Chase Baker and the Golden Condor: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series No. 2)

by Vincent Zandri

  “Rodney,” I say, voice even, non-alarming, knowing that at any moment those fangs could impale themselves into Leslie’s or my neck. “Rodney, you hear me?”

  “I see it,” he says from behind the tree trunk where he’s nested himself on one of the thick branches. “Stay still, Chief. Don’t move a muscle.”

  The snake is now wrapping its fifteen- or twenty-foot-long body around both the branch and our legs, while its white-fanged head is slowly inching its way toward my face.

  “Rodney,” I whisper, as loudly and forcefully as I can. “We’re in serious trouble here.”

  “Stay still. Don’t speak.”

  Then, two fangs, exposed only inches from my face, the snake’s mouth opening wide, so wide I can smell a sweet but sickly sour breath coming from inside its long, dark guts. Until a shot rings out and the anaconda enters into a kind of suspended animation, neither moving toward me nor moving away from me. Leslie pops her head up, focuses tired eyes in the direction of our booted feet. It takes her a second or two to realize what’s got itself wrapped around our legs, but when she does, she releases a scream that sends flocks of birds shooting out of their treetop perches.

  The anaconda drops its head onto our torsos before its body uncoils itself from our legs and the branch, and drops down hard onto the jungle floor.

  Leslie shoots up.

  “What the hell was that?” she barks. “Wait! Don’t answer. Don’t fucking answer. I know precisely what that was.”

  Her body is shivering, trembling.

  Rodney jumps down from his tree branch, stares up at us with a face full of smiles, like we’re about to embark on a Sunday-Funday outing in Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood. Gripped in both his hands is his AR-15. A slim stream of white gun smoke is rising up from the barrel tip.

  “You gonna live, Chief?” he asks.

  “I hope so. Help me with getting Leslie down.”

  He does it. I jump down, land solidly on both feet.

  Leslie stares down at the massive dead snake.

  “Can I change the channel on my world right now?”

  “You’re in for the long haul, Les,” I say. “Told you you should have stayed in New York. You and the gynie might have made up by now.”

  She shakes her head.

  “How about some breakfast?” Rodney suggests, pulling his fighting knife from his belt sheath. “Anaconda is good eatin’ roasted over a campfire.”

  “I suppose it tastes like chicken,” Leslie says. “But no thanks. I’ve just become a vegetarian.”

  I look at my watch. It’s half past six in the morning.

  “It’s getting late,” I say. “Let’s grab the packs and get going. We can eat some power bars along the way.”

  “Great,” Rodney says. “Back into the spider nest.”

  “Let’s hope they’re all asleep by now,” I say.

  “Stop the world,” Leslie says. “I wanna get the hell off.”

  31.

  The clearing beneath the goliath tarantula nest is entirely devoid of spiders, the black arachnids having climbed back up into their silk beds for the duration of the day, just like I predicted they would.

  “Let’s get the packs back out to the trail where we’ll shake them down,” I say. “Make sure no surprises await us on the inside.”

  I grab hold of both my and Leslie’s pack, which I carry out through the bush to the path. When I get there, I open both packs and give them a violent shake. Nothing crawls out. Reaching inside, I move the clothes and food packs around. No spiders. Is it foolish for me to be sticking my hand into a pack knowing a spider bite could very well await me? Maybe. But what most people don’t realize is the bite from a tarantula, even a goliath dinner plate–sized tarantula which is common for the Amazon jungle, isn’t any worse than the sting of a hornet. But that doesn’t mean I’m looking to get bitten. Had all those spiders converged on both Rodney and Leslie last night, their collective bites and the resulting shock might have killed them both on the spot.

  “Saddle up, everyone,” I say, pulling the Keogh II map from my pocket, unfolding it.

  I glance down at our relative position. If we follow the trail as it’s depicted on the map in Keogh’s handwriting, I’m guessing we’ll be spending another full night in the jungle.

