Prophecy Denied
(A Patton Douglas Novel)
by
Michael Lee, PhD
Dedication
A very long time ago I promised my son that I would take him treasure hunting in Venezuela. I reneged on the promise. The journey Patton Douglas took in this book will have to do, instead. I hope he forgives me and can take some pleasure in the adventure as it unfolds over the next several hundred pages.
This one is for Michael Edward Lee, II. Enjoy!
Prophecy Denied
by
Michael Lee
Published by Michael Lee, PhD
ISBN #978-0-9825096-4-7
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Michael Lee, PhD
All rights reserved.
Cover Design by Cherie B. Lee
The characters in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Chapter 1
He was the leader of 200 nearly naked, brown skinned people who wouldn’t tell you their real names. The prophecy that enticed the tiny old shaman to move his band from the Amazon forests of the Venezuelan back-country might seem a bit pretentious to a graduate of the secular public schools in the U.S. or the U.K. I know I wasn’t initially impressed enough to take him seriously, either.
His prophecy has become my story. It is a tale of how innocence and faith helped to protect the world from a nuclear catastrophe, of diminutive people overwhelming monstrous oil tankers and of the effective neutralization of a consortium of international arms brokers. It would be un-truthful of me to pretend it was all my doing. In fact, if it weren’t for my young friend and recent employee we would never have become involved in this adventure.
Like the creature whose name he had chosen, the eyes of Guacharo were still keen. His legs had been changing over the years becoming as those of the oil bird, weak and un-reliable. The great sun in the sky had lowered down behind the mountains and twilight had set his warrior-sentinels to stirring. He made his way across several walkways with rope railings to the center place and came to rest on a modest stool. The stool was in one corner of an equilateral triangle made up of log benches. His was the only stool in the center place.
Stones had been carefully arranged in the exact center of the space and there was evidence of previous fires on top of the stone covering. A thatched roof covered all but the middle section of the center place, in order that communal fires could be started and kept burning for extended periods of time. The main floor of this place had been constructed by splitting logs and then by tying them into a nearly flat surface.
The center place was constructed in a roughly circular pattern. It required the span of three great trees and the placement of those trees dictated the triangular shape of the seating arrangements. Large wooden dowels were constructed by burning holes through the timbers and into the living trees. There were winds sometimes swaying the center place and all the other dwelling lofts, as well. Mostly these places were stable, as Guacharo had intended. He had set it all into motion when he brought them here, the Sentinels. He brought them here to watch and to wait until the right time had come.
Guacharo knew only two languages, the tongue of his Fathers and the voices of the spirits. He didn’t know of the English word “Guardian” or the Spanish word “Centinelas”. He realized long ago these people who had traveled here with him had a special task. It would be they who protected the living spirits from the end of time.
As the twilight dimmed, deepest first, in the Northern reaches of the lake basin, the old man watched the spirits gather the tinder clouds high up behind the mountains. Still pinking from the last streaks of sunlight the clouds began to tumble closer, growing as they came. Looking like a great orb in the sky, the Moon, who was the Soul of the night, was rising slowly beside the mountains in the distance. “The Soul would be at its brightest tomorrow,” thought Guacharo, “our time is at hand.”
Others straggled in to the center place for the gathering tonight. Guacharo listened for footfalls and estimated the number in attendance. When he had left on this journey, years ago, there had been more among the group. Sickness and accidents had taken a dozen of the strong. Still, the women had given the village twice over the number of warrior-sentinels as had originally come to this new place.
The leader of the Yanomani warriors slipped his hand into a small pouch slung beneath a shoulder strap. Both were made from a mamure like fiber. He removed a small reddish brown substance and placed it into his mouth like chewing tobacco. He chewed the acrid substance and sucked some of the juice down his throat.
Guacharo understood the night and knew when the Soul of the night was strong in its brightness, the animals in the forest moved with much noise. He could hear the sounds of the beasts and of the frogs and of the insects all around him in the forest below. He looked up and saw the first streaks of blue and white flashing in the sky. The vivid fingers of lighting were becoming somewhat less clear to the leader whose vision was now beginning to blur from the substance in his mouth.
Each person trickling in to the center place was nearly a clone of the old man on the stool. The tallest among them stood just over five feet tall. All had straight black hair cut short in a bowl haircut, with bangs in front. Each adult was attired with a single loincloth. The children were naked. Adult women who were married wore a colorful headband, uniquely crafted for the owner. All were deferentially silent, awaiting Guacharo’s comments.
The leader closed his eyes and visualized the Soul of the night getting brighter, the animals in the forest louder and the lightning in the sky more fierce and wide spread.
He opened his eyes and turned to the only male in the group who possessed a headband. The special headband included two feathers, each about fifteen inches long. One feather was crimson and the second feather was yellow. He whispered something to the feathered man and the man quietly left the center place. Guacharo closed his eyes again and waited.
Two men got up from their front row seats and started a fire. The fire was blazing over a diameter of about four feet by the time the feathered man returned. He sat a second stool down at the right hand of the shaman. Guacharo swallowed deeply and took a deep breath. Everyone else took a deep breath and silently held it in. Guacharo spoke.
“The time has come when there will be two of us to give voice to the spirits,” he pointed to the stool sitting next to him, “he shall be known to the Yanomami as ”the Lightning Stick,” he closed his eyes and paused for effect. The Soul of the night was lighting the middle section of the center place from the East and the entire Western sky was boiling with hundreds of intense streaks of noiseless lightning.
