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“I don’t know. Certainly not as bad as leaving the Jeep out in the open for anyone to see,” he said. “I can’t tell if they’ve seen us, and I don’t know if they’re friendly or not. Maybe we can get back to the cenote and out of sight before they get here. That way, we can avoid finding out.”
They began to trot, moving steadily toward the shelter of a stand of trees that had grown up in the center of the strip. As they did, Remi looked back. One of the men had stopped on the hill and was bringing a rifle up to his shoulder. “Sam! Run!”
There was the crack of a bullet as it passed over their heads, and, about a second later, the sound of the rifle shot reached their ears. The next sound was the explosion of the Jeep, a gasoline fireball lighting the evening sky. Sam and Remi were running hard now, weaving to keep the trees and brush between themselves and the men. They had the advantage of a level surface and a clear path, where they could sprint without fear of tripping, while the men on the slope had to move along the hillside at an angle to avoid building up too much speed and tumbling down.
Sam glanced over his shoulder as a second man stopped and shouldered his rifle. “Another one. Take cover!” They both went low and ducked behind a cluster of trees. There was another shot, and the bullet pounded into one of the trees, sending a shower of bark chips in all directions. Sam peered around the trunk and saw the man adjusting his telescopic sight. “Go!”
Sam and Remi ran, working their way up to a full sprint as they approached the high wall surrounding the cenote. They ran around it to the far side and between the two layers of overlapping wall into the entryway. Sam began to pile loose stones in the narrow way to block it while Remi went to their backpacks and retrieved their four pistols, spare magazines, and boxed ammunition. Each of them checked to be sure the guns were loaded.
“I can’t believe this,” Remi said. “Who could they be?”
“Nobody we want to know. They seem to have tracked us, following our trail, then opened fire as soon as they saw us.”
“Who can they think we are?”
“Future dead people.” He put his arm around her and gave her a hug. “Let’s see if we can use this wall to stay alive.”
“I’ll go up to the walkway and see what they’re up to.”
“Keep your head low,” he said.
She pulled her baseball cap lower on her head. “Unfortunately, we’ve been in these situations before.”
“If we live through this one—”
She put her finger on his lips. “Shh. I know, bubble baths and spa treatments. We’ve already made each other all the promises we need.” She took a pair of pistols and climbed to the walk along the top of the wall, found her way to a spot where the wall had crumbled a bit and left a small dip, then rose enough to survey the strip of land the men were approaching.
Sam watched her bring her arm up to rest in the chink in the wall and begin to think through aiming her pistol. He had seen her do that before at competitions. Sam had been a respectable shot since the days when a member of a highly secret force had spent a month at a covert base instructing him in close-range shooting and sniper techniques. But Remi was in a different league. She had been shooting competitively since she was twelve, a champion for whom the term “nail driving” was not a figure of speech.
Sam stood below her and spoke quietly. “Get down, and stay there until you hear shooting.”
Sam moved to the entryway, climbed over the barrier he’d built, sidestepped along the ten-foot overlap in the walls, and ran to the nearest stand of trees. He moved through the trees beside the level strip, getting closer to the space where the men would pass if they approached the walled pool. As he went, he studied the places he passed, aware that soon he would be running past them in the other direction. He took a position in the thick brush within an arm’s length of the strip but outside the causeway, where the plants had grown in fully.
The men came at a run, carrying their rifles across their chests. They ran like they were chasing game, not like men who were about to meet an armed adversary.
Sam crouched and waited. He had estimated fifteen men, but he could see only twelve. They wore khaki pants and short-sleeved civilian shirts and T-shirts. A few of them carried bolt-action hunting rifles with scopes—probably 4 power, because, in these thick jungles, long shots across open space had to be rare. There were two men carrying shotguns, a weapon that probably put food in their bellies. Two had pistols in holsters, and the others carried assault rifles that Sam identified as American AR-15s, probably weapons that had found their way here during the civil war.
The man closest to Sam carried a hunting rifle. He raised it and took aim at the top of the wall around the pool. Sam was sure the man couldn’t see Remi, but he was getting ready for her to stick her head up.
A man who carried only a pistol stood by a tree and shouted in English, “We know you’re in there. Come out now and we’ll make it easier for you.”
Sam turned his head away from the men and called into the hills, “We mean you no harm. Go away.”
Three of the men half turned to see if someone had gotten behind them, and one turned around entirely, his gun ready.
The spokesman said, “We’ll never go away. Come out and we’ll let you go away.”
Sam could hear the bad news in the man’s voice. These men thought they had found very easy prey, an American couple, undoubtedly unarmed and helpless. They were probably already estimating the ransom money. And even if they got it, they’d kill them both.
Sam aimed his pistol at the nearest one, the man pointing his rifle at the top of the wall, waiting for a target to appear. The spokesman waved an arm, and the men moved forward toward the wall. Sam began to move with them to avoid being cut off from the entrance.
The man near him sensed something and swung his rifle toward Sam and Sam shot him in the chest, then dove into the low area beyond the brush. The man fell down, unconscious and gravely wounded. The others had seen him fall, and each fired in the direction he guessed the shot might have come from. Only two of them guessed right, and Sam’s thicket was peppered with bullets.
When Sam looked up, he saw that another man had fallen, one of the few carrying AR-15s. Remi must have shot him while the others were firing wildly, having picked him out as a high priority.
The leader trotted over to the man’s body, took the rifle and
the man’s pack. He aimed the rifle at the top of the wall, but Remi kept down, knowing the men all expected her to pop up and fire again.
