6

  elite charter flight 541

  august 13, 10:12 a.m.

  Andy leaned back in the soft leather chair and took a deep breath. He let the calming instrumental music from his earbuds wash over him and exhaled through his nose.

  “You’re going to be just fine,” he mouthed silently, not wanting any of the other members of the expedition team to hear him.

  There were twelve seats—six rows of two—on the fancy jet. Jonathan Roth was in the first row, and his production assistant, Libby, sat directly behind him. The newest arrival, Thomas something-or-other, was in the third row. Andy, himself, was in the fourth row; the two-person camera crew (Darnell and Sean, was it?) in the fifth; and Farah Karim in the back row.

  “Flying is safe,” Andy whispered. His heart thumped against his chest with every word.

  He opened his eyes and pulled a blue prescription bottle from his pocket. For all the pills Andy had taken, he’d never tried a Valium. He should have experimented with the pills beforehand. He didn’t want to make a fool of himself. What if he was allergic? Or what if it turned him into a slurring drunk? What then?

  His current predicament was so ridiculous he couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. Did he really have anxiety about taking antianxiety medication?

  That was a new one for his therapist.

  Andy decided against the pills, sliding them into the pocket of his backpack, then opened a separate compartment and removed a small wooden box. Andy set the box on the shiny table in front of him and, after glancing nonchalantly over each shoulder, flipped it open. He pulled out a white-and-gray-streaked rabbit’s foot and gripped it tightly.

  The rabbit’s foot had been a gift from Brady, a neighborhood kid Andy used to babysit while growing up in Rapid City, South Dakota. The town—the state’s second largest, after Sioux Falls—was located right next to the Black Hills National Forest. Andy wasn’t much of a hunter himself, but Brady was always running around the forest with his BB gun killing this and that.

  One night when Andy was watching Brady—which was mostly the two of them playing video games—the then seven-year-old presented him with the “genuine” rabbit’s foot. The following week, Andy flew for the first time in his life—to check out a college in Southern California—the rabbit’s foot clutched tightly in his hand, much as it was now.

  Andy gave the second of his four good-luck charms—he was wearing his first—a few more tight squeezes, his anxiety swept away for the moment as he thought about Brady, now twenty-two years old, and a starting linebacker for the Black Hills State football team. Andy hadn’t participated in sports much growing up—he wasn’t what most would refer to as coordinated—and he didn’t much enjoy watching them either. But for the past three years, he’d absolutely reveled in watching Brady’s football games.

  Black Hills State was a Division II football school, but they were perennially highly ranked, and Andy had watched their run through the playoffs the past winter and their narrow loss in the championship game. Andy had been decked out in Yellow Jacket gear from head to toe and cheered wildly at the bar across from the University of Chicago campus, where he was an assistant professor of anthropology.

  Andy set the rabbit’s foot on the table in front of him. Next, he pulled out what would appear to the naked eye as any ordinary rock. It was nearly the same beige as the chair he was currently sitting in, no bigger than a quarter, and pockmarked with little holes.

  Three years earlier, Andy had been living in Cusco, Peru, finishing up a yearlong research project for his dissertation. He had been walking around the famed Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, when he was startled by one of the many alpacas that freely roam the area, causing him to trip and fall down one of the steep rocky slopes.

  After sliding some thirty feet, Andy came to rest, unable to believe he hadn’t broken his neck. In fact, all he had to show for his thirty-foot fall down the incline was a bruised elbow and some scrapes on his legs. A few onlookers couldn’t believe it when Andy climbed back up the slope and went right back to his research. It’d been one of Andy’s proudest moments when one of his fellow researchers called him “one tough cookie.”

  Heading home on the bus that evening, admittedly stiff from his fall, Andy felt a small bulge in his jacket pocket. He reached in and found a tan rock that had found its way into his pocket at some point during his slide.

