Titanoboa Read online

  “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with the people that disappeared? And who the hell is that guy?”

  Riki glanced over her shoulder to the man with glasses. “That’s Craig Millard. He’s a herpetologist.”

  “What’s a herpetologist?”

  The man pushed his glasses up a little higher on his nose. It was so classically nerdy and clichéd, Mark would’ve chuckled if his head didn’t feel like a hammer was cracking it open.

  “I study amphibians and reptiles. Snakes, specifically,” he said.

  Mark swallowed. His throat felt like sandpaper, and he hadn’t really understood what the man had said. He sat down on a chair in front of him, his hand to his head.

  “We better get him to the hospital,” Riki said.

  Steven took one of Mark’s arms to help him up. Mark pulled away from him. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Hey, brother, I’m just trying to help. You want a lift to the hospital or not?”

  Mark pushed up to his feet. The room whirled. He had been so drunk before he lay on the carpet and gripped it as tightly as he could because the room was spinning out of control. He felt like that now.

  Riki’s hand found his arm and helped him stay on his feet. She was leading him out of the room, Steven hurrying up ahead of them and getting the door.

  “What does this have to do with Billy Gilmore’s disappearance?” Mark said.

  She was silent a moment. “He didn’t disappear, Mark. They know what happened to him.”

  The hospital in Kalou was much more modern than anyone visiting the islands could’ve guessed. Many doctors were locally trained, but many came from Europe and the United States. Physicians were completely private employees there, with no government or HMO interference whatsoever, and as a result, they were paid handsomely. Enough to buy mansions on the beach. On top of that, they received ninety days vacation time a year, full benefits, and the loveliest island in the hemisphere to call home. Many doctors, grinding away hours in the big inner cities like Chicago and Nashville, just couldn’t resist.

  So when Mark checked into the ER, he wasn’t worried about the healthcare. What worried him was why the hell Riki was suddenly working for the same people she had told him a day ago she didn’t trust.

  They placed Mark in a room on the main floor. The room was clean and white, with a comfortable, adjustable bed and a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. A nurse informed him that he would be getting an MRI, and he signed a few papers in anticipation of that. Riki and Steven were there as well, and they spoke to the staff, too.

  “Probably just a concussion,” Steven said. “Hell, I’ve had dozens of those.”

  “Not completely reassuring.” Mark turned to Riki, who was busy on her phone either texting or emailing someone. “What’s going on, Riki? You hated these guys, now you’re gonna work for them?”

  “I didn’t hate them. I just didn’t trust them. I still don’t. Not fully. But if what they’re telling me is true, I can’t pass this opportunity up.”

  “What opportunity is that?”

  She looked to Steven who said, “Well, we have ourselves a little snake problem.”

  “A snake problem?” Mark said flatly.

  “Yeah. See, when we began drilling, I think we disrupted the, hell, I don’t even know what you’d call it. The nerd, Millard, he could explain it better, he’s wandering around in the hall somewhere. He said something like we disrupted the ecosystem or something. These snakes were living here, right here in the center of the island, and they think a few of the other smaller islands surrounding us. Just living out their lives. Well, seems we might’ve upset that little arrangement.”

  “Snakes? You think the people disappearing are because of snakes?”

  “Not just snakes,” a voice said from the door. “Titanoboa cerrejonensis. The largest snake genus that’s ever lived. They should be extinct, actually. By about fifty-eight million years. But here they are.”

  Mark picked something up in the man’s voice. Giddiness, like a child. Millard looked like a hippie with the exception of the two cell phones holstered to his belt, one an iPhone and one an Android. He kept pushing up his glasses, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was a thin man, wiry, and his forearms appeared hairless.

  “Ancient snakes, huh?” Mark said. “Even if there is, and honestly, I don’t give a shit if there’s dinosaurs at the center of the island, but even if there is, what do you want with Riki? And why are you telling me this?”

