Book 1: Revelation at Tikal – Ch 15: Eagles, Tourists, and Other Predators

Cutty is waiting on the airstrip at Tikal, running every wrong version of this reunion in his head, when Paula steps off the bus from Palenque and straight back into his life. This chapter follows their uneasy reconnection: her hard questions about his drug use, his promise to stay clean, and the fragile "probation" they both know he deserves. Together they explore the ruins of Tikal—temples, acropolises, and handprints blown onto plaster a thousand years ago—while Cutty keeps one eye on the past he's been outrunning. The jungle city becomes a stone mirror for their own histories: priests and sacrifices, tourists and guidebooks, and the power of stories to erase or preserve a people's memory. Meanwhile, a junkie "mushroom" climber scrambles up the Great Jaguar, Colleen and Lisa work a stela, and Cutty can feel the real tangle tightening: him, Paula, Floey, the ruins, and a family story that stretches from Air Force "UFO" missions to United Fruit and CIA coups. When the Aviateca elder finally talks, Cutty learns what really happened to his brother Barry—and how the same machine that lied to their parents is still humming in the background of everything he's chasing now. This episode blends reunion, recovery, and revelation: a love story trying to restart in the heat of the Guatemalan jungle, and a family myth about flying saucers that turns out to be cover for a very human covert war.