Wolfie said, “So we hop a ride to this town, Capurgana, call home, and get on the first flight back to the States. From there, we just let the police take care of Desmond and Scarface — if they haven’t already found the bodies in the Escape Room.”
“Good plan,” said Kate. “Just one little problem. There are no roads to Capurgana, and definitely no airports. Guys, we are located along the border of Colombia and Panama. It’s a place known as the Darien Gap.”
Tahoe exchanged puzzled looks with Wolfie. “What?” she asked. “What is the Darien Gap?”
Kate said, “Only the most dangerous, most remote jungle in all of Central and South Americas.”
“Dangerous?” Wolfie said.
“This entire jungle is a haven for drug smugglers, using its remoteness to its advantage,” she explained. “It’s also home to revolutionaries from Colombia who have been fighting the Colombian government for decades. Kidnappings and assassinations happen all the time here.”
“Well that explains the lack of Hiltons on the beach,” Wolfie said.
“Oh, there’s more. The Darien Gap is also famous for being the only place where there are no roads. It is literally a blank spot on the map between South America and Central America. Anyone who tries to cross the Gap has to cut through the jungle, the mountains, thick swamps, a hundred different species of biting insects and venomous snakes.”
Kate’s description of the Darien Gap left the others speechless.
“There’s another option,” she said. “But I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”
“Try us,” Chance said. “It’s not like we’re swimming in great options right now.”
“Felipe told me that a group of men arrived in the village a few days ago. On motorcycles. They’re trying to make a crossing from here north to Panama, to the Pan-American Highway at a town called Yaviza. It’s just on the northern edge of the Darien Gap.”
“What do you mean, trying to make a crossing?” Wolfie pressed.
“Never mind that,” Chance said. “Why does it matter if there are a group of bikers headed up through the jungle? How does that help at all?”
Kate said, “If we can talk them into giving us a ride, we can get out of here faster. It beats heading farther south to a town that doesn’t have any roads, never mind an airport. We’d just be going in the wrong direction.”
“Yeah, but there are phones in that direction,” Wolfie protested. “We can at least call the police back home, call our families and let them know we’re safe. If we’ve been gone this long, they’re for sure worried about us.”
Jenny, who had been her typical quiet self, said, “I just want to get home. The sooner the better.”
“We don’t even know anything about these motorcycle guys,” Wolfie protested.
“It sounds like they have to be a little crazy,” Tahoe added. “just to even try to make the crossing.”
“We can’t make any decision until we talk to the guys,” Chance said. “Let’s go talk to them, see if they’re even willing to give us a lift, and then go from there.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
They found the adventurers in one of the huts at the fringe of the village. Five of them, three men and two women, all heavily tattooed, dressed in leather and denim. Part of a biker gang, they said. No fixed address. Right out of central casting, these people.
But beneath all the ink and the heavy leather jackets, the group couldn’t have been nicer. They listened sympathetically to Chance as he told them what had happened, about their need to get back home.
The leader of the group was a bear of a man named Bigfoot. In a rich baritone, he explained that they had shipped their bikes south to the Colombian port of Titumate, then sailed north to Capurgana on small fisherman’s boats. Their goal was to complete a historic crossing attempted by an adventurer named Danny Liska.
Back in the winter of 1960, Liska was attempting a motorcycle trip from Alaska to Argentina. He plunged into the Darien Gap but was forced to ditch his motorcycle in the thick jungle. He eventually completed the crossing on foot. Bigfoot and his crew were going to finish what Liska had started, on bikes all the way through the Gap.
“The distance through isn’t really that far,” Bigfoot told them. “Just 100 kilometers or so. The hard part isn’t the distance, it’s the jungle itself. The trail is overgrown. We’ll need machetes to slash our way through.”
“How long do you expect to be in the jungle before you reach Panama City?” Chance asked.
“Hard to say,” Bigfoot conceded. “Depends on the condition of the trail. Two or three days, maybe?”
“And you have room for five stowaways?” Chance asked.
