A Garden Party

We make our way in the direction of the drum beats screams and leave the river behind us. Lou has found a seldom used path through the jungle, one that he thinks might have seen travel several days ago.

He practically has his nose to the ground, like a hunting dog, scanning every inch of this trail before we take our next step. After walking point on countless recons and hunting parties in the jungles four decades past it is second nature to recognize camouflaged pits and trip devices that might be set along our path. He seems oddly relieved that this path is here in the Amazon. I suspect it is due to the absence of that explosive viciousness that accompanies war. No... here it is just little brown Indians with sharp sticks and darts. Still lethal, but nothing that will blow you apart if you don't see it first.

His hand comes up and we stop. Lou reaches behind his head and pulls the machete out of its scabbord between his pack and his back. We retreat a few steps and he reaches as far as he can, the machete at arms length. He lets it drop on the trail and after a moment of hesitation a sharpened pole arcs through the foliage and swings across the trail at shin level.

"I know these guys are short, but that wouldn't kill anyone... would it?"
"It's probably used for hunting."
Now that the trap is sprung, he uses the machete to probe on the other side of the crude trip device. In the long grass there are berries and seeds of some type.
"Probably trying to trap peccary or monkey."
"Peccary?"
"Yeah, Nancy, peccary... a type of wild boar. I didn't think they were up this far."
"What the hell did you do in that bar you owned, read the damn Encyclopedia Brittanica all day long?"
"We need to make tracks." Lou starts moving up the trail.
"Anything you say, Rainman."

Night is falling. There is the smell of woodsmoke... and as we close in on their position we can see flickers of fire light reaching through the jungle. The screaming has ceased for the time being. That has been replaced by a low chanting from a large group. They float this mantra into the humid night air of the Amazon and it seems to hang there like the smoke from the bonfire.

Lou retrieves the night vision scope from his pack and takes in the jungle around us. He wants to make sure we aren't under surveillance before we even make it to the outskirts of the camp. When he is satisfied we move up. There is enough noise emitting from the natives and the crackling fire to mask our approach. We find a spot beneath a huge outcrop of ferns, protected and providing the best overall view of the situation.

Their camp is in a clearing of sorts. There is a large mound of rock, might be the side of a mountain for all we know. The reach of the night vision is impared by the firelight. Lou makes his evaluation and then passes the scope to me.
"I count... what, maybe thirty of them?" I whisper my report.
Lou acknowledges with a shallow grunt.
"There, with his back to us... is that Chris?"
"Tied to the tree on the far side of the fire."
"Yeah... is that him?"
"Has to be. With him on the far side of the camp like that we should be able to circle around and let him know we are here."

We back out into the jungle a bit, putting fifty feet between us and the camp before we arc around and make our way to the other side of the clearing. You can see the main group of them, all painted up and chanting as though they are in some kind of trance. There is one of them standing, well... dancing. A Shaman of some sort wearing a mask that reflects a dull glow from the dancing fire light. They seem too pre-occupied to bother with us.

Sitting at the base of a small tree, his hands bound behind the trunk, is Chris. He is busy talking to himself. There are two other men bound in the same fashion, their trees farther away from the bonfire and Chris' position. We examine them from a distance with the night scope. They wear a uniform shirt, Keenan Mining Corporation, the same type of shirt we had seen in the pit. They too are talking to themselves, their mumblings are indistinguishable from the chanting of the natives.

The problem with getting to Chris is that the bulk of the chanting natives are facing our position. The only possibility of a stealth approach is that the light of the bonfire may be enough to blind them to our presence. Those little Indians on this side of the bonfire have their backs to us.

We leave our equipment packs in the bushes. Lou keeps his knife and Kimber. I move the strap on my MP5 so it lays on my back. We start to move on our bellies, Lou in the lead and me following, to keep our profile in as small as possible.
As we approach Chris, the tree blocks the light of the fire and we can see his face. His eyes are wide, his expression a combination of fright and surprise. He is talking to himself. The closer we get we get into a foliage a foot deep. From Chris' position it must look like a big black snake weaving its way toward him. His voice gets louder, the mumbling is more pronounced and we can hear him counting.

"One,two, three, four, five... toes on that foot." Over and over again he counts, pausing as his wide eyes look from his one foot, absent of any shoe or boot, to where his prosthetic foot should be.
I grab Lou's ankle and he stops. I slide up next to him.
"He doesn't have his foot. How the hell are we going to get him out of here without his foot?"

