Journey to the Center of the Earth

"Is there a bathroom in this theater?" Antonelli looks to both sides.
"This place is a shit hole."

I start in on a coughing fit that ends with a little dry heaving.
"What the fuck did you just say?"
"I have to go to the bathroom."
"You're in a cave in the Amazon Jungle, you dumbass, there are no bathrooms. Find a corner."
"Jake?"
I pull my head lamp off and shine it on my face.
"Oh... shit, man, I was tripping right there."
"You think?"

I stand and re-fit my headlamp. "LOU?"
All I can hear is Antonelli stumbling through the rubble to go and take a piss.
"Goddamn it, Chris... hurry up."
As soon as I hear him piss, I try something and turn my light off.
"HEY, that ain't funny."
"Quiet."

In the complete blackness I can see the glow of Lou's headlamp above, but there is no sound.
"Shit... LOU?"

When Chris is done he gives me a boost up to the edge of the crumbled hole to the cave above. I try to get a purchase to pull myself up, but knock rock and gravel down on Antonelli, who drops me to the cavern below.
"Try again, we have to get to him."
Antonelli heaves with all his might and pretty much launches me up to my waist in the entrance cave. I use the momentum and lift myself out of the hole.

I see his light, aimed at the caved-in entrance, buried under the rubble. There is a bloody hand visible. The rest is buried under brick sized stone. In an instant I am at his side, tearing rock off the pile until I have most of him uncovered. I freeze for a moment and watch his body. There it is... an intake of breath. He is alive.
"Lou?"
There is a burst of dust near his face as he exhales, "I might be getting too old for this shit." He mumbles.
"Are you alright?" I know... it's a dumb question.
"I just blew myself up, what do you think?"

He moves an arm, then the other. He repeats this with his feet and legs. Before long he is on his hands and knees. There is blood coming from his left ear.
"Hey, Lou, you might have a skull fracture... or at the least a blown eardrum."
"Fuck it."
"No really, take it slow." I reach out to support as he tries to stand. He swipes my hand away.
"Leave it be, Nancy. I'm fine."
He struggles to his feet and reaches out to the cave wall for support. Pretty soon he has both hands on the cave and tries to stand on buckling knees.
"Oh yeah, you're a regular Jack LaLane."

The next fifteen minutes is spent recovering from the blast. Lou from his burial, me from my intake of chamber dust. I choke and hack to the point where my head pounds and my chest hurts.
"Jesus... I'm the one who got buried alive." Lou looks at me, "Hey, you're spitting up blood."
"Great." I wipe my mouth on my shirt. "What the hell happened up here anyway?"
Lou nods toward the chamber hole and calls toward it, "Antonelli doens't know the difference between a percussion grenade and a thermal grenade, that's what happened."
I nod knowingly, not that I would have a clue under the same circumstances.

"That first one he threw was a percussion grenade... those will knock the shit out of you but not really blow anything up."
That explains me getting knocked back down the hole.
"Those little fuckers were thick out there so I told him to throw a thermal at them. So he picks that percussion out of the bag and tosses that instead."

"THEY BOTH LOOK THE SAME." Antonelli calls from the chamber.

"So, he throws the percussion grenade? What happened?" I look back at the opening and my light casts on the pile of rock that must be ten feet deep before you reach the jungle.
"So then he grabs a second one. But he doesn't throw this one as far seeing that the first one didn't do all that much and those little prick Yanomami are on us like Oprah on a baked ham."
I nod... he probably grabbed a thermal.
"The second one he throws isn't a percussion... but a thermal." He adds his beam of light to mine and we both look at the results. "Nasty fucking things."

We dig through the rubble and find the Kimbers. Lou checks the slides. One is toast, but the other is still functioning. He tucks them both in the back of his belt. The MP5 and the other pack are either buried in the rubble closer to the entrance, or outside altogether. Either way we aren't going to dig for them. We don't need to get out of here throught this hole. There is another entrance, one used by the Yanomami for centuries before this cave was cut. All we need to do is find it.

A light comes on in our collective thinking. The only way out of here now is an entrance only used by our little friends out there. It is possible that they are racing to that entrance as we sit here in the dark. That is foremost on our minds as we lower ourselves once more into the treasure chamber.

