| Subject: Prologue |
Author:
Juli
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Date Posted: Friday, May 21, 10:48:55pm
In reply to:
Juli
's message, "Angelita" on Friday, May 21, 10:47:26pm
Angelita
Prologue
1984 Tiuchi River, Bolivia
The elegant white motor yacht slipped gracefully past the banks of the Bolivian rainforest along one of the Amazon’s tributaries. The yacht carried a crew of 12 and a private chef. It also contained one of the world’s wealthiest financiers and his young wife.
Nicholas Wirth leaned his arms on the gleaming metal railing as he watched the lush green jungle drift by. What a difference this was from Australia’s dry landscape. The chattering of colorful birds drew his attention.
“Oh look, Nick, a monkey!” Rita exclaimed as she joined him at the railing, handing him a glass of ice and scotch.
Nick laughed and put his arm around his wife. “There are all kinds of wildlife out here, darling,” he said, kissing the top of her pale blonde head. “Crocodiles, toucans, squirrel monkeys,” he told her.
He watched his wife as she stared out into the thick surrounding vegetation. He hadn’t mentioned snakes, knowing her fear of them. He stared at her in fascination as he always did, wondering once more why she had chosen him. She was younger than he by ten years, only twenty five. She had been a paralegal at the law firm he kept on retainer. Nick had been smitten with her from the start. The first day she had walked into his offices behind the group of lawyers, he couldn’t keep his eyes off her long blonde hair and shining blue eyes. When she sat down and pulled out her notepad, crossing her long shapely legs, Nicholas had swallowed hard, willing himself not to become aroused.
Nick had built his empire from the ground up. He had worked himself through college at the University of Chicago, and gotten his MBA in finance from Harvard. He had gotten a job out of college at an up and coming brokerage firm and had proven to have a keen mind for the business. Working his way up the corporate ladder, he soon joined two of his colleagues in opening their own firm. By the time he was thirty, Nick was regularly making “lists” in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and other financial magazines. In the past five years, he had bought out his partners, and now owned the most lucrative firm in New York City. His own investments had brought him more wealth than he knew what to do with, and when Rita walked into his office two years ago, he realized what had been missing.
Their courtship had been short and passionate, culminating in a wedding that People magazine lauded as the most romantic and elegant of the year. Now, for their second anniversary, Nick had gifted Rita with this cruise throughout the South American seaports and the Amazon River.
“Are you enjoying yourself, darling?” he asked, taking a sip of his scotch.
Rita nodded vigorously, leaning into his warm side. She had come from a poor Australian family, both of her parents dying in an auto accident when she was sixteen. With no one else to take care of her, she had been fostered with an unmarried uncle until she was 18, and then she moved to New York City to get a job. She was bright, and quickly earned her paralegal degree, joining the firm of Mathews, Mahoney, and Davis.
Rita still could hardly believe the luck that had brought Nick into her life. She glanced from the scenery to her tall husband. At 33, he had been one of America’s most eligible bachelors, regularly making the covers of magazines and tabloids with his sandy brown hair and dark eyes. He was also tall and lean, something that Rita, at 5’9” herself, could appreciate. She could feel the hard planes of muscle under his shirt, and ran her hand along his back. She smiled inwardly at his squeeze, glad he was keeping his promise to forget work while they vacationed. She knew he had a hard and unyielding side when it came to business, and he thought nothing of “battlefield” tactics when handling an adversary. She was glad that he never turned that legendary Wirth temper on her. For their first anniversary, he had surprised her by buying a huge sheep ranch for her Uncle Walter, along with the hands to run it. They had spent a good portion of the last six months with Walter on the ranch, enjoying the Australian “winter.”
“Senor? Senora?” a white-coated steward interrupted politely.
The Wirth’s turned and the steward informed them that their dinner was ready. Nick put out his arm for his wife, and then led her downstairs to the dining room of the luxurious yacht.
The next morning dawned with a damp drizzle, keeping the Wirth’s warmly ensconced inside the yacht. Rita was leafing through the color pages of the tour brochure when she heard the first shot. She looked up in alarm as Nick poked his head into the salon where she was reading.
“Stay here,” he shouted before running off.
Rita turned to look outside the yacht’s windows, when more gunfire prompted her to duck her head. She began to pray.
Outside, the crew was shouting back and forth in Spanish and chaos reigned when Nick made it on deck.
“What’s going on?” he shouted to a crewman who rushed by.
