“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.
“How many?” Remi called.
“Seven, I think.”
“I only got two,” she said. “When are you going to try your new strategy? Before or after we’re out of ammo?”
“Now might be a good time,” he said. He went down the steps to the entryway, looked around the wall to see if any enemies were in sight but saw none. He restacked the firewood he had piled in the passage, poured some of the whiskey on it, struck a match and lit a fire. As it grew, he kept his shotgun aimed at the opening beyond. When the fire was flaming high and the resin-dripping branches were blazing torches, he took four of them together and ran up to the walkway. He threw one of the flaming brands as far as he could over the wall, then each of the other three so they landed as widely as possible. He sat down on the walkway again and listened while thirty or forty rounds glanced uselessly off the high stone wall.
Remi made use of the concentrated fire. She fired three rounds and then ducked down. “Make that three,” she said.
“I’ll tell the scorekeeper.”
“How’s our strategy— Oh, my,” she said, looking over Sam’s side of the wall.
Sam looked too. The sky seemed to be lightening. He took the shotgun and stood up to get a better look, then ducked down as the next volley of shots hit.
The torches had started some brush on fire, and the flames were growing, beginning to eat their way into a large thicket where Sam had hidden, crackling and raising sparks. As the gunfire died down, Sam heard men shouting in Spanish. Sam ran downstairs, picked up three still-burning brands, climbed back up, and threw them over the wall on the other side of the enclosure near Remi.
“What are you doing? They’re all on that side.”
“I’m giving us light and space,” he said.
“For what?”
“We’ll deprive those guys of hiding places and put them in the light of the fire.”
She patted his shoulder and smiled, then pointed at the other side of the enclosure. She and Sam crouched, went to that side, and got ready. Then they popped up at the same time, ready to fire. The men were not visible. In the light of the growing fires, Sam stared but saw nobody.
Remi tugged on the back of his belt. “Don’t give them time to aim at you.”
Sam ducked. “Listen,” he said. “We’ve driven them back.”
“For a while,” she said. “As soon as the fire burns that brush away, they’ll be back.”
Sam shrugged. “It bought us a little time.”
“Thanks, Sam. I’ll still love you for at least two more hours.”
“After that, what?”
“We’ll see,” she said. “It depends on their marksmanship.”
They sat on the walkway, holding hands. Every few minutes, one of them would go along the walk, pick a spot, and pop up to look. The fires flamed along the strip, taking brush and trees but not going any farther because of the pyramids on each side.
As the moon set, Sam looked down the strip. “I think they’ll be coming soon,” he said. “And it looks as though more of them have arrived. It makes you wonder who they can be.”
“This is starting to get depressing,” she said.
He went through his pockets. “How much ammo have you got left?”
“Twenty rounds. Eight in each pistol, and one spare magazine with only four in it.”
“I’ve got fifteen. And five shells in the shotgun.” He hugged her. “I’m sorry to say, we’re about done.” They sat leaning their backs on the wall, silent.
Remi sat up straight. “Sam!”
“What?”
“The pool. It’s not a cenote, like a well.”
“No?”
“It has a current. You could barely feel it, but all the artifacts we found were off to the side, and it moved us in the same direction. It’s a sinkhole over an underground river.”
He looked into her eyes. “Are you saying that’s the gamble you’d like to take?”
She nodded. “If we stay here, we run out of bullets, and we’ll be at their mercy. I don’t want to go that way. I’d rather drown.”
“All right,” he said. “We’ll give it our best try.”
She glanced out over the wall. “The fires are about to the end. I can see the men moving down there. We don’t have much time.”
Sam and Remi hurried down the steps and got their dive equipment ready and changed into their wet suits. Sam brought the waterproof bag of artifacts out of his pack. “Put the guns, phones, and ammo in here.”
While Remi gathered them into the bag and sealed it, Sam put a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and shoes in the net bag for each of them and lowered their pack into the water.
“That’s everything,” he said. “Maybe they’ll think we got out through the fires.”
Remi shook the bag. “Are you able to carry this?”
“It’ll make a good weight.” He removed the lead weights from his belt and attached the bag to it.
Sam and Remi put on the rest of their dive equipment, held their flashlights, and sat on the edge of the pool. He said, “I’m sorry it comes down to a long shot.”
She leaned over to bump him with her shoulder. “It’s not such a long shot. If there’s one sinkhole, there are probably others. We just have to conserve our air to give us more time to find one. We should have about twenty-five minutes.”
He nodded. As he did, there was a ferocious barrage of gunfire that ran along the top of the wall on three sides, knocking chips and mortar into the air. Sam and Remi turned their heads to kiss. Then they put on their masks, inserted their mouthpieces, and slid into the water. They swam downward for ten or twelve feet and then felt the slow current catch them and begin to push them gently away.
GUATEMALA
Sam and Remi swam cautiously in the deepening darkness, just going with the current for about a hundred feet to make sure that no one standing above the cenote could see them turn on their flashlights, and they increased their speed to move along the stone corridor of the underground river. The water rose all the way to the ceiling of the cavern, leaving no airspace above the surface. At first, the walls were about twenty feet apart but thirty or forty feet deep. Each time the space between the walls narrowed, Sam and Remi would feel a growing dread. When the space opened up a little, their relief was intense.