"What kind of damage do you think that last grenade did to their numbers?"
Lou stops for a moment and then looks at Chris, who has been in the dark for the last twenty minutes or so. He holds his hands up to shield his eyes.
"HEY... "
Lou tips his light down and looks back at Antonelli, "How many of those little bastards did you see?"
"More than I could count."
"And then there are the ones you can't see." Lou tries to figure the blast radius of the last grenade. He looks at me. "Anything within fifty meters we sent packing."
"Fucking metric system." Chris says in the dark, "What happened to the Amercian system."

We all agree that we have only slowed the Yanomami down. It would make sense that they would put their most experienced warriors up front on the hunt, so we took them out. But who knows how deep their "bench" is and how far they are willing to go to be rid of us. After all, we already killed their Shaman, wiped out their hunters, and are now in their most sacred offering cave pissing in the corners.

Chris has rummaged through the remaining pack and found a hand held torchlight. The night vision was blown off his head in the first explosion, so he was happy to find something to allow him to see down here.

There is nowhere to go but down. First the easy slope of the chamber we are in. We make our way down, keeping the talk to a minimum in case the Yanomami are on their way in to find us... we hope to hear them before they hear us. Antonelli starts to grab gold nuggets. Lou tries to make him put them back, but Chris has revenge on his mind for his imprisonment, drugging, and near tree-slapping adventure. He agrees not to take any offering from any hole with human parts.

"Fucking little indians. They fucked up my foot. The toes don't work any more."
"So buy another one, Mr. Trump."
"That's what I'll do, asswipe, but I'm not buying. I'll make a gold plated one out of this shit."
He holds up a nugget in he beam of his flashlight, then shakes his hand wildly as though he had a spider crawling on it.
"Oh HELL no."
"What is it?"
Chris shines his light down on the floor and we see one of the little frogs, this one with a blue strip. It is dead, but this does nothing for Chris.
"Those are the frogs they poisoned us with back in their camp. Oh fuck... you trip your balls off, trip your stinkin' balls off.

I look at Lou, and then back to Chris. "What did they do, make you eat them or something?"
"One touch, just one touch and you are done, man." Chris fires the gold nugget back toward the dark from whence we came, then vigorously rubs his hand on his pants. "Those little bastards... that witch doctor. He must have been immune to the shit. He takes the frog and touches your face, or your hand, anywhere. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later you're gone."

Oh crap. I look at Lou and am blinded by his light as he looks back at me. We both wipe our hands furiously over our clothing.
"Were those live frogs or dead and dried up like that one." I gesture to the darkness of the chamber behind us.
"Live I guess. It was still slimy."

We quicken our pace down the chamber. At certain points a trickle or two of water cross our path. The temperature is dropping slightly as we descend. The chamber seems to be at least a hundred yards long. As we walk, the offerings are in more advanced stages of decay until they are nothing more than handfuls of unidentifiable muck. Finally the chamber tapers and seems to end abruptly ahead of us.

"What the hell?" Lou shines his light on the damp stone at the end of the chamber.
"There has to be a... oh."
He stops and walks ahead of us about ten feet. He steps up and over a rise in the chamber floor that was not discernable at first, then sinks in to the ground and out of sight.
"LOU?" It is as if the ground swallowed him up. I race up and over the rise.
"Hey, wait for me." Antonelli is not about to have the darkness of ages at his back all alone.

The rise in the chamber floor hides an entrance to another space below. I can see Lou's light searching out the dimensions from the bottom of this fairly large opening.
"You okay down there?"
"Yeah, you two get down here."

The drop is substancial, and at first I think I might have fucked up my ankle. It stings, but I walk it off.
"Stay up there, Chris." I yell to him when I see his feet dangling in the hole.
"He can't drop that distance with one leg."

Lou looks around this new chamber and spots a clutch of notched poles piled away from the upper entrance.
"Hold up, Chris. Let me get something for you shimmy down on. The drop will break your good leg."

The poles are crudely cut out to allow the bare feet of the Yanomami to gain a foothold and climb into the offering chamber.
"Help me hold this steady."
Lou lifts the hardwood pole up and through the hole in the ceiling. Chris starts down it and then his weight spins the pole in our hands and he knocks against the back wall of the chamber, dropping off of the pole and onto his back.
"Oh shit... "
We drop the pole and get to his side.
"You okay big guy?"
He has his mouth open and eyes wide. Like a fish pulled from a lake and tossed on the beach.
"Oh he just got the wind knocked out of him, that's all." Lou takes one of his arms and pulls him up to a sitting position.
"Don't make me give you mouth to mouth... again." He tells him as Chris finally squeeks a breath into his lungs.