  Steven exhaled and sat in a chair near the bed. He put his boots up at the foot of the bed, dried flakes of mud falling off onto the clean white sheets. “Here’s the thing, brother, we had the native workers sign about the scariest NDAs and contracts and whatever the hell else our legal department had them sign. But you still got them to tell you what we were doing. I need someone like that working for me. I don’t get them, and they don’t listen. I need an insider that’s not an insider, if you get what I’m saying.”

  “Not interested. Especially after almost having my head cracked open.”

  “I’m telling you, they were not there to hurt you, just throw you out. Besides, what’s the difference if you work for us or for Riki? I know she was paying you. We’ll double it. Where else on this island are you gonna make that? And you don’t even have to do much. Help me pick out the men from the locals, come with us and watch us kill some of these damn things, and be on your way.”

  Two hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Mark’s head spun with the figure. If he could drag this thing out for a few weeks, that was all he needed to cover his legal fees in a custody dispute. He’d probably even have enough left over to put that additional room on the house so his daughter could have her own bedroom.

  He looked to Milliard, who was staring out the window, then to Riki, who glued her gaze to his. He would talk to her later about this decision and why she was choosing to go. She didn’t seem motivated by greed, and snakes certainly weren’t news.

  “Hunting snakes, huh? Two hundred and fifty bucks an hour?”

  “That’s right,” Steven said.

  “Okay, I’ll do it. But not salary. I want a retainer of twenty-thousand dollars, and I will bill out of it every day. If it reaches zero, it has to be replenished to the full twenty-thousand.”

  Steven smirked as he removed his boots from the bed and stood up. He thrust out his hand, and Mark took it after only a moment’s hesitation. “Brother, you got yourself a deal.”

  21

  The hospital affair only lasted a few hours. He was cleared of any bleeding in his brain and told to take ibuprofen the next few days for headaches. If they got too bad, he was to come back immediately for another MRI.

  Steven had informed him they wanted him to start right away. He had enough time to head home and pack. As Riki drove him over, he suddenly remembered that his house had been broken into. He would have to ask Steven about that little fact.

  His home appeared normal, nothing really out of place, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t have really remembered. He got out a duffle from the hall closet and packed. Most people that came to the island thought the proper jungle attire was to stay as comfortable and cool as possible. Hundreds of people over the years entered the jungles wearing shorts and tank tops, sandals, and whatever else they thought would keep them cool. But that was exactly the wrong way to dress in a tropical jungle.

  Insects, many of which science hadn’t yet discovered, were the problem. Flies that injected eggs into your nostrils, scorpions so poisonous they were called the “twenty-step scorpions” because you could only take twenty steps before you died, and, the insect that most frightened Mark, mosquitoes. Tropical mosquitoes weren’t the mosquitoes in California. The ones here were large and aggressive. They carried enormously varied diseases, but the islanders accepted as fact something the Western world completely ignored: that mosquitoes carried HIV.

  Scientifically, Mark had been told, it was not possible. A doctor on the is
land had told him mosquitoes treated the HIV virus as food. The HIV virus did not activate the enzymes that allowed certain diseases, like malaria, to exist within the mosquito undigested. The mosquito simply didn’t recognize HIV and digested it. Within a day, the stomach destroyed all virus particles.

  The islanders insisted that medical science was incorrect. That many mosquitoes, perhaps a new species of mosquito, did recognize the HIV virus in its blood meals and allowed it to exist undigested within the insect’s body. If true, every time someone stepped into the jungle, thousands of potentially HIV-positive hypodermic needles floated around, trying to stick them. The entire thing made Mark’s skin crawl.

  He dressed in long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a hat. Any area left exposed at this point he coated down with the most powerful insect repellent he could find, a gel applied directly to the skin. To get to the skin, the mosquito would have to puncture the gelatin layer on the dermis. The gelatin was so deadly to the insect that it could kill it in less than five seconds. Mark understood that it first paralyzed the insect then stopped its heart. He didn’t know how or why. All he cared about was that it worked. He’d captured some mosquitoes himself and tested it. Not a single one survived past ten seconds, and most of them died under five.

