Steve Martini - The Arraignment

In the front seat are Ibarra’s driver and another man, not quite as large as Herman, broad shoulders and a steely look.

Behind us is another vehicle with four security men. Three other vehicles with security left the hotel a half hour ahead of us. We are slated to meet at a point along the highway, at which time I will transfer into one of the other cars and drive by myself to the parking area at Coba.

Herman, Ibarra, and his people will approach the archeological site from a different direction along back roads. If all goes according to plan, they will be in place around the structure Ibarra calls Las Pinturas before I arrive. Some of his men are equipped with high-powered rifles and laser scopes to pick up heat signatures of people hiding in the bush. Ibarra has assured me that they are qualified marksmen.

We are unable to go to the police, since Pablo cannot be certain that his sons have not bribed some of the local authorities. Even if they haven’t, it is likely that the police would hold me for questioning well past the time set in the note, in which case Ibarra’s sons would kill Adam.

Sitting in the seat next to me, Pablo Ibarra tries to brief me on the terrain and what I will find when I get there. I can tell he is worried, a father on the verge of a violent collision with his sons, taking no joy in what he must do.

“I hope and pray that they are not there,” he says. But I can tell that the note that was shoved under Herman’s hotel room door, telling me to bring the Rosetta to Coba, leaves little doubt in his mind.

“What I do not understand is why they think you would have it,” he says.

“I don’t know.”

“Unless perhaps it is because of your association with this man Rush. Did my sons know about this?”

“I didn’t tell them.”

“None of it makes any sense.”

When I told him about the aerial attack at the Casa Turquesa, Ibarra scanned early editions of the local newspapers. He was looking for the names of the two men in the ultralight to see if he might recognize them. The brothers used ultralights over the jungle to look for ruins. Divers pulled the two bodies from the water late yesterday. But Ibarra didn’t recognize either name.

He has put together a package wrapped in cloth and tied with twine. Covered, it could pass for the Maya’s ancient book unless you had specific knowledge of its dimensions, which we do not. Once its cover is removed, however, not even the untrained eye would be fooled by the two plywood boards with paper between them.

I try to catch some sleep as we roll along the highway that connects Merida, the old Spanish Colonial capital, with Cancun.

I doze. It seems like only a few minutes when I feel a bump and wake up. We are rolling slowly, maybe twenty miles an hour, through a village along the highway.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” says Ibarra. “Topetons. Speed bumps. They put them on the highway coming into the villages so that people slow down.”

We come to another one, more like a hill than a bump. The long limo is now forced to come to a near stop to keep from dragging its rear end or losing its suspension. Herman sleeps right through this. I look at my watch. I’ve been asleep for twenty minutes.

The road to Merida is two lanes, one in each direction. Even at this hour, before five A. M. there are a few people moving about in the small settlements off the highway. Lights are on in some of the tiny cinder-block houses with their corrugated metal roofs. I have seen buildings like this before, on the islands of the Caribbean. They are fashioned to withstand hurricanes and tidal surge. The walls will stand. You can find your roof later or pick up someone else’s.

Except for the areas hacked out for human habitation, the low jungle engulfs everything within view. The even, verdant canopy is unbroken but for the occasional banyan tree that pokes through toward the sky and the indomitable microwave towers with their red lights blinking in the distance. To the east the faint glow of morning is already beginning to define the clouds.

“Do you have children?” says Ibarra.

“One. A daughter. She’s fifteen.”

“It is difficult.”

“Yes.” I have thought about Sarah and wondered what she will be doing in a few hours. Mostly I have been wondering whether I will ever see her again.

To think I could unravel the reasons behind Nick’s death was arrogant. To risk the security of the only family that Sarah has left was foolish beyond belief. If I were divorced perhaps, but I am not. I am widowed.

Harry was right, a single parent has no business doing what I am doing. And now it’s too late. By my actions, I have placed others in jeopardy: Harry in the hospital and Adam now in the hands of Ibarra’s sons. There is no turning back.

We turn off the highway at a place called Nuevo Xcan and head into the deep tropical forest. Here the road narrows, with vegetation nibbling at both edges of the asphalt. The road runs like a ribbon through jungle growth that becomes visibly more dense and taller with each kilometer.

The leafy green is impenetrable. It rises up like a wave in a sea of darkness on both sides of the car. We rocket along at seventy miles an hour, gliding over slight undulations only to find more road stretched out in front of us, a seemingly endless thoroughfare to nowhere.

The long springs of the limo lift us over a slight rise. On the highway ahead I see the taillights of two cars parked in the middle of the road blocking it.

“It’s all right.” Ibarra sitting forward in the seat. “It’s my people.”

The limo comes to a fast brake, the security car right on our bumper. Herman slides forward on the seat and finally wakes up.

“What’s goin’ on?”

“Time to switch cars,” I tell him.

“Shit, we already there?”

“Not quite. How far is it?” I ask Ibarra.

“Just a few miles. You will turn off to the right. You can’t miss the road. There should be a sign to the archeological zone.”

The limo rolls to a stop behind the other two cars in the middle of the road, and we get out. The trailing security car pulls up behind us, and two men dressed in camouflage fatigues get out and stand near the open doors, surveying the road behind them and occasionally glancing into the jungle overgrowth alongside the road. One of them is holding an assault rifle.

Up in front, Ibarra’s people are standing around on the road, two of them looking at a map spread out on the hood of one of the cars. The car doors are open, and some of the men are taking the chance to smoke a last cigarette before going in. They are wearing flak jackets, and two of them are holding scoped rifles.

Herman is walking next to me. “Rifles ain’t gonna be much good in the jungle,” he says. “Less they get an opening in the brush. I knew I shouldn’t a listened to these people. I shoulda brought the shotgun, the MP-5.”

“I think it’ll be all right. They look like they know what they’re doing.”

“Yeah.”

Ibarra waves me forward, toward one of the cars with an open door.

I start to walk.

“Hey.”

I turn and Herman is looking at me.

“Ain’t you gonna say good-bye?”

“I wish you were coming with me.”

“I could get in the backseat, lie down,” he says.

“Right. They wouldn’t see that. Besides, I have to go a ways on foot. Their people would pick you up before you could follow me thirty feet.”

“Probably. Here. You better put this on.” He’s holding a lightweight green jacket in his hand.

“I’m not cold.”

“I know. Just trust me. Take it. White shirt you got on is gonna light you up like a lantern out there in the jungle.”

I take the jacket and slip it on.