‘It’s morning,’ she said. ‘Any sign of Beto?’
‘It’s too early,’ said James.
They drank some water and ate more of their food and then decided that they should go down and wait for Beto where he could find them.
They climbed down the tower and made their way through the rooms of the ancient Mayan palace towards the steps. The ground was still in shade and a light mist lay across the grass. The morning was very still and quiet. They went down the steps, which ran the whole length of the palace, and shivered as they entered the shadows at the base.
‘We’ll head for the entrance to the track,’ said James. ‘There was a small building there we could hide in. Just in case.’
‘I’m getting fed up of running and hiding,’ said Precious.
‘It’s nearly over,’ said James, but he couldn’t have been more wrong.
As they rounded the end of the palace they came face to face with Manny, who looked almost as surprised to see them as they were to see him.
James’s mind was spinning. How on earth had Manny got here? He couldn’t have followed them all the way on foot. It was impossible.
He was still trying to come to terms with this apparition when Strabo and Mrs Glass stepped into the light.
‘Morning, Precious,’ said Mrs Glass with a thin smile. ‘We picked us up a hitchhiker. Sure had a lot of interesting stories to tell.’ She shifted her gaze to James. ‘Well, would you look at who it is. Good old Angel Corona. If that really is your name. Manny, here, tells me he saw you at the Stones’ house, that you pushed him out of the window.’
‘He also says he can raise the dead,’ said James, using his Mexican accent for the last time. ‘He’s crazy.’
‘What difference does it make?’ said Mrs Glass. She walked over to James and studied him. ‘I set out from Tres Hermanas with a gang of four. I’m down to two because of you, and one of them, as you say, is crazy. I need to put a stop to you before you foul up any more of my plans. So, why don’t you tell me just who the hell you are?’
‘My name’s Bond, James Bond.’
‘No, no, no, no, no,’ said Manny, shaking his head, the flap of skin and bone waving and slopping against his skull. ‘He’s my brother Louis.’
‘Cut the gags, Manny,’ said Strabo.
‘We robbed a bank,’ said Manny.
‘What’re you talking about?’ said Strabo.
‘We was getting away, and all. Me and Louis and the –’
‘Can it, Manny,’ said Strabo, but Manny grabbed him by the shirtfront.
‘Don’t you talk to me like that,’ he snarled. ‘Don’t you never talk to me like that, d’you hear?’
Strabo shoved him away and looked at Mrs Glass, who raised an eyebrow.
Manny clutched his head. ‘I get confused,’ he said.
‘It’s OK, Manny,’ said Mrs Glass. ‘We’ll look after you.’
Manny brightened, a look of childish delight on his face.
‘I knew you would,’ he said.
‘You can’t trust her,’ said James. ‘She left you behind, remember?’
‘Yeah,’ said Manny. ‘That’s right.’ He confronted Strabo and Mrs Glass. ‘You left me for dead. You want all the dough for yourselves. I never shoulda trusted you.’
‘Now, there’s an idea,’ said Strabo with a grin. ‘Maybe I will just pop you now and keep all the loot.’
‘Leave it, Strabo,’ said Mrs Glass. ‘And you, Manny. If anybody dumped you it was the kid. Pushed you outta your car, if you recall. It was us picked you up, wandering in the road. It was us who rescued you.’
Manny looked more confused than ever, looking from Mrs Glass to James and back again. James tried not to catch his eye.
‘What have you done with Beto and the guards?’ said Precious anxiously.
‘Beto? That his name? He didn’t say much.’
‘You killed him?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Glass. ‘It took us forever to find this place. We need someone to show us the way out. We left him tied up back at the airstrip and came to find you. He put up a good fight, not like the other two. Ran off like jackrabbits at the first sound of gunfire. As I say, Beto didn’t want to talk much, so perhaps you can tell me, honey, where in the hell is your father?’
‘He’s gone,’ said Precious defiantly. ‘Back to Vera Cruz. So you’ve wasted your time coming here.’
Mrs Glass sighed.
