Jungle Lab Terror Page 2

  “Besides,” Max went on as if she hadn’t spoken, “we’re moving out today.”

  Groans met this. The campground was perfect. Colombian patrols never crossed the border and the Panamanians didn’t care they were there. There was food—and it was tasty, even if it was occasionally weird—sunshine and water. Even when it rained, the place would dry out reasonably quickly and be pleasant again the next morning.

  And any moving around meant hiking over the hilly terrain and through the dense forest that had made the Darién Gap one of the least populated places on Earth.

  Max held up a hand. “Yeah, I know. I’m not looking forward to lugging the tents around either, but we’ve got a job to do.”

  Emilio spat into the fire. “A job? Who do we work for?”

  “The same group we always worked for: the downtrodden Colombian poor.”

  “Ah… so they’re back on the agenda…”

  Max kept his cool. Anyone else questioning their dedication to the underprivileged of his country would have taken a bullet, but not Emilio. His father was a hacendado, and Emilio had run from a life of comfort and riches to be there. He knew more about socialist theory than anyone else in the group.

  “I got a call last night.”

  The half-smile disappeared from Emilio’s face, and everyone else sat straighter, the food momentarily forgotten.

  Max basked in the feeling of honor and wonder that he was the leader of this little cell and of the foot soldiers—the peasants and field hands who formed the backbone of the army but weren’t privy to the discussions of the intelligentsia who knew the theory and guided the movement—camped a few hundred meters downstream. “The Captain has taken up arms again.”

  The thrill of excitement that ran through his comrades was palpable. There were no cheers here, no unseemly exultations, but seeing the sense of purpose, of hope, return to the gathered[nm1][nb2] visages was inspiring.

  “Bogotá has gone too far. They think that, just because there was a treaty in place, they can do whatever they like. Well, the Captain has decided that they can’t. We will remind them that, much like they don’t feel they are obligated to make concessions, we are not obligated to submit to their policies.”

  “And what’s going to happen now?” Serena said. She looked frightened, the only one who did.

  “We are going to act. Our orders are to move towards the coast. Twenty kilometers from here, a group of American scientists is studying the effects of climate change on native ant populations.”

  “So? They aren’t dangerous, are they?”

  “Of course not. But the Captain has decided that, in the next phase of the war against the government, we will need hostages… Even if we have to take them in Panama.”

  Emilio nodded with a grim smile. “We should have been doing this long ago. They’ll feel safe in Panama.”

  Max shrugged. “They’re just academics. Even if they were on their guard, how long do you think they could hold out against Coca’s men? Three minutes? What could they do? Run off into the jungle?”

  “Don’t all Americans carry guns?” Serena asked.

  Max laughed. “Only in Texas, my dear. And these aren’t those kinds of Americans. These are the ones in universities. They pretend to love the poor and hate the other Americans, the ones with the guns. They’re soft.”

  “But if they love the poor, should we still take them? I don’t understand.” Serena’s earnest look almost made him laugh, but he saw contempt for her flash across Liliana’s face, and that angered him to the point where he could forgive his lover’s ignorance.

  “They’re Americans. They pretend to care about the poor, but if you try to take away their air conditioning, or their cars, or their fancy coffee, they’ll scream for the Marines. They don’t actually care about the poor outside their country, it’s just fashionable to say they do. They’re the worst kind of hypocrites.” He let his smile widen. “And that makes them the best kind of hostages because if one or two of them should get damaged, we won’t shed too many tears.”

  Emilio laughed.

  “So, I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page. Liliana, I’m putting you in charge of getting our camp packed. I want it done in two hours. Coca, can you lend her five men from the main camp as porters?”

  “Of course. They’ll be happy to help.”

  “Good. How long do you think the men will take to get ready? Would it help if I came over and gave a speech?”

  Coca nodded. “They’d like that.”

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  Ten minutes later, they entered the main camp. It wasn’t too big—attrition had been high over the past few months. They hadn’t suffered combat losses, but troops had wandered off in ones and twos, rejoining the families they’d left behind, losing the fear of the warlord’s power or simply becoming bored with the whole thing and striking out for something else. Men who had nothing to lose.

  But fourteen still remained, ranging from old José, who’d joined one of the cartel’s enforcement arms when he was little more than a boy and still walked the trails forty years later, to Esmeralda, seventeen years old and who carried a year-old baby in a sling. She’d joined with a boyfriend who’d disappeared into the jungle when she told him she was pregnant. The rest of the troops, all men, had rallied around her, supporting her and helping to care for the child when it was born. In Max’s mind, that represented what they were all about: even in the middle of the jungle, where they had nothing, his people had gone all out in support of the member of their tribe who needed help.

  It pained him to force the most important members of his strike team to dwell under the trees, in a damp hollow that never got enough light, but they couldn’t risk being seen. A small camp like the one that held the leaders would be ignored by the small planes holding Colombian government spotters, but a dozen men? They’d be raided immediately, arrested under suspicion of drug trafficking… Even the Panamanians wouldn’t ignore a direct request from Bogotá.

