Belmopan Page 12

  “Captain!” Knobby shouted. “Come look at this.” Oz strutted over to an area just in front of and off to the right of the hut. “Look!”

  Oz bent on one knee, and turned the three foot log over in his hand exposing a dark stain and a clump of black hair caught in the bark. The broken stems of the foliage and bald areas devoid of plants, pointed to a struggle and presumably, the ultimate assault with the small log.

  Gizmo crept over from the entrance to the hut and knelt beside Oz to examine the ground area. “I do not see any signs of a body being dragged away, in fact,” looking off a short distance to the west and down a declination to the dense forest, more broken fern fans. “Knobby, go take a look and see what you can find.”

  Oz taking the hint, “We’d better scout the area a little more to see what we can find.

  A few short moments later, above the din of the now clamorous jungle, Ocho’s voice could be heard. “Captain, you’d better come look at this.”

  Lying face down, just beyond the clearing towards a shallow creek canopied by bamboo and palms, was a hulk of a man. Starting to stink, the body must have lain for at least a day; its outermost extremities were gone. Chunks of his lower back and buttocks were missing just above his faulty trousers that rested at half thigh; a jaguar had already made its claim. On closer examination, the remains of a severe edema protruded from the upper-rear-right quadrant of his skull; the skin and hair absent, matched that of the log.

  “We have our victim,” stated Oz, kicking the booted foot of the corpse.

  Knobby came up from behind and stated emphatically, “We have a trail.”

  “Good,” returned Oz. “Get ready to move out.”

  “What do we do with him,” questioned Ocho.

  “Leave im! He’ll keep the jaguars and critters busy for a while.”

  Without a second thought, they returned to secure the vehicles and prepare for jungle-trekking.

  The trail was easy to follow and appeared to have been forged by a herd of cattle. Whoever was in pursuit of the original two had no cares or considerations as to who may follow. Panic and desperation appeared to be the driving force behind their pursuit. Travelling fast and light, they were able to determine that a group of no less than eight men were in chase. Oz took the lead position followed close by Gizmo, the zoologist, handy for snap decisions on snakes, edible bugs and plants; following up last was Ocho, making sure they missed nothing. When the general direction of the chase was ascertained, Mundie and Knobby would drive the vehicles to as close a proximity as the jungle and terrain would allow. Wanda was coming in handy again.

  Within two hours of flight south-west, Oz came across the cramped clearing that had sheltered Shawna and the Mayan woman. Scouting the perimeter of a hundred yards in every direction, Ocho had determined that the original pursuants had routed, or altogether missed, the hideaway, but also found evidence of another trail that led directly to the shelter. Returning to the center of the area, Ocho found Gizmo fingering a delicate, feather needle; the obvious remains of a blow pole, the weapon of choice of the Mayan in hunting monkey and small game. The area showed signs of much activity but little lasting damage to the surrounding foliage. This group was not the original band that had followed them from the compound. The soil depression in some of the tracks was very light and almost unrecognizable; following these tracks would be difficult save for one set of tracks, larger feet.

  “We will have to hurry, clouds are rolling in,” sighted Ocho, face to the sky. Luck has been on our side with no rain so far, but if she rolls in, we’ll get eaten alive with the bugs.”

  “It will hold off for now,” Oz replied. “Move out!” They scurried along keeping close eye on all possible evidence of passage, whether it be a broken twig, fern leaf, parting of foliage, a print in the mud, or even a piece of moss dislodged from a rock lining the allusive path. They travelled like this for three hours, radioing intermittently to the tracking vehicles till they came to a well-worn path strewn with bodies. A mixture of Mayan natives, of slight stature, along with Creole, lay scattered throughout the small area. The Mayans had been shot at close range as if in hand-tohand combat. The Creoles had been darted and then hacked with machetes to finish off the paralyzing effects of the drug-tipped assault.

  “Come here Cap. I think this one's still alive.” Gizmo suggested.

  Oz, who came to examine the body leaning motionless against the tree, gave it a nudge and pricked the lifeless soul with his knife. “Are you sure?”

