“No, really, I think we’re close.”

  “You think or you know?”

  “I haven’t been back here in thirty years. The forest has changed.” Martin flipped his compass open and squinted at it.

  “Enough,” Patrick said. “You obviously have no idea where you’re going.”

  “I do,” Martin said. “There is a river a few hundred meters from here.”

  “Well, for your sake, there had better be.”

  The group continued hiking for another five minutes, and then Gina began to hear the unmistakable thrum of fast-moving water. Fifty meters later, the jungle opened up slightly, and there was a clear view of a rippling brown river.

  Gina’s stomach tightened.

  It appeared that Martin was leading them in the correct direction after all.

  “How much farther from here?” Patrick asked.

  “Thirty minutes,” Martin said.

  Gina’s stomach twisted. She’d been waiting for an opportunity to make a move, but now she was running out of time.

  Martin turned in her direction, and Gina gave him the quickest of winks. For a moment, she didn’t think he’d noticed, but then he did a 360-degree sweep of their surroundings and said, “I need a few minutes to get my bearings.”

  Patrick flashed a quick look of annoyance, then called to the soldiers, “Let’s take five. Then we’ll get prepared for the final push.”

  Martin consulted his compass, then walked to the edge of the small clearing. Patrick followed behind him, pestering him with questions.

  The soldiers made their way to the river’s edge. On the opposite side of the river, there was a giant capybara sunning on the sloping bank.

  Gina watched as the first of the soldiers picked up a small stone and tossed it across the river. The stone landed in the water, several feet in front of the large brown rodent.

  “Not even close!” Gina shouted to them in Spanish.

  The soldier glared at her, but soon all four of them were scavenging the ground in search of stones to throw.

  Bill was leaning back against the seven-foot-wide trunk of a massive tree. His pack was on the ground next to him. His shirt was drenched through, and there were small droplets of sweat beading inside his tinted glasses.

  Gina took a few steps toward him and said, “You need to drink some water.”

  “You read my mind,” he said, then knelt next to his pack and unfastened the top.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Gina watched as the four soldiers took turns throwing rocks at the capybara.

  She swept her head to the left. Patrick was thirty feet from her, with his back turned. He was watching Martin etch something in the dirt with a large stick—either a map or, possibly, the layout of the village.

  She silently commended Martin on his ingenuity.

  Bill pulled his plastic water container out of his pack and unscrewed the top. He tilted the container to his lips.

  Gina took two steps forward, pressed both hands to Bill’s chest, and shoved him backward with all her might. He hit the tree trunk with a soft thud, his head knocking back and water splashing all over his face.

  Within half a second, Gina had her hand inside Bill’s pack and was rooting around for the gun she had seen Bill wrap in a T-shirt the previous day. She felt the outline of metal, pulled out the shirt, and fumbled it open.

  She glanced toward the soldiers. She watched as one of the four spotted Bill moaning next to the tree and alerted the others.

  With her right hand, Gina clicked off the safety, while with her left hand she reached down and grabbed Bill by the collar of his shirt.

  She glanced toward Patrick. He’d overheard the commotion and was reaching for the pistol tucked in the back of his pants.

  Bill was still dazed from smacking his head against the trunk and did little to assist Gina as she yanked him to his feet. In one deft motion, she slid behind him, pushed her back up against the large trunk, then pressed the barrel of the gun against the side of his head.

  “Nobody move!” she screamed.

  Patrick continued a few feet toward her. Gina sent a bullet whizzing over his head. “I said, nobody fucking move!”

  Patrick stopped and raised his hands.

  Bill had started to regain his wits. “Don’t kill me,” he mumbled. “Please, don’t kill me.”

  Gina ignored him. She turned to Patrick and yelled, “Tell all the soldiers to throw their rifles in the river!”

  Patrick glared at her in silence.

  Gina sent another shot over Patrick’s head, this one close enough he must have felt the whiz of the bullet.

  “Okay, okay,” Patrick said. “Do as she says.”

  One by one, the four soldiers pulled their rifle straps over their heads and tossed the guns into the water.

  “Now, you!” Gina shouted. “Drop your gun and kick it toward Martin.”

  Patrick let out a deep breath.

  Gina narrowed her eyes and said, “I won’t ask again.”

  There was a loud thunk.

  Gina glanced upward.

  Less than a foot above her head, sticking out of the trunk of the tree, was a long, yellow spear.

  ≈

  “Nobody move a muscle,” Martin said. “There are probably twenty of them surrounding us.”

  Gina gulped audibly.

  So close.

  She stared at Patrick and watched as he slowly moved his gun back to his waistband.

  “Everyone remain very still,” Martin said, “or we’re as good as dead.”

  “Well,” Patrick said, “it looks like you were telling the truth after all.”

  The tribesmen must have been close by, and Gina’s gunshots had drawn their attention.

  There was a soft crunching from all around them, then suddenly several tribesmen emerged from the forest. They were clad in red loincloths, had yellow war paint striped down their faces, and their muscles were long and lithe. Several had different colored cloths tied around their biceps. Each carried a seven-foot spear with a razor point.