  Andy set the rock next to the rabbit’s foot and pulled a folded piece of yellow cardstock from the box. It was a menu—Shin’s Hollywood. Andy had eaten at the small Chinese diner before landing his one and only acting job. After graduating from the University of South Dakota with an undergrad in anthropology, he’d decided to chase his dreams and moved to LA.

  After eight months, he finally landed an audition: Allergy Sufferer #4 in a Nasonex commercial. He even had a line: “When my allergies are at their worst, I’m at my worst. [Sneeze! ]”

  Andy celebrated his big break with a fifty-dollar bottle of champagne, but over the next year and more than a hundred auditions, Andy failed to land a second gig. He moved back to South Dakota, and three months later, he started toward his master’s degree in cultural anthropology.

  Andy set the menu down just as the pilot’s voice came over the intercom.

  “Alrighty, folks. Looks like we got the go-ahead here. Going to be a little bumpy going up through this thick Miami air, but should be smooth sailing from then on. Sit tight for the next few minutes, then feel free to stroll around.”

  A little bumpy?

  Andy watched as the palm trees in the distance began to move across his small window. His stomach lurched, and his vision began to swim. Why had he signed up for this expedition? What was he thinking?

  It was supposed to be his mentor, Adrian Heliant—head of the anthropology department at the University of Chicago, and one of the preeminent scholars when it came to Inca history—who was to be the lead anthropologist for the expedition. But the aging Heliant came down with shingles and had recommended Andy—whose class, Ancient Inca Civilization, wasn’t offered during the summer quarter—as a last-minute replacement.

  The expedition had been hush-hush, and Andy hadn’t even known about it until he received a call just three weeks ago. His knees nearly buckled when the person on the other end revealed who he was: famed documentarian Jonathan Roth.

  Over the phone, Roth detailed the expedition to find the lost city of Paititi.

  Andy was circumspect at first. Hundreds of expeditions had tried and failed to find the lost city of the Inca Empire. It was widely believed to lie in the dense jungles of Peru, just east of the Andes. But surely after all this time, if the city existed, it would have been found by now.

  “Bolivia?” Andy asked when Roth told him where they were headed.

  “Yeah, northern Bolivia,” Roth replied. He explained that six months earlier, an acquaintance of his—who had assisted with the satellite imagery for Roth’s previous documentary—had emailed him a photo. Yewed Global had been hired by an eco-group to take pictures of the rampant deforestation of the Amazon forest. The group wasn’t able to come up with the funds to purchase the photos, and ultimately, the group disbanded. The photos were enormous files, and image consultant Jordan Mae was uploading them to an archive cloud folder when he found himself scanning one of them.

  In one of the photographs, a dark sliver was visible amid the thick jungle canopy. As Mae zoomed in, he realized that one of the enormous one-hundred-fifty-foot trees had fallen and taken down several other trees with it, leaving a break in the canopy. Mae continued to move in closer, curious if he could see any wildlife in this rare window into the jungle floor. He spotted a few monkeys, but that wasn’t what made him bite down on the cheap pen in his mouth so violently that ink spilled onto his lips.

  Mae zoomed in until the entire frame of the computer screen was filled by the object. Half buried in the dirt was a golden statue.

  A jaguar.

  This was the photo Roth received.

  Roth hadn’t let himself rush to judgment. Of course, Paititi and all that golden treasure of the Incas was the first thing that came to mind, but one lone statue in the jungle could easily prove incidental. For one thing, the statue was in northeastern Bolivia, several hundred miles from the area where Paititi was thought to be located. And, moreover, who knew if the statue was even Incan? There were hundreds of different Indian tribes who had lived in the jungles of the Amazon over the past few centuries.

  But it was Incan, at least according to Professor Heliant, who had been studying and teaching ancient Inca history for almost thirty-seven years.

  “So,” Roth said to Andy over the phone, “I put together a team to do a lidar survey over the surrounding area.”

