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After several minutes of this, the shaman motioned to Vicente.

“We’re on,” he said to Slash.

Slash opened the backpack, handing me some alcohol pads. “If you do the first aid, it might be better received.”

Was he kidding? I knew next to nothing about nursing. “Me? I don’t know how to treat a gunshot wound.”

“I’ll walk you through it. Hurry. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Let me wash my hands first.” I dashed over to the pool and scrubbed them as clean as I could before returning.

Slash had arranged all the supplies on the ground and motioned for me to get started. He walked me through preparing a shot of morphine for the pain and then directed me how to administer it. When I cleaned the wound with alcohol, the man cried out in pain. After adding antibiotic ointment, I wrapped the wound tightly with a bandage per Slash’s instructions, and had Vicente tell him to rest and not move his arm for several days to avoid opening up the wound. I then asked for the man’s mate to come forward. I demonstrated how to remove and rewrap the bandages using Slash’s hands as an example. I told her she should do it every other day and gave her a large roll of sterile wrap.

While we’d been tending to the injured man, the chief had assembled almost every man in the village. From what I could tell only the wounded man, the shaman, a few elderly men and some young boys under ten were not preparing for war.

“What are we going to do?” I asked Slash. “We have to help them.”

Vicente surprised me by picking up one of the backpacks and pulling it on. “It’s against my better judgment as we shouldn’t be getting involved, but I’ll ask permission to go with them and check it out. At the very least, I can warn them about the guns.”

“You’d do that?” I asked.

“Yes. If those guys turn out to be armed drug runners or bandits, you’re right, it’s not a fair fight. Having said that, it’s up to the chief whether he’ll permit me to accompany them.”

“I’d like to go, too,” Salvador said. “At the very least, I want to know where this strange village is located, so I can report to the government if it’s not legitimate.”

Slash exchanged a glance with me and without speaking we both knew what we wanted. “Add us to the group,” I said. “If they’re willing to permit all of us to go.”

Vicente walked over to the chief and began an animated discussion. After a few minutes, he returned. “We’re in luck. He’s permitted all of us to accompany them.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I’m not sure what good we would be, but at least we could prepare them to face weapons, or at least I hoped we could.

Slash insisted I keep one of the satellite phones, so I slipped it around my neck while he kept one and left a third at the village with one of the packs. He took the backpack with weapons, slinging it over his shoulder. I filled up our water bottles and we set off—Slash in his loincloth, boxers and hiking boots, and me in my loincloth, fishnet bra and boots.

My mother would be appalled. I wondered why I wasn’t.

I took one last look at the village over my shoulder as we headed into the trees. Amana had been staring at her new husband, but now she lifted a hand at me in farewell. I raised my hand back, trying to appear confident and strong, just as anAmazonaswarrior would be.

Good thing she didn’t know I was scared to death.

Chapter Forty-Four

Lexi

We traveled silently and single file. The villagers had realized early on we, the outsiders, were a huge liability in terms of moving in stealth, so we were relegated to the back. The chief took the front, guided by the warrior who had accompanied the man who’d got shot. I was thankful we were following the higher ground because the vegetation was thinner and made for easier footing.

Eventually, we descended until the chief gave us a signal to stop, indicating the village was ahead. We crept forward to look out over the so-called new village.

Three buildings were visible, but constructed beneath the tree canopy and painted green and brown so they could not be easily spotted from above. I didn’t see any people, but I could hear what sounded like a gasoline engine running somewhere. Possibly a generator. Just beyond the buildings, tall trees had been cleared and waist-high bushes planted on the rocky, cleared hillside where the ground sloped away.

The warrior who’d been with the man who got shot pointed to a spot near the right end of the buildings, apparently indicating that was the spot they’d been attacked. I smelled a fire and spotted a lazy trail of smoke coming from the smallest of the buildings on the left.

Salvador leaned over next to Slash and me. “Those look like young coca trees,” he murmured. “I didn’t think you could grow coca trees at this low an elevation.”

“You can’t,” I said. “I bet they’re trying to bioengineer them, just like you said, Vicente.”

“Someone went to a lot of extra trouble to put these buildings under the trees to keep them hidden,” Slash replied. He reached into his backpack and pulled out a pistol. “In my opinion, this all adds up to a drug plantation, right on Okampa territory and well within a protected national park.”

While we were discussing this, the chief sent a reconnaissance group out to stealthily approach the buildings. I glanced down at my watch. It was morning, coming up on nine thirty. The sun was bright and hot, the humidity oppressive, as always. Sweat trickled down my temples and back, causing further anxiety. Much to my relief, the scouting group made it undetected to the first building. I held my breath as they entered. After a moment, they came out unscathed, indicating no one had been inside. They did that for all the buildings and determined there was no one presently at the area.