The Maya Bust

  Copyright

  First ebook edition: September 2021

  ISBN: 978-1-941107-31-7

  Copyright © 2021 by E. Chris Ambrose

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review

  ROCINANTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  * * *

  Alta Verapaz, Guatemala

  The smells of cordite and diesel mingled uneasily with chocolate as Raxha Castillo shouldered her rifle and ducked into the cacao shed, determined to retrieve her father’s legacy.

  With a flick of her hand, she sent two men along either side of the long structure. Open sides meant a clear view at least as far as the encroaching jungle, but a woman didn’t get to her position without caution. Across the tables from her, Dante ran a hand casually over the beans, rifling them as if they were coins. A thousand years ago, they would have been currency for the Maya peoples whose graves still emerged from the jungle.

  Handsome and feral, with a perpetual hunch to conceal his height, Dante scooped up a handful of beans and let them rattle back down through his hands like spent casings in a firefight. A few of the workers twitched and huddled closer to the table as if they recognized the sound. Between the civil war and the incursions of other cartels, they probably did.

  “We’re looking for Eleiua,” Raxha said in Spanish. Most of these people should understand, even devoted as they were to the language of the dead.

  The nearest worker flinched and stared down, his hands gripping the edge of the table in front of him, his fingers as brown as the cacao beans themselves.

  She glanced at Dante, and he lunged, seizing the kid on his side and hauling him up toward the sloping roof. Rodrigo brought up his weapon while the kid cried out and struggled. Kid. Ha. Probably twenty or so. Didn’t know enough to be still until Dante’s gun rested beneath his chin.

  “Rainy season’s coming! You want me to get it started?” Dante pivoted, dragging the unfortunate young man along, feet dangling. “That’s how we do it around here, right? Blood sacrifice?”

  Raxha kept the smile from her face. He looked so eager, his dark eyes lighting with his desire to help, but maybe too much. “Dante, caridad, put him down. They want to help, don’t they? For my father’s sake?” She swept her gaze over the workers. They didn’t stand taller for her as they had for her papa, but they showed respect. For now, it was enough.

  “The shop,” rasped one of the workers, then he swallowed, his throat jerking with the movement. “She had — there was people.”

  Dante dropped the kid back on his feet, keeping a hold of his shoulder, probably so he wouldn’t collapse or run off right then. The sleek, black barrel of the gun still hovered close. Expelled from the government’s elite ranks of operatives for being a little too eager, Dante loved nothing more than the chance to rough somebody up. His bright eyes and floppy hair made him look like a puppy. She blew him a kiss.

  “There was a van,” supplied one of Raxha’s men. “Saw it pass about an hour ago.”

  Tourists? Raxha stalked past the workers in her way toward the so-called shop, the workshop, really, one of the few older buildings on the plantation left over from before the war. The rest, like the sheds, were bought like the souls of her people, with American dollars. Bought, like the civil war itself. The broad porch could be closed off against summer rains, but today it stood open to April breezes, allowing sunlight to illuminate more tables, crates of tools, heaps of burlap sacks and the woman working among them. At the back corner, as there had been for years, stood a display of Maya-style ceramics: broken things pieced together from shards in the riverbank, and a few obsidian points, even a clutch of jade beads left with the dead. Somebody had been robbing graves and digging temples. Along the front of the display stood a series of cylinders, mostly new, painted to look like the older things. Cacao cups.

  “You had tourists? I didn’t know you were open.”

  If her arrival startled the woman, Eleiua gave no sign of that. She worked over a ledger. A refrigerator from the Spanish colonial era muttered against the wall near Eleiua’s desk, maybe muffling Raxha’s entrance. Strolling closer, Raxha slammed her gun down on the front of the desk. Eleiua stiffened, then capped her pen and sat back.

  “Raxha. It’s been a long time.” Eleiua addressed her in K’iche, finally looking up. Dead language for a dying people.

