance of the five men Russell had sent to clear the helicopter landing spot, she had left little to chance. She knew the ruin was only a short distance away now, so she kept moving, hacking at the vines and brush in her way. She finally burst through the bush and stepped onto the great plaza. “There,” she shouted. “There is the city, the lost city I’ve found.”
She stepped boldly forward on the plaza. Ahead of her, on both sides of the wide-open space, were huge pyramids, and to her side was the biggest one so far. And while the reporters were ignorant about the structure, she had already seen the beautiful paintings on stucco inside the temple at its top. The architecture and art revealed a society that had been rich and complicated, colorful and full of life. And the place had been abandoned before the Normans invaded England.
There were sure to be hoards of priceless artifacts hidden deep in the royal tombs of a place this size. It was spectacular. She had already found a few things and they had stimulated her appetite. But even more, she wanted these newspeople to see her doing some excavating. A couple of photographs and some actual footage that could be shown on television in Europe and the United States would further the process of her transformation. Right now, she was dismissed as just one more heiress with exotic tastes. When her discoveries were all revealed, she would be a major power in the world of archaeology. Nobody would know her discoveries had all come from her Mayan codex, so she could still stage a “discovery” of it years from now and get full credit for that too.
She was perfectly dressed in a tailored explorer’s outfit, a tan shirt with epaulets and the sleeves rolled up, tailored pants in the same fabric, and polished boots, and she strode ahead with a kind of heroic energy, moving toward the huge pyramid that dominated the end of the plaza as though it were a beast she was conquering, when she heard a sudden wave of chatter behind her. She stopped and looked over her shoulder.
The journalists had come about thirty yards into the great plaza. They all seemed to be awed by the enormous size and imposing character of the city’s buildings, all of them partially sheathed in vegetation. Unlike most of the lost cities Sarah had visited, the tallest buildings were not totally obscured by the plants and dirt. Their outlines were fairly clear.