The Jungle’s Secret, Part Five
Photo by Daniel Stuben
Upon seeing the men with our friend, we froze.
One man kept the gun on Rose while another guy gripped her arm. The third gathered up the rifles belonging to the three Federale’s that were down. They beckoned to the fourth soldier to hold his rifle on the rest of us.
“Why didn’t we gather up the soldiers’ arms when we had a chance?” I whispered to Bill.
“Because we didn’t really have much of a chance if you recall. Things were happening pretty fast.”
“Yeah, that’s true, but this is unacceptable. What do we do now?”
“Pay attention for the right moment and act,” he said softly. “But I’m wondering where Roberto and the guys are at this moment. It might not be a good thing for them to come blundering into this situation about now. They might get shot just from the sheer surprise of them appearing.”
“Oh shit! You’re right! But if they’re astute and alert enough after their long hike through the cave, they may assess the situation before dashing out. Don’t you think?” I asked.
“That’s what I would do, and they are pretty savvy guys, so let’s hope they will have their thinking caps on when they get close.”
Soon, I overheard one of the bad men tell another to take the small woman and tie her up along with the mouthy one, or that’s what it sounded like to me, from hearing “Atar a la mujercita con el bocazas.” I wasn’t sure but could surmise I was right when Vero was jerked away by one of those men and tied up with Rose.
The three men started laughing and clapping their hands toward each other when one man said, “¡Cinseguiremos mucho dinero por estas tres mujeres!
”Si! Si!” Said the other, with more laughter.
“Those bastards!” I snarled. “They’re talking about all the money they will get for having three women to sell. I hope Lola will stay hidden, wherever she is.”
One of the men walked over to us. “Cállete!” he yelled, sticking the barrel of the rifle in our faces and then moving it and the stock to beckon us to start walking. He took us over to where Cecil was standing with the Federale’s gun pointed at him and bound the three of us together. The two women were further away tied to a tree, which made me really angry to see. I needed to figure out a way to get us out of this mess.
Photo by Alexander Jawfox
The bad guys were talking and pointing back toward the jungle, and with some of the words I caught, I thought they were discussing the man they’d knocked out and asking who was going to drag him out here.
Two of the cave men walked into the jungle, but instead of coming back dragging Greg behind, we heard them cursing and running around in the underbrush.
Greg must have awakened and ran away, I thought with a bit of relief.
This was confirmed when one of the men came running back babbling about the guy not being there. “¿Qué debemos hacer?” he asked the other guy.
I have an idea of ‘what they should do’, I thought angrily. But my idea requires my hands and a grenade up their butt, of which neither are available at the moment. I felt so helpless, frustrated, and guilty about getting my friends involved in this untenable situation. I wanted to scream and curse and beat the hell out of those evil sons-a-bitches.
The dude answered the guy’s question by telling him that they needed to find the man because they couldn’t leave any witnesses alive. He would help look. He then told the Federale to keep an eye on the bound men and women while he went to help look for the other gringo and added that they wouldn’t be long.
“Confident asshole,” spouted Cecil. “I hope Greg hides where they can’t find him.”
“Me, too,” I chimed in. But to our dismay, it wasn’t long before the three men returned with Greg between two of them stumbling along. They threw him in front of us and the leader of the group said in pretty good English, “I will make an example of thees man. I weel shoot heem first, because he heet me in the head with a rock.”
I’d just noticed the blood at the back of this man’s head when he turned away from me, and I wanted to be able to congratulate Greg for his marksmanship later.
“No!” I cried out. “You can’t shoot him!”
“Shut up! You are in no position to bargain. You weel be next.”
“If you start killing us, you will never find my wife. She has disappeared, no?”
He laughed. “For the moment, but she couldn’t go far, she was too out of it. I hurt her badly when I hit her on the head yesterday night. She lost a lot of blood, and we had to drag her with us because she couldn’t walk too good.” He laughed some more at the glower on my face, then continued. “If you want to see her one last time, perhaps you could call to her to have her come out of where she hides. Otherwise, you weel never see your wife again.”
My anger at my incapacity was so overwhelming I wanted to scream. My head was throbbing worse than ever as my blood pressure soared from being unable to move as I wrestled with the ties around my arms.
Photo by Markus Spiske
The badass man just laughed at my helplessness.
The rest of my guys began wiggling and moving their arms, also, to try and loosen the ties enough to help us out of them and take charge. I felt a slight give, but not enough to release us.
“Damn it!” I shouted at the butthole with the gun, “You can’t do this. We’re American and Canadian citizens; you’ll have our government all over you if something happens to us.”
