Fortunately, while team members were exchanging glances, face- and hand-signs deciding how to react to this suspicious deficiency, all lights at the airport went off. The lack of power at the entire airport also shut down all baggage checking X-ray machines. The perspective of having now to choose between either waiting for hours or leaving their entire checked luggage behind, lead to even more silent messaging among group members, some confused by Tony’s unmistakable command to wait.
He, of course, knew a solution to this now frequent problem in Maiquetía, Caracas airport, had developed over time: everyone would have to run and somehow go find their luggage, in either the cargo truck, the immobile conveyor belt, or the plane’s cargo compartment, surrounded by armed military personnel—and such luxury, permitted because the plane that brought Tony’s group came loaded with premium paying tourists.
As airport people with hand-held loudspeakers told passengers to go look for their luggage, pandemonium broke loose: no matter how large, tips could hardly help the Serengeti herds of passengers going berserk, told to go here and there by people pointing sometimes with fingers, sometimes weapons, or extended mops, in a confuse screaming match of groups trying to stay together, with everyone attempting to do the same thing, side by side, nobody quite sure who pointed where for whom, in almost total darkness.
There were brief moments of euphoria—when all seemed to get magically normalized by the return of electricity—, followed by an electrifying sense of suspense—when all lights blinked again—, and then anticlimactic thunderclaps of disappointment each of the several times darkness suddenly returned, to the spring of pickpockets and the autumn of thieves. Fortunately, since everyone in Tony’s group had been to countries where people in slum tin shacks steal electricity to power air conditioners, despite the prevalent chaos—including an accidental shootout—they were able to recover most of their belongings reasonably fast.
Paradoxically—and to Tony’s delight—the power outage had also spared that ‘uncertain’ team member with the passport ‘imperfection’ having to spend time alone with local authorities—now otherwise occupied dealing with the ensuing mayhem.
When darkness eventually came back to stay, in the dead of that oppressively hot night, surrounded by an almost comical pandemonium, Tony’s group had not only been able to clear customs and recover a couple of pieces of lost luggage: they had also been able to contact an ‘alternative resource’. This ‘resource’ would help them deal with an unknowably long delay to their next flight, the one that should have taken them to Mérida.
By plane, reaching Mérida should have taken less than an hour; but the wait would, with unusually good luck, be ‘four hours at least’—which, someone joked, in Venezuela nowadays meant four hours at least plus four at most, equaling most probably forty-four hours. To take luck out of the equation, they procured a truck—one that sure had seen better days—, hired two locals to help them deal with military controls and road pirates along the way, bought what they could find of food—which wasn’t much—and, tired, hungry, unsure of what might in the end happen, soon after were on the road.
Driving insanely fast, locals would only slow down when other drivers, travelling in the opposite sense, would warn them controls were not far ahead who were indeed controlling speed, documents and ‘funny cargo’.
Initially, at control points, the passport ‘imperfection’ didn’t seem to disturb any of the controllers, everyone very understanding, sympathizing with their plea and appreciative of Tony’s group’s generosity—until they eventually stumbled upon a patrol who were, very much indeed, checking everything ‘by the book’.
By then, in the dead of night, they were almost halfway between Barquisimeto and Valencia—and they wanted to extricate themselves from the patrol somehow, but nothing seemed to work. Then, as they had, again, started silently debating—using hand gestures and eye rolls—when to pounce and try overpowering the inflexible road patrol, a racket, more new year’s celebration than shootout at an American shopping center, made the dedicated officers momentarily forget about Tony and the other ‘tourists’, and, instead, start shooting in the opposite direction, so vehemently it indeed gave the impression that a new civil war had just started.
Turns out, the officers’ targets were just some run-of-the-mill road pirates—a big band of those, at that—determined, it might seem, to get their paws on the ‘gringos’ and rich Brazilians, which somebody had alerted them were travelling that way. Since none of the ‘tourists’ had heard tam tams and the road was dark as death, at least for pirates, phones or radios had to be working fine—even if they had miserably failed Tony’s group when they tried to contact the travel agency in Mérida from the airport in Maiquetía, to notify them about their unexpected delay.
