Jungle Up, page 7
“So were you court-martialed?”
“No. The government was taking a lot of heat for still having troops in Vietnam, and the last thing they wanted was the press getting wind of a bunch of soldiers smuggling dope back to the US. Trust me, I wasn’t the only one who was caught. I was given a general discharge—which is the worst they can do without court-marshaling you—and told to keep quiet.”
“So how did you end up in South America?”
“Spent a few years back in Reno after I got out, but I found myself doing the same shit I did before I left. Had a friend who wanted to backpack through South America. Planned it all out, then he went and flaked at the last second. I went alone. Started in Peru, then ended up in Colombia. Got introduced to some folks, and next thing I know, I’m flying fifty kilos of cocaine to Miami every two weeks.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, stupid. Drug smuggling, illegal mining, archaeological looting—you name it, and I was doing it.”
“Archaeological looting?”
“Yeah, there are ruins all over South America. People pay big money for artifacts, statues, relics.”
“Is that how you ended up being Jonathan Roth’s fixer?”
“Don’t get me started on that asshole.”
“Yeah, my six minutes sitting next to him on the plane was pure torture.”
He laughed.
I asked, “How did you get mixed up with him?”
“Fifteen years ago, I met a Bolivian girl living in Colombia. First time I had to think about anybody but myself in my whole life. We moved back to her hometown, La Paz, and I went legit. Had to find a way to make money the old-fashioned way. Didn’t plan on becoming what they call a fixer, but because I knew the language and had a good idea of how bureaucracy worked in South America, people—Americans mostly—started coming to me to get things done. Bolivia is the poorest country in all of South America, but if you have money, there’s money to be made.”
“So when Roth needs a permit to look for Paititi, you’re the man for the job.”
Roth’s eyes twinkled. “You know about Paititi?”
“Just what the anthropologist told me on the plane. Which wasn’t a whole lot.” I didn’t share that our time was pharmaceutically cut short.
“I can’t tell you how many of these expeditions I’ve seen come through here.”
“All looking for Paititi?”
“Not Paititi,” he said, shaking his head. “Most of those searches have been in the jungles of eastern Peru. But there are tons of undiscovered ruins all over the place. In the jungle, you could be two feet from what could’ve been a city teaming with thousands of people four centuries ago and not even know it’s there.”
“Thank God for lidar.”
“Now you’re just showing off,” he said with a laugh.
“According to Andy—he’s the expedition anthropologist—it sounds like they have a pretty good lead on something.”
“Best lead I’ve heard of,” Vern said. “Might not be Paititi, but there’s something there, that’s for sure. That’s actually how I met Roth. I flew the lidar survey, and let me tell you, four days in an airplane with that asshole is four too many.”
“Did he ask you to go to the Maldives with him?”
Vern started laughing so hard I thought he might choke. After his fit, he looked up and said, “You know what? That son of a bitch did ask me to go to the Maldives with him!”
This got me good and I buckled over. When I recovered from my laughter, I asked, “How many miles did you survey?”
“Fifty square miles. But it takes forever because the lidar machine doesn’t have a very wide scanning field. So you have to fly a grid back and forth, back and forth, like you’re mowing a lawn.”
“You’ve seen the photographs?”
“Actually, they’re not photographs, they’re three-dimensional scans. But yeah, I’ve seen them. Looks like there are all kinds of man-made formations down there. Pyramids, enclosures, plazas. Could be millions of dollars’ worth of artifacts.”
“Yeah, but doesn’t all that stuff belong to the Bolivian government? Or will all those artifacts get looted and sold?”
He let out a loud laugh and said, “The Bolivian government is the biggest looter of them all.”
I glanced out of the plane. We were now flying over dense, dark jungle. It was easy to believe there could be a lost city hidden in there somewhere. Heck, Miami could be cloaked beneath the sea of green, and you wouldn’t have any idea.
But honestly, I didn’t care about any lost cities or who looted what. All I cared about was finding Gina.
“So, level with me here,” I said. “Have you ever dealt with someone being kidnapped in the jungle?”
He nodded. “Just once.”
“And did you recover them?”
“Yeah, we did,” he said. “In twenty different pieces.”
10
la paz, bolivia
august 13, 7:16 p.m.
There was a giant snake projected on the screen at the front of the room. It was several shades of brown and easily camouflaged among the dried leaves in the photo.
“The fer-de-lance,” Mark Holland said in an English accent.
Holland, as he liked to be called, was tall, easily six foot four, muscular, with a light-brown goatee and a shaved head. He wore a white paracord bracelet on one wrist and an enormous black watch on the other. He had spent the previous five minutes recounting his bio: forty-two years old, ex–British Special Forces, advanced trauma medic, skilled survivalist, and senior instructor in jungle warfare. After leaving the military, he started a company called TAFLS, Television and Film Logistics and Safety. He specialized in bringing television and film crews into the most dangerous and inhospitable environments. He’d worked with several TV shows—including Running Wild with Bear Grylls, Survivorman, Extreme World, and Naked and Afraid—and on numerous documentaries.
