Diego had warned us to keep a look out for boars—especially at night, as they were mostly nocturnal. They could do a good bit of damage to you with their tusks. The large scar on Carlos’s neck—which I had assumed had come from someone’s knife, like most of those I’d seen as a member of law enforcement—was actually from a boar attack when he was a child. He’d been lucky to survive.

  “Nice boar,” I said, putting up my hand. “Nice friendly boar.”

  The beast whipped its snout back and forth, its three-inch tusks glistening in the light from my headlamp.

  “Okay, Pumbaa,” I said softly. “Nothing to be alarmed about.”

  I was trying to figure out what to do. Should I pull up my pants and start running? Should I try to be as still as possible? Was I supposed to get big and yell? Or was that for a bear?

  I set the Game Boy down and found a small rock. I chucked it at the boar and said, “Get out of here!”

  The rock missed and only seemed to agitate Pumbaa more.

  He snorted several times.

  I quickly looked for another rock but couldn’t find one. My eyes fell on the Game Boy. I picked it up and said, “Sorry, old friend.”

  I threw the Game Boy at Pumbaa. It hit him in the middle of the forehead. He stood there stunned for a second, then he kicked up dirt.

  All I’d done was break my Game Boy and piss off the boar even more.

  He whipped his head back and forth. I flexed both my hands; ready to throw down if it came to it.

  Pumbaa shot forward.

  I readied myself for the fight of my life, but Pumbaa zoomed four feet to my left, crashing through the underbrush. I twisted, waiting for him to come up from behind me, but it appeared he was gone for good.

  Hakuna matata.

  My heart was racing as I stood and began pulling my pants up. When straightening, my head smacked against the low branch of a nearby tree. Bits of dirt and leaves fell from the branch onto my head. But what I’d thought were bits of dirt and leaves were in actuality an army of red ants.

  I was covered in them—covered in quarter-inch-long red ants with trisegmented bodies and razor-sharp pinchers.

  I dropped my pants and began frantically wiping at the ants. I felt a sharp pain as the first one bit me on the neck. It felt like someone had touched a match to my skin.

  I continued swiping, but the bites kept coming. Head, neck, face, arms. I felt a bite on my leg. They were in my pants. A bite on my ass. Then, a moment later, it happened. Like someone had touched a hot poker to my left testicle.

  I screamed loud enough that I woke a troop of monkeys nearby and sent them into a frenzy.

  A flashlight bobbed toward me, and a terrified Diego asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Ants!”

  “You have to take all your clothes off,” he instructed. “Or they will just keep biting you.”

  I didn’t hesitate, pulling off my shirt and throwing it to the ground, then kicking off my boots, pants, and boxer briefs, until I was completely naked.

  Diego swatted away at the ants with a large palm frond until, after a long minute, I was finally clear.

  20

  jungle

  august 16, 6:42 a.m.

  expedition: day 3

  A quick but angry storm had blown in during the middle of the night, and Andy had awakened to heavy drops splattering against his tent. The storm only lasted a short five minutes, but it unloaded enough rain to raise the river by nearly eight inches.

  The previous day, after listening to Farah’s recounting of the temple she’d found, it had been agreed the expedition team would head back to the ruins at the break of dawn.

  Andy’s alarm had awoken him at 6:15 a.m., and he’d been the last to arrive at the main camp. Everyone else was already there and most had already eaten. Andy had wolfed down two tortillas slathered with copious amounts of Nutella and slugged back a cup of coffee. Now, minutes later, he was standing at the edge of the river.

  The sun had been awake for close to ten minutes, but little of its light found its way to the forest floor. If not for the headlamp on Andy’s head, it would have been nearly impossible for him to see the ropes that Holland and Rix had set up.

  Andy reached out and grasped the thick paracord. He held tightly to it as he shimmied through the now foot-and-a-half-deep water.

  The water swept swiftly just below Andy’s knees as he took the final few steps through the river. He released the paracord, then grasped Rix’s outstretched hand. Rix pulled him out of the water and onto the muddy embankment. The bank was slippery, and Andy pulled himself up the slope with the help of small trees rooted in the soft earth.

  The others were waiting at the top of the embankment. Nathan Buxton and Alejándro Cala helped Andy up the last few feet. Like Andy, everyone wore a headlamp, and together they illuminated a five-meter swatch of jungle.

  “I’m going,” Farah said loudly.

  “Just wait another minute,” Roth said. “We almost have everyone.”

  Andy glanced back over his shoulder and watched the Roth’s production assistant, Libby, maneuver her way through the water. Holland waited until she had successfully crossed, then he traversed the river in four quick jumps and scampered up the muddy incline like it was a mall escalator.

  “Alright,” Holland said. “Let’s rock and roll.”

  The hike took a bit longer than it had the previous day because of the muddy conditions. At one point, Bernita Capobianco, the Bolivian anthropologist, fell into a small sinkhole. It took both Rix and Holland to pull her out of the thick mud.

  By 7:00 a.m., there was enough light sifting through the canopy that their headlamps were no longer needed. Andy flipped his headlamp off, and seconds later, Roth said, “Alright, coming up on the edge of the city.”

