Temple of the Inscriptions

by Humphrey Price

Table of Contents

Chapter 9: Escape

With all the commotion, I suspected Pakal and his two bad guys at the top knew something was up. They were probably desperate and on edge, and that wouldn’t bode well for Karyn. I moved off to the side of the stairway and began climbing back up, hopefully in a direction where they would not be looking. I had to put the pistol and laser in my pockets so that both hands were free for clutching handholds in the sloping stone. My rock climbing experience in the Hill Country around Austin came in handy.

When I was almost at the top, I could see Karyn in the waning moonlight backing away from the stone house toward the steps. Pakal was right behind with his pistol pointed at her, getting ready to follow her down. I didn’t think this Mexican standoff was going to hold up much longer. Silently positioning the laser and pistol, I took a moment to steel myself and mentally prepare. I took a deep breath and then beamed the laser in his eyes and yelled, “Hey Paco, your fly’s undone!”

He yelled in surprise and started firing his pistol in my direction, but the shots didn’t even come close. I fired a shot aimed way over his head. I knew from growing up on a ranch in Texas that the odds of hitting what you wanted with a pistol in the dark were slim to none, and I didn’t want to hit Karyn by mistake. But that shot was enough to scare Pakal back into the stone house.

I yelled, “Karyn! Head down the steps! Don’t look back. I’m going to cover you. Doctor P.!” I still hadn’t figured out what that meant.

“Be careful!” she said. “I... I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

“Go! Watch out for two goons at the bottom, but I don’t think they’ll be in any shape to bother you.”

One of Pakal’s goons at the top poked his head and a pistol out the door, and I fired off a single shot directly at him. It ricocheted off the stone near his head. He ducked back inside, and I heard Pakal yell at him in Spanish.

I gave Karyn a minute to get away. The goon poked his head out again with his gun, and I was ready with a steady bead on him. I fired and actually hit his hand holding the pistol. He screamed and ducked back inside while his gun went clattering down the side of the pyramid. I took this time of maximum confusion to scramble down to the ground, avoiding the stairway. When I reached the bottom, I ducked into the darkness of the surrounding jungle and forged my way out of the ruins, skirting in and out of the foliage.

Dr. P was our nickname for Dr. Pepper. Since Dr. P was not available in Mexico, we had brought our own supply and kept it iced down. The only rendezvous point I could think of related to Dr. P was the “hielo” store where we had purchased ice, if it was still there after all these years, even though it was only a couple of weeks ago to us.

I hiked along the main road, being careful to retreat into the brush whenever I heard a car coming, and that didn’t happen too often at this hour of the night. About fifteen minutes into my hike, I heard vehicles coming from the direction of the ruins, so I ducked into the jungle and watched the road through the leaves. Two jeeps drove by. The lead vehicle had a hand-held searchlight scanning along the side of the road, but they never came close to spotting me and continued on past.

Since the hielo store was on the main highway, it was easy to find, and I arrived just as the sky lightened before dawn. I was exhausted and eaten by bugs, but I managed to find a spot to hunker down near the store behind a patch of foliage by the road. It was a dumping ground for gravel so it was relatively bug-free, and it commanded good views of both the road and the store.

I planned to hide there and wait, hoping to see Karyn show up. I smoothed out a spot in the gravel with my feet and sat down. I was finally able to relax and let my breathing and heart rate subside. Then I heard a voice whisper behind me, “Señor Frog,” and I almost had a heart attack. I lurched around, and there was Karyn behind me.

“You... scared... me... so... much,” I whispered. “And you’re the best thing I’ve seen in my life.” She smiled and sat down beside me. I put my arm around her, and she rested her head on my shoulder. We heard a rooster crow and watched the sky get brighter.

We sat waiting in silence until the door to the hielo store opened and a young woman came out. She was very pretty and very pregnant. She set out folding stands and wooden crates with fresh mangos, papayas, and limes and then hung out a sign: “Abierto.”

After she went inside, we waited another five minutes to see if anything else would happen. When nothing did, we changed into fresh clothing from our backpacks and emerged from the trees to enter the store to see if we could buy food and supplies and perhaps make arrangements for discreet transportation out of Palenque.

Trying our best to look relaxed and unhurried, we opened the door and entered. The store was thankfully empty of people except for the young pregnant woman sitting down behind a counter. She glanced up at us and froze, looking as if she had seen a ghost, or perhaps two ghosts. “¡Madre de Díos!” she exhaled.

