The Vivero Letter

He nodded, so I grasped the cable and started down again, getting a hell of a fright when I startled a spider monkey who gave a squawk and made a twenty-foot leap to another tree, then turned and gibbered at me angrily. He was a lot more at home in the forest than I was, but he was built for it.

At last we reached bottom and stood in the humid greenness with firm ground underfoot. I looked up at the cable. Some Maya or chiclero would come along and wonder at it, and then find a use for it. Or maybe no human eyes would ever see it again. I said, That was a damn fool stunt you pulled up there. What the devil were you doing?'

He looked up. 'Let's get out from under the chopper. It's not too safe here.'

'Which way?'

'Any goddamn way,' he said violently. 'Just let's get out from under, that's all.' He drew his machete and swung it viciously at the undergrowth and carved a passage through it. It wasn't too bad -- what Fallon would call a twenty-foot forest, perhaps, and we didn't have to work very hard at it.

After going about two hundred yards Harry stopped and turned to me. 'The chopper was sabotaged,' he said expressionlessly.

'What!'

'You heard me. That crash was rigged. I wish I could get my hands on the bastard who did it.'

I stuck my machete in the earth so that it remained upright. 'How do you know this?'

'I did the day-to-day maintenance myself, and I knew every inch of that machine. Do you know how a helicopter works?'

'Only vaguely,' I said.

He squatted on his heels and drew a diagram in the humus with a twig. 'There's the big rotor on top that gives lift. Newton's law says that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, so, if you didn't stop it, the whole fuselage would rotate in the opposite direction to the rotor. The way you stop it is to put a little propeller at the back which pushes sideways. Got that?'

'Yes,' I said.

'This helicopter had one engine which drove both rotors. The rear rotor is driven by a long shaft which runs the length of the fuselage -- and there's a universal coupling here. Do you remember that bang we heard just before the crash? I thought it was the rear rotor flying off. It wasn't. It was this coupling giving way so that the shaft flailed clean through the side of the fuselage. Of course, the rear rotor stopped and we started to spin.'

I patted my pockets and found a half-empty packet of cigarettes. Harry took one, and said, 'I had a look at that coupling. The retaining screws had been taken out.'

'Are you sure about that? They couldn't have broken out?'

He gave me a disgusted look. 'Of course I'm goddamn sure.'

'When did you last inspect that coupling?'

Two days ago. But the sabotage was done after that, because I was flying yesterday. My God, we were lucky to get ten minutes' flying without those screws.'

There was a noise in the forest -- a dull boom from overhead -- and a bright glare reflected through the leaves. 'There she goes,' said Harry. 'And we're damned lucky not to be going with her.'

II

'Ten miles,' said Harry. That's a a long way in the forest How much water have we got?' '

'A quart of good, and a quart of doubtful.'

His lips tightened. 'Not much for two men in this heat, and we can't travel at night.' He spread out his map on the ground, and took a small compass from his pocket. 'It's going to take us two days, and we can't do it on two quarts of water.' His finger traced a line on the map. There's another cenote -- a small one -- just here. It's about three miles off the direct track, so we'll have to make a dog-leg.'

'How far from here is it?'

He spread his fingers on the map and estimated the distance.

'About five miles.'

That's it, then,' I said. 'It's a full day's journey. What time is it now?'

'Eleven-thirty. We'd better get going; I'd like to make it before nightfall.'

The rest of that day was compounded of insects, snakes, sweat and a sore back. I did most of the machete work because Harry's chest was becoming worse and every time he lifted an arm he winced with pain. But he carried both water-bottles and the spare machete, which left me unencumbered.

At first, it wasn't too bad; more of a stroll through pleasant glades than anything else, with but the occasional tussle with the undergrowth. Harry navigated with the compass and we made good time. In the first hour we travelled nearly two miles, and my spirits rose. At this rate we'd be at the cenote by two in the afternoon.

But suddenly the forest closed in and we were fighting through a tangled mass of shrubbery. I don't know why the forest changed like that; maybe it was a difference in the soil which encouraged me growth. But there it was, and it slowed as up painfully. The pain came not only from the knowledge that we wouldn't get to water as quickly as we expected, but also very physically. Soon I was bleeding from a dozen cuts and scratches on my arms. Try as I would I couldn't help it happening; the forest seemed imbued with a malevolent life of its own.