Breathing deep, I readied myself to go shopping.
The plan was a simple one. We'd arrived around midday, which was the hottest time of the day and the root of Macho's bitching. I would go into a large store that stood at the opposite end of the city block and casually gather a third of the things on our list. Later, just as the sun began to set, Hunter would go in and do the same. We'd both pose as tourists with no knowledge of the other. Macho was to go in the following morning and complete the list.
Then, from the hotel lobby, we'd flag down a taxi and make our way to the edge of the city. We'd use the excuse of hiking, which we'd surely be doing a lot of. There was approximately seven miles of terrain to cover on foot once we left the city. From there, according to my grandfather's map, we'd encounter a relatively thick forest and upon locating a double waterfall, the tree would be visible.
Beyond that...we had nothing.
The more I kicked the idea around in my head, the more it felt like we were chasing fool's gold. For nearly an hour, I fought the urge to quit and go back home. Hell, I was rich! What need did I have for proving my grandfather right?
But then I remembered he surely had felt the same way. I began to remember myself as a child, seated next to my grandfather as he told me stories of the great war.
Something or someone had crossed his path and changed the work of his life in the process. Finding Hitler and proving it to the world had become my grandfather's obsession in his later years. There had to be something to his theory. I knew my grandfather well enough to know that he wouldn't have chased this theory of his without good reason.
He wouldn't have chased fool's gold.
So, I swallowed my pride and went shopping.
While the trip itself had been just as uneventful as I had hoped, a large truck nearly struck me down in the street near in front of the hotel. And it would have been my own fault. The large bag of supplies had hoarded just enough of my vision to let me walk recklessly in front of the truck, who's driver looked pissed as he drove past.
I returned to the hotel with a bag filled with flashlights, ample batteries, a week's supply of dry socks, three blankets, a lock-blade knife, a case of bottled water, gloves and boots, both leather.
"You looked like Santa Claus carrying that bag of shit down the street." Macho laughed. And I expected it.
"Most of the heavy stuff is on your list." I replied.
Suddenly, his wide smile turned to the frown of a lottery loser. There would be no grand fortune as he scratched his proverbial ticket, only a bad back and a continuing hatred for the sweltering heat.
?
Hunter's haul would go in much the same way that evening. He, too, looked like a jolly man with a sack of toys draped across his shoulder, though I dare say the carried them much better than I had.
As he returned, the city of Buenos Aires was beneath a full moon and paper thin clouds, which only added to the experience.
What exactly had I been thinking? I'd somehow managed to drag my friends halfway around the globe in search for history's most ruthless dictator when I should have stayed home and made plans. I'd been given a lot of money. Spending it wisely would surely be no easy task. Yet here I was, looking across the shiny railing that boxed our large balcony in.
It was the Grand Hotel's largest suite, but I'd not paid heavily for it. It had taken nearly a thousand pesos to fetch the massive room, roughly sixty-three bucks, and the room looked like something from a movie. The floor was made of shiny wood that barely showed any age, while two couches rested in perfect positioning to one another. One was a sectional, the other was very long. There was a community table in what served as the kitchen area and it, too, looked like something that had been plucked straight from a home design magazine.
But above all else, the balcony spoke to me.
It's very hard to explain, but outside in that fresh Argentinian air, beneath a hovering moon that brimmed with neon white, I felt my grandfather's presence. While my two friends tried their best to watch local television on the large flat screen mounted to the living room wall, pretending to understand what was being said. Hunter spoke a bit of Spanish, but certainly not enough to follow the soap opera in front of them. Macho spoke nothing - broken English, on his best day. I supposed he was just watching in hopes of catching a glimpse of nudity. He'd never shied away from his lust for women. The damning fact was that women had a way of shying away from him.
And so, with beers lined up on the coffee table in front of them, my two most trusted friends watched on. Not me. My own skin crawled with nervousness and my gut instinct was that we were about to become part of something incredible.
The map itself was crude and there were what I believed to be hidden clues throughout my grandfather's journal. But it had been the look on my grandfather's face that had sold me on the idea. I saw adventure - I saw fear.
For the remainder of the evening, I would pray. Right there on the massive balcony beneath my feet, I would ask that God watched over us and, if my grandfather could somehow hear me, that he would point us into the right direction.
?
The next morning seemed to pick up in an instant. From nowhere, the streets of Buenos Aires were once again filled with bodies on their way to and from. We'd becoming nothing more than three more tourists, in a manner of speaking.
Three and a half, if you included the massive sack on the back of our scrawny-legged friend. He looked like a small ant carrying a full-brown apple - nearly pushing him to the ground entirely as his legs bowed out under the pressure. The list had been a long one, but not that long. I suspected that our good friend had added a few extra items himself.
He had.
"Don't ask." Macho said.
And we didn't have to. The sound of glass bottles clanging around was enough to clue us in on the fact that he'd fetched a good amount of booze. And while we'd tried to limit our list to only the essentials, I knew that Macho would only argue the fact. He'd claim the booze was in case of an emergency toothache or something. Plus, he'd followed me halfway around the world. So I let it go.