The old man had been young once. He was a warrior then and spoke to the wise one about fighting the intruders. The wise one had shared a spirit voice with Guacharo, the warrior, and told him of the Prophecy. Guacharo, the warrior, resisted the prophecy until in the full strength of the brightness of the Moon, the great oil bird came and left a mark on his chest. The oil bird, whose legs are nearly useless, scratched the sign into his flesh. The warrior became Guacharo, the Shaman, who first gathered, then led the warrior-sentinels across the land. They traveled at night, guiding on the silent lightning in the sky. As taught to him by the oil bird spirit, Guacharo designed a community to live in the trees by day and hunt for food by night. He would not fight the intruders but would prepare the Sentinels for the time when the Prophecy would un-fold. He opened his eyes again.
Guacharo rose, unsteadily, to his feet. He reached again into his pouch and extracted something which he threw into the fire. The fire “whooshed” with golden flames shooting up about ten feet into the air. His audience gasped, involuntarily.
A shadow slid gracefully across the face of the orb in the sky and then downward into the open center of the thatched roof. The magnificent creature had a head like that of an eagle and wings spanning more than three feet. It hovered in mid-air, wings flapping slowly, then rose back up into the night sky and disappeared.
The shaman still did not speak. He looked slowly up and down each row of spectators, nodding at each individual. His hand repeated the trip to the magic pouch and back out again. This time the flames “whooshed” tall silver flames. The audience simultaneously muttered an audible “ahhh” sound.
The center place began to sway very slowly. The rocking motion in the trees became noticeably more violent. Sounds in the forest were turning to shrieks of panic rather than the natural murmurings of the night. The flashes of lightning overhead evolved into more violent and frantic spasms of energy. The center place shook vigorously. Guacharo raised his hands to calm his people. In the distance, flames from broken oil wells were shooting high enough into the night sky to be seen from fifty miles away. The flames were bouncing eerie luminescent flashes off the bottoms of the cumulus clouds.
As Guacharo slowly lowered his hands, the shaking subsided. A soft breeze had come up and was blowing the flames in the fire slightly off center.
“Your time has come,” was all he said. Guacharo tried to focus his eyes on the oil rigs burning in the far away distance. “But not this night, old man,” he thought to himself.
He closed his eyes again and found he could see everything much more clearly.
Chapter 2
Among the Yanomami there was but a single “Anaconda”. His many friends had chosen to be represented in the man world by different creatures and objects, but none other shared his personal talisman. Yanomami were expected to choose animal name when they reached adulthood. The animal name would protect the “spirit” name by which they would be called into the next life. Some of his people would occasionally choose the same name and it was imperative clan members find a way to differentiate between the individuals. “Capybara” was one of the most common animals in the wet forest and would serve as a good example. Many ways exist to differentiate among the characteristics of the large rodent like creatures. They have heavy bodies and short heads with reddish-brown fur on the upper part of their body…sometimes turning to muddy yellow on their bellies. Capybaras grow to more than four feet in length and may weight upwards of one hundred forty pounds. Capybara possess rear legs slightly longer than their front legs and they have webbed feet. Dark eyes, nostrils, small ears and a blunt snout sit on the front end of the tailess creature. There could be a “Big Capybara” and a “Short Capybara” or a “Long Eared Capybara” or “White Capybara” and so forth. “It was a good example,” thought the small brown man, “but who would ever take the name of a rodent?” he smiled at his mental picture of “two feathers” changing his name to “”Capybara Fur”.
Anaconda made much study of the animal whose name he had taken unto himself and attempted to pattern his thoughts and his methods after the large snake. One snake in particular. “It was on a night at the end of the wet season, much as this night,” he thought to himself, “when he came upon the old one.” The Moon was hiding on when Anaconda happened on to such a wonder as he did not deserve. He sat silently in his shallow dugout and watched the green and white phosphorous explosions back light the heavy clouds over his head. He moved his eyes without moving his head and searched for a sign of movement in the marsh. His acute sense of hearing told him a large animal was moving, several hundred yards from his dugout. Minutes passed, then the minutes elapsed into an hour reflecting thousands of silent flashes in his personal sky.
A terrific display in the heavens sprayed jagged lines of fierce light from horizon to horizon. In the brightness and sympathetic illumination of nearby clouds, Anaconda noticed her eyes. “She must have been there, waiting, as long as himself,” he pondered the idea. The width between her eyes was more than the width of Anaconda’s hand, even with his thumb extended. Her body was submerged below the surface and he could not observe whether she was hunting or resting from her feed. He watched her through another series of heavenly fireworks, then picked up his paddle. He silently stroked the frail water craft in the direction of the eyes. He made no sound in his approach but the eyes turned in his direction. Anaconda paused in mid-stroke and permitted the dugout to coast forward, at the apex of a series of slight ripples on the water.
The large snake inflated her body and Anaconda could estimate the length and girth of the animal. She was long, perhaps thirty or more feet and as big around as a Cypress tree. There were no bulges along the entire length of her body, “So she was also hunting tonight, like me,” he supposed, “or perhaps hunting me.”
Anaconda’s quarry nonchalantly rotated her head away from the canoe, which was no larger than a medium sized caiman. She began to swim slowly away from Anaconda and then paused. She looked back at him, then re-oriented herself and moved quietly farther into the marsh. Anaconda followed her for more than and hour, during which time she turned her head back to look at him several times. Then she stopped and allowed her massive bulk to sink below the surface. The momentum of the dugout carried Anaconda to within just a few feet of the head of the giant animal. She did not move her head. The eyes just stared at Anaconda, flashes of lightning reflecting off her lidless lenses.