  Silver and midnight hair braided back from her face, high forehead and full lips. Sometimes, Raxha saw what her father had seen. Sometimes, she thought of placing her gun against that forehead and blowing away the woman who had wrecked her mother’s life. Given Eleiua’s beloved status among the villagers, that act would destroy Raxha’s own dreams of gaining their respect. She continued in Spanish. “You had visitors. Why?”

  “Because some of us wish to make a living without others having to die. Is this why you came?” She stroked over the pen, then lifted her fingers away.

  “You weren’t so righteous when my father was alive.”

  The woman let out a long breath, and drew in another. “His death affected all of us, Raxha. My grief told me to find another way.”

  Her grief made her a traitor to their town, to their way of life, and not least to Hernan Castillo and his daughter. Raxha turned away from the desk and stalked toward the display of Maya ceramics, leaving her gun there as a sign of trust. Trust that Dante could blow a hole in Eleiua the size of a sacred cenote if she did the wrong thing. “My father gave you a cup a long time ago. I need it back.”

  “I heard you visited Aabo again. Must have been nice for him. I don’t think he has many visitors.”

  Nice. The flailing hands and mumbles of a drunk who still suffered from the rain of gunfire that had felled her father and the rest of his lieutenants. Certainly, it was nice. Raxha squatted in front of the cups. “He told me something interesting. Do you want to hear?” She picked up one of the cups, then set it down. It felt wrong, the wrong shape in her hand. Would her hand have been smaller then, when her father let her hold the cup? When he brought her to visit Auntie Eleiua, and called her princess, and raised a cup of chocolate in her name?

  “Tell me if you’d like.” Eleiua drew her ledger from beneath the rifle and shut the cover. “I’ve been thinking of Hernan lately. It’s good to know others remember.”

  “The cup is the way, Aabo told me.” She picked up another cup, glanced at the painted glyphs, and replaced it. “To the last delivery. What else could he mean?”

  “Aabo talks with his hands more than his mouth these days. Maybe you misunderstood him.” Folding her arms over her American t-shirt, Eleiua said, “Besides, you really think it’s still out there? It’s been ten, twelve years, Raxha. You think the stuff would last so long in the jungle without somebody finding it? Some caver, some hunter, some other — other business man?”

  Fourteen years. Since one of those other businessmen assassinated her father. Since she was nobody’s princess any more. Raxha took the next cup from the line, weighed it in her hand, and hurled it against the floor. It shattered into terracotta shards that rocked on the floor. Eleiua’s shoulders jumped. “Don’t, Raxha. Please don’t.”

  “Why not? They mean something? They’re more than just cups?” She grabbed another and aimed for a paper stuck to the fridge with a magnet. The smash of the cup flicked the other pages and photos, rifled by a ghostly hand. Her father’s.

  “Some of them are ancient, yes. Can you even tell the difference?”

  Raxha picked up one with conspicuously better artwork. “This is, isn’t it?” She hurled it a
gainst the refrigerator, enjoying the metallic resonance of ceramic colliding with the door.

  “Would you think, Raxha, would you please? What if you did find the last delivery, if it’s even out there, if it’s still worth selling?” Eleiua flung out her hands. “You want to buy your way back to los Zetas, the people who slaughtered hundreds of our own? You want a bigger piece of the business — you want to join los señores and deal in death across the borders? For what? For money?”

  “That’s part.” The load of heroin would be worth several hundred thousand dollars, maybe more. But the money was the least of it. Raxha took aim with another cup, a modern one. This time, she picked a photo as her target.

  Money, yes. The respect of the citizens, yes. The respect of the Zetas. Her father had been Z68. Such a high commander that they gave him his own number. He wanted her to be his Maya princess because he had been a king among men. The cup smashed against the photo. A small group of people, a few faces conspicuously pale, because Eleiua spent more time cultivating Americans than she did cultivating trees.

  “You’ve probably already broken it now.” Eleiua walked from her desk, careful not to crush the shards of the shattered cups. “Here, Raxha. We’ll find the cup. Just leave them. Just stop, Raxha.”

