Mexico Fever (The Bill Travis Mysteries Book 12) Read online

  A sign came up, which read Cenote de Sacrificio.

  I took to the path. The forest pressed in on both sides of the trail, and wherever I shined my light among the trees, pairs of small, close-set eyes gleamed back at me. I shivered, and turned the light back to the trail ahead, not so much out of courtesy to the local wild population, but so that I wouldn’t see any eyes that weren’t quite so close-set. What seemed like weeks before, I had asked someone about jaguars. I was certain the woods about contained a whole gaggle of them.

  I had gone no more than a hundred yards when I heard a strange, out-of-place noise from behind me. Part of the noise was covered up by a clap of thunder, but the sound was unmistakable—the bray of a donkey.

  I turned around.

  At that moment, the curtain of rain caught up with me and enveloped me. I was instantly drenched, and couldn’t see more than a few yards in any direction, even with the flashlight.

  “Señor Burro,” I said.

  I began walking back down the trail to the pyramid complex. The pathway had turned instantly to mud, and I wouldn’t have been able to run had my life depended on it. Also, at this stage I couldn’t afford to break any bones.

  The bray of Señor Burro came back to me again, even through the pounding rain and the play of lightning.

  “I’m coming, Señor Burro!” I shouted.

  My mind raced. Was Herlinda with him? Was she in trouble? If anything bad happened to that kid, I would be hurting somebody pretty bad.

  The mud beneath my feet gave way to sodden grass, and I ran.

  The low-hanging branch of a tree very nearly stiff-armed me in the chest, but at the last second I ducked beneath it and felt it scrape the crown of my head. That’s how you know you’re alive—narrowly miss something and have it scrape your head.

  I ran.

  The shape emerged in the bouncing cone of light from my flashlight. It was a low, squashed pyramid, broad at the base and with a platform twice as high as a man at the top.

  There, at the base of the steps leading upward, was Señor Burro, the multi-colored blanket on his back drenched and dripping as the rain continued to pour down. His forelegs were planted on the fifth step up, and his hind legs were on the ground and first step. Somehow he had gotten over the off-limits rope for the ruin and was trying to scale the pyramid.

  “Señor Burro,” I said as I came to him. “What are you doing? Where’s Herlinda?”

  He tossed his head at me, as if both making a statement and gesturing upward. He grunted.

  “It’s too steep for a donkey, old buddy,” I said. “But I can go have a look for you.” But even as I said the words, I knew. It was something that Candace had said to me. Something about Walt and the donkey having a love-hate relationship.

  “Walt is up there, isn’t he?”

  Instead of waiting for an answer, I whipped the map out of my pocket and hit it with my light. Templo de Sacrificio, it read.

  “The Temple of Sacrifice. Right next to the path to the Sacrificial Cenote. You’re a genius, Señor Burro.” The Grand Pyramid was not where people were sacrificed. It was this place, this low pyramid.

  “You stay here, partner,” I told the donkey. “Bill’s got this one.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Temple of Venus, the place of sacrifice of the ancient Maya, has a mere fourteen steps to the top on each side. I quickly stepped over the off-limits wire on the north side of the temple and took the steps three at a time. Lightning split the night and played about the temple complex. To my right, about a hundred yards away, a tree was split asunder by a lightning bolt. The crash was deafening, and I nearly lost my footing midway up the low pyramid. I reached the top, and played my flashlight across it. The rain pounded down on my head and all about, but I easily made out the form of a man, lying in a fetal position. It was Walt Cannon.

  I ran to his side, bent over him so as to shield his face from the rain, and pressed two of my fingers to the side of his neck. At first I didn’t feel anything, so I moved my fingers. I found a pulse. It wasn’t strong, but it was there.

  “Walt!” I yelled. “Are you okay?”

  No answer. His eyes were closed, and he was essentially unresponsive. His face was a massive bruise, with deep cuts and abrasions—very nearly a ruin. Maybe he was dying.

