Aztec Gold (4 page)

Rogers stood up as well and shook his head. “Damn shame, losing such a fine man.”

With that, he sauntered over to his tent. He had pitched it on the edge of the larger tent that she and Dani intended to share and far from Booth’s. That left only Hernandez by the campfire, and as Cynthia met the team leader’s gaze, she noted his uncertainty.

“You don’t think they’re dead, do you?” she asked, rubbing her arms to banish the chill that had arisen despite the heat of the night. She told herself it was from the cooling evening air and not the discussion.

Hernandez poked a long stick into the campfire and a few logs shifted, sending a spray of glowing embers into the emptiness of the night sky. After, he shrugged. A furrow knit his brow as he said, “Yolotli Yaotl believes they may be better off dead. I don’t disagree.”

Dani patted Cynthia on the back, trying to comfort her, but something quickened inside of her. Something that straightened her spine and tightened her gut with determination. “We’re going to find out what happened. We’re going to find the temple no matter what.”

Hernandez snorted inelegantly and tossed his stick into the fire. Rising, he said, “Channeling Coronado, are you? Just remember how most of those conquistadors ended up.”

Cynthia was awake way before the sunrise.

She had not slept soundly.

The discussion around the campfire the night before and the stillness of the night had forced memories of how her parents had died to rush out of her brain.

A few weeks earlier she had turned an awkward and lonely twelve. She had been playing by the campfire with a doll her parents had somehow had delivered to their remote camp. Her parents had been beside her, discussing the latest developments in their studies when they had heard the noise of booted feet crashing through the jungle and the cries of the men, which grew louder as they approached.

Somehow her parents had known the clamor meant trouble.

They had secreted her in a small belowground food locker they had built weeks earlier to protect their supplies from an assortment of wild animals.

Even now she could still smell the wetness of the earth and the ripe fruits in the shelter as they had slipped the plywood deck over her. Hear the rustle as her father draped a tarp over the wood and then the vibration of something heavy dropping into place above the locker.

She had curled up into a fetal position in a far corner, praying that nothing bad would happen. But then the screams had started. The deep voices of men shouting in a foreign tongue nearly drowned out the wails and cries of her parents pleading for mercy.

As the voices of her mother and father faded, the violence continued as the men had tossed their camp in a frenzy. Above her she heard the crash, thump and drag of items being trashed, and if possible she had made herself into an even tinier ball and continued to pray.

Eventually the still of the night replaced the gruesome sounds of the attack.

She had held on to her doll for the two days she had remained secreted beneath the ground until the local game wardens, having heard a report of trouble, had come to the camp to investigate.

She still had the doll tucked away in a drawer at home. It was her last connection to her parents.

Fighting back tears, Cynthia drove away those recollections and forced herself back to the now. In some ways Rafe had been right that she spent too much time letting the past dictate her life.

She hadn’t just been afraid to live her own life. She had been afraid to let Rafe live his for fear he would suffer an end much like her parents.

It didn’t help that her fears had not been misplaced.

With her arms pillowed behind her head, she listened to the quiet of the predawn morning. A peaceful morning filled with promise, she reminded herself as she battled those old demons.

Although it was dark, she would have to rise soon if they were to get underway with the sunrise and be able to take a break during the hottest part of the day.

Dani stirred beside her, stretching and then shifting to her side in the sleeping bag. She brushed back some errant locks of her straight blond hair, and with eyes still half-closed with sleep, she said, “Ready for the big day?”

Big day?
Most would have said that finally leaving the quiet safety of the museum had been her big day, but maybe Dani was right. Maybe this was her big day. Today they would enter
la selva del diablo
, and somewhere in all that jungle, there might be an ancient temple and some hint of what had happened to her lover.

“As ready as anyone can be,” she replied, sat up and tossed aside the one flap of her sleeping bag. They changed quickly, replacing their shorts and T-shirts with the more protective but lightweight khakis they would wear for the remainder of their trek into the jungle. She strapped the heavy leather belt with the holstered pistol onto her waist and secured it well. For good measure, she made sure an eight-inch hunting knife was within easy reach on her left side and jostled the canteen toward the back of her belt to confirm it was still full. She had replenished her drinking supply with the sweet refreshing spring water from the fountain in the town’s
zocalo
.