Anaconda just stared back at the eyes. After a few moments he returned to his own hunting routine. He listened hard and heard nothing. He allowed his eyes to swivel independent from his head. Nearby there were hammocks of cypress and in the far distance he could make out the signs for cat tails and other marsh grasses. A small channel from the main lake meandered toward the cypress and in the foreground there they were! “Bloodwood,” he said out loud to himself and to the snake.
Anaconda returned from his hunt only with the knowledge of the location of the stand of Bloodwood. He shared his secret only with the Shaman, but it gave Anaconda new stature in the community.
There had been many times when Anaconda had returned to visit the old one and not just to hunt or harvest the Bloodwood. He had attempted to pay back her kindness by herding prey into her direction, when his people already had a full larder. In return she had led him to Capybara too large for her to manage. In the first months after a giant caiman injured her with his bite, Anaconda had brought her fish to eat and had used his people to rid the swamps of the giant caiman. He had profited much from the relationship with his namesake, not the least of which was the first encounter and the discovery of the Bloodwood
The Guacharo had given him a mission this night. He was to seek out his cache of Bloodwood and return at the rise of the Sun with a new supply. The Bloodwood was like other bamboo except it was red, and it was rare in the land of the Yanomami. Bloodwood is harder than conventional bamboo and does not grow to such a large diameter as do the yellow variety. Bloodwood grows to straighter, longer lengths between the knuckles than conventional bamboo. The Yanomami use conventional bamboo for eating vessels, for construction, for fish pens and even for bird feeders. Husks from the yellow variety are boiled and beaten into the fiber making Yanomami cloth. Anaconda’s people use the Bloodwood for blowguns, spears, axes and for making flutes.
Anaconda pulled his loaded dugout up, onto the dry land of the cypress hammock that housed his village. He carefully arranged the new supply of Bloodwood beside the small craft then hoisted the canoe above his head. He walked a distance to a special tree where a number of canoes were still hanging, in a vertical position. The man with the name of a large snake selected a hemp rope and attached it to the end of the dugout and jockeyed the watercraft into the branches of the tree so it could not be seen from a distance. All the dugouts were not yet back in their assigned places. To Anaconda it meant the others had not yet returned from their own special assignments.
The Shaman gave out two other assignments at the center place last evening. Anaconda was to search out his secret place for the Bloodwood and two of our people were to travel to the Lake of the Manatees to observe the work going on there. One of our night hunters had reported of seeing a vessel on the water that was larger, even, than our entire village. The hunter had said that the shoe wearing people were building locks at both ends of the narrow channel into the lake and that other shoe wearing people were constructing stone houses where the Rio Bravo enters the Mother Lake. Two more Yanomami were dispatched to observe what was happening there.
The Sun was rising into its sky and only the children were going to bed. Anaconda thought that was strange. There now was a large platform, mostly completed, not there when he had left on his mission. Several adults seemed pre-occupied by completing the construction and several others were already engaged in making a model of the Lake of the Manatees and the tributary rivers.
The center place bustled with activity, as well. Anaconda’s new supply of Bloodwood was being worked into blowguns and women were preparing fluffy ended projectiles to be used in the devices. Two Feathers was using the heat from the fire to boil a resin-like concoction ensuring a fatal end to the recipient of any dart issuing forth from a Yanomami blowgun.
Guacharo sat in the center place with his back to the Sun. His eyes were closed and his body rocked slowly back and forth, caught up in the rhythm from the flute he was playing. He hummed a discordant note at regular intervals, like a human metronome issuing forth a beat for all to hear. Inside his head he watched a large bird with vestigial legs hovering in the air. His dissonant hums repeated the beat of the wings of the large oil bird. The winding up scene was near and he was beating time for his people to finish their work by.
Chapter 3
The lightning overhead was no longer visible to Anaconda. The great sun was awakening and about to peek into the sky. It was time for him to find a place to spend the day. Two days ago the Shaman had entrusted him with this mission. He was told it was important not only for his own people, but for the entire world.
He traveled in his trusty dugout by night. Old Guacharo had talked with the sky people and arranged for them to guide his dugout to the guardian city of the lake glistening far to the north. The soundless streaks guiding him, flashed continuously in hues of red and orange. His personal lightning pulsed much farther to the north than the white and green flashes over the Yanomami forests, serving as a compass in the sky above him. Endless black water of the Mother of Lakes surrounded him on all sides without a shoreline in sight.
It was to be a nine-day trip, four days travel north, one day to deliver the husk and four days back to the village. He was provided rations, the best axe in the village to make shelters and his choice of blowguns. Anaconda paddled hard and believed he could reach the guardian city in just three days. He was tired and welcomed the twilight time when he was forced to leave the great lake and make a camp, inland, on the shore.
First he must find a tree of sufficient height to hide his dugout, then he must climb the tree and loop his rope over a limb to serve as a pulley. After the dugout was safely hidden in the branches of the tree he set about cutting branches from another tree at pre-determined lengths to make a platform suitable for sleeping. Guacharo had emphasized the need for stealth so Anaconda made sure he remembered to rub mud on the ends of the cut branches so they did not betray their new place in a different tree. He needed to be careful about fire on this trip, and would make no fire this morning. Anaconda opened his pack and removed enough dried meat and fruit to satisfy his immediate hunger and to replenish the energy he expended on the hard paddling today.