  From somewhere out there in the night, I knew that Sunlight was coming. He was coming to kill me, and then he would kill Walt.

  Walt’s hands were bound with wire that had cut deeply into his flesh. His hands were nearly purple in the light from my flashlight. I felt for and found the end piece, and managed to slash my thumb on it. The wire was thin, but it was strong, as if it had greater tensile strength than mere steel. I ignored my bleeding thumb and tried again. I managed to push the end piece out and away from his wrist until I had leverage. I counted five turns around his wrists. This was going to be a job.

  I felt something bump my foot behind me, but I ignored it. Could it be hail falling from the sky? Did it hail on the Yucatan Peninsula?

  I was halfway through the second turn around Walt’s wrist when I was pulled backward by my right foot. I flopped onto my back and the rain struck me in the face.

  A bolt of lightning stabbed out of the sky, arched before my eyes not ten feet away and exploded in a blinding sheet of whiteness that turned into a black void. In the instant after-image I could see rain sucked upward, snatched from the air into the vacuum left in its wake. I could hear nothing and my next breath was of pure ozone, but the sensation of movement continued.

  I looked down at my feet and saw that the grandfather of all fleshy coils had taken hold of my leg and was pulling me to the edge of the stone platform.

  I kicked the coil with my left leg, and then a something dark rose into the sky above me, hovered there. At first I thought it was a giant human, a cyclops, perhaps. But then the lightning came again, farther off, and silhouetted the thing perfectly.

  Anaconda! The largest snake I had ever seen. It was bigger around than me. It’s head flattened and it lunged forward and made a hissing bark mere inches from my face that could have been a tornado eating a barn.

  “He will kill you,” a voice said. “He will digest you slowly.”

  I was Sunlight—Phillippe—and he stood five feet behind me, between me and Walt. In a flash of lightning I saw that he stood there in the rain. There was a huge bandage around his middle and his left shoulder, and the hole where I had shot him was stained with blood. He should have been convalescing for a week or more after receiving a wound like that, but he was on his feet and ready to deal in madness.

  “You’re crazy!” I shouted at him. “You and your damned snake both.”

  “He is a god.”

  The snake’s head came back to me, angled downward, as if he were going to swallow me head first.

  My right hand found the pistol in my waistband, and I whipped it out, held it up and fired as many rounds as I could into the scales at the base of its wide head. A large and dark hole open there from which poured hot ichor in a thick, syrupy flood.

  “NO!” Sunlight screamed.

  The coil released my leg and the length of the thing spasmed, thumped and slapped across the wet surface of the pyramid. Twice it rolled over and past me. The gun was wrenched from my hand and flew behind me.

  I pulled myself into a sitting position and scooted backward, unmindful of Sunlight, who cursed at me.

  “Die, damn you!” I shouted at the snake.

  In answer, the bulk of the beast jerked upward, shivered for a moment in yet another flash of lightning, then came crashing into me.

  I must have blacked out for a moment. Either that, or the change was abrupt. I was staring at a sky without lightning and without fat drops of rain.

  Slowly I turned over onto my belly.

  I wasn’t seeing so well. A man was standing there, his legs apart. He had a light in his hand and he shined it into my eyes. He was talking, but I couldn’t make a whole lot of se
nse out of his words.

  “—from Uraguay at a cost of ten thousand American dollars. She was beautiful. She was a god. And you killed her. And for that, I will kill you.”

  My vision must have been playing tricks on me, because I could have sworn that the man had four legs, two in front, and two behind. Then a pair of hands appeared, bloody hands held together with wire. They silently scooped up the gun lying there behind the man with the light.

  “You’re the one who’s dead,” the second man said, and then the sound of thunder came again, but this time it was without lightning.

  Phillippe fell forward, dead.

  “Walt?” I called.

  “Bill, I’m...dreaming. I don’t...feel so good.” The gun clattered to the stone.

