airstrip with their overnight bags in their left hands and their right hands free to draw their guns from their cargo pants pockets. The air was hot and humid, and it was quiet except for the buzzing of flying insects.
Taylor asked, “Do you think our ride will wait?”
Brodie glanced back at the Cessna, still idling at the end of the runway. “I think he’s conflicted—one hand on the engine throttle and the other on his joystick.”
“That’s crude.”
“I meant it as a compliment to you, Mrs. Bowman.”
“I do what has to be done.” Taylor stopped, then walked to the edge of the airstrip. “What’s this?”
Brodie looked. Embedded in the short grass was a metal tube, about two feet high. “I think… you put a pole, like a tiki torch, in the tube.”
“So the airstrip can be lit at night.”
“Or they have calypso dances on the airstrip. Okay, so Ms. Muller said you can’t land here in the dark, but Carmen said she did. And this is how they landed.”
Taylor nodded and continued Brodie’s deductive reasoning: “Mercer’s pilot must radio ahead, or it’s prearranged that someone in Kavak sets out the torches.”
“Right. So that means Mercer has help in Kavak, which is no surprise. But we can’t question anyone here, or we’ll wind up swimming with the piranha.”
Taylor thought a moment, then said, “Didn’t you tell me that Carmen said there were Pemón who accompanied her and Mercer on the boat to his camp?”
“Right. And also Pemón in the camp.”
“So there is definitely some level of cooperation—complicity—between Kavak and the camp.”
“That’s good deductive reasoning.”
“So…?”
“We are tourists. Bird-watchers. However, I think we need to get out of here as quickly as possible, before someone in Kavak gets word to Mercer that unscheduled tourists have landed.”
“Okay… you mean get back on the plane?”
“No. I mean get a boat.”
“That’s what I was afraid you meant.”
“It may all be moot. They could already be waiting for us in the village.”
Taylor stayed silent, then said, “All right. Let’s see if your impersonation of a married man and a bird-watcher is better than your impersonation of a john in a whorehouse.”
“Collins bought it.”
“He did not.”
“I’ll work on it. Bird-watcher is easy. Married man, not so easy.”
“Really.”
They continued along the edge of the airstrip, and about a hundred yards farther on they saw another tube in the ground, confirming Brodie’s guess that torches marked the runway at night.
Brodie raised his binoculars. The tall grass thinned out up ahead, and on the left he could see the village of thatched-roof huts with mustard-yellow walls, sitting in the grassland amidst a scattering of trees. On the western edge of the village the terrain sloped down toward the narrow river they’d seen from the air, which flowed north out of the distant jungle. Rising up beyond the village was the massive tepui. Brodie said, “This looks like the village that Carmen described.”
“There would be no doubt if she knew the name of the place she landed.”
“Right.” They continued on toward the end of the airstrip, where they saw a crudely built ladder in the grass, which was obviously Kavak’s answer to a jetway. They turned toward the village and approached a column of wooden signs including one that said BIENVENIDOS, and another that said WELCOME. But nothing from the Chamber of Commerce that said: KAVAK—THE SMALL TOWN WITH A BIG HEART. There was, however, an arrow that pointed the way toward a PEMÓN EXCURSION.
Brodie and Taylor stopped and looked around at the apparently deserted village. “Well,” said Brodie, “it appears we were not expected.”
“I don’t like quiet villages.”
“I hear you.”
They continued into the village, which was a collection of well-built and well-maintained huts of different shapes and sizes sitting apart from each other in the short grass. The thatched roofs were picturesque, as were the earthen walls, but all the huts had modern doors and windows, giving the village the appearance of a Disney theme park. Pemón World.
Brodie stopped and so did Taylor. Up ahead, he saw a man lying in a hammock, apparently asleep. In a nearby hut, he saw another man looking at them through a window. Brodie put his hand in his gun pocket.
Taylor said, “It’s either low tourist season, or this village was cleared out in anticipation of a hostile encounter.”
“Right. Meanwhile, we have no cover or concealment.” He glanced at a round hut. “Those walls are thick. Let’s move inside and see if anyone comes to greet us.”