The big man nodded. “We’ve got room on the bikes, but you’d have to work for the ride. Help us cut through the brush. And it would be cool if we can help you get back home. We’re down with that, too.”
They thanked Bigfoot and said goodbye, leaving the gang to their final preparations. The motorcyclists would be leaving the next morning, so they would have to make a decision quickly.
Kate said, “I just want to get home. I think we need to cut through the jungle with Bigfoot.”
“Can you hear yourself?” Wolfie exclaimed. “Cut through the jungle with Bigfoot? In what universe do those words constitute a plan? We need to get to town and use the phone. We can catch a boat from there.”
“I’m with Wolfie on this one,” Tahoe said. The pair was sticking together.
Chance considered the options. He had gotten a good vibe from Bigfoot and his friends, despite their imposing exteriors. And there was no guarantee they’d be able to catch a boat in Capurgana. If he was being honest with himself, he liked the idea of having some company. If Desmond and Scarface still wanted them dead, it was far better to stick with Bigfoot and his burly cohorts. And yet the prospect of a spending several nights in the unforgiving jungle was just too much. They weren’t adventurers. Now was not the time to take a risk.
“I think Kate is right,” Chance said. “But I think we need to do the smart thing here. And that means staying together and playing it safe. We need to get to a phone and get home. That’s it.”
He looked at Jenny, the only one yet to weigh in. She thought silently for a moment, and then nodded in agreement.
“Let’s go tell Bigfoot that we won’t be joining them,” said Chance. “And then turn in. Tomorrow is going to be a big day, and we need our rest.”
Wolfie and Tahoe had been the ones to inform the motorcycle gang. Kate used her surprising Spanish again with Felipe, who found an empty hut for them for the night. The little girl in the yellow dress — Lala — brought them bread and fresh water.
They slept on the bare earth floor. Despite his exhaustion, Chance could not sleep. The stifling daytime temperatures had dropped significantly, and they had huddled close to ward off the chill. Tahoe and Wolfie lay together, off to the side. Chance stretched out between Kate and Jenny. In any other situation, it would’ve been the stuff of adolescent dreams.
The others had been asleep for hours when Jenny rolled over, closer, murmuring in her sleep. Her body pressed against Chance, and her arm fell across his chest. She was close enough that he could feel the rise and fall of her chest, and soon he felt his own breathes slow in sync with hers. He relaxed.
In a cold, terrifying place, caught up in something he did not understand, the sudden intimacy nearly took his breath.
In that moment, Chance realized he was developing feelings for Jenny Chen. Exotically beautiful, quietly intelligent, fierce spirit. The way she had helped him evade the shooters back on the cargo ship seemed so out of character for her, and yet there was no denying that she had saved his life. She had saved all of them. He was attracted to her in every conceivable way.
Jenny shifted her position, rolled to her back. Her head rested against Chance’s shoulder. And something slipped from her waist.
Her notebook.
It fell open to a page ju
st barely visible in the faint moonlight that filtered in through a hole in the roof. With a free hand, Chance went to shut the journal when he glimpsed some of the writing.
DAY 1 – S2M
Resolute adherence to opinion and idea.
Reax negatively when challenged.
Contr limited to P2 and P4.
DAY 1 – S4K
No observation.
The writing made no sense to Chance. The abbreviations — S2M and S4K — were mysteries, as was the references to P2 and P4. Chance quietly turned a page. It was more of the same, under headings labeled Day 2 and Day 3.
None of it made sense, particularly to Chance’s sleep-deprived, overstressed mind. Were these notations? Observations? Was Jenny watching them?
Jenny murmured something under her breath, purred sleep-talk, and rolled to her other side. Chance closed the notebook and gently slipped it beneath her body.
Chance stared at the moon through the crack in the roof. Jenny’s body was warm beside him, comforting. The soothing rhythm of her slow breathing lulled his eyes closed. But he did not sleep.
TWENTY-TWO
The next morning, they were awakened by shouting.