‘What do we do now?’ said Strabo.
‘We’ll have to take ’em with us,’ said Mrs Glass, walking away. ‘But search ’em first.’
Strabo nodded to Manny, who handed his gun to Strabo and frisked first James and then Precious. Precious protested and struggled when he took the leather satchel from her.
‘There’s nothing in that,’ she said. ‘Leave it –’
‘What’s this?’ said Manny, pulling out the pouch.
Strabo gave a long, low whistle, and then roared with laughter. He called Mrs Glass over and they checked through the papers, murmuring in amazement.
‘Now, honey,’ said Mrs Glass, putting the pouch back in the satchel and strapping it over her shoulder. ‘You have saved us a hell of a lot of effort.’ She slapped Manny on the back. ‘Keep an eye on the kids,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ said Manny. ‘I’ll watch ’em.’
‘Funny guy,’ said Strabo, and he walked a little way off with Mrs Glass, where they started a whispered conversation. Occasionally they looked back at Manny. Strabo kept shaking his head and once laughed. Mrs Glass was, as usual, cool and unreadable.
James and Precious sat on the steps of the palace. Clouds had come from nowhere and there was a light drizzle, but they hardly noticed the rain. Soon flies appeared and buzzed around their heads, attracted to Manny’s wound. James felt almost too miserable to bother swatting them away.
‘What now?’ said Precious after a while.
‘Keep quiet,’ said Manny.
‘You can’t trust them,’ said James. ‘They’ve got what they want.’
‘Shut up.’
‘They’re going to get rid of us, Manny. You as well. Isn’t it obvious?’
‘I’m one of the gang,’ said Manny, sounding less sure of himself.
‘They won’t want you around,’ said James. ‘You’re hurt. You’ll only slow them down.’
‘They wouldn’t try nothing,’ said Manny. ‘I still got my gun.’
‘Where?’ said James and Manny frowned, feeling all over his body with panicked hands.
‘My gun?’ he said. ‘Where’s my gun?’
‘Strabo took it,’ said James.
Manny looked like a lost schoolboy. He glanced over at Strabo. He held his head. Groaned.
‘Come on,’ said James, grabbing Precious by the hand. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
They were running. Bobbing and weaving. Across open ground, towards the treeline about 50 feet away. They heard yells behind them, and then shots. First a warning shot. And second a shot that was intended to stop them dead.
James felt the bullet crackling through the air past his right ear.
He risked looking back. Manny was behind them, with Strabo catching up fast, his short legs pounding like steam hammers.
He raised his gun.
James pulled Precious to the side, and they zigzagged as another shot ripped past them.
And then they were into the jungle.
It was dark under the trees and very quiet. They followed an animal track, deeper into the thick vegetation, pushing aside lianas and trampling ferns and low- lying shrubs. Huge spider webs hung across the track and they blundered through them without thinking.
They passed several ruined buildings – parts of the Mayan city that hadn’t yet been excavated – then a beautifully carved stone pillar, and, a little further on, a statue of a jaguar half-buried in the earth.
They ran on blindly. The track twisted and turned before straightening out and running between high rocks covered in tou
gh, thorny creepers. Then they could go no further. The way ahead was blocked by a big fallen tree, half-rotten and crawling with beetles, caterpillars, spiders and a thousand other tiny creatures that seemed to be hurrying over it towards them.
From the other side there was a rustling sound and James thought it must be a small stream or river.
‘I’m not climbing over that,’ said Precious. ‘I hate bugs.’
James wasn’t sure he could do it either. The surface of the bark was alive with insects, some of them very large and poisonous looking.
‘Back,’ he said quickly and they retraced their steps, hurrying along between the rocks. As they rounded a bend, however, a shot exploded by their heads and a branch shattered, scaring up a cloud of angry flies.
‘That’s far enough,’ said Strabo, advancing towards them, panting and sweating.
James and Precious stood still, hand in hand.
A slow smile spread across Strabo’s big, wide face, which still showed the signs of Garcia’s attack.