  But you’re not prepared to spend another night in the jungle. Your guides are dead. Most of the food is gone. So is most of the ammo. Not only is the Tupac Amaru after you, but so are hostile natives, and who knows what else. The best solution is to find a faster route to the mountain that houses the aircraft, and once you get there, call in precise coordinates for assistance.

  Staring down at the map, I can see that it might be possible to bushwhack our way through the jungle and reach the base of the mountain a half day sooner than expected. But we’ll be taking a chance since no one can possibly predict how thick the vegetation is going to be. It’s exactly how I put it to Rodney who, with his AR-15 shouldered, his pack on his back, his Giants baseball cap pulled down over his brow, and his machete in hand, is calmly awaiting my instructions.

  He cocks his head.

  “I see your point in bushwhacking, Chief,” he says, his eyes also locked on the map, tracing his way along the jagged line with his index finger. “We can cut the distance between us and our end goal in half if we head on through the bush in this direction.” He pulls his eyes off the map, focusing on me. “But two things bother me about this approach.”

  “Speak freely, Rod.”

  “Well, first off, that trail was carved out of this jungle floor where it was carved out of this jungle floor for a reason. Meaning that to begin carving another one in another place might lead us head on into a situation we would rather not find ourselves in.”

  “Duly noted. And second?”

  “And second, the jungle is liable to be so thick and unnavigable that it could take us twice as long to get to the mountain than it would if we used the trail.”

  “Again, duly noted. How about this idea? We bushwhack for a while. Maybe an hour or so. If it proves impossible to get through all that vegetation, then we double back, jump back onto the trail. That way we’re only an hour and a half or so behind the original schedule.”

  Rodney looks at me, nods.

  “Good,” I say. “Try Keogh Three again, give him a report on the guides, and then tell him about our change of travel plans.”

  Rodney pulls out his phone, starts dialing. After a time, he shakes his head.

  “No answer.” He shoves the phone back in his pocket, pulls out his radio, and makes a call for Keogh III. But all he gets is dead air. “Nothing again.”

  I don’t like the sound of that dead air. Keogh III should be available to us at all times. But for some reason, he’s nowhere to be found. A vision of the sickly man, sitting in that leather chair hooked up to those intravenous lines, shoots through my overstressed brain, and it dawns on me that he might be dead. But I decide to say nothing about my vision to my partners. After all, if Keogh III has indeed died, someone on his support staff would have the decency to contact us about it.

  “Send him an email and a text,” I command.

  “What will I say?” Rodney inquires.

  “Make it short and sweet. Something like ‘Guides dead, taking new route to destination. Make contact ASAP.’”

  “That’ll do it,” Rodney says, thumbing away at the little digital keyboard on his phone.

  “Leslie, you okay?” I say, turning to her as she combs back her long dark hair with the open fingers on her hand and repositioning her hat on her head.

  I reach out with the palm of my hand to touch her pink cheek.

  “You good to go?” I say, touching warm skin.

  “I’m ready,” she states with confidence. Smiling, she wipes the perspiration from her face with the back of her hand.

  “You okay with cutting our jungle visit short?” I pose.

  “I’m okay with the new plan,” she says, her voice sou
nding weaker and softer than usual. “Just so long as it means we don’t have to spend another night in this place. I’ve had enough spiders and snakes to last a lifetime.”

  I re-pocket the map.

  “It’s settled then,” I say. “Rodney, you okay with taking first machete duty?”

  “Your wish is my command, trailblazer,” the big man says with a laugh.

  “Lead the way,” I say.

  Together, we enter into uncharted territory.

  32.

  You know what they say, Chase. Never get out of the boat. But in this case, you never go off the trail. There’s a reason for rules of the jungle, both written and passed down via tribal legend. You value your skin at all, you don’t veer from the established path.

  But then, you don’t have a choice other than to give bushwhacking a try. Your team has been decimated by hostiles. You’re down to bare bones supplies. And you can’t reach your employer via cell phone or radio.

  Plus there’s another reason for shortening the time in the jungle.

