by John Koloen
“There are many national forests and reserves. I have been there but there is a lot of trouble between the indígenas and the governo. They are building dams.”
“I’ve been reading up on it,” Duncan said. “The state’s trying to open it up to commercialization.”
“Yes,” Suarez nodded.
Duncan pulled up an app on his phone with the coordinates that Boyd had given him. Leaning over the table, Duncan pointed uncertainly to an area about sixty miles south of Jacareacanga, southwest of the three thousand-square-mile Floresta Nacional do Crepori.
“Tapajós has good fishing and there is much wildlife in the forests but it is very wild. There is nothing there and that is almost a hundred kilometers from Jacareacanga. You would need ATVs. I have one but mostly we use boats.”
“Maybe we could rent ATVs.”
Suarez looked skeptical.
“All those villages along the river are small and poor. Maybe you could find a guide on the river who could do it but I don’t know. It is wilderness.”
Duncan couldn’t hide his disappointment.
“But if we could come in by boat,” Duncan said, pointing to a place on the map where the river was only twenty miles from Boyd’s supposed location, “we could cut the trip to twenty miles from the river to the coordinates.”
“We still need an ATV,” Suarez said. “I want to help Mr. Cody but I don’t see how.”
There was no direct route from Manaus by boat. It would take days, though they would be able to bring an ATV. Duncan recognized this and didn’t press Suarez. Instead, he racked his brain.
“What if we fly in?” he said. “Cody showed me some photos and most of the land looks like it’s been cleared.”
The two looked out over the river for a moment. Suarez tapped his fingers on his chair while Duncan pulled on the soul patch he’d grown since coming to Brazil.
“There should be plenty of places to land,” Duncan said, pointing at the map. “All we need to do is get close, right?”
“I do not have a plane.”
“I know that, but you must know somebody who does?” Duncan said. “Here’s the thing. I can pay for all of this. I’ll pay you and I’ll buy whatever we need to do this. We land close to the coordinates, we go in. We find Cody and we get out.”
“You do not have to pay me.”
“Okay, I’ll pay your company.”
It sounded simple but Suarez shook his head.
“What if we don’t find him? How long will we look?”
These were not the type of questions Suarez would have asked in the past. He was more of a businessman now and more inclined to think things through from a business perspective. Duncan stared at the mud-colored river. The possibility of failure hadn’t occurred to him. He would never become involved in something that he believed would fail. That would be pointless.
“I don’t know. I think all we can do is try. You tell me how long we can stay and that’s how long we’ll stay. I need you because you know the jungle. You know how to find your way. I don’t.”
“It is the end of the fishing season and there’s not much for me to do now—”
“So you’ll do it?” Duncan asked expectantly.
Suarez smiled and nodded.
“That’s great. Now I gotta find equipment.”
“I have plenty. We just take it from the warehouse. And I know someone with a plane. He’s a, what do you call it, a piloto de arbusto?”
“Bush pilot.”
They discussed the minimum amount of equipment and supplies they would need for what they decided would be a two-night stay in the forest. Duncan asked whether Suarez’s cousins could come with them to help.
“If they fit in the plane.”
“We’ll travel light,” Duncan said.
As Duncan got out of the car in front of the hotel, he reached through the open door to shake hands and asked whether they could be ready to leave tomorrow.
“We will see.”
67
Unlike his expeditions, Duncan wouldn’t carry traps and other gear used to collect specimens. This was a rescue mission and they would travel light. Carolyn McKenzie hugged him, the top of her head brushing his chin, when he told her Antonio Suarez had agreed to help.
“When do we leave?” she asked excitedly after letting him go.
“We hope to leave tomorrow. It all depends on the pilot. My friend Antonio is working on it.”
“I should get ready, then.”
“Get ready for what?”
“Why, to find Cody, of course.”
They were in her room, which, like Duncan’s room, had a second-story view of the courtyard, brightly lit by the afternoon sun.
“Ah, it’s a small plane and there’s only enough room for four, including the pilot.”
“If I’m not mistaken, you, the pilot and your friend make three. I’ll be the fourth.”
Duncan was caught off guard as he struggled to collect his thoughts. He wanted to avoid sounding harsh. At the same time, he wanted to shut the door on her proposal.
“I forgot to mention one of Antonio’s cousins is also coming. That makes four. There’s no room for five.”
Duncan was looking out the window while Carolyn’s soft features hardened. He gave her a moment to absorb what he’d said. He knew she’d be upset at first, but given time she would see there was no choice. But she surprised him as he faced her.
“How does Cody get back?”
“Pardon?”
“You said there’s only room for four. Cody makes five. Who gets left behind?”
Duncan hadn’t given any thought to how they would return to Manaus, though he knew Cody wasn’t alone and was unlikely to abandon his companions.
“Nobody is getting left behind,” Duncan insisted. “There’s a small airport nearby. We’ll bring everybody there and then maybe it takes a coupla trips but everybody gets back to Manaus.”