‘I been looking forward to this moment for a long time,’ he rasped.
A large, blue-black wasp with orange wings had been disturbed when Strabo fired into the tree. It was making a loud buzzing noise and circling the air, looking for something to attack. It made straight for Strabo, who tried to shoo it away with his free hand.
‘Get off,’ he snapped, and the next moment the wasp darted in and bit him on the neck. He screamed and pressed his hand to the bite, dropping his gun into the undergrowth.
The wasp was a tarantula hawk wasp, and its sting is more painful than any snakebite. Its venom is meant for killing tarantulas, and while it isn’t deadly to a human, it will lay a man out in a few minutes. Strabo pulled the hunting knife from his belt and staggered forward, gasping for air. Already his face and neck were beginning to swell up.
‘We’ll have to see if there’s another way,’ said James and they turned and ran back towards the fallen tree.
James scanned the rocks, seeing if there was somewhere they could climb, but the barbed creepers on them were almost as uninviting as the insects swarming over the tree.
He tried pulling some creepers away but only succeeded in cutting his hand. He swore, then Precious grabbed his arm and pointed.
Strabo was charging down the track, his face a vivid purple colour and bulging grotesquely. His yellow eyes seemed to be bursting out of his head. From his thickened, blubbery lips came a horrible, growling, wheezing sound.
In his hand was the hunting knife, its vicious blade glinting as he passed through shafts of light.
‘Get to the side,’ said James, pushing Precious against the rocks, and he braced himself, running quickly through his options in his mind.
Strabo came on, like some ravening jungle beast, clawing at the air with his knife.
James never took his eyes off him.
At the last minute he dropped backwards, raised a knee and grabbed Strabo’s jacket all at the same time. He fell to the ground, pushed up with his foot and shoved Strabo skyward, trying to remember everything that Sakata had taught him.
Strabo gasped in surprise as he was thrown along the track. He did a lazy somersault in the air, struck the back of his head on the fallen tree, and landed with a heavy thump on the other side.
James picked himself up, brushing loose dirt and twigs off his clothing.
He snatched up the knife that Strabo had dropped and waited, tensed and alert, ready for anything.
There was no sound from the other side of the trunk, except for the soft rustling sound. Maybe Strabo had landed in the stream.
No. There hadn’t been a splash. James had heard a distinct thud.
Maybe the blow to his head had knocked him unconscious, or perhaps the wasp venom had paralysed him.
There was only one way to find out. James cautiously approached the trunk, all the while expecting Strabo’s ugly face to appear over the top of it, spitting obscenities.
James had to look.
He ignored the teeming insects, which were still spilling over the trunk, and scrambled up, feeling brittle bodies pop and crunch beneath him. He was bitten three times and stayed there just long enough to get a glimpse of what was on the other side before dropping back down.
‘What is it?’ said Precious, when she was saw his pale face. ‘What happened to him? Is he gone?’
James nodded.
Nothing could ever have prepared him for the sight that had met his eyes. The image, seen for only a brief moment, was burnt on his retinas.
A river of insects, perhaps 20 feet wide, the individuals swarming together like a single, giant creature, devouring everything in their path. It was a colony of army ants on the move. There must have been a million of them and nothing could stop them. Spiders, scorpions, lizards, even a snake, were struggling to escape, but sinking under a boiling, seething mass of black bodies and red heads with huge, slicing mandibles. The ants latched on to anything they could hold – a leg, a wing casing, an antenna, an eye – and after paralysing their prey with their bites they cut them into pieces.
And lying in the middle of all this was Strabo. James had been right about him. The combination of the wasp bite and the blow to his head had paralysed him as effectively as the ants’ bites paralysed the smaller creatures. His body was twitching and racked with spasms, but he couldn’t get up. The ants flowed over him, crawling into his clothing, his mouth, his ears, his nose. Biting at his eyelids and his lips. He was disappearing under a living carpet of ants.
