The Encounter

by Donal Myrick

  Peggy said rhetorically, “A gallon of water weighs what, about eight pounds? Don’t fret, Jim. I think Charlie and I can handle the water detail. He can take a small container or two down, dip into that quiet eddy pool where the current is fairly quiet, fill the containers, and fly back up here with eight to nine pounds of water. He can make a round trip every ten minutes or so. I can replenish our water supply each evening while we are getting supper ready.”

  “Lordy, Lordy, Peggy,” Max exclaimed, “Once again, it looks like you may have saved our collective butts if you can pull that off. You and Charlie are miracle workers.”

  “I didn’t just suddenly think about how to solve our water problem. It is a natural extension of something else I’ve been thinking about. Our batteries; they will need to be recharged every couple of days. Our recharging stations are down there in the river. I’ve been thinking that I could take a set of batteries down every day, set them on the recharge platform, pick up a charged set, and return. Since all of our batteries are inductively charged, there is nothing complicated with doing this.”

  Ted said, “I vote for Peggy being promoted to ‘Logistics Guru’. All in favor, say aye.”

  “Thanks, guys, but remember, it’s not just me coming up with ideas. Remember Spider is the one with all the special knots skills, and she is the one doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to the extreme rock climbs,” said Peggy.

  “You are right,” Max said. “You girls are leading the way, and I, for one, am extremely grateful. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you both. Thank you, girls.”

  “Three cheers for the girls,” said Ted.

  “Okay, let’s get our day packs ready and see how far we can make it today. I’m feeling good about our chances of finding the big passage that all this air movement says lies ahead somewhere.”

  CHAPTER 16

  You Dropped What?!!

  Around ten in the morning, Scott received a phone call from Glen. “Morning Scott,” Glen said cheerfully, “I thought I’d better let you know, the three of us are preparing to depart the States this afternoon and head your way. Connie arranged everything very efficiently; I’m very impressed with her competence.”

  “It’s good to hear that you are on your way. By the way, thanks for rounding up some local help. That was remarkable that you were able to get so many local cavers to rally to our need on such short notice.”

  “It was a piece of cake, nothing to it. I just contacted my friend Geraldo, explained the situation, and he said he would handle it, ‘consider it done’, he said.”

  “Well, he did it. We have over a dozen locals here and onboard. I am greatly relieved to have them here. Is Connie emailing me with your itinerary?”

  “Yes, I am sure she is. She laid it out in great detail for us, so I am sure it is probably already in your inbox. By the way, are there any last-minute things I can pick up for you?”

  Scott thought for a moment and then said, “Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. Do you have time to touch base with Connie before you depart?”

  “Sure, no problem. What do you want me to do?”

  “I’ll have Connie explain it for you when you get there.”

  “Roger that. We will be seeing you sometime tomorrow. Take care.”

  “You too. Ciao.”

  As soon as Glen had hung up, Scott called Connie. “Morning, Connie,” he said.

  “Good morning to you too, Boss.”

  “I just hung up with Glen. He had good things to say about you.”

  “That’s nice. He seemed to me to be a real competent individual. He was very intense, though.”

  “That’s basically what he said about you, and yes, he is a very intense type of person. He is very good, though. You just have to get used to him. He will be coming by to see you shortly. I want you to prepare a package for him to bring to me. You know what to include in the package. Instruct him not to let anyone see or have the package. Instruct him that if it looks like it will be compromised that he must find a way to destroy it. Make sure he understands the sensitivity of what he is carrying, okay?”

  “Understood Boss, and for your information, which I have emailed you already and which I am sure you haven’t seen yet,, or you would have said something, they will be arriving at your place around noon tomorrow. Carlos will be meeting them in Caracas, and flying them directly to you.”

  “Excellent. I’ll be in touch. Bye for now. Stay safe.”

  “You too.”

  Scott was beginning to feel a lot better about their situation. He had more than adequate support now, and things were progressing more smoothly than he had any right to expect. Little did he know that this was the lull before the storm. Things were about to go downhill quickly.