Suddenly, in the face of what seemed a far superior pirate force, the by-the-book detachment told the ‘tourists’ to take cover, and, courageously, prepared to protect them. Given the unfavorable odds, the man with the passport ‘imperfection’ decided to ask the military patrol commander for some weapons, suggesting all of them together might at least have a better chance at repealing the attack.
Precisely then, the officer in charge was shot in the head, and the surviving guards hesitated for a moment. Notwithstanding that one of them explained they were a bit short in ammunition, soon after the guards were vociferously debating among themselves whether to accept or not the ‘gringos’ offer. Their screaming match was cut short: all of the sudden, horrible, beastly screams, and the roar and rattle of massive gunfire exploded, all around the area in the nearby slopes from where the assailants had been shooting.
Apparently, Severian’s ‘alternative resource’ too, had somehow gotten wind of their arrival. Later Tony confided in David that Severian had indeed managed to contact her—a phone call all the way from France to Barquisimeto had gone through just fine.
At that time of the night—alongside those dealing drugs, money laundering, trafficking humans or human parts, or kidnapping someone for ransom, or smuggling weapons or any sort of endangered species—malfunctioning airports would prompt only the brave, foolish, insane, or desperate to use the road from Caracas to Mérida. And, when those road pirates dared entering her usual feeding area, she had read in their minds target descriptions fitting Severian’s description of the group to a tee. Moreover, after feeding upon the pirates, she had entered Tony’s mind (to tell him what, Tony didn’t share with David) and left, unseen by either the surviving members of the Venezuelan detachment or any of the ‘tourists’ they were protecting.
Since at the time only Tony knew exactly what had happened, after a cursory inspection of the surroundings to rule out a trap, and following an even shorter debate among the three military survivors, the ‘tourists’ were invited to follow them to Barquisimeto. There, the less badly wounded soldier took the other two to the hospital and parted ways with the ‘tourists’ for an hour or so. When he came back as promised, he helped them get fuel, and even a little food. Soon after, they all shook hands and the ‘tourists’ continued their insane trip to El Vigía.
There, at a more reasonable time to contact the tour operator, they found a telephone, reached the tour operators and struggled to convince them they were who they said they were, and they were where they said they were, even if the flight from Caracas had not arrived yet. All the same, the people at the travel agency were skeptical and refused to come pick them up there, leaving Tony’s group no choice but going to Mérida to fill out the required forms. This forced them to drive south and then north-northeast—when, at pretty much the same distance heading north-northwest, they would have reached Santa Bárbara de Zulia, the place where they were going to fake an episode of fulminating blood pressure drop. That would lead one of them to visit the hospital, and turn the tour operators in witnesses that road pirates had kidnapped those ‘tourists’—never to be seen again. That way, nobody would look for them, or expect them to exit Venezuela by any regular route, even if expu
nging their arrival to Caracas from world traffic databases should fail.
From there on, the two groups would split: the one with Tony, David, those present at the meeting on Manhattan Beach and their ‘wives’, would go to the ‘palafitos’, where they would wait for the submarine, help David complete his measurements as safely as possible, kill anyone who might inadvertently see the submarine or bandits of any sort or government patrols approaching their base—and, then, a week later, upon arrival of submarine number two, leave onboard one of the two subs.
Orders for the ‘other tourists’ would arrive on board Sub1 as well. Should ‘the others’ then be ordered to leave at the same time, the two submarines would take the instruments, David and Tony in Sub 1, with everyone else being exfiltrated onboard Sub2.
Finally, both submarines would have to leave in stealth mode, under total radio silence, given a high probability of encountering Russian submarines in or around the center of Lake Maracaibo—an exfiltration protocol David had aptly summarized in five hitherto unheard words in the world of covert operations: “What could possibly go wrong?”
