Chapter 19: Defensive Mode

February 1999 It was so quiet for that few but brief moments, but I think I could hear my companions’ hearts beating and mine. Then Rosalva did what I would never have expected. “I am sick and tired of your chanting in my dreams. I am tired of seeing your ugly face too. And I am sick and tired of being afraid.” When she had said that she reached over, pulling up my shirt to reveal the pistol in my belt. She pulled it out, cocked it, and began to aim it at the cloaked figure in black feathers with the hooded and hideous mask. “No more!” However, before she could fire, a click rang out, and then a thud!

Rosalva let out a grunt and then a gasp as she fell backwards. A crossbow bolt protruded from her chest. She was gasping in pain. The pistol had dropped from her hand, onto the bare, dirt carpet of the forest temple. Blood began to stain her white blouse. She began to cry out in pain, but coughing interrupted her cries, as the bolt had entered her lungs. Her lungs were beginning to fill up with blood, as her coughing showed blood coming from her mouth. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. Lou apparently couldn’t either. He raised the AKM and began to fire. Black-clad figures began to run for cover, and the cloaked priest disappeared behind the altar. Lou got off roughly about five shots before a crossbow’s bolt found its mark on him also. I heard Lou yell out in agony as I turned to see the bolt sticking out of his right thigh. It had gone completely through his thigh. Fortunately, it had missed his bone, and his major arteries. He went down on his knees. I knew I had to do something. My pistol was on the ground, behind Rosalva, who was dying in front of me. Lou, although wounded, kept firing. He was screaming obscenities in Spanish at his assailants the whole time. I grabbed Lou and helped hoist him to his feet, saying, “Let’s get outta here!” We turned and began to start back up the path that led out of the forest temple. That was when Lou felt another bolt enter his left calf. He screamed again, but he did not slow down. Then, as we were able to clear the door of vegetation that covered the entrance, we heard Rosalva screaming at the top of her lungs, though she was bleeding. I wanted to go back and tend to her, but I knew that was out of the question.

We could hear the cultists hot on our trail in pursuit. They obviously wanted us alive, or otherwise, they would have put a bolt in Lou’s chest as well. We ran down the path, but Lou, was in such pain, that he couldn’t run without limping. Of course, that slowed us down. Every twenty feet or so, Lou would stop and fire off a burst or two to keep their heads down. Crossbow bolts were whizzing by us the whole time. Why weren’t they using guns to kill us or at least wound us? That would have been much easier and quicker. Then it dawned on me that they like to cause suffering as well as death. I only thought of that in a brief second when just as we reached the bridge, we tripped over the first plank and fell into a heap onto the footbridge, causing the bridge to sag. As it did, a volley of bolts flew by our heads, indicating to me that they no longer wanted us alive. We knew something, and that made us dangerous. Knowledge truly is power, and, in this case, it was power enough to expose some people who did not want to be exposed. Lou reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out another magazine. He fired the weapon, aiming it in the direction we had just come from. Bushes and limbs were cracking and moving, either from the bullets hitting the vegetation, or from his victims falling into the foliage. Either way, a lot of activity was taking place in the direction we had just come from. Lou emptied the magazine. We got to our feet. Lou whispered to me between gasps of pain, “I’m out of ammo!”