  Lidar—light detection and ranging—is a relatively new technology with a vast array of commercial applications; from acting as the eyes for autonomous vehicles to guiding surface-to-air missiles to mapping the surface of Mars. Basically, lidar measures the distance to a target by illuminating it with pulsed laser light and measuring the reflected pulses with a sensor. Differences in laser return times can then be used to create a three-dimensional representation of the target, exposing formations invisible to the naked eye.

  This tool was proving revolutionary for climate monitoring, city planning, meteorology, mining, and, of course, archaeology. Just a few years back, lidar had helped unearth one of the greatest archaeological finds in Egypt.

  Earlier that May, Roth, his production assistant, and a lidar technician had flown into La Paz. They hired a pilot, and over the course of four days, they flew surveys over a fifty-square-mile area around the site where the statue was located.

  “Did anything come up on the scans?” Andy had asked hesitantly, though he knew that if nothing had shown up, he wouldn’t be having this conversation.

  “Hell yeah, it did!” Roth had exclaimed.

  Andy remained skeptical until he opened the email Roth sent him and looked at the scans himself. The thousands of beams of light sneaking through the jungle canopy had revealed a series of large rectangular mounds, pyramids, and enclosures—what must be the ruins of a lost city.

  Goosebumps had formed on Andy’s arms.

  “So are you with us?” Roth asked. “Do you want to be part of the team that finds the biggest archaeological treasure of the twenty-first century?”

  Hell yes, he did!

  But Andy couldn’t help thinking about the many flights it would take to get down there (presumably, each successive plane getting smaller and smaller), not to mention the jungle itself. Andy had lived in Peru for a year and a half—the last time he’d been on a plane—but he’d spent nearly all that time in the Andes. The closest thing to a jungle he’d been to was the Jurassic Park ride at Universal Studios.

  As if sensing his trepidation, Roth said, “Farah Karim will be our lead archaeologist.”

  Dr. Farah Karim was a young Egyptian archaeologist who, three years earlier, at the age of twenty-seven, had led the excavation of an ancient site in the Nile Delta. In addition to having a brilliant mind, Dr. Karim was stunningly attractive. She was something of a celebrity and often posted images of herself at her latest excavation site. At last count, she had more than three million Instagram followers—one of whom was Andy Depree.

  “I’m in,” Andy told him.

  Now, three weeks later, Andy was regretting his decision.

  The compact jet accelerated down the runway, and its nose slowly lifted. Andy picked all three of his good-luck charms up off the table and cradled them to his chest.

  “Don’t freak out, don’t freak out, don’t freak out,” he mouthed.

  The plane hit a pocket of turbulence as it rose. Andy fumbled for the prescription bottle in his backpack, slid one of the white pills into his hand, and tossed it into his mouth.

  7

  34,240 feet

  august 13, 10:33 a.m.

  days since abduction: 8

  “A little bit more turbulence than I anticipated,” the pilot said over the intercom, “but it looks like we’re in the clear now. Feel free to get up and stretch. Molly will be around with refreshments and snacks here in a bit. Should be about six hours until we touch down in La Paz.”

  There were six other passengers on board, and I had the third row of seats all to myself. I stood up, stepped past a blond woman in the second row who was preoccupied with a large blue binder, and took the seat next to Jonathan Roth.

  Roth had a magazine open on his lap and a red vape pen in his hand.

  “Thomas, my man,” he said as I sat.

  “John, my guy,” I replied.

  He inhaled on the red pen, then exhaled the vapor, engulfing the both of us in a fine mist. “It’s Jonathan.”

  “My apologies, Jonathan.”

  The sweet vapors from his vape pen—watermelon, I suspect—sent a thrum through my temples.

  I squinted against the pain and said, “I just wanted to touch base about what happens when we land.”

  He ignored me, smacking his hand on the open page of his magazine, and asked, “You ever been to the Maldives?”

  “I have not.”

  “Look at this,” he said, lifting the travel magazine to show a picture of turquoise water and white-sand beaches. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? Have you ever seen anything so beautiful in your life?”

  “It’s pretty.”

