Chapter 5

Tuesday

We were startled awake well before dawn by an angry duet of yowls from big cats. The girls pulled on pants and a shirt and slipped into their shoes while I maneuvered around them and then struggled with a pair of jeans and my shoes. They’d already exited the tent, taking the two HK-33s and all three Glocks.

The poor cook practically ripped the zipper on my tent trying to open it and hurry inside while the girls were preparing to leave. I’m sure she blushed seeing me pulling my pants up since pants were the only clothing I had on. She babbled an apology in rapid fire Spanish. While I can read and speak Western Hemisphere Spanish, it takes me a bit of time to translate something mentally, especially when the speaker talks as fast as an auctioneer.

She seemed to be apologizing for barging in while at the same time explaining that she heard two jaguars just beyond the creek.

“Stay here,” I told her as I grabbed the only weapons the girls had left me. They’d rushed outside, almost knocking Esmi down. I had my diving knife and my atlatl, along with the quiver holding the eight darts. Putting the quiver over my left shoulder, I strapped my dive knife to my calf and prepared a dart to throw. I held two more in my left hand. Everyone else was headed towards the creek, including our armed guards. I hoped nobody got shot accidentally.

Two guards with flashlights began probing the jungle’s understory. They worked together and covered each other as they sought the big cats that had caused the disturbance, but all was currently quiet. While jaguars do move about on the ground, they’re much more likely to be in the trees. Seeing one of the three guards and the five girls who were armed huddled together and guarding everyone else from camp, I waited until my eyes adjusted to the darkness and then cautiously proceeded into the jungle. I scanned and re-scanned the lower branches of the trees around me as I carefully crept deeper into the jungle.

Spinning to my left, I used my momentum to heave a dart at a dark shape crouched on a lower branch about fifty feet away. My shot was met with a shrill yowl of pain as the dart hit it in the side. The second dart was already on the way and I heard it hit, too. The dark shape fell from the tree and lay still.

I already had the third dart ready and pulled two more from my quiver as I turned in a slow circle to check my surroundings. My third dart was hurled at a dark clump on the ground about twenty feet closer than where I hit the first one. I’d only noticed that this shadow was different from the others because a tiny flash of starlight or moonlight that filtered through the trees had reflected from one of its eyes. That shape shrieked in pain, too, and charged me, right into the second dart I threw at it. While readying a third dart, I stepped behind a tree, so the cat would have to scramble around it to reach me.

All I heard was my pulse pounding in my ears and shouts from the two guards as they hurried back towards me, but no sounds of the big cat moving. Leading with the tip of a dart, I chanced a quick glance around the tree and saw the second cat lying in a heap about ten feet away. Taking no chances, and wishing I had cook’s two eight-foot spears with me, I threw another dart at the big cat. It didn’t flinch. Moving closer, I stabbed one of my darts through its eye and then moved towards the first cat.

I stabbed it in the eye too. Since I only had one more dart, I pulled it back out and prepared to throw it, again carefully checking my surroundings. Just then, the two guards arrived with their flashlights, ruining my ability to see in the dark.

“Are you okay?” one of the guards asked me.

“I’m fine,” I replied, noticing that he had night vision goggles shoved up on his forehead. “Shut off the damn lights and check the area around us using your night vision goggles, especially up in the trees,” I told him. Several seconds later, the jungle was dark again. I saw the guard put the goggles on and heard the quiet whine when he turned them on. While my eyes readjusted to the dark, he did a slow pirouette, his head moving up and down as he checked from the ground far up into the canopy of the trees.

“All clear,” he advised after finishing his second pirouette. The goggles went back up on top of his head and flashlights came back on as they tried to see what I’d done.

“Shit!” the guard exclaimed, followed by similar exclamations from the others who’d joined us.

“How the hell did you kill TWO of them?” Tina asked as she came up from behind us.

“I waited until I could see in the dark and started looking up in the trees. I saw the shape of the first one and nailed it twice. Since I heard two when they woke us up, I kept looking for a second one, not sure if it was still here or had run off. Then I saw light reflect from one of the eyes of the second cat and reacted,” I explained.

The guard who’d been on duty had a hatchet sheathed on his belt and chopped down two sturdy saplings. I found a bunch of orange nylon twine in the pocket of the pants I’d hastily pulled on. Some of the twine was what I had used to tie up the guard who crept into my tent a week ago. Some was the tail ends of the rolls Josh and Hector had used to create the search grid on the cemetery slope.

