Page 58 of Final Approach

The jungle hummed all around us, teeming with watching eyes and hungry stomachs. I gripped her hand in mine and pressed forward, determined to search quickly. The gun remained in the small of my back, but I didn’t want to waste a bullet on an animal trying to survive.

The ammunition was best saved for the human animals. They were far more dangerous.

Another smudge of blood decorated a tree several steps in front of us—the mark almost black against the soft brown bark. Tugging her forward, I was pleased the hiking boots held her upright far better than the heeled shoes. The underbrush was thick though, and we both stumbled over roots and stuck into thick clay.

She released my hand and took a few steps in front of me while I scanned ahead of her for our next clue.

Before I could find it, she screamed with closed lips, the sound trapped in her throat like a high-pitched choke. My heart sped up, desperate to find the source of my ángel’s distress.

Her body had grown as rigid as the corpses on the plane, an easy target.

A coiled mass of brown and white stripes lay at her feet, beady red eyes watching her.

She backed into my chest, quaking with fear, her weakness on full display. Snakes.

The reptile hid its tiny head within its rings, and a sharp, musky smell filled the surrounding air. Its instinct was to hide, not to bite. Non-venomous.

Squeezing her shoulders, I pushed her behind me before snapping out to grip the snake behind its head and at the root of its tail. I threw it as far as I could into the thick bush before turning to her.

“You’re trained to survive jungles, but you’re afraid of snakes?”

Her pouty lips drew into a thin line. She straightened, not bothering to hide her fear as she gazed into the trees where I’d thrown the creature. “I have survival training,” she corrected, “not jungle-specific. My father hated snakes, so they weren’t really a part of the rubric.”

So, her father had trained her. An enthusiast, or her own version of a madman? Before I could ask, hesitant eyes shifted to me.

“Were there a lot of snakes in prison? How did you know how to do that?”

“I was a landscaper before I took on the title of inmate.” Shrugging my shoulders, I proceeded into a small opening in the ferns recently trampled through, though by man or beast, I couldn’t be sure. It was a narrow path—we could barely fit a single file foot at a time. “There are snakes in every yard in every country in South America. They are like mosquitoes.”

“They are not like mosquitoes,” she retorted from behind me.

I smiled at her vehemence, amused my powerful leader could be taken out by a tame leaf-eater. The remains of a small camp just beyond my feet halted my amusement.

Ferns had been pressed flat in a perfect rectangle, as if something had laid on top of it—a tarp? An oblong circle had been dug into the earth. It was filled with coals, and the light scent of charcoal still lingered—evidence of man. The camp had been abandoned, but within the last day.

“Fuck.”

Marley’s shouted curse carried through the trees, forcing a squawk from a toucan above. Cautiously, I scanned the perimeter, searching for footprints or more blood to lead us forward. Something metal caught my eye, almost fully hidden beneath the cover of thorny bush. Reaching for it, I grasped the cool cylinder between my fingers and pulled it up to get a better look.

“Purdue” read the label of the travel mug. I’d never seen one before until everyone on the plane carried one in the same way we carried our own weapons in prison.

Smuggled cellphones and limited access to television over the years had exposed me to the new world outside my walls, but many things I did not understand. Prison life was far simpler.

“That’s mine,” Marley gasped. I turned and held it up between us. “I had that in the cockpit—it’s where I did my training—I’ve had that for years.”

I handed it to her, and she turned it over and over in her palms like a magic lamp that held her answers. The thick air that hung over us didn’t need words to fill it. He’d been here, and he’d left, the container our only clue.

“Jamie?” she called, her voice tentative and calm, before escalating to a manic high-pitched screech. “Jamie?!” She frantically searched through the ferns and low bushes, her fear of snakes dormant as she scoured this small pocket of rainforest for clues.

I followed her lead, lifting thick vines and surveying the perimeter of this small camp. I lifted a large, leafy branch with small orange flowers, only to find the abandoned translucent husk of a much larger snake than the one we’d seen at the base of its roots.

Much larger. As thick as my thigh and several feet long. Slowly lowering the leaves to not draw any attention, I moved on to look under the smaller ferns, finding nothing.

My captain looked upward at the carpeted canopy, as if her friend might be hanging in the tree branches with the monkeys and the bush-eaters.

“Jamie?” she yelled up the hidden sky, scattering smaller birds from the towering limbs.

“God dammit,” she cursed, running her hands through her hair in frustration.