  If the Tupac Amaru is on to you and your quest, they will make it a priority to kill you once you’ve succeeded in locating the Condor. But if you can get to it first without them knowing, you stand at least a chance of escaping the jungle with both the prize and your lives.

  That means bushwhacking…

  Providence must be looking down upon us.

  Because thus far, Rodney hasn’t had to use his machete for cutting much of anything. The layout of this uncharted forest isn’t all that different from a pine forest back in upstate New York or central Italy. The trees are so old, thick, and tall that their thick leafy branches are located far above the jungle floor, making walking fairly easy.

  We proceed uphill, but not a drastic uphill, the angle of ascent manageable without becoming too exhausting. Out the corner of my eye I keep a constant vigil on both Leslie and Rodney not only to make certain they’re both keeping up with the pace, but also to make sure no one is suffering from exhaustion or illness. Out here in the jungle it might be warm and humid, but hypothermia can kick in when you least expect it. So can jungle fevers like malaria and dysentery. The chances of our acquiring both just doubled with our hiking off-trail.

  After an hour, I shout out for Rodney to stop.

  “Water break,” I say. “That includes you, Les.”

  She pulls the bottle off her belt, unscrews the cap and drinks.

  Rodney does the same.

  “Going’s easy,” he says.

  Digging into my pack, I pull out a small bottle containing big green capsules. Popping the top, I drop three into the palm of my hand, two of which I offer up to Leslie and Rodney.

  “What’s this?” my agent asks.

  “Malarone,” Rodney answers in my stead.

  “For malaria,” I say. “It’s a preventive medicine, so take it.”

  Leslie swallows the capsule along with a gulp of water, and Rodney does the same.

  I check my watch. “It’s been an hour. What are your thoughts, Rod?”

  “Ain’t my call,” he says. “You the trailblazer.”

  I pull out the map, unfold it, press the tip of my finger against what I assume is our location. Pulling out my GPS device, I match up the coordinates on the device to our exact position on the map. The bushwhacking is proving more expeditious than I thought. We keep proceeding like this, we’ll make the mountain in less than two more hours rather than having spent all day taking the safe but circuitous route.

  I pocket the GPS and put away the map.

  “Let’s keep going,” I say.

  We don’t get ten more feet before we stumble upon the severed heads.

  33.

  They are the heads of the guides we discovered crucified last evening.

  They’ve been set side by side directly before us in a way that tells me we’re not only being watched from our front, but we’re also being followed. How else would they know enough to plant the heads here way off-trail?

  “Nobody move,” I say, my eyes going from the heads to making a one-hundred-eighty-degree sweep of the vicinity.

  “Fucking animals,” Rodney says, shouldering his AR-15. “Fucking…animals.”

  “How can anyone be so evil?” Leslie poses, her voice cracking under the strain of her fear.

  Silence ensues so that the only noise is the sound of insects flying past our ears and the occasional calls from a Macau or a spider monkey jumping from branch to branch far overhead.

  But after a minute of standing still as a statue, I begin to make out something else.

  So does Rodney.

  “You hear that?” he says.

  “I hear it,” I say, slowly drawing my automatic, cocking a round into the chamber.

  The sound that is filling my ears sounds almost like a stampede. Only not of hooves, but of human feet.

  “Christ,” Rodney says. “It’s another war party.”

  “Hold your fire and get down,” I demand, pulling Leslie down beside me by her belt buckle.

  The sound of footsteps trampling through the woods is getting louder. Now it’s accompanied by shrieks. Rodney aims his weapon at the source of the noise.

  “Hold your fire,” I repeat. “Those aren’t war cries, Rodney. Those are cries of fear.”

  He holds his fire.

  That’s when we see the first man. He’s running not at us, but toward us. Another native follows him and another one after that. Soon a half dozen nearly naked unarmed men sprint right on past us, screaming their lungs out.

  When they’re gone, we rise back up onto our feet.

  “What the hell was that?” Leslie says.

  “They’re afraid of something,” I say. “Something out there in the jungle.”

