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

Andy glanced up from where he was pouring himself a cup of tea and commiserating with his fellow team members to see Farah and Rix striding toward the tent. Like Andy, both were soaked in rain, their boots and pants covered in mud. Holland jumped up from his seat and met Farah as she ducked under the blue tarp.

“Don’t you dare pull that shit again!” Holland shouted, his face and neck glowing red under the tent’s bright halogens. “You put the whole group at risk by pulling a stunt like that.”

“I had a GPS,” Farah fired back.

“I don’t give a shit. You do something like that again and you’re gone. Done.” He took a breath. “Say you understand.”

She sighed and said, “I understand.”

Holland strode from the tent, still huffing and shaking his head.

Farah turned and glanced at the others. Even though she’d just been yelled at by the principal, she was fighting back a grin.

Roth was the one to ask the question they were all thinking: “What did you find?”

“Foundation stones,” she said. “From a temple.”

19

19

jungle
august 15, 6:52 p.m.
days since abduction: 10

Three hours earlier, after finding the insole of Gina’s shoe hidden in the ashes of the fire, we had continued fifty feet farther into the jungle and found a larger camp. Three tents had been set up and hidden in the bramble of a nearby bush was another of Gina’s breadcrumbs: an empty IV saline bag.

From what we learned from the villagers and the logistics of the camp—the lean-to, plus the three tents—my working theory was that after a day’s travel, Gina and her three abductors met up with at least three additional individuals waiting for them at the camp, one of whom was injured. It was impossible to say how long they stayed there, but I would guess a day, maybe two. While tending to her patient, Gina found an opportunity to stash one of the empty saline bags in the nearby brush. But this would be easy to miss, and she’d ingeniously slipped the insole out of her left running shoe and hidden it in the ash of the fire.

I wondered if she had me on her mind when she did this, but from the limited timeline I could piece together, I would guess not. The satellite phone call she made to me wasn’t until four days after she was abducted. It was possible Gina and her abductors could have stayed in this camp for that length of time, but my gut told me otherwise. Still, she may have already seen the satellite phone and was coming up with a plan to steal it and contact me. That said, it made more sense that the insole was left for the Tibióno villagers who’d followed them at the onset and who would be familiar with the running shoes she wore nearly every morning.