Just then the chanting stops, as though they overheard us... which is impossible. We shrink down as the crowd around the bonfire stand as one. The Shaman yells something and then points to a long pole of a tree that is next to the rock face that we now can see is indeed the side of a mountain of rock. He yells again and they start for the far tree and the man bound to it.
Some of the natives walk within a few feet of us and stop, their attention rivetted to their captor.

A small group of the Indians remove the man from the tree and carry him over their heads to the pole tree. Now another group grabs hold of tethering vines that are fastened to the top of the tree and they walk back toward the bonfire, pulling the tree over to the point the that top of it is near the ground. Others help to pull the top down and all but a few of the vines are tied through a tangle of roots from a tree long since cut down.

Now, with the pole tree locked down, the prisoner is tied to the trunk, hands bound at arms length over his head, feet bound in the same manner. Lastly, they tether him at the waist with some type of ceremonial sash of some kind. The man is still mumbling to himself... his eyes wide, seemingly unaware of the peril he is in.

The Shaman hushes the gathering and then chants over his victim. We can now see that the mask he wears is made of gold. In his hand he holds a sceptor with an animal claw. He motions to one of his minions and with head bowed one of the natives holds a small bowl at arms length to the Shaman. The witch doctor dips the claw in the bowl and then puts the claw in the mouth of the prisoner. He repeats this until we hear the man scream. He starts to talk now, brought out of the trance by the potion in the bowl.
"Hey now... what is this? Where am I?" He struggles against his binds. "Now, HEY... HELP, someone HELP ME."

The Shaman holds his hand high and the crowd goes wild. When he drops his hand the crowd stops and axes fall. The tree springs from its tether and the man screams as he flies toward the mountainside. Then the screams stop with an unnerving sound as the tree slaps his body into the rock face. It sounds like bags of wet laundry dropped from a third floor window. When the tree flies back, blood and body matter splatters the crowd and the bonfire. The tree volleys to a stop and the crowd goes wild again. The man's body is flat where it meets the trunk, the skull flatened, the eyes pushed from their sockets and hanging in the mess.

"Oh, Christ." I turn away.
Lou tugs my arm and then motions to the crowd of natives. They all seem to be waiving sticks or spears, some have a couple of feathered banners of some kind. One of them, his back to us and at the edge of the crowd, waives a lower leg and foot that is bound to a staff.
Lou smiles in the darkness.
"Its time to get the hell out of here."

Down the Rabbit Hole

There is no way out. Even though I have acclimated to the stench of decay, the stagnant air has this pit closing in on me. I have no phobia about closed in spaces, but fill them with corpses and no way out... then maybe something will develope.

I focus on the opening above us, looking for a way to climb out. Even though the bottom of this hole tapers in... which saved us from a severe impact, and the sides are covered with growth, there is nothing that will support our weight as we try to make our way to the top. This is proven time and time again by Lou, who is not giving up on the slim chance that he can find that one hand hold that... ooops, there he goes again.

Lou slips to the bottom of the pit, cursing under his breath at the hole, the natives, the heat, and the humidity. He works at it again, making it up about a third of the way before the foliage he is holding pulls out of the side of the pit.
I don't even try. If Lou can't get it to work, then my additional weight will doom any of my attempts.

"Motherfucker." He spits, hands on his hips as he looks at the side of the pit and the various holes in the side where he had worked his way up. He looks over to me, and then to packs.
"We each have line in our packs. Might be enough to make it to the top of this thing."
"And then what? I don't remember any grappling hook in my pack."
"Right... "
He looks around, like he might spot one laying agains the side of the pit or something. Then his eyes settle at our feet and the dead men in khakis.
"We need to check them... they might have something we could use."
"Oh come on, you want to rifle through these guys pockets? Hell, even if James fucking Bond fell in here he wouldn't have a grappling hook."

Lou stops for a moment and thinks... crouching down on his haunches he reaches up and turns his light on full. He is looking at something across the pit that was hidden from view behind the tree when we first fell in. When I talk to him he doesn't answer but stands and walks around the bodies.

"What are you looking at?"
Nothing.
"Lou... what?"

He walks around to the opposite of the pit and reaches down. He pulls aside some pale green vines and reveals a hole about three feet high.
"What is that?" I walk over to him and we both squat down and take a look into the dark passage.
"Maybe it is a vent?" Lou holds a handful of vine to the side and dips his head inside."
"A vent... a volcanic vent?"
"Maybe."
"There isn't a volcano around here, Lou."
"You don't know that."
"Hey... when I've watched the Discovery Channel the only volcano I have heard mentioned along with Brazil is off the coast somewhere."

