Quest for the Ark

by Taggart Rehnn

  “…And then, Mary Poppins, I know,” said Tony. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure enough to risk my life coming here,” David replied. “Seven billion Mary Poppins, who won’t need umbrellas to take off…”

  “Fine, then! Now, while we wait for your delivery, I’m going to take a few pictures of you relámpago del Catatumbo, as mementos. Do you want to come along? Remember, David, you can take as many pics as you want to study but the final release of those images will have to be vetted. Say, if you take any pictures here at the FOB, chances are you won’t be able to use them.”

  “FOB, huh? What happened with no military slang?” Tony gave David the bird. “Guess your meth lab people don’t want their spot to become too popular…” David acknowledged.

  “Something like that,” said Tony smiling, and cocking his head signaling for David to follow. The others kept doing their own thing and, clearly, either didn’t notice or didn’t care.

  “OK, Tony. What now? What did I do?” asked David, after a short boat ride ‘to take pictures’, clearly intended to get out of ear-reach from the others.

  “You did nothing yet. But I’m going to give you some life insurance: if, for, whatever reason I’m not around, and you ever get in trouble, anywhere in the lake, there is this place—Tony said, extending a photo to David…”

  “It looks like a whorehouse on the lake,” commented David.

  “Yes. They call it ‘El Putafito’. Officially, it’s a whorehouse on stilts. Now, if you were in trouble, especially in serious trouble, go there and ask any of the attendants: ‘Quiero ver a la Emperatriz, de parte de su primo Antonio.’ They will probably ask you to wait, go in, and come back to ask what is it you want. To that, you will reply, in English: ‘Antonio wanted me to convey his blessings to the Empress by express post.’ Can you memorize that? That could save your life,” asked Tony.

  “So, you want me to go to this whorehouse and ask for the Empress…” began David.

  “Not, you start in Spanish. “Quiero ver a la Emperatriz…etc etc,” corrected Tony.

  “OK. Begin in Spanish, and reply in English when they come to ask what it is I want. But you said ‘him’. Am I not asking for an Empress?” asked David.

  “The ‘Empress’ has a far bigger Adam’s apple than yours and his back is a time and a half yours at least. He’s almost seven feet tall,” explained Tony.

  “Ah. OK. So you’re not the only giant in Venezuela. And why would ‘la Emperatriz’ help me?” asked David.

  “‘Cause you come well recommended. But only if you remember the second part verbatim in English. Otherwise they will kill you and feed you to the ‘caimanes’, the alligators, which can be quite gigantic in that area. Is that clear?” insisted Tony.

  “Perfectly clear,” assured him David, as he took the last of his first set of photos and they started heading back for the FOB/palafito.

  “Great! So, now that we have our photos, it’s also time to go back and break some rations, huh?” Tony asked as they finished mooring the boat and started walking up the ramp, to join the rest of the group.

  “Sure thing. Before I do that, though, I’m afraid I will have to test the square squatting facilities. Where is the Blue Canoe?” David asked.

  “There, to the right of that door,” replied Tony, snorting. “You will also find a bucket with a rope beside it. Make yourself at home. Has great views of the lightning, perfect to take pictures, I was told.” As he finished the sentence, Tony left, in the direction of the house’s main door.

  When David went to do his thing, he realized Tony wasn’t joking: Catatumbo views from this stinking vantage point were truly spectacular.

  Hesitating whether to take a picture or not, he got distracted, until he was startled by suddenly noticing one of the other guys fast approaching the doorway. Immediately after, he saw the flash of a blade and heard a dry thud, like a thrown knife getting stuck on wood. In the confusion, David took a picture of the square wooden tube toilet—with a colossal spider, nailed to the boards by one of the tips of a massive shuriken.

  “I shall let you finish shitting and shall then retrieve my blades,” said the other guy, curtsying, with a satisfied smirk. “Those are nasty. If you get bitten and you’re lucky, you might not die—but you’ll have a good chunk of your ass gone, dissolved by the venom, like butter in the sun. No need to thank me, though. ”

  “Do you want me to clean it up for you?” asked David, unsure of what else to say.

