Havana Storm Read online

  Near the end of the journal, Summer turned the page and nearly choked on a mouthful of okra. In the center of the page was a rough rendering of a large carved stone in the shape of a semicircle.

  “He found it!” she gasped.

  Dirk gazed at the drawing and smiled.

  “Looks like a perfect match to the stone you found at Zimapán. Unfortunately, he didn’t make a very detailed drawing.”

  Summer nodded. Aside from the partial image of a bird, Boyd had depicted no detail from the stone. She flipped ahead to the last page but found no additional illustrations.

  “No luck,” she said. “He must have known it was Mesoamerican. I wonder why he didn’t devote more attention to it.”

  “What does the narrative say?”

  Summer recited the remaining text.

  “On January 26th, Martin, our lead diver, uncovered a large inscribed stone that was originally thought to be ballast. With considerable effort, the stone was raised off the bottom and towed to shallow water, where it was brought ashore. The stone appears to be one half of a larger round artifact that was deliberately split in two. Subsequent surveys of the wreck site by the divers failed to locate the other half.”

  “I share in his frustration,” Dirk said with a shake of his head.

  Summer continued reading.

  “The stone is Mexica, as Roy Burns has identified its carvings as Nahuatl glyphs. Its shape and design appear similar to the Calendar Stone, although at a fraction of its size. Its meaning is as yet unknown, although Roy is successfully translating sections at this time.”

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Dirk said.

  Summer skimmed the remaining pages. “The next few days were spent winding down the excavation and cataloging artifacts,” she said. “But there’s a bit more on the stone. On January twenty-ninth, he writes:

  “Roy has spent the last days studying the Mexica stone and making detailed drawings. His interpretation is necessarily incomplete, but he believes the stone is a map to an island depository associated with the deity Huitzilopochtli. He is quite excited about it, and has taken to calling it Boyd’s Emperor Stone. Quite ridiculous, I’m afraid.

  “Those are his words,” Summer said. “No indication of what’s on it, or even a rendering of the map.”

  “Burns is right,” Dirk said. “There’s obviously significance to this island depository. Too bad he didn’t give us his piece of the map.”

  “This is interesting.” Summer turned to the last page. “The final entry is dated February 1st:

  “We received an unwelcome visitor to the camp today in the form of Julio Rodriguez, who apparently has been in Jamaica on a dig near Kingston. He immediately inquired about the Mexica stone. He must have a spy in our local work crew. Fortunately, the stone has already been crated and was out of view on a wagon. Roy and I told him nothing, which stoked his ire and he departed in a tiff. Once again, he is seeking glory on the backs of other men’s toils. Thankfully, we are departing Port Antonio tomorrow, and will be able to decipher the stone’s full meaning back in New Haven.”

  Summer closed the journal. “That’s the last entry.”

  “So our hunch stands. The second stone is most likely collecting dust in a back room of the Yale Peabody Museum.”

  Summer scrunched her nose. “I don’t know. Boyd seems to recognize its importance. One of them must have published a paper on it.”

  “I suppose,” Dirk said, “but it could be as forgotten as the stone.”

  “We can email St. Julien and the museum tonight,” she said, “and do more digging when we get aboard the Sargasso Sea tomorrow. Assuming Dad doesn’t have a mountain of work waiting for us.”

  Finishing their meal, they paid the bill and hopped into the VW for the short ride back to the cottage. Turning onto the coastal highway, they were approached by a battered pickup that rode up on their bumper. Dirk accelerated, but the truck hung on his tail.

  Summer glanced in the mirror at the truck’s rusty grill bouncing dangerously close behind. “This guy makes a New York cabbie look polite.”

  Dirk nodded and pressed deeper on the gas. The winding road broke into a straight stretch that was free of oncoming traffic. Dirk edged the Beetle to the shoulder and slowed to let the truck pass. But the driver kept on Dirk’s bumper.

  “The guy can’t take a hint,” Dirk muttered, forgoing the courtesy and speeding up.

  “Maybe he’s taking the highway advice to heart,” Summer said, pointing at a weathered road sign that proclaimed Undertakers Love Overtakers.

