the piranha were beginning to get the idea. They were used to this game. Among others.
Tony held two by the tails this time, one in each hand. Looked back at the smiling Lupo, who got just as big a kick out of this as did Tony.
“Just like feeding popcorn to pigeons,” Tony said.
And let the mice fall.
The Venezuelan savannah burned under a sun that seemed to grow hotter with every passing day. Coarse grasses wavered in breezes too pitiful to offer much relief. On the crude but serviceable airstrip at Esmerelda, an equally crude but serviceable cargo plane rumbled down the runway, tentatively cleared ground, then seemed to gain confidence and pulled up into the sky.
In its belly, Kerebawa white-knuckled the safety harness that strapped him into his seat along the inner fuselage. The vibrations were nothing short of terrifying, like the convulsions of a sickened animal readying to lose a recent meal.
He still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of flight, even though the late Angus Finnegan had tried to allay his fears once by referring to a plane as a canoe with wings. That helped, and once in the air things were usually fine, although turbulence still gave him fits. Not so long ago, though, the mere thought of flight was enough to chill the spine of an otherwise brave warrior.
“What if we crash into the hedu kä misi?” he had asked Angus on that very first flight, to Caracas. He was referring to the next layer of the Yanomamö cosmos, hovering overhead at some undetermined altitude.
“The hedu kä misi is too high,” Angus had told him. “We could never reach it. No man could.”
Kerebawa had nodded. Then, “What if we crash into God-teri?”
Angus had frowned, looking puzzled. At last he had answered, “We’ll not crash there unless God calls us to.”
Two years ago, that had been. In comparison with that younger Kerebawa, he was quite the world traveler by now.
The cargo plane, now as then, was piloted by a man named Barrows. An old friend of Padre Angus, immense of belly and bald of head. His copilot, Matteson, was almost a complete opposite—tall and lean with his hair pulled into a graying ponytail. They ran a helter-skelter circuit between Miami and numerous cities across northernmost South America. They frequently touched down in Esmerelda, bringing supplies to the missionaries working among the Yanomamö. In turn, they bought plantains and other fruit and sold them to produce wholesalers in the cities. Both had been dismayed over Angus Finnegan’s demise. And reluctantly agreeable to aiding Kerebawa as he sought to continue Angus’s work.
They had already proven their worth as allies. For so much had already happened to get Kerebawa this far.
Medellín is Colombia’s second largest city, founded in 1616 by Spanish Basques settling in the New World. It’s nestled in a lush valley between two stretches of the Andes Mountains, five thousand feet above sea level and only six degrees north of the equator. Such logistics give it spring-perfect weather all year long. Medellín is world-renowned for the beauty of its orchids, and it is one of Colombia’s chief industrial cities. It has more than a few parallels with American cities—a juxtaposition of mirrored-glass office buildings with working-class ghettos struggling against poverty.
In the past ten to twelve years, it has rapidly become to the cocaine trade what Sicily is to the Mafia. A criminal mecca, center of a worldwide network. The Cartel. Exporters who found it far more profitable to work in cooperation rather than as independent rivals.
Standing on a sloping mountainside above the city, invisible within dense foliage, Kerebawa could smell the city’s fear. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people who never knew if death by gun or knife was moments away. You don’t ascend to the top of the coke heap without a cheap price on human life.
Angus Finnegan had never been here, but he understood it. That much Kerebawa had been able to
Tony held two by the tails this time, one in each hand. Looked back at the smiling Lupo, who got just as big a kick out of this as did Tony.
“Just like feeding popcorn to pigeons,” Tony said.
And let the mice fall.
The Venezuelan savannah burned under a sun that seemed to grow hotter with every passing day. Coarse grasses wavered in breezes too pitiful to offer much relief. On the crude but serviceable airstrip at Esmerelda, an equally crude but serviceable cargo plane rumbled down the runway, tentatively cleared ground, then seemed to gain confidence and pulled up into the sky.
In its belly, Kerebawa white-knuckled the safety harness that strapped him into his seat along the inner fuselage. The vibrations were nothing short of terrifying, like the convulsions of a sickened animal readying to lose a recent meal.
He still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of flight, even though the late Angus Finnegan had tried to allay his fears once by referring to a plane as a canoe with wings. That helped, and once in the air things were usually fine, although turbulence still gave him fits. Not so long ago, though, the mere thought of flight was enough to chill the spine of an otherwise brave warrior.
“What if we crash into the hedu kä misi?” he had asked Angus on that very first flight, to Caracas. He was referring to the next layer of the Yanomamö cosmos, hovering overhead at some undetermined altitude.
“The hedu kä misi is too high,” Angus had told him. “We could never reach it. No man could.”
Kerebawa had nodded. Then, “What if we crash into God-teri?”
Angus had frowned, looking puzzled. At last he had answered, “We’ll not crash there unless God calls us to.”
Two years ago, that had been. In comparison with that younger Kerebawa, he was quite the world traveler by now.
The cargo plane, now as then, was piloted by a man named Barrows. An old friend of Padre Angus, immense of belly and bald of head. His copilot, Matteson, was almost a complete opposite—tall and lean with his hair pulled into a graying ponytail. They ran a helter-skelter circuit between Miami and numerous cities across northernmost South America. They frequently touched down in Esmerelda, bringing supplies to the missionaries working among the Yanomamö. In turn, they bought plantains and other fruit and sold them to produce wholesalers in the cities. Both had been dismayed over Angus Finnegan’s demise. And reluctantly agreeable to aiding Kerebawa as he sought to continue Angus’s work.
They had already proven their worth as allies. For so much had already happened to get Kerebawa this far.
Medellín is Colombia’s second largest city, founded in 1616 by Spanish Basques settling in the New World. It’s nestled in a lush valley between two stretches of the Andes Mountains, five thousand feet above sea level and only six degrees north of the equator. Such logistics give it spring-perfect weather all year long. Medellín is world-renowned for the beauty of its orchids, and it is one of Colombia’s chief industrial cities. It has more than a few parallels with American cities—a juxtaposition of mirrored-glass office buildings with working-class ghettos struggling against poverty.
In the past ten to twelve years, it has rapidly become to the cocaine trade what Sicily is to the Mafia. A criminal mecca, center of a worldwide network. The Cartel. Exporters who found it far more profitable to work in cooperation rather than as independent rivals.
Standing on a sloping mountainside above the city, invisible within dense foliage, Kerebawa could smell the city’s fear. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people who never knew if death by gun or knife was moments away. You don’t ascend to the top of the coke heap without a cheap price on human life.
Angus Finnegan had never been here, but he understood it. That much Kerebawa had been able to
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