  “No, don’t worry. Just flush properly, and be done, quick. I’m next,” replied the other guy, as he walked away.

  Though starving, after signaling the other guy he was done, instead of attacking the FSRs or MREs or whatever menu Tony’s group brought to this party, David went to the other end of the house to be alone.

  There, convinced nobody else could spy on him, he checked the picture he had accidentally taken of the pinned spider. To be sure, he expanded it and observed it, a few times. “Shit!” he mumbled. There was no doubt.

  Trying to look calm, he went immediately to look for Tony to show him the image.

  37—Suspiciously timed ambush

  But he found Tony in the mess hall, chitchatting, eating and reading, all at the same time, surrounded by everyone but the guy that went to use the privy and those who were keeping watch. Unable to show him the image without rising suspicions, David gave up and proceeded instead to devour his FSR.

  When he was nearly done eating, came time for the boats to go collect his precious instruments from the submarine. Protest though he might, he would have to stay at the base. Those charged with retrieving David’s precious equipment would leave the FOB and start on their way with only a vague idea of the general direction they should follow. Only at the last minute would the submarine communicate the exact pick up point, by doubly encrypted message—but not to Tony’s group: the coordinates would be given to a group of designated collectors—a ‘protective rim’ of operatives, made of the ‘other tourists’ and some ‘local allies’—who would, only then, tell Tony’s operatives where to meet them.

  The unloading would happen on a night that, according to David’s best estimations, should be particularly low in lightning discharges, providing something ‘close enough to darkness’.

  Arrived at the rendezvous point, everybody was on edge, weapons drawn, last generation silencers on. Atop their masts, two of the boats had telescopic cameras with 360-degree viewing balls. The lake was unusually quiet—and that, paradoxically made everyone even more tense: although they were far enough from the rigs to avoid triggering any of the very few paid-surveillance patrols still paid in time, they were now also dangerously close to a route used by oil thieves, usually men, who risk their lives to sup abandoned platforms.

  Left to rust under the sun for lack of spare parts and maintenance, all exacerbated by political purges, lack of investment, corruption, and massive overall chaos, abandoned platforms act like magnets to scavengers of all sorts.

  Occasionally, the more adventurous among those bottom-feeders would steal anything that floats to sell as well—and this created a double problem: one, the more voluminous floating objects might collide with the submarine, and contain enough flammables to cause a problem onboard either the sub or the boats charged with offloading David’s instruments; two, the scavengers might see the submarine and its cargo as far more valuable targets that any of the junk they normally eke out a living from. Moreover, no longer able to feed their families, some roughnecks have gradually turned drug dealers; and dealer routes, guerrilla routes, and run-of-the-mill bandit routes, sometimes may intersect, leading convoys to take unpredictable swerves to avoid battles—and that, in turn, result in any of those convoys randomly taking alternative routes.

  Even so, that night the submarine managed to emerge without a hitch, unloaded most of its cargo in less than fifteen minutes, started debriefing ‘other tourists’ and ‘local allies’, and, it seemed, since all those tasks were now almost compl
ete, would be able to dive as smoothly as it had emerged and be on its way.

  But then, at the last minute, a massive swarm of drug dealers and ‘guerrilleros’ collided or converged near that precise rendezvous point—where by accident or by design, nobody knew. It didn’t matter. All hell broke loose: bullets, grenades and the occasional RPG immediately started flying in every imaginable direction. A submarine crewman, carrying some extensively wrapped piece—the shape and size of an adult man’s bent arm, only with two perpendicular forearms sharing a single elbow—ran, tottering, behind the submarine sail, trying to take cover.

  Shot in the head, he fell to the water, sill clutching the object.