She stood up and came around to us. Her eyes darted to Karyn’s pendant. “They are looking for you,” she said in accented English. “Quickly, I must hide you.” She took us out a back door, across a dirt yard with a clothesline and a chicken coop, and into a wooden shack with a washer, two refrigerators, a large freezer, and a table with piles of clothes on it.

There were stacks of cardboard boxes filled with folded clothes. It was all jammed together, and there was barely room for the three of us inside. She rummaged through the piles and produced two shirts and two pairs of jeans that looked much less conspicuous than what we were wearing. “Change into these,” she commanded. “Stay in here. I will help you get out alive.” She pointed to Karyn’s pendant. “You must put that where it cannot be seen.”

Then the spunky young pregnant woman left us in the shack and hurried across the yard back to the store. The shack had two high windows that were open, but we couldn’t see out them. There was an ancient keyhole in the door, and Karyn and I took turns looking out so we could see if anyone was coming.

After about five minutes, we heard a vehicle approach. Peering through the keyhole, I saw a jeep rumble into the yard between the shack and the store. It was Pakal and one of his goons. He honked the horn insistently, and the young woman came out. Pakal got out of the vehicle and started yelling at her. She took it in silence and then went back in the store. Pakal lit a cigarette and leaned on the jeep, smoking furiously as he waited.

When the woman returned three minutes later with a large brown bag, Pakal snatched it from her and scanned inside. He looked up, enraged, and screamed at her. When he finished the tirade, he glared at her, red-faced. She uttered something demurely, then he slapped her face hard, rocking her head to one side. She straightened up and looked calmly back at him as if nothing had happened. Pakal stared back for a few seconds, and then his gaze drifted down to her extended belly. He calmed down, mumbled something, and took the bag with him back inside the jeep. He roared off, fishtailing and spraying a plume of dirt and gravel behind.

As soon as the jeep was out of sight, the woman broke down, crying and sobbing as she went back into the store. Ten minutes later she returned to the shack. The side of her face was red, and we could see the outline of Pakal’s hand. She had brought us a sack with sandwiches, bags of chips, and two cold cans of Coke.

Karyn was very moved. She had tears in her eyes as she said, “Thank you for helping us... for putting you own life in danger.”

“I know you have something he wants very badly. It must be of great power, or he would not be so angry. I think it must be the drug that makes you young again. I don’t want him to have it. He will use it to build up his army. Some of them are from the very old times. He wants to get more power and control and bring those old times back. I’ve heard them speak of it. They hunger for the bloodletting, the sacrifices, and the slaves.”

Karyn said, “You are very brave.”

She shook her head, “If I was really brave, I would not be alive.”

“By being alive, you are able to help us, so you are brave.”

She put her arms around Karyn and they hugged, crying. Then she stepped back and said, “I’ve called my nephew, Roberto. He’s going to come here and get you away from Palenque.” She opened the door. “Please pray for me,” she implored, and then left.

It took Karyn a minute to bring her emotions under control. Then she said, “You know who she is, don’t you, Scott?”

The light bulb had been flickering in my brain, and it finally lit up. “No. It can’t be.” But I thought it had to be. “The old lady in the store?!?”

Karyn nodded her head. “Only she isn’t old now, is she? Pakal had her drink some of his precious stash of elixir.”

“But she speaks English!”

“I guess she learned some in the last thirty-two years.”

“And the baby?”

Karyn nodded. “I think so.”

“I hate him.”

“Me too. You know the elixir I spilled at the pyramid?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll bet after we left, he got down on the floor and lapped it up like a dog. In a few weeks he’ll look younger than the store lady. Hey, we don’t even know her name.”

Ten minutes later, a shiny red pickup truck pulled into the yard and backed up to the shack. A clean-cut man of about thirty-five years old got out and put down the tailgate. He partially unfolded an old, dirty tarp and set it to the side of the tailgate. He picked up a cardboard box filled with dirty laundry and brought it into the shack. Ignoring us, he set it on the floor under the table and picked up a different box filled with clean folded clothes and carried it out to the truck.

He came back to the shack, halted at the threshold, and looked discreetly around. Then he re-entered and acknowledged us. “My name is Roberto. Be quiet and quick and stay low.” We grabbed our packs and followed him out to the tailgate. He had us climb in and huddle in the front end of the bed. Then he covered us with the filthy tarp. We clutched it from beneath to ensure that it didn’t blow away. Roberto slammed the tailgate closed, started the truck, and drove us to the Palenque airport.

