by Noel Hynd
“As police, we could ask to see your passport,” one of them said, quite amiably.
“ Mi madre fue mexicana,” she said, trying to deflect it further. “ En realidad, chilanga. ”
“ Asi,? usted es mexicana? ” one asked.
She took a chance and showed them her American passport. She told them that she was on her way to visit friends who were among the missionaries at Barranco Lajoya. This, plus her excellent command of Spanish, seemed to appease them. They didn’t bat an eyelash when she pulled her Beretta out of her bag and strapped the holster to her waist. If anything, they were amused.
Then they began to ask more questions. They asked her why she was carrying a gun. She answered, why not carry a gun? They laughed and accepted the answer.
“The last time we were in this aircraft, we took seven bullets from rebels,” the younger one said, making conversation. “But we were flying over near Colombia that day. Today we go southeast toward Brazil.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
The older cop added that once they had sufficient altitude, small arms fire couldn’t touch them. And if it did, it wouldn’t penetrate. And if it did penetrate, it would be spent. And if it were spent, they could pick it up and throw it out the door.
“And if it did wound someone, the wound wouldn’t be too bad, si?” Alex asked, picking up their facetious tone. “And if the wound was bad, we’d fly to a hospital.”
They laughed again. “?Claro, claro! ” they said.
She swatted at a pair of mosquitoes that had somehow followed them into the aircraft. The policemen watched her as she reapplied some DEET lotion to her legs, even though she was already breaking a sweat. She caught them looking at her and gave them a smile. She felt she had won them over.
The helicopter lifted off into the low mist that covered the city, then broke through the clouds and hovered near the mountains, the aircraft listing to its port side dramatically. She held tightly to her seatbelt with one hand and her seat with the other. At one point, she reckoned, they were no more than two hundred feet above the treetops, and her heart gave a huge surge when a downdraft brought them half that distance lower.
The pilot righted the craft with a sudden jerky motion. They listed starboard violently, as if swinging in a gondola on a cable. Then the mountaintops became distant and they were well above them. The chopper banked and headed south. Alex kept track of directions by their relation to the sun.
The interior of the helicopter was stuffy and hot. Twenty minutes into the flight, Manuel pushed open the side door to the helicopter. “You’ll get a better view this way,” he said. “Plus, we’ll get more air.”
He was right. The open door cooled the helicopter. She and Manuel sat strapped into seats at the open door. There was a gun turret there also, but no weapon. The policemen retreated to a corner, broke out a deck of cards and started to play, having no interest in what lay below. Alex guessed they had seen it a thousand times. That, or they didn’t want their uniforms to serve as airborne target practice.
They flew low between gaps in the mountains over breathlessly rugged undisturbed scenery. They crossed a long, wide savanna and then a blue river; then the jungle below thickened, though it was crisscrossed with rivers and lakes. The journey was hot, and the motor of the helicopter was thunderous.
Below, green stretched in every direction beneath a low haze. At one point they came to a clearing where there were modern houses and communities. Alex scanned carefully. She saw few vehicles and no people.
“Who lives out here?” she said.
She took out the digital camera and began taking random pictures.
Manuel answered. “ Nadie. No one any more. There were merchants here. Rubber merchants. But it’s no longer safe.”
“Rebels?” she asked.
“ Bandidos. ”
Alex nodded.
After ninety minutes, the chopper flew over one of the most beautiful areas of the country, the Canaima lagoon and its surroundings. The lagoon was fed by several small waterfalls. Mist hung above the falls. She was surprised by the changing color of the water and sand. In several places, both took on a reddish hue. In some paces the sand was a light pink because of the presence of quartz. She took out the digital camera and recorded what she saw.
Beyond that, they passed over several flattop mountains. Several mining settlements had dug in. She could see machinery and movement on the ground, plus big gouges in the forests and earth. She took more photographs.
They arrived in La Paragua after a two-hour flight. A Jeep was there for them, along with a driver named Jose. He was a young man, maybe eighteen, with a handsome smile and an Argentine accent. A lunch of chicken, beans, and rice waited in the car, along with chilled bottled water in a crate with ice. Alex quickly won Jose’s approval by talking about the ins and outs of Argentine soccer.
The police departed in their own direction, giving Alex a final glance as they departed, admiration mixed with approval and a hint of subdued lechery.
Manuel, Alex, and Jose then began a three-hour trek over bumpy roads as they drew closer to Barranco Lajoya. The men rode in the front. Alex preferred to have more room to herself by sitting in the rear, but she continued to chat up both her driver and guide.
In some areas, mud on the road was so deep that it sucked at the tires of the vehicle. In one area, one entire lane of the road had been washed away by a mudslide. The road hadn’t been repaired, but the line in the middle had been redrawn. At another area, there was a one-lane “bridge” that was nothing more than a sheet of metal dragged across a fifteen-foot crater. Manuel and Alex got out of the Jeep and crossed the bridge on foot in advance of the Jeep in case the vehicle tumbled.
The roads weren’t bad, they were hideous. To make it worse, Manuel kept looking at the side rearview mirror. Alex asked twice if for any reason he thought they were being followed. Both times, Manuel answered only with a shrug.