  Scott left Sam in charge of the topside camp while he took Geraldo and Felix on a familiarization trip back to the pit.

  Scott explained to Geraldo and Felix, “This is where we begin. We will rappel two hundred and thirty feet down to a narrow ledge. I will go down first, then you two follow. When you get down, we will move along the ledge to the cave entrance. We have a few fixed ropes in place there, which we will use to get back to the first place where we start ‘Tarzaning’. Understood?”

  Geraldo and Felix nodded in the affirmative.

  Geraldo then said, “By ‘Tarzaning’, I presume you mean doing pendulum traverses, right?”

  “Yep,” Scott said as he clipped the rappel line into his rack, pushed the bottom brake bar up to lock the rope, stepped to the edge of the canyon, loosed the brake bar, pushed off the edge and quickly rappelled down to the ledge. Standing on the narrow ledge, he clipped his self-belay line onto the fixed rope that ran the length of the ledge, unhooked from the rappel line, and signaled for Geraldo to follow. As Geraldo neared the bottom, there was a moment of confusion because Geraldo didn’t realize that he wouldn’t actually land on the ledge. Instead, when he reached the bottom of his rappel, he was hanging out in space fifteen feet from the ledge. Scott grabbed the end of the rappel line and pulled Geraldo over to the ledge.

  Scott said, “Sorry, I forgot to mention that little detail. When you get to the bottom of your rappel, you have to pull yourself over to the ledge. If you let yourself go too far down, it gets a little awkward pulling yourself up onto the ledge here.”

  “Yes, so I see.”

  “Clip into this line here and move over there a bit, and let’s get Felix down.”

  Félix rappelled down without incident, and they moved along the ledge to the cave entrance. “From here, we move along on fixed ropes for about two hundred feet,” Scott explained, “and then we will ‘Tarzan’ the rest of the way back to the pit gradually getting lower and lower. Here we are over a hundred feet above the river. Back at the pit, we will be only eight to ten feet above the water. It gets really loud back there. This is the dry season now, but the underground flow is still quite considerable, but at least we can talk above the roar of the waterfall. The first time we were here, the water level was much higher, and the noise was so great that you couldn’t carry on a conversation without our noise-canceling headgear.”

  “That sounds awesome, but it also sounds like it is going to be a lot of fun,” remarked Geraldo.

  As they progressed back into the cave, Scott was relieved to see that both Geraldo and Félix were actually more adept at doing pendulum traverses than he was. No training was going to be required for these two. A short distance before they arrived at the pit area, they were hailed by one of the new Russians that had arrived with Dr. Kuznetsov. He was standing on the Russian’s bridge about twenty feet below.

  “Is that you, Mr. Mueller?” he asked in perfect English.

  “Yes, it is I.”

  “I was just headed back to the top to look for you. We have a serious problem!” he exclaimed with some alarm.

  “What is the problem?” Scott asked, suddenly filled with concern.

  “I’ll meet you back there and explain.”

&nb
sp; The threesome quickly made their way on back to the pit where they were met by five Russians and one Venezuelan soldier whom Scott recognized. Scott immediately noticed that the NMI rope was missing. He yelled, “What the hell is going on? Where is and what happened with our rope? Who messed with our equipment? My God, this is a disaster!” Scott’s wonder about what happened to the NMI rope quickly turned to anger. Scott directed his anger directly to the Russian, who was obviously the leader of the group. “Are you responsible for this? Did you cut our rope?”

  The Russian appeared visibly shaken by Scott’s violent outburst and accusation. He assumed that he would be upset, but Scott’s reaction was over the top. The Russian said, “Let me explain.”

  Scott said, continuing with a loud and angry tone, “This had better be good! You realize that you may have just murdered six Americans?”

