Quintana Roo (17 page)

The hut where Connie and Alita were taken was a twin to the one where the men were having their heads shaved except there were no poles. Being women, they were not considered dangerous enough for any special precautions other than the henequen cords that bound their wrists.

One young Maya, newly initiated into the corps of guardsmen, was thought to be more than sufficient to keep watch on them. After all, he was a full-blooded Mayan male, and these were only a spoiled gringa from
Los Estados Unidos
, and a Mexican
puta
, never mind what she claimed her bloodline to be.

Connie slumped down against one of the staked walls. Tears made little wet trails down both sides of her face. She could not reach around with her bound hands to wipe them away.

“Damn it,” she said, “I can’t stop crying. What are the bastards going to do to us?”

“I don’t know,” Alita said honestly.

“Oh, God.”

“Hey, you been pretty good so far,” Alita said. “Don’t go all soft on me now.”

“What the hell, I’m scared. Who are you, Joan of Arc or somebody?”

“I’m scared, too,” Alita said. “But as long as we’re still alive, we got to keep ourselves together. Try to think of something.”

“Yeah, okay.” Connie made an effort to compose herself, bending her head down to wipe the tears as best she could on the shoulders of the white Mayan dress. “Where do you think they took Hooker and Buzz?”

Alita pointed with her elbow. “To a hut like this one across the patch of grass out there. I saw them through the doorway. There’s a couple of ugly-looking guards out in front of their hut and lots of people coming and going, so I don’t think we can wait for them to help us.”

“Shit.”

“That don’t mean we can’t help ourselves.”

Connie showed her bound wrists to Alita. “Are you kidding? I can’t even wipe my nose.”

“I got an idea,” Alita said.

Connie looked at her curiously. “I’d love to hear it.”

Alita inclined her head toward the guard. The young Maya lounged in the doorway of their hut, eying the women through hooded lids. He licked his lips.

“These people are only supposed to talk ancient Mayan, but I got a feeling this one understands the new dialect.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Watch.” In the modern Mayan dialect spoken in the cities, Alita said, “He is very handsome.”

The young guard inflated his chest and smiled before he remembered to glance guiltily out the door to see if anyone were watching.

“What was that all about?” Connie said.

“I gave him a little test. He understands, all right.”

“So what?”

“Maybe we can use it.”

“I don’t see how.”

“Just keep quiet and watch me.”

Alita hitched herself across the dirt floor of the hut on her buttocks until she was sitting at the feet of the young guard.

“My name is Alita,” she said in the modern Mayan dialect.

The guard glanced down at her but said nothing.

“I know you are forbidden to speak the new language, but never mind. I will talk. You can listen.”

“What are you saying to him?” Connie asked.

Alita shook her head and kept her attention on the young guard. “I have Mayan blood,” she went on. “You can see it if you look into my eyes.”

The young guard looked down at her. Alita put on her most seductive expression, the one she used to distract the players in her father’s poker game.

“I like the way you look very much,” she went on. “Do you like the way I look?”

A twitch of the corners of his mouth told Alita the guard felt just fine about the way she looked.

“You do not like the yellow-haired woman better?”

A narrowing of his eyes said no.

“I could make you very happy.” Alita shifted her gaze very deliberately to the swelling at the young guard’s crotch. “Do you know what I mean?”

His flared nostrils and increased rate of breathing said he knew very well.

Alita let her cheek brush against the soft cloth of the man’s trousers where it stretched over his erect penis. He gasped and pulled back reflexively, glancing over at Connie, who remained huddled against the wall.

“Don’t worry about her,” Alita said. “She cannot understand what we are saying. She cares only for herself, like any gringa.”

The guard relaxed, and Alita slid over closer to him again. She put her face against him, touched her lips to the bulge at his crotch.

He moaned softly and looked down at her with eager eyes.

“Do you want me to make you happy? I know how.”

