Sam and Remi turned to face the sounds coming from the forest. They were between the grounded helicopter and a group of men. They could see a path that had been trampled in the brush recently. The bent and broken plants still had green leaves.
Remi gestured to Sam that she would go around the men to the right. Sam nodded and began to make his way to the left so he and Remi would be positioned on both sides of the group. They both stayed well back from the group, where they could not easily be seen and where any noises they made might be lost in the men’s conversation.
Sam made a ninety-degree arc around the sounds, then stopped and waited. He knew Remi would already be in position. Her sure-footed fencer’s body could move through vegetation better than his. And he knew that when he moved in, he could initiate the most frightening close-in attack while Remi, the pistol champion, could do much more damage from a moderate distance. He took the pistol from his belly and began to crawl toward the voices. It sounded to him like six men and they seemed to be close, arranged in a circle. Maybe they were sitting around a fire — no, he would have smelled a fire. Around a circle anyway. What were they doing way out here?
And then he saw them. There were actually five men in their twenties, unshaven and wearing jeans, khakis, bits of old military uniforms, T-shirts. On the ground in the center of their circle they had laid out an olive drab plastic tarp. Spread on it were Tim Carmichael’s belongings — his satellite phone, all three sets of earphones, the maps from the helicopter, his wallet, his keys, pocketknife, sunglasses.
Set on the ground beside each of the five men was a Belgian FN FAL 7.62mm military rifle. Sam moved closer, searching for some sign of what had happened to Tim Carmichael, and then he saw him. Tim was a few feet off, at the edge of the thicker vegetation.
Carmichael was standing, his hands tied behind his back, his ankles tied. He had a noose around his neck, the rope thrown over a thick limb of the tree above him and then securely tied to the trunk. If he got tired, he still had to stand. If he leaned, the noose tightened around his neck. His left eye was black and swollen, he had scrapes on his face and grass stains on his clothes, and his hair was stuck together on top of his head from drying blood from a blow to the skull.
Sam worked his way around the clearing at a distance, trying hard to avoid discovery. When he was directly behind Carmichael, he slowly crawled to him through the thick jungle vegetation. Staying hidden by the trees and Carmichael’s body, Sam reached out with his knife and sawed through the rope at Carmichael’s wrists, then his ankles. He took out his second pistol, switched off the safety, and placed it in Carmichael’s right hand. Then he crawled a few feet farther and cut the rope from Tim’s noose where it was secured to the tree trunk. He tucked an inch of the rope end into the remaining loop of rope behind the tree so it would look the same.
Sam crawled backward, retreating deeper into the brush. He took his time, selecting a spot where he, Remi, and Tim would have the men in a perfect cross fire. Now and then, one of the men around the tarp would turn and glance at Carmichael and see that he was still standing with his hands behind his back and the noose around his neck.
When Sam judged that he, Remi, and Carmichael were each a hundred twenty degrees apart on the circle, he raised his pistol, stepped close to the circle, placed his body behind the trunk of a tree, and showed only his right eye and his gun hand. “You!” he shouted in Spanish. “Leave those guns on the ground and step away from them!”
The men were startled and jerked their heads toward Sam’s voice. One started to raise his rifle, but Sam fired, and the man collapsed backward.
Carmichael shouted, “Drop the guns!”
Some of the men looked and saw he was suddenly free, aiming a gun at them. They set their rifles back down. One man saw this as unacceptable, pivoted with his rifle to aim at Carmichael, but Carmichael was no longer visible. He had slipped into the bushes. The man raised his weapon to aim, but a shot was fired from Remi’s side of the circle. It hit his arm and made him drop the rifle on the ground.
The remaining men moved back from their rifles and put their hands on their heads. Sam came out from behind his tree, knowing Remi and Carmichael were covering him. He kept his gun on the men as he took each rifle and tossed it to his side of the clearing so they formed a pile.
When Sam had the rifles, Tim Carmichael showed himself, holding Sam’s second pistol on his captors. Sam said, “Are you hurt?”
“Just a little. None of these clowns shot me anyway.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“They’re as talkative as a bunch of crows, but they never said anything to reveal that. I guess they’re just a bunch of guys who saw the helicopter, knew it was valuable, and tried to take it.”
“Is your helicopter all right?”
“It’s fine. I thought I’d get out of it and take a nap in the shade. When I woke up, I had already lost a fistfight.”
The sound of a helicopter in the distance drew their attention. The roar grew louder, the leaves on trees began to whip back and forth in the wind, and the helicopter hovered. Looking up, Sam and Remi could see through the treetops that there was a man in an open doorway holding an M16 rifle.
“Maybe you’d better let them see you, Tim,” said Sam.
Carmichael stepped into the area by his helicopter and waved both arms while Sam and Remi kept their guns on their prisoners. The radio in Tim’s helicopter squealed. “We see you, Tim. You all right?” It was the voice of Art Bowen.
Tim snatched the microphone. “Yes. The Fargos are here with me. We’ve got five prisoners, two of them wounded.”
“Sit tight. We’re coming in.”
The helicopter landed, and three men came running, carrying M16 rifles. The middle-aged, stocky man piloting the helicopter came more slowly, but he was also armed with an M16.
As Sam and Remi walked with Tim Carmichael to watch Art Bowen and his men load the five prisoners into the helicopters, Remi said, “I’ll bet Tim would like to take a few days off after this.”
Carmichael climbed into the pilot’s seat and put on his just-recovered sunglasses. “You know, I just might. When I was listening to those five talk, I realized that the only reason I’m alive is that, without me, they couldn’t move the helicopter.”
Chapter 25
Sarah Allersby walked from the pair of parked helicopters into the thick Guatemalan forest. The brush had grown over this trail a thousand years ago, so it would be difficult to demonstrate to her guests that this was a Mayan trail, although she was sure it was. She hacked her way along with a machete, watching her feet to find a spot that would be clear enough for the revelation.
She glanced back along the trail. There were fifteen journalists, all of them carrying complicated camera equipment and recorders and satellite phones. But they were all chattering away with one another about God knows what. They weren’t paying attention to the special place where she had brought them.
Sarah looked down and stopped, then called for their attention. “Look, everyone. We’re on a Mayan thoroughfare. It’s a paved foot road.” She stepped aside to let the journalists come forward to take pictures of the pavement. A few listlessly snapped the ground, with its layer of whitish cobbles, but more were inclined to take photographs of Sarah hacking through the overgrowth. That, she reflected, was all right too.
She pushed ahead, then looked back beyond the photographers at the longer line of armed men she had brought into the jungle, carrying their Belgian rifles. It was costing her a great deal of money, but this time she was going to be sure she had the manpower to keep everything under control. After the disappearance of the five men Russell had sent to clear the helicopter landing spot, she had left little to chance. She knew the ruin was only a short distance away now, so she kept moving, hacking at the vines and brush in her way. She finally burst through the bush and stepped onto the great plaza. “There,” she shouted. “There is the city, the lost city I’ve found.”