Lou releases the vines and looks at me, his LED lights blinding me for the moment.
"I don't need a damn geography lesson, Jake. This is either a vent of some kind, or maybe a feed from an underground water source. Something made this pit. Hell, I don't know, it could be the asshole of Brazil. I really don't give a fuck. I'm going to climb on in and see if it gets us out of here."

When I should be at El Corazon drinking a beer and throwing darts, I am in the bottom of a huge pit in the middle of the Amazon. Marlin Perkins here has a knife in his mouth, his LED on high, and his Kimber tucked in the small of his back.
"Pull the Tracker out of my bag and that way you can see where I am going."

"Right."

I have the tracker on and watch Lou disappear down the rabbit hole. For a moment or two it is just me standing there watching the tracker dot blip on the screen give direction and distance. It isn't long before I can feel the ghosts in the hole here with me. It takes all of my concentration to not look over my shoulder at the scatter of corpses and remains to see if they are closing in on me.
The blip moves, but it is scaled in miles. I fiddle with it for a moment and get the scale in yards, then feet. Lou is moving fast and has put a hundred and fifty feet and change between us. He is also turning back toward the area from which we came... I think.

"How is it in there?" I hear no echo, just a cushioned silence returns. I straighten up and watch the blip, turning along with the changing of direction until I am facing the other side of pit, toward the spot where we dropped in. I watch the tracker read more and more distance. The hole definately goes somewhere.

It is a good ten or fifteen minutes before I see the tracking run back in our direction. It stopped adding distance at forty eight hundred and thirty feet... quite a ways. I concentrate on the tracking blip and let the rest of the pit disappear around me. The thought of nearly a mile in this rabbit hole freaks me out just a bit. But to stay in this pit with this Jone's Town reunion isn't much of an option.
"Miss me, Nancy?"
I jump.
Lou pulls himself out of the hole. He is drenched, either with sweat... like me, or with water.
"It's water. This hole winds around back toward the river and comes out under a small waterfall, on what I think is the other side of the river."
I nod.
"Well?"
I am still nodding.
"Grab your shit and let's go."
"Not to sound like a pussy or anything." I give him the chance to chime in, but he is too busy pulling our gear toward the rabbit hole. "But shit like this freaks me out."
"What? I am supposed to risk capture to come back through the jungle... that is if I can even find this fucking hole without falling back in it. No, Jake, you are going in front of me in that hole. Got it?"
He tosses gear at me and I toss it down toward the entrance.
I don't move. "But..."
"You got nothing to worry about. I crawled many a Viet Cong tunnel, Nancy, and there were men with guns and Punji stake pits. This is a cake walk. So shut the fuck up and let's get moving."

With headlamps blazing, we start down the rabbit hole. We have to drag our gear behind us because there is no clearance with it on our backs. It takes twice and long to cover the distance. The air is extremely stale and we both pant at the lack of oxygen.
"Don't stop moving, Jake. I don't think there is enough air in here to keep a match lit."

Near the end of this crawl I feel light headed and have tunnel vision... no pun intended. I can feel Lou literally pushing me and the gear to get us out into the fresh air. It is a timeless scramble to the opening, like trying to make the surface from a sinking ship, only this time we have the stale air from centuries past to coax us along. Once we had made the wide arc around the pit we made a laser straight line toward the waterfall opening. It starts as a pinhole of light beyond the reach of our LEDs, then grows into the hope of fresh air and open spaces.

I shoot out of the hole as if fired from a cannon, powered by my own desire to live and Lou's knowledge of our limited air supply. We splash through the curtain of water and end up on the far bank of the Amazon. Our exhaustion makes us vulnerable to attack, but it doesn't come. We lay there and breath the sweet air for several minutes.

Lou comes back to his senses and turns off his LED, rising to his knees to survey the area. He motions to me to turn off my headlamp and I too get to my knees. Following Lou's lead, I stand and we gather our packs. The sun is still up, but its position lost to the surrounding jungle. On the banks of the Amazon we can see the sky above, but once we step into the jungle the light of day will barely filter through the triple terrace foliage.

But step into the jungle we must. After our breathing has normalized and oxygen replenishes our bodies, the drums beating in the jungle can be heard now over the beating of our hearts and rasping draw of air into our lungs.

The fact that we are not being prodded at the end of a spear means that our pursuers are no longer worried about us. They are in the middle of some type of communication... a ceremony perhaps. We do a weapons check. Lou pulls a small canister out of his pack and dips a finger into the green paste within it. He daps it on his face in spots, then offers the camo paste to me. I follow his lead. After two different cans we blend in with our surroundings from the neck up.

