The Deep Zone by James M. Tabor Page B

sheath hung with frayed rope around his waist. He had a battered leather satchel draped over his left shoulder.
    The old man spoke again.
    Bowman looked at Arguello. Hallie noted that the big man had turned ever so slightly, so that his right shoulder and hip were away from the old man. His right hand hung easily, casually, by the SIG Sauer.
    Arguello hesitated a moment. “Sorry. A very old dialect. He asked if we are here to kill
narcotraficantes
.”
    “Tell him we are not.”
    Arguello did, and the old man spoke more.
    “He says that is a pity. Now he asks if we are here to kill the
federales
. The government soldiers.”
    “Tell him we’re not doing that, either.”
    Arguello did, and the old man responded, his eyes straying to Hallie.
    “He said that, too, is a pity. He also says that the high woman is very beautiful. The tall woman, he means. Even with the funny glasses.”
    Hallie wondered how he could see her at all.
    “Ask him if there are
narcos
or
federales
close by.”
    “He says they are everywhere now. He calls them … ah, it is obscene. Something to do with the excretory function. But very bad.”
    “The
narcos
or the
federales
?”
    “Both, I believe.”
    “Ask him how he travels on a moonless night with no light through a forest of
mala mujer
.”
    The old man listened, chuckled, answered. Arguello translated: “He says that when you know
the way
, there is no darkness. And that he made friends with
mala mujer
long ago.”
    “Friends? Ask him … never mind.”
    The old man spoke at length then and Arguello translated again: “He says that he is sorry we are not here to kill the
federales
. They are stupid and careless, drunk constantly, and they shot his wife during a firefight. Also the
narcos
, drunk and worse, crazy on drugs. They took his two daughters and burned his home. Now he lives in the forest and kills those who get drunk and wander away from their camps.”
    “What’s going on?” Cahner whispered from back in the line. “Why did we stop?”
    The old man spoke again and Arguello murmured to Bowman: “He says Chi Con Gui-Jao is expecting us.”
    And Hallie wondered,
How would he know we are going to the cave?
    “Ask him why he approached us. Why he wasn’t afraid.” Bowman watched the old man, not Arguello.
    After an exchange, Arguello answered, “He is a
curandero
. Shaman. He says that you give off good light. Not like the
narcos
and
federales
. Their light is like foul water.”
    The old man kept talking, apparently explaining something to Arguello.
    “He says that he would accompany us but cannot until his business of putting out the, ah, ‘filthy lights,’ he calls them, is finished.”
    The old man spoke to Arguello once more.
    “He says that the cave is another world,” Arguello relayed. “One that—how to explain this—contains what we call heaven and hell. Many enter the cave and never return. Those who do return are different.”
    “Different how?” Bowman asked.
    Arguello questioned the old man in his language and once again translated for Bowman. “There is no way to know,” he said.
    Hallie felt goose bumps rise on her arms. The old man was speaking the truth. On her other trip into the cave, she had experienced exactly what the
curandero
described. One of the hydrogeologists, a hard-core smoker, had a cold when they entered Cueva de Luz. It intensified with frightening speed, becoming pneumonia in both lungs before they reached the cave’s terminus. If he had not disappeared, it was entirely possible that he would not have made it out of the cave in any case. Another of the men had flirted with her—just lightly, nothing offensive—during their trip down to Mexico. The deeper they went, the more powerful his lust became, the more insistent his advances, until toward the end she slept with her sheath knife in one hand inside her mummy bag. That man, too, had disappeared.
    Bowman turned back, addressing the team: “We’ll move out now.” He