They kicked their fins steadily to keep their speed up, and the current helped them along. They held their flashlights ahead of them, but what they saw was always the same—more curving tunnel. When the tunnel narrowed, Sam would wonder whether it was merely a fissure in the rock opened up by one of the frequent earthquakes in the region. If it was, it could narrow at some point from twenty feet down to six inches, and they would be trapped and drown.
Sam kept checking his watch as they swam. He and Remi had made a dive yesterday morning that had lasted about fifteen minutes. Each of their aluminum tanks still held about twenty-five minutes of air. That meant that for the first twelve minutes, if they reached an obstacle, they might still be able to swim back to the cenote and surface. Maybe if they did, they’d find that the men who had been after them had already stormed the enclosure, seen they were gone, and left to search for them. Sam knew this thought was part fantasy and part nightmare: the possibility that betting their lives on this underground river might be a dead end.
And then it was thirteen minutes, and he knew that if they tried to swim back, they probably wouldn’t make it before their air was gone. After five more minutes, they certainly wouldn’t.
When twenty minutes had passed, they could count on only five more minutes of air. Even that might be optimistic. They had been swimming steadily, so they had used air at an accelerated rate. He thought about their chances as rationally as he could. There was no reason to believe that they would reach another opening in the ground above them in the next five minutes. Remi was smaller and lighter and used less air than he did. If she had both tanks, she would have twice as much time to find an escape.
Sam shifted his tank to the side so he could turn off the valve, but Remi saw what he was doing. She grasped his wrist with surprising strength and shook her head violently. Sam realized that she must have been thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same fears, and known that Sam would try to give her his tank.
When Remi had grasped Sam’s wrist, his flashlight had swept the space above them, and something had looked different. Now he looked back and upward. He had gotten used to the sight of the bubbles they exhaled rising to the ceiling of the cavern, sliding into a depression, and staying there as a single, gelatinous bubble. Now his bubbles disappeared. He swam upward, with Remi still holding his wrist.
They broke the surface together and aimed their flashlights upward. They were in a dome, with the limestone ceiling about ten feet above their heads. Sam removed his mouthpiece and cautiously took a shallow breath. “The air is good,” he announced.
Remi took out her mouthpiece. They raised their masks and looked around. “I was afraid it would be carbon monoxide or hydrogen sulfide or something from a volcano,” she said.
“Nope. Just air.”
“It’s sweet, clean air,” she said. “How is it getting in?”
“Let’s turn off the flashlights and see if light is coming in.”
They tried the experiment, but there was no light. They waited for their eyes to adjust to the darkness, but they still detected nothing. They switched on their flashlights again. “At least we can swim on the surface for a bit,” said Sam. They closed the valves on their tanks and began to move.
The space remained above them, and they breathed the air and swam steadily along with the current.
Sam paused. “I think I know what this is.”
“You do?” she said.
“Rainwater that flows into cenotes or seeps in through cracks feeds the river. The water level must be very high after a rain—maybe even through the rainy season—and then gets lower as time passes.”
“Sounds right,” she said. “It would explain why the Mayans built those big stone strips like gutters, to catch the rain and direct it to the pool.”
“When there’s no rain for a while, much of the underground river probably gets low, and air flows in above it. When the river rises again, air gets trapped in places like this,” Sam said. “We’ve got to try to stay on the surface as long as we can to save our air.”
“And by the way,” said Remi, “don’t make any more moves like trying to give me your air tank. I’m already aware that chivalry isn’t dead.”
“I was just being rational,” he said. “You use less air than I do, so you could make it last longer and get farther.”
“All that would accomplish is that we’d both die alone. I plan to die in front of an audience and I picked mine years ago. You’re it.”
“Saves you having to send out a lot of invitations,” he said.
“That’s right,” she said. “This is hard enough with you alive. Just stick with me and curb your generosity.”
They swam on along the curving tunnel for an hour until they came to a spot where the wall ahead reached all the way down under the water. They sto
pped and held on to the wall long enough for an awkward kiss. Then they lowered their masks over their faces and turned on the valves of their tanks. Remi said, “Remember, it’s both of us or neither,” and put her mouthpiece in.
They sank, and found themselves in a long passage that looked exactly like the stretches they had first passed through. As they swam, Remi wished she had looked at her watch before they had submerged. She had timed their arrival at the air pocket at sixteen minutes, but how much time had gone by? And did their tanks actually hold nine more minutes of air? She and Sam had never tested the limits before. Letting their air get this low would have been risky and stupid on any day when they could have simply surfaced and gotten fresh tanks from the dive boat.
There was nothing she could do but swim. As the minutes ticked away, the passage opened into another, wider space. The bottom of the river was oddly uneven, with loose chunks of rock instead of the smooth-worn riverbed they’d seen before. Then she realized she was seeing these things outside the perimeter of their flashlight beams—real light was filtering down from above. They swam upward. As the light grew brighter, Remi laughed and heard herself make a squeaky noise like a dolphin. She saw Sam huff out a big flurry of bubbles in an answering laugh, and they broke the surface smiling.
But Remi’s laugh caught in her throat. There was light in this dome, directly above their heads, coming from a circular hole that opened to the starry sky. But the hole was at the center of the dome, beyond their reach, at least six feet above the surface of the river.
“Now, there’s a problem,” Sam said.
“What can we do?”