A blood curdling scream makes its way from the heart of the jungle beyond, riding in on the sounds of the drums. Whatever is happening out there it involves hurting someone.

Without a word we start into the dense foliage, trying to make our way with as little noise as possible. Even though we have a machete, we don't use it. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves in any way. We have to make it to the source of those drum beats, to the source of those screams, without being detected.

Run Through the Jungle

We watch the river flow over the spot where the boat had gone down. Nothing surfaces. I watch intently for maybe the boy to pop up or something... but no, they are most certainly dead. Lou grabs my arm and drags me back a few steps.
"Jake," he whispers, "let's get off this bank, man."

We grab the gear and follow a break in the foliage. It looks like the path was freshly made, hopefully by Chris and crew. Lou stops us and squats down to the side of the path, pushing the fern and grasses aside.
"See this?"
He shows me footprints in the soft mud of the trail, but to the side of where we are following.
"Someone followed them."
"Why wouldn't they just follow the path?"
"In case they went back to the boat for supplies. They have a local guide... he would probably notice the shoeless prints on the trail." He stands and we continue up the crude path.

About twenty yards in we come to somewhat of a clearing. Here the signs of a struggle are evident. You can see spots on the jungle floor where equipment cases or bags had been set. There are a few footprints going here and there.
"By the size of this print and the depth this had to be Chris." I see something shiney in the mud and take a knee to pick it up. As I hold it in my hand my blood runs cold.
"What is it?" Lou walks over to me.
We both look down at the medallion, Antonelli's family crest... the diamond generating a dull sparkle through the muck.
"Oh shit."

We walk the perimeter of the small area and assemble the clues that are left for us. Lou is rather good at this as well, like an old west tracker, but now on the trail of an enemy in this foreign land. He had survived the hell of VietNam by keeping this mindset. There, or here in the jungles of Brazil, he follows the same enemy. They are all animals that leave the same tell-tale signs as they move about. The trick is knowing what to look for.
"They came in from this direction. You see this?" He points to footprints and the small round divit to the right of them. There are several, at least five or six men from this side alone.
"The foot prints, yeah. But what is that dot there?"
"Either a spear or the end of a bow. Either one is extremely dangerous if it is poisoned tipped."

There are spots where the grass and foliage is laid flat from others as they hid from view. Lou moves to the edge of the camp where Chris' footprints stopped. He feels in the bushes and then smells his fingers. Part of the more disgusting job of tracking.
"Took him while he was pissing."
"Wait til I tell him you were sniffing his piss."
"Look, Nancy... he won't be laughing if he's dead."
Lou pulls the hand held tracker out of his pocket. We are at the location... within sight of it. "That's what I was afraid of."
"What?"
"The watch is here, but Chris isn't."

We scour the area and find the watch on the opposite side of the small clearing that leads away from the river. Lou puts it on his wrist.
"Let's hope that Jerry remembers to turn his tracker on."
Lou holds up his hand... silence, even though he is the only one talking.

For a few moments he stays standing, but then drops down to the ground and I follow. We are now looking through knee high foliage back toward the river. I hear it now, the sounds of paddles in water... nothing else.
Lou and I hoist the gear on our backs and move out into the jungle, keeping the clearing in sight as we lower ourselves back down to the ground. MP-5s are readied. I have to reset my drum canister. Lou points out that it isn't locked in correctly. The ratcheting noise it makes has birds taking flight.
Lou gives me a look.
"What?" I mouth, like I knew it was going to do that.

We can hear the hush of the boats being pulled up on the bank. Lou begins to scoot back on his belly, putting more real estate between us an the clearing. I follow his lead and we put another twenty feet in front of us as quietly as possible.

When we stop moving we watch the jungle toward the river. No one charges into the clearing, not even sight of them in the brush. Minutes pass and there is nothing but the shallow sound of our breathing... well, my breathing. Lou has hidden in the jungle undetected within spitting distance of the enemy and lived to tell the tale. He is a stone.

I see them... movement that I have to carefully watch without blinking. It is hard to believe my eyes. They are there, on the perimeter of the clearing. So silent and careful with their movements. Camouflaged so that they blend into the jungle foliage like an insect disguising itself as a stick or a leaf.
Four of them at first, then six, now eight. Two of them hold spears and without looking at the others, they command their movements.