Holland and his partner—Ian Rixby, whom they would meet the following day—would be in charge of Andy and the other expedition team members’ safety while in the jungle.
There were eight of them seated around a U-shaped table in the Republica Conference Room on the fourth floor of the ritzy Hotel Presidente—plus the two cameramen walking around the room shooting footage. In addition to Holland, the fresh faces were Alejándro Cala, head of archaeology for Bolivia; Bernita Capobianco, Bolivian anthropologist; Lieutenant Mauricio Goytia, liaison to the Bolivian Army; and Nathan Buxton, adventure and travel writer for National Geographic.
The “orientation,” as Jonathan Roth called it, began fifteen minutes earlier. Roth started off the meeting with a rah-rah speech about fate, destiny, and discovery. How over a hundred different expeditions had searched for the lost city of the Incas and none had succeeded. It felt a bit scripted to Andy—no doubt Roth had practiced the speech several times in front of the mirror—and it was certainly as much for the benefit of the cameras on the shoulders of Sean and Darnell as it was for the expedition team. But it was intoxicating nonetheless, and it had Andy buzzing to get into the jungle and get his hands dirty. That is, until Holland stood up and began speaking.
“The fer-de-lance,” Holland repeated, “is one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. They hide in the rocks, the trees, the bushes. They come out at night, are attracted to activity, and I can tell you from experience that they are irritable as hell. I can almost guarantee at some point you will encounter one of these arseholes.
“We’re going into one of the most isolated areas on earth, where choppers can’t fly at night, where weather can change in an instant, and where evacuation might not be possible for days. If you get bit by one of these blokes, you’ll lose a limb at best, and that’s if you survive. That’s why it’s important to always wear your Kevlar snake gaiters, especially at night when you get up to piss.”
Andy glanced to his left, where Jonathan Roth’s production assistant Libby sat. Her head hung slightly—the short blond strands of her pixie cut hanging just above her light-blue eyes—and she looked as though she may vomit at any moment. Andy, who had once locked himself in his room for three days because his dad saw a garter snake in the backyard, whispered, “I’m terrified of snakes too.” From Andy’s experience, fear loved company.
Libby scrunched her eyebrows and said, “Oh, no, I’m fine with snakes. I’m just not feeling all that well.” She bit her bottom lip and took a hard swallow.
“Altitude sickness,” Andy said, wondering why it took him so long to notice.
“What?”
“I think you have altitude sickness.” At twelve thousand feet, Andy was surprised more of them hadn’t been affected.
Andy, of course, had taken precautions, popping a couple of Diamox, a medicine that helped alleviate the symptoms of altitude sickness—pounding headache, nausea, dizziness, and shortness of breath—before they’d boarded the flight in Miami. The Diamox was one of thirty different medicines Andy had packed in what the TSA agent at Chicago O’Hare had dubbed “more pharmacy than suitcase.”
Andy had brought two pills with him to take at some point during dinner, and he patted the circular outlines of the small pills in his front pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, he slipped them out of his pocket and placed them in front of Libby.
“Take these,” he whispered. “They’ll make you feel better.” He pulled over one of three pitchers of lemon water set out by the hotel and filled a glass. “Drink all of this.”
Staying hydrated was the best way to combat altitude sickness. Since landing, Andy had drunk all three thirty-two-ounce bottles of water from the minibar.
Libby didn’t question what the pills were, tossing them into her mouth and slugging back the entire glass of water.
“Good, now drink another full gla—”
“Hey!” snapped Holland.
Andy glanced up. A picture of a scorpion was now on the screen, but everyone’s eyes were trained on him.
Holland glared at him. “You think I’m doing this for my own amusement? This is bloody serious.”
Andy felt his cheeks go flush to the point he thought they might burst. If getting singled out wasn’t bad enough, Andy turned and saw both Sean and Darnell had their cameras trained on him, documenting his embarrassment for possibly millions of people on Netflix or Amazon or wherever to someday enjoy.
But possibly worst of all, was Jonathan Roth at the head of the table and Farah Karim directly across from him, both wearing the same look of annoyance.
“Oh, sorry, sir,” Andy mumbled. “I, uh, yeah, sorry, please continue.”
If teleportation existed, Andy would have gone to the moon.
≈
Holland spent the next twenty minutes briefing them about the different ways the jungle would try to “tap them out” of the expedition.
Andy kept rapt attention, not only to make up for his earlier interruption—which was innocent enough; he was only trying to help out Libby—but because he knew something Holland said here in this conference room could save his life come tomorrow.
Holland put up photos of all the animals that inhabited the lowland Bolivian rainforest and could shred them to pieces: jaguars, caimans (small alligators, usually between six and eight feet long), black caimans (the largest members of the alligator family and, at around fifteen feet long, the largest predators in the Amazon River basin), wild boars, tapirs, and several different types of monkeys. He spoke at length about how it was imperative to remain observant, to keep a watchful eye.
Then came the bugs: mosquitoes, sand flies, chiggers, ticks, kissing bugs. Holland couldn’t stress enough how important it was to apply DEET from head to toe several times a day—to spray their clothing with it, to apply it before they went to sleep. Because as if the bugs weren’t bad enough, they also carried a plethora of deadly diseases: malaria, dengue, yellow fever—diseases that might not kill them but were so painful that they would wish they were dead.