Carolyn turned away momentarily, disappointed. She wanted to do something to help her husband, anything but stewing in a cramped hotel room where her imagination would run wild. But she realized the leverage belonged to Duncan, who was doing exactly what she had hoped he would do when she’d left for Brazil.
“Will you at least let me know when you leave?” she pleaded as he returned to his room.
68
Duncan had an impossible task and he knew it. Maggie and Carolyn stressed him out. He didn’t know what to say to them. They had different questions. Both of them made him feel guilty. He had given no thought whatsoever to Reptilus blaberus. It was as if the insect didn’t exist, as if Boyd was in the rainforest to collect butterflies. Duncan’s only interest was in finding his former assistant and bringing him to safety. Time was his enemy. Fortunately, Suarez would handle most of the details, provide equipment and a plane and pilot, all of which Maggie would pay for.
She urged him to enlist the aid of Brazilian authorities, which he would never do given his recent experience with the judicial system.
“This isn’t the United States,” he told her during their last conversation before leaving.
“It seems so haphazard, what you’re doing.”
“I know. But what choice do I have? The longer he’s out there, the worse it might be. Carolyn said he’s got a sat phone but no one’s heard from him.”
“Which is all the more reason to bring more people. Even a couple more. I would feel better about it.”
Duncan didn’t want to argue with her and implied that he would do what he could to get more people involved, though it wouldn’t happen without a larger plane. It wasn’t that he was opposed to involving more people. It was that reestablishing contact with Suarez had set his mind free. He had total confidence in the young Brazilian and was no longer focused on the logistics of the mission. Suarez would take care of everything. He would supply a cousin or other relative as the third person of the group. What Suarez couldn’t do was to determine where to look for Boyd. That was Duncan’
s job, assisted by Google Earth and online maps, saving many views to a flash drive that he would print out at Suarez’s office.
He’d remained vague about the plane and dodged her questions about the make, model and other details he didn’t know.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” he told her reassuringly. “I’m sure Antonio knows what he’s doing. He runs a guide service, you know. Probably he flies a lot of places. That’s how people get around in the bush, if they aren’t using boats.”
“I wish you could use a boat,” she said.
“It would take forever. This way we’ll be able to land close to the coordinates and be in and out quicker. The sooner we find Cody, the sooner I’ll be home.”
Maggie liked the sound of that, even though it couldn’t drown out the anxious voice in her head. They had come to the point in their conversation where they both recognized they were talking in circles. There was nothing either could do to change the situation. They were locked in their roles and it was time to move on.
“Just be safe, my love,” she said.
“I’ll do my best. And if it’s any consolation I will never do anything like this again,” he said, grimacing as he realized it wasn’t the first time he’d said this to her.
69
Duncan arrived at Suarez’s business not long after sunrise, upset with himself that he hadn’t told Carolyn that he was leaving. He had several excuses at the time. He’d slept fitfully. He didn’t want to wake her. And he didn’t think it necessary. But he regretted it nonetheless. He thought of calling her but resisted the urge, convincing himself that it would only compound the issue. It was an expression of the awkwardness he felt when confronted with unexpected social situations. And was he wrong in being vague to Maggie? She wanted to believe him. He could tell from the sound of her voice. She was worried. And he did everything he could to address her concerns, perhaps making things out better than they were. But if everything worked out, she would never know how close to the vest the rescue mission was.
That’s why he felt such relief when the plane was finally airborne. Sitting directly behind him, he couldn’t see the anxious look on the pilot’s face as the overloaded Piper PA-22 taildragger inched his way into the air, clearing an island of palm trees before crossing the Amazon River on its three hundred fifty-mile flight to Jacareacanga. Whether he had done enough to prepare, whether they had enough equipment no longer mattered. At Duncan’s urging, at the last minute, Suarez packed a Rossi Model 70 that he kept at his business for protection. The American was unimpressed by the .22 caliber revolver but it was better than nothing.
Paulo Diaz, a middle-aged cousin of Suarez, sat next to Duncan. Even though the pilot had distributed earplugs before the takeoff, the sound of engine and wind was inescapable. What little communication there was was conducted with hand gestures, mostly pointing at rivers during the first hour followed by a seemingly endless forest until their arrival in Jacareacanga in the early afternoon. It had been a bumpy ride as the pilot battled headwinds most of the way, and all four of them were relieved when they touched down where all four made a beeline to the tiny airport’s restroom.
Suarez, Duncan and Diaz shared a bench in the shade of the terminal building’s overhang, where they complained about buzzing in their ears. Diaz, who spoke English with a heavy Brazilian accent, mostly listened as his cousin and the American studied a sheaf of papers that included Suarez’s map, as well as Duncan’s printouts from the internet that were more than a year old and didn’t look like the satellite images that Boyd had shown him. Boyd’s photos showed swaths of open land amidst forest while Duncan’s photos showed mostly unbroken forest. They wanted to land as close to Boyd’s coordinates as they could. The pilot joined them after refueling and, after speaking with Suarez in Portuguese, returned to the plane.
