THE RIO MADONNA, THREE MILES DOWNRIVER

The large boat was cruising along at five knots, matching the last known speed of Teacher. It had taken the captain far longer than he thought it would to get his main mast and antennas up again after exiting the cave. Since then, he had numerous repairs to make as he had inadvertently gouged his hull on several occasions in the darkness of the cave. It was only his sheer ability as a river captain that had kept him from ramming one of the jagged-edged walls. The Frenchman had been a tremendous help, as he had assisted on the bridge, calling out depths and making course correction. The man was indeed very knowledgeable about surviving difficult situations. That fool Mendez and his men were a different story. They had cowered in the total darkness of the cave—a fact they would never live down in the captain’s eyes. From here on out, the men from Colombia would have to be watched.

Thus far they had had one casualty on this bizarre journey. While making a physical sounding when the fathometer had failed for an hour, one of his men had entangled the sounding rope on the bow anchor and had reached into the water to free it as two men held on to his ankles while he dangled over the side. The water had suddenly erupted and the man had started screaming. As the men pulled him back aboard, a long trail of blood splashed the white paint as he was lifted up. His hand had been totally bitten off. One of the men, Indio Asana, a man raised in the heart of the Amazon basin, had said that the large fish that did it was unlike any he had ever seen on the river before, with a large jutting jaw and a tail that looked strong enough to snap a two-by-four in half. He said that it had fins on it unlike any he had ever seen, and since it was Indio who had said it, the captain had no doubt as to its truth.

“Capitán, I have received a ping from three miles ahead of us,” his radio/sonar man said from his small desk in the back of the wheelhouse.

“Señor Farbeaux, a signal from the Americans: someone has pinged us with an active sonar search.”

Farbeaux was amazed the captain had any notion as to what an active sonar search involved.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, my equipment, while not state-of-the-art for the U.S. Navy, señor, is quite adequate for us South American rum runners,” he said, smiling through his cigar smoke.

“I meant no disrespect, Captain. How far ahead would you say the search originated from?”

“My operator says three miles upriver, señor,” he said as he turned the large wheel and started for the bank in anticipation of the Frenchman’s order.

“We’d better delay a while; they may have stopped for some reason, maybe an accidental ping? Nonetheless, we better anchor for a while, would you agree, Captain?”

“Sí, señor, we are currently doing just that,” the captain replied as he straightened the wheel and pulled the Rio Madonna alongside the south bank of the tributary.

Santos ordered the bow and stern anchors out and shut down his twin engines. Several men rushed aft and, with long poles, arrested the momentum of the large tow-barge that contained the Frenchman’s equipment. When he was satisfied, he watched the sly Farbeaux as he went to the afterdeck to inform his majesty, Señor Mendez, of the delay. The shouting and tantrum at the unexpected layover would begin momentarily. The captain smiled as he wondered how long it would take for Farbeaux to put a bullet into that idiot’s brain.

As he thought this, he wondered just who it had been to accidentally hit the active sonar button on the American boat, an accident that warned them the strange boat was stopped up ahead. Convenient, he thought and then laughed, happy that the Frenchman was on his side. But as he looked upriver his smile faded. Somewhere up ahead was a lagoon that was uncaring of laughter of any kind, rumored to be a place of sheer sorrow, and he was blindly following this Frenchman into the heart of that dark place. The captain removed a strange medal from inside the collar of his shirt, and kissed and replaced it. Then he turned off the overhead light and sat in the darkness, listening for the familiar sounds he had heard since his childhood. Ahead on the river, legends waited, as they had for thousands of years, to greet the greedy hands of man. Again, the captain reached for the medallion under his shirt and then crossed himself.