James had heard tales about army ants. How they would march like this all day until nightfall, when they would nest in readiness for another expedition the following morning. The insects scurrying over the trunk had been trying to get out of the way. They were the lucky ones. They had escaped the juggernaut. The unlucky ones, the ones that hadn’t been quick enough, didn’t stand a chance.
‘James?’ said Precious. ‘What happened to him?’
‘He won’t be any more trouble,’ said James. ‘He’s out cold. Let’s get away while we can.’
He took Precious’s hand and they once more went back the way they had come. Going cautiously, not knowing what to expect. When they came to the spot where Strabo had dropped his gun, they stopped and looked for it, groping around in the tangled vegetation by the side of the path. It was hot dirty work. Water dropped from the leaves overhead and they were soon both soaked and filthy.
It was Precious who eventually found it. But no sooner had she jumped up, triumphantly clutching it in her hand, than Manny came thundering down the track.
‘They’re coming, Louis,’ he yelled.
‘Who?’ said James.
‘I dunno,’ said Manny. ‘The cops, I reckon, maybe.’
‘Who’s after you, Manny?’ said James. ‘Is it Mrs Glass?’
Manny thought for a moment, his face clouded. ‘Yeah,’ he said finally. ‘It’s her. It has to be.’
Before James could stop him, Manny had grabbed the gun off Precious and fired wildly back down the track. He then shouted, ‘This way!’ and pulled her deeper into the bushes.
James had no option but to follow.
They ran through the jungle, pushing branches and lianas out of their way, dodging between the tall bare trunks of the trees. They were heading down the side of a hill into deeper jungle and, try as he might, James could not get Manny to stop. In the end, he physically took hold of him and pinned him to a tree.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘This is stupid. We’ll get completely lost.’
‘They’re coming,’ said Manny, looking around nervously. ‘They’re after me.’
‘I don’t think there was ever anybody after you, was there?’ said James.
‘I don’t know,’ said Manny fearfully. ‘I don’t know anything any more.’
James didn’t want to upset him. For now Manny seemed to have forgotten all about being pushed from the car. James needed it to stay that way.
‘It’s all right, Manny,’ he sai
d. ‘We’ll look after you. Just calm down.’
He slapped his arm where a mosquito was feeding on him. He hated mosquitoes. Last summer he had been so badly bitten by a swarm he had nearly died. Now their bites hardly itched at all, but he still hated the evil little things.
‘I need to rest,’ said Precious, flopping to the ground.
‘We can’t stay here,’ said James. ‘We have to keep moving. We have to find food and shelter and a way out of this mess.’
‘We need to go back,’ said Precious. ‘We have to stop her.’
‘Which way is back?’ said James. ‘We’re lost. If we ever get out of this jungle we can worry about Mrs Glass. In the meantime our main concern is survival.’
‘We had the papers, James,’ said Precious. ‘We had them in our hands. And now she’s got them. I handed them to her on a plate.’
‘There was nothing we could have done,’ said James. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘I’m going to get them back,’ said Precious. ‘I won’t rest until I do.’
‘All right,’ said James hotly. ‘But as long as we’re in the middle of this jungle, miles from civilisation, there’s nothing we can do.’
It was a sullen, silent group that set about trying to find a pathway or track of some sort and three hours later they were still wandering completely disorientated in the forest.
They were just about to give up all hope when they came across their first sign of civilisation. James spotted a big old tree, the bark of which had been cut in a herringbone pattern. A sticky, rubbery substance was oozing out of it and dribbling down the trunk into a burlap bag.
A little further on they found another tree that was being similarly harvested and then they stumbled upon a crude path that had been chopped through the jungle. They followed it, passing several more trees dripping sap. At last they caught the odour of wood smoke and cooking and through the foliage up ahead they could make out a camp in a clearing.
James put a hand on Manny’s arm.
‘Keep quiet,’ he said. ‘Don’t say anything. Let me do the talking. Please. Whoever they are, I don’t want to scare them, and for God’s sake, put Strabo’s gun away. If you start waving that around, we’re sunk.’
Manny nodded mutely, like a little child told to behave by his father, and James led them into the camp.