by Dan Pollock
As they followed him now along another curve of the canyon, they heard a sound ahead like polite applause. A moment later, at the end of a steep-sided, green-bordered glade, they stared at a sunlit, white-water staircase. From a forested verge at least a hundred meters above them, the Kavak in its full width cascaded down a theatrically faceted, horizontally striated cliff. It was like coming upon the overgrown ruins of an ancient jungle pyramid, so stair-stepped was the exfoliated face. But closer inspection showed the rugged stone laminations to be geologically formed, with projecting ledges polished by water and carpeted with moss. An intricate fringe of rivulets laced together with the main cataract to spill finally into a boulder-formed pool which sparkled with the tint of sherry wine.
“La Cueva?” Sam asked.
The Indian shook his head and held up three fingers.
“The Kavak, it has three waterfalls. This one we call ducha, the shower. You climb up and stand in this. The next one, it is the piscina, you swim in it. The last one, it is La Cueva. Most beautiful place.”
“Can’t we move faster?” D.W. barked.
No sooner had he said this than he lost his footing, flailing one arm as he held up his Avensa bag with the other. Julio was quickly beside him, bracing his elbow. With no further protest then, the quartet proceeded single file, crossing the foaming river on a bridge of boulders and fallen trees and continuing on the other bank.
D.W. felt a pounding pulse in his head now. Stress had mastered him days ago, but inaction was the most unbearable torture of all. It had seemed better, then, to be in motion, bringing near the fearful resolution—an end to the agony of unknowing. But the deeper they had penetrated this overgrown maze, the more he had doubted the convoluted, Sherlockian deductions that had led them there, and the less he sensed his child’s presence in this wild landscape.
They should turn around and go back—at once.
D.W. should arrange to leave the $5 million when and where the terrorist bastards wanted it, and just keep Siso and Higueras and all the rest of the gun-toting bureaucrats the hell out of it. That was probably his only chance to get his daughter back alive. They were wasting precious time, all because an Indian found a canoe under some bushes and now saw some machete marks!
The column halted, as Julio squatted to inspect a muddy patch of trail. In the rear, D.W. dropped his zipper bag and sat down heavily. A few inches from his eyes spiderweb strands drifted in the breeze. But something seemed odd. He focused. It wasn’t really webbing. More like black threads snagged on a low, projecting branch.
He tugged one loose. It wasn’t a thread at all. It was a human hair, black and coarse and easily two feet long. Much longer than any of the Kamarakota men he’d seen wore their hair. And the women artisans in that communal hut this morning, and the schoolgirls, they all had close-cropped hairdos. The tomtom pulse in D.W.’s head grew stronger. Could Jacqueline have yanked it out and left it as a telltale? But who would see it down there? Unless she, too, had rested here, seizing upon an unobserved opportunity, with nothing else handy to indicate she’d passed that way. Perhaps she had also scratched a sign in the mud nearby with a twig or a fingertip. But there was no such mark.
D.W. called out. Julio scrambled over, examined the hair, sniffed it, regarded D.W. with sudden respect, obviously impressed that a blanco had seen something he’d missed.
“Is no Kamarakota,” he said, meaning the hair. Sam and Enrico were also bending over now, staring at the strand and its mates floating on the twig.
“What do you think?” D.W. asked.
“Perhaps,” Enrico said.
Sam nodded.
She’s alive! D.W. thought. His heart began an erratic gallop. Sweet Jesus, Mary, Mother of God, Lord Buddha, keep her safe!
*
They’d been all night fighting their way up that river. Again and again, all three men had spilled out, leaving her noosed to her bench—ensuring her death by drowning if they capsized. But she’d reached a state of apathy and exhaustion where she simply accepted that. She’d hear them splashing and bellowing around her in the darkness, trying to coordinate their efforts as they manhandled the log boat up yet another stretch of unseen rapids. Then, exhausted and freezing, they’d tumble back in, Angel would restart the outboard, and they’d be off again at full snarl.