“How weel they know?” asked the cocky leader of the evildoers. “Your bodies will never be found, at least for years.” He laughed harder and then sneered, “You gringos think you have all the answers, and can do anything you want, but you are just stupid idiots who feel superior even in someone else’s country. I spit on your superiority. It is nothing.” He then proceeded to spit on my shoes.
It was then, when my anger and disgust had reached their limits and my head, instead of actually exploding, like it felt it would, shut down, and I passed out cold, bringing the rest of the men I was tied to down with me.
“Get up! Get up!” I could hear the mad man saying as I began to regain consciousness after my body’s defense mechanism saved me from an aneurism or some such thing from the way it felt.
The bastard was about ready to slam the rifle butt into my face when I saw movement in the corner of my eye and felt myself suddenly be jerked away. Bill and Cecil were using their legs to get themselves out of the rope that we had somewhat loosened earlier, but with that movement, it pulled me away from the danger of having a broken face and worse.
I saw the rifle swing toward Bill, who was the closest and was flinching involuntarily from the anticipated shot. I kicked out to trip the man, but my foot missed its mark.
I heard a shot and screamed out, “Nooo!” But then I felt a body at my feet, instead of ahead of me where Bill would have fallen, had he been the one who’d been shot.
I looked. It was the bad man laying at my feet. I kicked him away and tried to sit up, now that the rope had loosened. I looked around to see what was happening and saw the last Federale holding his rifle toward the other two men.
Photo by Specna Arms
Oh my God! He’s one of the good guys, after all! I wanted to shout and then saw that he had help.
Roberto, Keith, Michael, and Abi were surrounding the other cave guys and the soldiers who were still on the ground. Bartolo came over from behind with a machete and cut the ropes from our hands. I felt tremendous relief. I thanked Bartolo, who also helped me stand. My headache had miraculously lessened, and I was able to access the situation a bit more clearly.
I looked around for Lola but didn’t see her. Before I could ask these new best friends if they had seen her and how they got here, since I didn’t think they had come from the cave, or they would have been spotted, Roberto told me that Lola had found them just before they were ready to swim the cenote to the cave opening and warned them of what was happening.
“I knew that we couldn’t come out of the cave’s mouth, because we would be seen, so we turned back and went to the last caved-in roof that we had passed and climbed up out of the top. We were very worried about those men because I know how mean they can be. And then to find out the Federales were helping them…” he paused. “Well, I was very scared for you all. We tried to hurry.”
“Your timing was great!” I told him. “Perfect, in fact. With the last Federale to come to our aid when he did, and you arriving at the right time, it couldn’t have been scripted better! I am so grateful to all of you!” I announced.
I started to ask where my wife was when I felt arms around my waist from behind.
I turned.
I gazed into the blackened circles of Lola’s beautiful green eyes that had a stream of dried blood smeared next to her right eye and down her cheek. Her lips were puffy and there were scratches on her chin with more dried blood, but the sight before me couldn’t have been more beautiful. I threw my arms around her, and we both cried with relief and happiness.
Photo by Jacob Rank
“What an ordeal, eh?” she stated with a grin.
“What an ordeal, indeed. And what a bunch of true friends we have. I’m not sure how we will repay them.”
“Whatever we can think of won’t be enough, for sure,” Lola replied.
Roberto grinned and said, “We did it! But only because we lucked out with having one of those Federales turn out to be an honest and trustworthy man. I should have thought about the possibility of some of them being bad seeds, but I didn’t. I was just hoping they would be on the right side of the law and help.”
He paused and then continued, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to the others, or to the Chicleros, but that’s not our concern. I’m just glad it is over, and we can all go home and rest, at least as soon as the other Federales, who Lieutenant Rodriguez called, get here to take over this mess.”
“Hey! I have a good idea! How about we have a party tomorrow night to celebrate all you brave friends who came to rescue me?”
“Great idea!” I concurred.
“Thank you! That would be nice. I will spread the word,” Roberto stated and walked away.
“Oh, my love, what would I have done if you hadn’t returned to me?” I said to my wife.
“That wasn’t going to happen,” she told me. “I had a contingency plan formulating in my mind that I think would have worked, which I was going to implement as soon as my energy levels returned. I wasn’t going to let you be without me in this world. No way!”
“I love you so much, you know! Now, what was that plan of yours?”
She just gave me a wink and said, “another time”.
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If you missed any parts of the story read them here:
* Part One — The disappearance of Lola *
* Part Two — The limestone cave *