36—Maracaibo, mon amour
Lake Maracaibo is like a bag of goodies, held tight by an invisible hand, leaving a very narrow opening between the namesake city and Altagracia near its northern extreme; a slightly round-bottomed bag, not so unlike the stomach of some pigs, only more flattened-out at its base. Parceled into sections like a golf course, each parcel of the greens closer to the oil-rich northeast corner is ‘fenced in’ to form rectangular sections, perfectly defined domains—“concessions” to various oil-extracting and refining corporations. The entire neck of the bag, acts as a stranglehold for larger ships and submarines, their passage limited to a shipping lane, a deep canal connecting the deeper part of the lake to the Gulf of Venezuela. On the southwest corner of this bag lies the swampy region of the Ciénagas del Catatumbo National Park; and there, on the lake shore, Puerto Concha—where David’s motley crew theoretically should have started their ‘Catatumbo Experience’.
Needless to say, once the tour operators’ indiscrete eyes were on their way to Puerto Concha, as expected after the disappearing trick at the hospital in Santa Bárbara, the ‘other’ tourists departed on a motorized inflatable boat, heading west-northwest in the lake; and Tony’s group met a local man—of leery, more than shrewd, countenance—who took them, in a less obvious boat, to a group of ‘palafitos’ (houses on stilts), far away from the nowadays thinning Puerto Concha tourist crowd.
Even if from outside as unappealing and drab as anyone could conceive, on close inspection, this group of houses on stilts looked unusual. Inspired by it, David reminded Tony of a passage in Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”: “The kennel was stagnant and filthy. The very rats, which here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine,” to what Tony replied that seemed a little exaggerated: the rats crawling all over that place, albeit seemingly high on something, looked quite well nourished.
When, surprised by the quotation, Tony reminded David of Dickens’ anti-Semitism, the latter replied: “I know. Dickens was sympathetic to the poor, yet a racist, chauvinist, nationalist, and imperialist of the worst kind. But, if my ‘Biblical people’ and I did not read anyone who inserted some anti-Semitic jab at that time—and these days, for that matter—we would be far less aware of who’s stereotyping us to enable hatemongers, wouldn’t we?” Then he shrugged and kept inspecting the shacks on stilts, which, after all, gave Venezuela its name.
Hidden from the rest of the world by other surrounding ‘palafitos’ and covered from flying surveillance devices by a specially slotted cover, on the main compound’s roof there was a rather large solar panel array, which, while operating below peak nominal efficiency because of being camouflaged, still produced more than enough energy to power up the place—a place where the smell of chemicals was so intense the smell of human waste and rotting garbage was not enough to mask it. This putrid flotsam, in turn, attracted all sort of lake creatures, and those, in turn, fed ‘caimanes’, the alligators of these regions, all of which—like the rats— seemed permanently hyperactive, as if the lake were made of very strong coffee.
In this part of Venezuela, of equatorial climate—as opposed to the monsoon and tropical savanna in most other parts of the lake—one can also find iguanas, the occasional anaconda, and all sorts of little vermin that bite, sting, colonize, and suck blood from unprotected human skin. One of them in particular, however, a type of catfish, Pimelodus coprophagus, are particularly useful as cleaners of the untreated human excrement dropped on the lake from palafito toilets; and here, unlike some of the other species, P. coprophagus seemed perfectly far from impending extinction.
Another peculiarity of this palafito compound: a rather solidly built wooden bridge at floor level connected the two main houses in this palafito compound. Those were also the houses where that unmistakable, acrid aroma of chemicals was strongest. Fitted with trapdoors on the floor, from both houses, ramps below floor level led to a common mooring platform in two twin sections, united by a narrow bridge barely above water level. Just a few inches above the water level, chains flanked the narrow bridge; and both, bridge and chains, were hidden from side view by plentiful water hyacinth—so called camalote or aguapé—in addition to the inescapably endemic duckweed.
