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Day 44 – No Good Deed (Extra post)

The gunshot rang out, echoing across the rainforest’s canopy. Streaks of colour exploded across the early evening sky as parrots, and other birds darted away. A chorus of hoots and wails erupted as panicked monkeys bounded through the trees. The body slumped forward, the head lolled, blood blossoming from the chest wound.

“What the hell?” Nadia and I demanded.

“He was going for his gun,” our Venezuelan escort, Cortes, replied.

I look again. Sure enough, there is a gun – but, still strapped into his chair, Cortes victim could never have reached it.

Misjudgement? Heat of the moment? Killer’s instinct? Self-defence? Stone cold murder?

Out here, I don’t think there’s a difference.

Jaua-Sarisariñama National Park,

Venezuela

Our mad dash through an uncharted canyon had led us here. To this wreckage of a plane, some sort of Cessna, I think, big enough for around a dozen passengers. A dozen tourists on an aerial safari of the expanse of southern Venezuela that the Sarisariñama Expedition has made its home.

It is torn to pieces, the aircraft’s tail hanging above, suspended on jungle vines. It swings slowly, leaking liquid – fuel, I presume – which makes my eyes water. Small fires are scattered about, smouldering in the damp vegetation, which thankfully stops them from erupting into a full-scale bushfire.

The main fuselage, however, was shorn from the tail during the crash we witnessed from afar. It now lies crumpled at our feet, windows smashed, metal twisted, electrical systems spitting sparks.

But, there are no bodies. Well, there wasn’t until our Bolivarian Militiaman shot the plane’s sole occupant. The pilot.

Rather than the pile of dying tourists we had hoped to help, charging in like adrenaline-fuelled good Samaritans, the body of the plane is filled with book-sized packets of white powder.

Cocaine.

Lots and lots of cocaine.

It probably won’t surprise you that I’m no expert on the value of Class A drugs. But I’ve watched the news. A similar-sized plane crashed en route to Australia a few years ago laden with 500kg of cocaine, worth about £44m or $53m. Cortes certainly seemed to think this haul was comparable, a strange mixture of national anger and personal greed lighting up his face.

Perhaps it was the national anger that led to his summary execution of the pilot.

After overcoming our shock at the sight of the drugs, Nadia heard groaning from the wreckage. We made our way through the crushed aircraft to the cockpit. And there he sat, a bearded man smeared in blood. But, before Nadia could get close enough to assess his injuries, Cortes’ bullet put him out of his misery.

Execution complete, the militiaman headed back through the plane’s hold, leaving Nadia and me staring, dumbfounded. When I turned, I swear I saw him retrieve something from the floor, and I don’t doubt for a second what it was.

Whether Nadia saw it or not, I don’t know. Probably – the Russian woman doesn’t miss a thing! But she too wisely chose to swallow any disapproval in the face of the Venezuelan’s itchy trigger finger.

Indeed, at that moment, a sense of dread shuddered through me.

Fifty million dollars.

Fifty million dollars.

Just lying there, at our feet.

Of course, even if I overcame any sense of morality, killed my companions and claimed the hoard for myself, I’d have no idea how to start selling it. Even if I turned a blind eye to the harm it would do to others.

I sensed, however, that Cortes harboured little in the way of such morality . . . and, living in a country that shifts 24% of the global network of cocaine through its borders, I suspected he might have a few valuable contacts to point him in the right direction.

We had one of those moments then. You know, bated breath. Tensing. Twitching of muscles. I sensed Nadia shift beside me and suspected she harboured similar misgivings.

“We need to get out of here,” Cortes announced suddenly, and I relaxed a little.

Nadia suggested we call the situation into Carimara and wait for the authorities. But Cortes’ answer quickly persuaded us otherwise.

“You think whoever is running this operation is just going to leave this shit out here to decay? They’ll be on their way now, and I’m not hanging around here until they arrive.”

Without another word, he ducked through the hole in the fuselage through which we had accessed the plane and started back along the track we had made through the jungle. Nadia and I followed.

Then I did something.

Something impulsive. Stupid perhaps.

I picked up a burning branch from one of the surrounding fires and hurled it into the plane’s hold. There was a whoosh as the flames caught and turned the drugs into an inferno.

At least that was 500kg or so of deadly Class A drugs that wouldn’t be getting onto the streets of wherever it was destined for, ruining lives, killing people and making others rich.

As I stood watching the flames engulf the aircraft, I felt pretty good about myself. It was probably the most heroic thing I’ve ever done.

My smug satisfaction lasted only a second. It was broken by Cortes bellowing at me in Spanish, his eyes furious, his body shaking with rage. My Spanish is passable, but he was so animated that I couldn’t translate a single word until Nadia snapped at him, calming slightly.

“Do you know what you have done?” he finally managed to get out in English.

“Stopped fifty grand’s worth of cocaine getting onto the streets,” I replied, clinging onto my smugness. He was probably only pissed because he had been planning to pop back later with his buddies to retrieve some.

“No, you’ve just sent fifty grand’s worth of some Narco’s money up in flames,” he corrected me. “If they catch us now, they will make us pay for every cent of that with our blood.”

I suddenly remembered the stories we had been told weeks ago when camping en route to Sarisariñama at a jungle lodge attacked by guerrillas. When the authorities found the victims, they were hanging from trees, flayed alive.

Certainly not a fate I fancied for myself. I tried to hold a defiant glare back at the militiaman, confident I had done the morally right thing. In reality, I was terrified and never more aware of the precariousness of our situation.

“Well, if we get moving now, by the time they get here, we’ll be long gone,” I reasoned unconvincingly.

