Chapter Fourteen #2
“Junior Mint.” Juan’s voice interrupted Quint’s spiral into doomsville. “What’s wrong?”
He shook off his dark thoughts. “Juan, I could swear I heard Fernel call to me, but maybe it’s just the heat spinning dust devils in my mind.”
“You should drink some water,” Fernel suggested. “Hallucinations are a byproduct of dehydration.”
“Are you okay?” Juan took a couple of steps toward Quint. “Maybe you should sit and rest for a spell.”
“I’m fine.” Quint wiped the fresh layer of sweat on his face with his shirt sleeve.
Juan caned his way closer, keeping an eye on the ground along the way. “Are you feeling dizzy?”
“No. I was just …”
Behind Juan, Quint saw what appeared to be a rectangular slab of stone at the base of the large mound next to Fernel. Even from a distance, Quint could see the edges of the stone weren’t natural, showing signs of having been tooled long ago.
Was that a stela? Angélica would be dancing for joy around the campfire tonight, if so.
“What’s that?” he asked, walking past Juan to take a closer look.
“We think it’s a type of threshold stone,” Fernel said.
Threshold stone? He’d heard that term before when it came to European history. “You mean a stone hewn purposely as part of an entrance to a tomb or grave?”
“It might be a door or sealing slab,” Juan added, coming up beside him.
“Sealing in what, though?”
Juan shrugged. “We won’t know until you move it out of the way.”
Quint scoffed. “Who do you think I am? Superman?” He scanned the mound surrounding the slab. The jungle had done a fine job of hiding it under layers of ferns, vines, and other undergrowth. “How did you two find this?” It wasn’t like there’d been a billboard for it along the path.
“It’s one of the mounds we noticed on the LIDAR map,” Fernel answered, showing him the tablet with the map. “Since I’ve collected more ground points, I was able to have the software lay out the map lines in real time.” He held the tablet out in front of them, aiming the camera lens at the mound.
Quint took the tablet from Fernel, scanning the jungle through the camera, amazed by how the LIDAR map elements overlaid the landscape in front of him on the small screen. It was like looking through X-ray glasses and seeing what the jungle was hiding underneath.
He glanced at Juan, who’d been in charge of the compass as Quint had hacked a path toward what he thought was supposed to be another one of the structures on the map. “Did you lead us by this mound on purpose?”
Juan winced slightly. “Well, maybe a little. Dr. Fernel showed it to me when we set out. Since it was sort of on our way, I figured why not swing by to do some ground truthing. Kill two birds with one stone.”
“Does your daughter know about your slight variation of her plans?”
“Not yet.” Juan caned closer to the slab. “But we’ll fill her in after you shove aside this slab so we can see what’s behind it.”
Quint handed the tablet back to Fernel. “I don’t know if I can move that stone on my own. Look at the size of it.”
And what was behind the stone? Another sealed-off limestone mine entrance similar to what Pedro had stumbled onto at the last dig site? If so, Quint would rather they leave the slab in place. Nothing good had come from discovering that mine, only death. And snakes.
“We can make levers out of some of the trees,” Fernel said, tucking the tablet into his pack. “Use basic engineering to move it aside.”
“I vote we go find Angélica and round up Bronko and Fernando,” Quint said. He and the two others should be able to wrestle that rock away from the opening without damaging it. “She’s going to want to be here to see what’s inside.”
“It has to be some sort of tomb,” Fernel said, his voice higher with excitement. He walked about ten steps to the north of the mound, staring at the jungle through his tablet camera lens. “Look over here, Dr. García. The ground dips.”
Juan followed. “The ceiling of whatever is underneath the mound must have collapsed beyond the entrance.”
“Why would the entrance not have collapsed, too?” Fernel asked him.
Quint knew the answer to that one. “If it’s stone lined, like megalithic tombs and graves in Europe built during the Neolithic age, then those stones might have held the entrance up over time.”
“Well done, Junior Mint. Fifty more points for you.”
He didn’t want points. He wanted to go grab Angélica and bring her back here so she could see this before they messed with it. “I spent some time bouncing around Europe in my late twenties on different gigs.”
“In Mesoamerica,” Juan said, “the limestone often gives way over time, causing cave-ins. Farther north on the Yucatán Peninsula, the failing of limestone layers often produces cenotes, since the rivers run underground through much of that area. Here, closer to the highlands, there are fewer underground rivers, but more mines and caves.”