When the group arrived, on each of the twin sections, there were two motorized boats moored. Except for a doorway-like opening, as wide as the palafito-to-palafito bridge, the whole quick-escape device was dissimulated from passing-by boats view by a plastic honeycomb-mesh skirt, laid from the little veranda all around each house to slightly below the lake surface. Lake Maracaibo being choked by plastic garbage, the bottom of this plastic skirt had piles of garbage and wood attached to it—consistent with the residents’ apparent objective of hiding anything below floor level—and was, of course, garlanded by large clusters of camalote, some in full bloom. Aside from the doorway-like opening above the water-level bridge, the entire skirt had one very inconspicuous cantilever doorway on each of the sides, opening in both directions perpendicular to that narrow bridge, allowing the moored boats an escape route in either direction.
“That is one of the reasons why we can only stay one week,” admitted Tony. “In one week, the lab has to be back in full production. They apparently wanted this week to do some housekeeping—and, as you can imagine, I didn’t ask what that might mean.”
“Need to know all you want,” replied David, “could it be they are expecting company and want us to serve as decoys while they make ‘other arrangements’?”
“It occurred to me. They know full well what would happen in that case. In fact, they are so well aware they are providing some sort of ‘protection’ to this place, a very discrete form of protection and surveillance. Have faith, my friend—and insurance. Boats in the night are not uncommon—your Catatumbo lightning makes it quite easy to see—and those boats often carry armed gangs, guerrillas and drug-traffickers jockeying for spoils, revenge, new footholds, or hostages that can be ransomed. Sometimes, just fisherman’s wives eloping, though...”
“…Trying to catch a bigger fish, I guess…” interjected the Lieutenant.
Tony shrugged. “In any case, we now have to wait for our sub’s delivery, which will be handled by two of my most trusted operatives. What for us is a delivery to others might be a target—one we can’t let them acquire. If the sub is ambushed while offloading, my sharpshooters will have to protect the crew, the sub, and then your equipment, in that order of priority,” Tony explained.
“Now, that’s reassuring. If they damage the equipment, the whole idea of coming here, collecting the samples, test the results in situ—and, once we get the results decide whether another round of measurements is needed to test my theory—is over, and this entire trip, all for nothing,” protested David.
“Well, if hostiles capture our submarine, we won’t live long enough to lament our all-for-nothing trip. Let that cheer you u
p, Davide,” said Tony, stuffing every word with sarcasm. “Now, what are you going to do when they get here? Do we have to get out there in the night? As an aside, I read somewhere that your Catatumbo ozone cannot possibly get into the stratosphere, that it’s supposed to disappear before rising all the way there. How can it anchor the atmosphere to the ground if it vanishes before it gets to the ozonosphere?”
“Well, starting from the last part, yes and no. About 90% of Earth’s ozone is in the stratosphere. But 10% is in the troposphere, and that is the key ozone. Medically speaking, too much ozone in the troposphere would be a bonanza for those who make money treating lung cancer patients; so, it’s a great thing that it, indeed, disappears.
However, aside from lightning, in the presence of nitrogen oxides, methane reacts with tropospheric oxygen to form ozone—a reason why diesel cars are a disaster, except, again, for big pharma, lung cancer hospitals and clinics. In the lower ozonosphere—the one in the troposphere, which is far more dense than the stratosphere—the kinetic energy of particles which go from cloud to cloud, and, most especially from cloud to soil, act as a sort of—and this comparison is anathema to mainstream scientists—Bremsstrahlung, like the radiation charged particles emit when decelerated by other charged particles.
The model is complicated. To explain Catatumbo away, some are perfectly happy with just a mountainous wall capturing trade winds that blow southwest from the Caribbean—winds that carry mounds of water vapor from the lake—and suddenly forcing them to collide with cold air from the top of the Andes. Now, if you also take into account how this kinetic energy dissipates into electric energy, by conversion into chemical energy; and how this ozone formation affects the viscoelastic properties of the troposphere at the places where the discharge occurs; and then apply it not only to Catatumbo, but also to other places—like Kifuka in Eastern Congo, northern Pakistan, Malaysia, and such—calculations show the atmosphere is not very solidly anchored to Earth’s exposed ground. So, if these phenomena were to stop, the weight of the air column and the atmosphere-ground friction wouldn’t be enough to keep the atmosphere attached to the ground: they’d uncouple…”
Quest for the Ark Page 38