Chapter 48. Hole
Island of Boyuca, Bay of Honduras.
The men reluctantly went down to the water, cringing as they got close to the six crimson-stained bamboo poles. The first head belonged to Robert, the ship’s French chef. The second looked like Mindy, the administrative aide to Skip Drame. The third head was Captain Ben Z. The fourth looked like Brenda, the blonde girlfriend. The fourth and fifth heads belonged to the two security guards. The sixth belonged to the captain’s assistant. Zach Morse started tearing up. He had to walk down the beach, away from the group. He held his hands over his head with his elbows bent, like a sprinter working off a cramp after a grueling race. His father John Morse felt ill, and was bending over trying to regain his composure. Bolinda was horrified, but she was silently glad that she had not remained on the boat. Drame had just lost many people very close to him, and was taking it the worst, screaming and throwing up his hands, yelling “Those fuckers! I’ll get those fuckers!” Mountain Man Pete was the first to speak.
“They were cut clean off, probably a machete. Um, Professor Winston, if it’s all right with the group, I vote we get the hell out of here.”
“I second that,” said Bolinda. “I didn’t sign up for getting killed.”
“Wait a minute,” said Winston, thinking. He looked at the six heads closer, inspecting the bugs and vermin crawling on the flesh. He took out a tweezers and pulled something small off one of the heads. “These are hatched blowfly eggs.”
“Huh?” asked Bolinda. “What are you doing, Charlie? That’s disgusting.”
“Blowfly eggs take 22 hours to hatch. That means these six have been dead for over 22 hours.”
“How on earth do you know that?” asked Bolinda.
“Read it in a book,” said Charlie.
“Remind me never to go with you to Barnes and Noble,” said Bolinda.
Zach Morse walked back to the group, suddenly interested. “So, if they have been dead for over 22 hours, what does that prove?” he asked.
“When we went to shore,” said Winston, “The only other people left on the ship were Mindy, Robert, the captain, the captain’s assistant, Brenda, and the two security guards—in other words, the six that we see here. That red flare we saw was shot only four hours ago. If the six people left on the ship were already dead, then who shot the flare?” The men were silent for a few moments.
John Morse thought of the implications. “It must have been shot by the people who did this to our crewmates. And the only reason to do that would be to lure us back to the boat.”
“Why would they want to lure us back to the boat?” asked Zach.
“To kill us,” his father responded grimly.
“Does anyone have a gun?” asked Mountain Man Pete.
“Left it back at the boat,” said Drame, cursing himself. He had just assumed that the security guards would protect him.
“Look!” said Zach Morse, pointing out to the yacht.
Several hundred yards off the shore, a dozen outrigger canoes emerged from behind the yacht, around the bow of the ship. They were headed towards the shore. Morse and his friends looked for an escape, and turned back to face the jungle.
“Let’s head back toward the jungle, and take cover,” said Drame.
At that moment, from all sides, hoards of Mayan natives, wielding spears and bows, came charging out of the foliage onto the beach, screaming what sounded like war cries. Winston was surprised to see that a few of them were actually wielding guns. Within moments, the party of explorers was surrounded in the surf. One large native, wearing ornamental clothing and a headdress of birds’ feathers, approached the group menacingly with a machete. John Morse thought quickly, and whispered something into Ka’-an’s ear. The small-statured Mayan guide lifted up his hands, and yelled the word for “Stop” in the Mayan K’iche’ language:
“Tani’k!”
The natives momentarily paused, apparently surprised that someone was able to speak their language. Then Ka’-an began gesticulating and talking very fast in the Mayan language. The other men had no idea what he was saying, but at one point Ka’-an grabbed John Morse and Charlie Winston by the arms and brought them forward.
“Hunahpu and Xbalanque!” Ka’-an exclaimed triumphantly.
Winston eyed Morse. “Did he just say you and I are the Mayan Twin Heroes?”
“Yes, I think so,” said Morse, smiling and waving to the natives.
