Jungle Up, page 9
“What are you doing?”
Andy opened his eyes and turned his head slightly. Farah Karim was glaring at him, her mocha-brown eyes narrowed over her perfectly shaped nose.
“What are you mumbling?” she yelled over the roar of the rotor. Her words carried a slight Arabic throatiness.
“Oh, um, I’m multiplying by two,” Andy shouted back. He was going to leave it at that, but for some reason, probably the panic attack, he confided, “It helps to, um, to calm me down . . . when I’m, um, freaking out.”
“You don’t look like you’re freaking out.”
“Oh, well, I guess I hide it—” Andy realized she was messing with him. With his knees pulled up to his chest and mumbling incoherently under his breath, he most certainly looked as though he was freaking out.
“Do you have any other tricks?” Farah asked.
“Tricks?”
“You know, to calm you down.”
“Multiplying takes my mind off things. Sometimes I’ll drive around.”
“Drive around?”
“Yeah, I’ll drive through the town where I grew up.” Andy tapped on his head a few times. “In my head.”
It was something his therapist told him to try. He would get behind the wheel of the car he drove growing up—an aging green Jeep Cherokee—and he would drive the streets of Rapid City.
Farah leaned back from him an inch. “That’s weird.”
Andy didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter, because the helicopter banked hard to the right. Three of the freeze-dried pouches fell and smacked Andy on the head, but he hardly felt them as his heart rate jumped into the triple digits.
“Where do you go?”
Andy turned.
Farah asked, “Where do you go in your car?”
Andy took a breath. “To friends’ houses. To, uh, CVS. I go through the drive-through. Drive up to the college.”
“What drive-through?
“Taco Bell.”
“What do you order?”
“Two double-deckers and a bean burrito.”
Andy could feel his heart rate normalize, something he had Farah to thank for. He asked, “Do you like to fly?”
“Sure.”
“Doesn’t it bother you when the pla—I mean, helicopter—drops like that.”
“Not really. Reminds me of being on a roller coaster.”
“I’m scared of roller coasters.”
Farah rolled her eyes.
“What are you scared of?” Andy asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Not even, like, Ebola?”
“Fuck Ebola.”
Andy laughed.
He laughed so hard his eyes began to water. By the time he composed himself, the helicopter was on the ground.
≈
“Welcome!” Alejándro Cala yelled over the loud screeching coming from the jungle canopy.
“What’s that sound?” Andy asked, the fading wash of the helicopter rotor whipping his orange-blond curls. It reminded Andy of the one time he’d gone to see a screamo band and been unfortunate enough to sit five feet from one of the speakers.
“Howler monkeys!” Cala replied. “The noise from the helicopter gets them riled up.”
“Wow, those monkeys are loud!” shouted Buxton as he, Farah, Libby, and Bernita joined them.
“They’ll quiet down here in a few minutes,” Cala said, who had either offered or been chosen to be their base camp liaison. He nodded toward a wall of green and said, “Camp is two hundred meters in.”
A narrow path was chopped into the wall of vegetation, and Andy and the others followed behind the portly Cala.
“Has anyone been to the ruins yet?” Farah asked as they entered the imposing cave of green.
“Not yet,” Cala shouted from up front. “The closest ruins are half a mile from base camp. Holland doesn’t think we’ll get over there today.”
“What?” Farah said. “It’s not even one o’clock yet!”
Andy was itching to see the ruins as well, but he was in no rush. They would be there for the next twelve days.
“I’m with you,” Cala said. “I’m ready to get over there and start some ground-truthing, but Holland is calling the shots, and he’s concerned about the weather.”
Farah let out a frustrated sigh.
After a minute or two of hiking, they could still hear the shaking of branches a hundred feet overhead, but for the most part the howler monkeys had ceased their screaming.
“Wow, this is thick,” Buxton said, pushing a large branch out of the way.