On the way to the
zocalo
the night before, she had passed the adobe homes of the villagers. The large single-room structures had only one story, with high-ceilinged flat roofs to help deal with the heat and humidity. Only the
calpulli’s
home boasted a second story, a testament to his position as leader.

An occasional peek inside revealed that several relatives lived under one roof. Near the entrance to one home she had caught sight of a young woman twisting cotton and other fibers onto a stick while nearby an older woman, probably her mother, used a clay spindle whorl of brightly colored thread to make fabric on a small loom.

At the
zocalo
, a few villagers had also been gathering water in large earthenware jugs, while another group of men sat playing a board game.

They had shot her uneasy glances as she filled her canteen and Dani’s, but she had given them a smile and wished them good-night in Nahuatl, which somehow seemed to break past their reticence.

Cynthia wondered if the villagers would still be as cautious today as she exited the tent into the darkness of very early morning. Hernandez was at the ring of stones surrounding the remains of the campfire from last night. He had collected more deadfall and was starting another fire so they could prepare some coffee and breakfast. A few yards away their guides were loading up the two burros with their gear.

She and Dani turned their attention to taking down their tent and placing it beside Hernandez’s, which was already neatly packed and sitting close to the burros. With that done, they prepped the coffeepot and were taking dried meal packets from their rations when two of the female settlers approached, carrying a small cast-iron pot.

She recognized the pair from the night before when she had spoken to them at the
zocalo
. The one woman smiled at her and dipped her head in greeting. She held up the pot and offered it to her. Accepting the gift, Cynthia took the lid off the pot to find that it was filled with a thin but fragrant gruel containing an assortment of fruits and chilies.
Atole
, Cynthia realized and thanked the woman, as did Dani.

The second woman carried something wrapped in thin leather and also held it up for her to take.

Cynthia accepted the package and undid the leather wrap, exposing a ten-inch-long dagger made from polished obsidian. Gold obsidian, she noted as she shifted the knife in her hands and the minimal light from the slowly growing campfire played on the ribbons of tawny color in the otherwise ebony blade.

Unlike gold, which had been plentiful and therefore of lesser value, obsidian was hard to find and highly prized in Aztec culture. It was why sacred tools had been made from the stone.

It was also why she could not take the knife.

“I cannot accept such a treasured item,” she said and tried to return the dagger, but the woman would not reconsider her gift.

“You will need it in the jungle. Only sacred stone will protect you, not the metal that you wear,” the woman said and motioned to the weapons on Cynthia’s gun belt.

Cynthia shot a glance at Dani, who hunched her shoulders in response. Cynthia realized she had no choice. Bowing, she thanked the woman, but as the pair of settlers turned away, she called out, “Why? Why do you give this to me?”

The woman who had handed her the knife replied, “
La selva
took our brother many years ago. We tried to give it to your friends to protect them, but they would not accept it. Now we give it you since we do not want
la selva
to hurt anyone else.”

Both she and Dani expressed their gratitude once more, and when the women had gone, Cynthia examined the knife, wondering at its age.

“It’s handmade, but beautifully so. See the almost invisible chisel marks along the top edge of the blade,” she advised and pointed out the very faint nicks to Dani.

The handle on the knife was wrapped with leather strips that had been carefully oiled and bore a smooth finish that came with age and meticulous maintenance.

“Why do you think Rafe wouldn’t take it?” Dani asked and danced her fingers along the blade.

Cynthia shrugged. “Maybe its age? Or maybe he didn’t believe their warnings about a demon.”

“And you do?” Dani asked almost incredulously.

“I’m not willing to take a chance that they’re right,” Cynthia replied and tucked the obsidian knife into her waistband, close to the handgun. After, she sat down on the logs by the fire to share the
atole
with Dani, Hernandez and the others who were awake.

Booth and Rogers finally straggled from their tents a short time later, but made quick work of readying their gear. When they were packed, they joined the rest of the group by the fire for a quick bite before they finished cleaning up and returned the cast-iron pot to the women.

The first streaks of a pink-gray dawn were coloring the sky when they set off along with two of their guides down the path through the far mouth of the valley and into the Devil’s Jungle.