  He spread the gelatin on his hands, face, neck, ears, and forehead. It was as thick and goopy as hair gel. Before leaving the house, he checked the rooms, waiting for the gelatin to dry. Riki was outside in a rental car, playing on her phone. Mark climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Truth time,” he said before she had a chance to put the car in reverse and pull out. “Why would you possibly want to work for them? And don’t tell me a big snake is a good story. I once saw a forty-foot green anaconda in Peru. I didn’t get my name in the paper.”

  She grinned and pulled out. “Can you think of a better way for me to expose everything they’re doing than working for them?”

  He smiled. “Not really, no.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  They drove on the surface streets around the city. Mark watched the tourists. They were comforting to him in a way. Maybe it was their predictability. All were looking for the same thing; some memory they could later recount to other people. The biggest industries on the island were the jungle adventure tours and anything involving sightseeing.

  “Can I ask you something?” Riki said.

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you doing all this? It couldn’t just be the money.”

  “Actually, it is.”

  “Doesn’t seem like you need that much to survive here.”

  “It’s not for me, it’s for a lawyer. My ex and I have a daughter. I want to fight for custody.”

  “Oh.”

  He looked out the window at a group of tourists. A man with an unbuttoned shirt and gold chains hanging from his neck had his arms around two beautiful women. “You ever married?” he asked.

  “No. Just never got around to it, I guess.”

  “Being a reporter keeps you busy I would think. I worked closely with a few when I was back with LAPD.”

  “I bet even in that time everything’s changed. News doesn’t really exist like it used to. Even the New York Times is going under. Everyone gets their news from places like the Huffington Post and Reddit, so you can’t really be a full-time reporter anymore. You just freelance and hope you make a name for yourself.”

  “Is that what this is about? Making a name for yourself?”

  “What is that?”

  Mark followed her gaze out the windshield. About twenty feet out, two men were fighting. The fists were flying wildly before Ali tackled one of the men from behind. Another man grabbed the other person involved in the fight and pulled him away, back into the crowd to disappear and avoid arrest.

  “Wait here,” Mark said. He stepped out of the car and rushed over to Ali. “You need any help?”

  Ali had the man on his stomach and pulled out a pair of cuffs. He slapped them on the man’s wrists and double locked them. “I’m fine.” He lifted the man by his arms. The man appeared as if he wanted to fight but was so exhausted he didn’t have anything left. In a sudden burst of strength, the man tried to break away. Mark grabbed his left arm, and Ali held on tightly to his right. They raised the man nearly off the ground as they dragged him to the police cruiser and shoved him into the backseat. The man swore and spit, kicking at the windows.

  “What is that all about?” Mark asked.

  “Damn oil workers. Got into a fight up there in Toucan’s Bar.”

  “Over what?”

  “The father of a man that disappeared began insulting them. He said it was their fault his son was missing. That they’d released a curse on us.” Ali leaned against the car, breathing deeply.

  “You okay, old man?”

  Ali glanced at him and sneered. “I am getting old, Mark. This is a young man’s job. We need more police out here, or I need to retire.”

  Mark rested against the cruiser with him. “Curse, huh?”

  He spat onto the ground. “That’s what he said.”

  “Ali, can I ask you something? You ever seen any big snakes on the island?” Technically, Mark had not yet signed any NDAs or contracts.

  “What?”

  “Big snakes. Like, really big snakes. You ever seen any?”

  “Yeah, you’ve got boas deeper in. The jungles are really hot, and they like the heat. I’ve seen some big ones.”

  “Like how big?”

  “What is this about, Mark?”

  “You didn’t hear this from me. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  “The oil company, VN, they just hired me to help them on a hunt. For giant snakes.”