Andy pushed aside the same branch, thinking the author’s words couldn’t ring any truer. Even after it had been hacked away by who knows how many machetes, it was a gauntlet of green webbing,
A minute later, the jungle opened up and Cala exclaimed, “Here we are!”
Base camp.
A space fifty feet in diameter had been cleared of brush. Holland and Rixby each had a machete—their blades painted bright pink—and were continuing to widen the swath.
Hanging from the low branches of several of the skyscraper-high trees were two enormous blue tarps. The industrial-sized tarps were each twenty feet square and they were angled upward, creating a large makeshift canopy tent.
Libby and Roth were sitting in collapsible chairs under the tent and working on laptops. Both cameramen were busy recording the action. Sean walked around with a camera on his shoulder, while Darnell had set his camera on a tripod at the edge of the clearing. Darnell swiveled his camera toward Andy and the others as they emerged from the surrounding vegetation.
Holland, who was carrying a load of branches, nodded at them and said, “’Bout bloody time.” He tossed the branches in a large pile at the far end of the clearing and wiped his hands. “First things first: if you haven’t already, spray yourself down with DEET. Head to toe; skin, clothes, head, face, hair, shoes—everything. There aren’t a whole lot of bugs right now, but it only takes one to send you packing.”
Andy had sprayed himself twice already: once that morning, then again at the airstrip.
“Then put on your snake gaiters,” Holland continued.
Andy glanced down at the polyurethane-coated guards strapped to his shins and flapping out over half of his boots. He had put his snake gaiters on before they boarded the flight from La Paz and had no intention of taking them off until he was back in Illinois.
“Then grab a machete and some gloves and find somewhere in the close vicinity to fix up your campsite.” Holland nodded at a pile of machetes, each in a leather scabbard. Next to the machetes was a pile of black scuba-diving gloves. “Try to stay within fifteen meters. Somewhere you’ll be able to get to in the dark. Look for two trees eight to ten feet apart where you can string your hammock. If you have trouble setting up, grab me or Rix, and we’ll get you squared away.”
There was a third pile of red nylon bags, which Andy assumed were the hammocks.
Andy looked around at the others. Only Nathan Buxton had the same look of confusion on his face.
“Um,” Andy said. “I thought we’d be in tents.”
“Not tonight,” Holland said, matter-of-factly. “Tents are coming with everything else tomorrow. The hammocks have mosquito netting and rain flies. Personally, I prefer a hammock, but come tomorrow if you want a tent, you got one.”
“Oh, okay,” Andy replied, wishing he’d kept his mouth shut.
The four others dropped their packs and did as Holland instructed, spraying themselves down with insect repellent. Andy decided a third dousing couldn’t hurt and covered himself in the noxious spray as well. While the others busied themselves with their snake gaiters, Andy grabbed a pair of gloves, a machete, and a red nylon hammock bag. He pulled on the gloves, then trudged through ten meters of thick brush before spotting two trees that fit Holland’s description.
He dropped his pack, then slipped the bright-pink machete—Andy guessed they’d been spray-painted pink so they were more visible to anyone in the vicinity—from the leather scabbard. The machete was a foot and a half long with a slightly curved blade. It was lighter than Andy would have suspected, and he slashed away at the many different trees, ferns, vines, flowers, and leaves.
Thirty minutes later, Andy was putting the finishing touches on his hammock, when he was startled by a snap in the brush. He whipped his head around, expecting to see a large jaguar licking its lips, but it was Holland’s partner.
“How you faring, mate?” Ian Rixby asked, his accent more standard English than Holland’s regional brogue. Rix, as he liked to be called, was broad chested and had dark hair and heavy eyebrows. He was a few years younger than Holland and carried himself with the confidence of an MMA fighter.
Andy took a calming breath and said, “I think I’m almost done.”
Rix took a few steps closer. His nose wrinkled and he shook his head.
“What?” Andy asked, sniffing a few times himself. All he could smell was earth, flowers, and decay.