The vegetation was manageable at first but grew ever thicker and more tangled underfoot the farther they went, evidence of the fact that few traveled along the jungle route. All around them broadleaf vegetation blanketed the ground beneath large piñon pines, mangroves and fig trees. Here and there, nestled in advantageous places, were bromeliads and orchids, some of them in bright colorful bloom. From not too far away came the screeches of howler monkeys and the rustle of the trees as a group of them swung through the branches and in turn scared up a flock of hundreds of neon green parakeets that took noisy flight.

As the team cut through one swath of thick growth along the path, they startled a raccoonlike coatimundi that had been rooting through the nearby foliage and dirt below in search of insects. In a flash of red-brown fur, the animal scurried deeper into the underbrush.

In other circumstances Cynthia might have enjoyed the stunning flora and fauna she was seeing during the trek. She had delighted in that aspect of the travels with her parents, who had always taken the time to explain to her about the different locales they were researching for their primate studies.

For the first hour of their trek, the guides took turns at the lead, hacking at the thick growth and verdant tangle of vines with a sharp machete. They were replaced by Hernandez, then Booth and Rogers and then finally Dani, while Cynthia carefully kept an eye on her compass and the copies of the two maps to make sure they were heading in the right direction.

By noon they settled down for a short break next to a large waterfall and pool—one indicated on both maps as a key landmark. They drank from the clear, crisp spring water and refilled their canteens. Splashed the cool liquid on themselves and ate a nourishing lunch to provide the energy they would need for the rest of that day’s journey. They supplemented their lunch and supplies with some fresh mangoes from a tree growing close to the spring.

As Cynthia munched on the sweet orangey flesh of the fruit and reviewed the maps, she calculated that they were within a few hours of the edge of the city wall surrounding the temple. When she advised the team, she could detect the nervous excitement that rose up in all of them. She quelled her own emotions, afraid her own determination would make her act in haste. Sitting back on a fallen tree trunk by the pool, she attempted to rest during the worst heat of the day when what she wanted to do more than anything was to keep on trudging along until they reached the supposed location of the temple.

Dani sat beside her, equally eager until a loud inhuman howl filled the air, startling all of them from their rest.

The scream was eerily louder and scarier than that of any of the howler monkeys that they had passed along the trail.

The sound was followed by an unnatural silence, as if all life in the jungle had held its collective breath. A minute or so after that came the slow rise of the jungle noises again. The assorted chirps and clacks of birds and insects. The occasional clatter and screech of monkeys in the surrounding trees.

“What was that?” Booth asked, rose and grabbed his binoculars, scanning the treetops in their proximity and then farther away as the sound had definitely come from somewhere above them and at a distance.

“Hopefully not the demon goddess,” Hernandez said, but there was no hint of sarcasm in his voice. He was deadly serious as he swung his rifle around to cradle it in his arms. Tension was evident in every line of his body as he did a slow circle to check the jungle all around them. With a quick bob of his head, he turned to them and suggested, “Maybe we should get going.”

Cynthia wasn’t about to disagree with him. The spine-chilling sound had shaken her also. “Maybe we should.”

Unfortunately the two guides, who had been reluctant at the onset of their entry into the Devil’s Jungle, refused to go any farther despite the exhortations of Hernandez that they had agreed to accompany them and would not be paid if they abandoned them. Nothing could convince the two men to linger any longer in the Devil’s Jungle, leaving Cynthia and the others to proceed along the trail on their own.

With their number diminished, they split up the supplies and equipment that the guides had been carting among their various backpacks and the burros, gathered their gear, and checked the packs on the burros. Once all appeared in order, they set off again, Booth starting off in the lead this time, his motions strong as he used the machete to cut a swath through the underbrush and vines ahead of them. As before, it was tiresome work and they all took their turns.

Once more the sights and sounds of the jungle accompanied them, although there was a new alertness given the unnatural scream from before. But the howl was not repeated during their travels.

Nearly three hours into their journey, they hit a major stumbling block.

Cynthia stared at the imposing hillside before them that was nearly twenty feet high and stretched in an east-west direction for as far as she could see. Low grasses, tangled vines and small bushes covered its sloping surface while a trail of calf-high scrub brush ran along its base.