  The road wound down a small hill and over a bridge that spanned a marshy creek. As they reached the bridge, the truck finally made its move and pulled alongside the Beetle.

  Dirk glanced at a tough-looking Jamaican in the passenger seat who flashed an unfriendly grin. Then the man leaned out the truck’s window, pointed a pistol at Dirk, and pulled the trigger.

  29

  The shot whistled by as Dirk instantly stood on the brakes. The truck swerved hard over, smacking into the Volkswagen and driving it toward the meager bridge railing. The Beetle’s left fender tore through the guardrail, shattering its wooden supports like they were toothpicks.

  Dirk downshifted, fighting to keep the wheel straight. Summer let out a yelp as they veered off the shoulder, the left tires half hanging over the edge. The popping of the gunman’s pistol sounded over the fray. The Beetle’s windshield shattered as Dirk and Summer ducked low in their seats.

  Amid a screech of grinding metal, the VW fell back before the heavier truck could knock it into the creek. Dirk snapped the wheel right, barely escaping a plunge off the road. Finding no oncoming traffic, he swerved into the far lane and stomped on the accelerator.

  The Beetle’s turbocharged four-cylinder engine howled as the small car shot past the slowing pickup. The truck’s driver reacted quickly, gunning his own engine. A well-tuned 5.7-liter Mopar Hemi under the hood belied the truck’s shabby appearance and gave it more than enough juice to give chase.

  “How did they track us here?” Summer yelled, gripping the dashboard as Dirk pushed the Beetle hard through a tight curve.

  “I don’t know, but they’re serious about finding the other half of the stone.”

  The VW hit a large dip in the road and bounded into the air. The rear bumper scraped the pavement on their return to earth, sending a trail of sparks flying. Summer turned and watched the pickup wallow through the same dip, its driver nearly losing control.

  The Beetle was faster through the corners, but the truck easily gained ground on the straightaways. Charging down a straight section, the truck approached and smacked the rear end of the Volkswagen. The Beetle skittered, but Dirk maintained control and gained separation on the next bend.

  “Do you know where this road goes?” Summer shouted.

  “I know it runs along the north coast to at least Port Antonio, but that’s a ways off. If we come to a sizable town first, we can try and lose them or find the police.”

  Summer noticed a road sign indicating that the town of Ocho Rios was eighteen kilometers ahead. “Maybe we can find police there.”

  The VW approached some slower traffic, which Dirk hopscotched between oncoming vehicles. The truck followed suit but lost ground in the process. Dirk was forced to slow as they entered the town of St. Ann’s Bay, the site of the island’s first Spanish capital. A handful of ornate Georgian buildings peppered the town center, giving Dirk and Summer promise of finding police assistance. Their hope was short-lived as the sound of gunfire again erupted behind them.

  “Get down!” Dirk said, glancing into the rearview mirror.

  The pickup had somehow bypassed a row of cars and was right behind them. The passenger was now leaning out the side window, firing. Whether by faulty aim or the mistaken belief that late-model Beetles were still rear-engined, the shooter fired three r
ounds harmlessly into the trunk.

  Dirk stomped on the gas and blasted through a stop sign, barely avoiding a fruit truck. “Apparently our friends don’t hold the local constables in high regard.”

  “We’ll have to try for Ocho Rios,” Summer said. “I think that’s a port of call for cruise ships, so there will definitely be a police presence.”

  Dirk maneuvered past a stopped bus and sped out of the town, leaving the truck wedged behind. The coastal road cleared of traffic, and Dirk nudged the Volkswagen north of ninety miles per hour. In another ten minutes, they’d reach the larger city.

  “Try calling the Ocho Rios police,” Dirk said. “Find out where they are and tell them we’re coming.”

  “Nine-one-one?” Summer asked.

  “I think it’s the inverse here, one-one-nine.”

