JAKE PULLED THE DIRT BIKE over on a ridge overlooking Aeropuerto Guaymaral. The single-strip, general aviation airport was eighteen kilometers north of Bogota. It was a base for a pilot training school, and home to over a hundred small to midsize aircraft of various types. After Jake switched off the motor, he and Alex slid off the bike. It had been a tense ride there, both constantly looking over their shoulders to see if they were being followed. But they’d escaped unnoticed, and Jake allowed himself to relax for a moment.
Alex hadn’t spoken a word since saying good-bye to his friends, one of whom had sacrificed his life to save them. Jake crouched down and clasped his son’s shoulders. “You okay?”
Alex blew out a breath. He nodded. “I will be. But I’m worried about my friends.”
His son had been through hell and back, and his first concern was for kids he hadn’t known until a couple of days ago. “There’s no way anyone’s going to find them in that massive crowd at the concert.” He considered the devastation left in their wake. The woman, the dirty cops, the guards—all dead. The police would have their hands full dealing with that, giving the kids plenty of time to get away. “Yeah, I’m sure they’re fine.”
“I hope so, Dad. They’re good kids. They deserve some peace.”
Jake suspected his son was speaking about himself as well. But despite receiving what amounted to a death sentence, Alex had shown he was not one to wallow in self-pity. Instead, he’d focused on helping others.
“You’re a remarkable boy. I’m very proud of you.”
“Like father, like son.”
Jake smiled. “I guess you know where we’re headed.”
“Yeah, and I get the feeling we’d better hurry. You know how we’re going to get there?”
Jake stared at the airfield down below. “I’ve given it some thought.”
“I figured you might’ve.”
“It’s a long way.”
“Eleven hundred and twenty-five kilometers as the crow flies. That’s six hundred and ninety-six miles.”
“Show-off,” Jake said, mussing his son’s hair.
“No. If I was showing off, I would have said 695.935735 miles.” Alex forced a smile.
“I could have said that, too, you know.”
“As I said, like father, like son.”
“Let me see those binoculars your friend gave you. We need to upgrade our ride.”
***
An hour later he and Alex were flying over the treetops of the vast Chingaza National Park in the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes mountain range. The three hundred-hp engine of the Cessna U206 Amphibian purred like a kitten, and while the worn interior of the forty-year-old, six-passenger aircraft showed signs of its age, it was apparent the power plant and systems had been well maintained.
Finding an airplane that could go the distance had been the easy part. Finding an amphibian, now that, had been a stroke of luck. There weren’t many airports in the depths of the Amazon rainforest, but there were plenty of waterways. The Cessna had been one of several aircraft parked on the tarmac outside a commercial flight school. It was located in an isolated area at one end of the airfield, and at that late hour the only people around were a couple of bored security guards, whom they’d bound and gagged behind a hangar. Jake had gassed up the plane and taken off without clearance. That’s when all hell had broken loose, and the controller had blared warnings over his headset. Jake had made some pleas about a medical emergency, and that had bought him just enough time to disappear into the mountains.
He’d headed north at first, to throw off any pursuit. Then he’d broadcast an emergency message that he’d lost power and was going down. Thirty seconds later he’d switched off the transponder and GPS, dove for the deck, and altered course toward Brazil, hugging the treetops to stay off radar.
Jake closed himself off to all but the energy from the mini, taking care to tap only enough to heighten his vision in the night sky. Flying this low was dangerous, particularly in unfamiliar mountainous terrain. The aircraft had its own radar but he couldn’t risk using it, so a hundred percent of his focus was required as he maneuvered the plane through one narrow canyon after another. When they finally broke clear of the mountain range, the rolling agricultural plains of Colombia’s heartland stretched to the horizon in a patchwork quilt of rich fields. It was nearly midnight, and avoiding the few clusters of lights below was an easy matter.
The smartphone Marshall had given him sat in a console pocket beneath the dash. Jake wondered if now was the time to finally call Francesca to let her know Alex was okay.
“We can’t call her yet,” Alex said, as if reading Jake’s thoughts. “It’ll only make things worse when we tell her where we’re going. Besides, is that phone really secure? Just because Uncle Marshall said it was?”
“On the run for two days, and now you’re an expert at staying off the grid, is that it?”
“Trust me, I’ve learned some stuff.” Alex’s eyes went distant. “Lots of stuff.”
Jake studied him. They hadn’t discussed the mysterious disease that was aging Alex at an accelerated rate. Jake hadn’t wanted to bring it up any more than he imagined his son wanted to talk about it. But Jake saw the faint wrinkle lines around his son’s eyes, and the freckles on his arms that hadn’t been there before. Francesca had said Alex had less than six months to live, and the thought of it tore at Jake’s heart.
