“Let me help her,” Sam said.
Rivera glanced at Remi. His eyes narrowed. He limped over to where she was lying, crouched down, and picked up the pistol that had fallen from Remi’s waistband. Rivera stepped back. “You can help her now.”
Sam rushed to her side. She gripped his hand hard, her eyes squeezed shut against the pain. Sam patted his pockets, came up with a bandanna, and pressed it against the wound.
Rivera said, “Do I have your full attention now?”
“Yes, damn it.”
“The bullet hit her in the quadriceps muscle. She won’t bleed to death, and, providing she doesn’t stay out here more than a couple days, there’s not much chance of infection. Between these two guns I’ve got thirty more rounds. Start cooperating or I’ll keep shooting.”
CHAPTER 48
THEY MADE THEIR WAY DOWN TO THE VALLEY FLOOR, SAM IN THE lead with Remi cradled in his arms and Rivera trailing behind. They found a small clearing in the approximate center of the bowl, and Sam laid Remi down. Rivera sat down on a fallen log at the edge of the clearing. His gun never wavering from Sam’s chest, Rivera lifted his shirt up; on the left side of his abdomen was a black softball-sized bruise.
“That looks painful,” Sam said.
“It’s just a bruise.”
Sam knelt beside Remi. He lifted the bandanna on her thigh. The bleeding had slowing to a trickle. He whispered, “Rivera’s bleeding internally.”
Through clenched teeth Remi asked, “How bad?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Stall until he keels over dead.”
“I’ll try.”
“Stop your whispering!” Rivera barked. “Move away from her.” Sam complied. “Tell me your theory about the entrance.”
Sam hesitated.
Rivera pointed the gun at Remi.
“It’s based on the illustrations,” Sam said. “Chicomoztoc is always a cavern with seven smaller caves around it . . . like a flower. The cavern is beneath a mountain. The drawings vary, but the big details are the same—including the location of the entrance.”
“At the bottom,” Rivera said.
“Right. But if I’m right and this is the place, it means the exterior shape of the island was as important to them as the interior.”
“How could they have gotten an overhead view of it?”
“They didn’t. They sailed around it and mapped it. As small as this island is, it would have been easy to do it accurately.”
“Go on.”
“If you’re looking at the illustration face on as a two-dimensional image, the entrance to Chicomoztoc is down. If you look at it from overhead—and they oriented themselves on the four cardinal directions like most cultures do—then the entrance lies to the south.”
Rivera considered this, then nodded slowly. “Good. Now go find it. You’ve got four hours. If you don’t find it by then, I’ll kill you both.”
RIVERA MADE THE GROUND RULES clear: Sam would search for the entrance while he, Rivera, guarded Remi. Rivera would call Sam’s name at random intervals. If Sam didn’t answer within ten seconds, Rivera would shoot Remi again.
AS HE AND REMI HAD DONE on Pulau Legundi, Sam made do with what was at hand: a sturdy six-foot-long stick and patience. Facing what he thought was due south, he started up the caldera’s slope, prodding ahead of him with the stick.
The first pass to the top took him twenty minutes. On the rim he sidestepped to the right and started back down the slope. He felt ridiculous. Though his method was sound and still used in certain cases, the gravity of where he was, what he searching for, and the clock that was ticking on Remi’s life blended together, giving him a nagging sense of helplessness.
The afternoon wore on. In twenty-minute intervals he hiked up the slope, then down the slope. Up, down, repeating until he’d made six passes, then eight, then ten.