  Her gaze pinned to the photo, Raxha walked to the fridge, and ceramic cracked beneath her feet. A distinctive rim of white bordered the photo, marking it as an instant. Four young people: three girls in shades from Caucasian to Indian, making the Maya hand-sign for “cacao”, and a young black man next to Eleiua. The last few weeks, there’d been an American hanging around, according to the village gossip. This must be him. They wore matching t-shirts promoting the cacao cooperative. The same shirt she was wearing right now. Eleiua knew Aabo had been talking, knew he had a visitor. If she had known about the cup —

  “Leave my things alone.” Eleiua’s voice rang sharply, and she reached for the photo, but Raxha held it out of reach, then took long strides toward the porch.

  “Dante! Get after that van.”

  “Tourists, nothing more.” The older woman grappled with Raxha’s hand, but one of the men ran over, snatching the photo from Raxha’s fingers.

  She pushed Eleiua off of her, and took up her gun. “That man in the picture — get him back for me. Whatever it takes.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  Lexi Dionne scooted out of the cab in front of the airport in Guatemala City. Denise and Shari hauled their bags over to the terminal while Kaitlyn haggled with someone over a handcart so they wouldn’t have to carry their stuff all the way to the gate. Each of the girls wore a colorful embroidered dress, just like they planned for their flight home, but they still had too many souvenirs crammed in their bags, and Shari even had an extra bag made from strips of locally handwoven material. Lexi should’ve bought one of those, too. Maybe there’d be a shop inside. Pretty sure she remembered two from their arrival a week ago.

  Someone gave a light tap on her shoulder and she turned, cranking up her smile for Malcolm, focusing on his hands as he signed. “You’ve got the vessel in there, right?” He pointed toward the baggage.

  “Of course,” she signed back. “Wrapped in all of my hiking socks.” She exaggerated the gesture for “wrapping” as if she were swaddling a mummy, not just a Mayan-style cylinder.

  “Sorry,” his hands apologized, his glance flicking behind her again. “Eleiua wanted it sent to the States. Quickly.” His ASL was decent and improving all the time — he spelled out the name, and formed the signs carefully. He hadn’t mastered the role of his expressions as fundamental to the grammar of ASL, but she could usually figure out what he meant. “I’d rather it go with you than hang around in my hotel room.”

  “I’d like to hang around in your hotel room.” She bounced up on her toes to give him a kiss.

  Malcolm grinned and raked back his crown of twisted locs with one hand, looking even more like Michael B. Jordan. “I know, but you’ve got a flight to catch.” His hands made a little airplane fly. His eyes softened, then those strong arms wrapped around her, and they kissed again, long and melting. He broke off and sighed, signing, “Denise is waving.”

  Lexi kept one arm around his waist and turned back to her friends. She held up a hand for patience, then pointed at her boyfriend.

  Shari rolled her eyes and wrestled the cart around to face the doors, shoving hard to get the luggage into motion as she merged with the other travelers. Kaitlyn scurried along with her, while Denise pointed at her arm as if she still wore a watch, then signed, “Should we wait for you?”

  Lexi shook her head and freed up her other hand. “I have my ticket, I’ll just meet you at the gate, okay? Can you check my bag?”

  “Sure — as long as you guys don’t go off and elope, okay?” A quick clasp of her hands formed the sign, and Denise flared her eyes.

  Lexi tapped her lips as if she were thinking about it, and Denise flicked her a rude gesture, then stalked after the others, her long hair rippling over her shoulders.

  “I don’t want to make you late,” Malcolm said aloud so he could keep his hand at her waist while she read his lips. Given a clear context, she could usually understand.

  “That’s okay. You still look worried.” Her face underscored the emotion.