Another chamber, but this one is not laiden with gold and offerings. It is of the nature of caverns in the states, Carlsbad and the like.
Lou turns his light back toward the pile of poles.
"We need to conserve these lights, gentlemen, or we will be making our way through this shit like Helen Keller playing a game of hide and seek."

Before long, we have managed to find torches left behind by the Yanomami. Chris rustles through the remaining pack and comes up with a hand held flare and a waterproof container of wooden matches.
"Fast or slow, boys?"
"We better save the flare, so slow I guess."

Ten minutes after we drop into this new cavern, torchlite guides our way. I am beginning to hear whispers... see shadows if I dare look behind me. I say nothing. Maybe it won't be that bad.

The Chamber

There is complete silence as we all take in the gold in Lou's hand. What is it about gold that holds a man's gaze like the flame of a campfire? With Antonelli's last donation all three of us are set for life... so who needs more? It is a question that we will not be able to answer, not now, not here.

"We don't have much time."
Lou's voice snaps me out of the precious metal transe.
"You think?" I take the nugget out of his palm and hold it between me and Chris.
"That would make a nice necklace." Chris reaches for the gold... just for a closer look.
"You fucking pimp. A necklace? Are you serious?" I snatch it back. Lou's iron grip closes over my wrist and I relinquish the gold to his care.

"Look, you two idiots, there is enough gold in there to sink KOZANOSTRA a second time. But we have to hurry."
He does a quick scan of the jungle with the eyepiece.
"Those little Yanomami are probably walking in our footsteps as we speak. Even though the trail will be harder to follow once we stopped cutting our way through, they will be on us pretty quick."

We all take pause and listen to the jungle. The drums are silent. No sound of rushing warriors. The usual audible panorama of sound seems muffled and distant.
"Even though they are moving silently... the jungle knows they are there."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
"Just like walking up on a croaking frog or a chirping cricket... they stop as you pass."
Now that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is that we are standing out here in the open debating the limited time we have to take gold that we don't really need.

We move into the opening and pull the headgear flashlights out of our packs.
He takes the nightvision eyepiece off of his head and holds it out. Chris snaps it up.
"You put that on and watch the jungle. If you see any of them, you give us a shout."
"But... "
"Jake and I are going in and we will grab a couple of handfuls of these. That is the best we can do."

There is limited protest from Antonelli. He isn't too fond of enclosed places, but really wants to see the inside of the treasure cave. As soon as he locks the nightvision to his head we go inside, leaving him in the entrance. He stands there like an immovable oak tree. He takes my MP5 and still has the Kimbers. We leave our packs behind as well in the cave opening.

The inside of the cave is damp, almost misty. Our lights reveal the cold chiseled interior of the main tunnel. It is a stark, cold stone hole that has been hacked and most likely blown into the side of the mountain. The first thing I notice is the absence of the booby traps Lou has mentioned.
"Booby traps?"
"Not in this tunnel... in the chamber." Lou's voice is muffled as he moves ahead of me.
We go about twenty feet in, the passage narrowing as we go. By the time we are at the end of it, wear are bent over and the top of the shaft is at our backs. It seems like we are at a dead end... no chamber, and certainly no gold.
"This is it?"

Lou says nothing. He moves aside and looks down at his feet. His light casts on a hole, one that looks as though it would barely fit the Yanomami. I look down at it, and then to Lou.
"We go down there?"
He nods.
"Well, Chris sure as hell won't fit down there."
"That's why he is standing guard."

I watch him sink down into the hole. When he drops to his feet his light illuminates the chamber below. He waves me down and I dangle my feet in the opening and then struggle downward until I also drop down to the chamber floor some eight feet below.
"Don't move." Lou grabs me and makes it clear that we are not to step off of the small patch of ground beneath our feet.

The walls of this chamber do not look man made. It stretches beyond the beam of our lights. At our feet I see a web of thin cord that encompasses the spot below the hole that we stand in.
"What is that? Looks like a spider web." I go to reach out with my foot but Lou stops me.
"It's some kind of animal product... like cat gut. Trip wires."
"For what?"
"I don't know and I don't want to know. Just step over them and we won't have to find out."