“These days in Venezuela,” Manuel finally grumbled, “anything is possible.”
SIXTY-FIVE
T he Jeep halted at the side of a clearing. Beyond, a narrow path wound up the mountain between trees and rocks. The path was deeply rutted, the ruts flooded with water.
Jose stopped the vehicle and they all stepped out.
The late afternoon was so hot that steam rose from the mud. Low swarms of flies and gnats settled into little clouds above the mud. Alex fixed her hair into a ponytail, put on a cap to protect her head, and plastered herself with DEET for the third time.
“Barranco Lajoya is about a mile up the mountain,” Manuel said. “From here we go on foot. When God made this place, he must have been in a bad mood.”
She might have hiked up the mountain in long pants, despite the constant risk of insect or snake bits, but the heat ruled that out. Malaria was also rampant, so was rabies, and anything that flew or crawled had a good chance of being poisonous. She hoisted her pack onto her back and adjusted the weapon in her holster. The sheath with the knife was arranged on her left hip.
“The climb is steep,” Manuel said. “Take plenty of water.”
She put two one-liter bottles in her backpack and tied a fresh canteen at her waist.
“ Los machetes,” Jose reminded them. “Tigritos,? ustedes saben?”
She frowned. Jose explained. There were occasionally jaguars on the mountain, he said. They tended not to attack during the day, but one never knew. If the big cats were hungry enough, they would go after anything. Manuel took a machete with him, for protection as much as slashing through the underbrush. Alex at first declined, then took one.
Both Alex and Manuel checked the ammunition in their sidearms. If they needed the pistols, they might need them in a hurry. With a final gesture, Jose produced a pair of bracelets, suitable for ankle or wrist. They were made out of light wood, slatted with thin but strong wires running through connecting the beads. He proposed that they each wear one. Within one of the slats on each was a variation on a SIM
card, a small directional chip.
“In case someone needs to go looking for a body?” Alex said.
“We try to think of everything,” he said in Spanish.
Then they were ready and began their ascent.
They crossed a barbed wire fence that belonged to a local rancher. Then they trudged several hundred yards through a half-shaded path through the jungle. The DEET worked and kept the biting flies at bay. Above them was a canopy of leaves, which provided some shade but also held the humidity across the floor of the jungle.
The hike was steep, like a march through a giant terrarium. Sweat rolled off her. They stopped for water after a quarter mile and had all the water they wanted when they came to a wide stream with a hard rushing current.
They picked up sturdy fallen branches from the zimba trees and fashioned walking sticks out of them. The path across the first stream was across a series of rocks that some Good Samaritan had put in place but which the force of the current had loosened.
Some of the rocks were submerged. Manuel crossed first and offered a hand back to Alex. There were fifteen steps, then they were at a soggy little island in the middle of the stream. The ground below their feet was soft like quicksand, so they kept moving.
The other side was a deeper ford. There was no choice but to wade through it. Manuel led the way. The water was past her ankles, then up to her knees, then almost touching the hem of her hiking shorts. Then they came up to the other side. They dried off as much as they could, re-applied the insecticides and continued. Alex felt as if her boots would be wet for days, but forged ahead. Fortunately, she had two pairs.
This was like a different planet.
Twenty minutes later, before her was another makeshift bridge of stepping stones, twice as wide and perilous as the first set. The stick was useless now, the water was too deep and the stream swelled into a small unfriendly river right before her eyes.
Manuel, becoming unsteady, crossed ten feet ahead of her. She was on her own. She kept the stick and used it as a balance, as a tightrope walker might.
An insect hit her in the throat and she slapped at it, hitting herself hard on the neck. The rocks below her left foot wobbled and she fought wildly to retain her balance, waving her arms, trying to keep the stick centered. She managed.
Manuel arrived on the other side. She stayed focused. Nine more stones. Then eight. She counted them down. The river narrowed and became shallower. Her confidence swelled. She had made it. Two more steps. Then one.
Manuel extended a hand. “?Aqui, senorita, aqui! ” he said, above the rustle of the current. She grasped his hand and he pulled. She took the final step with a neat jump and landed on the soft riverbank.
“That was the toughest part,” he said.
They stopped to drink, catch their breath, and gather themselves. They found some shade and stopped again where the path was halfway up the mountain. At one point, Manuel took out a pair of binoculars and scanned downward to an area where they could see part of the path they had taken. “What are you watching?” she asked.
“?Mira! Three men with rifles,” he said.
Her heart jumped. She said nothing. Manuel handed her the field glasses and showed her.
She trained the glasses on them and felt her heart leap a second time. There were indeed three strong dark-skinned men in jungle pants and T-shirts. All three were armed with rifles. The guns were old but could kill nonetheless. One of them also had a sidearm. She scanned all parts of the path to see if there were any more than three, but those were the only ones she saw.
They were following them up the same path about half a mile below. Startled and fearful, she handed the glasses back to Manuel. Obviously, he read the anxiety on her face because he laughed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “About two miles from here there’s a rancher. His livestock escapes sometimes, and he sends out his hombres to bring back what is his.”