  Not responding, the victim sat motionless, his left arm hanging from its cleaved socket, a dart dangling from his neck just behind his ear. “He’s not cold, and there is slight reaction in his pupils. He must be breathing ever so lightly.”

  Felling his cool, clammy skin and looking into his eyes, Oz came to the same conclusion as Gizmo, “We can’t leave him like this.”

  Oz, pulled out his revolver with its silencer muzzle, and pushed it to the man’s temple. A slight pop and recoil, and it was over. His head tilted to one side and drool spilled from his mouth. A delicate, lightpink orchid, perched effortlessly above his head, reached down with its tendrils as if to capture his escaping soul, a blue morph butterfly transported it to the ethers.

  “The rest are all dead Cap,” uttered Ocho.

  “Numbers,” Oz questioned?

  “I counted four hunters and six Mayans, and maybe six hours ago.”

  “Which way, Oz asked?

  “They are heading east along the path here; I would say just four remain.”

  “Radio Knobby, and tell him to get on this road stat. It’s going to get dark soon.”

  “Yes, Cap.”

  As the team approached the remote village at dusk, made up of no more than a dozen huts and lean-tos, they could hear crying and waling. There had been obvious signs of a fight, with a young, boy victim placed on a table surrounded by a group of women, young and old. Close by hung the carcass of a small, half -butchered pig-like peccary, obviously abandoned, put aside in time for the unpleasant task of preparing the boy’s body for burial. Startled and frightened, they scattered to warn others; the elderly remained fearless to face the indignity of another assault. Several dogs approached with bared teeth, uncertain of the team’s intent and stood their ground, retreating only at the request an elder. Oz bent down on one knee, with his rifle pointed away, horizontally across the other. As a gesture of peace, he nodded his head and looked in the direction of the prone boy. Ocho and Knobby lay their fingers beside the triggers of their SA 80s and scanned the area for hostiles. They noticed a group of young males with blow pipes, behind several, grass huts near the outskirts of the hamlet; they made no effort at aggression.

  “Who did this,” quarried Oz? “Banditos,” he replied, head slowly drifting to his chest.

  Oz got to his feet and came before him. Raising his hand to the old man’s shoulder, he replied, “Let us help you.”

  Within the hour, Mundy and Knobby in the utility vehicles, had entered the small borough and began the task of retrieving the bodies of the villager’s fallen friends and family several miles down the trail.

  Diaz Quatro

  By early morning, with only a few hours of sleep, Mundy and Oz began the process of retrieving whatever information they could glean from the elder. His English was very broken, but they understood Senorita, Americano Indian. The old Mayan could speak some Spanish, so translation was slow, but effectual. By his words, after the banditos entered their village, they were met by more ‘cobarde’ (cowards), in a white truck and left with the senorita. They drove fast and north-east, and perhaps, back through the mountains

  “If they are in hurry, they may choose to stay on the main roads,” Mundy suggested, hopeful that they might catch them in an unpopulated area.

  “Knobby,” Oz yelled. “See if you can raise one of the teams in operations a bit west of here. Perhaps if we can get one of those choppers to give us a hand, we might find them sooner than later.

 
The teams that had been near Caracol, were brought closer and began setting up a drag net from Guacamalio, to Baldy Beacon. The area was immense with treacherous terrain, but it is what the forces were trained to do.

  EIGHT

  The Custodian Not far distant from Henry’s office in the Ministry of Archaeology Building, a well-groomed and manicured, grass field of approximately four acres, lay vacant beside the Governor General Field. Thirty feet below, in the aft of the Government Buildings, a single, aged figure walked the polished floors of the porticoes that formed the historical archive. Housed within its many rooms that branched from the maze of corridors, were the wonders and riches of a nation barely recognized. Apart from a select few civil servants, along with some closest to the National Forensic Science Service, very few were aware if its existence. Driven underground, well hidden from the previous occupying British, the treasures of a hundred, Spanish Galleons sparkled within locked rooms. The pottery, statues and figurines of a lost civilization once plundered, now crowded the many storage alcoves far within the reaches of the original caves. This was an awesome but quiet place, where few spoke but in whispers. The souls who did enter these halls were escorted quickly and quietly, to and fro, from the resource alcoves, by a small group of custodians that rarely exited the catacombs except on ritualistic occasions. All supplies and correspondences were screened by one of several guards that never entered the complex beyond the outermost receiving rooms. It was a mysterious place that over the years had remained obscure and definitely unknown to the general public, but on several occasions some of the visiting souls went missing.

