Steve Martini - The Arraignment

“That’s where they’re all going,” he says.

The place looks like an Egyptian tomb-building scene out of the The Ten Commandments. A vast anthill of men, too many to count, wielding shovels and pushing wheelbarrows, not a single piece of heavy equipment anywhere in sight. Even concrete is being mixed in a series of large tumblers on location, no modern cement trucks.

“It’s what didn’t make any sense when you told me about the story Metz gave you. When labor is plentiful and cheap, why would you bring bulldozers and backhoes?” says Adam. “Besides, the government down here doesn’t favor it. You don’t get to depreciate your equipment in Mexico. You’re expected to hire your countrymen. Give them jobs. Did you notice the hotel staff last night?”

“What about them?”

“Veritable army,” says Adam. “It took three of them to lead each of us to our rooms, one to lead the way, one to carry our luggage, and one to follow along, I suppose to make sure we weren’t ambushed from behind. Mexico is learning how to avoid revolutions,” he says. “You have to admire them for the effort.”

“You sound like you travel down here regularly.”

“Enough. I like the people. Friendly. What you see is what you get.”

“Then why all the security?” I ask.

“I’m a humanitarian,” says Adam, “not a fool.” Something catches his eye. He leans forward and talks into Julio’s ear over the seat in front.

When he settles back, he looks at me and points off to our left. “That’s Puerto Adventuras up ahead there. It’s a resort. Has a fleet of good fishing boats. Have you ever done any deep-sea sport fishing?”

“No. I’ve had clients that are into it, though.”

“You should try it sometime. We’re going to stop there on the way back for dinner. We may spend the night, depending on how late it is.”

“I didn’t bring a change of clothes, toothbrush, or anything else.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll go native,” he says. “Besides, anything we need we can find there.”

We pass several signs with the word Cenote, each of these listing kilometers. I ask Julio about these.

He tells me that the Mayans considered them sacred watering holes. They worshiped at these caverns in the limestone under the jungle where large quantities of fresh water gathered, sometimes running in underground rivers.

“There are many of them in the jungle down here. Some of the Indians take their water from them even today. You want to be careful, though,” he says. “Watch out for ah… how do you say? Caiman.”

“Gators. Big ones,” says Herman. “What he’s tellin’ you is, you get off the road, you wanna watch where you take a drink.”

I make a mental note, not that I’m planning on drinking anything that doesn’t come out of a sealed bottle.

A few minutes farther up the road, and Julio is looking at a map spread open on his lap. He’s talking in Spanish into the handheld wireless again. “Aqui. No, no, no, no, aqui.”

The lead car throws on its brakes and suddenly turns left across the highway without a signal. The car doing at least forty. We all follow, a Mexican intersection.

We bounce along on a sand-strewn road into the strip of jungle between the highway and the coast, my body bucking in the seat belt. We travel for a few miles.

As we approach a rise in the road, Julio issues orders for the cars to slow down. Finally we stop. He marks the place on the map with his finger and confers with Herman, who seems to agree. Then Julio gets out of the car and runs up to the lead vehicle. The man in the passenger seat of that car gets out, and the two of them take off up the road, on foot.

They are gone for about five minutes, when I see Julio coming back toward us, a few steps and a skip as he hustles down the road. He finally reaches the car. Adam pushes the button, rolling down his window.

“This es the place.” Julio is out of breath, perspiration running down his forehead and cheeks, dripping from his chin. “You will want to take a look.”

Adam closes the window and gets out. He tells the driver to keep the motor running and the air-conditioning on.

I climb out on the other side while Julio opens the back of the car and fishes around for something. He comes up with a bottle of water, takes a long drink. “Senor?” He offers it to me.

I pass.

Then he finds two pairs of field glasses, large Bausch amp; Lomb’s, twelve power, fifty millimeters. He hands one to me and the other to Adam, then leads us back up the road.

It takes three or four minutes uphill and around a bend before we reach the crest where Julio’s helper is still standing, looking toward the sea in the distance. As we approach, he’s crouching, blending into some low jungle foliage at the side of the road.

He speaks to Julio in Spanish and holds up two fingers. He points off in the distance. “Dos hombres fuera de la casa.”

Adam and I settle in next to them. I can see that from this point the jungle declines gently toward a cove and some rocky bluffs on the coast about a mile away. A little to the north, perhaps a half mile from where we stand, is a sizable clearing in the jungle, red clay and naked limestone scraped clean, like a bald spot in a sea of green. I would guess it is several acres in size. Parked on it is an assortment of trash, wrecked-out vehicles and abandoned tires, some larger trucks, old Fords and Chevys, one with a rusted crane on the back that looks like it could be an antique.

The ground is spotted with empty fifty-gallon drums corroding in the sun, some of them dented and tipped on their sides. Splotches of darkness spread from the yawning open ends of these into the soil, the last contents leaking out onto the ground.

On the far side, closest to the bluffs and the sea is a construction trailer, white sides and a flat metal roof with an air conditioner on it, ripples of heat rising from this.

Out in front of the trailer, a few large truck tires laid on their sides with pieces of plywood thrown over them form a crude wooden deck in front of the door that faces this way.

Julio finishes talking to his assistant, then swivels around on his haunches to translate for Adam and me.

“This es a road they don’t use,” he says. “Otra. Over there.” He points. “The other road. They use.”

I lift the field glasses to my eyes and adjust them. On the other side, farther to the north, a winding stretch of brownish red soil wends its way back into the jungle and disappears around a curve.

“My man says two of them are outside the house. The trailer. They are armed.”

I bring the glasses back to my eyes and check it out. I see nothing moving around the trailer. The cars parked closest to it appear to be empty. With the sun now behind us, anyone outside is likely to be around in back of the trailer, in the shade, where we can’t see them.

“We’ll stay here for a few minutes,” says Adam. “It’s getting hot.” He takes off his hat, one of those floppy safari things with a broad canvas brim, then crunches it up and uses it to wipe his forehead.

Julio hands him a bottle of water. Adam uncaps it, takes a drink, and immediately spits it out. “It’s hot,” he says.

Julio shrugs as if to say, “That’s all I’ve got.”

Adam pours the rest over the back of his head and lets it drip down onto the jungle vegetation at his feet, then opens the hat up and puts it back on his head.

“There.”

When I look, Julio is back over my shoulder.

I bring the glasses back to my eyes and train them at the trailer. From the back side a man walks this way, what looks like a short assault rifle of some kind slung from one shoulder, muzzle pointed at the ground. Just as he rounds the corner on the front side of the trailer, the door opens and another man steps out onto the plywood step in front.