  Summer started to dial when Dirk stood on the brakes, causing the phone to fly out of her hands. Rounding a bend, he had spotted a tour bus stopped on the road ahead. Oncoming traffic had also stopped, allowing a throng of tourists returning from the beach to clog the road while boarding the bus. Additional buses up the road were exiting a side parking lot.

  “This isn’t good,” Dirk said, seeing there would be no quick resolution to the bottleneck. He quickly scanned the road for a possible exit or point of concealment.

  They had only one choice. Just shy of the bus, a small dirt road angled into the jungle. If Dirk could get the VW up the road before the pickup turned the corner, their pursuers might think they’d gotten ahead of the stopped traffic.

  Dirk let off the brakes and accelerated toward the parked bus.

  Summer threw her hands on the dash to brace for an impact. “What are you doing?”

  She fell silent as he stomped on the brakes and yanked the car in a blunt right turn. Screams erupted from the frightened tourists boarding the bus, but their cries were muted by the Beetle’s screeching tires as it slid in an arc, then shot up the dirt road. Dirk held his breath as the car bounded up and into the jungle. He glanced to his right and down the highway to see if they had been detected.

  The nose of the pickup appeared just around the corner, pursuing at high speed. A second later, the Volkswagen was lost under cover of the thick brush. The car bucked and shimmied over the rut-filled road, which looked like it hadn’t been used in the last decade.

  “Do you think they saw us?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, but I sure hope not. We’re certainly not going to outrun them on this road.”

  A hundred yards behind, the pickup’s driver had missed seeing the Volkswagen turn. But he didn’t miss the fresh skid marks that led to the side road nor the light cloud of dust floating above it. With a shark-like grin, he wheeled onto the side road and barreled up its washboard surface.

  Ahead, the road climbed through thick foliage that clawed at the VW’s blue paint. Summer saw a vine-covered sign with an arrow pointing to Dunn’s River Lookout. As they turned through a tight switchback, she peered behind them and caught a faint glimmer of steel through the bushes. “Bad news. They’re still on our tail.”

  Dirk nodded, battling the Beetle to keep it from getting high-centered. He had no idea where the road would lead, but he knew their time on it would be short.

  “Worst case, we stop and take to the jungle,” he said. “Head downhill to the road. If we get split up, let’s meet at the Green Stone Bar.”

  Summer tried to smile. “First drink’s on you.”

  Dirk coaxed the Beetle up a short hill, then stopped. The road ended in a clearing just wide enough for a car to turn around. Tall trees encircled the clearing except to their left, where a shallow river rushed by. They were effectively boxed in as the pickup truck roared up the hill behind them.

  Dirk looked at his sister.

  “It would seem,” he said with a grimace, “that we’ve reached the end of the line.”

  30

  Summer gazed at the loose sandals they both wore, dreading a sprint through the jungle. Hearing the roar of the approaching pickup, she reached for the door handle. “We better get going.”

  Instead, Dirk put the car in gear and drove forward. “Wait,” he said, looping the car around the dead end. He angled toward the wide, shallow river and stopped at its gravel bank.

  “What are you doing?” Summer asked.

  “That’s Dunn’s River.”

  The rusty sign down the road had registered in Dirk’s mind. He knew that one of the major tourist attractions in Jamaica was Dunn’s River Falls, a terraced waterfall that visitors enjoyed climbing by linking arms in large groups. It explained the bevy of buses below.

  “Let’s get across the river,” he said. “We can hike down the other side and hop a tour bus at the bottom.”

  Too late, an engine roared and the pickup came flying over the crest. The truck was traveling much too fast—on a collision course with the Volkswagen. Dirk punched the accelerator, driving off the bank and into the river.

  The truck just slipped by the VW as the driver mashed on the brakes and slid to a stop in front of a mature mango tree.

  Inside the Beetle, Dirk kept the accelerator down and continued across the river. The bed was relatively flat and shallow, and the car easily bounded toward the opposite side.

  “Don’t these things float?” Summer asked.

  “You’re thinking of the original Beetle,” Dirk said. “I don’t know about the new models. Nor do I want to find out.”

