She took a chance and showed them her American passport. She told them that she was on her way to visit friends who were among the missionaries at Barranco Lajoya. This, plus her excellent command of Spanish, seemed to appease them. They didn’t bat an eyelash when she pulled her Beretta out of her bag and strapped the holster to her waist. If anything, they were amused.
Then they began to ask more questions. They asked her why she was carrying a gun. She answered, why not carry a gun? They laughed and accepted the answer.
“The last time we were in this aircraft, we took seven bullets from rebels,” the younger one said, making conversation. “But we were flying over near Colombia that day. Today we go southeast toward Brazil.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
The older cop added that once they had sufficient altitude, small arms fire couldn’t touch them. And if it did, it wouldn’t penetrate. And if it did penetrate, it would be spent. And if it were spent, they could pick it up and throw it out the door.
“And if it did wound someone, the wound wouldn’t be too bad, sí?” Alex asked, picking up their facetious tone. “And if the wound was bad, we’d fly to a hospital.”
They laughed again. “¡Claro, claro!” they said.
She swatted at a pair of mosquitoes that had somehow followed them into the aircraft. The policemen watched her as she reapplied some DEET lotion to her legs, even though she was already breaking a sweat. She caught them looking at her and gave them a smile. She felt she had won them over.
The helicopter lifted off into the low mist that covered the city, then broke through the clouds and hovered near the mountains, the aircraft listing to its port side dramatically. She held tightly to her seatbelt with one hand and her seat with the other. At one point, she reckoned, they were no more than two hundred feet above the treetops, and her heart gave a huge surge when a downdraft brought them half that distance lower.
The pilot righted the craft with a sudden jerky motion. They listed starboard violently, as if swinging in a gondola on a cable. Then the mountaintops became distant and they were well above them. The chopper banked and headed south. Alex kept track of directions by their relation to the sun.
The interior of the helicopter was stuffy and hot. Twenty minutes into the flight, Manuel pushed open the side door to the helicopter. “You’ll get a better view this way,” he said. “Plus, we’ll get more air.”
He was right. The open door cooled the helicopter. She and Manuel sat strapped into seats at the open door. There was a gun turret there also, but no weapon. The policemen retreated to a corner, broke out a deck of cards and started to play, having no interest in what lay below. Alex guessed they had seen it a thousand times. That, or they didn’t want their uniforms to serve as airborne target practice.
They flew low between gaps in the mountains over breathlessly rugged undisturbed scenery. They crossed a long, wide savanna and then a blue river; then the jungle below thickened, though it was crisscrossed with rivers and lakes. The journey was hot, and the motor of the helicopter was thunderous.
Below, green stretched in every direction beneath a low haze. At one point they came to a clearing where there were modern houses and communities. Alex scanned carefully. She saw few vehicles and no people.
“Who lives out here?” she said.
She took out the digital camera and began taking random pictures.
Manuel answered. “Nadie. No one any more. There were merchants here. Rubber merchants. But it’s no longer safe.”
“Rebels?” she asked.
“Bandidos.”
Alex nodded.
After ninety minutes, the chopper flew over one of the most beautiful areas of the country, the Canaima lagoon and its surroundings. The lagoon was fed by several small waterfalls. Mist hung above the falls. She was surprised by the changing color of the water and sand. In several places, both took on a reddish hue. In some paces the sand was a light pink because of the presence of quartz. She took out the digital camera and recorded what she saw.
Beyond that, they passed over several flattop mountains. Several mining settlements had dug in. She could see machinery and movement on the ground, plus big gouges in the forests and earth. She took more photographs.
They arrived in La Paragua after a two-hour flight. A Jeep was there for them, along with a driver named José. He was a young man, maybe eighteen, with a handsome smile and an Argentine accent. A lunch of chicken, beans, and rice waited in the car, along with chilled bottled water in a crate with ice. Alex quickly won José’s approval by talking about the ins and outs of Argentine soccer.
The police departed in their own direction, giving Alex a final glance as they departed, admiration mixed with approval and a hint of subdued lechery.
Manuel, Alex, and José then began a three-hour trek over bumpy roads as they drew closer to Barranco Lajoya. The men rode in the front. Alex preferred to have more room to herself by sitting in the rear, but she continued to chat up both her driver and guide.
In some areas, mud on the road was so deep that it sucked at the tires of the vehicle. In one area, one entire lane of the road had been washed away by a mudslide. The road hadn’t been repaired, but the line in the middle had been redrawn. At another area, there was a one-lane “bridge” that was nothing more than a sheet of metal dragged across a fifteen-foot crater. Manuel and Alex got out of the Jeep and crossed the bridge on foot in advance of the Jeep in case the vehicle tumbled.
The roads weren’t bad, they were hideous. To make it worse, Manuel kept looking at the side rearview mirror. Alex asked twice if for any reason he thought they were being followed. Both times, Manuel answered only with a shrug.
“These days in Venezuela,” Manuel finally grumbled, “anything is possible.”
SIXTY-FIVE
The Jeep halted at the side of a clearing. Beyond, a narrow path wound up the mountain between trees and rocks. The path was deeply rutted, the ruts flooded with water.
José stopped the vehicle and they all stepped out.
The late afternoon was so hot that steam rose from the mud. Low swarms of flies and gnats settled into little clouds above the mud. Alex fixed her hair into a ponytail, put on a cap to protect her head, and plastered herself with DEET for the third time.
“Barranco Lajoya is about a mile up the mountain,” Manuel said. “From here we go on foot. When God made this place, he must have been in a bad mood.”
She might have hiked up the mountain in long pants, despite the constant risk of insect or snake bits, but the heat ruled that out. Malaria was also rampant, so was rabies, and anything that flew or crawled had a good chance of being poisonous. She hoisted her pack onto her back and adjusted the weapon in her holster. The sheath with the knife was arranged on her left hip.
“The climb is steep,” Manuel said. “Take plenty of water.”
She put two one-liter bottles in her backpack and tied a fresh canteen at her waist.
“Los machetes,” José reminded them. “Tigritos, ¿ustedes saben?”
She frowned. José explained. There were occasionally jaguars on the mountain, he said. They tended not to attack during the day, but one never knew. If the big cats were hungry enough, they would go after anything. Manuel took a machete with him, for protection as much as slashing through the underbrush. Alex at first declined, then took one.
Both Alex and Manuel checked the ammunition in their sidearms. If they needed the pistols, they might need them in a hurry. With a final gesture, José produced a pair of bracelets, suitable for ankle or wrist. They were made out of light wood, slatted with thin but strong wires running through connecting the beads. He proposed that they each wear one. Within one of the slats on each was a variation on a SIM card, a small directional chip.