We step up and over the web of trip wire and then start into this lower chamber. The walls and floor of the chamber are damp, the air heavy heavy with cool water vapor.
"It feels like there should be a waterfall or something." I look at the rockface to our left and it seems to be weeping.
"The gold is up further." Lou steps very carefully, stopping... pointing out more of the web like strings that would be impossible to see in torchlight. Whatever device they would trigger remains hidden.

We move on, slowly. Ahead of us the chamber descends just slightly. There are spaces dug out of the rock and in these spaces are nuggets... some the size that Lou had shown us... others smaller, some larger. These are placed here for a reason next to bits of plant, a couple of shrivelled remains of small frogs, what looks like some kind of dried grain. Next to a fist sized nugget is a shrunken head... the eyes and mouth sewn shut with crude stitches.

"Are these... offerings?" I look at each one in turn.
"Looks that way. This might be some kind of temple for them." He looks down the chamber, his light reflecting off of countless gold offerings in unending alcoves.
We continue into the chamber, each of us scanning the walls, looking at each offering and what it was with.

"They are praying, or worshipping, or something." I pick up what looks to be a fresh little frog carcass. You can still see the bright red stripe of color on its dried up back.

Lou picks up his own frog and turns it over in his hand. He looks back toward the hole we dropped through.
"This doesn't make sense. That entrance, the cave entrance, that is man made. You can see where it was hacked out of the rock. These Yanomami, they don't possess the tools or knowledge to make an opening like that."

"Okay, so they found the cave after the hole was made." I offer my explanation with doubt as I look around this second chamber.
"No, this is too old." He lets the beam of his headlight cast down the chamber. The path down the center is shiney, as though a thousand bare feet had walked it for centuries. "No, this chamber has been used for a long,long time."

Silence settles between us as we pan our lights down the chamber. After a beat, the silence is shattered by gunfire coming from above. Our attention cuts to the hole from above as we run to the opening.
"Give me a boost."
I interlace my fingers and Lou steps up. I lift with my knees and help him up throught the ceiling of the chamber. I wait for a moment, expecting Lou to reach down through to help me up through the hole, but he doesn't come. Instead I can hear the Kimbers joining in the gunfire from the MP5.

I leap and catch an edge of the hole with both hands and try to pull myself up. The adrenaline rush helps alot and I am able to get both of arms up through the hole to the point where I can pull my head up. Lou is in the entrance, firing the Kimbers. Antonelli is not in sight, outside of the entrance firing away with the MP5. Then Lou stops and tries to yell something to Chris.

There is a huge explosion, one that knocks me out of the hole and back into the chamber. I struggle to my feet, the cave above me choking gravelly dust down the hole and onto my position. The MP5 resumes firing, and after a moment to change out his clips, Lou lets the Kimbers loose again as well. After a few beats, I can hear Lou yelling at the top of his lungs. Next, one of our packs is hurled into the cave and lands at the edge of the hole above me. Before I can move out of the way it comes down on my head and I am once again knocked to the ground.

"Well son of a BITCH." I struggle to regain my footing.
Above me in the cave, the firing stops and all that can be heard is what I suspect are the Yanomami war cries. There must be too many for the boys to contend with. I am with that thought for a fraction of a second before the next blast. This one is enough to slam me to the floor of the chamber. I shield my head as the cave above crumbles down on top of me. It is a hurrendous explosion. The flash of light and massive concussion, coupled with the deafness that follows makes everything around me seem surreal.

I lay there in a timeless fog that only clears when I can feel myself choking on the dust and debris. Struggling I lift myself to my hands and knees, coughing until I puke. The dust from the explosion hangs in the air. I pull my shirt over my nose and mouth and then straighten out my head light to survey the scene around me.

Antonelli is face down beneath what had been the hole at the top of this chamber. It is now a ragged opening three times bigger than it had been. I make it over to him and push him over. He moans and then chokes a bit, opening his eyes. I yell his name but hear nothing, not even my own voice. He is alive, and aside from a little blood from cuts and slashes, he seems okay.

As I look around, my light reveals the destruction of the explosion. Rubble and rock are thick on the floor of the chamber. Antonelli is now sitting up. I look around the chamber, then up to the gaping maw that leads into the cave above. One thing for sure... nothing remaining above could have survived that explosion.

Trailblazing

Chris must have hit the witch-doctor harder than he thought. After the first fifty feet of dragging him, Antonelli drops him like third period French. Lou feels for a pulse and shakes his head. Whatever plan he had for the Shaman is left behind us at the edge of the clearing.

