Mitchell smiled. “Yes, that’s the plan.”

  “I’m lost. How can we start from Boa Vista if the boat is here?”

  “Ryan’s just showing off,” said Jackson. “Your brother is going to help us move the boat.”

  “Correct,” said Mitchell. “Why waste a week sailing up the Amazon, when we can fly there? I texted Alejandro and asked him to send his airship up here to the international airport. He agreed and will fly it himself. It should be here by noon tomorrow.”

  “Won’t a giant dirigible draw a lot of attention?” asked Jen.

  “I’m counting on it.”

  “Ryan, I can see the hamster running as fast as he can on the wheel inside your head,” said Jackson. “Care to let the rest of us in on your plan?”

  “What are you doing, Yuri? Planning a coup d’etat?” asked a man in a sweat-stained shirt as he placed a heavy plastic container on the table in front of him. Aside from the man and Yuri, there were a couple of other men in the warehouse loading the supplies Yuri needed into the back of a truck. The dealer opened a box and let Yuri examine the contents. “I got you what you asked for. Everything here is the latest in U.S. and European technology.”

  “Diego, do these satphones come with spare batteries?” asked Yuri, examining the phones.

  “Naturally,” replied Diego. “There’s also a charger on your boat.”

  “Did you get me the heavy machine guns I asked for?”

  “Yes. They’re already loaded in the truck.”

  “Weapons and ammunition?”

  Diego raised his hands. “Yuri, relax, your reputation precedes you. Screwing you over would be dangerous for business.”

  Yuri wasn’t sure what the arms dealer meant by that, but he was willing to let it work in his favor, if it got him what he wanted.

  A musclebound young man in a tight T-shirt walked over and stopped a couple meters away. He glared at Yuri while he slowly removed his work gloves.

  “Javier, what do you want?” asked Diego.

  “The word on the street is that Mister Uvarov, here, is worth a cool one hundred grand to whoever finds him,” replied Javier.

  Diego turned and jammed a finger into the young man’s chest. “I don’t give a crap what you’ve heard. I made a deal with Mister Uvarov, and I intend to honor it. Now shut your mouth and go help Rico load the truck.”

  “Screw that!” snarled Javier. The young man pushed Diego aside with one hand and reached behind his back with the other for his gun.

  Yuri saw the move coming and went for his own pistol, hidden under his open Hawaiian shirt.

  Javier may have been younger, but Yuri was far more experienced. The sound of Yuri’s Makarov pistol firing echoed through the warehouse. Javier’s head snapped back as the bullets exited out the back of his skull. He was dead before his body hit the floor.

  Yuri spun on his heel and aimed his weapon at Rico, who stood there with his hands in the air. “Be cool, mister. I don’t mean you any harm,” said the terrified youth.

  “It’s okay, Yuri, Rico is family. He won’t try to double-cross you,” explained Diego.

  With a flip of his thumb, Yuri made his pistol safe. “What about him?” said Yuri, looking down at Javier’s dead body.

  “He’s been working for me for the past couple of months,” responded Diego. “Good help is hard to come by these days. But he’s right. There’s a man in town asking about you and your friends.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  Diego nodded. “Salazar, Vladimir Salazar. He’s bad news, Yuri.”

  Yuri spat on the ground. “We ran into him and some of his men in Morocco.”

  “He has ties to a mercenary organization called The Scorpions.”

  Yuri bit his lip. “I’ve heard of them. They are well-financed and have friends in high places spread throughout the region. Many a government looks the other way when they are involved.”

  “Si. You and your friends are in bigger trouble than you thought.”

  “Do you have a safe house we could use for the night?”

  “For what you are paying me, I’d put you up in my home if I thought it was safe to do so. Unfortunately, the competition will be watching my place like hawks. I have another warehouse near the airport. It’s not much, but it’ll do.”

  Yuri reached for his phone and called Mitchell. “Ryan, pack your bags. We’ve been compromised.”

  “Already?” moaned Mitchell. “I thought it would take at least a day or two for the opposition to find us. Is it just surveillance, or is there a price on our heads?”