  The Nsé-Eja.

  One tribesman shook his spear at Patrick and shouted several words in his native tongue.

  “What are they saying?” asked Patrick.

  “I don’t know,” said Martin.

  More tribesman emerged from the forest until there were twenty spears around them. A tribesman with a rim of white hair and three lines of yellow paint beneath each eye rushed forward and jutted his spear in Gina’s face.

  Gina’s heartbeat thrummed against her ribcage.

  “I think he wants you to drop the gun,” Martin said.

  Gina released her grip around Bill’s neck, then she slowly lowered her hand and set the gun on the ground.

  Another of the tribesman picked up the gun. He turned it over in his hands and carefully inspected it. A moment later, several of the tribesmen began yelling at them, prodding them toward the forest from where they had emerged.

  Patrick said, “I think we should go with them.”

  Gina didn’t think they had much of a choice.

  46

  jungle

  august 23, 1:24 p.m.

  days since abduction: 18

  When I was twenty-nine years old, I attempted to do an Ironman triathlon. Not the real one, not the one in Hawaii, but one of the half ones. It was in Atlantic City, which was an hour’s drive from where I was living in Philadelphia at the time. The race was a 1.2-mile swim, a 56-mile bike ride, and a 13.1-mile run. Added up, it came to 70.3 miles, and they gave you a big “70.3” sticker to plaster on your car. That is, if you finished.

  I never got the sticker. Or the T-shirt. Or the Clif Bar.

  I’d been running for most of my life, and the few bike rides I’d taken were easy enough, but I was nervous about the swimming portion. My sister was swimming collegiately at the time, and she helped train me during the six weeks leading up to the race. When race day came, I was ready.

  Or so I thought.

  Surprisingly, I knocked the swim out in twenty-five minutes and then hopped on the $3,000 bike I’d splurged on. I had only trained on the bike five or six times beforehand, and never for more than twenty miles. I had just assumed that if I was in great running shape, I was also in great biking shape.

  It turns out that isn’t how it works.

  I made it through the first of the two twenty-eight-mile loops around the city with no problem. But around, oh, mile forty, my quadriceps started to cramp up. It took me two hours to finish the last sixteen miles.

  Three miles into my run—a time when most everyone else had already finished the race—my legs loosened up, and I settled into a nice pace. But then around mile eight, I hit a wall.

  “Don’t quit,” I kept telling myself. “Don’t you quit.”

  This got me through another couple miles.

  Lacy was cheering me on near the ten-mile marker—holding a large poster that read “Choo! Choo! Thomas the Train coming through!”—and I gave her a big thumbs-up as I passed. A quarter mile after seeing my sister, I came to a fuel station. I stopped and slugged back two small waters, and I grabbed for some energy gel. I squirted two of the gels down my throat, and when I went to start running again, my legs wouldn’t budge.

  “Um, excuse me,” I said to my legs in my semidelirious state. “What’s going on with you guys?”

  “We’re done,” they answered.

  “You’re what?”

  “We’re done. If you want to go any further, you’re going to have to talk to Arms.”

  That was the last time I pushed my body to its breaking point. Now, nine years later, I was doing it again.

  “I have to sit,” I said.

  Diego and Rix glanced back over their shoulders and stopped. I could only hope they were both impressed that I’d made it this far. According to Holland, most people who contract dengue fever are laid up for a week, sometimes as long as three weeks. And I now realized why.

  Dengue was a crippling virus.

  Even now, two days after my fever broke, I was nauseous, my joints were on fire, and everything felt heavy, like I’d had a blood transfusion and been filled with AB-granite.

  I flopped down in the middle of the forest and took several long, deep breaths.

  Early yesterday, when we set out from the pyramid at T4, it had taken Diego and Rix half an hour to find the right trail. There were several tracks leading to and from the ruins, but after careful debate, it was decided the northeastern route had the freshest tracks.

  We’d set off in search of the Nsé-Eja and, hopefully, Gina—hiking for eight hours before stopping to make camp. My Garmin inReach had spotty service the entire day, but around dusk, I’d been able to get a signal. I sent Lacy a few messages asking her to do some digging on Belippa for me.

  This morning we rose with the sun, and we’d been charging through the jungle at a heavy clip for the past seven hours. I wouldn’t have made it even a mile had it not been for the bag of coca leaves Juan Pablo had given me when we departed. The mild stimulant from the coca, along with the several Advil I was taking every few hours, slightly numbed the pain in my joints, and this combination was the only reason I’d been able to make it as far as I had.

  Diego hiked back to where I was sitting—nay, lying—in the heavy grass. He stood over me, Camila hanging around his neck. Diego had intended to leave the baby sloth with Vern, but perhaps sensing Diego was leaving her, she’d refused to let go. She’d clung to his shirt with her claws and squeaked until Diego relented.

  Diego reached down and put his hand on my forehead. “The fever has not returned.”

  “That’s good,” I murmured. As weak as I was, if the fever returned, I didn’t have much hope I’d live to tell about it. Unlike Atlantic City, the closest ambulance was a fourteen-hour hike and a helicopter ride away.

