Clive Cussler - Serpent

The groan repeated off to the right. With Morales covering him, Trout moved cautiously toward the apparent source. The sound seemed to be coming from practically underfoot. Trout looked down. Partially hidden by the long grass was a black hole. He knelt at the edge but couldn't see anything in the darkness.

Feeling somewhat foolish at talking into the ground, he said "Who's there?"

Another groan. Followed by a stream of Spanish in a weak voice.

Morales, who had come over to kneel by Trout's side, listened a moment. "It's a man. He says he fell down the hole."

"What's he doing way out here?"

Morales relayed the question, then the answer. "He said he was out walking."

"This is a pretty remote place to be taking a nature stroll," Trout said. "Let's get him out."

Trout went back to the chopper and found a nylon rope in ,the emergency kit. He dropped a knotted loop into the hole, then he, the pilot, and Morales hauled on their end of the rope. First the head, then the shoulders of a pitiful-looking creature appeared in the opening. The man's scraggly beard and long greasy hair were covered with a gray dust, and the whiteness of his illfitting clothes was a distant memory. He sat on the ground, alternately rubbing his arms, legs, and head. His nose was bruised.

The police officer gave him a water bottle. He noisily gurgled the water, slopping half of it onto his chin. Refreshed by the water, the man showed yellow teeth in a cocky grin and tipped the canteen for another guzzle. His sleeve fell as he raised his arm.

Trout kicked the canteen like a punter and sent it flying into the grass. His big hand shot out and gripped the man's hairy wrist. Even Morales was shocked by the unexpected move.

"Senor Trout!"

"This is my wife's watch." Trout slid the expansion band Swatch off.

"You're sure?"

"I gave it to her." Anger flashed in the normally calm eyes. "Ask him where he got it."

Morales asked the question in Spanish and relayed the answer.

"He says he bought it."

Trout was through playing games. "Tell him that if he doesn't talk we'll throw him back in the hole and leave."

The grin vanished. The threat of being tossed back into the ground unleashed a torrent of Spanish.

. Morales listened, nodding. "He's crazy. Name is Ruiz. Keeps talking about the devil woman and the dwarf who made the

earth swallow him:"

"Devil woman?"

"Si. He says she broke his nose."

"What happened to this woman?"

"He doesn't know. He was down in the hole.. He heard a lot of shooting. Then quiet. He says his friends abandoned him. I ask if these amigos are chicleros. He says no." Morales grinned without mirth. "He's a stinking liar."

"Tell him we're going to take him up in the helicopter and throw him out if he doesn't tell the truth."

The man looked at the granitehard expression on the face of the giant gringo and decided he wasn't joking.

"No!" he said. "I talk. I talk."

"You understand English."

Poco," the man said, holding his thumb and finger slightly apart.

In halting English, using Spanish when words escaped him, Ruiz admitted he was with a gang of chicleros who came here to steal antiquities. They found the woman and the little old man and locked them in the ground where there was no way they could escape. But they burrowed out of the earth somehow and threw him into the hole. The other chicleros gave chase. They never came back to look for him. He didn't know what happened to the man and woman.

Trout pondered the report briefly.

"Okay, get him in the chopper."

Morales handcuffed the man gingerly, trying not to touch him, then used the toe of his shoe to persuade Ruiz to stand. They stuffed him into the rear bench seat, and Morales got in beside him. The man exuded a stench so vile the pilot complained. Morales laughed and said if it got too bad they'd throw Ruiz over the side. Ruiz didn't think it was funny, and his eyes grew wide in fear as the helicopter lifted off the ground. He wouldn't be giving them any trouble. They circled the site a couple of times, then picked up the gleam of the river. It was barely visible through the trees, but with three sets of eyes they were able to trace its course.

Trout couldn't wait to tell Gamay her new sobriquet. Devil woman. He hoped that she was still alive to hear it.

26 THE BUZZ OF THE ANCIENT OUTBOARD motor was so loud Gamay didn't hear the helicopter until it was practically overhead. Even then it was Chi's upturned face that alerted her to the arrival of company. She jammed the tiller over and aimed the pram toward the shore, bumping into a grassy bank under a protective canopy of overhanging branches. From the air the boat would be almost impossible to see through. the thick greenery. Gamay took out extra insurance and nudged the pram into a huge fern bush. She didn't want the early morning sunlight reflecting off the aluminum hull.

An instant later the air overhead was filled with the slashing of rotors. Flashes of a shiny red-and-white fuselage came through openings in the dense foliage as the helicopter skimmed the treetops. It never dawned on Gamay that within hours of learning she was missing her husband would return to the Yucatan, commandeer a helicopter, and now be hovering a few hundred feet above her head. Since arriving in this place she'd had her hair almost pulled out by the roots, been threatened with rape, been stuffed into a cave to die, crawled through dark and practically airless tunnels, and been used for target practice. There was no reason to believe the people who had treated her so badly had not brought in air support to increase her misery. She breathed a sigh of relief as the sound of the helicopter receded in the distance, and moments later they headed out into the river again.

After disposing of Yellow Teeth, Gamay and Chi had bolted for the woods, dodging the bullets that whizzed around them, and scrambled down the slope to the river. Finding three battered aluminum prams lined up side by side on shore, they shoved two boats adrift, then piled into the third, got the outboard motor going, and made a dash for safety.

Traveling an entire day without incident, they spent a quiet night pulled over to the side of the river and got an early start the next morning. The helicopter made Gamay realize their smooth escape and peaceful passage had lulled them into a false sense of security. Now they kept a sharp eye on the sky, and Gamay steered dose to the river's edge. There was no further sign of the helicopter, but the propeller tangled in vegetation, and she had to angle the boat into shore to clear the blades of weeds. The job should have meant no more than a minute or two of delay. When Gamay went to restart the motor it played hard to get. She couldn't figure it. The antique fifteen-horse-power Mercury didn't look like much with its sandblasted engine housing. Yet it worked fine before they turned it off. She was trying to figure out what the problem was when they heard voices in Spanish coming from upriver.

Nothing on the face of the earth is more frustrating than a cranky outboard motor, Gamay thought, especially when the recalcitrant hunk of metal is all that stands between you and disaster. Gamay braced her foot against the transom. Hoping to placate the malevolent spirit inhabiting the machine, she smiled prettily, whispered "Please," and pulled the starter cord with all her might.

The motor responded with a soggy poppop, an asthmatic gasp, a wet sigh, then silence broken by Gamay's cry of pain as she fell back and scraped her knuckles on the hard metal seat. She unleashed a stream of blasphemies that turned the air blue as she called down the furies on dumb, stubborn machines everywhere. Professor Chi was in the bow, clutching an. overhanging branch so the pram would not drift out of control with the lazy current while Gamay fussed and fumed over the outboard. Sweat dripped off her chin. With her mouth set in a square of anger, snakelike tendrils of dark red hair framing her features, she could have modeled for an ancient Greek sculpture of Medusa. What's worse, she knew how gorgonish she looked. Primping would have to wait.