  “The latter, regrettably. You’re going to have to move from your hotel to a safe house. I’m on my way. Round everyone up and be ready to leave the second I get to the hotel.”

  “Got it.”

  Yuri hung up and slid his phone back into his pocket. “Okay, Diego, let’s get out of here before anything else happens.”

  With all three men working, it took less than a minute to finish loading the truck. As the truck pulled out of the warehouse and into another rainstorm, Diego made a call. Javier’s body would be disposed of by some of his men. His remains would be dumped in front of the hotel Salazar was staying in, as a sign that not every black marketeer was for sale.

  27

  A long, triangular shadow moved across the open field at the far end of Belem’s airport, blocking out the sun.

  Mitchell watched in awe as Alejandro’s experimental airship came in to land. The Avalerion was over two hundred meters long from the front tip of the ship, to the back of the vessel. The airship was widest at the back, with a width of one hundred meters. There were three propellers affixed on either side of the ship. The narrow cargo bay ran down the middle of the undercarriage. The crew compartment was forward near the front of the craft. Designed to be nearly silent, it was as if the Avalerion wasn’t even there.

  “Now that’s something,” marveled Jackson, as three large circular pads inflated on the undercarriage of the airship. The air cushioning system allowed the ship to land anywhere on the planet where there was a flat surface.

  Alejandro waved at his colleagues from the cockpit, as he brought his vessel down. Sensors spread throughout the ship fed information to the state-of-the-art flight-control computer. Without making a sound, the Avalerion touched down.

  Mitchell looked over a dozen men standing around a couple of cranes. “Okay, let’s go,” he shouted. “Get the cargo onto the ship, and the boat ready to be slung underneath.”

  A man with a balding head and bushy mustache waved back and bellowed at his men in Portuguese to get moving. In minutes, two sea containers and their boat, hidden from view under a tarp, were on the move.

  “Unbelievable,” said Jen, slipping an arm under one of her husband’s.

  “I know,” he replied. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have thought such a ship even existed.”

  “I’ll make sure they secure everything,” said Yuri, as he walked past Mitchell. “I don’t want to lose our boat somewhere over the Amazon.”

  A side door to the cockpit opened, and a set of stairs dropped to the ground. Alejandro climbed down and walked straight towards his colleagues. He was wearing a pair of white slacks, with an unbuttoned, navy-blue shirt.

  “My God, you’ve got quite the ship there,” said Mitchell, shaking Alejandro’s hand.

  “She’s wonderful isn’t she?” replied Alejandro, smiling from ear to ear. “Aside from my crew of six, there are a couple of reporters from a TV station in Rio to film the journey. As you asked, Ryan, I made sure they knew the reason for this unscheduled test flight was to help my sister’s research trip into the jungle.”

  “Just don’t let them see what’s in the sea containers, or our plan will be in ruins before it gets started.”

  “The cargo bay will be out of bounds, except to you and your party, until we drop you off in Boa Vista.”

  “How long do you think it will take us to fly there?” Jen asked.

  “At sixty knots an hour, it shouldn’t take us more than fifteen hours,” replied Alejandro.

  “So we’ll be arriving in the dark,” said Mitchell. “That should work in our favor. I take it you have men waiting to receive us at the other end?”

  Alejandro nodded.

  “I like the sound of that,” said Jackson. “We can be in the water and on our way, before anyone is the wiser.”

  “That’s the plan,” said Mitchell.

  “Come, let me give you a quick tour around my ship,” announced Alejandro.

  Everyone followed Alejandro up into the futuristic-looking cockpit. Most of the ship’s information was displayed on the front glass windows. There were two seats up front, one for the pilot and other for the co-pilot. A woman in her early thirties, with short, black hair and silver-rimmed glasses, looked up from the co-pilot’s chair. She smiled and waved.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you my co-pilot, Camila Duarte,” said Alejandro. “I was lucky to find her. Camila was a pilot in the Brazilian Air Force, before I enticed her to join my company. She may sit in the co-pilot’s chair, but she knows far more about this ship than I do. It will be hers to command the moment we get back to Rio.”

