Quintana Roo (12 page)

“What happened, Johnny?”

“I fell asleep, and the little fuck tried to cut my throat.”

“You’re bleeding!” Connie cried. She reached out to touch his wound.

Hooker pushed her hand away. “Only a nick. He didn’t have time to finish the job.”

Manuel released his hold on the smaller man. Chaco sagged for a moment, sucking air in noisily. Then, with one hand on his bruised throat, he whirled on the larger man and croaked something in their strange dialect. Manuel’s heavy features drooped into an apologetic, doglike expression.

“Chaco told him they are no longer brothers,” Alita said.

“If you ask me, he’s a lot better off.”

Hooker’s eyes met those of the big man. “We’re even now, Manuel.” He gestured with the gun for the Indian to move aside.

The first rays of the sun slanted down through the trees. Manuel did not move. Hooker turned to Alita. “Tell him to get out of the way.”

She looked at Hooker questioningly.

“Tell him!”

Alita spoke briefly to Manuel, who stood his ground, looking stricken. He mumbled a couple of words to Alita.

“He wants to know if you are going to kill his friend.”

“Damn right, I’m going to kill him. Nobody gets a second chance at me.” He leveled the pistol.

“Hooker!”

Everyone stood frozen for a moment at the sound of Connie’s excited cry.

“Over there, beyond that first clump of trees, I think it’s the airplane.”

Hooker eased the pressure of his trigger finger and glanced over to where Connie had parted the leaves of a fan palm to look beyond.

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Come and see.”

He studied Chaco for a moment longer over the barrel of the .45. The thin
chiclero
had his eyes squeezed shut and his shoulders hunched against the expected impact of the slug.

“Listen to me, skinny,” Hooker said, “and you better understand what I say. You’re never going to come any closer to dying than you did just now. How much longer you stay alive depends on how well you behave yourself. Personally, I hope you screw up so I have an excuse to put a bullet through your sneaky heart.
Comprende?
”

Chaco’s eyes opened to suspicious slits. They widened and darted around, as though he were surprised to find himself still upright and alive. He licked his lips and nodded to Hooker’s question.

Alita was watching them curiously. “He understands English?”

“He’s a smart boy. He understands a lot.”

“Please, Hooker,” Connie said. “Can’t that wait?”

With the pistol, Hooker motioned Chaco over to a spot where he could keep an eye on him. Then he moved over to join Connie and peered through the gap in the palm leaves where she was looking.

Unmistakably, it was the fuselage and one inclined wing of an airplane. Most of it was grown over with vines and ground creepers, but in spots the metal still showed — aluminum painted in the pale blue and yellow colors of Braithwaite Industries.

“It’s Nolan’s plane,” Connie cried. She started to push through the brush toward the overgrown wreckage.

“Wait,” Hooker said.

She looked at him in surprise.

“Let’s not go rushing in before we have a look around,” he said. “The airplane isn’t going anywhere.”

He unslung the rifle from his shoulder and handed it to Alita. “You remember how to use this?”

“Is it like the one you taught me to shoot in the desert?”

“Close enough.”

Alita hefted the weapon. “I remember.”

Hooker pointed a finger at Chaco. “Keep an eye on the skinny one. If he makes any sudden moves, shoot him.”

Alita nodded. The
chiclero
stared at Hooker with cold eyes. Manuel looked uncertainly from Hooker to Chaco but stayed beside his companion.

Moving cautiously, alert for any sign of movement, Hooker made his way through the brush to where the wreckage lay. The fuselage and one wing seemed more or less intact. The engine had been telescoped back into the cabin by the head-on impact. The other wing was nowhere in sight. It had apparently been sheared off when the plane came down through the trees. The unscratched vertical stabilizer rose out of the tangled growth like a listing tombstone.

Hooker climbed up on the wing and peered in through one of the four cabin windows. The glass was shattered in all of them and completely gone from the first. In the darkness inside, he could make out the four passenger seats ripped from their moorings and tumbled about. The aisle was clogged with debris. A jagged hole was ripped in the opposite side of the body. Through the raw gap in the metal, the jungle had crawled in and taken over.

He raised up to peer into the pilot’s compartment. In the Orion, it was located forward and above the passenger cabin. Hooker almost fell off the wing when a skull looked back at him.

“What is it?” Connie called. “Did you find something?”