“Monkey piss.”
Andy sniffed again and realized under the thick smell of vegetation was the musky scent of urine.
“This is their tree,” Rix said, glancing upward into the tall canopy. “And unless you want to wake up each morning to piss hitting your tent, I recommend moving.”
Andy followed Rix’s gaze upward. He was surprised to see three black monkeys hanging from branches seventy feet above and starring down at them.
“Monkeys usually leave at the first sign of humans,” Rix said. “But this area is so remote and untouched, I’d be willing to bet these monkeys have never seen humans before.”
One of the monkey’s pulled a piece of red fruit from the tree and tossed it down at them. Soon they were being pelted with fruit.
Rix said, “And I should mention, the bastards are super territorial.”
With fruit raining down on them, Rix helped Andy dismantle his hammock and then find another, more suitable campsite. Within twenty minutes, the two had cleared a ten foot area and restrung the hammock from two trees. Once Rix left—after demanding Andy give him knuckles—Andy gave the hammock a test-drive. The underside was made of thin nylon, and the top consisted of mosquito netting and a rain fly. Andy entered through the zippered seam on the side.
Lying back, Andy couldn’t help but think back on Holland’s frightening lecture about snakes, scorpions, spiders, jaguars, wild boar, and the plethora of other deadly jungle inhabitants. And here he was, served up like a rotisserie chicken.
“One night,” he muttered. “One night.”
He slid out of the hammock, deciding he would head back to the main camp and see if he could help out with anything. Or, better yet, now that he was an expert in hammock stringing, he could offer his services. He imagined Farah struggling with her hammock, then him emerging from the brush, walking toward her, confident, self-aware, Rix-like, and asking, “Do you need some assistance?”
He laughed at the thought.
Yeah, right.
He started toward the main camp but quickly realized he didn’t know which direction the main camp was. He glanced at the three hundred and sixty degrees of green brush and tried to remember which way Rix had departed. He looked for evidence of cut brush, but between the two of them, they’d more or less hacked away at all the surrounding vegetation.
How long had he and Rix walked from his first campsite? One minute? Two? Why hadn’t he been more careful when he’d traveled to his second campsite?
But he supposed he’d been with Rix, so he hadn’t worried about it.
Andy began to backtrack in the direction he thought he and Rix had approached from, and after a couple of minutes, he recognized the two trees where he’d initially strung his hammock. He found himself letting out a deep breath, one he hadn’t even known he was holding.
He drew closer, then stopped. He sniffed. He didn’t smell the underlying musk from earlier, and on closer inspection, there were no leaves on the ground, and there was no evidence of the fruit the monkeys had rained down on them.
This wasn’t the area he’d cleared.
He turned around. And around. He cocked his head and listened for voices, but all he could hear were the erratic shrieks of the jungle.
His heart began to pound.
He glanced at the orange whistle around his neck, then shook his head.
No.
He’d been in the jungle for less than an hour. There was no way that he was going to blow his whistle and have to be rescued.
No way.
His palms started to sweat, and his entire body started to tingle. The dam was close to bursting. He closed his eyes and did one of his calming exercises: naming characters from The Simpsons.
“Homer . . . Bart . . . Lisa . . . Maggie,” he said, taking a deep inhale between each name. “Marge . . . Mr. Burns . . . Ned Flanders . . . Smithers . . . Barney . . . Ralph . . . Millhouse . . . Groundskeeper Willie . . . Grandpa Simpson . . . Chief Wiggum . . . Apu . . . Troy McClure . . .”
He named characters for another long minute until his heart rate felt almost back to normal. He opened his eyes, let out a deep exhale, and said, “You’re okay. You’re going to be okay. You’ve got this. We’ll just retrace our steps back to our campsite, and then we’re all good.”
He started back in the direction he came. He walked for one minute. Then two. Then three.
Where was his campsite?