“Caves acting as a mouth leading to the Underworld,” Fernel said, nodding. He turned back to Quint. “We must move that rock aside.”
“But if it’s caved in,” Quint returned, “we’re not going to see much.”
“There might be an altar stone just inside the entrance,” Juan said.
“Why?” Quint asked him.
“If it was a tomb or a mine, there may have been a protection ritual performed at the altar stone by those entering.”
That was all good and fine, but … “So, you’re back to thinking this is a religious site?” Quint asked Juan.
“Versus a prison, you mean?” When Quint nodded, Juan shrugged. “Move that slab aside and I’ll answer that question.”
Quint rubbed his jaw, moving closer to inspect the slab of rock. He squatted in front of it, rubbing his hand over it. The limestone was warm and pitted, lightly abrasive under his palm. “What’s heavier? Limestone or granite?”
Juan came up beside him. “That depends on the density of the limestone, but typically it’s less dense than granite, which makes it more susceptible to wear and weathering.” He tapped on the stone with his cane. “This has undoubtedly thinned and weakened over the centuries.”
“What if this mound isn’t an entrance to a tomb or grave or mine?” Quint asked. “What if this site was actually some sort of prison. Why would they close this off?”
“Maybe it’s some kind of bunker,” Fernel offered.
“To hide more weapons or people?”
And if it was the latter, Quint thought, to hide people from what?
Juan huffed. “We’re not going to know unless we move the stone.”
“Maybe we can jam a more solid branch in that crack near the top and wiggle it away,” Fernel suggested.
Wiggle it? A thick slab of limestone? Quint stood, glancing again toward the main path. “Something feels off about this.”
“It’s just a stone slab,” Juan said.
Yeah, it was, but why was Juan pushing so hard to do this right now? Angélica had made it clear last night at supper that they needed to work as a team, and this didn’t feel very team-like. It was more like two men on a mission, and a poor third sucker stuck doing the hard labor.
More important, though, if Fernel hadn’t been the one calling for Quint to help them earlier, who was it? And how had they mimicked Fernel’s voice so well?
Something definitely wasn’t jiving here. Not Juan’s impatience. Not Fernel’s willingness to get his hands dirty. And definitely not the whispers he’d heard earlier.
“Junior Mint, we won’t go inside,” Juan said, misreading Quint’s hesitation. “We’re just going to move the stone and shine our flashlights in there. You can take pictures of the inside and show those to Angélica tonight, and then she can come here tomorrow with a small crew to dig deeper.”
“Dig deeper?” Hmm. “I’ve heard that before.” And look at the trouble that had led to. Digging deeper seemed to be an archaeologist’s disease.
“Plus,” Juan continued right over Quint’s sarcasm. “I need to be able to check the structural integrity inside so we can bring whatever stabilizing materials we need tomorrow when we return.”
When Quint continued to frown at him, Juan added, “Just think, you’ll save us much-needed time by opening this slab right now.”
The saving-time factor was true. Angélica had talked again this morning about the pressure to find something soon at this site to send back to INAH.
Maybe there were glyphs on the other side of that rock slab that would help her nail down the site’s purpose.
Someone could have moved several artifacts carved with stelae in there for protection from the elements.
Or maybe there were artifacts even more valuable than the conch-shell trumpets and the dagger KuTu found.
Finds that Angélica could use to secure more time and help to figure out what happened here long ago.
But did they really want to know?
What if the purpose of this site was sinister in nature?
What if something was waiting inside that mound for more skulls to collect and post outside the wall?
Stop it! Quint growled, pushing away the worrywart prattling on in his head.
“Okay, we’ll try to move the stone, but you two have to promise me that if we wrestle it out of the way, you will not go poking around inside until everything is stabilized and Angélica is here to share in any finds.”
“Deal,” Juan said, poking his cane at the soil and leaf debris around the base of the slab. “We’re going to have to clear this out and see how deep the slab is buried.”
Secretly, Quint sort of hoped it was too deep to dig without a shovel, or that the stone would be too big and heavy to move after all.
He grabbed a flat rock from nearby and started to clear away the layers of debris and dirt in front of the slab.
“I’m going to do a walk-around of the mound,” Fernel said. “See if there are any entrances on the other side.”
“I’ll come with you,” Juan said. “One of us needs to keep an eye out for snakes.”
They took off, leaving Quint to keep digging on his own.
“Nobody’s watching for snakes on my behalf,” he grumbled, wiping a drop of sweat from his brow with his shoulder.