“Um, does he know we look nothing alike?” asked Winston.
“We’re improvising,” said Morse.
The natives were hesitant. The tall one pointed the tip of his machete at Morse’s chest, and then at Winston’s chest. Then he walked over and skeptically put his finger on Morse’s face. Then he did the same to Winston’s face, and then called out something long in Mayan, to which many of his fellow warriors agreed, as they raised their spears in anger.
“What’s he saying?” asked Morse.
Ka’-an tried to keep his poker face. He says you two cannot be the Hero twins because you look so different.
“Tell them that we are using magical disguises,” said Morse.
Ka’-an did so. The native asked something else.
“He wants to know who the rest of our group is,” said Ka’-an.
“Tell him that they are our servants, and that we are furious that they have killed these other six, and that we demand a sacrifice for their deaths.”
Ka’-an looked nervous, as he stared out at the nearly two hundred snarling natives. “You sure that’s how you want to go, boss?”
“I am sure,” said Morse. “Tell him.” Morse looked at Winston, “Charlie, put on your angry face.” Winston, scared senseless, switched from waving and smiling to crossing his arms and furrowing his brow. Zach Morse, at the corner of the group, looked at Winston’s terrible acting and was convinced they were all going to die.
Ka’-an complied with Morse’s request, and told the leader of the Twin Heroes’ displeasure with the killing of the six servants. The tall islander looked surprised, and then hesitant. He obviously did not believe them, but what if they were telling the truth? If he angered these gods, he would be the first one they would punish.
He consulted with several of his men for a moment, and then returned. He put the tip of his machete onto Morse’s hand and made a small cut. He wiped Morse’s blood onto his hand and showed it to the other natives.
Ka’-an said, “He thinks you are lying. He said you bleed like any mortal man.”
Morse took out his iPhone. It had a little bit of charge left. He quickly took videotape of the leader of the natives and his men. He held up the iPhone for everyone to see.
“Tell him I have trapped all of their souls in this device and I will not release them until we are freed.” Ka’-an quickly gave the translation.
Many of the men recoiled in dread. They had never seen a home movie of themselves before and did not know what to make of it. The Leader was troubled too, but in his gut, he was sure this was some kind of trick. The Leader consulted with two other men briefly. Then he said something in K’iche’ which ended in the word “Xibalba” and the crowd of warriors erupted in agreement. With that, the islanders charged Morse and Winston and the rest of their party, binding the party of seven with ropes at their wrists and ankles. As they were carried off on the islanders’ shoulders into the jungle, Drame asked Ka’-an, “What did he say?” As Ka’-an’s head hit a tree branch going into the forest, he replied, “He says if we are truly the Hero Twins, then we must face the Trials of Xibalba!” Morse looked at Winston. Well, at least the ruse bought them some time, thought Morse.
A half-hour later, after being dragged by the islanders at a rapid pace through the mosquito-infested jungle, they were all dropped roughly down on a patch of dirt near the side of a rocky hill. The island’s large mountain loomed in the background. The natives quickly brought out their knives and cut the binds, freeing the men. A semicircle of natives surrounded them with spears and began poking them.
“Hey!” said Zach, annoyed that he had just been cut in the stomach.
They forced the men back to the black stone wall. Ka’-an spoke briefly with the leader. “They want us to go in there,” said Ka’-an. The men turned around to see a small hole cut into the side of the rock wall. It looked slightly bigger than a manhole lid.