“He says we need to go,” Suarez said, packing the paperwork. “He wants to fly home before dark.”
“So he’s not staying with us?” Duncan said
“No,” Suarez said, shaking his head. “He has other clients.”
Duncan had assumed that the pilot would remain with them until they found Boyd. He also assumed that they’d be able to squeeze him into the plane despite having barely gotten off the ground in Manaus. He had given no thought to others in Boyd’s group.
“What if we pay him to stay?”
“I am sorry, Mr. Howard, but—”
“I’ll pay him double whatever he’s getting.”
Suarez frowned.
“Triple. I’ll pay three times what his other clients pay,” Duncan said, upset at himself for not having paid more attention to the details before leaving Manaus. “Just ask him. Please.”
Returning to the plane, Suarez spoke briefly with the pilot who seemed resistant at first, eyeing Duncan as if sizing him up. Suarez smiled as he turned to Duncan.
“He says he will think about it.”
70
They were not in the air long when they got their first glimpse of a curtain of smoke rising beyond the horizon. It looked like a storm front at first, but the closer they got to their destination, the denser the smoke appeared, rising thousands of feet into the otherwise clear sky. At that point, it was something to observe, but only as a distraction as all eyes were on finding a place to land.
One low-level flyover was enough to convince the pilot that Duncan’s proposed landing spot wasn’t as level or unencumbered as the printout showed. The pilot scowled when Duncan pointed toward the ground. The open terrain looked more promising at twelve hundred feet than it did at two hundred, revealing stumps, ruts and debris left over from lumbering operations.
As the plane regained altitude, the pilot expanded his search area, flying a circle around Boyd’s coordinates, eventually bringing Braga’s mining operation into view. The pilot shouted something in Portuguese and abruptly veered away. Duncan tapped Suarez on the shoulder, who was sitting alongside the pilot.
“What’d he say?” he shouted loud enough for his words to penetrate the noisy cabin and Suarez’s ear plugs.
“He says, they might shoot us,” he shouted, nonchalantly.
Sitting behind the pilot, Duncan could see little of the mining camp until they had turned away. In the few seconds that he had a clear view before it was behind them and no longer in sight, he could tell that this was the place depicted on Boyd’s satellite photos. The GPS readout on his phone confirmed it.
“That’s the place,” he shouted to Suarez, who turned around in acknowledgement but said nothing as the pilot continued to put distance between the plane and the mining camp.
Having flown over their destination and now seemingly leaving it behind, Duncan struggled to temper his frustration. He wanted to do another flyover but he didn’t want to continue shouting, uncertain whether Suarez could even make out what he was saying, much less communicating it to the pilot who was fully engaged in locating a suitable place to land. At the same time, he didn’t want to upset the pilot and give him a reason to return to Manaus before they found Boyd, especially if he was injured. So he seethed in his seat while, in his estimation, the pilot passed up close-in landing sites for reasons that eluded him. Finally, the pilot pointed to a clearing that had been scraped by earth-moving equipment. They flew over it twice as the plane slowly descended, touching the ground on the second go-around with a jolt, bouncing slightly before the rear wheel settled and the pilot applied the brakes and cut the engine with plenty of ground to spare.
The three passengers bounded out of the plane while the pilot remained in his seat, fiddling with his GPS. They unloaded their gear, including nine two-liter bottles of water, hauling it from the plane to the remains of a small tree left standing with a single denuded branch perpendicular to the trunk, extending about eight feet. Suarez and his cousin attached a lightweight tarp to the branch, pinning it to the ground with rocks, forming a lean-to that provided the only shade from the midday sun.
While they did this, the pilot lifted the fusela
ge’s tail, pivoting it so that the plane faced the modest breeze. After finishing their work, the three settled under the shade, watching absently as the pilot climbed into his seat. Duncan nodded toward the plane.
“What’s he doing?” he asked.
Suarez shrugged, refilling his water bottle from their supply. Seconds later, the sound of the plane’s piston engine filled the air.
“What’s he doing?” Duncan repeated, emphatically.
“I don’t know, Mr. Howard,” Suarez said, rising to his feet, along with Duncan.
No sooner had they started to approach the plane than the pilot powered up, the propeller whipping up clouds of dust and sand as it gained speed until the wheels left the ground, climbing quickly to several hundred feet, turning to the northwest while Duncan reached the tracks left by the wheels, waving his kayaker’s hat futilely at the air.
71
Duncan was crestfallen. He looked at Suarez and lowered his head. Suarez’s cousin, Paulo, watched from the shade.
“Where’d he go?” Duncan asked once he regained his composure.
Suarez shrugged.
“Did you tell him I would pay more?”
“I did but he said he had another customer tomorrow.”
“He’s coming back, right, to pick us up?”
“Yes, in dois dias,” Suarez said, holding up two fingers.