Again, the guard looked over at Connie, who was watching them silently. He shook his head.

“We don’t have to do it here,” Alita said. “Take me out behind the hut. No one will see us. No one will know.”

Doubt crept into the eyes of the young Indian.

“Please, my warrior. My handsome warrior. Let Alita do nice and happy things to you.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the young guard reached down and pulled Alita to her feet. She kept her eyes fixed on his, her lids half lowered the way she had seen women do it in the movies.

“Where are you going with him?” Connie asked.

“I tell you later,” Alita said back over her shoulder, keeping her full attention on the young man.

Holding Alita by the arm, the guard thrust his head out of the hut and looked in all directions. There was activity across the way in the hut where the two white men were being prepared, but no one was paying any attention to him. It was his good fortune, he decided, to be given the hot little Mexican as his charge rather than being assigned to the men. Perhaps, as she claimed, she did have Mayan blood. Of one thing he was certain; she had lips that could drive a man crazy.

He took her out through the doorway and around to the back of the hut. There was a bare space of some eight feet between the hut and the city wall. No one would see them there.

The rain had started falling harder again, but that made no difference. It was warm and sensual on the skin. The young Maya pulled Alita around to face him. Her eyes were on a level with his.

“All right,” he said, speaking in the forbidden modern dialect, “make me happy.”

Alita turned to show him her bound hands. “I will need these to do a good job.”

He studied her while the rain pattered down, whispering softly across the grass that surrounded them. “I must tie you again afterwards.”

“I know that. It does not matter.”

He drew the narrow-bladed dagger from his belt. It was like the one the high priest had used to administer the coup de grâce to Chaco. With a swift upward slash, he cut the henequen cord between Alita’s wrists, then returned the dagger to his belt.

She brought her hands around in front and worked the fingers, rubbing the tips with her thumbs. She knelt before him and reached for the opening in the front of his trousers.

Reflexively, the guard jumped back.

“Do not be so jumpy, my warrior. I must undo the laces of your trousers to bring out your mighty weapon.”

“I will do it,” he said quickly. With clumsy fingers, he untied the knot in the leather laces and pulled them out through the eyelets. He reached in and freed his erect penis.

“So big!” Alita said, gazing at the organ with admiration. “So strong. So beautiful.”

The young Maya rumbled pridefully in his chest.

She took his penis in one hand, stroking it gently. With her thumb, she drew back the foreskin. She leaned forward, bringing her mouth closer.

Her shoulder bumped against the hanging sheath of the guard’s double-edged sword.

“This thing is in the way,” she said. “Can you take it off?”

“It is not permitted.”

She let her tongue slide out and touch the very tip of his erection. “Many things are not permitted.”

“But — ”

“Please, my handsome warrior. If I am to do justice to your magnificent natural weapon, I must not be hindered by the metal one.”

No longer able to protest, the young man unbuckled the sword and sheath and lay it on the ground at his feet. Alita snuggled closer, pushing her face into his crotch.

“That’s better,” she said. “So much better. Do you not agree?”

She drew back slightly and popped the head of his penis into her mouth. Such behavior, she knew, was unheard of in the strict code of the Mayan women who followed the old laws. However, it was a universal fantasy among the Mayan men, particularly the younger ones who had some knowledge of the customs in the cities.

“Ah … ah … aah!” was all that the young Maya could manage as Alita slid her lips up and down his organ, her left hand holding it steady at the root.

The guard began to breathe rapidly as he approached orgasm. His eyes closed ecstatically.

Looking up as she continued to service him, Alita saw his eyes close. She used her tongue gently, prolonging the moment. Her free hand found the hilt of the sword he had put down. Slowly, carefully, she eased it out of the scabbard. With the soft splash of the falling rain, the sucking sounds she was making, and the young man’s heavy breathing, the gentle scrape of the sword sliding free could not be heard.