  With a brutal gunfight still raging all around, caimans got to him, and he disappeared under the waters, taken the contraption down with him. Since the man, though corpulent, had trouble carrying it, and the strange object popped up at some distance from the melee, the odd contraption had to be inside some sturdy, airtight, waterproof container of some sort. By then, the submarine had already dived, the boats offloading David’s precious equipment were leaving the scene at full throttle, a few newly arrived caimans were dragging and tearing corpses in a feeding frenzy, and drug dealers were escaping—swerving in a different direction, so the ‘guerrilleros’ couldn’t steal their cargo, perhaps less valuable but definitely less heavily defended than the ‘gringos’ equipment. However, since immediately after it broke out of the water surface the arm-with-two-forearms-like parcel got stuck in a small island of floating debris, water hyacinths and duckweed, nobody noticed it bobbing, abandoned, in that moonless night particularly low in lightning flashes.

  A little while later, when things had barely calmed down, two scavengers went back to the scene of the battle, looking for salvageable scraps. Helped by good fortune and intensifying Catatumbo lightning, they discovered the floating, tightly wrapped object, loaded it on their boat, and, well aware it might be as unusually valuable as it was shaped, disappeared as fast as they could from the place.

  In the meantime, the ‘other tourists’ boats had travelled, as fast as they could, following a route in which the members of the ‘protective ring’ would double as decoys. In about an hour they should be back to the FOB palafitos and reunite David, who was suffering acute bouts of separation anxiety, with his equipment.

  Everything seemed to be going according to plan until they passed a group of dilapidated palafitos near a narrow bay. Their top-of-the-mast telescopic cameras were cycling from visible to thermal, adjusting for periods of darkness and flashes of light, and malfunctioning here and there.

  Though damaged during the shootout, one of them then detected a small armada of pirate boats—probably fast but likely, not fast enough. While waiting for instructions, the sergeant in charge weighed his choices: return to the base at full speed, hoping to outrun them, might reveal Tony’s group FOB location; stopping and fighting them off, might result in damaged equipment; alternatively, running to a different location to avoid revealing the FOB’s emplacement might just postpone an inevitable confrontation—and, ultimately, also result in loss of equipment. When, having waited long enough, the sergeant was about to act, Tony authorized a return to FOB at full speed.

  While they were heading to the base full tilt, Catatumbo suddenly became uncooperative and turned night to day with an extravagant light display. If the pirates had not heard their low-noise outboard motors, they would definitely see their silhouettes now.

  And they did.

  With pirates high on their heels, everyone prepared to defend the base of operations. No sooner the three boats should enter the security perimeter, they would cut the sinking weights and floating contact mines would pop up and surround the place. As the sharpshooters were taking position on both palafitos using the small bridge, others were mounting the machine guns on the veranda and positioning the RPGs on both huts.

  At that point, Catatumbo began cooperating: instead of the eerie silence some expect from it, it was blasting the lake with gusto and gumption, hiding the sound of the boats and blasting the ‘ensign’ boat of the pirates’ ‘armada’—insufficient to stop it, but enough to momentarily delay them. Going full-tilt the runaway boats got far enough from the pirates to be able to afford slowing down to lower the masts and so avoid damaging the cameras. Then they even managed to half-decently moor the boats under the ‘palafitos’.

  Understandably, David wanted to immediately start bringing the equipment up, away from the impending shootout. Tony, however, convinced him to, instead, leave the equipment onboard. That way, were the base to be lost, they could just jump on the boats, escape and take the equipment to the beta site—and, once safely there, perhaps complete the mission.

  With everyone still making adjustments to defensive positions at the base, and before Tony’s sharpshooters could begin firing at the approaching small fleet, a shadow flew above the approaching pirate boats, descending on them like a vulture on a herd of sick cows. Dumbfounded by the sight, everyone at the base froze. A few rubbed their eyes in disbelief. Careful the others wouldn’t notice, Tony winked at David who was then staring at the scene surprised but visibly less than shocked. David subtly bobbed his head.

  The pirates started shooting upwards, their gun discharges visible on a background of diffuse light. Soon enough, carrying through over the lake’s surface, their howls—sounding more like cattle being eaten alive by beasts—merged with the detonations in an ugly cacophony that reached the compound. One of the boats hit one of the contact mines, exploded in a ball of fire, and started to sink. Its motor and prow continued forward, plowing through the wreckage, until finally the motor itself exploded and sank.