  A lone, stooped figure that stayed out of sight, shunning attention was a hideous sort of man, hiding his gnarled features beneath a draped hood that fell loose above his shoulders. His voice, quiet and deep was his only seeming attraction, giving a soft and seductive sound that mesmerized those in attendance. His eyes, when exposed, were piercing and slightly bloodshot, as if sleep deprived, and hidden deep within the puffy flesh that surrounded them. He had been there for what some say was an eternity, and given full authority over the institution by some previous administration; no-one could remember which one, for no-one had seen the vaulted documentation, or had seen any other, apart from this odd creature, sweeping and walking the halls of this sacred place. He quietly did his business through the wee hours of the morning, and left late from the corridors after viewing hours. No one had ever seen his living quarters, and he spoke only to the few assistants who appeared to hold him in great regard, for they were never seen to question or refuse his requests. He had always been quite generous with his donations to the Red Cross and supported the Medical Sciences wing of the University of Belize, with few strings attached apart from the occasional request for reports on certain blood-type screenings.

  Unbeknown to the others, several rooms were his favorite. He would sit for hours and gaze at the Mayan reliefs that had been reclaimed from overseas and crumpling ruins, relocated to this safe place to stifle irreversible decay. Clay vases and plates depicting sacrifice and bloodletting lined the walls and were dusted almost daily and cherished as if personal heirlooms from his past. Small clay and jade figurines from Canaan, Middle East, and Central America adorned the shelves of his private sitting quarters along with woven blankets and mats that were strewn about accenting the sparse furniture, and used as if possessed. Often, he would shut off the security cameras to some of the main storage rooms and take the key that opened the most sacred of the sanctuaries. The custodian, sat for hours amongst the Chocmol and other sacrificial altars and artifacts. Some had been repatriated from far civilizations of the world, previously plundered from the jungles of Central America; the most recent, a small, jade bowl, with the Mayan calendar etched on the lid, seemed his favorite.

  He had held the jade bowl in his hands once before, many years ago. It had been a slight thing then, and for the most part was still not all that entrancing; but people had always desired to have it as a keepsake. The bowl had been a delightful, little trinket, given as a gift to a woman who had shunned his advances. The betrothed daughter of a king, would have nothing to do with the arrangements made for her procurement. He had only wanted a tiny piece of her heart, literally. She held within her genetic pool, the purity that would sustain him for a more lengthy time, a hundred years or so, maybe two, perhaps more; he was not sure. It would depend on the quality and directness of the lineage of her ancestry back to the original one. She was the purest he had been able to find for some time in this decaying world. The Custodian had continued to use less superior subject tissue for his medical procedures, but with the inevitability of more frequent operations, came of course, the need for more donor tissue.

  He gently fingered the embossed sides of the bowl, and stroked the calendar lid; the bowl was a pretty little thing, a gift to capture her heart. Love and hope, the two psychological pillars of mental strength, were used as tools, endeared by this insignificant creature called man. These were illusionary emotions, like the light of the moon, reflective, and not of pure essence; just like him. He had hoped to entreat the princess with this gift to steal her heart away; but, understanding the true nature of his gesture, she escaped from the top of the temple at Xunantunich. The local Mayans at the time, considered her disappearance a miracle, and she was placed in the pantheon along with the other gods. The princess was remembered for her act, and all that remains to this day is an embossed slab of stone, the ‘Stone Maiden’, present in the secluded alcove where she had fled. The Xunantunich ruins, soon thereafter, fell into disarray and decay. Knowing her mortal nature, he continued to search for her offspring; they somehow evaded his many efforts of finding them, till now.