We start off toward the location of the airstrip. At first we move quickly down what might have been a streambed at one time. For about a hundred yards we don't even break out the machete. But then the streambed turns away from our objective and we head into the thick of it.

I hold the tracker and we put Lou up front with the machete. The Breitling blips away on the little screen, as well as a rough compass heading. Our night vision scope has been lost in the fray back at the clearing. In my pack I have an eyepiece that straps to your head, but there is no magnification. I give it to Lou so he can see where we are going.

The swarms of pium, or black flies, that are usually plentiful in this area seem to have found us at long last. I don't remember them in the pit. In the clearing the smoke from that fire must have kept them away. Now that we have moved into the jungle, we are constantly slapping them away. At one point we take a moment and rifle through the packs to find some DEET. Throwing caution to the wind, we put it on every inch of exposed skin and clothing. It seems to work and we press on.

It is hot here, hot and muggy. The straps of my pack cut into my neck. The stew of sweat and blood allows the nylon to slowly saw into my skin. For the hundreth time I reposition the strap and keep my thumb tucked underneath to give it some air. That dart must have caught a vein or something, because I haven't stopped bleeding. It isn't an arterial flow, more of a nuisance.

"Jesus, you look like a ghoul... what I can see of you in this dark motherfucker." Antonelli makes his remarks over the buzz of the jungle.
"You better stop that bleeding or you'll pass out."
I hike a few more steps, following Lou's silhouette as he swings the machete through the dense foliage. He stops in his tracks and reaches down at his feet. When he turns he looks like the Borg with the single night vision eye-piece.

"Try this." He holds up a piece of some plant. I can smell it from here.
"No thanks, I had plants for lunch."
"You don't eat it, Nancy Dumbfuck." He spins me around,"It is a natural coagulant."

It stings for a moment, but then I feel nothing. When he is done applying it, he folds what is left of the leaf and tucks it between the strap and my shoulder. He wipes his hand on my pack.
"That should help."

Our little group keeps moving. We hear the drums for about a mile until they either stopped or the noise was consumed by the jungle. Surely one or two of those little natives escaped and told the rest of them. Our only hope is that they think we are heading toward the river and not deeper into this shit.
We only hear Abigail that first time, only launch that one flare. If Chris is right and this airfield is out there, then it will be in the next couple of miles. The fact that we didn't hear Abigail after that first pass leads me to believe that Jerry found the strip and set her down. Once we get closer I will launch another flare to signal them.

Lou raises a hand but I don't see it and stumble into the back of him. Antonelli does the same and we all struggle to keep our balance.
"This means stop."
"No shit Mr. Nightvision?"
"Shut the fuck up and listen."

There is something. It is some kind of clacking of wood on wood, or steps on a wooden surface... off to our left. Lou crouches down and we follow. Now we can hear the rise and fall of voices. Through the black thickness of jungle a flash of torchlight... just for a second.
"Are they coming after us?" I bring my MP5 down off my shoulder and grip it tightly.
"They wouldn't be this noisy if they were."
Lou starts to move again and we all start toward the spot where we saw the flicker of flame moments ago.

Movement is slow going. Now instead of whipping through the foliage with the machete, we are stepping over and through and it is taking forever. For a moment we freeze at Lou's command. There is a strong smell, a musk of sorts, as Lou pans the jungle with the night vision. He stops... locked on to something in the trees ahead. He motions for my MP5 which has been locked in my grip since I brought it around front. Silently I hand it to him. He slides the stock out to full length and then tucks it into his shoulder.

One shot is all he takes, not more than a slight cough from the muzzle. There is a tumbling out of the trees ahead and the unseen threat is dead.
"Panther." Lou tells us as we walk toward the spot.
In the dark we see nothing, but by the smell of the big cat it is apparant that is on the ground and not moving.

"I'm hungry." Antonelli whispers as we leave the big cat behind us.
"Are you kidding?"
"No, I'm not kidding. I haven't eaten anything since before I was captured."
"Maybe there's a McDonalds out here... they're everywhere you know."
"Funny."
"I think I saw some energy bars my pack. Next time we stop I will grab you one."
"I'd rather have McDonalds."

It takes a good forty minutes until we get to the sight of the torchlight. It is along our path to the supposed airstrip so we don't stray off course.
The light is coming from two torches on either side of an opening in the rock face. There is a large pile of rubble and tailings outside the hole... definately man made. As we take in the entrance to the mine shaft, two of the natives emerge from the opening. They each take a torch and then walk off into the jungle. We hear the clacking noise once again as they make their retreat.