  “No, we didn’t cut your rope. What happened was an accident! We have been instructed to move our winch so we can handle the loads better. There isn’t much room back here, and we need more room. Since you weren’t using your equipment, we were just trying to move it over there temporarily. We tried to pull it up, but we couldn’t. It must be tied off down below. I had two men hold it while I tried to retie it over where you are now. We didn’t realize how heavy it was, and all three of us couldn’t hold it. It went down.”

  “Jesus, you presumptuous idiots!” yelled Scott, not trying the least little bit to conceal his anger. “Don’t you know that you never, ever, ever mess with other people’s equipment, especially their rope riggings without their express consent?! Not ever! This is insane! This is completely unacceptable. You guys need to leave. You all need to vacate this area right now before you screw something else up. We need to figure out how to rectify this situation. You need to let Dr. Kuznetsov know we have a serious problem, immediately!” Scott made it clear that they needed to depart now without further delay.

  As the Russians began their departure, the Venezuelan soldier made his way over close to Geraldo, whom he recognized as being former military and quietly said, “No fue un accidente!” He then followed his Russian comrades out of the cave.

  Scott, still fuming, turned to Geraldo and Felix and said, “This is a hell of a way to introduce you to Churún River Cave. I apologize. You see why we need your help. It looks like things are going to get really complicated really quick.”

  Geraldo said, “No kidding, and you have no idea, do you?”

  “What do you mean?” Scott asked.

  Geraldo answered, “That Venezuelan soldier; I’ve seen him before, and he recognized me as well. He whispered to me as he was leaving that this was no accident. And, his tone was emphatic.”

  “You have got to be kidding! I was informed that we needed to be wary of these new Russians, but all this and especially that bit of information just confirms everything about which I was warned.”

  Geraldo asked, “What are you going to do now? What is next? How are we going to rescue the guys on the bottom?”

  Scott was thinking out loud, “The situation maybe isn’t as bad as it might seem, on the bottom they are going to go ape crazy, to put it mildly. Let’s get back to camp and bring the others up to speed and do some planning.”

  “But how are we going to be able to help them?” persisted Geraldo.

  “We have rope, lots of rope. That’s how,” Said Scott.

  CHAPTER 17

  Get a Bigger Rock

  With their day bags packed, the group was ready to push the new passage as far as they could. Max asked, “Bufford, are you bringing some rope?”

  “Yes, I’m bringing a hundred and fifty-foot length. We have this and a two hundred foot length left. We used the four-fifty to rig the slot. If we need the four-fifty, we can re-rig the slot with the two shorter lengths.”

  Max opined, “Well, with any luck, we are going to need the four-fifty.”

  The passage leading off to the east was a narrow canyon about ten feet wide and twenty feet high. The walls were sheer, and the floor was covered with breakdown. The passage continued for almost a mile and a half before narrowing down to four to five feet in width.

  Bufford remarked, “Do you realize that Spider and I were trying to find a way through this god awful breakdown pile beneath our feet. I can’t imagine a more miserable caving experience than belly crawling, twisting, turning, and squeezing through over a mile of breakdown. I, for one, am damn glad we found this route!”

  Peggy chimed in and said, “I think I can speak for all of us when I say ‘we are all damn glad’.”

  The floor of the passage smoothed out, no longer strewn with breakdown, but was back to bare rock with a small crack running roughly down the middle. The crack was only a few inches wide. It was not a clean crack, so one could only see a few feet down. But, as they proceeded down the passage, the passage gradually widened, and so did the crack. After a few hundred yards, the crack was wide enough so that occasionally they could see all the way through into a dark abyss opening below.

  Max said, “Be quiet for a moment.”

  And, sure enough, they could hear the rushing waters of the Churún River far below. “Someone grab a rock,” Max said excitedly.

  Jim went back up the passage to where the breakdown ended and found a baseball-sized rock. He hurried back to the waiting group, and they dropped the rock through the crack and counted seconds as they listened.

  “I didn’t hear anything did you?” Max asked.

  “Maybe, but I’m not sure,” Jim replied.

  “Get a bigger rock! This is probably a good four hundred and fifty feet deep, just like back there where we came from.”

