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

The two other soldiers joined him. They had a quick exchange in Spanish.

I glanced back over my shoulder at the surrounding jungle. Gina and Camila had made it to the cover of the forest. Hopefully, they could meet up with Andy and Vern and somehow find a way to survive this nightmare.

The trio of Bolivian soldiers broke their huddle, then began walking forward, their guns up and trained on me.

“¡Alto!” a voice rang out.

The soldiers turned, as did I, and watched the owner of the voice pick his way from the foliage where he was hidden and walk to the edge of the village.

Vern.

He was wearing a large red pack and his hands were up over his head. For the first time since seeing him, he didn’t have his maroon hat pulled down over his scraggly gray hair.

“Get out of here!” I shouted at him. “Find Gina and Camila and get back to base camp!”

Vern shook his head.

Two of the soldiers turned and pointed their guns at the approaching sixty-five-year-old, who, I couldn’t help but notice, was no longer limping.

Vern shouted something to the men in Spanish. The soldiers turned to one another, their mood elevated by whatever Vern had said.

“What did he say?” I asked Martin.

Martin replied, “He said he had something he could give them. Something worth a lot of money.”

When Vern was ten yards away, one of the soldiers told him to stop.

Vern did. Then he pulled off his pack and set it on the ground. He dug his hand in, rooted around, then pulled something out.

It was shiny and heavy.

A golden mask.

The three soldiers gasped. One stepped forward and took the mask from Vern. Another soldier picked up the pack and turned it over. Several items fell out, including a silver alpaca and the Incan ceremonial knife that Andy had shown me a picture of.

I shook my head. That old son of a bitch was the one who had looted the cache.

Vern must have been faking his knee injury the whole time, so no one would suspect him when he snuck off to the ruins and stole the priceless artifacts.

And here he was, buying my life and several others’ lives with his bounty.

After a quick meeting, the three soldiers said all was good.

We were free.

They quickly took their treasure and disappeared into the jungle.

≈

I freed both Martin and Rix from their restraints. Rix had regained consciousness, but he was in a lot of pain.

“We’ll get you fixed up here soon, buddy,” I told him.

“The sooner the better,” he said with a grimace.

“Thomas!” Gina ran out of the forest toward me, with Camila bouncing around her neck. She must not have gone far, probably waiting and hiding at the edge of the forest.