  So the leadership had to be separated from the rank and file. The leaders needed to stay sharp—it was one thing to replace a strong set of arms, but quite another to replace the central knowledge necessary to keep an army like this one, scattered across tens of thousands of square miles of jungle, focused on its goals. Even Serena, innocent as she was in the true ways of the world, had studied political science in Caracas. She might be the proverbial babe in the woods… but she had the theory down to an art.

  He stood on a log and twenty-seven eyes—a man called David had lost one in some long-forgotten altercation—stared up at him with a mixture of respect and expectation. These were the true core, loyal not only when the war was sexy, but also in the hard times, the boring times, when nothing seemed to happen.

  “Good morning, my friends. I know these days have been difficult for you.” He looked around. “This hollow in the woods is wet and miserable. It’s a symbol of how our fight has gone in these past few months.

  “But we knew when we started that this was not a struggle we could win in just a few days. The road we were promised was a long one, and it most certainly has been long and slow. I applaud you for your tenacity in the days that have gone past, and,” he fixed his eyes on the young girl, noting how pretty she was becoming. He smiled at her, “I will find a way to thank each of you personally.”

  He let them think about that.

  “But most of all, I came to tell you that the waiting, the uncertainty, the feeling that the world has forgotten about us, that our cause is buried under everything else that’s happening on the planet, is over. Today, we head out.”

  This time, there was a roar of approval from the troops. Not, perhaps, because they truly felt anything, but because they’d learned that the pauses after a big announcement were there for cheering. So they cheered.

  “And we’re not heading out on a training exercise. This isn’t a political statement. We have a real mission, a combat mission.”

  Again he paused, again they roared.

  “Best of all, the mission isn’t against our own countrymen. Misguided as some Colombians might be, they are still our brothers. A complete victory is one where we can change their thinking, bring light into the darkness without hurting our own flesh and blood. This strike will be against foreign invaders!”

  This time, the noise went on for some while.

  “American invaders!”

  The crowd was nearly wild with frenzy. Some of it might even have been sincere: these troops knew just how badly American interference had distorted Colombian politics.

  “They are on Colombian soil.” Technically, they were in Panama, but he didn’t want to sow unnecessary confusion. The troops weren’t privy to maps and GPS systems; why muddy the waters? “Spreading their influence in the jungle that, traditionally, foreign invaders never dared to enter. Why? Because they think we’ve grown complacent, they think our vigilance has lapsed.” He held their gaze. “Should we teach them the error of their ways?”

  Max waited for the cheer to die away, then gave them the reassurance their anxious faces craved. “The good thing is that the invaders are unprepared. So confident are they that they would find a submissive population, a Colombia open to being colonized, that they aren’t heavily armed. They sent students and teachers to do the work when they should have sent their most heavily-armed special forces. By the time they realize they how stupid they are, it will be too late. Their little university mission will be in our hands.

  “Now, time to work. Get this camp packed and be ready to move in two hours. I’ll speak to you more when we arrive!”

  The crowd dispersed and Coca caught his superior’s eye. “That was well done. It should keep them happy until we get our hostages. After that, we will h
ave no problems.”

  Max nodded his thanks. “And the girl… I’d like to meet her tonight, after we make camp. Preferably without the baby and far from the rest of them.”

  Coca raised an eyebrow. “And far from Serena?”

  “Naturally.”

  “You’re a pig.” But the man’s smile belied the words. Both knew that there would be no coercion. They both knew the girl worshipped the ground Max walked on, and she would make whatever contribution to the cause he requested. As the upcoming mission wouldn’t require putting her life at risk, she would be more than willing to show her commitment in other ways.

  “Men in my position need to find ways to relieve the stress.”

  “Of course. I’ll take care of it,” Coca replied.

  Max had known he would. Unquestioned loyalty to Max personally, even in the face of unusual requests, was why Coca was in charge of the troops. He wasn’t the most polished lieutenant in the Democratic Republican Commando… but he did his job. That was all one could ask, wasn’t it?

  “Oh, and don’t forget to send us five porters for our gear.”

  “Of course,” Coca replied.

  Chapter 3

  Professor Cora Gomez swatted at a mosquito, wondering if this was the bite that would give her the Zika virus. Apparently, no amount of repellent would convince Aedes Aegypti that she wasn’t good to eat. Or maybe, despite the manufacturer’s claims, she’d sweated away the last application.

  “Damn,” she said.

  “What’s up?” John Vincent was the Associate Professor of Plant Physiology. He didn’t work directly in her department—Cora herself was head of the Ecology track, but not specifically employed by the Biology school—but had been the very first to sign up for the study. Two of the three grad students who’d come along were biology PhD candidates and former students of his. His light-blonde hair, nearly white in the dusk light, and pale blue eyes seemed uniquely unsuitable to the tropical conditions. As if to underline the point, he wore a pith helmet.

  “I can’t find the crate with the jars.”

  “You can’t think of doing any collecting tonight, can you? We just got here.”

