Sam turned his head away from the men and called into the hills, “We mean you no harm. Go away.”
Three of the men half turned to see if someone had gotten behind them, and one turned around entirely, his gun ready.
The spokesman said, “We’ll never go away. Come out and we’ll let yougo away.”
Sam could hear the bad news in the man’s voice. These men thought they had found very easy prey, an American couple, undoubtedly unarmed and helpless. They were probably already estimating the ransom money. And even if they got it, they’d kill them both.
Sam aimed his pistol at the nearest one, the man pointing his rifle at the top of the wall, waiting for a target to appear. The spokesman waved an arm, and the men moved forward toward the wall. Sam began to move with them to avoid being cut off from the entrance.
The man near him sensed something and swung his rifle toward Sam and Sam shot him in the chest, then dove into the low area beyond the brush. The man fell down, unconscious and gravely wounded. The others had seen him fall, and each fired in the direction he guessed the shot might have come from. Only two of them guessed right, and Sam’s thicket was peppered with bullets.
When Sam looked up, he saw that another man had fallen, one of the few carrying AR-15s. Remi must have shot him while the others were firing wildly, having picked him out as a high priority.
The leader trotted over to the man’s body, took the rifle and the man’s pack. He aimed the rifle at the top of the wall, but Remi kept down, knowing the men all expected her to pop up and fire again.
But Sam had a new problem. A man with a rifle was walking toward his thicket to see if Sam’s body was lying there or if he needed to be finished off. Now the man’s feet were breaking sticks in the thicket. Sam located the sound and fired three times. The man’s rifle went off, and Sam heard him fall. Sam crawled to him, his pistol ready, and found him lying, with an entry wound in his forehead. Sam took the rifle, cycled the bolt, pulled himself to the edge of the thicket, and pushed the brush aside with the barrel.
A man with a shotgun was moving along the foot of the wall. Sam aimed and fired, and the man fell dead. Sam cycled the bolt again and searched for another target. There was a man with a scoped rifle on a sling, climbing a tree so he could get a vantage into the walled enclosure. Sam aimed and fired, and the man went limp and fell ten or twelve feet to the ground. He wasn’t moving.
Sam cycled the bolt again and realized that after one more shot he would be out of ammunition. He crawled toward the body of the man he’d taken the rifle from. But, as he did, another man spotted him and cried out to the others. Sam was out of time. He fired, took the rifle with him, and ran into the jungle. He didn’t stop, circling toward the walled enclosure around the pool. He couldn’t hear any running footsteps behind him. As he ran, he removed the bolt from the rifle and tossed it into an impenetrable patch of low plants. A hundred feet on, he threw the rifle into another patch, and kept moving.
He came around behind the enclosure far from the entryway and carefully stalked around the wall. As he came to the overlap, he saw a man crawling into it with a shotgun slung over his back. Sam fired a pistol round into the back of his head, knelt to take the shotgun, then heard a shot ricochet off the wall inches from his head. He leapt into the entryway just as a burst from an AR-15 turned the space he’d just occupied into exploding stone chips. He clambered over the stones piled in the passage, and inside the wall.
“Honey, I’m home,” he called.
“It’s about time,” she said. “I was worried sick.”
Sam climbed the steps, carrying the pump shotgun. “I counted them. There were twelve to start with and now there are six.”
“I know,” she said. “At least we made it cost them something.”
“We did better than that. I’d say at the moment we’re winning.”
She slowly shook her head. “There were more at first. At least two of them ran off into the woods about the time you did. I thought they might be after you, but then I saw them going back up the slope where they’d come from. They must be going for help.”
“Maybe now is our best chance to get out of here,” said Sam. “Let’s pack what we need in our backpacks, leave the rest, and make a run for it.”
“That’s all we can do,” she said. “Let’s hope their main camp is far away.”
He set the shotgun down beside her. “You keep watch. Use this if one comes in range.” He left the scuba gear, the tent, and most of the supplies. He packed the extra ammunition, the machetes, and the artifacts from the pool in his pack and left Remi’s. He climbed up to the wall and picked up the shotgun. “All right. Slip off into the woods and wait for me. I’ll take one last look and see if I can…” He paused, looking at the expression on Remi’s face. “What?”
She pointed in the direction of the hillside. In the waning light, they could see a long line of men walking single file down the trail toward them. “It’s not six men anymore. It’s thirty-six. They must have heard all the gunshots and started this way to see what was up. Or maybe we’re so far from civilization that they can use radios without being overheard.”
“I’m sorry, Remi,” he said. “I really thought we had a good chance.”
She kissed his cheek. “You know, there’s a lot to be said for bees. When somebody comes to wreck their hive to take their honey, the bees generally lose. But they make it as unpleasant and painful for him as possible. I respect that.”
“It’s hard not to.”
“Let’s get every magazine loaded while we can still see. And don’t forget the shotgun.”
“Right,” said Sam. He went down the steps, crawled to the body of the man he had shot, took the man’s day pack, and crawled back with it. There was a box with a dozen shells for the shotgun, but the rest was useless — a canteen, a hat, spare clothes, most of a fifth of whiskey. Sam gathered more stones from the crumbled area at the end of the pool and piled them in the passage, then carefully piled up their supply of firewood in case they needed to start a fire.
He took the powerful flashlights they had brought for diving in the cenote, then climbed to the wall where Remi waited. He checked his pistols and hers to be sure they were fully loaded, then checked the ten spare magazines and reloaded the two they’d emptied. “See anything yet?”
“Nothing I can hit,” she said. “They’re still way back, out of pistol range. I think what they’ll do is wait until it’s fully dark and then move in close enough to hit us if we show ourselves for a second.”
“That’s the time-honored method.”
“What are we planning to counter it?”
“I’m considering another time-honored method.”
There were six, then eight, rifle shots that hit along the top of the wall at intervals of about a yard. “Too late,” she said. “They’re trying to keep our heads down so they can rush the entrance.”
Sam clutched the shotgun and ran down the steps, then lay against the pile of rocks he’d built. Two men appeared in front of him and he fired, pumped the shotgun, and fired again. Then Sam pumped his shotgun a second time, grasped the barrel of one man’s gun, and dragged it inside with him. It was a short submachine gun he was familiar with, an Ingram MAC-10. It had been at least ten years since they’d been manufactured, but he had no doubt it would work.
Another man appeared, and Sam fired his shotgun again, pumped it, and retreated back over the rocks. He heard gunfire coming from up on the wall, four rapid shots.
He looked up as Remi ducked down. There were fifteen or twenty shots fired at the place where she had been, but she stayed low and moved over ten feet.
Sam climbed back on the wall, peered over it, and saw four men running toward the entryway. He raised the MAC-10, popped up, and strafed the runners from above. He ducked back, having seen all four fall, but the action of the MAC-10 remained open. He had used up the ammunition. There was a storm of bullets pounding the wall now. He sat still on the walkway, waiting for it to subside. It took a while, but gradually silence returned.