Jungle Up, page 1
Copyright © 2021 by Nick Pirog
E-book published in 2021 by Blackstone Publishing
Cover design by Zena Kanes
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced
or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the
publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental
and not intended by the author.
Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-9826-7391-8
Library e-book ISBN 978-1-9826-7390-1
Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Blackstone Publishing
31 Mistletoe Rd.
Ashland, OR 97520
www.BlackstonePublishing.com
“The tropical rainforest is the greatest
expression of life on earth.”—Thomas Lovejoy
“I hate the jungle.”—Thomas Prescott
1
nice, france
august 11, 11:24 a.m.
“I was walking down the road and I saw a donkey, Hee Haw!” I read from the popular children’s book The Wonky Donkey. “He only had three legs, one eye, he liked to listen to country music, he was quite tall and slim . . . and he smelt really, really bad.”
Clark had his little arm extended and was moving his finger over the donkey on the page. At sixteen months old, he could say a handful of words, among them: Ma-ma (Lacy), Da-da (Caleb), Un-kee (me), boo-ger (taught by me), and don-key.
“Don-KEY Don-KEY!” Clark exclaimed.
“Yeah, that’s a donkey,” I told him. Currently, he was sitting on my lap on the couch. He was a porker, weighing close to twenty-six pounds. He had my sister’s and my gray-blue eyes, but he had inherited his father’s dark-brown, nearly black hair, which cascaded sideways on his forehead and lipped out over his ears.
I continued reading: “He was a stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.”
Clark’s body bounced with each word, and he emitted a low rumbling cackle that started me laughing as well.
“You think that’s funny?” I asked. “That he’s stinky?”
At the word stinky, he erupted into laughter.
I squeezed his fat little thigh, and his laughter went up another octave. That’s when I “smelt” it.
I scrunched my eyes and leaned back a couple of inches. “Oh, man. It’s not just the donkey.” I let out a few light coughs.
I set the book down on the coffee table and lifted up the still-giggling twenty-six-pound Porta-Potty.
After babysitting Clark nearly every Saturday for over a year—it was the busiest day of the week at the art gallery my sister and her husband owned—I still dreaded changing the little guy’s diaper.
Sometimes it wasn’t all that bad, but sometimes it was a crime scene. And I’d seen my fair share of crime scenes in my tenure as a homicide detective and a consultant with the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit. I had no doubt that what was awaiting me in the Huggies Little Mover was what we in the business like to call “a real bloodbath.”
I carried Clark to the counter and hefted up the diaper bag. After a couple of long deep breaths, I unclasped the diaper, revealing the carnage. I said, “Dude, what has your mom been feeding you?”
My best guess was cabbage—and lots of it.
After some light gagging, a bit of moaning, and four “You’ve got to be kidding me’s,” I had Clark cleaned up and in a fresh diaper. I picked him up off the counter and set him on the floor, where he waddled off.
After double-bagging the diaper, I made my way to the sliding glass door of the two-bedroom flat. Nice, pronounced “niece,” is a coastal city in the southeasternmost of France, sitting on the pebbly shores of the Mediterranean Sea. From Lacy and Caleb’s sixth-floor balcony there was a perfect view of glimmering cobalt water. The boardwalk running the length of the shore was packed with locals and tourists strolling the open-air markets and riding bicycles.
It was a much better view than the one from my small rented flat a quarter mile away. I’d lived at Lacy and Caleb’s for the first few months after moving to France, but after the baby came, it was just too much—the crying, that is—so I rented a place not far away. It came fully furnished, and there was an amazing café just a hundred feet away. But in the French Riviera, I suppose there is an amazing café every one hundred feet.
Anyhow, it was a nice day—a few lazy clouds in the sky—and if I hadn’t been on diaper-duty, I would most likely have been on the boardwalk myself, engaging in my new favorite activity.
Rollerblading.
Yeah, I know, the once mighty Thomas Prescott—detective extraordinaire, fearless defender of justice, and according to one post by the fourteen-member Facebook group Prescott Posse, “unconventional sex symbol”—had been reduced to a rollerblading nanny.
And sure, if Old Thomas could see what New Thomas had become, he would most likely stake out New Thomas’s house; wait for him to put on his kneepads, wrist guards, and helmet; strap on his “blades”; and put in his earbuds. Then when New Thomas was least expecting it—riding that blader’s high, hands beating to Michael Jackson’s greatest hits—Old Thomas would gun the engine and Mad Max New Thomas into oblivion.
Or Old Thomas would just be really sad.
One of the two.
There was a diaper pail in the far corner of the balcony, and I walked over and deposited the diaper. I had nearly replaced the lid when I noticed something small and gray among the rolled-up balls of white. Shaking my head, I reached down and extracted my sister’s pug, Baxter.
As was often the case with narcoleptics, Baxter was fast asleep.
I shook him, his beady eyes finally opening, and I said, “Of all the places to take a nap.”
He panted in reply.