  It might have been the different lighting, but as Andy glanced around, he didn’t find anything in the surrounding jungle that looked the least bit familiar. He couldn’t believe they were on the same trail they’d traversed fifteen hours earlier.

  A moment later, they stopped.

  Andy recognized a large tree covered in thick climbing vines and the group of ferns where a day earlier Farah had stashed her backpack. On that note, so far Farah had been well behaved. It appeared, at least for the time being, that Holland’s threat to send her packing if she went AWOL a second time had tamped down her rogue spirit.

  Roth consulted his GPS, but evidently it had dropped its signal. After checking to make sure no one else had a signal, Roth asked Farah, “Do you think you can navigate to the temple ruins from here?”

  “I think so.” Farah pulled a compass out of her pocket. “Should be one hundred and forty-two degrees southeast for about eighty or ninety meters.”

  “Okay, we’re going to have Farah lead the way,” Holland said. “Rix and I will slash through anything that needs slashing. The rest of you stay five meters back.”

  Holland and Rix pulled out their bright-pink machetes. Holland nodded at Farah and said, “Lead on.”

  The expedition team slowly trudged through the dense foliage in single file. Andy ended up at the rear, with Darnell a few feet in front of him.

  Darnell had the large camera balanced on his equally large shoulder and was whistling a tune. Andy listened for a minute, then said, “ ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’?”

  Darnell stopped and turned. “Not even close.”

  “Darn.”

  “I’ll give you two more guesses. Loser sleeps outside tonight.”

  Andy shook his head and said, “There’s not enough money in the world.”

  “Really? Not for a hundred thousand dollars?”

  “No way.”

  “Come on now. You’re telling me you wouldn’t sleep on the ground for one night for a hundred grand ?”

  With $100,000 Andy could pay off all his student loans and still have enough money to upgrade his fourteen-year-old Camry.

  Darnell turned back around. Andy hustled forward to catch up and said, “I’d do it for five hundred thousand.”

  The back of Darnell’s head shook back and forth as he said, “Andrew, Andrew, Andrew.”

  It had been years since someone called him Andrew—not since his uncle visited him in Chicago. The memory brought a smile to Andy’s face. “Why, how much would you do it for?”

  Darnell made a few clicks out of the side of his mouth, something Andy had overheard him do a few times before, then said, “I’m being serious here, I’d do it for five hundred dollars.”

  “You’re on.”

  Darnell stopped and turned. “You know when you tell a brother that it’s on, then it’s on.”

  Andy did not know this.

  “Good, because it is on,” Andy said.

  “If I sleep outside tonight, you’re going to give me five hundred dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t back out.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I want cash.”

  “Venmo.”

  “Deal.”

  Darnell stuck out his hand, and Andy shook it.

  ≈

  Holland, Rix, and Farah were ten meters in front of Andy, who was at the rear of the group. Still, Andy heard Farah shout, “Here! This is it!”

  Fifteen seconds later, Andy joined the others at what appeared to be a small hill, but what according to the lidar scans was actually an earthen mound ninety feet square and twenty feet tall. The mound didn’t look any different than the surrounding jungle: it was covered in small trees, thorny bushes, climbing vines, leafy ferns, and thousands of fallen leaves.

  Roth turned to Libby, Sean, and Darnell and snapped, “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  “Darnell,” said Libby, “I want you between those two trees, shooting upward. Sean, I want you at the precipice. I want framed reactions from everyone as they get up there.”

  Andy was surprised. He had thought Libby was simply Roth’s production assistant, responsible for the countless minutiae that went into filming a documentary, but evidently, she was the DP. The DP, or director of photography—sometimes called the cinematographer—is in charge of a film’s lighting and most of its artistic and technical decisions.

  Darnell moved to where Libby had instructed and pulled a collapsible tripod out of his large pack. Libby checked the lighting with a digital light meter, and once Darnell had the camera situated on the tripod, he made a couple of minor adjustments. Libby then clambered up the thirty-degree slope and disappeared. Thirty seconds later, she reappeared and said, “Let’s roll.”

  Roth and Farah glanced at each other and then started up the incline. When those two were halfway up, Alejándro and Bernita started their ascent. The final pair to go were Buxton and Andy.

  Andy was four feet up the incline when he overheard Roth shout, “Look at these stones! Jackpot, baby!”

  The next reaction was from Cala, who cried out, “¡Maravilloso!”

  Bernita’s reaction came a moment later. She said calmly, “What an incredible discovery.”

  Andy reached the summit a few moments later. The top plateaued out for thirty square feet. There were several—twenty at least—large foundation stones spread in a loose rectangle. The stones were heavily eroded and covered in a thick layer of green moss and strewn with vines.

  Next to Andy, Nathan Buxton said, “If that isn’t the ruins of an ancient temple, I don’t know what is.”

  Several of the expedition team laughed.

  Andy could instinctively feel Sean’s camera zoomed in on his face, waiting for his reaction.