Lala, the little girl, was standing in the open door of the hut, still dressed in her faded yellow dress, shouting animatedly. She bolted from the doorway, even before any of them had fully emerged from their slumbered cocoons.
Tahoe turned to Kate, “What did she say? What’s going on?”
Kate eyes were etched with concern when she spoke. “There’s been a fire.”
That got them moving. They hurried from the hut into the dirt courtyard. There was no smoke they could see anywhere in the plaza, no acrid scent of burning. They found Felipe drinking tea on the porch of his hut, Lala huddled next to him. They did not look particularly concerned.
“Qué está pasando?” Kate asked him. “Oímos que había un incendio?”
Felipe shook his head. “Agui no. Los soldados rebeldes entraron en un tiroteo en Capurgana. Drogas. Ellos prendieron fuego a algunas casas. Muy peligroso allí ahora.”
Kate quickly translated. “There’s been some kind of fight down in Capurgana between some soldiers and some drug smugglers. Fires have been set all over town. Felipe says it’s dangerous there now.”
Tahoe said what they were all thinking. “Capurgana was our way home.”
“Not anymore,” Chance said.
“What time did Bigfoot say he was leaving?” Wolfie said, suddenly realizing their only other option was about to motor off into the jungle.
As if on cue, the roar of a revving motorcycle roared through the plaza.
“That’s them!” shouted Tahoe. “They’re leaving.”
They found Bigfoot and his friends just outside the village, loading food and extra fuel canisters into black leather saddlebags. A thin dirt track led west, disappearing in the shadows of the thick jungle.
“I thought you might change your minds,” Bigfoot said. “We just heard about the nasty business down in Capurgana.”
“You still up for some company?” Chance asked.
“You still willing to hack trail?”
“Absolutely,” Chance answered.
Bigfoot studied Chance and his friends. He seemed to be evaluating their hardiness for the journey ahead. “Let’s go then,” he said finally. “Let me introduce you to my friends.”
If Bigfoot’s friends had real names, he didn’t share them. Chance hopped onto a bike piloted by a thick woman with a shock of silver hair named Flicker. Wolfie paired up with Snake, a giant of a man nearly as large as Bigfoot, with a ZZ Top beard and a snake tattooed across his neck. Kate joined a second woman who introduced herself as Cyborg. Kate rode in the front with Bigfoot. Tahoe said hello to a fat biker named, seemingly without irony, Fats.
“We don’t have extra helmets,” Bigfoot said. “So don’t fall off.”
While there was no paved road through the Darien Gap, there was something resembling a trail. It was just wide enough for a motorcycle to pass, so long as the riders kept their elbows and knees closely tucked. The jungle was suffocating, oppressive, the air thick with insects. The drone of the bugs was so loud that it could be heard over the motorcycles laboring engines. They often had to duck under low-hanging vines and branches. The trail was an unending puddle of tire-sucking muck that slowed them to a pace little faster than walking. They rode in single file, spaced out to avoid the spray from the spinning rear tire in front of them. Even so, within the first five kilometers, everyone was splattered with mud. They pushed the bikes as much as they rode them.
They managed a respectable 34 kilometers the first day, and slept beside the warm engines beneath the dark cloak of the jungle canopy. If any of them were freaked out by sleeping outside in the elements with the bugs and the snakes and the thousand unseen noises, they didn’t cop to it. For Chance it was simple — he was exhausted. He had wielded the machete for hours, hacking until his arms burned with fatigue. He took a double shift, sparing Jenny, whose shoulder was still bandaged in a makeshift sling. He fell asleep almost instantly.
The next day passed in blur of wet forest, biting insects and slashing machetes. They traveled another 41 kilometers. On the morning of the third day, the jungle closed in on them, and they lost the trail. For three kilometers, they had to carry their bikes over gnarled tree roots and up muddy hillsides. It was slow, backbreaking work. Falls were frequent, and tears flowed. Even the tough exteriors of Bigfoot and his friends broke during this stretch. “It’s like we’re lugging around 400-pound metal backpacks,” Bigfoot grumbled.