“What? In there?” asked Mountain Man Pete. He was much bigger than the other men, and it looked like squeezing into that hole would be a tight fit. One of the islanders stabbed Pete in the shoulder. “Hey! OK! OK!” Pete looked at John Morse and Charlie Winston. Pete realized that if he went in that hole, he might never come out. In a low tone, he spoke to the other men. “No way I’m goin’ in that hole, guys. I say we each grab the nearest islander, take his spear, and try and make a run for it. What do you think?” The other men nodded. Their odds were low, but going into a tiny cave hole did not look smart. Pete made a feint as if he was going to go to the hole, and then he whirled around and grabbed the spear of the nearest islander. Tossing the man roughly aside, he stabbed the next closest native with the spear. At the same time, each of the men tried to do the same. Zach was successful in grabbing a spear and dodging past the natives next to him, sprinting into the jungle. But Winston and John Morse were academics, not experienced fighters. They were subdued within seconds. Bolinda was also quickly captured, although she put up quite a fight. Skip Drame, for all of his experience in action movies, also posed no threat, and was tackled by several natives quickly. Pete and Ka’-an did a fair job of fending off a few of the natives, but after a few minutes of fighting, they were outnumbered and brought down to the ground. The tall native was furious at the betrayal, and began yelling harshly. A phalanx of six men roughly grabbed Mountain Man Pete from all sides and threw him like a torpedo into the cave opening. John Morse, Charlie Winston, Bolinda, and Ka’-an were next. Winston went into the mouth of the cave and was surprised that it quickly angled downward like a water park chute into a subterranean room. Winston landed with a thud on top of Morse and was hit in the head seconds later by Bolinda and Ka’-an falling on top of him. Everything was black, except for the light coming from the chute they had just traveled through.
Morse thought about his son Zach and hoped he had made it back to the yacht. That question was answered about a minute later when Zach came flying down the chute with his backpack into the room. Zach quickly collected himself and stared at the light emanating from the top of the chute. Could they just wait this out and go back up the chute later? Just then there was a loud scraping noise, and the light at the top of the shaft was blotted out. No, going back the way they came would probably not be an option. Zach looked at Bolinda and at the other men, who had equal looks of panic and dread. The Trials of Xibalba were about to begin.
Natal, Brazil.
Little Tanya Gomez, after being locked in a storage container for hours, was finally heard by a dock worker, who had been walking by the metal storage container on the way to a job. He quickly called the police and fire department. Unable to locate the owner of the storage container, the fire fighters decided to cut their way in. With the assistance of arc welding equipment, they were able to cut a large hole in the side of the container. When the first responding fireman stuck his head into the inside of the storage container, his nostrils took in a horrible smell. He had smelled that smell once before and it wasn’t good. He flooded the interior with the light of a flashlight, and was surprised to see a dirty little girl crying and clutching a small pink doll, crouching in the corner of the container next to over a dozen decayed and rotting dead bodies.
Across town, the lead detective who would normally handle such an investigation, Homicide Detective Manuel Rosario, heard the report over his car radio. He had never heard of such a large massacre in his city before. What was going on? Although he possessed the best investigative skills in the Department, he would have to hand off the job of investigating the newly discovered bodies to other members of his team. Rosario was busy looking for his kidnapped daughter.
He had found her blue bicycle. There were no prints on the bike. A canvass of the neighborhood led to one eyewitness. She was an elderly lady and had seen the abduction from her kitchen window. However, the distance from her kitchen to the street was pretty far. All she could say was that there were two large men, and they had put a bag on her head and had thrown her into a faded yellow van. She could not remember any markings or words on the van, and she had been too far away to see a license plate. Detective Rosario had every officer in the city looking for a faded yellow van. He had one boot print in the mud. He had made a plaster cast of the boot print and sent it to a police lab in Rio de Janeiro. He was waiting for their report. Other than that, there was no other physical evidence. Minutes ago, he had just received a call from the Stolen Property Division. A plumbing company called Pollo’s Plumbing had just reported that their van was stolen. And it was yellow. Rosario stepped on the gas. The address of the plumbing company was just a few miles away.
Atlanta, Georgia. Offices of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Murielle Winston and her associate hurried down the hall of the CDC with their laptops. They were late for a meeting with their boss, Director Bjorn Jendel. When they arrived, Jendel scowled at them, obviously annoyed that they were late.
“Come, sit,” he said. “What do we know?”
Murielle Winston spoke first. “We have finished processing the tissue samples taken from the warehouse in Mexico.”