I set him down, and he scurried in through the door where he promptly began chasing Clark around the living room. I watched the two play for a few minutes until Baxter’s body went limp and he somersaulted a few times before coming to rest against a bookshelf. I took a little off for the landing, but it was still a solid 9.2.
I checked the time on my watch—it was nearly noon—and said, “I think it’s time for someone else’s nap.”
Clark fought me for his requisite twenty minutes, but by 12:15 p.m. he was down and out.
I grabbed the baby monitor and made my way to the carpet in the living room and began doing my daily rehab.
Two years earlier, I was involved in a crash. Not a car. A hot-air balloon. I counted myself lucky that a sprained knee was my only injury. The other two occupants fared far worse. Wheeler, the small-town veterinarian I was dating at the time, broke her arm in two places, and the third occupant, well, let’s just say that he’s doing his best Stephen Hawking impression.
I moved to France a month after the crash. At the time, I’d recently gotten back into shape—after gaining nearly forty pounds—and was running five miles a day. But my knee continued to bug me. Finally, at the constant urging of Lacy, I went to get an MRI.
The verdict: a torn meniscus.
I wasn’t a stranger to hospitals, having been shot twice, fallen off a cliff into the Atlantic Ocean, been technically dead for seven minutes, collapsed a lung, and most recently, been attacked by a pack of wolves. So I put off surgery for over a year. But it finally got to the point where I could hardly chase after Clark without my knee doubling in size.
I was initially scheduled to go under the knife in early March, but a few weeks before surgery, Lacy had one of her worst MS flare-ups in years. Lacy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis her junior year in college, and she’d had several bad flare-ups in the following years, the most severe resulting in two months of temporary blindness.
In late February the incurable autoimmune disease once again reared its ugly head; this time attacking Lacy’s balance and coordination. She was weak, could barely hold a fork, and couldn’t go three feet without the assistance of a walker.
With Caleb pulling double duty at the art gallery, I knew I would need to help my sister look after Clark. And I did, moving back in with them and sharing a room with the then one-year-old. It was during this time that I noticed my first-ever gray hairs—there they were, sprinkled among the cinnamon-brown ones. Was there a direct correlation between this onset of graying and my sharing a bedroom with a crying baby?
Yes.
Yes, there was.
Thankfully, before I went full Ted Danson, Lacy’s symptoms waned, and her strength and coordination came back. And a couple of weeks later, I had my knee repaired.
My main rehab for the past few months had been swimming in the warm waters of the Bais des Anges—Angel’s Bay—which is what the fishermen had named the Mediterranean waters off the coast of Nice. (And, of course, rollerblading, which I took up after Lacy sent me an article about how much better it was for your knees than running.) But I also had to do a number of grueling exercises and stretches with a resistance band.
I pressed my foot against the purple band and counted out ten leg extensions. After working my knee for another fifteen minutes, I spent the remainder of the hour stretching. At thirty-seven, I had the aches and pains of a baby boomer, and the orthopedist who fixed my knee said that if I wanted to be abl
I was holding one hell of a Warrior II when I heard Clark stir on the baby monitor.
I fed him some mac and cheese, apple slices, and some green beans, then I crawled around with him on my back—I was his donkey—which wasn’t the best decision for my knee but well worth it for the amount of giggling and clapping I received for my performance. After a little arts-and-crafts time—basically, Clark throwing crayons while I skillfully finished up two pages in my adult coloring book—the two of us settled in on the couch for some TV time.
Clark was probably too young to understand the complexities of Veep, and I couldn’t stomach any more Paw Patrol, so I selected a Blu-ray from my sister’s enormous collection. I’d watched a hundred kids’ movies over the past year, my favorite being How to Train Your Dragon, with Frozen—yes, Frozen—a close second. I picked one I hadn’t seen before, The Incredibles, and popped it in.
Clark started to fidget within a few minutes, but I was committed to the movie—mostly because Mr. Incredible reminded me so much of myself—and I handed Clark my cell phone, which historically would buy me an hour.
He took it with glee, and as always, I reminded him, “Whatever you do, don’t erase my Tetris score.”
He giggled and put the corner of the phone in his mouth.
Elastigirl had just donned her outfit for the first time when I heard a voice come from my phone.
“. . . interested in our new Xfinity promotion . . . Forty-four ninety-nine a month for both internet and TV . . .”
Clark had opened my voicemail app.
“I don’t think they have Comcast in France,” I said with a laugh, then turned my attention back to the superheroes on screen. Who was the black guy in the blue suit? Where did he come from? Was that Samuel L. Jackson’s voice?
“Thomas!”
I whipped my head around and glared at the phone in Clark’s lap.
It was a voice I hadn’t heard in over a year.
It was Gina.
She was in trouble.
2
tibióno village, bolivia
august 5, 6:33 a.m.
Even in the dry season, every tree, vine, and leaf was dripping with condensation. A light mist danced in the small pockets of rising sun that filtered through the thick canopy overhead. A low din of hoots, hollers, calls, and screeches filled Gina Brady’s ears as her feet pounded the soft earth.
