It would take two days by boat and four days on foot before Daniel found his way to the jaguar statue in the middle of the jungle. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he pulled it from the ground and held it. It must have weighed upward of ten pounds. If it were solid gold, which Daniel presumed it was, it would be worth over a quarter of a million dollars for the gold alone. He fastened the jaguar to the top of his pack and set out to find the jungle pyramid.

Following the compass headings Lefbrevor had written in the text—“1.6 kilometers at sixty-two degrees”—it took Daniel three hours to find the pyramid. According to the book, the tribe was two days’ travel from there, roughly twenty-five miles away.

But in which direction?

Daniel decided to head north toward Brazil, then work his way back around. He’d purchased a rifle in Cobija, but hoped to avoid the tribe altogether. With a two-day radius of twenty-five miles, it was a search grid of nearly two thousand square miles. The odds of actually stumbling on the tribe was as microscopic as the organisms Daniel was searching for.

His plan was to take as many soil samples in the area as possible. Though he had some rudimentary lab equipment stored with the shop owner in Campo Verde, it wouldn’t be until Daniel was back in the States that he could begin the detailed research necessary to see if the microorganisms in the samples had therapeutic properties to treat either cancer or autoimmune disease.

It happened two days later. After a lengthy rain, Daniel was trudging down the side of a small hill, when he slipped and fell backward, smashing the left side of his torso into the exposed root of a large tree.

Daniel rolled on the ground, certain he’d broken two ribs. A few hours later, he attempted to walk, but he couldn’t go far. It was too painful to breathe.

Three days later, it was evident to Daniel that he’d injured more than just his ribs. Something internal was damaged. He was coughing up blood.

It rained torrentially the next two days. Daniel tried to move to higher ground, but he couldn’t get far. He was swept away by a flash flood but somehow managed not to drown, pulling himself to safety. But his pack was gone, and with it his medicine, samples, food and water, GPS receiver, the golden jaguar—everything.

By May 23 Daniel was certain he wouldn’t last another day. Lying down, he told his mom up above that he would see her soon.

≈

When he opened his eyes, he was in a wooden hut. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the growth of his beard indicated it had been at least a week.

Standing over him was a slender native with white hair and a few golden feathers sticking out.