Chance and the others were exhausted, but did not complain. With each passing kilometer, they were getting closer to home. That’s what mattered. Bigfoot said that if they could find the trail, they could get to the highway by nightfall.
They slashed at the vines and overhanging branches, hacked at exposed tree roots. After a while, the bugs didn’t even bother them anymore. They rediscovered the trail just north of Cerro Tacarcuna. According to Fats, who apparently was the history buff of the group, the 6,151-foot peak was the ancestral home of the Kuna, the revered origin of their tribe. To Chance, it was an imposing giant that he was glad to pass without having to ascend. They paused in the shadow of the peak to eat.
“Is there any more of that cornbread left?” asked Flicker. The 10 of them sat on the ground in a small clearing. The break in the canopy gave them the first rays of direct sunlight in nearly 48 hours. They tilted their heads to the sky, basking in the warmth.
Snake tossed a fistful of bread to Flicker. “That’s the last of it,” he said.
The group tended to talk in pairs based on riding partners. Kate and Cyborg bonded over the fact they had both once lived in Flagstaff. Tahoe and Fats shared the same kind of biting sense of humor. They could spend hours ragging on each other, with neither taking any real offense. Snake was trying to convince Wolfie to let him tattoo him when they got to Panama City. Jenny and Bigfoot made for an unusual couple. A grizzled bear of a man, Bigfoot was easily twice her size. And yet whenever Chance watched them, they were either laughing or in a hushed conversation.
So he was surprised to find that Jenny had retreated alone to the far edge of the clearing. She sat on a toppled tree trunk, her ever-present notebook on her lap. She was writing in it, as she had almost every day since the escape room.
Chance had not forgotten the writing he had read in her journal. Nor the unsettling feeling of being observed.
“I used to write in a journal,” Chance said, offering her a canteen of water. “You would cringe if you read what the 12-year-old version of me wrote in those pages.”
Jenny quickly shoved the notebook into her jacket, looking embarrassed. She sipped from the canteen eagerly.
“I’m sorry,” Chance said, suddenly feeling foolish. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I’ll leave you to your journal.”
He turned to leave when Jenny said, “No, Chance, wait. I’m always happy for your
company.”
He sat beside her on the lichen-covered log.
“What do you write about?” Chance asked.
Jenny shrugged. “Pretty much anything,” she said.
“Innermost feelings?” Chance smiled.
“You wondering if you’ve made an appearance in these pages?” she asked playfully.
“Oh, I’m sure I have,” Chance said in mock confidence. “There’s probably a page in there just filled with nothing but my name. Am I right?”
“Absolutely,” Jenny said. “Because I’m a 12-year-old girl and that’s exactly what I spend my time doing.”
They laughed, loud enough to draw stares from the others. Chance lowered his voice, and said, “Hey Jenny, about your notebook —”
Chance needed to ask her about the cryptic writing. What did it all mean? Was she really taking notes about them? But when he looked into Jenny’s chestnut eyes, all he really wanted to do was ask if he could hold her.
“Yes?” she prodded.
Chance hesitated. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation for Jenny’s mysterious notes. And what did it matter, anyway? They were almost out of the jungle. All he wanted to think about was getting home and putting all of this behind him.
“Nothing,” he said. “But hey, when we finally get out of here, and get back home …I wonder if maybe you and me can hang out sometime.”
Jenny lifted her gaze to meet Chance’s, held it there for a long moment. Her lack of a response unnerved him. He quickly said, “Or, we could just hang out in the jungle with all the ants.”
Jenny considered Chance with an expression he couldn’t interpret. She seemed to start to speak, then think the better of it. When she spoke again, her demeanor changed. Whatever moment that had been about to unfold between them had turned cooler, more clinical. “I want to ask you a question,” she said. “It’s a bit of a brain teaser.”
Chance leaned back. “Is now really the best time for a puzzle?”
“Ideal, really,” Jenny said. “You ready?”
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