"Hey..." Antonelli scoots up between us.
"Those were Yanomami Indians back there."
We both look at him, "So?"
"These miners have been killing them by the hundreds when they are in the way of the gold. Ceremonial lands, villages, farms... anything that stands in the way of operations they wipe it out. Who's going to know, you know?"
Lou leans in, "And this has to do with what?"
"Well, their obvious desire to kill any white man for one. But they have also taken any gold that has been mined on their lands and locked it away somewhere. You know? It's like a huge stash. Maybe it is in that cave."

We wait, laying low until we are sure they aren't coming back. Lou stands and we follow him in. A quick inspection of the immediate area reveals a wooden bridge of sorts over a small ravine.
"The miners must have built this to come to and from this shaft."
Lou removes the eyepiece and hands it to me.
"It looks pretty sturdy."
"Sturdy enough to support supply carts carrying ore I would suppose."
"That would mean that the bulk of their operation is in the immediate area, wouldn't it?" I look at the bridge in the green flood of light in the eyepiece, then hand it to Chris.
"Fuck this bridge, let's look inside." He hands the eyepiece back to me. "And where are those energy bars?"

At the opening of the mineshaft Lou unloads his pack and dons the nightvision eye-piece. He checks his Kimber, tucks it, and then grabs the machete. Without a word he disappears into the black hole.
"Well, I guess we will wait here."

Antonelli starts going through Lou's pack but comes up with nothing. He turns me around and sticks his meathooks into my pack and rummages around until he comes up with a handful of energy bars. He unwraps two of them and eats them together.
"These things suck."
"Sorry. I'll pack a tuna fish sandwich next time."
"See that you do."

Lou is gone for under a minute, but it seems like five. When he emerges he stands for a moment with a wide grin on his face, machete in one hand, the other holding something in a closed fist.
"What?"
Lou turns nods toward the entrance, "There are a shit load of booby traps in there."
I look at the black hole of the mineshaft.
"To keep those Yanomami away?"
"No, they are the ones that set them."
He opens his hand and reveals a nugget the size of a walnut.
"They set them to keep people out."

Party Crashers

I am still in shock after looking at the mess of the man as the tree stops swaying. The natives swarm over and cut the remains down. It is a frenzy of sorts that has most of them moving with the body as they head toward the ceremonial fire. They heave it into the flames and the fire sends sparks into the misty air as the mass settles and the inferno begins anew.

"He's moving." Lou pokes me with the machete. "Take this and get Chris loose."
He looks for the little Indian with Chris' foot and then heads out.
I take the machete and watch the smattering of natives that are still around Chris and the other victim. Their eyes are on the fire and now the Shaman as he dances around the burning flesh.

I crawl on my belly toward Chris, who is looking wide-eyed in my direction. I must look like a big python coming at him through the grass because he starts to writhe around, trying to back up or turn away.

"Hey... Chris?" I whisper as loudly as I can to have him hear me but still be silent to the others.
"NO... no, no, no... I gotta go, get out of here." He sputters sentence fragments at me as I come up to him. He wildly kicks his foot at me, catching the machete and knocking it into the grass.
"God damn it, Chris." I turn to find the machete and he starts talking, but not quiet like before.
"NO...NOT... YOU." I think he recognizes me. He is twitching really bad, his face ticking. Whatever this shit is they gave him it is fucking him up. I turn back toward the excecution tree and see the bowl that the Shaman used still on the rock where he placed it before sending that man on the ride of his life.
I grab the machete and turn toward the smattering of natives still on this end of the clearing. They are slowly heading over to the Shaman and the fire, so I wait until they have stepped away before I cross over to the bowl.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Lou skirting the clearing abreast of the little Indian that has Chris' foot. The man stops to chant, the rest of his clan are ahead of him or have their backs to him. Lou makes his move. Like a panther with his prey he takes the man back into the jungle after snapping his neck. We have the prosthesis, now to wake him up so we can make a run for it.

