Orinoco

by Dan Pollock

  The brothers stood side by side now, smiling stiffly. The height differential was comical. The little one wore a liki-liki shirt and Day-Glo shorts, the big one camouflage pants and a faded T-shirt featuring Las Tortugas Ninjas—the Ninja Turtles. The camera came in close as they chattered back and forth in some Indian dialect. A moment later they began to box playfully. The frame pulled back to capture the big one taking an obvious dive, as the little guy threw a wild roundhouse right. Sam told Bernardo to reverse to the full-face shots, then hit PAUSE/STILL. When the brothers were frozen on-screen in mid-grin, he turned to Enrico.

  “Do you still have that Polaroid camera around here, amigo?”

  Enrico nodded, and hurried out of the den.

  Five minutes later they had several pretty good Polaroid likenesses. They got the best screen resolution shooting in PLAY, not PAUSE/STILL.

  Enrico thought of something else. “You know, Sam, I recognized some of those words when they were talking. It’s definitely Pemón.” This was the common language of the indigenous tribes of the Sabana—Arekunas, Kamarakotas, Taurepanes.

  “How do you know?”

  “From Roberto I bet,” Bernardo said. “He’s half-Indian.”

  “Who’s Roberto?” Sam asked.

  “One of my llaneros,” Enrico said. “He and I taught Bernardo to ride.”

  “Well, why don’t you get him in here?”

  Roberto was ushered into the den a few minutes later, hat in hand and looking distinctly uncomfortable. He was still in his llanero outfit—unbuttoned work shirt, cowhide half-chaps over threadbare jeans, bare feet. He was also dripping wet; the rainstorm was still having its way outside. Enrico gestured to a space on the sofa, but Roberto smiled and squatted cross-ankled on the carpet in front of the TV monitor. Bernardo replayed the entire scene with the two brothers talking and clowning.

  “Well?” Enrico prompted when it was over.

  Roberto looked eager to oblige. “Jefe, what do you want to know?”

  “Do you recognize them?”

  “No. I never see these guys before. They’re Kamarakotas.”

  “From the Kamarata Valley?” Sam asked.

  “Sí, I think from the Mission.”

  Jesus! Sam thought. We could be very close to something here. What if they were taking Jacqueline back to their valley, to some hideout nearby? He should notify Captain Siso immediately. But then what? Sam could visualize big choppers landing in the midst of the Indian village, rotor blasts stripping the palm thatch off the huts, red-beret paratroopers swarming out with submachine guns. If Oscar and the Indians were anywhere in the vicinity, they’d be scared off—and harder to find than ever. Which would put Jacqueline at greater risk. And with the Seguridad Policial and the Special Intervention Brigade down here running the show, any chance for a clean ransom payoff would be gone forever.

  And what if it was just a blind alley? Just because the Indians were Kamarakotas didn’t mean they’d be heading home. The plain fact was, they could be taking her anywhere, or still be holed up in San Félix.

  The prudent thing to do was check it out himself early tomorrow morning. Show the Polaroids around the mission, find out whatever he could about the brothers. Then decide.

  While working through these musings, Sam stood quickly to thank Roberto for his help. Then, as Enrico exited the room with his llanero, Sam swung to Bernardo. “Still want to work for me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How about driving back to Puerto Ordaz in the rain?”

  “No sweat. What for?”

  “I left without telling D.W. anything, and I promised I’d keep him informed.”

  “Why don’t you just call his penthouse?”

  “Hey, why didn’t I think of that, Nardo? Look, D.W. is surrounded up there. They’re tracing calls, probably recording everything in and out. It’s probably nothing, this Kamarakota stuff, but I don’t want the federales barging down here just yet. Okay?”

  “I got it. You want me to take some of the Polaroids?”

  “No, don’t take anything. Just be cool, you know? Walk up to him and make small talk, till you can get him alone. Then tell him we saw the Indians on the tape, where they’re from, and that I’ll be flying down to the Kamarata Valley tomorrow to check it out. Tell him I should be back by noon, and I’ll call him. Got all that?”

