Jack Chalker - Echoes of the Well of Souls

“We’re shifting our base for the evening to a private ranch closer to the fun. Took one hell of a lot of work to get permission from them, but they’ve got the only airstrip in the entire region.”

“I didn’t think anybody civilized lived up there.”

“Well, ‘civilized’ is a matter of opinion. Francisco Campos isn’t exactly a great humanitarian. More like a cross between the Mafia and the PLO.”

Lori gave a low whistle. “How’d you ever get him to agree to help us?”

Terry grinned. “You’d be surprised at the contacts you have to develop in this business. Truth is, he’s so afraid of the inevitable army of media and scientists and government officials, he’s allowed us to be the initial pool while he treads water and tries to figure out how to handle what might be coming. It’s one reason why we’re exclusive in the area. He’s been known to shoot down jet planes with surface-to-air missiles.”

“And they let him just stay there?”

“He’s inches over the border. He’s worth more than the entire Peruvian treasury and has better arms and maybe a larger army than the government. The Peruvians also have enough trouble with their own revolutionaries, the Shining Path. Sort of a Latin American version of the Khmer Rouge. Compared to them, Campos is a model citizen.”

In the lobby Lori met the man Terry always referred to as Himself for the first time. He looked tall and handsome and very much the network type; in his khaki outfit, tailored by Brooks Brothers, he looked as if he’d just stepped off a movie set.

“Hello, I’m John Maklovitch,” he said in a deep, resonant voice that made Terry’s parody seem right on target. “You must be Doctor Sutton.”

“Yes. Pleased to meet you at last.”

“Had a problem getting in,” he explained to them. “I wound up having to get here from Monrovia via England, Miami, and Caracas.” He turned to Terry. “Everything set with Campos?”

She nodded. “As much as can be.”

“Let’s get cracking, then. It’s going to be one of those long, sleepless nights, I’m afraid.”

Once up in the air, it was easy to see why the natives would hate strangers. What once had been a solid, nearly impenetrable jungle now had vast cleared areas, and other huge tracts were on fire, spilling smoke into the air like some gigantic forest fire. It was as if the jungle had leprosy, the healthy green skin peeling away, revealing huge ugly blotches that were growing steadily. It was hard to watch, and after a while she turned away.

Maklovitch was going over his game plan with Terry and working over some basic introductory script ideas. “The equipment already there?” he asked worriedly.

“They flew it in this morning before coming back for us,” Terry told him. “We have a couple of local technicians from RTB in place and checking it out. When we get there, we’ll do as many standups as they want us to, time permitting, but then we fly. We’ll tape from the plane if we can and do live commentary—audio is firm and direct, and they can pick up the NASA pictures until they get our feeds. It’s the best we could do with the equipment we had available. Plan is to take off about two and take a position on the track of the meteor about four hundred miles out—that’ll be sufficient for us to link via Manaus. Then we follow it in. Plan is, if it comes down anywhere in our area, we’ll find it, circle and shoot what we can, then get back to the ranch and raw feed whatever Gus has along with your standups. Then, if it’s within a couple of hundred miles, we’ll use one of Campos’s helicopters to get in to the site. If it flattens as much of the jungle as they say it will, we might be able to land for a standup. If not, we’ll be able to get some pretty spectacular close-in pictures.”

“I hope this won’t be like Matatowa,” the reporter sighed. “Everything set up for it to blow, half a million bucks spent, and the damned earthquake hits three hundred miles south. I’d hate like hell to have this thing drop into the lap of ABC.”

Their attitude was reassuring to the novice scientist. No talk of danger, no talk of risks, no reservations—just how to get the story. It may have been foolish to dismiss those thoughts, but it was also infectious. Maybe one did have to be crazy to do many of the things others took for granted; maybe those who took the risks were the ones who knew how to live, too.

“You’re going to have to be on your best behavior and bite your tongue at this ranch, Doc,” Terry said to her.

“Huh?”

“These are extremely dangerous guys,” she explained. “Nobody knows how many people they’ve killed or what they’re capable of, but no matter how macho or weird they are, go with the flow. I haven’t dealt with these guys face to face before, but I’ve dealt with their type in Colombia. The Nazis must have been like these guys—smart, articulate, well educated mostly, often charming and cultured, but nutty as fruitcakes in the most psychopathic way. No comments, questions, or moral judgments. We’re not here to do their story this time. Let’s just do our job, okay?”

She nodded. “I’ll try and just stay out of their way if I can. We won’t exactly have a lot of time, anyway.”

“We’ll probably have one of them with us,” Maklovitch noted. “I seriously doubt if they’re going to like a lot of low-level photography of that region without some controls on their part. They’ll have a man with us and another with the ground station just to make sure that nothing they don’t want seen gets out. Don’t worry too much about it, though; satellites can take better pictures of the region than Gus can.”

“Like hell,” the photographer growled. “Give me an altitude of just a few hundred feet and I’ll tell you what’s real and what’s camouflage. Besides, we don’t have a lot of satellite coverage in the southern hemisphere. They’ll be on their toes with us. Bet on it.”

“Yeah, well, don’t you go trying to get away with shots you know are taboo,” Maklovitch warned. “This thing’s dangerous enough as it is. It wouldn’t take much convincing if we were to wind up dead and burned from what they’ll say is a tragic accident with the debris from this meteor. There’re too many of these crackpots down here for us to cause trouble with Campos. Let the powers that be handle that. You just get the shots you’re being paid for and not the kind in the back of the head.”

The “Seat Belt” sign went on, and they heard the engines slowing; they were coming in on the Campos airstrip.

Darkness fell fast in the tropics, and it was difficult to see much. It was clear that the strip wasn’t commercial caliber; it was bumpy as hell, and they could hear cinders hitting the wings and underside of the plane as they taxied in and slowed to a stop.

It was almost seven-thirty; seven and a half hours to go.

The door opened, and the heat and humidity streamed in. If anything, it seemed far worse than even Manaus, although climatologically there wasn’t a lot of difference. A beat-up old station wagon, a full-sized American model not seen on U.S. roads in a decade, bounced up, and several men got out. They carried submachine guns and looked incredibly menacing.

One of the men shouted something to them in rapid Spanish, and Terry responded in kind. She turned to them and said, “Everybody’s supposed to get into the wagon and go up to the main house. Air crew, too. They say they’ll unload the rest of the gear and bring it along. I think they’re supposed to search the plane—and the gear— although they don’t say that.”

“No problem,” responded the voice of the pilot behind them. “They did this earlier today, although Joel and I just had to stand behind the wagon.”