Andy had gotten his yellow fever vaccine a couple of days after his phone call with Roth three weeks earlier. He’d also started taking malaria pills the previous week, as instructed. But according to Holland, neither the vaccine nor the pills guaranteed they wouldn’t contract the diseases. And sadly, there was no prevention for dengue—also known as “breakbone fever”—other than trying not to get bitten by a mosquito that carried the virus.
From bugs and diseases, Holland moved on to plants. Nearly a third of the plants in the Amazon rainforest were poisonous in some way or another. Holland would distribute gloves—the kind scuba divers used—and he recommended wearing them at all times. He urged everyone to be especially careful when going to the restroom, the last thing you wanted was for your privates to brush up against something sinister and swell, burn, and blister. Even with his warning, it was sure to happen to someone.
Don’t be that someone.
Holland cautioned how easy it was to get lost. Wandering a mere fifteen feet from the group could lead to disaster. Never detach from the group. Never leave base camp alone. On every trip from base camp, everyone would be required to bring an emergency kit filled with food, water, a flashlight, a knife, matches, DEET, and rain gear.
He took out a box and handed out whistles. He watched as every member of the group, from Roth to each of the cameramen, draped the orange whistles over their heads. “Do not take the whistle off. Not tonight. Not any other night. You are my responsibility,” he said, finishing up. “And no one is going to get hurt or bloody dead. Not on my watch.”
≈
The restaurant, Café Banais, was three blocks from the hotel. It was 8:30 p.m., and the place was a third full. The expedition team pushed two of the small wooden tables together to make room for the seven of them. Three of the team had opted out of dinner: Lieutenant Goytia, who would be rejoining the expedition on Wednesday with a small group of Bolivian soldiers; Libby, whose altitude sickness had lessened because of Andy’s pills, but who said the bathtub and room service were calling her name; and Bernita Capobianco, who wanted to spend the night with her children before heading into the jungle for twelve days.
Andy took his seat next to Nathan Buxton. After shooting some B-roll footage of the restaurant, Sean and Darnell took the two seats across from Andy. Bolivian chief of archaeology Alejándro Cala was seated to Andy’s right, at the end of the table, and already in a heated conversation with Sean about futbol versus American football. And at the other end of the table sat Jonathan Roth and, to his left, Farah Karim.
Their waiter was a young Bolivian girl in a pressed shirt and tan skirt. She took their drink orders, which for the majority, including Andy, was a Paceña, a beer brewed locally with Andean water.
Drinking alcohol was a surefire way to get altitude sickness, but if it hadn’t hit Andy by now, he was probably in the clear. Plus, he didn’t want to be the only one not imbibing.
The beers came, and the entire table cheered.
“To Paititi!” Roth shouted. “We’re coming for you, you son of a bitch.”
The whole table erupted in laughter.
“You know what?” Roth said. “Let’s do that again. This time on camera.” He pointed to Darnell and said, “Would you mind? Just on your phone.”
Darnell pulled out his phone, and they recreated the cheers.
“To Paititi! We’re coming for you, you son of a bitch.” [Cue laughter.]
Roth asked to do it, “Just one more time,” then the waitress delivered a plate of chips and salsa. If she hadn’t, Andy suspected they might have done twenty takes.
“So, you’re a professor of anthropology?” Buxton asked from the seat to his left. “At the University of Chicago, correct?”
“That’s right,” Andy said, choking down a chip loaded with salsa, then following it with a sip of beer. “An assistant professor, actually. I only have the winter and spring quarters under my belt.”
“How’d you like it?”
Andy didn’t want to tell him how he had been miserable the entire time. How he’d penned his letter of resignation twice but fell short of sending it. How he was dreading the first day of the fall quarter come October.
“It was great,” he lied.
“You teach the Incan Empire, correct?”
“I do.”
“How’d you fall into that?”
“In undergrad I took an Inca-studies class and loved it. They were so incredibly innovative; their society was so much more complex than what is commonly thought.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
“And there’s so much drama to their demise. Betrayal, heartache, sibling rivalry, pestilence. It’s all there.” Andy took another chip, then asked, “Do you know much about them?”
“A decent amount. I write an adventure-novel series, and one of my books had an Incan element to it. I did some surface research and it gave my wife and me a chance to go down to Machu Picchu, which, as you know, is simply out of this world.”
“The Cusco Paradox,” Andy said with a smile.
“You’ve read it?”
“I have.” Andy had read most of Buxton’s books. “It was pretty good. A few things you got wrong about the Incas, but hey, it’s fiction.”
“When you’re writing fiction and you get something wrong, you just say you took ‘creative liberties.’ ” He gave Andy a light slap on the shoulder. “But yeah, sometime over the next few days, let’s chat about what I got wrong. I’m curious.”
“I have an email saved in my draft folder if you really want to know.”
“Seriously?”
“No, of course not. I’m not one of those people.” In actuality, Andy was one of those people, and he did have an email in his draft folder listing the many inaccuracies in Buxton’s book.
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