  After Bernardo drove off, Sam apologetically declined Romalda’s offer of dinner in favor of a hot shower and bed. He cut it pretty close—he had just enough energy left to peel back the sheets and crawl in. He succumbed to sleep without struggle or thought.

  It seemed another century—not nearly long enough—when he felt himself being shaken awake. Gray light filled an unfamiliar room, and D.W. was staring down at him. Sam couldn’t put the pieces together.

  “Where am I?”

  “At your ranch. La Promesa.”

  “What—what are you doing here?”

  “Bernardo drove me down.”

  “Wait a minute. This isn’t making sense.”

  “You’re flying down to Kamarata this morning to look for those Indians. I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you’re not.” Sam managed to scoot halfway up against the headboard. “Jesus, Duke, you’re supposed to stay by the phone, in case Oscar calls. Does what’s-his-name, Siso, know you’re down here?”

  “No. I just walked out of the hotel two hours ago. I called from a gas station, told one of his deputies I’d stay in touch. I don’t trust those bastards, Sam. If Oscar did call, I don’t think they’d tell me.”

  “D.W., you know they’re gonna go apeshit up there.”

  “I’m going apeshit. I have to do something, Sam. Please!”

  Sam swung his feet onto the floor, found himself staring at a blue Avensa zippered carry-on. “What’s in the bag, D.W.?”

  “A million dollars.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  A flash of lightning reversed the world into photo negative—white sky and river against gray-etched, black-slashed jungle. An after-flash strobed three shapes huddled under a tarp along the riverbank, watching rain lash the raging current and pound the upturned bottom of their thirty-foot dugout canoe, which now sheltered their supplies and outboard motor. An instant later came the eruption of double thunder—not a mere crackling boom, but a doomsday sound like the sky’s entire fabric being ripped apart, horizon to horizon.

  Oscar Azarias, one of the three huddled figures, had witnessed countless tropical thunderstorms over his nearly fifty years. But somehow being pinned down out here on the edge of the Sabana, lacking even a cave in which to hide from the elemental fury, made this storm particularly disturbing. These nuclear white flashes and rending crashes, and the unceasing roar of falling water, nearly overwhelmed all his other anxieties with undiluted fear.

  Yet he dared not neglect his other urgent concerns. This river, for instance—the Kukurital, just east of its joining the Caroní—was it rising too rapidly? Should they be dragging themselves and their boat even now to higher ground? But if so, then surely Angel, who knew these parts intimately, would be initiating the panic, not squatting stoically beside Oscar, chin on knees.

  Another prime concern, of course, was poor Chucho, out in this wild night on yet another critical mission. Fortunately, the smaller Kamarakota had vetoed Oscar’s plan to have the ransom demand delivered overland all the way to Canaima on the Río Carrao. Fortunately, since Oscar’s plan would have entailed several hours’ night hiking across the intervening savanna. And after an evening of light rain and nearly a half-hour’s unremitting downpour, that savanna trail had probably become impassable swamp. Wisely instead, Chucho had elected to carry Oscar’s carefully printed ultimatum only a short distance from where they’d beached their dugout, to Puerto Kukurital. This riverside outpost of palm-thatched shelters was linked northward to Canaima Camp by a rough track, only an hour and a half drive by Jeep or Land Cruiser. Chucho had assured Oscar that a ransom note posted there tonight would be discover
ed early in the morning by Indian employees of Canaima Camp and communicated quickly to camp headquarters—and thereafter to the Guardia Nacional and the girl’s father. The success or failure of the entire scheme now hinged on Chucho’s being correct in these assurances—and being able to deliver the note as promised. By Oscar’s watch, the Indian had been out in the storm twenty minutes already.

  And if this were not sufficient worry, there remained the third figure huddled under the rain-bludgeoned tarpaulin. Oscar had availed himself of the last blue-white lightning flash to check out their hostage and had been startled by what he saw. Señorita Lee was not cowering in girlish fear. On the contrary, her profile was the equal of Angel’s in stolid endurance. And other resemblances between her and the Indians struck Oscar in that blinding instant. There was a subtle similarity in facial contouring—an upper eyelid curve, a prominence of cheekbone, a slight frontal flatness—and, of course, in straight black hair of glossy thickness. The ethnic link, he realized, came through the Asian half of her heritage, since the prehistoric ancestors of the Kamarakotas, like all the native tribes of the Americas, had supposedly migrated here from Asia via an ancient land bridge.