The young Maya put both of his hands on the back of Alita’s head as he felt himself about to ejaculate. He pulled her face all the way into him, gagging her as his penis jabbed the back of her throat.

Gripping the hilt of the sword, Alita brought the point to just behind the man’s testicles. With all her strength and accumulated rage, she thrust upward.

The guard, impaled on his sword, jerked and lunged spasmodically, uttering little cries of shock and pain. Alita pulled her mouth off his penis and spat out the semen. She jerked the sword back and forth, slicing with both sides of the blade, and pushed him backward. Hot blood spilled over her hand on the hilt of the sword. She withdrew the blade from up inside the young man as he stumbled away from her, clawing for the dagger in his belt. He yanked the knife free and slashed at Alita, even as the insides of him slipped out through the gash the sword had left behind his scrotum.

Alita held onto the sword with one hand and pressed the other to her side where the knife had caught her. She watched the guard die on the wet ground in a widening pool of his own blood mixed with rain water and mud. Then she pried the dagger loose from his clenched fingers and went back into the hut.

“Jesus,” Connie said, “what happened? You’re all over blood.”

“The guard is dead. Now we must get the men.” Alita laid the sword on the ground and used the guard’s knife to saw through the cord binding Connie’s wrists.

“Are you hurt?” Connie said.

“Nothing important.” When she had freed Connie’s hands, Alita handed her the knife. “You take this. I will keep his sword.”

“There’s blood on everything,” Connie said.

“You better get used to it. There’ll be a lot more before we get out of this.”

The rain was warm and clean on the two women as they slipped out of the hut. It helped wash the blood of the dead guard off Alita’s hands, and she was glad, for she fancied she could smell it.

“Which way do we go?” Connie asked.

Alita pointed with the dead guard’s sword. “Over there is the hut where they took Hooker and Buzz.”

As they looked, a young Mayan girl came out of the hut carrying a bowl of viscous liquid. She threw the liquid off into the darkness, letting it slap the wet ground. Two guards followed the girl out of the hut. The guards were carrying knives. They wiped the blades on the grass and returned the knives to their belts. One of the guards said something, and they both laughed.

“Oh, Jesus, they haven’t — ” Connie began.

“Quiet!” Alita ordered. “No, they are still standing outside the door. If they had killed the men, there would be no need for guards.”

Connie shivered, although the rain was warm.

“Come this way,” Alita said, and pulled her back toward the wall that surrounded the city.

As they passed the rear of the hut where they had been held, Connie stumbled over the body of the young guard. Between his legs lay a pile of his intestines in a dark pool of blood.

“Oh, God,” Connie said, “did you — ”

“Of course I did,” Alita snapped. “What did you think, he died of old age? Come on.”

They crept along the inner perimeter of the wall toward the back of the hut where Alita had seen Hooker and Kaplan taken.

When they came to the spot immediately behind the hut, they crouched in the darkness, listening. There was only the sound of the rain and the night cries of the jungle outside the wall of the city.

Alita tapped Connie on the shoulder and pointed to the hut. Together they ran across the open area of scrub grass between it and the wall of the city. They knelt there beside the upright stakes bound with henequen that walled the rear of the hut. Alita pressed her ear against the stakes and clearly heard the voices of the men inside.

“Well, shit, Hooker, why didn’t you stay in Veracruz?”

“Good question.”

“I could have lived on coconuts and turtle eggs and been happy for the rest of my life, however long that might have been. But no, you had to come barreling down to Quintana Roo like some half-assed knight on a rescue mission.”

“As the drunk said when they asked him why he shoved his fist through the plate-glass window, ‘It seemed like the thing to do at the time.’”

“Tell me something, Hooker.”

“Yeah?”

“Why are we babbling like this?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to keep from thinking.”

“Yeah.”

On the other side of the stake wall, Alita whispered, “It sounds like only the two of them inside.”

“What do we do?” Connie whispered back.

“The guards are still out in front. We’ll have to cut through this wall.”