  The sky behind him had taken on a golden glow. Was morning coming? Surely not. But Walt didn’t look so good. He took a step, then his right leg tried to give out on him, so he moved his left leg and quickly shifted his weight to it. It was almost as if he were drunk.

  “Walt, come and sit down.”

  “Can’t,” he said. “Feel like...if I lay down again...I’ll never get back up.”

  “It’s me, Walt. Come here.”

  But he staggered again, this time over to the edge of the pyramid, trying to keep his footing on the wet, smooth surface.

  “Walt!” I shouted.

  But instead of going down to his knees, he took another step, and disappeared over the edge and into the night.

  *****

  I must have passed out, then. Somewhere along the way, I must have taken a knock on the head, because when I opened my eyes yet again, it was to the light of the dawn.

  *****

  The rain had abated by the time he stepped up onto the broad platform of the Pyramid of Sacrifice. The first rays of the sun struck his face. Oddly, his uniform appeared dry, as if it were instead the skin of some alien creature that shed water.

  “Well done, Señor Travis,” the Generalissimo stated. Two of his soldiers came up behind him and took up station.

  “I don’t think I did so well,” I said. I was still on my hands and knees. The body of the snake was stretched out beside me, inert in death. Between us was the body of Phillippe. It struck me as odd, suddenly, that I couldn’t recall his last name, or whether or not I had ever heard it. “However, a deal is a deal.” I removed the handcuffs he had given me from my back pocket.

  “That appears not to be necessary,” the Generalissimo stated.

  “No,” I said. “It’s necessary all right. Here is your pound of flesh.” I encircled one of Phillippe’s wrists with the cuff and cinched it tight, reached for the other arm, pulled it behind him, and cuffed them together. I noticed then the hole in Phillippe’s back where Walt had shot him. I fell back on my keister, all but exhausted and looked up at the General. The smile faded from his face.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve still got the key.”

  At that moment, Enrique and his squad of men stepped up to join us.

  “Madre de Dios,” he said. Mother of God. “That is the largest snake in the whole world.”

  “Enrique,” I asked. “How is my friend, Walter Cannon?”

  “He’s alive. I left someone with him down there. You hear the ambulance coming?”

  And then I could hear it, coming from Pisté. It was at about the turnoff to the pyramid complex. Apparently my hearing was returning to me. For awhile there, after the blinding flash and the instant boom of thunder, I had thought that if I wasn’t done for, then I would never hear well again.

  One of the Mexican men kicked at the snake, then shifted quickly back, as if he might awaken it from the dead.

  “Gentlemen,” I said. “We think of the snake as the enemy of man, but it’s really not. The enemy is here, though. The enemy is withdrawing your love and understanding from your fellow man. This guy here,” I gestured to Phillippe, “forgot the real lesson was never anything more complicated than that.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Walt Cannon had sustained a number of cuts and contusions during this ordeal as Phillippe’s captive. I couldn't blame the man for having shot him. As he’d said in his letter to me, he really was an avenging angel, if such was ever born.

  I stood in the early morning sunshine and watched as the ambulance took Walt away from the pyramid complex grounds. He was alive, and for that I was thankful. I’d had my doubts on that score from the moment I saw him fall into space from atop the Platform of Venus.

  Walt’s departure that morning coincided with the departure of the military convoy, which I hoped would be heading back to Mexico City. The first of the morning crowds had begun to arrive, for the most part tourists, and they gave me and the local police a few quizzical looks. I smiled at them and waved. I must have looked a sight, with my disheveled and wet clothes and my hair going every which way. I hadn’t brought a pocket comb with me—not that I ever used one to begin with.

  I had a few moments alone, as the cops moved across the compound to verify my story. The activities of the previous night had segued all over the place, and we’d left evidence behind in our wake—clothing in the woods, spent cartridges on the stonework, that sort of thing. The good thing, though, about the rain is that it washes everything away. Including the blood.