  They had slogged about thirty feet across the river when they heard a splash behind them. To Summer’s dismay, she saw the pickup truck follow them into the river. Another pop sounded behind them, and Dirk heard a whistling an instant before the dashboard disintegrated in front of him.

  “We’re not going to beat them across,” Summer said, her voice tightening.

  Dirk came to the same conclusion. He hadn’t counted on the pickup following them. With its lower clearance, the VW would bog down or stall sooner than the truck. Glancing in the mirror, he yelled at Summer to hang on, then turned downriver.

  They had entered the river above the head of the falls and it was only a short distance to the first rocky terrace—about a three-foot drop to a small pool. With the Beetle’s drive wheels still finding traction, he centered the car with the falls and drove off the edge.

  The front wheels struck an inclined rock that pitched the car’s nose up and the car landed in the pond nearly upright. The impact sent a wave splashing over the falls beyond.

  Though the water nearly covered the wheels, the Volkswagen kept running, and Dirk steered it forward. He and Summer looked back to see the pickup truck hesitate at the top of the falls, then follow them.

  “They’re crazy,” Summer shouted over the water’s roar.

  Dirk shook his head. “Guess we need to be crazier.”

  He coaxed the VW across the pond to the next falls. Unlike the first, it was a continuous descent of nearly seventy feet that angled down a series of terraced ledges. Dirk checked to ensure his sister was safely buckled in, then aligned the Beetle and drove over the edge.

  The initial plunge was the sharpest, a ten-foot drop onto a narrow terrace. The VW landed nose-first, crunching the front end, but bounced up and forward. The air bags deployed with a puff of white smoke as the car skipped over the next ledge.

  The Beetle bounded like a hopping frog down a long series of inclines and ledges. A group of tourists watched in shock as it tumbled past them. It caromed from one boulder to another, its tires bursting and suspension imploding, yet it remained upright. Momentum carried the VW down a long, slick rock, where it slid thirty feet through a rush of water.

  Dirk and Summer’s wild ride ended at a final set of steeply terraced falls. The battered Beetle descended the incline amid a screech of metal. Striking the bottom terrace, it did a slow forward flip, splashing wheels-up into a large pool.
The inverted car floated peacefully for a moment—and then sank from view.

  A nearby Jamaican tour guide abandoned his clients and waded toward the steam and bubbles that marked the VW’s resting place. He froze as something under the water grazed his shin. Then the tall, lithe figure of Summer emerged, clutching a red journal. A second later, Dirk popped to the surface a few yards away and swam to his sister.

  The Jamaican gasped. “You both alive? It’s a miracle.”

  “The miracle is called an air bag,” Dirk said. “You okay, sis?”

  Summer gave him a weak smile. “I’ve got a wrenched shoulder and a sore knee, but everything else seems to be working.”

  “Look out!” One of the tourists pointed toward the top of the falls.

  Dirk and Summer saw the pickup tipping over the ledge. The driver had pursued the Volkswagen to the precipice of the second falls, then stopped to watch the Beetle’s descent. But a boulder underneath had given way, leaving the truck teetering on three wheels. The driver tried backing up but more rocks broke loose. The truck hung in midair for a moment, then plunged over the falls.

  With its heavier front end, the truck hit the first terrace nose-first and flipped over. Crashing down the next incline, the truck then somersaulted all the way down the falls. Wheels and bumpers went flying in all directions. The passenger was tossed out the window midway, his body colliding with a limestone boulder that snapped his spine.

  The driver rode the pickup all the way to the bottom as it struck the pool with a colossal splash. The cab was completely pulverized. As the truck settled into the water, Dirk knew the driver was dead.

  “Might be a good time to get out of here,” he said, grabbing Summer’s arm and pulling her to the riverbank. They staggered past a group of stunned tourists, who stared at the truck’s sunken remains as if waiting for its dead occupant to emerge.

  Climbing down the remaining falls, Dirk and Summer found a Montego Bay resort hotel bus idling in the parking lot and casually boarded it. They hunkered down in the back row, trying to avoid the gaze of the tourists following them, who chatted excitedly about the vehicles they saw plunge down the falls.