Up River

Our boat guide and his porter










"Still strong." Lou holds the tracker up and checks the signal at different angles.
"How far?"
"About twenty four clicks as the crow flies." He looks at me, "Do they have crows down here?"
"In miles, for Christ's sake."
"About fifteen miles."
I pull the small notebook that Abramawitz gave us and flip to the chart inside and the red "x" that marked the spot of the transmission.

I turn to our river guide. He is middle aged, balding... has his nephew or grand kid or something like that along to help us with our gear. He gives us his name a few times, but I don't remember what it is. He speaks pretty good English.
"Hey... uh," I hold the small chart out for his inspection, "This place, how far from here?"
He hands control of the tiller to his boy and takes the small chart in hand. After a moment he looks up, definately a little more pallid than before.
"This is where my brother has gone?"

I am at a loss for a second, then... "Oh, yes, you are brother to Chris' river guide. Forgot that one."
He still has that wide-eyed look.
"Why, is that a problem?"
He hands the book back to me, his hand shaking ever so slightly. "My brother would not have gone all the way up river to this point."
"Why not?"
"This is very dangerous area, bad makumba."
"Yeah, yeah, I heard about the scary Black Makumba. Look, I know it doesn't seem like it to you, but this is the twenty-first century. We have our own magic now, it's called the computer age? So let's get passed all of this."

He shakes his head. I can see it in his eyes that he wants to turn the boat around.
"Hey, now... just relax. You want to find your brother, don't you?"
He takes the tiller from the boy. I hear the click of the hammer being pulled back on Lou's Kimber. I cut to him quickly and shake my head... that won't be necessary.

"We won't let anything happen to you and your boy. Our friend, your brother, they need our help. We can't do that without you. Your brother would do it for you."
He chews on that for a moment.
"How long to that spot?"
"River winds many times." He looks at the sunlight pouring through the trees, "Three hours."
Lou's head drops, "Three hours? We should have flown that float plane up here ourselves."
"You can't land that plane on the river. You could barely see it through the jungle."
He shakes his head, "Fucking Nancy."

The boat ride is interesting at first. We see a lot of wild life; parrots, yellow and black striped bass that are native to the river, a couple of huge spider webs with no spiders, Lou even spots a jungle cat sleeping in a tree. But all of this slowly turns to boredom, the drone of the little outboard engine a constant soundtrack to all that we see. Time passes, the light changes.

Lou holds the tracker out for my inspection, "Another half a mile and we are there."
The boy says something in Portugese to the man, it is urgent and is accompanied by a frantic tugging at the man's shirt. He points to the shore and his voice gets higher. There, on the bank, is a strange assemblage of sticks and foliage in the shape of an "X". It obviously means something.

Our river guide lets off the throttle and the engine drops to idle. There is a noise in the jungle, not drums but definately man made signals of some kind being tapped off on a hollow log or something of that nature. I don't even get all the dots connected before Lou has donned his MP-5 and tucked the Kimber in his belt at the small of his back.

There is panic in our guide's face as he starts to turn the boat. Lou presents the Kimber at arms length, "Keep her comin'."
"Lou, easy man, just have him take us to shore. It is only a half a mile."
"Which shore, Jake. You want to swim this river? I don't. No, this guy will take us to the very spot or he dies here and now."

I am hoping he says this for effect and isn't serious. There is a little kid here, and shooting his... whatever he is to him, would be pretty traumatic.
"We will double your payment, okay? Just take us up until we know which bank... "
"STOP pussy footin' around with this guy, Jake. He will take us all the way." He keeps the Kimber leveled at him. The man's hand slowly goes back on the tiller. Lou wiggles the end of the gun to press him into action and the throttle is twisted and we are once again under way.

"Jesus, these guys and their black magic. You know that shit is only as powerful as you let it be." I don my MP-5 and ready my Kimber. "This guy isn't going to wait, you know that... don't you?"
"I don't care if he waits. He can leave right fucking now as far as I am concerned. But the boat stays."
"Oh, sure, that'll work."

Our guide looks constantly from side to side. Since spotting the "scarecrow" on the bank of the river he is as nervous as a Kentucky prom date in a short red dress.
Lou snaps his fingers and motions to shore. The boats, one red and one orange, are pulled up out of the river. Not a soul in sight.
The boat is pointed to the bank and there is a noticable look of relief on our friend's face.

As we approach, Lou spots a piece of paper floating on the water. He picks it up and looks at it, then passes it to me. I look at it. Three words; Berliner..leave.. comment.
"What the hell does that mean?"
Lou shakes his head. I let the soggy piece of paper fall to back into the river and prepare to disembark.

On the shore, our man leaves the engine running. Lou checks out the boats. They look fine. He pulls the covers off the five gallon gas tanks.
"Plenty of fuel." He gives the engine a once over. "These haven't been tampered with. Hell, he can go if he wants. We can find our way back."

He doesn't need any prompting. No sooner do we have the gear off the boat he backs out into the river. In his haste to shift from reverse to forward he stalls the engine. As he frantically yanks on the cord, a few whisps of air can be heard from the far shore. First the boy cries out, grabbing at the small of his back before going limp. Then the boat lurches as the engine catches and the escape proceeds for a moment. A few more whisps and the man grabs at his neck. As he collapses onto the tiller, the boat begins a continuous turn at full speed until its own wake begins to swallow the craft.

In less than a minute the motor is silenced as it sinks into the Amazon. There is no evidence that they were even here... with the exception of the two of us.