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  Chapter 4

  Three Years Ago, Belize, Central America

  The chopper’s blades sliced through the damp atmosphere, thumping a hypnotic beat as the aircraft hovered fifteen hundred feet above the jungle treetops north of Spanish Lookout. The five passengers gazed through the windows at the topography below – referring to their bound reports, making discreet notes in the borders, exchanging glances before returning to their study of the land.

  The pilot was flying in a methodical grid pattern so that the group could better appreciate the area in which they’d spent the last six months. Professor Calvin Reynolds, a rail-thin man with a largely bald head and round, steel-rimmed spectacles, pointed to a small clearing in the distance.

  “There’s A-7. Looks pretty remote from this far up, doesn’t it?”

  They slowly drifted toward the site, climbing another few hundred feet in an effort to find calmer air – the heat rising from the earth was creating unpredictable updrafts, resulting in an uncomfortable ride, and the pilot was sensitive to providing as pleasant a trip as possible.

  A swarthy, heavyset man wiped his neck with a red bandana and shifted uncomfortably in his seat, obviously ill at ease. The occasional turbulence from thermal drafts wasn’t helping; every time the helicopter jolted, he clutched the sides of his seat with a hawkish grip. He hated flying, but especially hated helicopters. He’d read about their aerodynamics, or rather their lack of them. As far as he was concerned, they were death traps – a conviction that Reynolds ribbed him about mercilessly.

  “It looks that way because it’s in the middle of nowhere. I don’t care if I never see the place again, frankly,” he declared in a tone of disgust.

  Oscar Valenzuela was a highly competent geologist with over twenty-five years of experience in Central America, but one of his personality quirks was that he complained incessantly about everything. His colleagues had long ago grown used to it, but not so his first and second wives, who eventually couldn’t stomach his worldview and moved on to more palatable possibilities. Oscar threw the pilot an evil glare, as though the turbulence was a personal slight, and swallowed with difficulty, his complexion decidedly pasty.

  Professor Reynolds gifted him a humorless grin. “You know as well as I do that we’ll probably be spending a lot more time here,” he said, with a condescending nod of his sunburned head.

  “Just my luck. Filthy place. Bugs the size of buses. Malaria, dengue, yellow fever, typhoid–”

  “And those are the positives,” Reynolds reflected.

  Another jolt hit the cabin as they encountered more bumpy air, causing Oscar’s sweating to intensify. He was preparing to complain about the heat and the roughness of the ride when a loud beeping sounded from the cockpit. The pilot fought with the controls, and then leaned forward and tapped on one of the gauges. The helicopter shuddered as the motor stuttered, then it resumed purring as it had for the last forty-five minutes, the strident screeching of the failure warning dying abruptly.

  Oscar’s eyes were now saucers of panic.

  “Wha…what the hell was that? What’s wrong?” he demanded in a shrill voice a full octave higher than normal.

  The pilot was turning to address him when the alarm clamored again, but this time the vibration intensified before a grinding sound tore through the cabin. Another louder alarm began howling as the rotor stopped turning.

  Oscar’s stomach lurched into his throat as the helicopter stalled. The screams of horror and panic around him battled with the din of the engine failure alarms – his worst living nightmare playing out in real time. The drop began gradually for a quarter second and then accelerated like a runaway elevator, freefalling into the embrace of gravity. All Oscar had time to think was “Oh, God – no, no, no…”

  The explosion from the chopper plowing into the earth was audible fifteen miles away in Spanish Lookout, and the plume of smoke from the wreckage was visible all the way to the Mexican border. By the time rescue craft mobilized and made it from Belize City, the flames had exhausted themselves, and all that was left was the charred skeleton of the frame.