“It will just appear as though the plane caught fire after the crash,” Nadia offered her support.

Then I did it again.

I opened my big mouth and jinxed us.

“Yeah, it’s not like anyone’s around to have seen me torch it.”

That’s when the second gunshot rang out.

This time, Cortes wasn’t the shooter. He was the victim.

The big militiaman went down in a spray of blood, Nadia dived to the ground, and I’m pretty sure my legs simply turned to jelly (I know, a clichéd but nevertheless apt expression) and refused to hold my weight.

To say my heart thundered in my chest would be an understatement. It was all I could do to stop myself from throwing up, even though my stomach felt so knotted that surely it wouldn’t let anything escape.

Then Cortes, injured, rolled onto his belly and fired his assault rifle on full auto. The noise was deafening – I mean, actually physically painful, making it feel like blood was pouring from my ears.

His bullets ripped apart the vegetation in the direction of the shooter’s hidden position, and the firing seemed to go on forever. When he finally ran out of bullets, Nadia was on the move, crawling to his side. I was surprised my legs obeyed my mind’s orders and also made the dash to him.

Cortes had been hit in the leg, the fleshy bit of the thigh. Even I could tell he was losing a lot of blood, but he nevertheless reloaded his rifle and aimed it at the trees again, though he did not fire.

Nadia quickly unloaded a load of the medical supplies we had brought along to help non-existent tourists. While she saw to Cortes’ wound, I radioed base camp.

If del Vega, the leader of the expedition’s military escort and Cortes’ boss, was annoyed at my rambling, less than military-precision update, he did not show it. Instead, he took everything in his stride and asked if we could make it back to the canyon. He explained that he’d re-route one of the rescue helicopters already en route to the crash site to pick us up and update the authorities.

As soon as Nadia had finished the basics, wrapping a bandage tightly around the wound, Cortes insisted we move out. There had been no further movement or signs of the shooter, and we assumed Cortes had killed him. Nor was there any other activity to indicate anyone else planned to shoot at us, so Nadia and I helped Cortes hobble away from the crash site.

The return trek through the undergrowth was slow and nerve-racking. As daylight waned, every flicker of light and shadow through the trees, every rustle of vegetation, every squark, hoot and wail of the Amazon’s denizens turned my blood to ice. I couldn’t shake the image of flayed bodies hanging from trees from my mind.

Even if whoever had shot Cortes, another survivor of the crash we theorised, was dead, other so-called narcos could be anywhere. Stalking us. Hunting us.

I’ve never felt more vulnerable.

With Cortes’ pace slowing and faltering more frequently, it took us nearly two hours to reach the canyon. The sun sank lower, little more than a blood-red smear on the horizon to match Cortes soaked bandage. Seeking shelter behind a natural fortification of ragged rocks in case the narcos caught up to us, Nadia tended to the wound again.

And we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And, while we waited, while Cortes grew paler and weaker, while Nadia’s stoicism slipped into concern, all I could think about was what would happen if the narcos caught us. If they’d found their hoard intact, they would have spent their time retrieving as much of it as possible. But my self-righteousness had led to our ‘protector’ getting shot. Even if the shooter were dead, his bullet-riddled body would tell his compadres we were there and send them after us. Thinking we were heading to help injured tourists, we’d made no attempt to hide our trail from the canyon earlier, the same are we followed back.

Tracking us down would be simple.

But, if the shooter was alive, if he’d seen me, a six-foot-two black man in a leather utility waistcoat, set fire to fifty million dollars worth of cocaine . . . shit! I’d be begging to be flayed alive by the time they finished with me.

I never wanted to be somewhere less than that cold canyon under a blanket of stars. Never have I been happier to see a cocky American’s Huey fly overhead or fearful that the flare Nadia sent up could give away our location.

Needless to say, as I’m sat here in the crappy motel in Carimara, writing this instead of trying to sleep, the drug runners didn’t catch up to us. Nathan Raine found and evacuated us and will be returning Nadia and me to Sarisariñama tomorrow,

The town’s medical facility – such as it is – stabilised Cortes and arranged a medevac to better-equipped facilities in Bolivar (?) where they reckon he’ll make a full recovery. At last report, the fire at the crash site had burned out, and the Venezuelan authorities have taken possession of the wreck.

And they’ve found no sign of whoever shot Cortes.

That means someone running around out there might know that it was me who torched the drugs. Perhaps I’m being paranoid. After all, I didn’t do it to be a hero and certainly not to piss off a South American drug lord. I did it because my moral compass told me to. Because I thought the world would be a better place without fifty million dollars worth of cocaine on the sheets.

But, as I sit here flinching at shadows and jumping at any noise, I am reminded of the old adage.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Benjamin King

My name is Dr Benjamin King, and I am an archaeologist working on the UNESCO Sarisariñama Expedition. Join me on my epic journey to one of the most remote places on the planet – a tabletop mountain towering above the Venezuelan rainforest. This will be my home for six months as my colleagues and I attempt to unravel the mystery of the ancient ruins that lie buried within an enormous sinkhole. Not only do I blog updates about the project, but also the trials and tribulations of life in the jungle. Something tells me that the danger of the jungle’s predators is nothing compared to the perils of being trapped with the same group of people for the next six months! Don’t miss out on a single moment of this extraordinary adventure - follow me on social media @benking1209 Benjamin King is also the fictional hero of the action-packed adventure series ‘The Xibalba Saga’ by James Richardson. Read it now https://amzn.to/3dD9wZW Stay up to date on new releases and exclusive free content at www.moonmask.net and @worldofmoonmask

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