He and his comrades killed more than sixty people that day; eleven by his own hand, and each produced in him that same wondrous feeling. Later Guzman personally congratulated him, then took him to bed—a strange night of pain and pleasure that ended with him sobbing in Guzman's arms. Zacul moved very quickly up the Sendero ladder after that. He was among the first assigned to take the movement out of the country. Masagua, Guzman had told him with tears in his eyes, was ready for the new generation.
On the bed, Zacul rolled onto his side, still breathing heavily. "Suarez, you pig. Suarez. Get in here!"
There was a tap at the door and Suarez came in quietly, as a nurse might enter the room. "I'm sorry, Julio. I was only just told that you were calling." He had opened a plastic bottle and was tapping out small blue capsules into his palm. Zacul grabbed three and swallowed them quickly, then lay back again, already feeling better, knowing the pills would soon do their job. He said, "The two Yankees—do you trust them?"
Suarez said, "Of course not. But the large one, he knows something of the book. That is clear. "
"Tomorrow you will arrange for a truck to take the hippie to Costa Rica. If he produces the book, we will deal with them. We need the money."
"If he doesn't?"
Zacul didn't answer. Instead he said, "And this child we have; the son of that whore Rafferty—he is no longer any use to us."
"Then we should no longer keep him as a prisoner?"
"The prisoners—that's another thing! I'm sick to death of their stubbornness and their filth. I can smell them when I walk to the lake. This camp is becoming a pigsty, I tell you. We have been patient enough! I have my limits!"
"Of course."
"We'll shoot them this afternoon."
"Very well."
"I'll shoot them."
"The boy, too?"
Zacul sat up, feeling the first sweet edge of the medicine entering his bloodstream. He thought for a moment, and said, "No. This evening, when I'm done with the prisoners, you'll bring the boy to me."
"Certainly."
"Then you and I and the other officers will have a special dinner. A small celebration."
Suarez said, "I will notify the cook."
Ford said, "I'm looking for frogs."
Tomlinson watched patiently as Ford, on hands and knees, crawled along the path, pushing over rotted logs, which immediately swarmed with ants or termites.
Finally Tomlinson said, "I'm the last one to rush a student in his work, but don't you think we ought to figure out a way to make Jake part of this deal before you do any more collecting?"
"That's what I'm doing. That's exactly why we need to find this frog. A bright-red tree frog. You could help, you know. You have any cuts or anything on your hands?"
"No."
"Good. We need a bunch of them. "
They had bathed from buckets inside their hut and changed clothes while the chef, Oscar, fried fish fillets for their lunch, corvina in garlic sauce. It was among the best fish Ford had ever had, but Tomlinson had refused it, choosing to have the cooks in the main mess ladle out a plate of red beans and rice for him.
Now they were halfway down the jungle trail that led to the Pacific, already beyond the high bluffs at the southern perimeter of the lake. They had told Oscar they were going for a swim in the ocean. They told him to tell the general if he saw him. From the expression on Oscar's face, the chef clearly hoped he would not see the general.
Ford said, "You know what Zacul wants, don't you?"
Tomlinson was already kicking over logs, making a halfhearted search. "Yeah, he wants the book and he wants to sell us a lot of artifacts at inflated prices and make a ton of money. That's what I mean: Couldn't we work the boy into the deal some way?"
"How? The book's in New York. It won't even get to Florida for another day or two—and I'm not positive about that."
"Oh yeah."
"We've got to get the hell out of here tonight, Tomlinson. We've got to grab the boy and go. If you get in that truck to go to Costa Rica tomorrow, I'm never going to see you again, and you'll never see me, because they'll kill us both."
"Right. Shit." Then Tomlinson said, "Hey, is that one?" A small red frog jumped out from beneath a log ... sat blinking in a ray of sunlight . . . then jumped again.
"Grab it."
Tomlinson hunched over the frog, then hesitated. "These things don't bite, do they?"
Ford lunged and caught the frog, then quickly gloved it with the tail of his shirt to protect his hands. He held it up so Tomlinson could see. The frog was only about three inches long, iridescent scarlet with black flecks at the dorsum. "This is one of the Dendrobates," Ford said. "In South America, they call it the poison dart frog because it secretes a poison through its skin that the natives use on their arrows. It's an alkaloid poison, potent as hell."
"You're going to shoot Zacul with an arrow?"
Ford was transferring the frog to his pocket. "I'm not sure what I'm going to do. We have to create some kind of diversion to get Jake out, so I thought if we could catch enough frogs to get a couple of tablespoons of the poison, we could sharpen some sticks and somehow surprise the guards—="
"That sounds pretty chancey."
"I know, I know. They'd shoot us before the poison had time to take effect. Hell, I don't know . . . I'm desperate, and that's the first thing I came up with. But the officers are the key. The soldiers around here aren't loyal to Zacul. They obey him out of fear. Take a look at the camp. Discipline's sloppy, beer bottles everywhere. With the officers out of the way for a while, maybe we could get the boy and make a break for it. Maybe if we could get the poison into their food—"
"I'm not too crazy about that, either."
"I'm open to suggestions." Getting a little tired of Tomlinson's second-guessing.
"You're talking mass murder, man. I'm no fan of Zacul's, and if he really butchered those villagers like that doctor said, then the bastard should be committed. But I'm not going to have a hand in killing. Couldn't we just trick Zacul into coming into Tambor with us and hope we can find someone to help us?"
"Like who?"
"You said you knew people there."
"Yeah, I do—peasant people who are terrified of anyone in uniform. We're not going to find any help there."
"Maybe Rivera heard about us being kidnapped. He has people in Utatlan; informers, you said."
"We can't count on Rivera. Face it, Tomlinson, we're going to have to find our own way out. For now, you can help by looking for more frogs."
"I don't know, man."
"The poison won't kill them. It'll just make them sick for a while. Maybe paralyze them for an hour or two. And that's only if I can find a lighter so we can roast the poison out of the frogs, and only if the poison doesn't taste so bitter Zacul and the others won't eat the food." Sighing because now the plan sounded even weaker.
Tomlinson stood looking at him calmly. "You're telling the truth?"
"I wouldn't ask you to help if I wasn't."
"Okay, okay—let's flush out some more of those little bastards."
But by the time they came to the lagoon on the jungle side of the long rind of white beach and sea, they had found only one more poison dart frog. They would need at least a dozen, maybe more.
Discouraged, Ford began to wade the shallows of the lagoon. It was a clear-water bay with plenty of tidal transfer so the place was alive with tunicates, purple and gold cushion stars, club-spined sea urchins, bright sea fans, and all the scurrying, feeding, fecund life of a Pacific tidal pool. The bottom, he noted, was white sand and eel grass, and resting in or moving slowly over the bottom was a large population of gray and black fish with large flat heads and big incisor teeth—a genus known as botete. They were slow moving; so docile that they could be caught by hand. When they did decide to move, they propelled themselves with their tail and lateral fins like wind-up fish in a bathtub. Around more northern shores, fish related to the botete were called box fish or puffers or porcupine fish. It was one of the most prevalent fish in Pacific backwaters, and Ford wasn't as surprised to see so many as he was surprised that he hadn't thought of them before.