With each cat, I tied the front paws together and then the back paws. Then, the two guards, Hector, and I, carried the jaguars back to camp, each cat slung beneath a sapling carried on the shoulders of two guys. Several of the men from camp were following us by then.

Those who had stayed huddled together in camp rushed over to see us. Esmi had one of her two eight-foot spears and Dr. Watts the other. Others had grabbed hatchets, shovels, machetes, and cooking knives. “We worried when we didn’t hear any shots,” Dr. Watts commented questioningly.

“Who needed guns?” one of the guards laughed. “The Great White Hunter here used his atlatl to kill both cats. We’d already rushed through the area with flashlights and guns. He waited until he could see in the dark and stalked through the area slowly. We didn’t even think about looking up into the trees.”

Esmi came over and looked at the two cats, and then up at me. I was surprised when she pulled my face down and kissed me. The other girls were smirking, but she wagged her finger at them reprovingly.

“You girls see only this man’s physical appearance,” she chided them. “While it is extremely pleasant, I also see the man whose spirit has been touched by the gods,” she explained.

“Yeah,” Tina agreed thoughtfully while looking at me appraisingly. “That would explain the naked visits to the Tribunal, as well as them warning him about the two attacks.”

“And the dream sex,” Amy giggled.

“As well as his uncanny ability to pinpoint important locations here at the dig site,” Dr. Watts added, looking at me as if he were suddenly just seeing me for the first time.

“Enough already,” I protested. “This thing is heavy.”

Esmi had us wait while she grabbed the canvas tarp and the sheet of Visqueen she used when she skinned, dressed, and butchered the game I brought her. Both had been left behind by previous groups, along with a few other things the groups felt were trash.

Her hand-crank-powered radio was like older military field radios. Hers, however, was much smaller and less complex. It only broadcast or received on a few channels. Her family had another one and they used them to communicate when she was working here. She could also receive an FM radio station from the closest city.

Right now, she had two of the camp’s electric lanterns providing enough light that she could skin the cats--after I took pictures of them.

“I will radio my son in two hours and have him come for the skins. My daughters will scrape, tan, and stretch the skins for you. They will also make you a nice necklace from the fangs and claws. You can wear it with your other necklace,” she said.

Involuntarily, my hand went to the necklace the Tribunal had given me.

I’d forgotten all about it and nobody else had commented about it. In fact, I didn’t remember seeing it in the mirror when I shaved yesterday.

“What other necklace?” one of the guards asked.

“The one he always wears around his neck,” she replied questioningly. “It glows so brightly that I’m surprised he doesn’t light up the area for two meters around him.”

“Oh,” I replied, worried about just what sort of necklace the Tribunal had given me. However, I immediately felt my concern vanish. The guards were still looking at me questioningly.

I could see the first hint of light in the eastern sky. Even though my cell phone didn’t work here, I kept it charged and it still told time and worked as an alarm clock. It was 5:22, so the sun would be up in half an hour or so. I felt well rested after a long night of dream sex, so I stayed up. Besides, I was still wired after facing and killing the two jaguars. The girls had gone back to my tent and I assumed they hoped for another hour’s sleep.

“Can’t go back to sleep?” the guard asked.

“Still wound up and it should be dawn in half an hour or so,” I replied.

“I’d have thought you’d need all the sleep you can get trying to keep up with so many women,” he chuckled.

“Actually, most of the sex is dream sex. The gift I’ve been given that lets me see ancient places also lets us meet in our dreams and have sex. Dream sex is great because I can keep going all night. In addition, it seems that the more time I spend having dream sex each night, the better I feel the next day. I may have missed a couple hours of sleep tonight, but I feel like I had at least eight hours,” I explained.

“So that’s how you keep them all happy,” he teased.

“Yup, I can go straight from one girl to the next all night. I don’t tire and can stay hard all night. They tend to amuse each other when I’m busy with one of them.”

Since I was still up, Esmi had me start fixing breakfast about 5:30 while she continued skinning the two cats. She told me how to light the two propane camp stoves and the two propane barbecues. Each barbecue had a large stainless-steel pan like one used on steam tables at buffets. In the bottom of each pan, she had me put two wire cooling racks for cakes and then fill beneath the racks with water. Covering the racks with a piece of aluminum foil would keep the bottom pancakes from becoming soggy. The barbecues were set just warm enough to keep the pancakes hot.