  “We rest,” Diego said.

  By “rest,” I assumed he thought at some point I would be able to resume hiking. That was not going to happen. Unless he and Rix wanted to play Weekend at Bernie’s with my lifeless body.

  I said, “I can’t go any farther.”

  Diego asked, “What about Gina?”

  I glanced up at him.

  His squinty eyes were open slightly more than normal.

  “Yeah,” I breathed. “Gina.”

  Gina was all I’d been thinking about for the last several hours. Replaying the first time I saw her, our first kiss, the first time we’d slept together, the first time she went to the bathroom with the door open—you know, all the highlights. The images were in high definition at first, but then, gradually, whether it was my fried neurons or because I was losing hope I would be able to continue, the images started to get grainy and pixelated, until I could no longer conjure them at all.

  I said, “She could be fifty miles from here.”

  “No,” Diego said, shaking his head. “These tracks fresh. She is close.”

  He might have told me this before—my brain was as fatigued as my legs—but I didn’t remember him saying it so defiantly.

  “We must keep going,” he said.

  47

  tribal village

  august 23, 2:12 p.m.

  days since abduction: 18

  The Nsé-Eja village was a fifteen-minute climb up a steep incline. Gina was in the middle of the pack, behind Patrick, Martin, Bill, and one of the four soldiers. With their spears held high, the tribesmen marched them up the hill.

  When they reached the top, Gina was surprised to see a bustling village of solidly built wooden houses. Over fifty villagers congregated outside their homes, cooking over open fires or tending to flocks of chickens. The women wore ornate long blouses with a sash around their waists. The older men and the children wore long sleeveless shirts.

  The villagers stopped and stared as Gina and the others were marched to the far side of the village, where a row of five tall wooden poles jutted from the earth. The poles were eight feet tall, six inches in diameter, and spaced roughly three feet apart. There was another set of five poles sixty meters away on the opposite side of the village. As Gina drew closer to the poles nearest her, she noticed heavy slash marks cut into them. All the slash marks were at neck level.

  She thought back to what Martin had said about the tribe.

  They are headhunters.

  A chill ran up Gina’s spine. She imagined how the next few minutes would play out. Each of them would be forced to stand with their back against the pole, then, one by one, their heads would be severed from their bodies.

  But then why did the villagers appear so civilized?

  They looked nothing like what Gina imagined a ruthless tribe of headhunters and cannibals would look like.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Twenty-odd tribesmen had their spears held above their shoulders, ready to throw. Gina considered slipping through the poles and into the surrounding jungle. What were the chances of them hitting a moving target with their spears?

  Pretty good if the spear that struck the tree right in front of their group was any indication.

  But if she could get to the jungle, she could outrun them. Or could she? Maybe on her trail near her village she could, but here on their home turf?

  Probably not.

  Martin, who was standing next to her, whispered under his breath, “Don’t do it.”

  Gina raised her eyebrows.

  “Just trust me,” he whispered.

  “What are we going to do?” Bill said quietly. “They’re going to kill us.”

  Gina turned and gazed at the group of tribesmen surrounding them.

  A moment later, there was a rustling, and the tribesmen separated. A thin old man shuffled forward. He was wearing a long blue tunic and his white hair was adorned with golden feathers.

  Martin took two steps forward and said, “Parlasqayki.”

  The old man, who Gina knew must be the village shaman, nodded and with a toothless smile, said, “Yaykuykuy.”

  Martin turned to the group and translated, “Shaman Yapunqui welcomes us.”

  Gina was trying to figure out what the heck was going on, when there was a loud series of thunks. It was the sound of thirty spears being thrust into the ground.

  ≈

  After the tribesmen thrust their spears into the ground, Martin walked forward to speak with the aging shaman. A few of the children ran up to Gina and the others and began touching them and speaking in their native language.

  A small boy, probably the same age as Miguel from her village, waved to Gina. He had shiny black hair, but his skin was a few shades lighter than Miguel’s. In fact, on closer examination, all the villagers’ skin was bronze as opposed to the darker cocoa of most indigenous groups.

  A few moments later, the villagers and warriors disbanded, and Martin returned from his conversation with the shaman.

  Gina asked, “So they’re not headhunters?”

  “No,” Martin said. “They’re quite peaceful actually.”

  “So you lied about that,” said Patrick. “Why? And why were you so reluctant to bring us here? Even when I offered you five million dollars? Even after I told you what was at stake?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Shorten it,” Patrick said.

  Martin said, “Thirty years ago, much like they just surrounded us, I was surrounded by a tribal hunting party and marched to this village at spearpoint. It didn’t take me long to realize their language was one of the six that I spoke.

  “I spent three months living with them and apprenticing with their shaman, Yapunqui. Over those months, I came to learn that the villagers were rarely sick, and that they didn’t even have a word for cancer. I learned a lot about their history and as much about their medicines as I could. When I returned to the States, I knew that if anyone found out the true location of the tribe, their way of life would be destroyed.”

 

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