Roberto took the truck out on the tarmac in front of a general aviation hanger and parked next to a Cessna Skymaster, an unusual small plane with a high wing, a propeller in front on the nose, and a second propeller on the back of the fuselage. He had a regular cargo and mail run to Villahermosa, so the cargo space behind the four seats was neatly and efficiently laden with boxes, mailbags, and containers.

Since Space Girl actually had experience flying small planes, she sat up front in the copilot seat, and I was alone in back. After we were airborne and leveled out, I took this time to look through my pack and reorganize it so I could easily get to things I might need to get Karyn and me back to the U.S. There were clean clothes, dirty clothes, trash that still needed to be disposed of, my camera with interesting photos, and then I remembered something in my front pocket - a small leather pouch. I took it out and pondered it in fascination. This was tangible proof to me that our weird journey had been real. I was holding in my hand something given to me by a gorgeous five-thousand year old Egyptian queen.

I untied the knot in the drawstring and slowly pulled open the soft pouch. Inside were many shiny things of various sizes. I carefully poured a few of them into my palm. There were gold coins and... lots of diamonds, big ones, small ones, and medium-sized ones. They were cut in different shapes, the classic conical shape, rectangular, triangular, and some were raw, uncut diamonds. I stared at them in silence for a minute, and then I put them away, pulled and tied the drawstring, and slid the pouch back into my front pocket.

We arrived safely in Villahermosa, and even though there were no threatening people lying in wait to ambush us, we wanted to make ourselves scarce as soon as possible. Roberto had to make a quick turnaround with his return cargo and get back to Palenque before any suspicion could be aroused.

Before he left, he called his trusted cousin Enrique who came to the airport to pick us up and help us get on our way. Thankfully he spoke English quite well. My reserves of cash were running low, and my credit card had expired thirty years ago, but I insisted that Roberto take a hundred-dollar bill as payment for his help, probably at great personal risk.

Enrique took us to his house, and left us there alone while he went off to work. We cleaned up and changed clothes. Then I sat Karyn down and emptied Hetepheres’ pouch into an empty bowl from the kitchen. Her eyes went wide in amazement. It was also the first time I had looked at the entire extent of the incredible treasure. We selected two diamonds, one medium-sized one and one large one, to try and sell, and we stashed the rest away.

After Enrique returned, we helped him with dinner. After the meal, and after a couple of beers, we showed him the two diamonds, and explained what we needed to do. Enrique was game.

The next day, he drove us to Mérida, the largest city in Yucatán. He took us to a diamond dealer, who could not take his eyes off of the big stone, and we ended up leaving with seventy-five thousand U.S. dollars. But that was only after we refused his initial offer and walked out with no deal. He called us back, and we then negotiated an acceptable price. He didn’t want to let that big sparkling diamond get away.

We agreed to give Enrique a couple of thousand, and he helped us with our most difficult task. He knew someone who knew the master forger of Mérida, and after two days, we were able to get an appointment to see one of the most skillful artists I would ever meet. He took photos of Karyn and me and also took our old expired passports. Three days later, we returned and exchanged ten thousand dollars for two current U.S. passports and two New Mexico driver’s licenses for Scott Garret and Karen Wong. They had our pictures on them and looked like the real thing.

Enrique had a girlfriend who helped us shop for twenty-first century attire that would not draw attention. We rented a 2003 Volkswagen Beetle, the last year the old Beetles were manufactured in Mexico. It had a sun roof, just like my old VW, and I loved it. The next day we said our goodbyes to Enrique, and we were on our way back to the U.S.

We left Mérida as the sun rose on a Sunday morning for a long day’s drive with the gas pedal pressed all the way down to the floorboard. As the sun set, we stopped at Lake Catemaco, which I consider to be one of the most gorgeous places on the face of the Earth. We ate a much-needed dinner of local fish, tortillas, rice, beans, and fresh papaya salsa as a huge full moon rose over the towering mountains surrounding the gigantic lake, with its silver reflection shimmering in the wavy expanse.

We left the table to stroll over to the water’s edge, Corona de Barril, cervezas in hand. Karyn turned away from the lake and leaned back against the wooden rail at end of the deck. She lifted her face up toward mine with a look that left no doubt what she wanted. I kissed her, and she responded. We held the embrace for a time, and then she gently eased back. She smiled at me and whispered, “Let’s don’t be in too much of a hurry. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

Proceed to Chapter 10...

Copyright © 2023 by Humphrey Price