  He shrugged one shoulder. “I wish you were there at the village, when they gave me that vessel. It was weird. Eleiua said it had to leave quickly, like it was” — he signed carefully, probably remembering some of the new words he had learned on the trip, then said something out loud that she couldn’t follow, and she signed for a do-over. He fingerspelled, “a religious thing.” He shook his head again, those adorable curls bouncing.

  “Maybe it is?” she signed.

  He stepped back a little to regard her. “I think that’s —” he made horns with one hand and lay his forearms together, the fingers of his other hand flicking downward near his elbow. Bullshit.

  Lexi felt a sudden chill, thinking of her bag being searched, the fact she wasn’t even inside the airport with the luggage. What if the Guatemalan police got suspicious, in spite of the letter Eleiua supplied. It’s not like the thing was old, right? Just patina’d to look that way. “She’s not smuggling something? Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “She wouldn’t want me to get in trouble — and she doesn’t know your dad’s a cop.” A sign as if he held a badge to his shoulder.

  “Like he’d care. He hasn’t spoken to me for years.” Never should’ve let Kaitlyn show him those pictures. Seeing her dad again just brought back the old pain. People always talked about stalking their ex’s online, never about their friends stalking their fathers. Kaitlyn’s thing about uniforms was getting out of hand, and Lexi intended to taunt her mercilessly all the way home.

  Malcolm made a sad face, then signed his apology. “Sorry I brought him up. I’m an idiot.”

  “Yeah, but you’re so cute, I can’t help myself.” She caught his face in both hands and kissed him, then scooped her backpack onto her shoulder and hurried toward the airport, a knot of tension building at her throat. Should’ve asked Kaitlyn to stay close, to be ready to interpret. No — Lexi was the one who made Kaitlyn back off the last time — she could use her text-to-voice if she needed to communicate with the airport staff. She’d be fine. She and her friends navigated their way here, and had the best-ever Winter Break getaway, not-so-coincidentally in Malcolm’s research zone. All she had to do was get through the check in, and familiar procedures were always easier because of the common expectations on both sides. All she had to do was leave Malcolm behind for a while — a long while, given how Mom felt about him. She turned back three strides away to blow him a final kiss. His white grin flashed.

  A green truck with big tires bumped half onto the sidewalk not far from Malcolm, and he focused on that. The passenger jumped out, a guy in fatigues who started gesturing, his mouth working. Shouting, as if Malcolm were the one in the wrong when the truck had practically run him
over. Malcolm backed off a step, hands up, shaking his head. The door behind him opened.

  Lexi’s father the cop used to be Lexi’s father the Army Ranger. Every story he’d ever told sprang to life before her, every self-defense lesson he’d ever given in spite of her mother’s protests. Suspect everything, trust nothing. Mysterious vehicle, angry men. Something was very wrong. Lexi screamed, feeling as if it burned her throat. Malcolm jumped, alerted to the guy behind him, and tried to run.

  Already, the guy grabbed his elbow, dragging him off-balance toward the open door. The passenger swiveled hard, a hand sliding under his jacket. Knife? Gun? Oh, God — Malcolm. Running toward them, she yanked off her backpack and hurled it into the passenger’s core.

  The other guy locked Malcolm’s arms behind his back, shouting, his face distorting his words.

  “She’s deaf, she can’t hear you!” Malcolm shouted back, kicking and struggling.

  The guy hurled Malcolm into the truck, pulling a gun, shielded by the door. Lexi kicked the door and it slammed the man’s chest. The gun went flying and his face went red, mouth gaping. She grabbed the handle and yanked it toward her, using it to balance for a roundhouse kick that would take him down, hard. Just like Daddy taught her.

  The guy collapsed out of her way.

  A hand caught the back of her neck and something pressed against her side. The new guy didn’t bother to speak so far as she knew. She didn’t need to see the gun to know what it was, what it had to be. Malcolm’s face framed in the darkness of the interior, showed her everything she had to know — along with the guy behind him, holding a high-powered rifle.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and her throat clenched. All she had wanted was a kiss goodbye. It wasn’t meant to be forever.