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

Thirty years later, Patrick tracked down the retired professor in Calgary and begged him to take him to the tribe. Patrick even offered Martin an enormous payday. But Martin had maintained there was no sum of money great enough to get him to go back to the tribe. Not after what they did to him. Which is why, as he’d done countless times before, he refused to return to the Amazon jungle.

It wasn’t until Patrick decided to take the man by force that Martin revealed that the ruins and the tribe were located in northeastern Bolivia.

Everything was going according to plan until their second day in the jungle, when Martin made a run for it. One of the soldiers hired to keep them safe from the countless jungle threats spooked the fleeing doctor, and Martin had fallen, hitting his head on a tree trunk.

Bill glanced to his left.

Gina Brady was sitting in the dirt, going through a series of yoga poses. She was in incredible shape and unequivocally attractive, and her green-flecked hazel eyes sparkled with intelligence. She would turn the head of most red-blooded males, and Bill had witnessed the soldiers gazing at her lustily on numerous occasions. Or perhaps, vengefully. It was so easy to forget that Gina had killed one of the soldiers. But Bill couldn’t blame the doctor, after all, they had kidnapped her.

After Martin had fallen and hit his head, there was little they could do. Even after working in the medical field for so many years, Patrick had no actual medical training. And if Martin died, there would be no chance of finding the tribe. Luckily, one of the soldiers they hired was a Yanomina Indian and knew of a village nearby that had an American doctor living among them. Three of the soldiers had set out, and they returned with Dr. Gina Brady a day later.

It was remarkable she’d been able to keep Martin alive this long.

On that note, Patrick emerged from Martin’s tent. He stalked his way toward the several artifacts the soldiers had excavated from the earth. He picked up a large ceramic bowl and threw it into the side of the pyramid, where it shattered into a hundred pieces.

The monkeys in the trees started screeching and howling.

It took Bill a moment to realize it wasn’t the shattering of the artifact that had put the monkeys in a frenzy; it was the sound of a helicopter flying overhead.

42

42

base camp
august 22, 7:41 a.m.
days since abduction: 17

When I was eleven, my best friend and I had a sleepover. We set up our sleeping bags in the finished basement and watched The Goonies. The movie was our favorite—Goonies never say die!—and we’d seen it several times before. When it was over, when we knew my parents were fast asleep, we popped in the second movie of our double feature: Candyman.