I grab the bowl and start back... but then think better of it and decide to pour some of the black substance onto a palm sized leaf I pluck from one of the plants.
That Shaman is not as entranced as the rest of these folks and he might just notice if something is out of place.
With the leaf cupped in one hand, I make my way back over to Chris. I don't seem to alarm him now that I'm not slithering through the grass. He is still ticking and mumbling while I try to pour what little of the substance I have into his mouth, but he fights me.
"Come on, Chris... knock it off." I look on the ground for a stick or something. That Shaman used that claw or whatever it was to get it in that guy's mouth. Not a lot of sticks laying about in the jungle. I take the machete and take a couple whacks at the roots of Chris' tree and manage to cut off about a ten inch long piece.
Lou scares the shit out of me when he bolts out of the jungle.
"Jesus..."
"Did you get him loose?"
"I thought I better wake him up first with some of that black shit before we cut him loose."
"Good thinking."

We take the root and dab it in the remains of the black stuff and then dart it into Chris' mouth while he rambles on. He stops immediately and his hardened, maniacle gaze softens.
"Do it again." Lou tries to get the prosthesis into place.
I repeat the process, whiping what is left of the black substance onto the root and then pop it into his mouth.
He blinks once or twice, then looks down at Lou.
"It doesn't go that way."
Lou looks up at him, then at me... then back to him.
"Well hello, Sunshine."
"Why are you touching my leg, you fag?"
"Isn't that the pot calling the kettle black?"
He moves to swing at him but his hands are still tied.
"HEY... cut me loose you guys."

I grab him by the shoulders and give him a shake. "Do you know where you are?"
His eyes dart this way and that and then settle back on mine, "Nope."
"I will untie you but you have to follow us and be quiet... understand?"
He nods his head.
I draw the machete across his bindings and they fall away. Immediately he goes about resetting the prosthesis.
"Hurry up, Sunshine. These guys look like they will be ready for another test-flight on that tree pretty soon."

Chris struggles to his feet, still under the waining influence of whatever had him in the trance.
"Oh shit..."
"Easy there, pal, we have a long way to go to get out of here." Lou drags him back into the jungle where we left our packs. I follow, keeping my MP5 levelled at the distant crowd of natives.

As Lou and I hoist our packs up and on the chanting stops. We freeze and look at each other, then at Chris. Realization seems to have crept back into his eyes, like he has come out of it.
"Shhhhh..." He motions for us to get down.

"Welcome back." Lou gives him a pat on the back as we all get small.
"I new you guys would come... just new it." He throws a big arm around my neck and tightens his grip for a moment. A big fist stirs up the hair on my head. When he lets me go I straighten up.
"What happened out here?"
His finger comes up to his mouth and once again our whispers fall silent.

The crowd starts back up, their chanting turning to screams and shouts as the Shaman ushers the crowd back to the execution tree. We watch from our cover as more of the vines tied at the top of the tree are drawn down and the tree is locked into place.
The spectacle is repeated as they take the other Miner from the base of his tree and fasten him to the trunk of the execution tree. The crowd is wild now as the Shaman grabs the bowl and holds both it and the sceptor with the animal claw at arms length overhead, turning and dancing as he does.

"Whoa, what a trip." Chris whispers at the spectacle.
"You ain't scene nothing yet." Lou says, his eyes glued on the Shaman who plays it to the hilt for the crowd.

The claw is dipped and administered to the victim. The man regains consciousness and begins to struggle.
"NO... YOU CAN'T DO THIS." His words are dampened with the struggle against his bindings. The crowd goes wild. The Shaman holds his his sceptor high... the frenzy peaks, and then he gives the signal and the vines are cut.

We watch as the tree whips toward the rock face, the man screaming the whole way. His wailing stops abruptly and the tree flings back the other way, again spraying the crowd. Only this time the man had disintegrated from the waist up, so when the tree comes to a stop all that is left dangles from the ankle bindings.

"Oh HELL no." Chris' jaw drops.
"That would have been you next, old friend." I tell him.
"HELL NO."
"Shhh, we gotta make tracks." Lou yanks him by the arm.

We start back toward the river, keeping Chris between us as Lou leads and I take the rear. Behind us the natives have cut their latest victim down and start to haul the remains to the fire when we hear a voice higher than the rest... alarmed and cautionary.
There is silence for a moment and we can hear the Shaman speak.
"Shit. We gotta go back." Lou turns us toward the crowd once more.
"You understand what he is saying?"
"No... I understand that if we let those little natives escape into the jungle that they will have us all on that joy ride before sun up. We have a better chance at them when they are in the clearing."

Lou and I pull our Kimbers and hand them to Chris. We had only gone thirty or forty feet before the alarm was sounded, so it is only seconds before we make the clearing.