A cab had been easy enough to spot. It was solid black until you reached the top, which became bright yellow. And they were literally everywhere. It didn't take very long to hold a hand in the air and have a cab screech to a halt. Though it did take almost ten full minutes to pack our belongings into the cab's trunk.
The driver was nice enough, yet very quiet. The cab itself smelled of heavy beef and noodles, which could have been seen as good or bad, depending. Most importantly, the driver had a pistol holstered near the car's transmission shifter.
It had taken nearly thirty minutes for the driver to get us to the spot we needed to be - just a few miles outside of the city, but far enough that it looked distant. It took only thirty seconds or so to convince the driver to sell us the pistol.
At first, he didn't understand. Hunter spoke very bad Spanish and he was the best of our bunch. But after pointing to the pistol and then to the landscape we'd be hiking, I held a wad of money up and ready. Approximately fourteen-hundred pesos, which is all that we had left. The rest sat comfortably in the bank somewhere and besides, we'd no use for cash in the countryside of Argentina.
The driver eagerly took the money and it didn't take us long to figure out why. The revolver looked as though it were centuries old. It appeared to be some sort of military revolver with splashes of Old West influence thrown in. The handle was made of scarred wood and the gun itself was dingy blue steel.
It came with six rounds.
Apparently, the driver was exuberant about getting the money. He sped away so quickly that a thick cloud of dust romped us away from where we stood. He'd been grinning like an idiot throughout his drive away. A point that Macho didn't care for.
"I'll knock that damn smile from his face when I see him again."
He then spit a mouthful of dust and forming mud from his mouth and continued to stare at the cab, which had now gotten far enough away
to be forgotten.
"We should go. There's a long hike in front of us." I said.
"Jack's right. We need to get moving." Hunter added.
Macho nodded, finally turning away from the small cab and the large trail of dust it had left behind.
"Who's carrying all the shit?"
?
The hike had taken hours. It had been much harder than any of us had anticipated. Especially for Hunter, who carried the bulk of the heavy supplies, while Macho bitched beneath the lightest load.
As we came onto a double waterfall, it didn't take us long to rest our supplies onto the ground and stand with exhaustion. Still, the sight of two towering waterfalls was one of pure magnificence. The faint sound of splashing water quickly grew into a thunderous roar and only seemed to add to what felt like a magical moment for me personally.
Macho rested himself onto the ground with a cigar to his lips. The massive smoke stick could have doubled as an elephant's tusk, had it been white. Moments later, with sweat pooling on his forehead, Macho laid back down in the tall grass and drew deep breaths, cursing beneath his breath and smoke rose up.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you." I said.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Macho didn't seem too concerned.
"Snakes."
Had a bolt of lightning hit my friend? Macho jumped to his feet with a look of fear haunting his eyes. He'd never been that fond of the slithering variety.
"You never said anything about snakes."
"Well it is Argentina," Hunter laughed. "Besides, we need to get our packs in order before we head out."
"Head out...we just stopped?" Macho whined.
I heard the bickering as I panned my set of binoculars around slowly. Nothing seemed out of place. There were no observation decks for tourists around the waterfalls. They were much too small for that. But there were two, just as my grandfather's journal had sworn, and the surrounding area according to his hand-drawn map was spot on. Grandpa Carter had been here before. There was no doubting the fact.
I did what I could to position myself according to his map. Then, I began looking into the general direction of what he'd claimed had been a hidden tunnel of some sort. A part of me had thought my grandfather had slipped into lunacy during his older years. That was the most logical explanation. But the other part of me wanted to find this tunnel of his. I wanted to believe that the impossible was in fact...possible.
There are few moments in life when you know.
Staring at your first child in the minute that it's born, you know your place in life. Soul mates know one another at first glance. When a man or woman gets right with God above - they know. These are the types of moments I will use to describe it.
As my eyes caught sight of a very large tree - I knew.
It was surrounded by others and I had nearly missed it. In fact, I would have missed it, had I not been looking for it. The tree in questions was slightly different in both shade and texture. Its brown was paler. Its bark was too shiny.
"There." I said.
At first, neither of my friends saw the difference between the tree in question and the hundreds more around it. Perhaps I was slipping into lunacy as well.
"He's right," Hunter said. Staring hard through the binoculars while easing my mind a bit. "There's something off about it."
"Looks like a damn tree to me." Macho testified.
"It looks too much like a tree," Hunter disputed. "I don't see any flaws or imperfections. There are no vines hanging. The trees around it have plenty."
"Yea." I added.
"Well let's go, then." Macho demanded.
"Our packs first." I said.
Nodding to Hunter, I was OK with him keeping the pistol. He nodded in return and tucked it behind him, beneath the waist of his jeans.
"We can't carry all of this water." Hunter said.
"No," I agreed. "We'll need to take a few bottles each and leave the rest. We need to focus on things that will help us. Things like rope and-"
"Knives," Macho said proudly. "Ain't nobody trying to die."