Just before dawn they’d turned the corner on a broad valley, silver in the anticipatory light. After a blank moment, Jacqueline had suddenly recognized it from having flown over it two weeks before with Sam. This was the veldtlike Kamarata, so the dark, overshadowing colossus on their left must be Auyán-Tepui. Over the horizon, then, lay all the Gran Sabana, its sweeping grasslands unpeopled clear to Brazil, except for a scattering of missions and native settlements. Again, it was not as if any real hope of escape or rescue had been quenched by this bleak realization. Jacqueline simply took it in.
In short order they had veered off their diminishing stream and pushed up another tributary, until its rock-studded shallows were no longer navigable. Then they’d beached and hidden the boat, apportioned the supplies among the three men, and started up this long, winding canyon climb. The point of it—at least all Oscar would tell her—was that the ransom note had been safely delivered by Chucho. Now they were going into their hiding and waiting place.
It was some consolation to realize that the crazy old man was as exhausted as she, and the Indians only a little less so. During the hike they had stopped frequently, finding it harder each time to push on. At one point, Oscar stumbled about the path like a zombie and dropped his pack. Some of it had to be abandoned, the rest divided between Chucho and Angel.
Jacqueline found the numbing fatigue actually helped blunt the ache from the burns on her feet. Otherwise, she knew, every step would be unbearable, despite repeated applications of Angel’s forest salve. And for all the cushioning she got from the charred remnants of her down booties, she might as well be barefoot. But when she foundered, which happened frequently, Angel was always there to steady her, and to lift her entirely over the more difficult stretches.
At such times, she would nearly lapse into unconsciousness, eyes shut, hearing sluggish footfalls and ragged breathing, and the random wet hiss of Chucho’s machete lopping off leaves and vines and meddlesome branches. Then she’d open her eyes on a scene of transcendent beauty—like that first incredible cascade, a baroque, angel-haired fountain; and farther on, a series of pellucid, slab-sculpted pools, linked by plashing cataracts, each deliciously inviting. But they had staggered on, toward God only knew what destination.
Eventually, with the sun above the treetops and beating relentlessly down, they’d all gotten their cooling bath. A collapsed portion of embankment detoured them onto the Kavak’s eddying margins. They moved first along a stone-scalloped apron, then, as this sloped into the river, waded thigh-deep through the onrushing current. Jacqueline slipped and plunged several times on green-slimed rocks, but declined to be carried. The liquid embrace was too wonderful, and she mourned its loss keenly when the time came to rejoin the trail. The instant she emerged, she felt the hot imprint of rock on the bottom of her foot and realized she’d lost one of her booties in the river.
Well, good! she thought. That would make a better clue than near invisible strands of her hair. But still, who would ever see it underwater?
Aside from the remote chance of rescue or ransom then, her only hope remained to stay close to Angel at all times, and pray that his devotion was indeed genuine, and that he would be equal to the task of protecting her from Oscar when her fate hung in the balance.
*
In order to keep flogging himself forward, Oscar tried to reconstruct the intricate elements of his plan. But again and again, it would all fold up on him, and he’d be ready to simply drop in his tracks and abandon everything. Why was he doing any of this? Why this bone-wearying climb after that freezing, all-night battle with that fucking dugout canoe?
Five million dollars.
Ah, yes! Finally,
that chimerical, fantastical number took flight and hovered in the air, like one of those dancing blue butterflies, and Oscar staggered up the trail after it. Five million dollars. Just follow the plan.
Oh sure, there were pitfalls, but look how far they’d come already. It could work. When they finally reached the end of this accursed canyon, they’d sleep one whole day and a half. That would also be Oscar’s last chance at his hostage, something that didn’t bear thinking about. Of course, his original plan was simpler and far more satisfying. They’d have their fun with her, leave her body up here, and take off together in the canoe for the ransom pickup. Now, because of Angel’s pathetic attachment, Oscar and Chucho would slip out tomorrow night, leaving the girl with Angel another day or so.
