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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
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  17. 17
  18. 18
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  20. 20
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  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
  53. 53
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  55. 55
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  63. Author’s Note

“Or just devour it,” Gina said.

She watched him finish the first, then half of the second. Then he drank another bottle of water.

When he was finished, Gina said, “So I’m guessing the reason they abducted you is because you know about these ruins. Where the gold must be buried?”

His gray eyebrows jumped. “We’re at the ruins?”

“Yeah, there’s a huge pyramid fifty feet away from us.”

Martin shook his head back and forth. “I haven’t been back here in thirty years.”

That would explain the compass headings instead of GPS coordinates.

Gina asked, “Are you leading them to the Incan treasure?”

“Treasure?”

“You’re an archaeologist, right?”

“No.”

“But your tattoos . . .”

He snickered softly and said, “When I was nineteen years old and Indiana Jones first came out, I thought I was going to be the next great archaeologist, but after my second semester of college, I changed course.

“Changed to?” Gina prodded.

“Ethnobotany.”

Ethnobotany is the systematic study of how people from a particular region use the local plants. Several ethnobotanists had visited Gina’s village when she was working with the WHO.

“If you’re an ethnobotanist, why did they abduct you?”

“Why do you think?” Martin asked.

It took Gina less than a second.

They were looking for treasure, just a different kind of treasure. Possibly the most profitable treasure in the history of mankind.

≈

“Está despierto,” Gina said. He’s awake.

None of the soldiers even glanced up from where they continued to excavate. There were now more than fifteen different artifacts that had been pulled from the earth.

“¡Está despierto!” Gina repeated, this time several octaves louder.

All four soldiers glanced up at her.

“¿Quién es?” one of them replied.

In Spanish, Gina said, “The guy in the tent, the guy in the coma, the guy who everyone has been waiting to wake up.”

The soldiers’ eyes opened wide. They jumped up and took off running around the side of the pyramid and crashed through the foliage. Less than five minutes later, the soldiers returned with Patrick and Bill.

“He woke up about ten minutes ago,” Gina told them.

Martin had now been awake for close to an hour, but Gina didn’t want Patrick to know the ethnobotanist had spent the last thirty minutes disclosing the details of his abduction to her.

“How is he?” asked Patrick.

“He doesn’t know who he is or where he is,” Gina lied.

Hopefully, Martin would be convincing.

Patrick and Bill raced past Gina and ducked into the tent. The soldiers huddled near the front flap, hoping to overhear what was being said inside.