His pack was not large. It was made from three bamboo husks, two facing each other and sewn together with thread made from laboriously pounding other husks. The facing husks were concave and when sewn together they made a vessel about sixteen-inches tall and about the same in width. A third husk, cut to size, was used as a top flap to cover the opening of the vessel. The pack was waterproof and pliant, yet rigid. That is to say the husks were hard to the touch but would bend upon impact, like the shiny plastic used by the shoe-wearing people. Inside his pack Anaconda carried an assortment of dried meats and a few fruits. It was understood he would search out fresh fruits during the long days on his trips. Surely no worthwhile Yanomami would sleep through an entire day during the long days of the dry season.
Anaconda was too tired to search out fruits early in the morning. He intended to get some rest, then later see what the surrounding area had to offer. He pulled the small white husk from his pack. He marveled at the texture of the sharp edged and tried to see how the Shaman had been able to fold such thin husk over onto itself. He checked to make sure the magical markings on the husk were still there. On one side the map, on the other the scratchings of the oil bird. He put the thin husk back into the pack and then verified his darts were still there. He laid them out on the floor of his sleeping place. Four yellow, four white. They were there, as well. The white fibers were wrapped tightly around a dart treated with the sap taken from the roots of the timiu bush. The Yanomami used these saps to put fish to sleep in the rivers and in the marsh land. It was a much faster way to feed a village than with traps and spears or with hooks at the ends of threads.
The yellow fibers signified to Anaconda the dart had been treated with fluids taken from the little black frogs with the bright yellow bands. They were special frogs and were kept only by Guacharo, himself, or by Two Feathers. The tiny creatures were less than two inches long yet they could kill a man if they weren’t handled properly. Early in the rainy season the Shaman brought the village together at the center place so they could observe the ritual stomping and circling of the creatures. The dances of the Yanomami followed the pattern of the powerful animals. The low-pitched trilling of the frogs of death could hide the signs of prey in the forest and sometimes caused a Yanomami to become the prey of larger animals.
Anaconda had never used the yellow darts and they frightened him. He put them carefully back into his pack and then examined his shiny blowgun. It had lay in the dugout all this way and he might need to use it tomorrow. The blowgun was shiny and red and beautiful. It was almost as long as Anaconda was tall, with a leather shoulder sling, made from the skin of a swamp deer. As a small child he had become familiar with the toy sized versions of the primary weapon of his people and had become as proficient as any in his village. He could knock a monkey or a bird out of a tree at fifty or sixty feet and hit a running deer at a greater distance. He had practiced with black darts, the ones without poison. He had hunted with the white darts and was successful more often than not. The yellow darts had never been inside his personal blowgun. He did not know what to expect if he was forced to use them. He would put his trust in his Shaman. “If old Guacharo thought he might have to use them, then Anaconda should be prepared,” the little man shuddered at the thought, then lay down for some sleep. He lay there on his platform, settling in to his surrounding and wondering if the trilling of the black and yellow tree frogs was to be a comfort or a warning to him. The calling of the frogs dwindled to silence and Anaconda drifted into a deep sleep.
The great sun was still a fist and a thumb above the horizon when Anaconda awakened. He glanced quickly around his tree and listened hard for anything that might be threatening. Confident he was alone, he scrambled down the tree and began looking for a place to do his toilet and to wash himself. He circled the tree protecting him during his sleep, several times. Each circle took him farther away from the tree until he had searched an area about one hundred yards in diameter. Within his search area there were two berry bushes and a birds nest with eggs. The eggs were fertile and each of three eggs housed a small, un-hatched bird.
The great sun was edging closer to the horizon so Anaconda hurried to make a small fire while the light of day would hide the flames from possible on-lookers. Cooking the tiny, featherless birds took very little time and he ate them as his main course and savored the sweetness of the berries as a welcome dessert. The fire put out and his belly full, Anaconda trotted back to the berry bushes and picked them clean. He would leave the berries on his platform, “For his way back,” he thought.
His personal lightning was no longer there. He guided upon an orange glow in the sky from the lights of the guardian city. He paddled hard and brought his dugout in among a place of many small boats and large ships. The Mother of all Lakes dwindled down to a size where he could see both sides of the lake. Buildings of the shoe-wearing people came right down to the edges of the water. “The lake would have no room to breathe,” thought the man who took the name of the great snake.
He hid his dugout under a long boat dock and left his pack and the axe in the wooden canoe. He placed the yellow darts into the left hand side of the waistband of his loincloth and the white darts into the right side. The blowgun, he slung over one shoulder and the mamure rope over his other shoulder. The thin husk went into the front of his loincloth. Anaconda had memorized the map and set out to find a landmark getting him started in the right direction. He first would find the church with the two spires and from there he would search to the west for the village called “La Universidad”.
Anaconda did not like the stone earth. It hurt the soles of his feet. He did not like the buildings of the shoe wearing people, “But this was his mission and he must not complain,” he focused his mind on the job at hand. He learned quickly to keep to the shadows of the building. There were smaller and darker routes spiking off from the main roads in every direction. The darker routes took longer but he could wind around behind the lighted roads and continue in the same direction. He seemed to master his sense of direction quicker than he would have supposed and located the two-spired building. He recognized it at once and veered off to the west in search of the walled village on his map.
