The Fifth Harmonic (9 page)

Rain forest Muzak.

The quotidian rhythm of jungle life continued uninterrupted, taking no notice of him.

Will slapped at a stinging spot on his neck, and his hand came away with a dead mosquito on his palm. Well, something was taking notice of him. Maybe it would be a good idea to close up the Jeep now.

He stepped around to the rear and found the door flaps under his duffel. He also found an extra machete. He pulled it out and hefted it. The handle was cheap plastic, the long flat blade a dull black except for the steely glint along its honed edge, but somehow he felt better knowing he had it. He gave it a few practice swings, then slipped it through his belt.

The door flaps snapped into place easily, and he zipped the rear panel closed. There. That should keep out the bugs very nicely.

Just for the hell of it, he slipped behind the wheel and tried the ignition. No luck. The damn engine still refused to turn over.

The enclosed Jeep was hot and stuffy now, so he stepped out again. He considered pulling out his laptop and putting down the events of the day, but he was thirsty. He had a machete; all he had to do was find a coconut and chop it open as Ambrosio had.

He strolled up the gully, looking for a coconut palm. After a few dozen paces, the sound of running water caught his ear. It seemed to be coming from somewhere ahead and to the right.

A stream or a river maybe. Even better than a coconut.

As he moved on, looking for a break in the brush, he thought he saw a patch of sunlight beyond the roadside trees. That could only mean some sort of clearing. He found a narrow path into the undergrowth, probably an animal trail, climbed up the bank, and followed it in.

The going was slightly uphill and fairly easy for a couple of hundred feet. Along the way he noticed a dark brown, two-foot mound to his right. The ants moving in and out of the hole atop their hill were a good ten times larger than the leafcutters he'd seen before. He shuddered at a brief nightmare image of tripping and falling into
that
, and moved on.

Another twenty feet or so and he came to a thick tangle of bush and vine. Whatever had made the trail apparently squeezed under
the tangle. Will wasn't about to try that, but he sensed that the clearing was just beyond.

He pulled out his machete and began hacking. It wasn't easy work, and his shirt was soaked with sweat by the time he broke through. He grinned. He'd made it to the clearing. But what he saw straight ahead brought him up short.

A pyramid.

It sat in the center of the clearing, basking in a pool of sunlight angling in over the treetops. Will had read up on the Maya in the past week, and had seen pictures of the temples and pyramids at Tulum and Chichen Itza. This one resembled those, but not as large; and in much worse condition. The jungle had gone a long way toward reclaiming it—vines, mosses, bromeliads, and even trees with long, snakelike roots crowded its crumbling steps and basked in the sun atop its templed crown. But the resurgent foliage hadn't yet been able to obliterate its man-made lines. No doubt about it: an undiscovered Mayan temple.

And
I
found it!

His heart raced with exhilaration. He hadn't been here a day and look what he'd discovered.

When was the last time human eyes looked on this spot? he wondered. A hundred, five hundred, a thousand years?

Mesmerized by the wonder of that possibility, he pushed through the undergrowth toward his find.

Passing a tilted, vine-covered column that he at first took to be a dead tree trunk, he was startled to see a pair of eyes peering out at him. As he cut away some of the vines for a better look, he realized that he'd found a Mayan stela, one of the carved stone pillars they set up around their public areas. This one appeared to be red sandstone; it stood a good eight feet above the ground, and probably had at least another four feet planted in the soil.

The parted vines revealed a frowning face, almost Asian in its flatness, wearing an elaborately carved headdress alive with gaping jaws and bared teeth. A snarling jaguar head jutted from where his chest should be. But the cold merciless eyes of that face unsettled him.

He moved on toward the pyramid—
his
pyramid—and started to climb its steps. The sound of rushing water was louder here and he
hesitated. The exertion of cutting his way through to here had increased his thirst. Maybe he should find the river, then explore the pyramid.

The light suddenly faded and Will looked up. A dark billowing cloud had swallowed the sun where it had been poised above the trees. A deep rumble of thunder announced that Ambrosio's Chac was coming back for a return engagement.