“Mom misses you. She’s worried sick.”
“I figured she would be when I ran away. But I didn’t have much choice, did I? Doc said government men were looking for me, and my being around put them in even more danger than they were already in. So I had to leave.” Alex held his father’s gaze. “Just like you.”
After a long moment of silence, Jake said, “It’ll be another four hours before we arrive. Why don’t you lie down in the back and get some shut-eye?”
Alex nodded and crawled in the back. Jake refocused on the task at hand. The wild and unforgiving Amazon River basin was as big as the forty-eight contiguous United States, and they were headed straight into the heart of it.
***
An hour and a half later they crossed the border into Brazil. The clouds had passed, and the night sky was ablaze with stars. A half-moon illuminated the landscape. Even though he’d expected it, what Jake saw tightened his gut. Instead of a never-ending canopy of trees, a bleak wilderness stretched to the horizon. It was dotted with the remnants of fallen trees, a grim reminder of the pressing war between man and nature. Up ahead he spotted the silhouette of a large herd of cattle. Most were lying down, but a few stood eating grass. It was hard to tell from only the moon’s reflection, but the ground behind the herd appeared to be absent of any vegetation. He imagined the cattle eating their way across the landscape like termites gnawing through a home.
The cattle scattered at the Cessna’s low-flying pass. Plumes of smoke obscured the distant horizon, where he suspected controlled fires had been set to replenish the soil and clear more brush for the next season. He’d done a lot of reading on the flight to Bogota, grateful that the commercial airliner offered internet access. He’d learned Brazil was home to over two hundred million heads of cattle, a booming industry built at the cost of stripping away a large part of the rainforest that had enriched the planet for eons.
“It seems to go on forever,” Alex said, as he crawled back to the front seat.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Bad dream.”
Jake waited for him to elaborate. Instead, Alex gestured ahead and asked, “How far does it go?”
Jake thought back to what he’d read. “Over two hundred and twenty thousand square miles. A swath of destruction nearly as large as the states of California and Oregon combined.”
“It’s horrible. Can’t they see what’s happening here?”
“People tend to see what they want to. Sure, there are lots of folks who cry out against what we’re doing to the planet, but there are many more who’d prefer to bury their heads in the sand. It’s going to require strong leadership to make the kind of changes necessary to avert the global disaster looming ahead—leaders willing to do what’s right, rather than kowtow to the shortsighted demands of the moneymen who supported their rise to power. That will require a level of personal courage rarely found in politicians these days.”
“Maybe it’s just as well that I’ll be dead in six months, because the world is going to hell.”
If Jake had been driving a car just then, he would’ve pulled over. “Don’t talk like that. Hope isn’t lost when there are people like you and your friends on the planet, willing to sacrifice your lives for the sake of others. It’s heroes like you who are going to make things right.”
“And heroes like you…” Alex said, his voice trailing off.
They sat in silence for a moment, until Alex nodded as if having decided something. He retrieved a tablet from his backpack.
Jake said, “You know you can’t get internet access up here, right?”
“Duh.”
He was grateful his son hadn’t lost his sense of humor. Hiding sadness or fear behind a veil of humor was something Jake was all too accustomed to, a trait born from years packed with far too many challenges. It was one more characteristic Alex had picked up from him. “You’re quite the smartass.”
“You’re not half wrong. Except my new friends called me a friggin’ genius. I prefer that moniker over smartass.”
Jake grinned. “A moniker? Really? Well, I’m not about to call you genius, because that’ll just go to your head.” He winked.
Alex rolled his eyes at the play on words, but he couldn’t completely hide the beginnings of a smile. “Corny.”
“Let’s see, the world knows me as the Global Terrorist, so you could be Son of GT, or Kid Terror, or…”
Alex chuckled. “You’re weird, Dad.”
Jake pantomimed spreading open his shirt like a superhero brandishing his logo. “I know, you can call me Brainman!”
Alex shook his head, but his smile was wide and free.
“Brainman,” Alex said in the best dramatic accent he could muster. “Faster than a speeding Cessna!”
Jake matched his tone. “More powerful than an alien grid!”
“Able to leap herds of cattle in a single bound!”
They laughed heartily together. Jake reached over to tickle his son to keep it going. It had been way too long since they’d shared a moment like this. He pulled his hand away. “I got it,” he said with a grin. “If I’m Brainman, your official moniker should be Brainchild!”
Alex’s countenance shifted. His mouth hung open in mid-laugh, but no sound came out. He sagged into the seat and tears moistened his eyes. “I won’t be a child much longer, not from what Mom said.”
Jake sobered up. “Yeah, I heard about that. How’re you feeling?”
“Scared.”
“Me, too, son. Me, too…”
“It’s not fair.”