One comes from behind the group and takes the lead. He stops where we stopped when we found Chris' medallion, then turns... retracing my steps. Without a mistake he unwinds the tangle of footprints, gather mine and Lou's movements until he looks straight at our position as though it all points to us. My eyes go wide. He cannot see us as we hide in the grass, can he?"

I look back, unable to turn and run... not knowing where I would go anyway. Now their tracker makes a motion to the man making the calls and just like that men that we could barely see against the jungle backdrop are no longer there.

I feel Lou tugging at me and realize that he has already begun our retreat and had to come back to collect me. He is no longer belly down but crouched and ready to run. I take all of this in as the first of the darts fly our way. Seconds before they impact you are aware of their trajectory. We are in a carefully managed crossfire, the trees around us bristling with the first volley of darts fired from afar.

Run through the jungle... I follow the black pack ahead of me as it turns, leaps, ducks, and dodges through the labrynth of Amazon Jungle. Behind us our pursuers have to be moving quickly, silently, if they are on our tails.
For a split second I try to look back and when I am eyes forward again I catch my boot on the root of a tree and tumble to the ground. As I skid to a stop I hear them, the darts whistling in as I scramble to my feet, a light slapping as they impact my back pack... one of them catching in the sole of my boot as I run again.

In front of me Lou stands tall, MP-5 leveled at me... well, behind me. I blow past him and he opens fire, laying down a long burst at waist level along both sides of the trail and the path itself. I ready my weapon to make our stand, but Lou runs by and drags me along to follow.
"That might have bought us a little running room." He says in passing.

For a hundred degrees with matching humidity I seem to be doing well with the double shot of adrenaline that courses through my veins. I don't know where we are going, but away from there is fine with me. I am on Lou's heels and see him pull the MP-5 around and fire off to our right. With a quick cut of the eyes to the right and then back to the trail I can see them, running along side about twenty feet off.

Lou fires a couple of silenced bursts and then I see the darts coming in from the left side of the trail. A spear connects with a tree that I just have left behind me. They have us on both sides.

I start with a long burst, the mechanism of the rifle sounding louder than the report from the silencer. When I let off the trigger, I hear Lou shout to "save it." It being the ammunition.
"SHORT BURSTS", he calls over his shoulder.

But then the darts and spears stop as we run into the more heavily terraced jungle. Before either of us can speak, we run headlong into a massive network of thick spider webs. Our momentum pulls the web back over our packs and as it stretches and snaps it looks like we are running beneath a crocheted bedsheet.

Before we can wonder what huge fucking spider might have made this web, we tumble down the throat of a huge pit... hidden from view by the thick foliage. The drop is long enough for us to realize that something is going to break when we hit bottom. Not a word is spoken. Our asses and equipment packs connect with the wall and we slow with the gentle angle it takes as we near the bottom. We settle to the bottom with a harsh stop at the base of a large hardwood tree, its height not reaching the jungle floor above.

"Wow... what a hole."

Lou isn't listening. He stands quickly and checks himself out, no broken bones. I do the same and wince at a slightly sprained ankle. Not bad though. I put more weight on it and then walk a bit.

We look up first and try to see our little native pursuers. There is no evidence of them, not that we could see them if they were standing right in front of us. No weapons being fired either... not a dart or spear to be seen.
From our position we can see that we are at the bottom of a hundred foot... what, a lava tube or sink hole or something. It is pretty amazing. The jungle still grows in this pit. The tree, vines, and plants all reach up toward the dim light filtering down from above.

"Jake."
I turn and look at Lou who is pointing to the ground at our feet. The stench registers as my eyes adjust. What we couldn't see at first we see now. Bodies... maybe hundreds, in various stages of decay from coffee colored bones to the ten or so that are still identifiable as human. There are locals... maybe natives from the tribe that chased us, or maybe from a warring tribe, identifiable from the scraps of cloth worn around what was their waist. Then there are the men dressed in more modern garb, khaki shorts and shirts, those are the ones that concern us.

We pull LED headlamps from our packs and light them up. This is a grim sight in here, the bodies... the fresh ones, are bloated and hardly human in appearance. They have to be part of Chris' crew, or at the very least unfortunate enough to have crossed these guys at about the same time.

"These men were killed, or at least drugged before they were thrown down here." Lou pulls a dart from a bloated neck, then another. He starts to roll the man over.
"What are you doing?"
"We gotta make sure Chris isn't down here."
"He's not."

Lou straightens up, "How the hell do you know that?"
I point to the bare and bloated legs, complete sets among the bodies.
"No shit... good one, Jake."