Will looked longingly toward the boxlike temple atop the pyramid, but decided to postpone a peek inside. He didn't want to get caught out in the storm that was barreling this way.

If nothing else, he thought as he hurried back toward the trail, the rain will solve the thirst problem.

By the time he found the gully, the wind was bending the trees and shaking loose the remainder of the last downpour. The roaring thunder and lightning flashes filtering through the leafy canopy spurred him into a run. He made it to the Jeep just in time.

Will had heard of tropical rains but had never experienced one. There was no build up—one moment the storm was threatening, the next instant he was underwater. If the Jeep had been moving, he'd have sworn they'd driven into the Mesoamerican equivalent of Niagara Falls. The water battered the hood like a thousand angry fists,
pounded
the canvas roof with such force that Will cringed in his seat, fearing it would tear and he'd drown. A couple of minor rivulets ran down the inside walls from leaky seams, but nothing serious. He stayed dry, but he could see nothing but water through the windshield. His world had shrunk to this noisy little two-seat cubicle.

The storm raged for a good hour, then gave up and moved on, leaving Will in the dripping darkness. Night seemed to fall as quickly as the rain.

Will unsnapped the door and stepped out for a breath of fresh air. His boot landed in running water. The gully had turned into a stream.

Where the hell was Ambrosio? How long before he got back? He hoped nothing had happened to the little guy.

Will hopped back up on the narrow running board. At least the Jeep was clean now. He scooped some water off the canvas roof and drank it.

Swallowing accentuated the fullness at the back of his throat, reminding him of the ticking bomb within. He drank some more, then crawled back into the Jeep and buttoned it up.

So here he was, alone in the dark, with no idea of how long he'd be stuck here.

Might as well make the best of it, he thought.

He reached over the seat, unzipped his duffel, and extracted his laptop. Maybe he should start the journal of his adventure tonight. And maybe not. He wasn't sure he could resist the temptation to open this chapter with, “It was a dark and stormy night.”

He decided to send e-mail first. He tapped out a message to Kelly, telling her he'd made it to wherever he was—he told her he was in Mexico—and that he was doing fine.

He plugged his satellite modem card into the PCMCIA slot and raised the little antenna. The Jeep's canvas top wouldn't hamper his uplink a bit. He'd been told that this was the cutting edge in computer communication and would work anywhere in the world. It had worked fine in Westchester, but this would be the real test.

It took three tries, but finally he managed to log onto his e-mail account via satellite. As he uploaded Kelly's letter, he saw that he had mail waiting for him—from Terziski. He downloaded that and read it immediately:

Doc—

Having trouble confirming Maya Quennell's CV. Discrepancies at her primary sources. Checking further. Will get back to you.

—Terziski

Terse and to the point. Too terse. Terziski seemed to think e-mail was like a telegram—he wrote as if he were getting charged by the word.

“Discrepancies at her primary sources . . .” What the hell did that mean? The detective hadn't come right out and said Maya was lying about her past, but that was certainly the implication.

Great. Will had left behind Western civilization to trek off with a woman with discrepancies at her primary sources. He hoped he heard back from Terziski before he got too deep into this . . . whatever this was.

But for now, might as well make the best of it.

He didn't feel like writing, so he zipped the laptop back into the duffel, then checked the fittings on the canvas top, making sure they were snapped shut. He was pretty well shielded from nuisance creatures, like insects and snakes, but what about predators? Were there any? He remembered the jaguar head on that stela. Hopefully none of them were about, or if they were, he hoped they'd avoid something the size of the Jeep.

Figuring sleep would speed the passage of time, Will pushed back the seat as far as it would go, got as comfortable as he could, and closed his eyes . . .

“Wha—?”

Will awoke with a start. He straightened in the seat. How long had he been asleep? And what had awakened him?

A flash of light and a not-too-distant bellow answered the second question. Another storm? Didn't Chac give up?