I wanted to laugh and I would have, if not for my nerves. Instead, each of us packed our own bag, which was a professional grade hiking pack. We each took a hand ax, very high quality pocket knife and, of course, Hunter had the pistol. We agreed on three bottles of water each, along with a fistful of meal replacement bars and plenty of batteries. It didn't leave us much room for anything else, but we each took something we believed would be of use. Hunter took a small fire starting kit, I took a bundle of rock climbing rope, along with the clasps, and Macho took two bottles of sherry and a hard box of cigars.
"For toothaches." he insisted.
After getting ourselves together, we rested for an hour or so. Keeping a very close eye on the tree in the process. Finally, we mustered enough courage to begin walking toward the large tree and did so with the utmost caution.
Upon arriving, it seemed very normal. But Hunter spiked our caution as he dug his knife into the bark of the tree. Removing a small piece of the brittle bark exposed solid steel! This was no tree at all, but rather a doorway of some type. Just as my grandfather had sworn.
Chapter 3
We'd found an elevator.
It was the type of elevator that you'd normally find in a large factory. A cargo elevator with two sets of doors that would have taken dynamite in order to breach. In this case, they stood open and waiting. With only a single button on its interior, the elevator seemed to invite us; if not taunt us.
Down.
Hunter entered, followed by myself and then Macho. We stood there in silence for at least a minute solid. I watched as clouds passed over, reminding me of the prettiest sky I'd ever seen. Fresh air brushed against us. I wondered exactly how long it would be before my lungs drenched themselves in air this fresh again.
With a deep sigh and a silent nod from each of my friends, I pressed the large green button and watched as both sets of steel doors closed by themselves. There were several openings which allowed us to look outside of the elevator, which only added to the peril of the descent.
We fell at a rate of speed that would be hard to estimate. Damn fast, I imagined Macho thought. He'd certainly be right. The elevator dropped swiftly enough for my lunch to begin making its way back up. Hunter held the walls as best he could and Macho squatted in the corner. Refusing to look, like a child cowering from the boogeyman.
Steel passed by the small windows of the elevator at first. Then dirt, accompanied by large white lights. If the elevator would have been an airplane, it would have fallen from the sky fifty times over, and at about the same speed.
Finally, after coming to the end of what I'd believed to be our very last moments alive, Macho, Hunter and I loosened our grips of the thick railing inside of the elevator, which began stopping as it had been programmed.
As the doors opened, each of us sprinted out of the deathtrap and staggered with disorientation, splashing into a large body of water. The coldest water that a person could fathom. My heart nearly exploded; burst, even, as my lungs began to gasp for breath in instinctive fashion.
With the hellacious ride down, I cannot say how long it took me to swim ashore. Less than a minute, all things considered, though it seemed like an eternity against the torture of freezing cold water. My mind worried for my friends - my body collapsed against the bed of soft clay that surrounded the cold water.
My eyes took in a most intriguing sight.
The ceiling of the cave, or whatever we had discovered, glowed iridescent blue. Not slightly, but with utter magnificence. It rivaled the brightest sky I had ever seen, yet it was no sky at all. Nothing more than hard rock.
Then, moments later, my vision was brought to attention by a large black blur of movement. The kind that is indistinguishable, yet telling.
We were not alone.
My body was too exhausted to jump alive. As I turned my head, I could see Macho laying in pretty much the same condition - watching a
s Hunter rose to his feet and began defending himself. He'd always been the strongest of the three.
Ape men.
I know what you must be thinking, yet I must speak the truth. These were ape men in every fashion imaginable, and they wore shiny armor. There must have been at least fifty of these beasts and we were completely at their mercy, there was no getting around it. But Hunter would not be convinced of it.
My good friend put up one hell of a fight, lashing punches onto the closest ape man and eventually drawing our only pistol - firing onto several of them and ending them. Shortly after, Hunter was ended, too. Bludgeoned to death by thick wood. The weapons were designed in much the same fashion that a ball bat would have been, only much thicker and very crude in appearance. At first, Hunter's hand went up with defense. Eventually it fell. He was dead, yet the creatures continued to wail on his body for several minutes.
By now, I was up to my feet. Preparing to enter into the same fate.
One of the ape men uttered something loudly. Its language was unlike anything I'd heard before. Tribal, yet advanced. I presumed this beast was trying to warn me, in fact, I bet my life on it. I held a hand out and knelt down. Praying that it was not the end for me.
I could hear several of the ape men conversing and it sounded like an argument, in all honesty. Two of their own lay as dead as Hunter, in a pool of their own thick red blood. As one of them approached, perhaps a superior among their people, I closed my eyes.
The creature began to spout off words to me, yet I could not understand. I did understand its demeanor. Anger...frustration.
"I can't understand you." I said with apology.
The beast looked me up and down. Eventually spouting off more derelict language. Then, as abruptly as it had confronted me, the monster walked away. Its subordinates would soon place my hands in shackles, as well as my neck. They were not kind in doing so, either, and I did not care. The rough manner in which they shackled me was a far better fate than death. I was simply happy to be alive.