SIXTY-FOUR
Alex had not been to the Venezuelan capital for six years. She found it much as she had remembered it, hemmed in by green forested hills that rose to each side of the city. Caracas squeezed the tremendously wealthy and the desperately poor into a single chaotic metropolis. The fascinating disorder was reflected in the gravity-defying skyscrapers at the center of the city, which were a short walk from the teetering shantytowns that covered the surrounding hills.
In the evening, a Senor Calderon presented himself at the hotel. He was a lanky Venezuelan in his twenties. He was an emissary of Mr. Collins and worked for Collins’s foundations in South America.
They spoke Spanish. He asked her to call him by his first name, Manuel.
Manuel Calderon would be her guide to the village of Barranco Lajoya. He would pick her up the next morning at 9:00 a.m. and take her to a small private airport east of Caracas. A private helicopter would take her and Calderon to Santa Yniez, which was a small clearing in the jungle. Calderon explained that the airfield had been built by smugglers who brought cocaine into Venezuela from Colombia and Brazil. But it had then been seized by the government in the 1980s following the collapse of Pablo Escobar’s empire and had been sold to pro-Western business interests. President Chavez kept threatening to nationalize it, but so far, he hadn’t.
“Pack your jungle gear in the backpack and have your weapon accessible just in case,” Manuel said. “Dress accordingly. Temperatures will probably be a hundred, at least.”
“Will the gun be a problem at the airfield?” she asked.
Calderon laughed. “You’re in Venezuela,” he said. “Everyone has a gun.”
The next morning, Calderon led her to the airfield, which was on the edge of the city. They found their way to a rickety old helicopter, a thirty-year old Soviet SU-456. They buckled in for a flight to Canaimo. Two members of the national police joined them, needing a lift to Santa Yniez. One of them was in his forties, the younger one in his twenties.
The early morning heat was already stifling. Alex needed only a tan T-shirt and cargo shorts. She wore new hiking shoes and heavy socks. Before leaving the hotel, she had applied DEET to her neck, arms, and legs and packed her digital camera in a convenient pocket.
The two national police officers seemed perplexed, even amused, that a good-looking woman was to be on the flight. She could tell they were trying to figure her out. She engaged them in a conversation in Spanish and kept deflecting their questions about her nationality, as they waited to take off.
“As police, we could ask to see your passport,” one of them said, quite amiably.
“
“
She took a chance and showed them her American passport. She told them that she was on her way to visit friends who were among the missionaries at Barranco Lajoya. This, plus her excellent command of Spanish, seemed to appease them. They didn’t bat an eyelash when she pulled her Beretta out of her bag and strapped the holster to her waist. If anything, they were amused.
Then they began to ask more questions. They asked her why she was carrying a gun. She answered, why not carry a gun? They laughed and accepted the answer.
“The last time we were in this aircraft, we took seven bullets from rebels,” the younger one said, making conversation. “But we were flying over near Colombia that day. Today we go southeast toward Brazil.”
“Yes, I know,” she said.
The older cop added that once they had sufficient altitude, small arms fire couldn’t touch them. And if it did, it wouldn’t penetrate. And if it did penetrate, it would be spent. And if it were spent, they could pick it up and throw it out the door.
“And if it
They laughed again. “
She swatted at a pair of mosquitoes that had somehow followed them into the aircraft. The policemen watched her as she reapplied some DEET lotion to her legs, even though she was already breaking a sweat. She caught them looking at her and gave them a smile. She felt she had won them over.
The helicopter lifted off into the low mist that covered the city, then broke through the clouds and hovered near the mountains, the aircraft listing to its port side dramatically. She held tightly to her seatbelt with one hand and her seat with the other. At one point, she reckoned, they were no more than two hundred feet above the treetops, and her heart gave a huge surge when a downdraft brought them half that distance lower.
The pilot righted the craft with a sudden jerky motion. They listed starboard violently, as if swinging in a gondola on a cable. Then the mountaintops became distant and they were well above them. The chopper banked and headed south. Alex kept track of directions by their relation to the sun.
The interior of the helicopter was stuffy and hot. Twenty minutes into the flight, Manuel pushed open the side door to the helicopter. “You’ll get a better view this way,” he said. “Plus, we’ll get more air.”
He was right. The open door cooled the helicopter. She and Manuel sat strapped into seats at the open door. There was a gun turret there also, but no weapon. The policemen retreated to a corner, broke out a deck of cards and started to play, having no interest in what lay below. Alex guessed they had seen it a thousand times. That, or they didn’t want their uniforms to serve as airborne target practice.
They flew low between gaps in the mountains over breathlessly rugged undisturbed scenery. They crossed a long, wide savanna and then a blue river; then the jungle below thickened, though it was crisscrossed with rivers and lakes. The journey was hot, and the motor of the helicopter was thunderous.
Below, green stretched in every direction beneath a low haze. At one point they came to a clearing where there were modern houses and communities. Alex scanned carefully. She saw few vehicles and no people.
“Who lives out here?” she said.
She took out the digital camera and began taking random pictures.
Manuel answered. “
“Rebels?” she asked.
“
Alex nodded.
After ninety minutes, the chopper flew over one of the most beautiful areas of the country, the Canaima lagoon and its surroundings. The lagoon was fed by several small waterfalls. Mist hung above the falls. She was surprised by the changing color of the water and sand. In several places, both took on a reddish hue. In some paces the sand was a light pink because of the presence of quartz. She took out the digital camera and recorded what she saw.
Beyond that, they passed over several flattop mountains. Several mining settlements had dug in. She could see machinery and movement on the ground, plus big gouges in the forests and earth. She took more photographs.
They arrived in La Paragua after a two-hour flight. A Jeep was there for them, along with a driver named Jose. He was a young man, maybe eighteen, with a handsome smile and an Argentine accent. A lunch of chicken, beans, and rice waited in the car, along with chilled bottled water in a crate with ice. Alex quickly won Jose’s approval by talking about the ins and outs of Argentine soccer.
The police departed in their own direction, giving Alex a final glance as they departed, admiration mixed with approval and a hint of subdued lechery.
Manuel, Alex, and Jose then began a three-hour trek over bumpy roads as they drew closer to Barranco Lajoya. The men rode in the front. Alex preferred to have more room to herself by sitting in the rear, but she continued to chat up both her driver and guide.
In some areas, mud on the road was so deep that it sucked at the tires of the vehicle. In one area, one entire lane of the road had been washed away by a mudslide. The road hadn’t been repaired, but the line in the middle