There was a pregnant pause. “And?” asked Jendel.
Winston slid a color 8x10 photograph of a what looked like a worm. “It’s not good. It’s Mackinac Ebola all right. Perfect match.”
Jendel looked at Roessler grimly. “You concur?”
“Yep. It’s Mackinac.”
“The reason I ask,” said Jendel, “is that once we tell the President about this, she might close down all traffic coming into the United States. That’s air flights, cars, trains, everything. If we are wrong, that is going to be a lot of egg on our face. You both are positive?”
“Positive,” said Winston.
“Positive,” said Roessler.
“Who knows about this?” asked Jendel.
“Just the three of us,” said Murielle Winston.
“OK, keep it that way. I am going to try to arrange a conference call with the President one hour from now. Be back in my office then with all your data. We’ll do it in the conference room on Ten. That has the big screen.”
“OK, boss,” said Roessler.
As they left their supervisor’s office and walked down the hall, Roessler turned to Winston. “Murielle, I am a little freaked out. If somebody gets across our borders with that virus in them, and we do not track them down in time, this could kill a lot of people.”
Murielle Winston looked gravely at Roessler and stopped in the hall. “Jacob, this virus could kill everyone on Earth.”
Roessler looked at Winston soberly. “Um, how do you want to present this?”
“Send me the Greene Mass Tag data, the RT-PCR, the antigen capture. I have the igM and the nucleotide sequencing. Make me some side-by-sides, showing the photos from Mackinac and the ones from the lab. I have the video from Tsung. I will cut that up and make a Powerpoint. Hopefully, we can have something ready in an hour.”
“You going to present it to the President’s team or should I?”
“I’ll do it. Let’s just pray they take our advice to shut down the borders immediately.”
Murielle Winston thought about her husband. Shutting down the borders was the right thing to do, but how would Charlie get back into the country? She tried to call him on his cell, but as expected, got no response. She should never have let him go on this foolish adventure. She left him a message saying that it was urgent that he return home now.
Natal, Brazil.
Amy Rosario could hear the two sweaty men with the bad breath upstairs whooping cheers while they watched television. The Netherlands was beating the United States, and the men were obviously happy. As soon as the game was over, they would come get her again. She had to get out of here. She looked at her right wrist chained to the bottom of the radiator. The handcuffs. She remembered the time her dad was stabbed in the shoulder in his squad car by a murder suspect who had escaped from handcuffs in the back of the police car. After that, Amy’s father had successfully petitioned for funds to get cages installed between the suspect area and the front seats of squad cars. Amy had been fascinated by the handcuff escape, as she had believed that no one but magicians could escape from handcuffs. Her father had told her that the sad truth was that most police handcuffs were based on a design from 1912 and could be easily picked with a simple bobby pin. He showed her a YouTube video in which a fourteen year-old escaped from police handcuffs in under seven seconds. Amy had asked her father to teach her to escape from handcuffs. That father-daughter bonding moment was going to come in handy today.
She looked at the bottom of the handcuff. Handcuffs either came with a “single lock” or a “double lock.” There was a small hole on the right of the cuff where the handcuff key was inserted. That was the first lock. And then, on the left of the cuff, there was a little open hole shaped like a bar, with a notch of metal in the middle. If her captors used the double lock feature of the cuffs, they would need to turn the handcuff key over to the opposite side, where there was a small nub on the backside of the key. The nub was inserted into the bar hole, and used to slide over the notch, creating the second lock. She inspected the bar hole, and the notch of metal was still in the middle, meaning that her captors had only used the single lock mechanism. Good news. This should not be too difficult, if she could remember how to do it.