  The special sacrifice of all those years ago had slipped his clutches, but he had another. She would be arriving soon, and how ironic, she delivered the bowl, now called ‘the Pillars of the Moon’, back to him as a gift. He placed the bowl back in its place and continued down the hall to his private quarters. He was still uncertain whether to bring her entire body back or just the important parts. He would need to have the cooler sterilized along with the bags to contain the ice. Xunantunich was not far distant, but he could not take the chance of any deterioration. A cooler was always less conspicuous than a body.

  A story had circulated among the facility’s guards, that at one time, he had been a talented, medical surgeon of international renown barred from continuing his research. After little debate and much to-do, death-threats eventually drove him from Europe, and underground to continue his work. Organ transplants, and trials of cell regeneration had not been imagined yet, let alone practiced, so he had left the Mediterranean area by boat to continue in obscurity. All this, he considered a slight thing, and many years later, he has been left alone to go on with his research in absolute privacy. No one has lived to tell the tale of the true nature of his work, but one individual has pursued his career, from a distance, slowly putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

  Dias tres (day 3)

  Time passed and stories being just stories, the crumpled, old man had become as much a part of the archives as any of the historical papers and artifacts that are housed here. Few outsiders ever had audience with him, seemingly associated to him and bestowed them. No one outside the inner sanctum knew where he had originally come from, or in most cases did those in his attendance ever seem concerned, for he had always been there. Today he had a visitor, protected by those closely silenced by the riches he Doug , the Americano.

  Doug Baldwin was a cool, calculating character, whose good looks and savvy had kept him a step ahead of all those who would trip him up. During the Second World War, he had been young and had a good nose for opportunity. While his buddies were out shooting and defending the front-lines, he was in the background procuring weaponry and souvenirs for the boys to take home on convalescence or leave. He always seemed to be there when all the accolades were being doled out. He was a well decorated man, and appreciated for the efforts he had m
ade in making his superiors look and feel good, at all costs.

  After the war, the mercenary life did not appeal to him, so he entered the Caribbean stage running goods and rum from the eastern seaboard of the states, south to the islands; lucrative to say the least. His desire for power and money eventually led him to the antiquity trade and a variety of relationships with individuals like Juan (Amalia’s friend from the Royal Reef bar). Cut from similar cloth, the two had been able to forge a workable relationship that generally served them both well as long as the artifacts, drugs and money flowed abundantly.

  Juan, on the other hand, scraped his way through life being the only son of an alcoholic father, who regularly beat him and threw him out of the house. One such night, his father drunk, chased after him into the nearby mangrove forest. After evasion, Juan has chosen to hide out and watch for his father. After some time had passed, Juan had heard muffled screams and his father’s cursing, and had found him with a young girl. Fallen from his drunken state, he had hit his head on a branch. Shouting and cursing at Juan as being useless and threatening to kill his mother, Juan took destiny into his own hands and ended this barrage of threats and insults with a log; the belligerent drunk never came home again; they never found the body. The young girl, who was barely twelve years old, half naked close by, obscured by fallen trees and scrub, witnessed the whole episode, her name, Amalia.

  The news Doug had to bring the custodian was not all that good. His prized genetic pool had escaped custody, and even though they were confident the search would recover her, trepidation crept the halls before him. Shawna had found temporary freedom, and if necessary, since the custodian’s second choice was still a possibility, there was hope the momentary lapse would not unleash morbid retribution. As a last token of appeasement, there was always Amalia.

  The gates clanking loudly reverberated throughout the halls of the complex. Every section of the security ring had its own set of doors that the American would enter through. Each gate had protocol that had to be adhered to with signings and photo recognition, or shutdown would be initiated and the complex would be frozen till proper procedures and assurances were met. The closer Doug got to the archives, the fewer security personnel he saw till eventually no-one came. The halls were very brightly lit from overhead and seemed endless apart from the intermittent gates. The sound of his footsteps echoed from the hard, bake tiled floor to the white-washed walls giving an unnerving, delayed, audio response adding to his uneasiness. Upon reaching the last gate, Doug was welcomed by a rather scholarly looking spectacled man of slight stature, who bowed then handed him a damp, hand towel. A smile and hand motions that indicated he was to use the towel for sanitary reasons and discard it into a bin. The man directed Doug to sit on the nearby chair, bowed once again, and disappeared down the hall and through a doorway.