  “Pretty? It’s gorgeous. What do you say, you and me, Maldives? Beach, snorkel, surf, chase some tail. We’ll clean up, you and me.”

  I would like to point out that I’d known this guy for going on nineteen seconds, and he’d just invited me to go on vacation with him.

  There was an emergency door four feet in front of us, and I eyed it. I mean, I wasn’t going to pull the door open and jump out just yet, but I was considering my options.

  “You keto?” he asked.

  “What?”

  He leaned over and grabbed my biceps. He squeezed it a few times. “Keto. Are you keto?”

  I should mention that I really, really don’t like people touching me, but I decided to give this guy a pass. He was doing me a huge favor by letting me catch a ride—a favor he was being paid handsomely for, but a favor nonetheless—so I decided not to cram his vape pen up his nose.

  Anyhow, I’d heard of keto in passing, but I didn’t know much about it. I said, “No, I’m Eggo.”

  “What?”

  “I’m Eggo. Blueberry, Cinnamon Toast, mostly Chocolate Chip.”

  He thought I was kidding, and he let out a toothy laugh. Then he said, “I’ve been keto for six months now. Changed my life.”

  I tried to steer things back my way. “So when we lan—”

  “Sour cream.”

  “What?”

  “Sour cream,” he repeated. “I eat it by the tubful.”

  “That sounds disgusting.”

  “No, it’s great. Blue cheese dressing too. Right out of the bott—”

  “Listen,” I interrupted. “I just want to know what happens when we land.” This came out ruder than I expected, but his vape pen was starting to give me a migraine, and I didn’t want to hear any more about his stupid fucking diet.

  Roth shrugged, his silver hair bouncing slightly, and said, “I was told to add your passport in with the others, and that everything would be taken care of.”

  This jibed with what Paul Garret had said, which was that I didn’t have to worry about any paperwork—no visa, no vaccine records, no customs form, nada. All I had to do was make sure I had $200,000 in cash when I landed.

  On that note, Roth seemed pretty nonchalant about aiding and abetting the commission of an international crime. Had he done this before? Was this not as big a deal as I thought it was? Did this stuff happen all the time?

  I buried these thoughts for the time being. Who knows how long I could keep this guy on topic. I asked, “Did this Papagayo tell you why I needed to get down here?”

  “Something about a missing chick?”

  “A missing doctor, actually.”

  “Right, doctor.”

  I added misogynist to Roth’s growing list of accolades and asked, “So, how well do you know this Papagayo?”

  “Not great. He’s what you call a fixer. It’s hard to get anything done in these shithole countries, so you need a guy who speaks the language and can grease the right palms.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Straight shooter, from what I could tell. Though rumor has it he’s got some serious skeletons in his closet.” He slapped me on the arm and said, “But don’t we all.”

  Old Thomas probably would have told him, “If you touch my arm again, the next skeleton in my closet is going to be that I once beat someone to death with a travel magazine.” But New Thomas—Uncle Thomas—bit his bottom lip and nodded.

  “Anyhow,” Roth continued, “Papagayo got all our permits squared away with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and nailed down a few other things I was told would take months, if not years, to clear the red tape.” He paused a moment, then added, “Or should I say brown tape?”

  No, you should not say that.

  Ever.

  “I wouldn’t worry much about anything,” Roth said. “Bolivia is shit poor. A little green goes a long way down here.”

  “Good to know,” I said.

  It was also good to know that in two short minutes, Jonathon Roth had checked all the boxes: narcissist, misogynist, elitist, and racist.

  I needed to get away from him before I committed a felony or, at the very least, multiple misdemeanors, so I pulled my passport out of my pocket and offered it to him. He nodded behind him and said, “Give it to Blondie.”

  “Right. Thanks.”

  I ducked into the second row and waved for his assistant’s attention. It took a moment, but she finally glanced up from the blue binder. Her blond hair was cut short, there were dark circles under her eyes, and she had that slightly annoyed, just-get-through-this look of a mom with three kids at the grocery store.

 

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