Jungle Up, page 5
“I’m Thomas,” I said.
“Libby,” she said dryly.
I put Libby in her early thirties, and I put the last time Libby had slept at last July.
“I’m supposed to give you this.” I handed her my passport.
She took the passport and tossed it into a large manila envelope. She lifted her hands lightly as if to say, “Anything else?”
I gave her a double thumbs-up, then started back to my seat in the third row. It was my first chance to get a good look at the rest of the passengers. In the far back, there was a young woman. She had dark, nearly black hair, large brown eyes, and various colored necklaces around her neck. She was unquestionably attractive and had perfected her don’t-even-think-about-coming-to-talk-to-me face.
Duly noted.
In the row in front of her were two guys who looked like a bad wrestling duo. They were both roughly the same age as me; one black, the other white. The black guy had a thin mustache and was wearing an orange and black Cincinnati Bengals hat. The white guy had a bushy brown beard and a full sleeve of tattoos running down his left arm.
That left one last passenger. He had the fourth row of seats to himself. He had curly orange hair that looked as though it had never been styled in its lifetime, and he was donning a lime-green T-shirt. He was lean, maybe five foot seven, and he was wearing what I can only describe as a look of dread.
I slid into the seat beside him, and he pulled two white earbuds from his ears.
“H-h-hey,” he muttered. His face was pale and waxen.
“Are you okay?”
“I don’t fly well,” he said, his Adam’s apple bouncing in his throat.
“I’m sure that turbulence didn’t help.” Our ascent had felt like we were in a dogfight in World War II.
“No,” he stammered. “No, it did not.”
“I read somewhere that you’re more likely to die—”
“I know, I know,” he interrupted. “You’re more likely to die in your car on the way to the airport than you are on the flight.”
I shook my head. “No, I was going to say that I read somewhere you are more likely—” I paused for effect, “—to die in a plane crash than you are to get on The Bachelor.”
His eyes—dill-pickle green, and made even more so by his shirt—doubled in size.
“Or maybe it was that you’re more likely to die in a plane crash than to get on Big Brother.”
He couldn’t speak. Maybe it was the phrase “die in a plane crash” that had his tongue tied. Maybe I should stop saying that.
I shook my head. “No, no, that’s not it. Now I remember.” I gave his hand—which was gripping the armrest so tight his fingers carried a slight tremor—a few light pats and continued: “It’s Survivor. You are less likely to survive a plane crash than you are to get on Survivor. That’s it.”
“Can you, um—” He gulped. “—stop talking about plane crashes?”
If I seriously wanted to mess with him, I would have told him how my parents had died in a plane crash eleven years earlier when my father’s company jet, which was similar to this one, had crashed into the Sierra Nevadas.
I let out a light laugh. “Sorry, I was just messing with you.”
I have a weird sense of humor. And it gets even weirder when I’m stressed. And flying on a jet to Bolivia to track down the love of my life in the middle of the Amazon jungle had my stress level at Platinum Select.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Andy Depree.”
I introduced myself.
There was a rabbit’s foot, a tan rock, and a folded piece of yellow paper on the table in front of Andy and I asked, “What’s with the garage sale?”
The corners of his mouth turned up into the faintest of smiles, and he said, “Good-luck charms.”
“Ah.” I nodded at his lime-green shirt—which on closer examination read i paused my game to be here—and said, “And let me guess, that’s your lucky flying shirt?”
“How’d you know?”
“I don’t think anyone would wear a shirt like that voluntarily.”
He looked down at his shirt then back up. “It’s not that bad.”
I let this go and asked, “What makes it lucky?”
“Every time I’ve flown in it, we haven’t crashed.”
“Wow. Such sorcery.”
He half laughed, then asked, “I’m guessing you don’t have many good-luck charms of your own.”
After I was attacked by a pack of wolves, one of the rangers sent me a tooth from one of the wolves that had been killed. It was in a box somewhere in Seattle next to the bullet they’d removed from my left shoulder. But I thought of these less as good-luck charms and more as friendly reminders to buy additional life insurance.
“I’m not superstitious,” I said, then without planning it, I added a line from The Office: “But I am a little stitious.”
He laughed. “Michael Scott!”
In my fit of depression two years earlier, I’d binged all nine seasons in one week.
“I actually auditioned to be on that show,” Andy said.
“No kidding?”
“Yeah, I think it was season three or something. I auditioned to be their IT guy.”
“How did you not get the part?” Andy was all IT guy.
“I got nervous. Muffed my lines. Wasn’t the first time.”
“I’m guessing you aren’t here because you went on to have an illustrious acting career and are now headed to the jungles of Bolivia to research your next part.”
“That would be correct.” He paused, then said, “I’m a professor of anthropology, specializing in the Inca Empire.”
“You look a little young to be a professor.” It might have mostly been his stupid shirt, but I’d put him in his mid to late twenties.
“I’m thirty-two. And to be accurate, I’m an assistant professor. I’m going into my second year.”
I nodded, then asked, “Incas? That’s Indians, right?”
“Yes, Amerindians.”
“So this expedition you guys are going on, it’s to find the lost city of the Incas?”
