The door opens. Mick recognizes the pilot’s voice. “I’ll be in the hangar. Tell your men to be very careful, comprende, amigo?”

A flurry of Spanish. Men begin moving body bags. Mick remains perfectly still.

Several minutes pass. He hears a truck’s engine start, then fade in the distance.

He unzips the bag, then peers through the open cargo door, spotting the tram heading for an open hangar.

Mick climbs out of the bag, jumps down from the EVAC chopper, and jogs toward the main terminal.

JOURNAL OF JULIUS GABRIEL

JOURNAL OF

JULIUS GABRIEL

It was in the fall of 1977 that Maria and I returned to Mesoamerica, my wife now six months pregnant. Desperate for funds, we decided to submit the body of our work to Cambridge and Harvard, careful to omit any information pertaining to the presence of an alien race of humans. Impressed with our research, the powers that be awarded each of us a research grant to continue our work.

After purchasing a used mobile trailer home, we set off to explore the Mayan ruins, hoping to identify the Mesoamerican pyramid the artist of Nazca had drawn upon the desert pampa, as well as a means of saving humanity from the prophesied destruction to come.

Despite the morbidity of our mission, our years spent in Mexico were happy ones. Our favorite moment—the birth of our son, Michael, born at sunrise on Christmas morning, in the waiting room of a tiny medical clinic in Merida.

I must admit that I was quite concerned about raising a child under such harsh conditions, worried that Michael’s isolation from other children his own age might impede the boy’s social development. At one point, I even suggested to my wife that we send him to a private boarding school when he turned five. Maria would hear nothing of it. In the end, I acceded to her wishes, realizing that she needed the child’s companionship as much as he needed hers.

Maria was more than Michael’s mother, she was his mentor, guide, and best friend—and he, her prize pupil. Even at an early age, it was easy to see that the boy possessed his mother’s keen mind, to go along with those dark, ebony eyes and their disarming focus.