The rain hit then, drowning out the thunder as it attacked the Jeep with another mad cacophonous tattoo like automatic gunfire against its roof and hood. Will wouldn't have thought it possible, but rain from this new storm seemed heavier than the last. How could clouds hold this much water?

And then the Jeep moved.

What the hell?

Will grabbed the dashboard as the vehicle swerved to the right, bumped something, then swerved left and stopped with a jolt. He moved his leg and heard his boot splash. Reaching across to the driver's side, he found the light switch and turned it. The glow from the
dashboard revealed nearly an inch of water on the floor, and more running in around the door flap. He pushed the flap open and gasped as water cascaded into the Jeep. A brilliant flash of lightning revealed little through the deluge, but enough to show water flowing all around. Flowing fast.

The gully had become a rushing stream. The rain alone couldn't account for all this. Only one explanation: the river, the one he'd heard but not seen, was overflowing its banks.

He pulled the door shut again, but the floor of the Jeep was now awash.

I should be all right if I sit tight, he told himself. After all, how high can it get?

As if in answer, the current lifted the Jeep and began to carry it along. Will felt his heart hammer against his chest wall as the little vehicle tilted left and then right.

Don't panic, he told himself, but remembering how these vehicles had been criticized for having too high a center of gravity did not help.

Moving sideways, the Jeep picked up speed until the driver side wheels caught on something and it began to tip.

“Oh, Christ!”

Will kicked out the passenger door and scrambled out. He landed in waist-high water. Through the lightning-strobed torrent he saw the Jeep tip about forty-five degrees, then hold. The current swirled around it, pushing at it, but whatever it had caught on seemed to be supporting it. But it was useless to Will as shelter. He had to get out of this water. He imagined snakes and maybe even alligators floating his way from the river . . .

Yes, he definitely had to climb a tree or find higher ground, but first . . . he reached back into the Jeep and found the machete. Good. At least he had a chance of self-defense with that. Now where?

The pyramid.

How far had he floated? Surely not past the trail he'd found earlier. Using the lightning flashes to guide him, he moved further downstream, trying to remember any landmarks he'd passed this afternoon, but it was no use; everything looked so different now.

Finally he spotted an opening in the brush but couldn't tell if it
was the same one. He didn't care. He had to get out of this mini-river. He splashed up to the bank, but as he followed the trail, he sensed the water rising behind him.

Where the hell am I?

He almost cheered when the lightning revealed a recently hacked web of vines directly ahead. He scraped through as a particularly brilliant flash drenched the clearing in white light. Even so, he could barely make out the ghostly shape of the pyramid dead ahead. The rain fell even harder here in this open area, so hard he felt he might have to use his machete to carve his way through the cascade.

He splashed toward the pyramid. And the closer he got, the eerier it looked in the flashes. Almost forbidding. But he couldn't let that put him off. He needed a high, dry sanctuary against the rising water, and right now the temple atop this pile of stone was the only game in town.

He slowed as he hit the steps, picking his way by touch and an occasional flash as he climbed over the vines and tree roots, skirting the bushes. After a few minor stumbles and scrapes he made it to the dark maw of the temple—literally a maw, since the Mayas had carved the head of some sort of monster around the opening.

He stepped through and stood dripping in the darkness, reveling in simply being out of the rain. He looked around. The space measured ten by twelve at most, with an identical doorway in the opposite wall. Small, yes, but it was relatively dry. The roof leaks were minor. Those Mayas knew how to build.

It took him a moment or two longer to realize that he was not alone.

The smell was the first clue—the acrid scent of animal droppings. The rustle of leathery wings in the darkness above him was the confirmation.

Bats.

Will ducked into a cringing squat and looked up at the ceiling. He could see nothing there. But he definitely could hear their agitated wings and an occasional squeak. He guessed they were about ten feet above him in the narrow angle of the roof.

Lots of bats in the northeast were rabid. What about these? And weren't there vampire bats in this area of the world—the ones that
sucked blood from cattle? Or was that in South America? He never should have canceled his subscription to
National Geographic
.