Thomas Hoover - Life blood

The main problem was, a violent downpour, the leading edge of the hurricane, was now sweeping across the Yucatan, stirring up the treetops of the jungles below. The rain, which had begun in earnest about ten minutes after we got airborne, had been steadily increasing to the point it was now almost blinding.

This was the risk I'd chosen to take, but let me admit right here: The weather had me seriously scared, my fingernails digging into the armrests and my pulse erratic. And now was there something else? We'd only been in the air for thirty-five minutes, and already we had some kind of mechanical issue looming? What was left to go wrong?

"Some of the lights went out or something." Dupre tried a shrug. "I'm not sure. No big deal, though. This old bird always gets the job done." His pilot, Lieutenant Villatoro, formerly of the Guatemalan Army, had just shouted the new development back to the cabin. "Probably nothing. Don't worry about it."

Don't worry about it! His "tourist" helicopter was a Guatemalan candidate for the Air amp; Space Museum, an old Bell UH-1D patched together with chicle and corn masa. Surely the storm was pushing it far beyond its stress limits.

"Right, but what exactly-?"

"Sounds like the nav station." He clicked open his seat belt. "Something… Who knows? If you'd be happier, I'll go up and look."

I felt my palms go cold. "Doesn't seem too much to ask, considering."

The world down below us was a hostile melange of towering trees, all straining for the sky, while the ground itself was a dark tangle of ferns, lianas, strangler vines, creepers-among which lurked Olympic scorpions and some of the Earth's most poisonous snakes. If we had to set down here-I didn't even want to think about it. To lower a helicopter into the waves of flickering green below us would be to confront the hereafter.

"It's just the lights, like he said." Dupre yelled back from the cockpit's door, letting a tone of "I told you to chill out" seep through. He was peering past the opening, at the long line of instruments. He followed his announcement with a sigh as he moved back into the main cabin. "Relax."

I wasn't relaxed and from the way his eyes were shifting and his Gauloise cigarettes were being chain-smoked he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In his case it wasn't just the weather. He was fidgeting like a trapped animal, giving me the distinct sense he was doing someone's invisible bidding and was terrified he might fail.

"Well, why don't you try and fix it?" Was he trying to act calm just to impress me? "Can't you bang on the panel or something?"

"Okay, okay, let me see what I can do. Jesus!" He edged back into the cockpit, next to Villatoro. The wind was shaking us so badly that, even bent over, he was having trouble keeping his balance. Then he halfheartedly slammed the dark instrument readouts with the heel of his open hand. When the effort produced no immediate electronic miracle, he settled into the copilot's seat.

"Que pasa? " he yelled at Villatoro, his voice barely audible over the roar of the engine and the plastering of rain on the fuselage. Then he looked out the windscreen, at the torrent slamming against it, and rubbed at his chin.

"No se, mi comandante," the Guatemalan shouted back. I sensed he was hoping to sound efficient and unperturbed. Dupre claimed his pilot had personally checked out the Bell and prepped it. Now, though… "Mira. Like I said the lights. On the nav station. Maybe the electrical-"

"How about the backup battery?" Dupre was just barely keeping his cool.

Villatoro scratched his chin. "I'll tell you the truth. The backup is muerto. I tested it before we left, but I couldn't find any replacements in Provisiones. I figure, no problem, but now, amigo…"

I felt another wave of dismay, right into my churning stomach.

"Well, keep your heading north." Dupre's voice was coming from a place of extreme pain. "And if you sight the Rio Tigre, then Baalum or whatever should be more or less due west, according to what I'm assuming. Just keep your eyes open." He paused. "Problem is, with all this rain, the river's going to be tough to make out."

I redoubled my efforts to peer out the window, searching, my breath coming in bursts. Still nothing. Dear God, what now?

Finally Dupre headed back, bracing himself against the firewall as he crouched and passed through the door into the main cabin. When he settled into the seat across from me, he was glaring at me as though everything was my fault. "You know." He was yelling again. "I'm beginning to think maybe we ought to try to find a clearing and just sit out this crap till morning." He leaned over and peered down through the Bell's spattered side windows at the dense tangle of growth below. After a moment he got up and once more moved the toward the cockpit, still with the same troubled look. This time, however, he was beaming as he shouted back.

"There may be a God after all. I think we just intersected the Rio Tigre. We can bear due west now, along the river. We could be getting close, if it's where I think it is."

I turned and stared down again, barely making out the thread of the stream through the rain. Yes! Maybe there's hope. Still, below us the windblown treetops were a solid mass of pastel sparkles, a dancing sea of hungry green… But then I thought I saw something. Hey! It might even be a clearing. I quickly unbuckled and made my way up to the cockpit, hanging on to anything I could grasp.

"Alan, look," I yelled, and pointed off to the side, out through the rain-obscured windscreen. "I think we just passed over something. Back there. See?"

"Where?" He squinted.

"You can still just make it out." I twisted and kept pointing. I was biting my lip, trying to hold together. "There… it looks like some kind of clearing. Maybe… I don't know, but what if we just set down there and let this storm blow over?"

He ordered Villatoro to bank and go back for a look. A few moments later it was obvious there was an opening in the trees.

"Yeah, let's check it out." He then said something to Villatoro and we started easing toward it, definitely a wide opening. The billowing ocean of trees below us seemed to be parting like the Red Sea as we settled in. There had to be solid ground down there somewhere. Had to be.

"What's…" I was pointing. "There, over to the side, it's a kind of hill or something. It's-"

"Where?" Dupre squinted again, his voice starting to crack. Then he focused in. "Yeah, maybe there's something there. Hard to tell what it is, though. But I guess we're about to find out."

He gestured to the lieutenant, barking an order in quick Spanish. While the Bell kept moving lower through the opening, Dupre flicked on the landing lights, and appeared to be muttering a prayer of thanks.

I was staring out, growing ever more puzzled. A "hill" was there, all right. The problem was, it was definitely man-made, topped by a stone building. I could just make it out in the glare of the lights.

"What do you think that is?"

"What do I think?" Dupre studied the scene for a moment longer, and then his face melted into the first smile I'd seen since we left. "I think we are lucky beyond belief. God help us, we may have found it. That could be the damned pyramid or whatever's supposed to be up here." He leaned back. "Yeah, congratulations. Look at that damned thing. Either this is the place, or we're about to become the archaeologists of the year. Cover of Time. The Nobel frigging Prize."

At that moment I almost wanted to hug Alan Dupre, but not quite. Instead I moved farther into the cockpit, trying to get a look out the windscreen. By then we had lowered well through the opening in the trees, the helicopter's controls fighting against the blowing rain, and it felt as though we'd begun descending into the ocean's depths in a diving bell, surrounded by thrashing, wind-whipped branches.