When The Jaguar Sleeps: A jungle adventure Read Free Page A

can risk moving him? Won’t we do him more harm than good?’
    ‘Do we really have a choice? He cannot stay here. Look at all this mess! Everything is nearly torn to shreds. There is no place for him to lie down comfortably. And what if the whole thing explodes or if help does not come today, and some wild beast, prowling around at night picks up the scent of blood and attacks him?’
    Wasting no more precious time, Florent and Didier carried the wounded body very carefully out of the wreck and put it down alongside Anna’s.
    Didier returned to continue his search of the remains of the fuselage, but found no one else. However, he did discover the shattered pieces of the aircraft radio and a pair of backpacks, barely damaged. He reached into a pocket of one of them and felt something flat and hard under his fingers: a mobile phone. It looked all right; its display illuminated the moment he pressed it. Filled with new hope, he quickly punched a few buttons. Unsurprisingly, it proved useless because there was no network coverage in this remote area.
    Outside of the wreck he examined again the surrounding foliage and noticed something red gleaming on the large oblong leaves of a tree. Was it blood? It certainly looked like it.
    Slowly he lifted his eyes, following the course of the stains. A bit higher up, from a thick, gnarled, knotty branch a body was hanging, swinging gently in the air. At the same moment Florent’s terrified voice came from behind him, making him jump.
    ‘Oh my God, that’s Carlos.’
    Florent recognised Carlos only from the clothes still wrapped around the body. Where his head should have been was a bloody mass, and both legs were missing, ripped away up to the thigh.
    Didier turned aside, bent forward and started gagging and retching until he finally threw up some bile and mucus. Then he sank to his knees, heaving for air, his face twisted in a grimace of disgust and revulsion. He could not look further. But he had no doubt that the pilot must also be dead because the cockpit had obviously taken the full force of the impact. Later during the day his suspicions were confirmed when in the surrounding undergrowth they found the remains of his body.
    The two young men sat down on the backpacks under a knotty tree in the shadow feeling completely drained. The hot, humid and stuffy air around them congested their chests. Breathing became difficult and their clothes were sticking disagreeably to their clammy, slippery skin. The sweet smell of blood mixed with the sharp odour of sweat lured swarms of mosquitoes. They were circling around them, persistently biting into both bare and covered skin. At first they tried to ward them off, but quickly gave up seeing that it was useless. The enraged insects would just return anew, attacking them with redoubled ferocity.
    ‘Those damn mosquitoes are going to eat us alive.’
    Florent looked at his watch. It was two in the afternoon. Their stomachs had started to groan with hunger. However, the extreme thirst they were experiencing was far worse. Every now and then, with a stiff and swollen tongue, they would lick their chapped lips but could do nothing to bring relief. Their throats felt parched, as if someone had sandpapered them.
    ‘Let’s search the backpacks,’ Didier suggested after a while.
    They were pleased with what they found: besides a few bottles of mineral water, each rucksack contained something to eat as well. There was even an insect repellent spray in one of them. If they handled the food stocks with care they should last for at least two days and by then help might have reached them. Rescue teams must already be on their way, searching for the lost plane. They should arrive soon. Of course, this was assuming that they knew the exact location of the crash. But both men chose to stay positive.
    Fog had thinned only here and there and still hung motionless on the branches of some of the trees like a thick, milky white cobweb. In other places, timid