I wrestled with the tangle of leather straps and metal clasps until I was pretty certain I wouldn’t fall out.
“You just settle back,” the pilot said. “I’ve been making this trip for decades. Nothing to worry about.”
“Decades?” I said, trying to think clearly through the haze of my sickness and fear. “Where are you taking me?”
“Johurá village, what was. Lot more to it now.”
“And you’ve been flying there for decades?” A thought struck me. “Did you fly the Wyatts?”
He laughed. “Yes, I surely did. How do you know them?”
“I met Katherine,” I said.
“No kidding. You know Kay? Now that’s one incredible lady.” He grinned, his beard parting to reveal very white teeth, and held out his hand. “Nate Carter. Missions aviator, forty-three years and counting. I’ve clocked thousands of hours in this baby, dropping folks like Kay all over the Amazon. Even more in my old Helio Courier. Now that was a plane—better than anything else in its class. Couldn’t get enough avgas, though, so we had to trade up to something that could burn jet fuel.”
He kept on talking as the engine roared to life, drowning out most of his words. I wasn’t sure the words were really meant for me, anyway. Nate seemed more like a taxi driver who had to talk to his passengers to stay sane. He leaned out the window and shouted “Abram caminho!”—the Portuguese equivalent of “Watch out!” or “Stand clear!”—and the plane kicked forward along the runway with surprising speed. The vibrations rattled my teeth and shuddered in my chest. Sooner than I expected, the ground dropped away, so fast it was like falling into the sky.
“That’s the PC-6 for you,” the pilot said, seeing my surprise. “Jumps into the air like you’re riding a rocket. Some of the places I land, you couldn’t get yourself out again with anything less.”
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted above the engine noise. “You’re a missions pilot, not a kidnapper.”
Nate looked genuinely surprised. “Kidnap? Is that what you call it? I guess I could see that, from your point of view. But trust me, once you see what’s happening there, you won’t be sorry.”
Porto Velho soon fell out of sight behind us, and cultivated fields gave way to thick rainforest. The green treetops stretched to the horizon in every direction, the details of branches and leaves blending together from this distance, giving the impression we were flying across an algae-covered sea. A wide, muddy river cut through the green, looping back on itself in serpentine curves, like a giant anaconda swimming through the algae.
I pointed. “Is that the Rio Maici?”
He looked where I was pointing, and then laughed. “Not hardly. That’s the Rio Madeira, and it’s practically an ocean compared to the Maici. Settle back, my friend. We’ve got miles to fly before we rest.”
It had been evening when we set out, and the sun hung low in the west, staining the sky with vivid orange and purple hues. If not for my spasming cough and the terror of losing control of my mind, it might have been beautiful. As it was, I barely thought about it, until the sun sank lower, and the green treetops faded to black.
“Nate?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“How can you land this thing at night? Doesn’t it get pretty dark out here?”
“Back in the day, you’d be right,” he said. “Night out here comes down on you like somebody shut the lid on a box. One minute, there’s enough light you can almost read by it. The next it’s so dark you can’t find a book that’s sitting in your lap.”
“So… what’s different now?”
He grinned at me. “You’ll see soon enough.”
We flew on. The sun dwindled to a sliver, then disappeared entirely. As Nate had predicted, the darkness fell suddenly. It took me a moment to realize that I could still see, and another moment to realize why.
The rainforest was glowing.
As far as I could see in every direction, the trees radiated a greenish light. The leafy canopy itself remained dark, but something underneath it shone brightly enough to illuminate our way. As we flew, gaps in the trees revealed glimpses of twisting lines of luminescence, like branching lightning, underneath the canopy.
I couldn’t help it. “It’s beautiful,” I said. We could now see what I assumed was the Maici, a river so serpentine the loops almost met each other in places. In places, I caught sight of the water, which glinted in the forest’s glow.
“There’s our landing strip,” Nate said.
I looked. “Where?”
“That dark spot to the north. See it? Eleven o’clock.”
I saw the spot he indicated, but it didn’t seem possible. Not a clearing so much as a gash in the tree line, barely visible except for a darker color of foliage.
“You’re going to land in that?”
He didn’t answer. He flipped a switch, and the engine changed timbre. We started to descend. As we approached, I could see the landing strip, but actually landing there didn’t seem possible. It was a short stretch of tall grass that looked barely longer than a football field, and so narrow I thought Nate would have to tip the aircraft on its side to fit the wings through.
Nate seemed unfazed, however, and I assumed he knew what he was doing. He buzzed the strip once, peering out the window at the ground, apparently checking for obstacles. On the second approach, he went for it, diving at the grass at an angle so steep I involuntarily raised my arms to protect my face. We thundered toward the ground, propeller spinning, and threaded the needle between the trees. There seemed to be only inches between the tips of the wings and the branches on either side. The wheels hit with a gentle lurch, and Nate did something to the flaps, slowing us as quickly as if he’d thrown a parachute out the back. The uneven ground threw us roughly about, but in moments the plane had stopped just short of the end of the grass.
I took a deep breath and let it out. The breath turned out to be a mistake, however, because it turned into a fit of coughing, and it was a while before I could catch my breath. I wondered how long it would take the lung infection to clear up without medical care.
“Still kicking back there?” Nate asked.
“For the moment.” Now that we were on the ground, my fear of what I would find here came roaring back. As far as I knew, I might have only hours left as the sole master of my mind. Certainly not more than a day. My only hope was to escape from the rainforest, but that didn’t seem likely. I felt so sick I could barely walk, and I didn’t know how to fly an airplane, much less take off from a landing strip the size of a playing card.
I managed to unstrap myself and climb out of the airplane on my own strength. The glow was all around me, emanating from the trees on every side. The sky above, though the stars were now visible, seemed dim by comparison.
A familiar figure strode out of the forest and crossed the grass toward me. It was my brother.
Paul walked toward me, arms open wide. He wore loose tan cotton pants and no shirt. He looked healthy, well-muscled, tanned and weathered by the outdoors. I staggered to meet him. When he came within range, I swung a punch at his head with the whole weight of my body behind it.
I’ve never been a fighter, but I took him by surprise. My knuckles connected with his mouth, and both of us went down, him on his backside and me flat on my face. I struggled to my knees, meaning to hit him again, but my body betrayed me with a violent fit of coughing. I doubled over and spat blood onto the ground.
“You bastard,” I said when I could catch my breath. “Is this who you are now? Kidnapping? Bioterrorism? You infected your own family.”