He spun in a circle. The slow drip of panic returned, but this time there was nothing he could do to stem its tide. His heart fluttered. His skin prickled. His chest heaved. The wall of green began to close in on him like a giant green fist.
He was on the verge of blacking out, and he fell to his knees. Andy pulled the whistle up from around his neck and with one of his few remaining breaths, he blew.
TWEEEEEE!
TWWEEEEEE!
TWWEEEEEEEE!
13
rio orthon
august 14, 2:45 p.m.
days since abduction: 9
Lunch consisted of the snacks Vern and I had picked up at the market: dried plantains, Brazil nuts, and chicharróns (basically, fried pork rinds). A combination of sweet, salty, and savory. Though to be honest, I’d covered myself with such a thick layer of insect repellent that everything I ate tasted of DEET.
In addition to spraying myself from head to toe with the insect repellent, I’d slapped on a wide gray fisherman’s hat and sunglasses to help combat the equatorial sun’s intense glare on the water.
Carlos was now manning the outboard, and Juan Pablo was playing some game on his early-model iPhone. Vern made a little bed for himself between the benches and was lying against his backpack, his knees pulled up to his chest and his maroon hat over his face. Camila had found her way over to him, and she was snuggled into his side.
Over the past six hours, the river had widened, narrowed, widened, and narrowed. Presently, it was at its widest: over two hundred feet. We’d lost the last of the tour boats two hours in, and other than an empty canoe tangled in the vegetation of the narrowest stretch of water, we hadn’t encountered any signs of human life since.
Carlos kept the boat thirty yards from the shoreline to our right, close enough to hear the howler monkeys above the din of the motor.
Maybe an hour later a canoe came into view. It was long, twenty feet at least, and two natives clad in nothing more than loincloths were standing in it—one at the front, one at the back—both guiding the canoe with long bamboo poles. The men waved as we passed.
Diego said they were from the Yanomina village, not too much farther upriver.
We reached it twenty minutes later. A muddy bank with several canoes and rafts came into view, and a group of twenty-plus natives, mostly women and children, were scattered about. I expected most to be barely clothed, like the men seen earlier, but the kids all had on shorts and T-shirts, and the women wore brightly colored shawls. The women were doing laundry in the river, and the kids were kicking around a ball and laughing.
“The Yanomina,” Diego said again. “Their village is not too far from the river.”
“How many people live there?”
He considered the question, then said, “Sixty or seventy.”
The laundry and game both paused as we passed. The village women stared at us with little regard, but the children waved and jumped up and down. It probably wasn’t every day they saw someone on the river, and who knows how long it’d been since they’d seen a white face.
“Do the different tribes interact much?” I asked Diego as the Yanomina faded into the distance.
“Not too often, but every once in a while. Friendly tribes.”
This was the second time he used the word “friendly” to describe a tribe, and I asked, “Are there unfriendly tribes?”
“Yes. Deeper in the forest. Unfriendly. Very unfriendly. Headhunters. And cannibals.” I thought he was kidding about the last part, but the narrowing of his squinty eyes said otherwise.
Diego unzipped one of the aged military rucksacks near his feet and said, “That is why we have these.”
Inside the rucksack were three handguns, a Remington 870 shotgun, and two M16 military assault rifles, one with a laser scope.
Diego lifted out a matte-chrome pistol, pulled back the hammer, eliciting a soft click, and asked, “Have you ever shot a gun?”
The pistol was a Glock 22, not much different than the standard-issue Glock 19 that I’d carried for the four years I worked for the Seattle Police Department.
I replied, “No, but I’ve played a lot of laser tag.”
“Laser tag?”
Apparently, one of the big fads of my youth—and shamefully, something I did every Thursday well into my thirties—had yet to make it down to Bolivia. I told him I was joking, then attempted to explain laser tag to him, which I’m not sure he fully grasped.
_preview.jpg)
_preview.jpg)
_preview.jpg)