“Yeah, it’s called Paititi. Theoretically, it’s the Incas’ last refuge after the Spanish nearly wiped them out.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“I do. Quechua as well.”
“What’s Quechua?” I asked, pronouncing it as he had: ketch-wah.
“It’s the language the Incas spoke. A lot of rural Peruvians still speak it. Mostly in the Andean region.”
The color had started to come back to Andy’s cheeks, and his grip had loosened on the armrests. It must be my calming demeanor. Or more likely, it was whatever was in the pill-bottle-shaped lump in Andy’s left pants pocket.
I didn’t know how much longer Andy would have his wits about him, and I asked, “So, Roth, he’s leading this expedition?”
“Yeah, he’s a pretty famous documentarian. It’s his rodeo.”
I wanted to tell Andy that after my limited interaction with Jonathan Roth, I had slotted him in at #4 on my Most Loathsome People list. He was right behind #3, Stephen Baldwin; #2, Unknown Frenchman who continually puts his yoga mat way, way too close to mine; and #1, Turd Gregory (RIP). But Andy’s eyes shimmered when talking about the guy, and I didn’t want to sway his loyalties.
I thumbed over my shoulder. “And who’s Princess Jasmine?”
He got a kick out of this, smiling big and goofy. I estimated he had thirty more seconds of consciousness.
“That is, uh, that is Dr. Farah Karim. She’s an Egyptian archaeologist.”
“She’s not bad looking.”
“She’s soooooo hot,” he slurred.
I was curious that an Egyptian archaeologist was part of an expedition searching for a lost city in South America, but Andy’s eyelids had begun to sag, and I figured I only had time for one more question. “And what about the two guys who look like a wrestling duo called the ‘Rustbelters?’ ”
He mumbled, “Camer-ad cry-you.”
Camera crew.
“Gotcha. Okay, buddy, time to go night-night.”
I leaned Andy’s chair back, and it took his body with him. A minute later, he was softly snoring.
Andy’s backpack was on the floor in front of him, and it was partially open, revealing the spine of a book. I felt a little guilty reaching into his backpack, but I had six more hours to kill, and if I left my mind to wander, it was going to start playing tricks on me. And when you’ve seen the things I’ve seen, the tricks aren’t the pull-a-rabbit-out-of-a-hat kind, they’re more along the lines of “Let’s saw this body in half . . . and then stab it multiple times . . . and then let’s throw it in a dark cellar for a few weeks until it no longer has the will to live.”
So whatever book Andy brought along, Inca this or Inca that, or maybe How to Revitalize Your Acting Career in Your 30s for Dummies, it would keep Gina and a thousand different grim scenarios at bay.
I pulled out the book. It was titled Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation. I grinned, thinking back to a Christmas morning nearly thirty years earlier and unwrapping my Nintendo, then playing Contra the next two days until I had calluses on half of my fingers.
Now that was a generation.
The Nintendo generation.
My generation.
I cracked open the book and began reading. Molly came by a few minutes later, taking drink and snack orders (club soda and a turkey sandwich for me). I ate lunch; read for two hours, which is about my max; then, after twiddling my thumbs for ten minutes, I leaned my chair back and closed my eyes.
≈
A slight rocking jolted me from a dreamless sleep. I brought my seat back to its full upright position and stretched my arms above my head. After cracking my back on both sides, I turned and glanced at Andy to my right. His chair was still reclined, and his eyes were closed. But on closer examination, his body was rigid, like he was “planking,” and his face looked like he had just eaten a lemon wedge. He was either having a Valium- (or Xanax or whatever he’d taken) induced nightmare, or he was wide awake.
The plane shook and a high-pitched moan slipped through Andy’s pursed lips.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told him. “Just normal turbulence.”
He shook his head from side to side but said nothing.
We hit a pocket of air, and the plane dropped to the point I got that hollow feeling in my belly. The last time I felt that sensation, I had been plummeting to the ground in a hot-air balloon. If anyone was going to let out a soft wail, it should have been me.
But it was Andy.
I turned and glanced back behind me. Dr. Farah Karim was staring at Andy, trying to bury a smile. Team Rustbelt was staring at him as well, both shaking their heads in disgust.
“Dude, you need to pull it together,” I told Andy. “You’re embarrassing me.”
This was like the time I sat next to Brett Lentz in the high school cafeteria. I was trying to be nice—you know, sit next to the kid who always eats alone. I thought maybe we could be like Zack Morris and Screech, but then Brett took his shirt off and started rubbing his burrito against his nipples before each bite. And next thing you know, Jessica Morris (my #1), Courtney Yonder (my backup), and Heather Richter (my last resort) all “really don’t feel like doing the whole homecoming thing this year.”
“What’s your favorite video game?” I asked.
One of Andy’s eyes peeked open. “What?”
“You’re wearing that stupid shirt. You’re obviously a gamer. So, tell me, What is your favorite video game?”
The plane rocked and both of Andy’s eyes instantly snapped shut.
“Come on,” I prodded. “Donkey Kong? Space Invaders? Grand Theft whatever?
“Auto,” he said, adjusting his seat upright a few clicks. “Grand Theft Auto.”