  Like Angel, Jacqueline Lee squatted on her haunches, resting her forearms and chin on her knees, staring into the storm. Her neck was freed of its noose, but a short rope now hobbled her ankles. If she was shivering under her cotton coveralls, she did not betray it. Her bearing, in that lightning-etched tableau, was too much like that of some caged pantheress, he thought, enduring the temporary ignominy of capture, only awaiting the moment to reassert her supremacy. If Oscar could get the glossy creature alone, he could crush that arrogant spirit, he knew. But not so long as Angel sat nearby.

  In any case, her humbling could wait. Far more urgent problems confronted Oscar now, with no earthly way of avoiding them. He and the Kamarakotas had committed themselves to running a deadly, one-way gauntlet, with the entire Venezuelan security forces arrayed against them, and a pot of gold waiting at the gauntlet’s unseen end—if, that is, Oscar contrived to have the gold deposited there. Only by snatching that prize and fleeing the country under an altered identity, Oscar knew, would he again be free. The Indians, however, were unlikely to avail themselves of such a course, being reluctant to leave their tribal lands. And once their identities were known to the authorities, there would be no escape for them.

  But so far, amazingly, all had gone well. By Chucho’s estimation, since leaving Espinero on Lake Guri two evenings ago, they had covered more than two-hundred kilometers on the Caroní—all under cover of darkness and against the current, averaging around fifteen to twenty kilometers per hour from the two-stroke Mariner outboard. At dawn yesterday they’d slipped past the mouth of the Río Paragua, beaching and concealing their curiara just beyond the confluence, in sight of the village of San Pedro de las Bocas.

  All that long day, as planes had droned suspiciously overhead, tracing both rivers, they’d remained in their overgrown riverbank lair. There was no shortage of tinned food, and water was only a long scoop away. The Caroní, which appeared blood-red along its pink-sand shallows, when captured in a tin cup had nearly the color and clarity of champagne. During the forenoon, while Señorita Lee watched in some fascination, the Indian brothers had extracted some special tree sap, mixed it with palm oil and painted their bodies black. It made an effective night camouflage, Oscar had to admit, especially since Chucho had used up the only tube of black camo cream. The long, torrid afternoon found all four cocooned in tree-slung hammocks under mosquito netting. But Oscar had devoted several of those oppressive hours to the careful composition of a ransom note, and—because he was prevented from using physical coercion—to begging Señorita Lee for just one little bit of authenticating information, information that would, after all, only let her father know she was safe and facilitate her deliverance. Finally, after being cursed and reviled and actually spat upon—all under the vigilant glare of the big Kamarakota—Oscar had come away with her mother’s maiden name, Julienne Langlois, and pet name. So, their arrogant bitch was really an exotic mongrel, part slant-eyes, part French!

  Again at first darkness, they were pushing off in a heavy drizzle, using their heart-shaped paddles periodically to bail the fast-filling bottom. Despite the gradually worsening rain, they’d made steady progress, reaching the Carrao around eleven. By midnight, as lightning began to pulse all around the sky, they’d gained another fifteen kilometers to the fork of the smaller Kukurital, where Chucho swung them sharply left. Moments later, they were dragging the dugout onto the Kukurital’s shelving bank as the heavens opened and the deluge began in earnest.

  But the night was still far from over, Oscar thought, and there were fifty more kilometers to make upstream before sunrise. If only Chucho would get back and report success, and if only the accursed rainstorm would ease off to something less than waterfall strength, they could get underway again.

  A quick squishing sound told him somebody was now beside him in the dark.

  “Chucho?”

  “Who else it would be, boss?”

  This reply was punctuated by far-off lightning, which showed Chucho’s grinning, dripping, sap-blackened face. The little guy really enjoys this stuff, Oscar thought.

  “So you did it? Left the note in a good spot?”

  “Sure, boss. I can swim good, huh?”