Many blocks later Anaconda found himself slipping into a small forest with large open expanses of grasses. He stopped at a stone fountain gurgling water into cascades and draining down into a pool. He took a drink and rested for a few minutes. He continued through the small forest and back into the streets on the other side. The look of these streets was different from before. The color was peeling from the buildings and was chipped in places. Litter was strewn around large containers and there were fewer torches at the intersections in working order. Shadows were easier to find on these streets but Anaconda hurried along, a bit un-easy. Several young men were grouped up ahead, some leaning against the wall of their buildings and some sitting on steps. Anaconda slipped out of the shadows and around into one of the smaller, darker passageways. He heard a shout behind him and the sound of running feet.
The little man un-slung his rope and threw it hard up over the overhanging porch of a nearby building. One end went around a post and came back to his hand. Anaconda quickly climbed his rope and then over the top railing of the porch. He snatched up his rope just as the first of the young men came into the darkened street. He could see the young man was not a full adult, yet he was much taller and larger than Anaconda. The adolescent yelled something to his friends Anaconda did not understand, then he laughed. The others came into sight and also began to hoot and to laugh. They pointed fingers at Anaconda and started to shout at him. Anaconda just stood, patiently, attempting to determine if these young men were going to pose a threat or not.
One of the group picked up a stone and threw it at Anaconda. Then another did the same. The leader, the one who had first shouted at him, retrieved a knife from his pocket and put it, sideways, in his teeth. He started to shinny up the post to the balcony while his friends continued , with poor aim, to hurl rocks and stones. Anaconda un-slung his blowgun and placed a white dart into the mouth of the weapon. “Whumf,” was the only sound it made. The dart found its mark and the adolescent with the knife went tumbling off the post and onto the ground. The group stopped yelling and rushed over to their leader. A small trickle of blood rand down from the entry would from the dart in his neck. They shook him and he did not respond. They mumbled anxiously among themselves, then their anxiety turned to fear. The remainder of the group ran blindly from the small, darkened, passage yelling, “Policia!” as loudly as they could.
In the confusion, Anaconda re-slung both his weapon and his rope and climbed onto the top railing of the balcony and used the extra height to make a heroic leap and grab the edge of the roof. He pulled himself up and over the edge and started running across the tops of the roofs. He found himself at home in the higher elevations of these buildings and continued running in the direction of his objective, jumping the eight or ten feet between buildings as he ran. Much later he could make out the sounds of wailing back in the direction he had came. He was sure the wailing had something to do with the young man who had taken his dart.
Anaconda had memorized the map and started back South around the outer wall of the village when he reached “La Universidad”. He followed the wall for four intersections and then turned East along a clean road with flowers along the edges. First with the fingers of his left hand he counted, one, two, three, four, thumb. Then he shifted the count to his right hand, one, two three. He stopped and faced the “three” building. He could not be sure this was the one. The husk did not describe the building, it only counted it out to him. He paused to decide what to do. There was no ladder to get to the higher level where the shoe wearing people must actually live. He could see no pathways at the upper level, either.
Anaconda thought the only way to be sure this was the right place was to call the name he had been told. “Professor Cabrara,” he shouted loudly, “Jesus Gonzales Cabrara,” he continued. There was no reaction inside the darkened house.
Anaconda thought he might not have counted correctly and turned to the house next door and started shouting all over again, . “Professor Cabrara,” he got out and then a light came on inside the “three” house. He was on a roll. His shouting was getting some results so Anaconda continued shouting, “Jesus Gonzales Cabrara.”
“This was fun,” he thought and was gathering himself for another round of shouting. More lights came on inside the “three” house, as well as several other houses in the neighborhood. The door in the front of the “three” house opened and Anaconda could see an elderly man standing in the opening. The man was wearing what looked to Anaconda like a long shirt but he was not wearing any shoes. “Jesus Gonzales Cabrara?” he asked in a more conversational tone.
The man told Anaconda, “Si.” and nodded. Anaconda was not sure “Si” meant yes but he recognize the nod and approached the man. The little brown man walked the entire distance from the street to the door with his arm extended, offering the husk to the man.
The man took the husk from Anaconda and examined both sides, then he did the un-thinkable, he opened the husk. Anaconda shrank back, away from the door. Cabrara started to read the note he had just been given in the middle of the night by an aboriginal native dressed in a loincloth. The note was just as remarkable as the situation in which it had been delivered. He looked back at Anaconda and considered what the neighbors might be thinking and also this little man might be in danger, so he motioned Anaconda inside his house.
Cabrara noticed his diminutive guest kept looking at the stairs leading up to his sleeping quarters but he did not recognize the significance of Anaconda’s furtive glances in that direction. The note in front of him had his name on the outside of the envelope but no street address. There was no postage affixed to the envelope and a strange map had been drawn on the back. The date at the top of the letter was more than twenty years ago. It was written in long hand, in ink, and in English, not Spanish.
June 21, 1981
Jesus Gonzales Cabrara
Dear Professor Cabrara,
I am writing this in June of the year 1981, at the end of a six-month anthropological expedition into the Catatumbo wet land civilization. It is my sincere hope you will remember me from our visits in your offices at the University of Zulia before I embarked on this journey.
If you are reading this then my Yanomami friends might be in trouble. You can be sure there is a significant threat to their society and to their culture. The village leader, a Shaman who calls himself after the oil bird Guacharo, moved his people to the wet lands of the Catatumbo from the Amazon basin more than fifty years ago as a part of the fulfillment of an ancient prophecy of his people. He felt I would, somehow, play a role in the eventual survival of his people.
Anyway, I promised him I would come when he needed me and that promise is the purpose of this letter. When you get this letter you must consider it urgent for you forward this message to me. I will immediately put my affairs in order and return to the Catatumbo and the Yanomami to see how I am needed.
