Life Blood ---XIX---Page No--61

"What did he say?" I asked, not quite catching the burst of
rapid-fire Spanish from the cockpit. The explosion of expletives
had included the word navegacion. Something about malfunction.

God help us.

Alan Dupre's helicopter reminded me of the disintegrating taxis on Guatemala City's potholed streets. The vibration in the passenger compartment was so violent it made my teeth chatter. My stomach felt like it was in a cocktail shaker, and the deafening roar could have been the voice of Hell.

I was staring out the smudgy plastic window, where less than
three hundred meters below I could just make out the top of the
Peten rain forest of northwest Guatemala sweeping by beneath
us. So this was what it looked like. Dense and impenetrable, it
was a yawning, deciduous carpet enveloping the earth as far as
the eye could see—if something ten stories high could be called
carpet. I'd been in the forests of India's Kerala and seen some of
the denser growth in southern Mexico, but this was like another
planet.

The main problem was, a violent downpour, the leading edge
of the hurricane, was now sweeping across the Yucatan, stirring
up the treetops of the jungles below. The rain, which had begun in
earnest about ten minutes after we got airborne, had been
steadily increasing to the point it was now almost blinding.
        This was the risk I'd chosen to take, but let me admit right
here: The weather had me seriously scared, my fingernails
digging into the armrests and my pulse erratic. And now was there
something else? We'd only been in the air for thirty-five minutes,
and already we had some kind of mechanical issue looming?
What was left to go wrong?

"Some of the lights went out or something." Dupre tried a
shrug. "I'm not sure. No big deal, though. This old bird always
gets the job done." His pilot, Lieutenant Villatoro, formerly of the
Guatemalan Army, had just shouted the new development back to
the cabin. "Probably nothing. Don't worry about it."
        Don't worry about it! His "tourist" helicopter was a
Guatemalan candidate for the Air & Space Museum, an old Bell

UH-1D patched together with chicle and corn masa. Surely the storm was pushing it far beyond its stress limits.
        "Right, but what exactly—?"

"Sounds like the nav station." He clicked open his seat belt.
"Something . . . Who knows? If you'd be happier, I'll go up and
look."

I felt my palms go cold. "Doesn't seem too much to ask, considering."

The world down below us was a hostile mélange of towering trees, all straining for the sky, while the ground itself was a dark tangle of ferns, lianas, strangler vines, creepers—among which lurked Olympic scorpions and some of the Earth's most poisonous snakes. If we had to set down here—I didn't even want to think
about it. To lower a helicopter into the waves of flickering green below us would be to confront the hereafter.

"It's just the lights, like he said." Dupre yelled back from the cockpit's door, letting a tone of "I told you to chill out" seep
through. He was peering past the opening, at the long line of instruments. He followed his announcement with a sigh as he moved back into the main cabin. "Relax."

I wasn't relaxed and from the way his eyes were shifting and
his Gauloise cigarettes were being chain-smoked he was on the
verge of a nervous breakdown. In his case it wasn't just the
weather. He was fidgeting like a trapped animal, giving me the
distinct sense he was doing someone's invisible bidding and was
terrified he might fail.

"Well, why don't you try and fix it?" Was he trying to act calm
just to impress me? "Can't you bang on the panel or something?"
        "Okay, okay, let me see what I can do. Jesus!" He edged
back into the cockpit, next to Villatoro. The wind was shaking us
so badly that, even bent over, he was having trouble keeping his
balance. Then he halfheartedly slammed the dark instrument
readouts with the heel of his open hand. When the effort produced
no immediate electronic miracle, he settled into the copilot's seat.
        "Que pasa? " he yelled at Villatoro, his voice barely audible
over the roar of the engine and the plastering of rain on the
fuselage. Then he looked out the windscreen, at the torrent
slamming against it, and rubbed at his chin.

"No se, mi comandante," the Guatemalan shouted back. I

sensed he was hoping to sound efficient and unperturbed. Dupre
claimed his pilot had personally checked out the Bell and prepped

it. Now, though . . . "Mira. Like I said the lights. On the nav station. Maybe the electrical—"

"How about the backup battery?" Dupre was just barely keeping his cool.

Villatoro scratched his chin. "I'll tell you the truth. The backup
is muerto. I tested it before we left, but I couldn't find any
replacements in Provisiones. I figure, no problem, but now, amigo
. . ."