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Back Jungle Up Save as PDF
Chapters (63)
  1. 1
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  63. Author’s Note

“Your men!” Roth yelled at Lieutenant Goytia. “I know they came here in the middle of the night and looted those artifacts.”

“Wrong,” Goytia said, shaking his head. “They did not. We are here to protect the site from looters.”

“My ass!” Roth yelled. “Where are your other two soldiers? Were they too exhausted after spending the entire night sneaking through the jungle to steal the artifacts?”

“My men stayed behind to go hunting. To get dinner. Your people, they enjoyed the meal last night, yes?”

Andy stood next to Nathan Buxton, twenty feet from where Roth and Goytia were arguing.

Nathan Buxton nudged Andy’s side and asked, “How long do you think it would take to get here in the pitch dark?”

“It would be super risky to go through the river in the middle of the night,” Andy replied. “Even with a headlamp, it would be dangerous. But without using the river to get here, it would take a couple hours.”

Andy couldn’t imagine that the round trip to T3, plus the time to dig up the artifacts, could be done in less than five hours. Then again, these were Bolivian soldiers. Navigating through the jungle in the middle of the night might be the equivalent of a city-dweller walking to the twenty-four-hour gas station to get midnight nachos.

“They would need GPS, don’t you think?” said Buxton.

“I don’t see how you could navigate here without it.”

“You think the soldiers have GPS?”

“They probably have at least one between them. How would they have found us in the first place if they didn’t?”

Across the clearing, Roth yelled, “No, I will not calm down! Those artifacts are worth millions.”

“They were never yours,” Farah yelled from the sidelines.

“I know, but—” Roth stomped his foot. “They belong to the Bolivian people. And think about how much attention they would have brought to a possible excavation.”

Buxton turned back to Andy. “Is Roth right? Would those artifacts go for millions?”

“Not the silver alpaca,” Andy said. “There’s already a bunch of those in museums, plus the silver was pretty tarnished. But the other two—the Inti mask and the tumi—were in excellent condition. They’d go for seven figures.” He added, “Maybe even eight.”

≈

Andy dug his trowel into the ground and tossed the dirt aside. Careful not to disturb the artifact, he took a small brush and began to buff the top of the vessel clean.

The dirt was caked into the grooved pattern of the clay pot, and Andy’s brush did little to clear it away. He glanced at Farah on the opposite end of the marked-off area and wondered if she was having an easier time.