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Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
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  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
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  55. 55
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  63. Author’s Note

“Yeah, I’m on Rush My Travel Visa, and they say the same thing. Three days. But that’s business days. And that’s for them to process all the paperwork. Then they still have to mail it.”

“So you could get it by Thursday?”

“Theoretically. But from what I’ve read, the earliest most people get their visa is five business days. Then I still have to fly there.”

“You could go to the Bolivian Embassy here on Monday morning and try to get someone to help you.”

“As an American citizen, I think I would have to fly back to the States and go to the embassy there.”

“You’re probably right.”

“But I can’t imagine it still won’t take a few days.”

“You have to get a yellow fever vaccine too.”

“Yeah, I saw that.”

In addition to a yellow fever vaccine, I also needed my flight information and hotel bookings for the duration of my stay.

“You could try to sneak in,” Lacy offered.

I turned around in the chair and looked at her.

She said, “You don’t need a visa to get into Chile. You could get on the next flight to Chile, then sneak into Bolivia.”

I’d only had to get a travel visa once before. It was for the ten-day African cruise Lacy and I had taken. A cruise that had been cut short by some pirates and coincidentally enough, eventually lead to my meeting the dark-haired, hazel-eyed WHO doctor I was attempting to rescue this very second.

At any rate, our travel visa for the cruise had covered the various countries where we made stops: Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa. Not once did we encounter a checkpoint or a border crossing.

I said, “I think you might be confusing me with Jason Bourne.”

Lacy forced a chuckle.

After another hour of research and a half dozen more phone calls, it was evident that barring the appearance of a magical visa-dispensing fairy godmother, the earliest I could get into Bolivia would be Friday.

I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that by then Gina would be dead.

4

4

nice, france
august 11, 6:32 p.m.

“What about Paul?” Lacy said, rushing into the office.

Lacy had spent the last half an hour reading to Clark and putting him to bed. Her blond hair was now pulled up into a ponytail. She was holding her transparent pill tray and dumping her nighttime regimen of pills into her hand.

“Who?” I asked.

She had just tossed the pills into her mouth and mumbled, “Pab Garad.” She dry-swallowed, squished her eyes shut, then said, “Paul Garret.”

Paul Garret was an ex-boyfriend of Gina’s. He’d been the one to initially contact Gina three years earlier and coax her into traveling to a village in South Africa to save three small children.