Please call me collect at (206) 543-5255
Remember this is urgent.
Thank you for your help.
Annika Olsson, PhD, Assistant Professor
Biocultural Anthropology
Box 353100
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195-3100
Professor Cabrara glanced up from his reading to see how Anaconda was faring. “The messenger must have endured terrible hardships to get his message to me,” the Professor thought. Without taking the time to get dressed, Cabrara grabbed the key to his automobile and convinced Anaconda to get inside the vehicle parked on the street.
Anaconda held tightly to his weapon. The Professor attempted to communicate with his passenger and repeatedly showed Anaconda the back of the husk that had traveled from the person of old Guacharo to the old Professor. He stabbed his finger on the symbol of the church with two spires. Finally he understood and nodded to the man.
Jesus Gonzales Cabrara was a little scared, too. He had studied aboriginal cultures for most of his life, though he concentrated on the Amazon basin. He had heard vague rumors about one of their end of time prophecies but had not given the rumor much credence. He was excited about possibly sharing some of the research and any academic rewards coming from a discovery of how these cultures dealt with apocalyptic prophecy. He definitely would call Professor Olsson right after he dropped his brave little messenger off at the church. Surely the little man could find his way from there.
He stopped the old Chevy just off to the side of the church and Anaconda got out, still clutching his blowgun tightly. “It was about one hundred miles over some very rough water between Maracaibo and the rain forests of the Catatumbo,” thought the Professor, “it was a miracle he had found his way!”
It was no miracle to Anaconda that he found his way to the elderly man. It was no miracle, either, he had completed his mission and was returning to his people. He had been entrusted this task by his Shaman and old Guacharo had made sure he would find his way.
The dugout was exactly where Anaconda had left it, tied to a piling under the dock. He waded into the water and placed his blowgun and the rope into the front of the canoe. Careful to keep the wrappings on the darts above the water, he placed them back into the pack and then leaned forward over the dugout and pulled himself aboard. There were still several hours before the great sun would pull itself into the sky. He paddled hard in the direction of the red and orange lightning which now guided him back to the wet forest and his people
Chapter 4
The sun was rising over the eastern shore of the big lake, nearly seventy-five miles away. The Captain’s quarters were pitch black inside. Captain Petro Bondaruk had ordered it so. The ship’s Captain hailed from the port city of Odessa, in the Ukraine. Long workdays in Odessa were followed by dark night skies filled with soft points of light. Bondaruk could not adjust to the colored flashes of lightning filling the night sky above his ship. The lightning lit up the sky more than two thirds of the time and seemed to be centered over this place. From dusk till dawn the thunder-less streaks erupted and phosphoresced brightly through the night-time clouds. It was driving him nuts. He ordered blackout blinds to be installed in his quarters and helping him to get a little sleep. He had allowed himself a little extra sack time today. The boss was coming to check on things and the good Captain wanted to be at his best.
Bondaruk rolled groggily out of his bunk and shuffled across to the head. He sat down on the stainless commode and pondered the day in front of him as he attempted to move his bowels. “I should get paid extra for the constipation,” he thought, “the change of food and the intense heat here have dried everything up.” He continued to sit and to think.
The ship was almost ready. They would be finished with the pre-fabricated replacement missiles in two days time. The locks at the west end of the waterway had been completed weeks ago and those on the east end should be finished early next week. A final test of the locks and they would be off. Back to his Ukraine. “It would be good to see my family. All would be anxious about moving, but they would like it here in the new sanctuary village. Their new home was to be as large as an American movie star’s place. The children would have a swimming pool and I would purchase a sleek new fishing boat, not a trawler like back in Odessa, but a sports fisherman with a tuna tower. The wife would love her garden and bossing around her own servants,” these were good thoughts. They were thoughts he never would have permitted himself to even think about, before.
Nothing seemed to be moving inside him so he focused on today’s work. His men had been put on double shifts to make the ship, cruise ready. Diego had given Captain Bondaruk $10,000,000 U.S. dollars to purchase a craft suitable for this operation. He searched the ports of the world and came up with this particular vessel. The purchase price of the tanker was actually $17,500,000, but the broker offered terms. Diego’s $10,000,000 was a down payment with the balance due on January 1, 2008. AzAd Sarang had forwarded Diego’s verbal acceptance of the offer and Bondaruk bought Diego a fine ship. He had christened the vessel “Equal Force,” a name he thought aptly described the project.
The “Force” was originally a Liberian oil tanker. She was 800 feet long and 138 feet wide and she had a draft of just over 60 feet. The ship would return to the Ukraine and exchange the pre-fabricated replicas for the real missiles and return back here. The ship was re-fitted to carry two missiles side by side and two from front to rear. The hollowed out containers were insulated and padded so each resembled a gigantic butterfly chrysalis from which a stinging wasp would emerge in the spring.
The missiles were each 76 feet long and 7.8 feet in diameter. Net weight of each was 104.5 tons. Bondaruk’s men had prepared four containers 85 feet long and 12.8 feet in diameter for their expensive cargo. Each man had been promised $1,000,000 in U.S. dollars for their successful involvement in this operation, as well as a home for their family on the protected shores of Lake Maracaibo.