“They need all that artillery to track down goats?” she asked.
“The region is peaceful these days,” Manuel said, “but it is still too dangerous to wander around by oneself or unarmed. About a year ago, a man named Luis was upset because his wife had fled his village. He sat around drinking all day, then attacked some friends for no reason with his machete. He killed a child. The people in his village had to take things into their own hands.”
“What did they do?”
Manuel wouldn’t say.
“Please tell me,” she pressed.
“It was not pleasant. And it is not good to speak of it to outsiders,” he said.
“I want to know,” she said. “There is no one else here. You can say it aloud to the mountain, as if I’m not listening.”
He paused, then spoke slowly.
“They attacked him with heavy hammers and clubs,” he said. “They broke his legs. Then they the tied him to a tree and left him for three days. By the time they returned, he was dead. Wild animals had feasted on the body, perhaps when he was still alive.”
At length, she said, “I see.”
“There is no justice out here other than what people make for themselves,” he said. Luis’s remains had received a proper burial under four feet of dirt, a pile of stones, and a primitive wooden cross on a remote part of the mountain.
“God will be his judge, as he will judge all of us,” the guide said.
Alex nodded and asked nothing further about the incident. Her gaze drifted back down the mountain. Manuel’s eyes followed her gaze.
“Anyway, there is no reason to be alarmed right now,” he said, looking back down the mountain. “Those men down there are looking for the pigs and goats that belong to su jefe. I know those men. They are friends. Let’s continue.”
“Good idea,” she said.
They rose and continued their hike. The path narrowed again and headed into heavy brush under a stand of trees. It continued that way for another few hundred yards, then came to a clearing and began to wind steeply through a rocky area that required climbing.
She was thankful she’d worn good footwear, solid mountain hiking stuff. The gun and the machete hung heavily at her side and reminded her constantly of the extra danger from wildlife.
Then she was out of breath. They stopped. She found a rock and she sat, panting to get her wind back. Manuel seemed midway between concerned and amused.
The time passed slowly and heavily. There was a rustle in the underbrush. Alex’s hand went for her weapon as she thought of the jaguars. But when a beast emerged it was only a wild pig, a descendant of an escapee from a nearby ranch. Future prey for los tigritos. The animal gave them a curiously indignant look and scooted off into the heavy brush.
“? Esta bien?
” Manuel asked.
“ Estoy bien,” she answered. “I’m okay.”
“One more push to Barranco Lajoya,” he said.
She nodded and stood. He led the way after a final warning to look out for snakes, which could be up to six feet long. “The rattlers are the worst,” he said. “And you don’t always hear the rattle before they strike.”
The last part was free of rocks. From somewhere there was even a breeze. A hot breeze, but a breeze nonetheless. She became short of breath again, but Manuel urged her on, promising that the rest of the way was short and if she stopped at this altitude it could sometimes prove impossible to get back into gear.
Then, up ahead, she heard an incongruous sound.
Chickens.
When you heard the chickens you were close to the village, Manuel said. A final few hundred feet and she came to a clearing. The contours of a wood and plaster roof came into view, and then there was the sound of children shouting. Manuel walked ahead of her a few more strides, and a minute later a clearing opened before them. When they stepped out of it, there was the village of Barranco Lajoya.
The path didn’t end so much as it disappeared into a rambling battered mishmash of rundown huts and shacks. Walls were made of scrap metal, as were roofs.
Some roofs were thatched, others had gaping holes in them. There were hammocks for sleeping on small overhangs to some of the huts, attempts at porches, and a few primitive colorful murals that attempted to make things look better. Some of the better homes had mosquito netting on the windows. The majority didn’t. The windows were just open. Alex saw one car, an old blue Citroen with an ornate grill. It must have been forty years old and have spent part of its early life in the old French colony of Guyana, to the east. She wondered how it could have gotten there and guessed that the path must have been more passable in the past.
There seemed to be one store, which operated out of a window in someone’s hut. Barefoot children played soccer in a field cluttered with litter. A hand-painted sign on the side of one building said Iglesia Christiana. The church. The building would have been considered an eyesore and a slum in most American towns, but here it was one of the better buildings. It was white stucco, shuttered windows and large wooden doors that locked. Beside it, adjacent to a porch, was a gasoline-powered generator. Electricity had not yet come to Barranco Lajoya, nor had telephones. In Barranco Lajoya the modern world didn’t exist.
A crowd began to gather. Moments later, a small middle-aged man with slick hair, a round face, and a pleasant smile came forth from the church. He introduced himself as Father Martin. He was a Cuban American from Miami, who spoke English and Spanish.
“?Bienvenida! Por favor, accompaname,” he said. Welcome and come with me. I will take you to the other missionaries.
SIXTY-SIX
I n London, Anatoli felt safe. Honest to God, he had never committed even the slightest crime in the United Kingdom. And he wouldn’t. He rather liked the place, the pubs, the football, the girls. Like the cute redhead with whom he had spent the previous night. The trashy blue collar fun of Oxford Street and Picadilly Circus. London was a great place to be for a young man from one of the old Soviet republics. Much better than Rome, from which he had arrived a week earlier.