  “They are afraid of what you came here to find,” says the voice of a man who pops his head out of the bush. “The aircraft that you are going to find for us.”

  The mechanical gunmetal on gunmetal sound of two AK-47s being cocked follows as two rebels emerge from out of the jungle.

  They are the men I originally spotted at the landing strip in the Sacred Valley. The men who, no doubt, are responsible for crucifying and now beheading our guides. They approach us with their AK-47s held at the hip, at the ready.

  “Your weapons, gentlemen,” says the lead man in a heavily accented voice. He’s tall, thin, wearing worn jeans, cowboy boots, and a jean jacket over a worn work shirt. He’s got a straw cowboy hat that’s seen better days planted over a head of stringy black hair while his face sports a matching beard that doesn’t know if it’s coming or going.

  He makes his way to Leslie, reaches out with his free hand, runs it under her felt hat, flipping it off her head. The hat falls down against her back, its string catching on her neck. From where I’m standing, I can see her eyes go wide as he caresses her hair. I see her body go stiff and cold.

  The other man is shorter, chubbier. He’s wearing military clothing. Combat boots, green fatigues, and matching jacket, with an olive green baseball hat to match. He’s clean shaven, and beneath his chin he sports a bright red bandanna that, if I remember correctly, represents the official color of their terrorist organization.

  “Weapons!” he shouts. “Or the woman’s brain becomes home to a bullet.”

  Rodney and I toss a glance at one another. Reaching into my bush jacket, I slowly draw my piece by its barrel so that the grip faces the bandits.

  “Drop it,” says Military Man.

  I drop it.

  “You too,” he insists, dark eyes now focused on Rodney.

  Rodney slowly pulls the AR-15 off his shoulder, drops it at his feet.

  “Fuck you,” the angry big man whispers.

  “Excuse me, gringo?” Military Man barks, shouldering his AK-47, aiming the barrel for Rodney’s head, point-blank.

  Rodney raises his hands in surrender.

  “I said ahhhcchooo,” he smiles. “All this vegetation makes me sneeze, compadre.”

  “I am not
your compadre, gringo,” Military Man hisses, as he gathers up our weapons while maintaining his lethal aim on both Rodney and myself. Obviously, he’s a pro at this sort of thing.

  As Military Man backs away, Long Hair removes his hand from Leslie’s hair and steps toward me.

  “You are the leader, huh?” he says in a deep, throaty voice.

  “The buck stops here, asshole,” I say, not without a grin.

  “Such language,” he says, inverting his weapon so that the wood stock faces me. “You should learn better manners. Your life may depend upon it.”

  When he jams the stock into my stomach, I double over from the sharp abdominal pain and from the sudden loss of air in my lungs. But I don’t drop to my knees. Chase the proud and the strong.

  It’s a struggle, but I manage to straighten myself slowly back up.

  “Chase, say something,” Leslie says, panic painting her voice. “Are you okay?”

  “Silence, perra,” shouts Long Hair while shooting Leslie a look. Then, turning back to me, “We will make a deal now, Chase Baker.”

  “You know my name?”

  “Yes, I know all about you. You are quite the famous Renaissance man, are you not?”

  I force myself to grin, despite an abdomen screaming with pain. “Thanks…I try.”

  He taps his temple with his index finger. “But you are not always so smart. People in organizations talk, and my hearing is perfect.”

  “You saying there’s a mole in my boss’s organization?” Rodney chimes in.

  Long Hair turns to the big man.

  “Let’s just say your Mr. Keogh could use a security upgrade. But enough of this useless small talk. We all want the same thing and you’re going to lead me to it.”

  I could play dumb here and pretend I don’t know what Long Hair and Military Man want, but that would only make them more pissed off. And pissing off revolutionary terrorists who are holding locked and loaded AK-47s is probably not the best idea in the world.

  “You have a map?” Long Hair poses.

  I nod.

  “Sure, I’ve got a map. It’s right here in my chest pocket.”