“Right.”
“GTA’s not bad, but I mostly play Red Dead Redemption.”
“What’s that?”
He brought his seat fully upright and said, “Oh, it’s great.” He started telling me all about the game.
A few minutes later, there was a soft thud, and the pilot came over the intercom, “Welcome to La Paz, folks.”
8
aeropuerto internacional el alto
august 13, 4:27 p.m.
days since abduction: 8
Exiting the plane, two things were immediately evident: the air was much cooler than it had been in Miami, and there was a lot less oxygen in it.
I knew from my research that La Paz rested on a natural plateau in the Andes Mountains and, at an elevation of almost twelve thousand feet, it was the highest capital city in the entire world. It was located in the far western center of Bolivia, twenty miles from the Peruvian border. Though if you want to get technical, we weren’t in La Paz, we were at the El Alto International Airport, eight miles from the Bolivian capital.
La Paz was visible in the distance, a Lego city set against a background of sprawling, white-capped mountains. It was one of the more beautiful views I’d ever seen, but hopefully it wasn’t one I would get to enjoy for long.
As I descended the jet’s airstairs, I gave the blue duffel bag in my right hand a few small lifts. It felt the same as it had before, though I wouldn’t know for certain if Molly snuck out a few bundles while I was asleep until I took the time to count it, which didn’t seem like the best idea to do on the tarmac with two airport officials in yellow vests fast approaching.
Roth and Libby, who were the first two off the plane, beelined toward the yellow vests. That we didn’t have to go through the official customs line told me we were getting express service. Maybe Roth had paid for it, or maybe the red carpet was rolled out for all charter flights. Regardless, it worked in my favor.
Libby and Roth met the officials fifty yards from the plane and exchanged a few pleasantries, then Libby handed over the manila envelope she’d added my passport to. Both vests had clipboards, and they quickly began pulling the paperwork out of the envelope, flipping open passports, and pulling stamps from some sort of stamp holsters on their belts.
The camera guys and Egyptian Lara Croft huddled in a small group around a pile of bags. Andy stood a few feet from them, by himself. He appeared comfortable in his own bubble, which is something I could admire, though I think he was just happy to be on solid ground.
As for me, I was doing my best to look like a guy who wasn’t trying to illegally sneak into these people’s country. Sadly, this translated into me doing jumping jacks, then arm circles: a ridiculous mash-up of a guy who had taken a long flight and really needed to stretch and a third-grade gym teacher leading calisthenics.
Exchanges in Spanish turned my attention back to Roth, Libby, and the airport officials. It was evident Roth couldn’t keep up with whatever the Bolivians were saying, and he barked for Andy to come over.
Andy, who at some point had pulled a blue sweatshirt on over his ridiculous flying shirt, plodded his way to the group and began translating.
I knew there was a problem when, twenty seconds later, all eyes turned toward me.
Uh-oh.
I made my way over to the small group.
Roth cut his eyes at me, then said, “Apparently, your paperwork is missing.”
“Well, I gave my paperwork to you,” I said with a big smile. “What did you do with it?”
Roth didn’t have a chance to respond as one of the officials pointed at my bag and said, “¿Qué hay en la bolsa?”
Andy said, “They want to know what’s in your duffel bag.”
Oh, you mean my blue duffle bag that looked like it was filled with a bunch of cash, which in actuality was a blue duffel bag filled with a bunch of cash.
“Papagayo,” I whispered.
Both officials looked at me.
“¿Qué?” one of them asked.
I looked at Roth, then back to the officials. “Papagayo,” I repeated, this time with an accompanying eyebrow raise.
Nothing.
“Parrot.”
Nothing.
I started flapping my arms around and bawking my head back and forth.
I’m not sure what I expected—for them to both smile and nod and say, “Oh, now we get it. Take your big bag of money and enter our country”?
This did not happen.
What did happen was that one of the officials yanked the duffel bag from my hand and unzipped it, revealing two decades’ worth of his salary.
The two officials began barking in Spanish, and Andy translated, “They’re going to detain you.”
From Midnight Express, I knew this was the first chip to fall which would ultimately end with me falling in love with a man in a third world prison.
“Do something!” I said to Roth.
Roth threw up his hands in defeat. He’d already gotten his check, what did he care?
More Spanish was barked, and Andy translated, “If you don’t go with them now, they’re detaining all of us.”
I leaned my head back and took a deep breath. In all honesty, it wasn’t a third world prison that scared me—yes, I’m sure their prisons sucked, but I’m sure I would survive—no, I was terrified about Gina’s fate.
Regardless of whether they sent me back to the United States or they sent me to prison—who knows what laws of theirs I’d broken by bringing in a bunch of cash—by the time it was all sorted, Gina’s trail would be long cold.
I glanced over my shoulder at the rest of the expedition team. They looked on with curiosity, wondering just who this ruggedly handsome mystery passenger they had picked up really was. I thought about running back onto the plane, where the pilot still was, and telling him to take off. I could get him to land in a field somewhere or take me to Chile. Of course, I wouldn’t have my passport or any money with me, and I would probably be worse off than I was now.
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