As I began mixing the pancake batter, both camp stoves were started with a large griddle set atop each one. Esmi had a ladle that was the perfect size so I could make three pancakes on each griddle. It left half an inch between them. As long as I didn’t screw up when I flipped them, everything fit just right.

By the time people started showing up to eat, I had plenty of pancakes ready for everyone. “He can cook, too,” Tina teased loud enough for others around us to hear, which started the other females laughing.

I managed to kill a capybara after breakfast. Esmi brought her two spears and accompanied me. “Too bad your darts have such large tips,” she commented. The steel tips of my darts were three-pronged broad heads for hunting.

“Why?” I asked.

She pointed farther upriver where a small group of some sort of animal was eating the shorter grass near the creek. “Guinea pigs are good to eat. The meat sells well in cities and large towns,” she explained. These looked to be a little bigger than the guinea pigs I had as pets when I was a kid.

“Wild guinea pigs?” I asked.

“These are different than the ones raised for pets,” she explained.

“Yeah, my darts would make a mess out of them,” I commiserated. Still, I had a thought that would give me something to do today. Once everyone headed off to work at their assigned site, I headed into the jungle with a hatchet, saw, machete, and my atlatl. I also wore one of the Glocks. Over the next hour, I hacked and chopped dozens of branches from the thickness of two fingers to maybe a quarter-inch thick.

Esmi looked at me questioningly when I dropped the travois and its load in the shade of a tree near where she was working. Weaving was one ancient skill I’d learned, not that I had developed any real proficiency at it. I’d never be able to weave watertight baskets like some ancient cultures did. If I was lucky, my best baskets would hold hazelnuts.

Still, I began weaving. “What are you making?” Moraika asked. She had accompanied Alfredo to camp this morning.

“A trap,” I replied, remaining intent on my work. She watched for about fifteen minutes and then went to help her mother and brother load the llamas. By lunch, I had finished weaving four sides for a cage three feet on each side. I made it from a tree I knew rodents disliked because both the thin bark and the wood tasted nasty to them. After lunch, I wove a sturdy bottom and a sturdy top. Aside from making a cage woven out of wooden branches, the main oddity was a round opening near the center of one side of the cage. Esmi kept looking at me questioningly.

Well before dinner, she figured out what I was making. I wove a funnel for a fish trap, leaving the narrow end barely wide enough for the guinea pigs to squeeze through. When I finished, the narrow end of the funnel fit through the opening in the side of the cage, sticking far enough into the cage that the open end was near the top and center of the cage. The bottom end was at ground level outside the cage.

We’d bait the trap with some of the fruit growing on nearby trees. The guinea pigs would enter through the funnel and would have to drop into the cage from near the top, center of the cage. They could climb the sides but still wouldn’t be able to reach the narrow end of the funnel. They’d have to climb the underside of the funnel. Then, they’d have to figure out how to squeeze back through the narrow opening while hanging upside down.

Esmi laughed at my idea--because she thought it would work. We set the trap up right before dinner, baiting it by loading the bottom with fruit we picked. We even picked enough extra fruit to eat with dinner, as well as extra for Alfredo to take home in the morning.

At dinner, Tina’s group discussed what they’d found today, and Dr. Watts said that his group had reached a layer of rocks in the grave. I’d already warned him about what I saw of the burial. Neither of us knew why the rocks had been placed over the body instead of on top of the grave after it was refilled.

After dinner, Esmi and I returned, stunned to find a dozen guinea pigs inside the cage gorging themselves. Using shorter wooden spears with sharpened tips, we killed all of them and she carried them back on the travois. I carried the empty trap and the funnel. After dealing with the guinea pigs, Esmi fire-hardened the sharpened tips of the two smaller spears tonight, as well as her two big spears.

Amy and Alice were absent from our dream sex tonight. Tina explained that they gave in to the constant whining from two of the other guys and spent the night with them. “They’re taking one for the team,” Tina chuckled. “Even without the dream sex you’re more attentive to us than other guys we’ve been with.”

“Well, I have been hogging all of the gorgeous women in camp,” I riposted.

“You’ve been hogging all the women in camp,” Tina corrected, laughing.

