even trust John, I thought? I couldn’t imagine not trusting him. I hated being this paranoid. You have to trust someone.
CARLOS
Lucy made her call without incident. Jeb and I watched her do it and we all returned to Jeb’s room. I called the front desk to ask them to bring our luggage down to the lobby. Later I went down to the cashier to check out for an early departure and to sneak the suitcases out to the parking area. Risky, but we needed that stuff. I stood in the dark watching the parking area for at least a half an hour before approaching the car and didn’t see anything suspicious. Maybe they weren’t even looking for us.
We all stayed in Jeb’s room for the night. Two beds, three people, and Lucy looked like she didn’t want to share. Neither did Jeb and I, so I wound up on the floor. After all, it was his room.
It was still dark when we crept down the back stairs to the parking area. Lucy and I crouched down in the car below window level, as Jeb wheeled out into the street, trying to look like a tourist with a long day of sightseeing ahead of him. We uncomfortably cruised around town for a half hour that seemed much longer. “Looks OK,” Jeb said, “Nobody’s on our tail and everything looks as normal as Veracruz ever does.”
“Go for it,” Lucy said. She was probably even more uncomfortable than I was, up there in the front foot well. “Head for Muelle 9.”
Danger / Peligro
THE BOAT / EL BARCO
LUCY
In the morning, before dawn, we went down to that smelly dock and boarded Tío Sebi’s shrimp boat. Once we put out to sea, I felt much safer.
It was good to see Tío Sebi. He hadn’t changed at all. Still very big. Still very loud. Still my favorite uncle, even though I hardly ever saw him any more. It’s hard to visit people who are always out in the middle of the ocean. But we would have two days of leisure on the boat. Tío Sebi would be busy keeping the boat going, but we would still have some time to chat.
And now, finally, I could to take time to fill Carlos and Jeb in about our plans, as far as I knew what they were myself. There would be lots of playing by ear on this venture.
CARLOS
The car stopped and Jeb turned off the motor. Can I get off the floor now? I asked. Lucy popped her head up, looked around. “There’s El Triunfo. De prisa, hurry. Let’s get aboard. We’ll be a lot safer when we’re at sea. Jeb, bring the car keys for el Capitán, it’s his car.”
We scurried across the wet fishy smelling concrete, down the pier. Lucy called out softly and a large, round face appeared above the rails of the boat. “¡Lucy!” came a harsh whisper “¡Pasen al bordo! ¡Rápido! ¡Arriba!” We ran up the ramp onto the boat.
There seemed to be at least three people aboard, although I wasn’t sure as the dawn light was just beginning to do some good. They pulled up the ramp and untied the ropes. The motor was already running and we were away within minutes. By that time we were hidden from prying eyes in the wheelhouse cabin.
“¡Lucy! ¡Que bueno verte! ¡Hace tiempo! ¡Demasiado! Eres tan bella como siempre.” An immense man wearing a captain’s hat was hugging Lucy, her feet a foot or more off the deck. I concluded this was the captain, and I thought he was acting a little familiar with Lucy. Was I getting possessive now? Watch it, I thought.
“I’m so sorry about Gonzalo,” the Capitán continued, but with a sorrowful face. “He was a good man. How did it happen?”
“There were four of them,” she said, “they got him by ambush on the highway south of Tampico. Three of them are dead, but the small one got away.”
“From ambush was the only way they could have taken him,” the Captain said, “He was the best. Were you there?”
“How do you think the others got dead?” She replied. “I wish I’d had another bullet to put into that redrojo too. I would have reloaded, but the little pendejo is fast.”
I guess we were back to calling him the Runt, redrojo. Pendejo wasn’t a bad concept either, pubic hair literally, and I thought he could pass for one. By the look in Lucy’s eye, and the crooked little smile, I figured we would be seeing him again, one way or another. Probably briefly.
She turned to Jeb and me. “Tío, te presento a mis amigos y compañeros,” Tío, I thought, her uncle, somehow relieved. What difference does it make I scolded myself. Shape up. This is business.
“This is my Uncle Sebastián. Tío Sebi knows what we are doing and has graciously agreed to get us to Campeche the safest way possible—on his boat.”
Con mucho gusto, mi Capitán, I said, shaking his immense hand. I’m fairly tall, but he towered over me. The man must be six eight at least, over 275 pounds with no sign of fat. I didn’t think I would be calling him Sebi any time soon.
He glowered at the both of us. “I want to be very clear on one thing,” he said in a booming Spanish, “nothing bad will happen to my favorite niece while she is with you. Are we in agreement?” We both agreed wholeheartedly, nodding our heads up and down like a couple of clowns. Capitán Sebastián has that affect on people. Completamente de acuerdo, I said.
“Good,” he smiled. His face lit up, and he didn’t look so menacing. “Lucy will sleep in the crew’s quarters. The crew—and you—will sleep on the deck. It’ll be comfortable, not to worry. If it doesn’t rain. We’ll get there late tomorrow. After dusk.” I’m not real crazy about always getting to places in the dark, but I suppose it’s best.
Lucy had explained that our destination was just a spot on the beach, but that we would be met by friends. Hopefully by friends. We would then proceed by car to the tiny town in the jungle to organize the next step. Los Muertos. The Dead.
We spent the day relaxing in folding lounge chairs in the shade of the wheelhouse drinking iced down soft drinks and discussing our situation. One sure thing about traveling by shrimp boat: you always had plenty of ice. We would have preferred beer, but Capitán Sebastián says no alcohol on board, except in port, when he insists on a lot of it. Says fishing, or anything else on a boat, is dangerous enough when you have all your wits about you, especially when you have a limited supply of wits to begin with. Jeb and I stuck with Fantas, Lucy preferred the little Chaparritas. To be practical, we wore our swimsuits. Lucy’s was yellow, if I remember correctly. And I do.
Our tiny brains were being stretched a bit by what Lucy was telling us. We were practical everyday down-to-earth smugglers, albeit romantic adventurers in our own minds. Stuff like this was not part of our portfolio. But, it was Lucy telling it, so we took it, if with the proverbial grain of salt.
As she had already told us, our Object had been around for a while, a few thousand years at least. “Family tradition tells of its presence for at least two long count calendar cycles,” Lucy said. “If true, that puts it at over ten thousand years right there, and maybe it was around a lot longer, much longer. It was supposed to be destroyed at the end of the last cycle, in 3114 BC, but wasn’t. The next opportunity will be in 2012, after that we would have to wait another 5126