The total weight of the missiles was well below the capacity of the Equal Force. The big tanker could carry 26,000 tons of cargo and still move across the ocean at a speed of more than 13 Knots. Re-fitting “Equal Force” included spacious quarters for the families of the crew and the families of Captain 1st Rank, Tischenko and his Naval Spetsnaz team. Ships stores on the return voyage would include refrigerated meats and vegetables not found in most Ukraine homes. The foodstuffs and dry goods would help to start a community store in their new village. The community would even have a transponder relay tower for cell phone transmission by the time they returned.
Bondaruk finally gave up on his attempt to stimulate his bowels and rose to face his own reflection in the mirror. His coal black hair was mangled from tossing and turning all night. His face felt greasy with sweat but his crew would never notice. Captain Petro Bondaruk wore a crinkly beard always giving him the appearance of being disheveled. He soaped his hands and rubbed them over his face, lathering through the unruly whiskers. A splash of water over the dark circles under his eyes completed his toilet. The Captain left his bunk to be made by the cabin boy and dressed for the day. Traditional sea faring clothes had proven way too uncomfortable in this climate. Bondaruk work khaki shorts and a short sleeved white shirt with golden epaulettes. When the Equal Force first arrived in these waters his shirts had been heavily starched. Many sweaty, itchy, starched shirts later, the good Captain nixed the starch and merely changed into a clean shirt each day.
He also wore white socks with his deck shoes. He was careful to change the socks every day and to take precautions preventing fungus from infecting his feet. Bondaruk worried about some aspects of living in the tropics. Athlete’s foot was one thing that worried him. Constipation worried him. International intrigue didn’t worry him.
A fully dressed ship’s Captain opened the blinds and blinked at the brightness rushing inside the cabin. A second or two passed before he could see well enough to be able to find his sunglasses. His sight was something else he did worry about in his new homeland, and polarized sunglasses helped to salve the concern.
Captain Bondaruk commandeered the re-fitting of his ship with a walk-around style of command. Before his quarter mile walk from the stern of the ship to the bow and back again, the Captain went up to the bridge. The view of the ship from this point was breath taking. The double hull of this steel vessel had been under attack by environmentalists for a decade. The double hull fused well below the water line and became a single bottom. Amid all the hullabaloo and political furor, this was a safe ship. Ships records verified she had never leaked a drop of crude into the sea, yet there were cries to scrap her and all the single bottom transports traveling the high seas. “The single bottom would do just fine with a primary cargo of less than 1000 tons,” thought Captain Bondaruk, “we might even be riding too high in the water to be taken seriously.” He was considering the combined weight of the missiles of 418 tons, net, and the empty hovercraft at another 550 tons, net. The engines had been completely re-built and showed zero hours when he took command of the ship in Libya. Captain Bondaruk was even thinking about seeing how fast she would go on the way back to Ukraine, without any cargo aboard. He wouldn’t want to jeopardize this mission by screwing up the new engine, though. He dropped the idea without pursuing it further.
Before it became the Equal Force, this ship was equipped with three sets of 7500 TWPH pumps for loading and off-loading crude oil. Bondaruk kept the exterior fittings for the pumps but scuttled the motors and on-board pipes. He desired the vessel’s silhouette continue to appear as that of an oil tanker. When Equal Force arrived at Lake Manatees, there were three small cranes on deck. The Captain replaced all three with heavier cranes and added a fourth. He put the cranes on rails so they could handle the missiles at one end of the vessel and also the air cushioned landing craft of Captain 1st Rank Tischenko, loaded and stowed at the bow end of the ship.
The bridge of the Equal Force was nine stories above the nearby wetlands and the Captain could see for miles over the bow, across the large inland lake. He swiveled in his well padded Captain’s chair and stared back over the stern of the vessel. Two miles away was the nearly completed village with the tower just waiting for the repeater disks to be attached. They had transformed a twenty acre, heavily forested, island into a resort like community. Sand for a white beach was brought in from the Caribbean, enough for the entire island to have thirty yards of beach, all around. Separating the beach from the planned community was an eight-foot high concrete wall two feet thick. Fenestrations in the wall protruded outward a full six feet and offered entrance only at a right angle to the wall. A two-lane asphalt road connected the village, with a drawbridge between the island and the peninsula of the main land. The village had constructed a secure port on the lakeside of the island, between the sanctuary village and the boundary island of La Paloma. Construction crews had been beefed up by use of labor from the nearby native village of Los Manatees, across the Rio Bravo from the sanctuary island.
There was a large pleasure craft approaching the off-shore port at the moment. He could see the sleek white craft as it motored south along the naturally protected channel.
Petro Bondaruk was a little excited. He had never met his benefactor. In fact, it was Captain Tischenko who was the common denominator. Tischenko did some business with Diego before Diego was arrested. Bondaruk met the Spetsnaz Captain when they were doing a deal between themselves. Tischenko was a Captain 2nd Rank, then, and Bondaruk was also a Captain, a sea Captain, of a freighter much smaller than the 90,000-ton vessel he now commanded. “You must be kidding me,” Bondaruk had thought at the time he was approached, “Nobody offers a deal like this!” Well it was real and the Captain of the Equal Force already had $100,000 of Diego’s money to prove it. He hurried down the four floors from the bridge to the deck and then dis-embarked from the ship. He drove the two miles to the village with the windows down in the old pick up truck. By the time he reached the village his shirt was sweated through.
He was told Diego did not require a tour of either the village or his new tanker but would meet with Captain Bondaruk on board the yacht. Bondaruk took a launch to the tether of the yacht and boarded from the gangplank. He found his benefactor on the third deck, on the bridge. Diego was using a pair of expensive binoculars to scan the area. Captain Bondaruk was sure Mr. Orozco was spending more than enough time studying the above deck quarters of the tanker. It made him nervous.