  Jim scurried off back down the passage in quest of a larger rock. This time he returned with a thirty-pound boulder. “This ought to do the trick,” he said.

  They pushed the boulder through the crack, and it rattled down a little way before launching off into space. They counted off the seconds, thousand and one, thousand and two, . . . , thousand and seven, then Ka-boom came the reverberating sound as the boulder crashed on the floor far below.

  “Yep, just like I said, it’s a good four hundred plus feet down to the bottom.” Bufford said with a sigh, “Well, Spider, let’s go back and re-rig the slot. It looks like we are going to need the four-fifty after all, just like Max was hoping.”

  “He was hoping because he knew that he wasn’t going to be the one re-rigging the slot,” replied Spider. The crack at this point was not large enough to squeeze through, so they continued following the crack on down the narrow passage in the hope of finding a spot large enough to rig and rappel through. The crack got bigger, then smaller until finally, they found a spot wide enough to comfortably rappel through. This was where they would make their descent.

  On the way back to the base camp, Jim asked, “Max, where is the laser mapper?”

  “It’s back in camp, right where it doesn’t need to be. I guess I was too anxious to get started checking out this passage that I forgot to bring it. I know what you are thinking. Yes, if I had brought it, we could have just measured the depth back there instead of dropping rocks.” After a brief pause, Max continued, “However, on the other hand, I kinda like dropping rocks down deep holes. Somehow, it is really satisfying to hear them reverberate when they hit the bottom.”

  “You remind me of someone I used to know back home.”

  “Who? Is it anybody that I know?”

  “I’m just saying, not telling.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Icy to Frigid to Thaw

  When Scott and his crew arrived back topside, he called everyone over to meet in Miguel’s dining tent. Both Sam and Dr. Fred were concerned with the urgency in Scott’s tone, but Miguel was the first to ask, as all the new crew began filing in, “What’s going on? Has something happened?”

  Sam said, “It is very quiet on the com; I can’t hear anything.”

  Scott said, “The reason you can’t hear anything is because the com is down, like down the pi
t.”

  “What!!” gasped Dr. Fred.

  “Yes, down the pit. Actually, the com gear is still okay, but the NMI rope is down the pit. The Russians accidentally dropped it, or at least that is what they claim. We have reasons to believe that it was no accident.”

  Dr. Fred said, “If the Russians had anything to do with it, I guarantee you it wasn’t an accident.”

  Scott went on to explain, “When I saw what had happened, I went ballistic, and I read the new guy in charge back at the pit, the riot act. After I calmed down a bit, I told them to get out of the cave until we figured out how we were going to support our team and get them back up safely. I presume the new guy is Kuznetsov’s number two man, so I am sure he will give Kuznetsov a full rundown on our reaction to their treachery. Although, I don’t believe they think we think it was treachery on their part, but rather just stupidity. I think that is what they want us to think, and if we think that, it will serve their purpose, whatever that is. I think they are hoping that we will somehow retrieve our team and then vacate the area.”

  Miguel asked, “Why do you believe it wasn’t an accident?”

  “One of the guys back there was one of the Venezuelan soldiers that Sergei had assigned to help us. So I recognized him, and I could tell from his body language that he was very uncomfortable and that he didn’t want to be associated with this deed. He also apparently recognized Geraldo from some previous military encounter. Geraldo says that he remembers him also. He told Geraldo as they were leaving that it wasn’t an accident. So, it is not just how I feel about the matter; my feelings are consistent with what he said.”

  “So, what now? Have you thought of a plan? Have you had time to think through things?” asked Dr. Fred.

  “No, not really. I think we should examine our options immediately. I think our relations with the Russians are going to go from icy to frigid, though. I also think we need to think through all this and try to understand what the Russian’s game plan is. Exactly what do they expect to gain from dropping our rope? Now that I have kind of poisoned the well with my giving them a verbal whiplashing, what should our follow on response be? Miguel, update your boss asap. Fred, do you think we should let the American Embassy know what is going on?”