  Even though the flames and lightning provided more than enough clarity to see the scene in detail, by then there was no sign any of the pirates were trying to swim away from the explosion. Soon after, onboard the other boats nobody stirred either. Somehow, mere seconds apart, all remaining pirate boats had stopped, as if a ghost of some sort had miraculously cut motors and dropped anchor.

  As a precautionary measure, the base remained on high alert for some time after that. Some of the other boats from the ‘protective ring’ that had escaped the battle around the submarine were dispatched, to go reconnoiter the scene from the side opposite the FOB. Coming stealthily from behind the pirates, friendlies’ boats took almost an hour to get to the site, make sure such sudden stillness wasn’t a ruse, and thoroughly inspect the scene. Notified that contact mines were afloat, they, however, didn’t approach the base, but by coded message instead, reported everyone onboard the pirate fleet was dead; some decapitated, some white as if bloodless, others with necks twisted, as if wrung by a machine of some sort. Onboard the pirate boats they also found broken and torn arms, broken and torn legs, innards dangling, eyes gouged, and a couple of pirates with guns deeply inserted in unseemly places.

  To rather general surprise, once the report received, Tony ordered all friendlies return to their original postings and told the Lieutenant to have the mines sunk again. Except David, a few people at the base asked questions Tony answered with shrugs. Someone made a few jokes about ghosts and vampires. Everyone laughed, some of them— even though combat-hardened operatives—nervously.

  “Need to know, people, need to know,” replied David, as he and Tony started slowly marching down the ramps, ready to start unloading equipment from the boats.

  Surprised by David’s nonchalance, some simply returned to their regular positions, other stayed a little longer at their observation posts, studying the surroundings with night vision binoculars, incredulous, still fearing a possible ambush—should they get damaged by Catatumbo, binoculars be damned.

  Now David used his time to finally show Tony the picture he had accidentally taken of that spider pinned by a shuriken to the vertical boards of their ‘toilet’. Of all the many models of ninja stars swirling about, this eerily familiar shuriken was of the exact same type used by the people that had attacked them at the hotel
in Bucharest.

  Tony looked at the picture from various angles and at different magnifications, and after a few hissing indraws, slowly exhaled and then asked David who had killed that spider. Not the answer he expected. Indeed, it was not a person with a ‘passport imperfection’.

  “Our problem is more serious than I thought,” Tony discretely whispered to David, gesturing as if they were talking about some of the equipment still on the boat. “Tell nobody else. Not a word about this, to anyone. This is truly serious. Truly. Deadly.”

  “You don’t say. You can’t imagine how serious this is,” replied David, looking at the piled equipment, lifting tarpaulins, moving boxes, clearly searching for something, swinging his flashlight like an orchestra’s conductor during a ferociously fast finale.

  “A key part of the equipment is missing. And without it, all we have here is totally useless. Truly—useless.”

  38—Weather, free radicals and radiation

  After a final search of all the materials retrieved confirmed the piece was indeed missing, Tony tasked the more “Latino looking” members of the group with looking for it, assigning each an area along the boats’ trajectory from the submarine surfacing point to FOB. Trying to avoid confrontations with fishermen, pirates, drug dealers, tour operators, spies, security guards, police and military, they fanned out to sections quickly mapped using best estimates of lake currents and the like.

  To different degrees, time and qualifications permitting, they were also to discretely measure physicochemical parameters, and take samples—helped in those last endeavors by a few risk-taking environmentalists. Appalled Lake Maracaibo is becoming a rusting soup of duckweed, water hyacinths, leaky pipes and human dejections, garlanded by unfathomable amounts of plastic detritus, and populated by mutating animals, the environmentalists were quite eager to share their data with them. Since in polluted enough areas evolution can almost be observed happening in real time, the treasure trove of data regarding ‘neobiomas’ would be outside mission ‘Swampland Thunder’s scope, but David’s ‘surrogates’ were glad to pool data on temperatures, atmospheric pressure, salinity, and concentration of pollutants.