  “Congrats,” said Jen to Camila.

  “Obrigada,” she replied.

  “Next stop on the tour is the passenger compartment,” said Alejandro, as held them down a narrow corridor. They came out in a room that rivaled the first-class accommodations of any major airline. Each seat was enclosed in a pod, with a screen to watch movies, or to use as a computer monitor.

  “I thought I liked your jet, but I may have just changed my mind,” said Jackson, looking about the luxurious, brightly lit cabin.

  “What’s back there?” said Sam, pointing at a closed door at the other end of the room.

  “That leads to the cargo bay,” explained Alejandro.

  As if hearing his name being called, Yuri opened the door and stepped into the cabin. “Nice,” he said looking around.

  “Are we good to go?” Mitchell asked Yuri.

  “Da, a couple of flight technicians are double-checking that the cargo is stored properly before we take off,” he replied.

  “How did your business associates split up our supplies?” Cardinal asked Yuri.

  “The extra fuel for the first leg of our trip is in one container, while our weapons, ammunition, and other supplies are in the other,” said Yuri.

  “Where are the reporters?” asked Julia, looking around the cabin.

  “They’re outside taking pictures,” responded her brother. “When we take off, they’ll be riding up front with me. They won’t bother you during the fight. I told them that you’re all quarantined to avoid catching a cold before heading deep into the jungle.”

  Julia smiled at her brother. “You think of everything.”

  “I wish I were that smart,” replied Alejandro. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to take a walk around the ship before we depart.”

  “Ryan, are you sure about all of this media attention?” asked Julia. “I thought keeping the tribe a secret was our ultimate goal.”

  “It is,” responded Mitchell. “Trust me, if things turn bad, having members of the Fifth Estate on call will work in our favor.”

  Mitchell and Jen took a seat and stretched out their legs.

  “I wish every mission started with a ride on one of these,” said Mitchell.

  “Enjoy it while you can,” said Jackson from across the aisle. “Soon, we’re going to be riding around in a secondhand, black-market boat in a jungle filled with big, nasty bugs, and critters that will eat you alive. Don’t forget the rain and the humidity. You had best get used to the idea that once your clothes get wet, you’re going to be wet until we get back to civilization.”

  “Thanks for that,” said Mitchell. “I was trying to block that from my mind for the next fifteen hours.”

  Jackson grinned. “You’re welcome.”

  With his hands wrapped so tight around his binoculars that his knuckles turned white, Salazar watched the airship float up into the sky. His quarry, for once, had gotten ahead of him. He lashed out and threw his binos in a nearby swamp. A startled crane leaped into the air to avoid the incoming projectile. Salazar grabbed his phone and called his contact.

  “Yes,” replied a man on the other end. His voice was dispassionate.

  “Colonel Sosa, the Americans, they’re gone,” said Salazar, reporting to the man who led The Scorpions. “They’re on their way to Boa Vista.”

  “That is not a problem. I can move the team from Colombia to Venezuela. We have access to an MI-26. I can have them in place in a matter of hours.”

  With the world’s largest heavy-lift transport helicopter at their disposal, Salazar’s gloomy outlook brightened. “Okay, do it. Colonel, do you have some men pre-positioned in Boa Vista, who can keep an eye on Mitchell’s people until we arrive?”

  “Si, I sent three men there yesterday. They’re in a hotel near the airport.”

  “Excellent. As soon as I can, I’m going to catch a flight up there.”

  “See you in Boa Vista, Vladimir.”

  Salazar slid his phone back into his jacket and turned to leave, when he stopped and glanced down at his watch. Gerhardt Lang was due to land in the next hour. Salazar jumped back in his car and turned the start button. The Hyundai Santa Fe’s engine roared to life. He placed it in gear, and sped toward the airport’s departure terminal. He had two tickets to buy. If all went well, he and Lang might arrive in Boa Vista before the troublemakers. All they would have to do was keep a discreet distance between them, and let the fools lead him and his people to the prize.