The native drums that have been beating this whole time now take on a different cadence. A different message is being sent. Within seconds it is lost to the sound of the screams of the crowd as our silenced MP5s rake them down. Spears and darts fly our way as those on the outer reaches try to fight back. The reports from the Kimbers crack through the night air as Chris' walks through the clearing, picking off one after the other until he has the Shaman in his sights.

"NO... CHRIS, we need him." Lou calls over his shoulder as he lets burst after burst fly from his MP5.
Chris sneers at the Shaman.
"Lights out, bitch."
He brings the side of the Kimber across the witch doctor's face, knocking the mask off of the man as he falls to the ground.

A few of them run out into the jungle as we make our way through the clearing. A couple of those try to turn and fight, but catch a round or two in the process. In the end we face no resistance.
The drums here in the clearing stand empty now. But now that the firing has stopped we can hear the other end of this communication somewhere in the jungle beyond, maybe miles away."

"Not good." Lou says, eyeing the edge of the clearing for any heroes that might make a run at us. It seems they have all but given up at this point.
"What?"
"Those drums... might be re-enforcements."

"So now what?" I let the MP5 hang on the strap and rub the back of my neck. I come up with a dart. "Oh crap."
Lou motions for it and I hand it to him. He sniffs the end of it, then rubs the tip of it between his fingers.
"Just a dart. Nothing on it."

We stand for what seems an eternity, but only twenty seconds pass.
"Hey, that's my watch." Chris reaches out and takes Lou's wrist, looking at the Breitling.
"Yep... I found it in the jungle." Lou tells him, tearing away from his grip.
"Give it to me."
"Fuck off."
I step between them. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"He started it." Lou says, like they are fighting over a red rubber ball in a school yard.
"These little bastards are out there getting re-eforcements and you two are arguing over a fucking watch."
"Keep it, then." Chris throws his hands up in surrender, both Kimbers' slides back all the way to show they are out of ammunition."
"Don't sweat it, Sunshine, I'll give it back to you."
Lou motions for the Kimbers as he sets his pack on the ground and Chris gives them up. Two fresh clips are slapped into place and he hands them back to Antonelli, who pulls each slide back in turn to load the first round.
"You can hold my pistol as a deposit... okay?"
Chris nods.
Lou pulls a couple of large zip-ties out of the pack, then slings it back over his shoulders.

"Where do we go?" I ask, scanning the jungle for any movement. The fire still blazes in the middle of camp, so the night vision will not be of much use right here.
"Go and grab that Shaman and zip-tie his wrists." He nods at Chris who takes the zip-ties and runs over to the downed tribal leader.

"Where are we going?" I repeat.
"They know we came up the river, that's for sure. We would be like sitting ducks out there unless we kill every last one of these guys."
"What other choice do we have? I mean going down the river. I doubt we can kill all of these guys... and it has to be pretty damn illegal, don't you think?"
Lou looks at me and smiles wide.

Chris drags the Shaman by the wrists, which are bound behind his back. He holds him like a suitcase. It has to be pulling his arms out of their shoulder sockets. When he gets up to us he drops him on the ground.
"Motherfucker... " He kicks his good foot into the ribcage of the downed Shaman.

Before another word is spoken, a familiar sound overcomes the bugs, fire, and distant drums. It builds on the horizon and then crescendoes overhead as Abigail can be seen through the treetops.
"Holy SHIT... Jerry... it's Jerry." I drop my pack and begin to rifle through it, hoping there might be a radio or a beacon of some kind. No radio, but there are signal flares.
"He is homeing in on this watch, Jake... must still be putting out a signal."

Chris perks up. "Hey, there is an airfield they scratched out of the jungle northeast of here. One of the miners told me about it when we first got taken."
I put everything back in my pack and sling it into place, loading the flaregun afterword.

We can hear Abigail in the distance. We wait to see if she will turn back. Above the triple terraced jungle is a three quarter moon. If there is an airstrip cut out of the jungle, that might be enough light to reveal it.

"Which way is north?"
Lou pulls the tracker out of the zipped side pouch of his pack. He turns it on and even though it is tracking the signal from the watch on his wrist, it does indicate north as well.

Chris is pretty certain that the airstrip is a large operation. The miner told him it was an equipment staging point for the Keenan Mining Corporation. It might even be lighted and manned around the clock.
We decide to make for the airstrip. I shoot a flare off while we are still in the clearing. There might not be another chance.