Tina disappeared from our dream sex for a few seconds and returned with an embarrassed Alice. “Alice was shortchanged tonight. He was a one and done guy and offered little in the way of foreplay,” Tina explained. Alice grinned, relieved, when I opened my arms and welcomed her.

I went out of my way tonight to be considerate of each of the girls. “Just the fact that you know each of our preferences is proof that you’re better than the other guys,” Tina explained just before we all drifted off into our own dreams. Somehow, we each returned to our own dreams shortly before it was time to wake up nearly every morning.

Wednesday

Esmi helped me carry everything out to set up and bait the trap. She left me her two big spears and, once the trap was baited, I moved near where the capybaras usually congregated and waited. I was far enough away that I managed to hit one of the two that decided to charge me after I had killed the one I aimed for. The second that charged me ended up shish-kebabbed on one of Esmi’s spears. I had a hell of a time securing all three to the travois and dragging it back, even though we’d done it before. Esmi was excited. She had already told her son to borrow two or three more llamas for today to help carry back the surplus meat that had accumulated in the propane freezer.

After breakfast, I returned to the trap and dealt with the ten guinea pigs that were inside the trap. When Alfredo arrived, I had him take the trap with him. Using the atlatl to hunt was one thing but trapping and then killing trapped animals was different. If it had meant my survival, I could have done it. Even knowing that it helped Esmi’s family, I had a hard time killing the trapped animals. Once Alfredo had it packed on one of the llamas, he partially filled the trap with fruit we picked from nearby trees.

Dr. Watts had determined that the GPR scans we had done were thorough enough. Rudy had meticulously reviewed them, and he and I marked the places we suspected were graves. Dr. Watts had already asked me if I thought there were any other locations here that we’d need the GPR unit for. I managed a few seconds away from the girls last night to visit the Tribunal to ask them. They assured me that the sites we’d located were everything of importance. They also told me that this site would become very important in a few days.

With my assurance that we’d scanned everything significant, Rudy packed up his GPR and thanked me for the chance to get out in the field. Then he headed back for civilization.

Today, I actually got to help. I helped pack the artifacts that had already been documented and cataloged. First, I had to make sure they were cushioned against impact and the shaking they’d experience in transit. Then, I packed them in large wooden crates, further protecting the cushioned packages. We used excelsior (also known as wood wool) between layers of artifacts. The weight of artifacts can cause them to settle through foam pellets, allowing two or more items to come into contact with each other.

Packing the artifacts required even more documentation, listing which artifacts were packed in each crate and on each layer. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that the government was involved, hence the requirement for so much documentation. However, having already been on the receiving end of crates of artifacts from a dig, I knew how important the documentation was, especially documenting information from when and where the artifacts were found. What layer they were found in and what other artifacts were found in the same layer or nearby could all be indicative of other artifacts being from the same era and could help determine what era that was.

Dr. Watts’ group removed the rocks from the grave today. The rock layer was only ten to twelve cm thick. They looked to be flattish river rocks. Beneath each rock, they could see bone fragments. They also unearthed what I guessed was the bottom of the pottery bowl that I’d seen used to replace the head. Since the bowl had been placed upside down, they still had a few more centimeters of soil to remove before the bowl could be recovered.

Alfredo made a second trip today, arriving just before dinner to finish carrying everything home. Of course, there would probably be even more meat after dinner. He couldn’t wait that long, not wanting to be on the road after dark. He told me that Javier, his younger brother, was excited about my trap because it gave him a way to help earn money for the family. Guinea pigs were abundant around their village because it was located along one edge of a large, grassy plain.

Thursday

After my morning hunt and breakfast, Dr. Watts let me start excavating a second grave. Josh and Hector joined me as we located the next gravesite and documented the location before we began our excavation. We erected a shade awning to keep from broiling beneath the equatorial sun, even though the temperature was only in the low 80’s (28°C).

Just before dinner, there was a loud whoop of excitement from the other gravesite. “Johnny,” Dr. Watts hollered at me excitedly, so I went over to see what they found. He was holding the bowl, this time right side up. The inside of the bowl was covered in glyphs. The bowl was about fifty cm wide and twenty-five deep, so there were lots of glyphs.

He had me use my still camera to take pictures of the bowl. The outside was solid black. With Dr. Watts hovering over my shoulder, I emailed the pictures to Dr. Parker, along with an explanation of what I had seen during the burial, and pictures of my sketches of the burial.