Amazonia

Manny searched the dappled jungle floor around him. Chokes of ropy vines and leafy bushes clogged the path to both sides. Where would it come from?

Shadows shifted.

He spun on a heel, crouching. He tried to see through the dense foliage. Nothing.

Farther down the trail, a section of shadow lurched toward him, a sleek mirage of dappled fur, black on orange. It had been standing only ten feet away, lying low to the ground, haunches bunched under it. The cat was a large juvenile male, two years old.

Sensing it had been spotted, it whipped its tail back and forth with savage strokes, rattling the leaves.

Manny crouched, ready for the attack.

With a deep growl, the great cat leaped at him, fangs bared.

Manny grunted as its weight struck him like a crashing boulder. The pair went rolling down the trail. The wind was knocked out of Manny’s thin frame as he tumbled. The world dissolved down to flashes of green, splashes of sunlight, and a blur of fur and teeth.

Claws pierced his khakis as the great cat wrapped Manny in its grip. A pocket ripped away. Fangs clamped onto his shoulder. Though the jaguar had the second strongest jaws of any land animal, its teeth did no more than press into his flesh.

The pair finally came to a stop several yards down the trail where it leveled off. Manny found himself pinned under the jaguar. He stared into the fiery eyes of his adversary as it gnawed at his shirt and growled.

“Are you done, Tor-tor?” He gasped. He had named the great cat after the Arawak Indian word for ghost. Though presently, with the jaguar’s bulk seated on his chest, the name did not seem particularly apt.

At the sound of its master’s voice, the jaguar let loose his shirt and stared back at him. Then a hot, coarse tongue swiped the sweat from Manny’s forehead.

“I love you, too. Now get your furry butt off me.”

Claws retracted, and Manny sat up. He checked the condition of his clothes and sighed. Training the young jaguar to hunt was quickly laying waste his wardrobe.

Standing up, Manny groaned and worked a kink from his back. At thirty-two, he was getting too old to play this game.

The cat rolled to its paws and stretched. Then, with a swish of the tail, it began to sniff at the air.

With a small laugh, Manny cuffed the jaguar on the side of its head. “We’re done hunting for today. It’s getting late. And I have a stack of reports still waiting for me back at the office.”

Tor-tor rumbled grumpily, but followed.

Two years back, Manny had rescued the orphaned jaguar cub when it was only a few days old. Its mother had been killed by poachers for her pelt, a treasure that still brought a tidy sum on the black market. At current estimate, the population of wild jaguars was down to fifteen thousand, spread thin across the vast jungles of the Amazon basin. Conservation efforts did little to dissuade peasants who eked out a subsistence-level existence from hunting them for profit. A hungry belly made one shortsighted to efforts of wildlife preservation.

Manny knew this too well himself. Half Indian, he had been an orphan on the streets of Barcellos, along the banks of the Amazon River. He had lived hand to mouth, begging for coins from passing tourist boats and stealing when his palm came up empty. Eventually he was taken in by a Salesian missionary and worked his way up to a degree in biology at the University of São Paulo, his scholarship sponsored by the Brazilian Indian foundation, FUNAI. As payback for his scholarship, he worked with local Indian tribes: protecting their interests, preserving their ways of life, helping them claim their own lands legally. And at thirty, he found himself posted here in São Gabriel, heading the local FUNAI office.

It was during his investigation of poachers encroaching on Yanomamo lands that Manny discovered Tor-tor, an orphan like himself. The cub’s right hind leg had been fractured where he had been kicked by one of the poachers. Manny could not abandon the tiny creature. So he had collected the mewling and hissing cub in a blanket and slowly nursed the foundling back to health.

Manny watched Tor-tor pace ahead of him. He could still see the slight tweak to his gait from his injured leg. In less than a year, Tor-tor would be sexually mature. The cat’s feral nature would begin to shine, and it would be time to loose him into the jungle. But before that happened Manny wanted Tor-tor to be able to fend for himself. The jungle was no place for the uninitiated.

Ahead, the trail curved through the last of the jungled slopes of the Mount of the Sacred Way. The city of São Gabriel spread open before him, a mix of hovels and utilitarian cement-block structures bustled up against the Negro River. A few new hotels and buildings dotted the landscape, built within the last half decade to accommodate the growing flood of tourists to the region. And in the distance lay a new commercial airstrip. Its tarmac was a black scar through the surrounding jungle. It seemed even in the remote wilds there was no stopping progress.

Manny wiped his damp forehead, then stumbled into Tor-tor when the cat suddenly stopped. The jaguar growled deep in its throat, a warning.

“What’s the matter?” Then he heard it, too.

Echoing across the blanket of jungle, a deep thump-thumping grew in volume. It seemed to be coming from all around them. Manny’s eyes narrowed. He recognized the sound, though it was seldom heard out here. A helicopter. Most travelers to São Gabriel came by riverboat or by small prop planes. The distances were generally too vast to accommodate helicopters. Even the local Brazilian army base had only a single bird, used for rescue and evacuation missions.

As Manny listened and the noise grew in volume, he realized something else. It was more than just one helicopter.

He searched the skies but saw nothing.

Suddenly Tor-tor tensed and dashed into the surrounding brush.

A company of three helicopters flashed overhead, sweeping past the Mount of the Sacred Way and circling toward the small township like a swarm of wasps. Camouflaged wasps.

The bulky choppers—UH-1 Hueys—were clearly military.

Craning up, Manny watched a fourth helicopter pass directly above him. But unlike its brethren, this one was sleek and black. It whispered over the jungle. Manny recognized its characteristic shape and enclosed tail rotor from his short stint in the military. It was an RAH-66 Comanche, a reconnaissance and attack helicopter.

The slender craft passed close enough for Manny to discern the tiny American flag on its side. Above him, the jungle canopy rattled with its rotor wash. Monkeys fled, screaming in fright, and a flock of scarlet macaws broke like a streak of fire across the blue sky.

Then this helicopter was gone, too. It descended toward the open fields around the Brazilian army base, circling to join the other three.