Gina had been running this trail each morning for the past two years. The trail was an old friend. Ever reliable. Gina knew that six minutes into her run she would pass a line of leaf-cutter ants carrying their prized cargo to their nest; at eight minutes she would hear shouts from the howler monkeys swinging high overhead; and at roughly sixteen minutes she would pass a mottled knot of lianas—woody, climbing vines abundant in the rainforest—that resembled a clenched fist.
The Fist, as Gina had come to think of it, came into view, and Gina checked the watch on her wrist: a little over seventeen minutes. Slower than usual. She thought about picking up the pace but decided against it. In Seattle, at the park across the street from the health clinic where she briefly worked, Gina could knock out four miles in twenty-five minutes. But in the jungle, even with her encyclopedic knowledge of every centimeter of the trail, she would rarely finish the loop in less than half an hour. But whereas the only threat at the park in Seattle was stepping in a pile of dog crap, in the jungle there were a thousand different things that could kill you.
A year earlier, during her morning run, Gina had picked up her pace. She was speeding along when she screeched to a halt, kicking up dirt like in a cartoon, seven feet shy of a fer-de-lance. The pit viper was the deadliest snake in South America, responsible for more than a hundred thousand deaths a year. Luckily, the snake only gave her a quick assessment, then slithered into the brush.
It was a healthy reminder that in the jungle you had to be vigilant.
For better or worse, Gina had been conditioned for vigilance at a young age. Her mother had died when Gina was five years old, and she was raised by a single father. A single, military father. Throughout her early childhood, Gina followed her father to seven military bases on three different continents. In addition to her daily school load, her core curriculum included combat lessons, threat assessment, and weapons safety.
Finally, after a promotion, William Brady and Gina found a home at Marine Corps Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Jumping from military base to military base had made it difficult for Gina to make long-lasting friendships, but within a few weeks, when a young freckled boy moved onto base, Gina made her first real friend.
Paul and Gina were inseparable, and a few years later, on Gina’s sixteenth birthday, that friendship blossomed into fiery passion. The two dated throughout high school and undergrad at the University of Virginia. After undergrad, he went to Georgetown to get his MBA in political science; she stayed at UVA and started med school. After a year doing long distance—which wasn’t all that long, it was only a two-and-a-half-hour drive—Paul called it quits.
Crushed, Gina put everything into her studies. She graduated from med school, aced the MCAT, and cruised through her first three years of residency. There were flings, of course, but it was always physical. Nothing more. A means to an end. Then, in the last year of her residency, Gina’s father died in a car crash. At the funeral, she saw Paul for the first time in years. He had a redhead on his arm, and she was brandishing the engagement ring that, even after their break-up, Gina had always envisioned on her finger.
Parentless and broken, at the age of thirty Gina needed a change, and she applied to the World Health Organization (WHO). Her first posting was to Romania, where for two years she bounced around, treating different rural communities. When there was an outbreak of tuberculosis in Bolivia, Gina jumped at the opportunity to move to South America. With her background in infectious disease and four years of college Spanish under her belt, she was a perfect candidate. A week later, she and a team of two other doctors made the exhausting journey into the dense Amazon rainforest and to the remote village of Tibióno.
The “Death Cough,” as the villagers called it, stoked fear in the small community of just over eighty. Eleven confirmed cases. Three fatal. Two of those, small children. With the combination of antibiotics and vaccinations, within a few months they had quelled the outbreak. Gina remained in Tibióno for two years, playing host to several other doctors and researchers. Living in a thatched hut among the villagers, Gina came to love the people, the pace of living, even the seclusion. Though most of the villagers spoke Spanish, several of the older residents spoke only their native Tibióno. Gina learned the language, their culture; she was treated as a member of the community. She could have stayed there forever, but then the satellite phone call came. Paul Garret, her ex-lover and now White House press secretary, had tracked her down. And he needed a favor.
That’s how she found herself traveling to South Africa. Ultimately, the trip nearly cost Gina her life, but there was one silver lining.
Thomas.
She hadn’t planned on falling for him; in fact, she found him quite aggravating at first. But she fell, and she fell hard. She moved to Seattle and found a job at a small health clinic. It was a whirlwind romance, and she was about to move into his house overlooking Puget Sound when the WHO contacted her. There had been another outbreak of tuberculosis in the Tibióno village.
Gina was forced to choose between Thomas and the villagers. In the end, she chose the villagers. That had been two years earlier.
Gina eased into the second half of her run. The trail ran even with the river for half a mile, the waking sun shimmering off the moving water. Ten minutes later Gina passed a large fern she’d decided long ago was her finish line and slowed.
As Tibióno’s thatched huts came into view, Gina could tell something was off. There had been several villagers eating breakfast when she left on her run, but now there was no one in sight. In a climate where the heat would rapidly intensify all day long, until at its peak it was nearly unbearable, the temperate hours of the morning were usually the busiest of the day.
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