Bondaruk stood quietly until he was addressed directly. “Are we on schedule, Captain?” Diego wanted to know.
Bondaruk started to explain all the nuances of his elaborate preparations. Orozco interrupted him by stating, “A simple yes or no would be sufficient.” His gargantuan bodyguard stared ominously in Bondaruk’s direction.
“Yes,” said the nervous Captain, “Sir,” he added.
“And you expect to be back here, when?” Diego queried.
“Like AzAd said, by Christmas, sir.” was the timid response.
There was a pause in the conversation, then Diego said, without emotion, “AzAd is dead.” There was another pause, after which Diego added, “Christmas eve,” he said with emphasis, “Make sure you are back by Christmas eve.”
“Don’t you want to know anything else? The construction of the village? The security precautions we have taken? The Electrical power station? The locks in the waterway? Anything?” Bondaruk was puzzled by Diego’s apparent lack of curiosity.
“Is there some kind of a problem?” the question was asked by Elvis Presley. Diego had returned to gazing through his binoculars.
“No. No problems at all. I just wanted you to know… I mean… Thank you for this opportunity. I will not fail…we will not fail...I mean, thank you.” Bondaruk stopped stuttering and backed out of the doorway.
Captain Petro Bondaruk was still not concerned about international intrigue but he did add two more concerns to his list; Diego Ramirez Orozco and Elvis Presley Miguel Sanchez.
Captain Bondaruk hurried to find a bathroom. His bowels suddenly had the urge to move.
Chapter 5
“What was that all about, boss?” Gerald asked in a small voice. It must have looked extremely unusual to him in order for him to get up enough courage to ask me about it. I performed an extra jump kick into the air as I ran past him, just for his benefit.
“It helps to keep the spring in my legs,” I answered back over my shoulder. The part of my early morning run Gerald found out of the ordinary was the beginning ritual where I combine stretching and jumping to get going. I walk a few steps and then jump into the air and give a vigorous kick, then walk, walk, walk, walk, and another kick. I do that for a block or two and then start my run at the statue of the Confederate Soldier who guards a small city park. I vary the distance I run, but seldom vary the route. At then end of my walk-kicks, I start my run and guide around the park, through a tunnel of majestic oaks and onward till I hit the truck route and then I follow the highway over Sidney Lanier Bridge and then head over in the direction of Jekyll Island. It had been over a week since my schedule had provided me the opportunity to run so I was doing the twenty-mile distance today.
Shen and Gerald were waiting for me at the statue and Shen immediately fell in with my pace. Gerald is the same height as Shen and they both did a technical internship at Disney World, but they are physically very different men. Shenzhen is thin and wiry and looks like the marathon runner he is. Gerald is narrow through the hips but has wider shoulders and larger arms than Shen. Gere looks more like a gymnast or lightweight wrestler than a marathon runner. He had scrounged a bicycle in order to join Shen and I on our run this morning. He pedaled hard to get up to our pace and then settled in to a rhythm.
The Brunswick fog was patchy this morning. Our early run was mostly in and out of shadows thrown by large trees and through brightly lighted intersections. Very little mist reached the ground, but lolled around in the canopies of the trees. The up-grade on the bridge did not even provide a challenge to we marathoners in our little group. However, the legs of the amateur bicyclist did not respond well to the climb. Gere’s pace dropped off and a little distance grew between Shen and I. Shen laughed, then winked at me and we ran harder so we would lose ourselves in the lazy fog at the top of the span. Gerald forced his legs to go faster when he reached the top of the span and he gathered speed on the downward slope. Half way down the westward side of the bridge, he zipped on by us and lost us in the fog.
Our route turned off the highway and in the direction of Jekyll Island and when we started our turn Gerald was several hundred yards in front of us. He was pretty proud of himself until he noticed we were no longer behind him. “Lucky for him the fog is high this morning. If he hadn’t noticed our turn, he would have been at the interstate before he missed us,” Shen laughed.
There is a Georgia State welcome station located about halfway to the island. Gerald caught back up to us at the welcome station and settled back to our pace. He was huffing and puffing, noticeably. I suggested he wait for us in the lighted parking lot, but he refused. “We’re not going to share any secrets from you before we get back,” I told him. Gerald thought we might be challenging his manhood and refused to stop.
Shen and I turned around just on the other side of the bridge into Jekyll and picked up our pace on the way back. Gerald turned around at the top of the small bridge and realized we had increased our pace. His legs pumped the pedals and he wheezed at us, “I should have listened,” he puffed.
To those in this world who have never known the joy of experiencing a self generated breeze buoying up your body and the euphoria of an adrenalin high from flying just above the ground, I can not find the words to express the joy you are missing. I know my friend and partner shares this small ecstasy with me and we normally tease and joke and challenge the pace during this part of our run. A twenty-mile run can be a lot of things. It is good exercise for the body, surely, but it is also a time for introspection, for creativity, for dreaming and for sheer entertainment. My runs in the past have been instrumental in generating melancholy, in dissipating melancholy, in clarifying decisions, by offering hope and even helping in the planning of missions. Shen and I met at a marathon in Hong Kong and since then have shared physical ailments such as pulled muscles, twisted ankles, blistered feet, and burning lungs. At separate times, we have even witnessed each other throwing up during and as a result of running in or preparing for the mystical Grecian athletic event called a “Marathon”.