  I fished out my cell phone and called Elizabeth Sawyer.

  “Walt’s going to be okay, Elizabeth,” I said. “I hope you didn’t pay the ransom money. The guy who was demanding it is dead.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Travis. That’s so good to hear. No, I followed your instructions. My grandfather’s money is still sitting in his bank account, where it belongs.”

  “How is he doing?” I asked.

  There was a moment’s hesitation on the other end, and my stomach was suddenly in my throat.

  “Not good. He took a turn for the worse during the night. He’s...not expected to last the day.”

  “I’m so sorry, Elizabeth. He’s a good man.”

  “Yes. And you’re a good friend.”

  “I—thank you. I’ve only done what I had to. Is he awake, and does he understand you?”

  “I’m going back down there in a few minutes. I knew you would be calling this morning. Yes, he’s awake, last I looked in on him. Is there something you wanted me to tell him?”

  “Yes. Please till Governor Sawyer that he saved Walt Cannon’s life. That he can rest easy on that score.”

  “I’ll tell him,” she said. “I have to go, Mr. Travis, and cry my eyes out. Thank you for everything.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “And it’s going to be okay.”

  “Yes. I suppose it will have to be.”

  “Goodbye, Elizabeth. Call me...after.”

  “I will.”

  We hung up.

  I waited a moment, letting the implications of the conversation sink in. I breathed in the damp morning air of Chichen Itza, then I dialed home.

  Jennifer answered.

  “Are you coming home, daddy?”

  “Of course I’m coming home, but it will probably take me a day or two to get there. Sometime tomorrow, maybe.”

  “Good. Daddy, I want to get an alpaca.”

  I laughed. “Honey, you may not have an alpaca.”

  “Okay. I thought I would ask.”

  “Is your mother home?”

  “Yes. She’s just done feeding the baby. Daddy, how many kids are we going to have in this house?”

  “As many as it takes,” I said. “Can I talk to your mother?”

  “Here she is,” Jennifer said.

  I waited for the hand off.

  “Are you coming home?” Julie asked me.

  “Yes. I’m just about done here. Walt is okay.”

  “I’m glad he’s okay. And I’m glad you’re okay. You are okay, aren’t you? No gunshot wounds, no knife wounds, right?”

  I chuckled. “No wounds of any kind.”

  “Must have been boring then.”

  I though
t about it. “Pure drudgery.”

  “Good. That’s what I like to hear.”

  “I know you do. And that’s why I lie.”

  “Come home, Bill. And never do this again.”

  “Okay. I won’t.”

  “Liar.”

  “Uh huh. But you love me.”

  “I do, dammit.”

  “I’ll call you before I take to the air, so you can spend endless hours worried about me.”

  That got her, because she laughed. “In your dreams. That’s one thing I don’t do. I don’t worry.”

  And that, of course, got to me. “Hmm. Why not?”

  “I don’t worry, not because you’re not prone to getting yourself hurt or anything. It’s only because I never saw any advantage to it.”

  “That’s what I thought. Goodbye my love.”

  “Goodbye.”

  *****

  Instead of riding back to town with one of the cops, I thought it best to take charge of Señor Burro, who spent his time grazing on the lawn nearby, waiting for me. I came to him, gently took his reins, and walked with him across the pyramid complex, past the parking lot and to the fork in the road. There we stopped. I looked toward distant Pisté, then turned and regarded the road to the airport. I was curious about what Phillippe’s compound looked like in the aftermath of the previous night, but not curious enough to walk the distance.

  Together, Señor Burro and I walked to Pisté. Along the way, I realized how much I missed the sombrero.

  *****

  When we arrived at the Monsiváis home, Herlinda came and gave me a bear hug, then took Señor Burro from me with a broad smile.

  “I wish you knew English,” I said.

  She shook her head, as if to say, “I don’t understand you.”