  28

  “Five minutes to the landing zone,” announced Alejandro over the airship’s speakers.

  Mitchell looked out a window and saw only darkness. He, like everyone on his team, had switched into loose-fitting clothes. They were dressed in a mix of greens and browns to help blend in with the jungle without looking like soldiers.

  “Thank goodness for GPS,” said Jackson, as he showed Mitchell their position on a tablet. They weren’t being dropped off in Boa Vista, but in a clearing next to a river, about thirty kilometers to the west of the city. Some of Yuri’s underworld contacts were waiting in the dark to help offload the boat and all of the supplies.

  Jen placed a hand on Mitchell’s shoulder. “I guess we’re committed, now.”

  He looked into her deep-brown eyes and smiled. “It’ll be okay. By now we should be well ahead of the opposition.”

  “Let’s just hope it stays that way.”

  The airship began to slow.

  “Hang on to something back there,” said Alejandro.

  Mitchell and the rest of the team grabbed hold of what they could, and braced themselves. A second later, the ship came to a halt and hovered in the air. The lights in the cargo bay switched to red.

  Yuri opened a door and stuck his head out.

  “What’s going on?” asked Mitchell.

  “They’re lowering the boat into the river,” responded Yuri, looking through a set of night-vision gear.

  A few seconds later, a loud clicking sound was all the warning they had, before the compartment they were in began to descend from the belly of the craft.

  “This is something new,” said Sam.

  Less than thirty seconds later, the compartment touched down. The side door automatically opened. Cool night air rushed inside.

  Yuri drew his pistol and cocked it. He hid it behind his back before stepping outside and looking around. A flashlight was shone in his face.

  “Are you Uvarov?” asked a man in the dark.

  “Yeah,” replied Yuri. “Who are you?”

  “Diego sent us.”

  “Good. Now get that damned light out of my face, and bring your forklifts over to the cargo compartment. There are two sea containers in there to unload, and not much time to get it done.”

  As soon as the two containers were removed, Alejandro brought up the cargo bay and secured it back underneath of his ship.

  “Thanks for all of your help,” said Mitchell to Alejandro via his Motorola.

  “Do what you have to, Ryan, just please make sure my sister comes back to me,” said Alejandro.

  “There are no guarantees in this business, but we’ll do our best to bring her home.”

  “Very well. I’m going to land in Boa Vista for the day. If you need me, don’t hesitate to call.”

  “If Julia and Jen are right about where the tribe is located, we should be able to wrap this up and be on our way home in a week to ten days.”

  “I’ll expect daily calls, or I’ll assume something is wrong and come looking for you.”

  “Fair enough.” Mitchell saw Julia standing nearby and handed the Motorola to her so she could say her goodbyes.

  Jen and Julia stood to one side, watching the boat being outfitted with the extra pieces of equipment Mitchell and Jackson had asked for.

  “Wait until the sun comes up,” said Mitchell. “Then she’ll look like something.”

  “As long as she gets us home, I don’t care what she looks like,” said Jen.

  Above them, in the night sky, the Avalerion powered up its engines and rose into the dark. Had someone been watching, the craft’s glowing red running lights would have made the ship look very much like a UFO.

  “I guess I should go over and give my friends a hand,” said Mitchell.

  “What would you like us to do?” Jen asked.

  “Go over our planned route one more time. I’d hate for us to take the wrong turn on the river because we missed a clue written on the map or in the journals.” With that, he turned and walked to the river’s edge.

  Jen nodded and reached for her pack. She pulled out her tablet and switched it on.

  “We’ve been over this a dozen times,” protested Julia. “Sometimes I think your husband doesn’t trust me.”

  Jen patted Julia on the hand. “He likes you. He’s just a bit of a freak when it comes to details. Trust me, we’ll be doing this day in and day out until we either find the tribe, or decide they no longer exist. Come on, let’s review our notes and see if we’ve missed anything.”