Amazonia

Kelly nodded. “Agent Clark had no knives with him when he was found.”

Professor Kouwe ran a finger along the dried and yellowing tips of the fronds. “And from the rate of decay, this was torn from the living plant around two weeks ago.”

Frank bent closer. “Around the time when Gerald Clark stumbled into the village.”

“Exactly.”

Kelly’s voice grew excited. “Then there’s no doubt he must have used this boat to get here.”

Nathan stared out at the small river. Both banks were thick with dense walls of vegetation: vines, palms, bushes, mosses, stranglers, and ferns. The river itself was about thirty feet across, a featureless silty brown flow. Near the shores, the waters were clear enough to see the muddy, rocky riverbed, but within a few feet visibility vanished.

Anything could be lurking under the water: snakes, caimans, piranhas. There were even catfish so large that they were known to bite the feet off unsuspecting swimmers.

Captain Waxman shoved forward. “So where do we go from here? We can airlift boats to our position, but then what?”

Anna Fong raised a hand. “I think I might be able to answer that.” She shoved off more of the palm fronds. Her small fingers ran along the inside of the canoe. “From the pattern in which this canoe was chopped, and from the painted red edges, this had to come from a Yanomamo tribe. They’re the only ones who construct canoes in such a manner.”

Nate knelt down and ran his own hands along the interior of the canoe. “She’s right. Gerald Clark must have obtained or perhaps stolen this canoe from the tribe. If we travel upriver, we can ask any of the Yanomamo Indians if they’ve seen a white man pass through or if any of their canoes have gone missing.” He turned to Frank and Kelly. “From there, we can begin tracking again.”

Frank nodded and turned to Captain Waxman. “You mentioned boats.”

He nodded sharply. “I’ll radio in our position and have the Hueys airlift in the pontoons. It’ll eat up the remaining daylight, so we might as well set up an early camp for today.”

With a plan in place, everyone began to busy themselves setting up their homestead a short distance from the river. A fire was started. Kouwe collected a few hog-plums and sawari nuts from the nearby forest, while Manny, after sending Tor-tor into the jungle to hunt, used a pole and net to catch a few jungle trout.

Within the course of the next hour, the roar of helicopters rattled the forest, causing birds and monkeys to screech and holler, flitting and leaping through the canopy. Three large crates were lowered into the water and pulled to shore by ropes. Packed inside were self-inflating pontoons with small outboard motors, what the Rangers called “rubber raiders.” By the time the sun had begun to set, the three black boats were tethered to shore-side trees, ready for tomorrow’s travel.

As the Rangers worked, Nathan had set up his own hammock and was now skillfully stretching his mosquito netting around it. He saw Kelly having trouble and went to her aid.

“You want to make sure the netting is spread so that none of it touches the hammock, or the night feeders will attack you right through the fabric.”

“I can manage,” she said, but her brow was furrowed in frustration.

“Let me show you.” He used small stones and bits of forest flotsam to pin her netting away from her hammock, creating a silky canopy around her bed.

Off to the side, Frank was fighting his own netting. “I don’t know why we can’t just use sleeping bags. They were fine whenever I went camping.”

“This is the jungle,” Nate answered. “If you sleep on the ground, you’ll find all sorts of nasty creatures sharing your bed by morning. Snakes, lizards, scorpions, spiders. But be my guest.”

Frank grumbled but continued to wrestle with his own bed site. “Fine, I’ll sleep in the damn hammock. But what’s so important about the netting anyway? We’ve been plagued by mosquitoes all day.”

“At night, they’re a thousand times worse. And if the bugs don’t bleed you dry, the vampire bats will.”

“Vampire bats?” Kelly asked.

“They’re all over the place here. At night, you want to be careful even sneaking off to the latrine. They’ll attack anything warm-blooded.”

Kelly’s eyes grew wide.

“You’re vaccinated against rabies, right?” he asked.

She nodded slowly.

“Good.”

She glanced over the bed he had helped make, then turned to him, her face only inches from his as he straightened from his crouch. “Thanks.”

Nathan was again struck by her eyes, an emerald green with a hint of gold. “Y…You’re welcome.” He turned to the fire and saw that others were gathering for an early evening meal. “Let’s see what’s for dinner.”

Around the campfire, the flames were not the only thing heating up. Nathan found Manny and Richard Zane in midargument.

“How could you possibly be against placing constraints on the logging industry?” Manny said, stirring his filleted fish in the frying pan. “Commercial logging is the single largest destroyer of rain forests worldwide. Here in the Amazon we’re losing one acre of forest every second.”

Richard Zane sat on a log, no longer wearing his khaki jacket. His sleeves were rolled up, seemingly ready to fight. “Those statistics are greatly exaggerated by environmentalists. They’re based on bad science and generated more by a desire to scare than to educate. More realistic evidence from satellite photography shows that ninety percent of the Brazilian rain forest is still intact.”

Manny was near to blustering now. “Even if the rate of deforestation is exaggerated as you claim, whatever is lost is lost forever. We’re losing over a hundred species of plants and animals every single day. Lost forever.”

“So you say,” Richard Zane said calmly. “The idea that a cleared rain forest can’t grow back is an outdated myth. After eight years of commercial logging in the rain forests of Indonesia, the rate of recovery of both native plants and animals far exceeded expectations. And here in your own forests, the same is true. In 1982, miners cleared a large tract of forest in western Brazil. Fifteen years later, scientists returned to find that the rejuvenated forest is virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding forest. Such cases suggest that sustainable logging is possible, and that man and nature can coexist here.”

Nate found himself drawn into the discussion. How can the jackass actually advocate rain forest destruction? “What about peasants burning forestland for grazing and agriculture? I suppose you support that, too.”