All at once, the last of the Cologne’s hydrogen erupted in a towering midair explosion that looked as though the sun was rising in both the east and the west. Flames in shades of yellow and orange and magenta swirled and spun high into the sky as the airship’s envelope and the gas cell were consumed and metal framework began to soften. It sounded like they were standing inside a tornado.
Bell and Marion ducked under the waves as a wall of pressure and heat raced out from the epicenter of the blast. From below the surface, the explosion looked like the Portals of Hell had opened above. They resurfaced in time to see the skeleton of the nose crash into the jungle just beyond the beach and collapse like its rigid struts were nothing more than putty.
The pair swam for shore, where the fronds of some palm trees had caught fire as the remnants of the wrecked dirigible smoldered.
They dragged themselves above the tide line and let themselves fall into the sugary sand. Bell immediately rolled up onto one elbow so he could look at his beautiful wife. “I believe you made mention of Dreissen escaping. Do you think that a man who threatened your life should expect his to last?”
“Not even for a second.” She caressed his cheek and gave him a flirty little smile. “You know, we should get out of these wet things. Give them a chance to dry in the sun.”
Instead of readily agreeing, which he always did, Bell stood and held out a hand to pull her to her feet. “I would absolutely love to, but we have to find a way back to Colón and warn Goethals. We have only two days.”
“But everything you said about knowing Tats Macalister isn’t who he claimed to be?”
“I knew who he wasn’t, I didn’t know who he was. I never told anyone about him. I didn’t understand Viboras Rojas’s plan or his role in it until I saw they were smuggling explosives. Teddy Roosevelt is about to sail into a trap.”
38
The pair began walking up the beach. Bell knew the direction to take. What he didn’t know was how far it would be. They had landed east of Colón, but he had no idea how distant. And factoring in their drifting flight further complicated things. At best it was twenty miles, at worst fifty. At least there was a nice sandy beach to walk on. Usually, the jungle came right down to the ocean in dense mangrove swamps filled with crocodiles and teeming with malaria-laden mosquitoes.
And they weren’t going to starve. When each wave receded, tiny bivalves blew telltale bubbles from beneath the wet sand. Isaac and Marion plucked them with ease and slurped them straight from the shells as if oysters at a fine restaurant. The juices saved them from the risk of having to drink any water from the countless streams feeding into the Caribbean.
Three hours after the crash, luck smiled upon the couple in the form of a native longboat being paddled by six men. The boat was just beyond the breakers, and the men stopped rowing when they spotted and heard Bell and Marion waving and hollering to them. They spoke amongst themselves for a moment, then waved the duo over.
“There are no cannibals here, right?” Marion asked as they walked over.
“If there are, we’re not going to enjoy dinner,” Bell remarked, and they waded out to the bobbing craft.
The men were shirtless and shoeless and wore skirts of grass around their waists. Their wrists were adorned with bracelets made of leather and glass beads and bits of animal bone. They were Kuna Indians, one of several indigenous tribes that inhabited the isthmus of Panama. Their double-ended canoe was a massive tree that had been hollowed out. Bell guessed it would have taken years to fashion the boat and assumed they were used for many generations. At their feet were baskets filled with fruit and dried fish. A collapsible rack for drying fish was stowed aboard, as well as a seine net of woven braided twine.
Marion asked if any of the natives spoke Spanish. The navigator sitting at the back of the boat rattled off several long sentences, and Marion tried her hardest to understand, but there wasn’t a Spanish word anywhere in his speech.
“¿Tu no hablas español?” Bell asked, one of the few things he’d learned to say since arriving.
The navigator grinned. “Si, no hablo español. Mi padre lo habla.”
“I think I get it,” Marion said. “He doesn’t speak Spanish, but his father does. “¿Tu padre habla español?”
The man grinned again and nodded vigorously. “Mi padre lo hablo.”
They made room for the couple, and as soon as they were settled, the men spun in their seats and began paddling again.
“No,” Marion protested and pointed behind them. “We want to go that way.”
“Colón,” Bell said. “We want to go to Colón. Do you know it? Big city.”
“Isaac, what are we to do?”
The navigator tapped Bell’s shoulder and pointed ahead. “Mi padre.”
Oh, I get it, Bell said to himself, then spoke to Marion. “They’re taking us to see his father. Their village must be past where we crashed. If we’re going to get their cooperation, we need to be able to communicate. Let’s go along for the ride.”
The men were small in stature and slenderly built, but a lifetime of paddling had given them surprising strength. And their teamwork meant not an ounce of energy was wasted. The boat covered the three hours of walking Bell and Marion had put in in just two, and they kept on for another two hours before the men turned toward the shore where a narrow valley ran into the ocean. A