  In hindsight, Andy was never sure why he said the exact phrase he did. Obviously, the camera had played a large part in it, recording his reaction for all eternity. But it hadn’t been planned or contrived. It wasn’t like Andy had tried to come up with something funny or smart or clever as he made his way up the slope; it had just come out.

  As had the Italian accent.

  On seeing the ruins of the ancient temple, Assistant Professor of Anthropology Andy Depree smiled and said, “Now that’s a spicy meatball!”

  ≈

  “You’re not mentally challenged, are you?” Darnell said. “Because my answer is going to change if you’re mentally challenged.”

  Andy said, “To my knowledge, I am not mentally challenged.”

  “Okay, good. I just wanted to make sure.”

  After spending several minutes at the top of the temple ruins—one of those minutes so awkward Andy thought he might snap in half—Andy descended the earthen pyramid and took up a spot next to Darnell.

  “And if I’m not mistaken,” Darnell said, “you are a college professor?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “An anthropology professor, to be exact?”

  “Again, correct.”

  “And as a professor of anthropology, you would supposedly know more than your average person about an ancient temple?”

  “One would think.”

  “Okay, so you get to the top of that hill, see these ancient ruins, and then— Remind me what you said again.”

  Andy cleared his throat. “Now that’s a spicy meatball.”

  “Like that. You said it like that?”

  “No, I said it with an Italian accent—Now that’s a spicy meatball.”

  “And judging by the paleness of your skin and your orange hair, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you aren’t Italian.”

  “I am not.”

  “Hmmm,” Darnell said, touching a finger to the bottom of his chin. “Then, to answer your question, yes, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard someone say.”

  Andy dropped his head and looked down at his muddy boots and snake gaiters.

  It was bad enough he’d cast himself as Jungle Weenie within the first few hours of the expedition. But now he’d cast himself as Jungle Idiot within the first five minutes of finding actual ruins.

  Andy said, “Do you think I could get fired over this?”

  “Like from the expedition? Or like from your job as a professor?” Darnell didn’t wait for a reply. “Because that helicopter isn’t coming back for another nine days, so I think you’re stuck here. As for your real job, yes, I think you’ll be fired.” He quickly clapped Andy on the shoulder and said, “I’m just kidding.”

  “No, seriously. My boss—well, the head of the anthropology department—was supposed to be the one who came here. He’s the one who recommended me. When he sees the footage, or when Roth calls him when this is all over, I’m sure he’s not going to want me affiliated with the department.”

  “If that’s the case, then why are you smiling?”

  “I’m not smiling.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Andy waited a second, then looked straight into Darnell’s brown eyes. “I love anthropology, but I hate teaching. I hate it so much.”

  Andy had never told anybody this. Not his parents, not his siblings, not a single friend.

  Darnell let out a loud laugh, then said, “I bet that felt good!”

  “You know what, it did.”

  “Let it out.”

  Andy twirled around. He was about to repeat his statement, to tell the surrounding jungle just how much he hated teaching, when he noticed something on the ground. He squinted at the tangle of vegetation behind where he and Darnell were standing. The top of a gray stone was partially visible among the throng of leaves.

  Darnell asked, “What?”

  Andy took three steps forward, then fell to his knees. He brushed a barrage of damp leaves aside, revealing that the stone was larger than it first appeared.

  “Bring that camera over,” Andy called to Darnell.

  Andy pulled the small trowel from the side of his backpack and began digging around the stone.

  “Okay,” Darnell said, pointing the camera down at him, “what have you got?”

  Andy ignored him. He continued excavating until he uncovered a rectangular stone a foot and a half wide and three feet long.

  Andy dug down around the edges of the stone, revealing it to be only six inches thick. Beneath the flat stone, Andy uncovered the beginnings of a white quartz boulder.

  Even if the flat rectangular stone weren’t in such close proximity to the ancient temple, Andy still would have recognized it for what it was. But as it sat at the foot of the temple, it made the discovery even more astounding.

  Andy snapped the yellow walkie-talkie off the strap of his backpack and held down the black button on the side. There was a soft chirp, then Andy shouted, “You guys are going to want to see this!”

  A moment later, Roth’s voice came over the speaker. “What is it? What did you find?”

  “An altar,” Andy said, trying to breathe evenly. “A sacrificial altar.”

  21

  jungle

  august 16, 7:16 a.m.

  days since abduction: 11

  “Well, look who decided to put some clothes on,” Vern said, his thick gray mustache hovering above a devious grin.

  He was standing near a small fire with Juan Pablo and Carlos. All three of them were holding small collapsible cups. Even from ten feet away, I could smell the wafting aroma of coffee.

  I scoffed lightly at his ribbing, and then I pointed at the cup in his hand and said, “Please tell me there’s more where that came from.”

  Juan Pablo leaned down and picked up a small kettle from where it sat a foot from the fire. He magically popped a three-inch blue disk into a small cup and filled it with coffee.

  I took the cup, but before I could take a sip, I heard a squeak behind me. It took me a few seconds to locate the responsible party. She was eight feet up a tree, hanging with three of her four limbs from a large branch. The baby sloth gazed lazily in my direction and made another little squeak.

 

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