“I know.” Jake took his hand. The physical connection, heightened by the mini in Jake’s pocket, allowed them to share their sadness, worry, anger—and so much more—without words, their minds merging in a kaleidoscope of memories of the incredible adventures they’d shared, measuring them against the unknown of what awaited them in the dark jungles ahead. They sat that way for several long moments. It was Alex who finally broke free.
“So anyway,” Alex said, drawing out the words. “Even though I could probably figure out a way to get internet access using that sat phone in your backpack, it’s not necessary. I downloaded all the wiki pages I thought we’d need while you were off stealing this plane.”
Alex powered up the tablet and opened a folder containing what looked like hundreds of files. He opened the first twenty in a series of overlapping windows. He scrolled through the first article, and Jake knew he was capturing details as fast as a high-speed scanner converting printed pages into PDF files. Ten seconds later Alex was on to the next file, and the next, and when he’d finished digesting all twenty files, he looked up at Jake with wide eyes. “Did you know that the deadliest living spider in the world lives in the Amazon rainforest?”
“Yeah. The Phoneutria, or wandering spider,” Jake said, pulling from his own bank of memorized articles. “So called because they don’t bother with webs. Instead, they crawl around at night like crazed hunters on the loose.” A chill tickled his neck. He hated spiders.
“And I suppose you know about the red-bellied piranhas, with razor-sharp triangular teeth, and jaws powerful enough to strip the flesh of a large animal in minutes? Or the electric eels that can zap you with a six-hundred-volt charge that could stop your heart?”
“Yep, let’s avoid swimming.”
“No kidding, because if the piranhas or eels don’t get you, the four-hundred-pound black caiman crocodiles will. That’s assuming, of course, that you haven’t first been wrapped in the hungry embrace of a five-hundred-pound, twenty-seven-foot long anaconda, or pounced on by a jaguar. Jeeze, Dad. Humans are nothing more than a tasty treat down there. How do people live in the midst of all that?”
Good question. Jake didn’t bother adding that the area they were headed into—the Vale do Javari—was considered one of the most isolated places in the world. It was a vast jungle landscape the size of Austria, riddled with twisting rivers and inhabited by dozens of indigenous tribes, many of which had remained “uncontacted” because of their aggressive response to intruders. He’d learned that the Brazilian government stopped sending emissaries into that part of the jungle years ago because none ever returned.
And we’re being pulled straight toward it.
“Keep reading. We’re both going to need our wits about us if we expect to survive down there.”
They flew on in silence.
Two hours later the swath of eco destruction was hundreds of miles behind them. Jake had thousands of hours of flying time under his belt, much of it at night, but he’d never encountered an expanse of darkness like the one stretching out ahead of them. They were seventy-five miles from their destination, and no sign of civilization could be seen in any direction. Not a single light. The moon had dipped below the horizon, and the starlight had little chance of penetrating the thick canopy of trees. The only visible terrain feature was the flickering reflection off the flowing rivers and tributaries snaking in a never-ending series of hairpin turns.
“Is it going to be difficult to find a straight enough stretch of water to land in?” Alex asked.
“Landing’s not the problem. Once the skids touch the water, I cut power and we’ll pretty much stop on a dime. Taking off, though, is an entirely different matter. Because of the drag caused by the water, and the fact that this baby is a pretty heavy utility aircraft, we’ll need a straight stretch of at least two thousand feet. Make that three thousand feet if we have to clear trees at the end of the run.”
“More than half a mile,” Alex said, studying the squiggles of rivers. “Not going to find a stretch that long down there.”
“You’re right, but we should be okay at Frank’s. The river there is wide and straight.” It had required an intense Google search to isolate the location. It wasn’t as simple as zooming in on satellite views along the river system feeding the area, because so little was visible beneath the trees skirting the banks. And they needed far more than just a landing spot. They’d fled Bogota in a hurry, with no gear. They needed to get outfitted. Food, clothing, camping gear, weapons—the lot. Most important of all, they needed to hire a guide. Jake had faced a lot of challenges in his life, but trekking through deadly rainforests wasn’t one of them. Going off on their own would be a death sentence. He’d scoured the web for local help. The villages that popped up on his search were few and far between, and none were within striking distance of Jake and Alex’s destination. Only by speed-scanning hundreds of travel and adventure blogs had he finally found the small fishing village that was home to Frank’s.
“Frank’s Last Chance Bar sounds a little ominous,” Alex said. “Don’t you think?”
“We’re Bronsons. We do ominous with our eyes closed.” He winked.
Alex rewarded him with a crooked smile that matched his own.
It was 5:30 a.m., and the first glow of sunrise peeked from the horizon. He switched on the plane’s GPS long enough to confirm their position and track, then turned it off.
“We’ll be landing in thirty minutes.”\