If the big Kamarakota spent that time treating her like a princess instead of his slave girl, he was even dumber than he looked. But—alas!—that wasn’t Oscar’s problem. Everything would be okay, so long as Angel showed up at their rendezvous on time, and the bitch didn’t find her way out of the canyon until the three of them were far south on the Río Karuay with all the money, en route to Brazil.
Suddenly Chucho was calling a halt. Oscar, who had been carefully planting his squishy tennis shoes on the stony path, looked up at a preposterous sight. Just ahead was a calmly rippling pond, maybe fifty meters across, entirely surrounded by steep, vine-draped rock walls. Apparently, the canyon and the river both ended abruptly right here, in a forested cul-de-sac. Where the hell did the Río Kavak come from then, some underground spring?
He shuffled up to Chucho, who was already squatting and rummaging into his daypack for canned edibles. Likewise, Angel had slung down his woven bag containing blowgun, machete and other Kamarakota essentials, while behind him Señorita Lee, a limp figure in her tattered coveralls, stood gaping at the small body of water exactly as Oscar had.
“La Cueva?” Oscar asked, gesturing all around.
“No, boss,” Chucho said. “The cave is around the corner. But now we stay here.” He tossed Oscar a can of peaches.
Oscar couldn’t see any corner for a cave to be around. But he was far too weary to argue the point, and already savoring the siesta to come. He backed away into canyon shade, lowered his bony rear onto a flat rock, punctured the can with his pocket knife and sucked out the syrupy contents. When he glanced up, Angel and Chucho were cross-legged and face to face in the full sun, taking turns poking their bamboo stick in each other’s nostrils and shooting up with their black magic powder.
Just look at ’em, Oscar thought. A pair of fucking yopo addicts!
He watched, fascinated, as the hallucinogen kicked in. Their tongues protruded, saliva pearled and drooled from their slack jaws. Eyelids fluttered, eyes rolled up. Persimmon skin, already slick with perspiration, now seemed to be streaming sweat. In a moment, Oscar realized, both men would be senseless.
But it took an instant for the significance of this to hit him.
When it did, he glanced slyly around—and directly into the dark, suddenly frightened eyes of their captive, who was slumped against a boulder less than five meters away. Obviously, she, too, had realized the possible ramifications of this quaint Kamarakota ritual. Her guardian “Angel” had temporarily checked out of this world and into another. Until he returned, she was without her protector.
Oscar winked at her.
Chapter Forty-Eight
But the girl didn’t react properly. She simply stared back at him. And the look Oscar had read as simple fear seemed subtly compounded now with other emotions. Wariness, perhaps. Even cunning. And then it struck Oscar, as it must have her—with the Kamarakotas in psychedelic stupor, not only had Señorita Lee lost her protector, but Oscar had lost his backup. The instant Oscar succumbed to sleep, there would be no one watching her. She was obviously waiting for that to happen. And then what? Would she try to escape down the canyon? Or come at him with the machete?
Lagarta! Lizard-bitch!
It was about time Oscar taught her a real lesson. Unfortu-nately, that long-overdue resolve and the gratifying images it conjured lasted hardly a moment. She might appear bedraggled, but the level look in her eyes told him she was far from defeated. She’d fight back like a she-cat and scream her lungs out to rouse her unconscious champion. And Oscar didn’t much feel like wrestling a just-awakened, drug-crazed monster. The bitch definitely wasn’t worth that kind of risk.
Of course, he could outwait her, stay vigilant till she collapsed. But the sweetly insidious tide of sleep was already tugging at him. He had to act while some strength remained. He shuffled over to the packs, pulled out the things he needed. Both brothers had now toppled over, Angel emitting an intermittent growl not unlike that of their outboard motor.
“Please do not scream, señorita,” Oscar said as he approached her. “I am not going to touch you—if you cooperate. But I have to take a siesta, and I have to make sure you will be here when I awaken.”
She eyed the ropes dangling from his left hand and replied in disgust. “Where am I going to go? I can barely walk.”