He waved her off and leaned in for a better look. The skull, picked clean by soldier ants and scorpions, rested on the mouldy cushion of the pilot’s seat. It leaned to one side so the thing seemed to be looking up at him with an expression of wild glee. More bones were scattered around the compartment. Hooker recognized part of a pelvis and a couple of loose vertebrae.

“What’s in there, Hooker?” Connie said.

“Just a minute.”

“Dammit, I’m paying for this, and I want to see.”

“Okay,” he told her, “you’re the boss. Come on up.”

He gave her a hand up onto the wing and lifted her so she could look into the cabin. Her body tensed under his hands when she saw the skull and what was left of the skeleton.

“Seen enough?” he said.

“Yes.”

He lowered her back down to the wing where she turned and looked up into his eyes.

“It isn’t Nolan.”

“How can you tell?”

“My husband wore a bridge — his four front teeth. That … thing had all its teeth.”

“I’m going inside and take a more thorough look around.” He looked down at Alita. She cradled the rifle comfortably in the crook of her arm.

“You okay?” he called.

“Okay,” she answered. “Any funny moves and I shoot.”

“Thatagirl.” He grasped Connie by the waist again and lowered her to the ground. Then he pulled himself up and through the broken window into the pilot’s compartment.

The wheel was snapped off the shaft, the whole instrument panel shattered and pushed back into the cockpit. All that remained of the powerful engine was a tangle of broken tubes, wires, and a mass of rusted metal. There was moss and tropical lichen growing on all exposed surfaces. In another year, the jungle would have claimed the wreck entirely.

As far as Hooker could tell, the one skeleton was all there was up there. He closed his eyes for a moment and pictured Buzz Kaplan — hearty, broad shouldered, big muscled. Could these scattered bones be all that remained of him? Strip away skin and tissue and there isn’t a whole lot of difference between any of us. He supposed that if they took the skull back to civilization, it might be identified. They did wonders with bits of bodies these days.

He knelt at the rear of the compartment and used his knife to hack away the creepers that crawled over the hatch leading down to the passenger’s cabin. It was rusted shut, but he managed to pry it loose.

As he lowered himself into the cabin, a land crab the size of his fist scuttled away from under his feet. It looked like a huge spider and moved with startling speed. Hooker shuddered and dropped the rest of the way into the musty cabin.

The rent in the side of the fuselage began up in the cockpit and continued all the way back to the rear of the cabin. Part of it had been stuffed with padding from the seats. In the aisle, a pile of blankets and seat cushions had been fashioned into a makeshift bed. Hooker stood looking at it, rubbing his jaw. It was then he noticed that the outside cabin door was slightly ajar. He picked his way over to it and worked the panel back and forth. Surprisingly, it was not rusted in place.

He sat down on one of the upended seats to consider the significance of what he had found. Beyond the partial skeleton in the pilot’s compartment, there was no sign of human remains. That left two men unaccounted for. It was possible, of course, that their bodies had been dragged off by animals into the jungle. It was also possible that one or both of them had survived. There was definite indications that somebody had been living in the wreck.

Still pondering what it all meant, Hooker let himself out through the cabin door and dropped to the ground. He walked over and stood with Alita and Connie, looking at the wreck. The
chicleros
were totally taken with the airplane and were no threat, at least for the moment.

“As far as I can tell, there’s only one body in there,” Hooker said. “And you say it’s not your husband.”

“I’m sure it isn’t Nolan,” Connie said.

“Then it has to be either the pilot or Buzz Kaplan.”

“What happened to the others?” Alita said.

“A reasonable question,” Hooker said. “And I’m as curious about it as you are. The thing is, my instinct tells me it would not be smart for us to hang around here trying to find the answer.”

“Your instinct,” Connie repeated.

“It’s served me well in the past.”

“Then what do you suggest we do? Just turn around and go home?”

“I’ve got a camera and film in my pack. We’ll take pictures of the wreck and of what’s inside. That ought to be enough to prove the plane went down.”

“What good will that do? It doesn’t prove whether Nolan is alive or dead.”

“To tell you the truth, it’s more than I ever expected to find.”

“And you could just walk away from it now?”

“Easy.”

Connie stared at him. “Every time I start thinking I could like you, Hooker, you do something to make me think you’re a heel.”

“I never claimed to be Jack Armstrong.”

“But what if Nolan’s still alive? Or your friend?”

“We’ve got a lock on the position of the wreck now. Your husband’s company —
your
company — can send out a fully equipped expedition that can do a hell of a lot better job looking for them than we can. The sensible thing for us to do is get our ass back to civilization and report what we’ve found.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Connie said doubtfully.