  *

  Jacqueline Lee was terribly frightened and terribly cold, yet determined not to show either. She had decided she was going to survive this ordeal, no matter what. She’d kept telling herself that, through two shivering nights with a rope around her neck, securing her to the bench of the dugout canoe. She’d renewed her resolve again and again during the long, sweat-drenched, insect-ridden day they’d lain in hiding beside the river. And when her secret litany had become so many meaningless syllables, and she felt herself sinking into a sea of helplessness, she’d resorted to little mind games.

  She’d pretend herself elsewhere. To combat cold, she conjured herself into a Palm Springs patio, complete with the scent of sunblock and random boing of diving board. Several times she’d recreated all the little tactical moves with which she’d maneuvered Sam Warrender into that first kamikaze kiss—and nearly knocked him out of his saddle! And to survive the all-day agony of being hammocked in a jungle steambath with her ankles tied together, she’d visualized Arquimedeo in his khaki shorts and baseball cap, squatting for hours in a trench, patiently scraping away at some tiny outcrop of history. And for the last trembling half hour here beside Oscar and Angel, while the sky exploded over their heads and threatened to reduce her to a whimpering child, she had simply prayed to God to keep her safe.

  And perhaps her plea had been heard, for shortly after little Chucho had returned from wherever he’d gone to leave the ransom note, the overhead fury quite suddenly ceased—even the rain stopped falling. Immediately Chucho and Angel scrambled out to turn the canoe rightside up and mount the outboard on the rough-hewn transom. A moment later, Angel loomed out of the darkness, apologetically slipping the noose around her neck and lifting her into the narrow, wobbly craft.

  Jacqueline suffered this disgrace without outward protest, believing the big Kamarakota had taken this onerous task upon himself only to protect her from rougher handling. Chucho remained a smiling enigma, but she did not wish to think about the kinds of things Oscar might do to her if Angel ever once left her side. She only hoped that the Indian’s obvious feelings for her could somehow tip the balance in her favor in any coming crisis, or—pray God!—when the moment came for her to escape or be rescued.

  But for now, they were back in the water, strung out in their customary positions in the narrow dugout—Angel in the prow, Oscar next, Jacqueline tied to the thwart abaft the fuel drums, and Chucho silhouetted in the stern with his left arm guiding the outboard tiller. All she knew was that they were heading up some smaller tributary now into a featureless abyss, accompanied as always by that monotonous lawn-mower sound that, e
ven when they stopped, continued to growl in her subconscious.

  After they were a half-hour under way, stars began to glitter here and there as the storm clouds rolled and shredded off to the east. This afforded Chucho incremental light to steer by and made it easier for him to see Angel’s arm signals. About when he expected it, the immense black brow of Auyán-Tepui reared up on his left, crowned with constellations. For the next forty or fifty kilometers, the Río Kukurital would scallop the western base of this great table mountain, all the way south to the Kamarata Valley, where it fanned out into the broad savanna in a maze of subtributaries and feeder streams.

  At that point, Chucho had proposed to Oscar they abandon the curiara, and follow on foot another small river, the Kavak, back through many twists and turns and traversing several waterfalls, into a deeply recessed canyon at the southern tip of Auyán-Tepui known as La Cueva—the Cave. Here they could safely hide until it was time to recover the ransom—and go their separate ways.

  If the weather and their amazing luck held, Chucho hoped to be off the little Kukurital and climbing up into Kavak Canyon before first light. But already the Kamarakota’s keen eyes caught the first patch of shallow, tricky water ahead—a low-angled rapids frothing in the starlight.

  Angel had seen it, too, and was shouting back. Chucho cut off the motor and dropped instantly over the side into the frigid current. His bare soles slithered over the riverbed boulders, but he never lost his footing. As infants, Kamarakotas were taught how to slide along on river rocks till the foot stopped and gripped of its own accord, then to take the next sliding step. While Angel did his grunting and pulling alongside the prow, Chucho steered and shoved the curiara’s transom upward against the fierce current. Then, realizing they still had two passengers, the little Indian screamed at Oscar:

  “Boss, get out and push! Five, ten minutes only, then we go again full power!”