Connie nodded. She began using the dead guard’s knife to saw through the cord that held the upright stakes together. Suddenly, Alita seized her hand.

“Wait! Someone else has come in.”

Both women pressed their ears to the wall and listened. There was a shuffling of feet, and the voice of Holchacán spoke.

“Comfortable, gentlemen?”

“Fuck you,” said Buzz.

“I can understand your pique, of course, but you must see that there is no other way.”

“So you’re going to chop into our heads, you butcher bastard.”

“Save it, Buzz,” Hooker said. “You’re just giving him a chance to gloat.”

“Oh, come now, Hooker. I have no intention of gloating. I came to say good-by. I will regret losing someone with whom I can converse in English.”

“Tough on you,” Buzz muttered.

“You will, however, make excellent specimens for, well, let’s call it brain alteration.”

“Let’s call it murder,” Buzz said. “We saw what you did to that little guy tonight.”

“I was using an experimental technique with that one, since he was worthless, anyway. With you I will stick to the tried and true methods.”

“We’ve seen the results of those methods,” Hooker said. “Why don’t we knock off the game playing and get on with it.”

“That is one wish I can grant you,” said the Mayan chief. “I will send someone in with a potion that will spare you most of the pain of the operation. Until then, I leave you a last few minutes to yourselves.”

From where they were kneeling out behind the hut, Connie and Alita could hear the shuffle of feet again as Holchacán and his personal attendants left.

“Now,” said Alita.

Connie began once again working with the knife between the wall stakes.

“Stand away,” Alita said.

Connie looked at her.

Alita raised the heavy sword over her head. “The knife is too small. Let me do it.”

Connie moved to the side, and Alita swung the sword straight down, slicing through the cord, cleanly separating the wooden stakes.

Inside the hut, Buzz said, “What the hell was that?”

Hooker craned his head around to look at the rear wall and said, “Shh!”

One of the guards standing out in front of the hut pulled aside the animal hide that covered the doorway and looked in. Hooker shuffled his feet around as much as he could manage on the dirt floor to cover the noise from the back of the hut.

The guard grunted something in the Mayan language.

“For Chrissake,” Hooker said, “can’t you put some cushions in here?”

The guard stared at him for a moment in confusion, then snorted and withdrew. Hooker and Buzz both twisted around as far as they could to look toward the back wall.

Outside, Alita used the sword to pry the stakes apart. She and Connie looked in.

“It’s us,” Alita whispered. “Are you okay?”

“So far,” Hooker said. “How the hell did you get here?”

“Long story.” She pulled the stakes to one side while Connie pulled to the other, forming an opening big enough for them to crawl through.

When the women were inside, Connie whispered, “Jesus, you’re bald!”

“No kidding,” Hooker whispered back. “Cut the damn ropes. And try not to rouse the goons outside.”

Connie began to work on the many turns of cord binding Hooker to the upright pole. Alita did the same for Buzz, though her work was more difficult with the clumsy sword.

Before either of the men was cut free, the sound of a voice outside froze the four people in the hut. It was the Mayan language that none of them understood, but they recognized the high-pitched voice of Zoaltl, the high priest, as he spoke to the guards.

Connie left off slicing at Hooker’s cords and moved away from the pole. She flattened herself at the side of the doorway. Behind the pole where Kaplan was tied, Alita tugged at the sword, but it had become wedged in the wood, and she could not pull it out.

The flap of hide across the doorway of the hut was pulled aside, and the high priest entered. He wore his usual elaborate headdress and a new robe that had no ugly blood spots like the one he had worn earlier. He also wore an expression of self-satisfaction that changed instantly to an almost comic look of shock when he saw Alita struggling to pull the sword from where it was sunk into the wooden pole.

The high priest turned back toward the doorway. He opened his mouth and drew in a breath to summon the guards when Connie stepped out from beside the doorway and stabbed him. The knife blade scraped on a rib, then slipped cleanly through muscle and lung tissue and into Zoaltl’s heart.