“You’re damn right I’m right.”

“Let’s hurry, Johnny,” Alita said. “I don’t like the smell of this place.”

“Neither do I,
chiquita
,” Hooker said.

He whistled sharply to get the attention of the
chicleros
, who were starting to poke through the wreckage for anything worth stealing. As he beckoned them over, a roar came from the thick undergrowth directly behind the spot where he stood with the two women. It was unlike any animal they had heard since entering Quintana Roo. The three of them turned. Hooker’s hand went instinctively for his .45.

“Hooker, you crazy son of a bitch, it
is
you!”

Out of the trees hobbled a huge apparition, dressed in rags, the face mostly hidden behind a wild red beard.

“Buzz?” Hooker peered at the enormous man lumbering toward them, a Mayan spear clutched in one hand.

“It ain’t Dr. Livingston.”

The two men stumbled forward and embraced. For one giddy moment, Hooker felt as if he were going to cry. Then both of them started to laugh like crazy and pound each other on the back and shoulders. When they finally stepped back, Hooker cocked his head and looked at his friend. He jerked a thumb at the spear.

“What were you going to do with that?”

The bearded man looked down, laughed, and tossed the spear aside. “Strictly for show,” he said. “If you turned out to be bad guys, I was going to use it to make a gallant last stand.”

Hooker shook his head. “Kaplan, what the hell is going on here?”

“It’s a little complicated. Was that you who buzzed over here a couple of times two, three days ago?”

“Yeah. Was that you flashing at us with the hunk of metal up in the tree?”

“That was me. Kaplan pointed to a tall mahogany tree on the other side of the wreck. Down from the upper branches hung a vine that had been twisted and knotted together with pieces of rope and braided cloth. It reached to within five feet of the ground.

“My homemade semaphore. I heard the plane come over in the rainstorm and knew damn well nobody could see anything down here. Just in case they came back, I worked like hell to carry that hunk of the engine cowling up the tree and brace it there so it would wobble when I yanked on the rope. When I heard the plane again the next day, I just kept tugging on the rope, hoping somebody would spot the signal.”

“We damn near missed you.”

Kaplan’s glance took in the two women and the
chicleros
. “Who was your pilot?”

“Klaus Heinemann.”

Kaplan’s smile faded.

“He’s a damn good flyer,” Hooker said.

“I know he is. He just always struck me as a cold fish.”

“We couldn’t have made it without him.”

“In that case, as soon as we get back to civilization, I’ll buy him a beer. Aren’t you going to introduce me to your other friends?”

“You know Alita.”

“I sure as hell do.” He held out his bearlike arms and Alita ran into them. He squeezed her for a long moment, then released her.

“And this is Connie Braithwaite.”

“That would be the wife,” Kaplan said.

Connie nodded, staring at him.

“Pleased to meet you.”

“Can you tell me what happened to my husband?” she said.

“Up to a point.”

For the first time, Hooker noticed that Kaplan was supporting himself on a crude cane fashioned out of a branch. He looked down at tattered leg of his friend’s trousers and saw no foot there. Instead, there was a carved wooden stump attached to his leg above the ankle by leather thongs.

“What the hell is that?” he said.

“Like I told you, it’s a complicated story.” He looked across at the
chicleros
, who stood watching them with impassive faces.

“Who are they?”

“A couple of men we picked up in Campeche.
Chicleros
, if you’re familiar with the term.”

“I am,” Kaplan said. “They’re not the kind of people you want to spend a lot of time in the jungle with.”

“There wasn’t any choice. We needed two men, and these were all we could get. The little one’s Chaco. Don’t let him out of your sight. The big one is Manuel. Him I’m not sure of.”

“I got the picture. If they brought you in here, I trust they can get us out. I don’t walk too good, but with a little support, I can make it. Until you showed up, I was afraid I was going to have to float out of here.”

“Float? On what?”

“A raft. I got it damn near finished. Hell, buddy, I’m a regular Huckleberry Finn. Want to have a look at it?”

“I mean on what kind of water. There are no rivers in Quintana Roo.”

“Not on the maps, but I know different.”

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or are you saving it for the
Saturday Evening Post?
”

“You got any cigarettes?”

Hooker passed over his pack of Luckies.

“Thank God.” Kaplan lit up and inhaled the smoke hungrily. He let it out with a sigh of immense satisfaction. “I’ll give you the short version now and fill in the details when we get to a nice comfortable bar somewhere.”