“Guerillas,” the man replied gesturing to the dense foliage.
The sound of a bullet whizzing by caused them both to duck.
Nick grabbed the man’s arm, angry now. “What do you mean gorillas? Someone is shooting at us!”
“Senor, not GO-rillas,” the man explained, mimicking an ape. “Guerillas… Revolutionaries.”
Nick’s heart sank. He knew that only a mere three years previously, there had been a bloody, military overthrow of the Bolivian president, financed largely by cocaine lords, but most recently, things had been quiet.
He cursed as another bullet flew by his head, splintering into the fiberglass hull of the yacht. Nick ducked instinctively as a loud flash lit up the undergrowth, followed by the shudder of the boat beneath him.
“A bazooka?” he wondered, picking himself off the deck.
Nick started for the door that led below when the yacht’s captain ran up to him. Captain Ortega was a tall, light-skinned Brazilian, who loved the yacht more than he could ever love a woman.
“Senor Wirth, we are under attack. The rockets have taken out our engines, and there is a very large hole in the starboard side of the yacht,” he said breathlessly.
Nick swore under his breath. As he opened his mouth to give instructions to his captain, the man’s eyes widened and he looked down.
Nick too looked down at the man’s chest where an expanding circle of red marred his pristine white uniform. Nick caught Ortega as he collapsed, pulling his body behind a half wall that afforded some cover. Nick removed his own blazer, covering the other man’s body.
“Stay here, I have to reach Rita,” Nick shouted, running around the port side of the yacht. Realizing too late that the attackers were on both sides of the river, Nick stumbled when the first bullet ripped into his thigh. Dragging himself quickly to the front deck, he ducked down into the interior of the yacht. When his feet hit water after only four steps, Nick began to panic.
“RITA!!!” he screamed, hoping that his wife could hear him over the chaos. “RITA!!!”
Splashing through the dining room, he made his way to the master suite and wrenched the door open.
He called for his wife again, but still only heard the muted sounds of gunfire from above. The water was up to his knees when he finished searching the first floor of the yacht, and the remaining lower decks were completely submerged.
Nick prayed that Rita had had the sense to get out of the ship when it began to sink, and he pushed open a hatch that led onto the back deck. He stumbled again when another bullet lit a fire in his chest, and toppled over the rail and into the water. Nick struggled to keep his head above water as the current carried him down the river away from the carnage. He kicked with his good leg, trying to make it to shore, but soon the blood loss began to weaken him.
10 Days Later
The voice seemed familiar, but it wasn’t registering in Nick’s drug-clouded brain. He couldn’t seem to make his eyes open, but the voice wouldn’t go away. He knew that voice from somewhere, but he couldn’t make the connection in his brain.
“Damn it, Nick. Open your eyes!” the voice said, as if shouting from a distance.
With great difficulty, Nick managed to blink his heavy eyelids open.
“Welcome back to life, son,” the gravelly voice said with a smile.
“Walter?” Nick rasped, his voice weaker than he thought it should be.
“In the flesh,” his wife’s uncle replied.
“Rita?” Nick croaked, closing his eyes again.
Walter swallowed. “We haven’t found her yet, Nick. But we’ve sent helicopters, boats, you name it. They’ve been searching everyday. I flew up from Australia as soon as I heard.”
“I want to go out there,” Nick said, trying to sound stronger than he felt.
“Hell no!” Walter replied, putting a restraining hand on Nick’s good shoulder. “You’ve been shot. You were half dead when they found you.”
“What happened?” Nick asked, remembering nothing after falling into the river.
“Hells bells! Where do I start? Your captain managed to get off a radio distress call before the yacht was compromised. The rescue team found you about a mile down river washed up on a sand bar.” Walter paused when Nick closed his eyes again.
“When they got you here, you were badly dehydrated, lost a truckload of blood, and over the last week have been fighting the infection that you caught from that cesspool of a river,” he finished.
“What about Rita?” Nick asked quietly, fighting to remain conscious.
Walter put a hand on Nick’s arm. “Like I said, Nick, they’ve been out there everyday, combing the jungle,” Walter reported somberly.
“Don’t bullshit me, Walter. What are the chances?” Nick asked, using up the last of his strength.
“It doesn’t look good, Nick. I’m sorry. But I promise you, we’ll keep trying,” Walter assured him.
A tear slipped from one of Nick’s eyes as he finally let go of consciousness.
Two months later, Nick returned to New York, without his wife.
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