  Ali pulled a pack of menthols out of his breast pocket and lit one, even though he was still sucking breath. “What do they want with snakes?”

  “They think there are some snakes they thought extinct that live in the center of the island and that they’ve disrupted their habitat or something. They think that’s what’s responsible for the disappearances.”

  He shook his head. “Stanley disappeared on the ocean. I’ve never seen a boa in the ocean.”

  “Me neither.”

  He puffed at his cigarette and supported his head back on the car, as though he had completely taxed every muscle. “I wouldn’t believe anything they told me. Who knows what their real reason is.”

  “That’s about what I feel. Just wondering if you’ve heard anything.”

  “Well, I mean, my mother would always tell me monsters lived in the center of the island. But that if we left them alone they would leave us alone. So no kids ever went to the center of the island. She said that’s why all the cities are built on the beaches.” He shrugged. “Just fairy tales they told us so we wouldn’t run off.”

  Mark looked at Riki, who was doing something on her phone. “Let’s hope so.”

  22

  After driving to the edge of the city, Riki parked, and Mark sat in the car while she stepped outside to find a bathroom. She walked with her face buried in her phone toward some nearby shops. Mark got out of the car and sat on the hood. The jungle air this far from the ocean was hot and wet. The humidity could reach upwards of seventy percent, the highest ever recorded in the jungle allegedly over a hundred percent. Enough to soak clothing while sitting still and doing nothing.

  Headlights bobbed up and down on the dirt road before they pulled onto the paved streets. The road was the only path through the jungle, but just to the center. Someone going inside would have to turn around and come out the same way, or at least that’s what he’d heard. The jungle was boiling, dark, and—something Mark probably wouldn’t admit to anyone else—creepy as all hell. He had never been more than half a mile in.

  Two Jeeps, both a green camouflage color as if they were in Vietnam or something, rolled to a stop in front of him. Steven Russert jumped out of the lead jeep and ambled over. He didn’t say anything but hopped up onto the hood of Riki’s ca
r. He looked up at the sky.

  “Damn beautiful,” Steven said. “Never grow old of this.”

  “It has its charms.”

  Steven smiled. “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “I don’t know you.”

  “Well, you can trust me. I don’t have any ulterior motives. I want to kill some snakes and make my bosses happy. That’s it.”

  Mark looked over at the shops to see if Riki had finished yet but didn’t see her. “This must be pretty profitable to go through all this for some snakes.”

  “Oil, man. Ain’t that much of it left in the world. The competition’s gonna keep getting worse, until finally we’re fighting wars openly for the last little bit left. That’s where we’re headed.”

  “Maybe.” Mark leaned back on his hands. “So, let me ask you, have you seen one of these snakes?”

  “Hell, I did better than that. I was almost eaten by one. It wrapped around my ankle and started going up my leg.”

  “How big was it?”

  “It was dark, couldn’t really see, but big. Really big.”

  Riki returned, but she didn’t seem to notice the Jeeps. Her face was still down over her phone. “So what happens when you kill some of these snakes?”

  “Well, we’re gonna have to kill a whole lot of them. Enough so that our workers are left alone. Then when that happens, they can go back to extracting the oil underneath this island.”

  “And when the oil’s gone?”

  “When the oil’s gone, the jobs will be gone, too. The island will go through a depression, and people’ll starve. But it’ll just go back to this size eventually.”

  “You’re pretty calm about destroying an island.”

  “Hey, brother, I told you, you could trust me. I’ll always be straight with you.” He jumped off the car. “You ready to go?”

  During the dark, bumpy drive through the jungle, Mark rode in the Jeep behind Steven’s while Riki rode with him. Three natives and the herpetologist surrounded Mark. They spoke no more than five words between them and nothing to Mark. Which was just as well, because he felt like doing nothing more than mentally running through every scenario of what could go wrong. Steven seemed pretty confident that this would be a simple operation. Find the snakes and kill them. If Mark had learned anything in his life, though, it was that things never went as planned.