Luckily, she had used bobby pins to put her hair back today for the big game. She used her free left hand to grab one out of her hair. She took one end of the bobby pin and removed the small plastic cap at the top of the bobby pin. Then she inserted the bobby pin into the keyhole of the cuffs, sticking it through about half way. Then she pushed hard and bent the edge of the bobby pin inside the cuffs. She took the bobby pin out and inspected her work. She had successfully bent the top of the bobby pin into an “S” shape near the top. Now it was ready. Using her free left hand, she inserted the bobby pin into the keyhole, and pressed it under the latch mechanism. Then, turning upward, she released the cuff and it came free.
She tried the door, but it was locked. There was a window, but it was boarded over. She ran across the room and pulled her soccer jacket off the back of a chair. She searched frantically for her phone. It wasn’t there. The men had taken it. The only thing left in her jacket was the black marker she was going to use for her team poster. It was Seniors’ Day, and the underclassmen were making posters for the seniors on their last game. That gave her an idea. She took the marker and wrote in Portuguese on the back of her soccer jacket: “Help! I am kidnapped in this building. Call my dad Detective Manuel Rosario.” Then she added her dad’s phone number. She went over to the boarded-up window and tried pressing against the boards, but they were nailed tight. She would have to kick them in. She climbed up on the window ledge. She reached up and grabbed an overhead pipe and then swung her whole body forward kicking through the space between the bars. She needed more leverage. She scanned the room. There was a couch in the room. That might work. Using all her strength, she turned the couch upright, so that it was standing tall on its side. She used her leg muscles, and starting low to the ground, slid the tall couch over to the window ledge. Then she pushed a desk over to back up the couch. That ought to do it. She climbed back on the window ledge and put her back against the tipped-up couch. Then, using her thigh muscles, she kicked at the board with all her strength. There was a creak! She tried it again and it looked like the board was loosening. With one final smash, she kicked out the board. Unfortunately, she also kicked herself back onto the couch which tipped over and went crashing to the ground, making a large bang. The men would certainly hear that. She quickly ran to the window and looked out. She was in an old warehouse district. This window was three stories up, too high to jump. She grabbed her marked up soccer jacket and threw it out the window into the wind. At that moment, one of her captors, a tall stocky man wearing a yellow Brazil football shirt, burst into the room. “Hey!” he said.
He ran over to Amy Rosario, who tried to dash around him, but he was too quick. He easily tackled her to the ground. He stuck a knee in her back, and pulled out another pair of Zip-ties, tying her wrists behind her back. “How did you get out of those handcuffs, you little shit?” Amy tried to scream, but he put his big sweaty palm over her mouth. She bit him, and he cursed, and then back-handed her harshly across the mouth, sending her crumpling to the floor, crying. “Little bitch! Just for that, no food for the rest of the day!” This time, he hog-tied her, bending her legs back behind her, and securing them to her hands behind her back. “Let’s see you get outa that!” he snarled, and slammed the door behind him.
Amy Rosario looked across the dirty floor, desperately crying from the pain to her head and mouth. She looked at the broken board. He hadn’t noticed it. Hopefully someone would find her jacket. “Daddy!” she whimpered. “Please find me!” Exhausted and hungry, she tried to think how she could escape a second time. She couldn’t think of anything.
Tom Bergman, an architect from Minneapolis, Minnesota, worked for a firm which had helped with the construction of the new Natal Football Stadium. As a perk, he and his wife had gotten free seats to the game between The Netherlands and the United States. His wife had been thrilled to get a free vacation paid for by the company, but Bergman was tired of being in Brazil. He had been here for three months and was anxious to get home. And the place was so blasted hot. He had been told that in the summer months it was supposed to be colder in South America, because their seasons were reversed. Obviously, the weather man did not get the memo. Bergman had sprayed himself all afternoon with one of those water sprayers they sold outside the stadium, but he was still covered in perspiration. The game was almost over, but he could see the United States was going to lose. He preferred to beat the traffic back to the airport. Although his wife was disappointed that he was cutting the vacation short, Bergman and his wife left the game and headed for the airport. If they made good time, they might be able to catch the earlier American Airlines Flight back to Dallas, and then he could get a connection back to Minneapolis tonight.