“Please, it is not a discussion, señorita. Here.”
In his right hand he proffered an open can of peaches and a plastic jug of water.
“Just put them down. I’ll have them later.”
“You will have them now, señorita. Or you must wait hours from now, if you’re lucky.”
He squatted near, trying to keep his eyelids open while she gulped down the contents of both containers—angrily but greedily enough. When she was finished, he instructed her how to hobble herself, tying knotted loops around each ankle with a short rope. Next he had her make a knot around one wrist, then stretch both hands behind her.
“It’s too damn tight,” she complained, even before he’d finished securing her wrists. “You’re cutting off the circulation. I can’t sleep like this.”
Oscar loosened his knot slightly. “Is that satisfactory, Your Highness? And may I suggest that you lie on your side?”
She flashed a look of pure malevolence as he stepped back. Then she did, indeed, roll onto her side away from him—an awkward maneuver with her arms pulled behind. The reclining posture also accentuated the plump swell of her hips, as the river-damp coveralls traced her curves. Though barely sensate now, Oscar felt the stab of desire. But even without the risk, he was too far gone. He parked his butt back on his rock, positioned a canvas pack in what he figured was just the right spot, then fell backward and asleep before his head hit the improvised pillow.
Jacqueline, however, did not sleep. While repelling wave after wave of fatigue, she was already trying to kick loose her ankle bonds and feeling around for sharp stones to cut through her wrist ropes. But all the rocks and pebbles she fingered were river-smoothed, and her wrists seemed awfully secure, even though Oscar had pretended to loosen the knot after her complaint. Her best bet, she decided, was to concentrate on her legs. She had tied those hobbles herself and managed a slipshod job, despite his watching. If only she were a contortionist, she’d jackknife down and open the knots with her teeth. But in order to accomplish anything, she had to stay awake.
*
It was just after one o’clock when they came to the chain of spillways and rock-rimmed pools. Sam and Enrico, their shirts and shorts saturated with salty perspiration, exchanged a quick glance. Then, after removing a few non-immersibles such as wallets and Enrico’s belt radio, the pair climbed down to the nearest pool and slid in fully dressed. Moments later they were joined in the pink-tinted, crystalline water by D.W. Those portions of his round face not masked by golf cap and mirrored sunglasses were seriously sunburned; sunblock had not been on their morning checklist. After a welcome cool-off, which, under other circumstances, would have been wonderfully refreshing, all three hauled themselves out, allowing their guide his own brief dip.
Shortly after they’d gotten underway again, wading through shallows upstream from the pools, Enrico reached down and brought up what looked to Sam like a soggy red scuba booty or lea
ther-bottomed mukluk. But D.W. grunted as if stomach-punched, then took the dripping article in his hands.
The quilted-nylon uppers were badly torn up, most of the goose-down stuffing gone. He turned the booty over, staring at the suede bottom, and in particular at several burn-scalloped holes. Again, D.W.’s distress was partly concealed by his sunglasses, but the bitter set of his lower lip revealed much. It wasn’t necessary for the others to know that D.W. had seen his daughter wearing this slipper that night on the burning ship, or that he’d ordered it from her favorite outdoor catalogue.
There was no question now that they were on the right trail, and that they were very close. But what did its abandonment mean? Had she dropped it on purpose, as she’d wound those glistening black telltales on that low branch? Or had the booty simply come loose in the stream somewhere above and been carried down?
D.W. slipped the waterlogged booty into Enrico’s pack. Then they continued quietly, all four men eyeing not only both embankments now, but also the swirling current for any other objects.
*
Chucho, who had been roving the forested hills in his jaguar spirit-body, returned suddenly to his own yopo-tranced form and shook himself awake. There had been a sound—not the constant lullaby of the river or the afternoon windsong in the trees, and not an animal cry or bird call. No, he had heard the heavy, lifeless tread of civilizados. People were coming. He sat up, ears and eyes tracking, nostrils dilating.