  “Of course not,” she replied, hoping that her expression wouldn’t tell him that that was exactly what she had been planning. “I just really want to look inside to see that the glassware survived the trip.”

  “Come on, I’ll help you look.”

  The campground was a maze of wooden packing boxes. It was hard to believe that the huge pile of supplies was meant for just five academics and three jungle-savvy local guides; it looked like there was enough stuff there to equip a small army. Of course, since they were planning on staying for three months, most of the content of the crates was food.

  Finally, he found the one they were looking for and pried it open. Inside, secured carefully so they wouldn’t move around, were a series of smaller boxes, plastic ones. When opened, each of these revealed a foam-filled interior. Cylindrical holes had been drilled into the packing material, each large enough to hold one collection jar.

  “Looks OK to me,” John said.

  “Thank God. Do you know what it would have been like to find glass jars in this place?”

  “I think that would have been the easy part. Try keeping them sterile, though…” He chuckled at his own joke and they walked back to the campground, where the three grad students were attempting to erect their tents.

  “Come on, guys,” Gaar said. “We practiced this a bunch of times.” His tent was up and looked like something that would have satisfied the toughest sergeant in the British Dragoons.

  “That was on a lawn, and we had decent light,” Amber Cross replied. She was a muscular woman in her late twenties with skin the color of coffee and cream, enormous almond eyes and uncontrolled curls. Her own effort sagged in the middle and, as Cora entered the clearing, collapsed upon itself. “This stuff on the ground… I don’t even know what it is.”

  “Some biologist you turned out to be,” the third grad student said. Stephan Gregoire was a statistician, and looked it. Pale, with short, dark hair, he looked even more out of place than John. But in his case, a pith helmet would only have added to the impression of tropical inadequacy. His tent was a pile of rods and cloth that didn’t even make an attempt to get off the floor.

  “Mr. Ching,” Cora said with a smile, “I’d really appreciate it if you could assist your colleagues in pitching their tents instead of making them feel like idiots. It’s their first time out in the field. The first time I ever went on a research trip, I almost had to sleep out in the open, as I’d never even seen a tent, much less pitched one.”

  “Hey, it’s my first trip, too,” Gaar replied.

  “Help them anyway.”

  He grinned at her and walked over to Amber’s tent. “So, where you went wrong is…”

  “Are you going to be an asshole about this?” Amber asked. “Because if you are, I’m…”

  The rest of her words were swallowed up by the jungle as Cora rounded a bend in the track the donkeys—the only way to get cargo this deep into the Darién forest—had made through the underbrush. The three Panamanian expedition guides they’d hired to accompany them already had a fire going, and had slung hammocks between the trees. They looked like they’d been there for months.

  “Hello, Doctor,” their leader, Joaquín, said. “Do you need any help?”

  She thought of the students’ pathetic attempts to get themselves set up and smiled, but shook her head. “No. We’ll be fine. I wanted to speak to you about tomorrow’s excursion. We’re looking for ants.”

  “Yes. We know. You won’t have to go very far. Here’s one.” The guy laughed like he’d said something enormously witty. Cora signaled her forbearance by not bashing him over the head with one of the fiery logs.

  “These are a specific type of ant called brachymyrmex gagates, and we’ll have to look around a little before we find a suitable colony. If we can’t find one of those, we have two back-up species that are nearly as good for the purpose of our study.”

  He looked puzzled. “So what do you need from us?”

  “We want to walk inland a bit, and find a thick forest with dark floors.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “No. But we want it to be no more than a couple of hours’ walk from the camp and easy to return from.”

  He shrugged. “I think you chose the right spot. It should be easy.”

  “Good. Do you need anything from the supplies?”

  Joaquín looked around. “No. This is a good place,” he smiled. “Also, an agouti came too close, so we won’t need anything for dinner.”

  Cora swallowed and walked back to the main camp. Agoutis were rabbit-like rodents, probably delicious, but not something she would ever eat out in the bush.

  ***

  Later that night, after much longer than it should have taken, they sat around their own fire, eating pre-prepared dinners that, rodent or not, smelled a lot less delicious than the agouti had.

  “So,” Gaar said during a lull in the conversation, “how did you manage to get the funding for this, anyway? Word around campus is that The Iron Lady has you in her crosshairs.”

  Cora smiled. This was the kind of thing every grad student always wanted to ask and which, back when she was one of them, would never have dared inquire of a senior member of faculty. Times had certainly changed. “Dr. Hillary can recommend cutting my programs until she’s blue in the face, but unless the current board of governors decides to retire or resign, she’ll never push it through.”

  “You have friends there?”

  “Not so much friends as allies. The board is from a different era, and the current focus on identity studies as opposed to the hard sciences is pretty much a lost cause with them.”

  “Then how did Dr. Hillary ever make it to Chancellor?”

  Cora shook her head. It was a question she often asked herself. “I think it was a question of hiding her true colors until it was too late for anyone to do anything about it. And, in her defense, she is a magnificent administrator.”

  “But she hates the natural sciences.”

  “Not as such. I think she just wants people to recognize other fields as equally valuable.”