The high priest coughed once and turned completely around. He took two faltering steps back into the hut, then began to crumple. Hooker ripped free of the remaining cords and staggered to his feet in time to catch the falling man. He clamped a silencing hand over the high priest’s mouth, but it was unnecessary, as all that came out was a glob of blood.

“Nice going,” he whispered to Connie.

She stood swaying back and forth. Her complexion had gone greenish. The knife, wet with Zoaltl’s blood, was still clutched in her hand.

Hooker freed one of his hands to take her by the shoulder. He shook her gently. “Come on, snap out of it. We’ve got to move fast.”

Connie nodded without seeming to hear him.

Alita finally succeeded in pulling the sword out of the wooden pole and used it to cut the rest of Buzz’s cords. He struggled to his feet and gave her a thumbs-up sign.

Still holding the dead high priest erect, Hooker reached down and removed the knife from his belt. As he did so, the flap of hide across the doorway was jerked aside and the two guards looked in. Their jaws dropped in unison.

Instantly, Hooker clapped a hand over the high priest’s face and pulled his head back while bracing the limp body against his own to make it appear that Zoaltl still stood. He brought the dagger to the dead man’s throat and made vicious sawing motions for the benefit of the guards. Their eyes filled with fear and indecision.

“Put them on their knees, Buzz,” Hooker said.

Kaplan pulled the two guards the rest of the way into the hut and forced them down into kneeling positions. Hooker kept turning to keep the front of the high priest’s body toward them so they would not see the bright splotch of blood on the back of his robe where Connie’s knife had gone in.

“What are you going to do?” Connie asked.

Hooker looked at her quickly. Her eyes were feverish and a little wild.

He said, “I’ll stay here and tie them up. You three make for the wall. I’ll catch up with you.”

“You want me to handle this?” Buzz said.

“No. I can move faster than you. Get going.”

Hooker kept his grip on the dead Zoaltl and the knife while the two women, then Buzz, crawled out through the gap in the rear wall of the hut. The kneeling guards stole a glance at each other. Hooker knew they were getting ready to make a move now that they had him outnumbered.

• • •

Minutes later, waiting out by the stone wall, Buzz and the women saw Hooker work his way through the gap in the back of the hut and run toward them in a crouch. His feet slapped on the muddy grass.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s go over.”

“What did you do to them?” Connie asked. “Those men?”

“Tied them up. Come on; move.”

“No, you didn’t. There wasn’t time. You killed them, didn’t you?”

“I took care of them. That’s all you have to know. Now will you get the hell over that wall, or do we leave you here?”

Connie stared at him for a moment, then shuddered and turned away.

Hooker and Buzz made a step with their hands and hoisted Connie up and over the wall. Alita went next, then Buzz.

Hooker took a last look around to be sure no alarm had been raised, then gripped the top of the wall and pulled himself up and over. He dropped onto the soft earth on the far side where the others waited.

“Everybody okay?”

There were mumbles of assent. Then Alita stumbled and fell against him for a moment. Hooker’s hand came away wet.

“What’s this?” he said. “Blood?”

“It is a night for blood,” Alita said. “I used our guard’s sword on him.”

Connie said, “Look, I’m sorry, Hooker. I acted like a dope for a minute there.”

“You acted just great when it counted,” Hooker said. “Later, we can all go to confession. Buzz, do you think you can find the way back to the plane wreck? You said there was a river near there and a raft you were building.”

Kaplan looked up into the rainy night sky. “No stars to help, but I’ve always had a pretty good feeling for directions.”

“Well, let’s go, buddy, it won’t be long before they find the mess we left back there, and then we’re going to have some people chasing us.”

Buzz sniffed at the air and pointed off into the darkness. “This way,” he said, adding too softly for anyone to hear, “I think.”

The four wet, hurting people stumbled off into the jungle.