Kindle Edition Amazon Category:  Action/Thriller Publisher: American Literary Corporation ISBN-10:  B003TOGGEC Type: Fiction Pages: 300 Copyright: August,2010 Andy Cooper, TV news cameraman, is dragooned into covering a National Geographic-type TV special searching for the BILLIONS in lost gold and emeralds of Eldorado in a mysterious lake at the 10,000 foot level in the South American cloud forests. What he finds is guns, gold, greed, treachery, murder and the enigmatic and beautiful Celia who may be the greatest danger of all. Excerpt CHAPTER SIXTEEN Kelly had seen me approaching and had the side hatch open by the time I reached the Big Green Machine. There was a radio headset around his neck, the connecting wire and jack unplugged and dangling by his knees. I threw the Arri with one magazine attached, a second magazine and the film cans up on the steel deck and climbed in after them. Kelly pointed up to the second storey cockpit over the cargo area in this old helicopter’s unusual layout. I climbed up after him. Once there, he plugged in the headset and adjusted it on his head. A tinny sound of excited Spanish came leaking out of it. He held up an index finger commanding my silence. Finally, he spoke. “So,” he said gesturing upwards, “the Army chicken looks for rebel worms to eat.” “Army plane?” “Si,” he tapped the earphones, “they are talking.” “About?” “That big fren’ of mankind, that Annalee has been to them. She is on a radio somewhere at a policio estation. She ees tell them look for thees lake. She tell them we not at Guatavita but tell them enough about here so they will find soon enough.” “And when they do?” “The death squads come and we will have many keelings of thees rebels and anyone weeth them like you.” “What about you?” “Ah, my fotographico friend, I am merely a poor innocen’ trock driver of the air. I am a Liberal with whiskey and love-making. I am a Conservative with money and cargos. Those are my political beliefs. To me, April 9th is just a day on the calendar. I am a innocent beast of burden.” “Well, I’m not involved, either. I’m just here working.” “Down here, amigo, a person who ees with our enemies, ees our enemy. Norteamericanos, ‘specially. It best you make yourself not here.” “Any suggestions?” “You could drive but there are no workeeng vehicles. You could walk but the jungle eet you up een an hour. You could go to the April 9th and go from here in a hearse.” “Is this thing flyable?” He nodded. “Always flyable. Dependable as Colombian rain.” “How about flying me out?” He shook his head, “I would like to help you out, my fren’, but I am not been paid. I not leave ‘til I paid.” “Look, Kelly, this film is worth a lot of money if I can get it back to the network and not lose it to the Movement or the Army. The network would pay a great deal for it.” “I don’ think as much as I owed?” “How much is that?” “Two-hundred-fifty thousand, American.” “That’s a lot of choppering.” “One hundred for driving this muy dangerous trip ten times. One hundred I pay out for them for all that equipment I breeng here. Fifty thousand for feex up Kelly Karga for thees job.” “Who owes you that?” “Waterston.” I thought of precisely how to explain it to Kelly and decided to tell it straight and let him sort it out. “Waterston’s dead.” “Dead? Yes? Then...then...Garcia, he owe me.” “Well that doesn’t work either Kelly because he’s also dead. You see, Garcia killed Waterston. Then Celia shot Garcia.” “Garcia dead also? Waterston dead? Then that Garcia woman, Celia? She ees now een charge, has the gold, she pay me.” Third verse same as the first. “Not that easy, Kelly. The gold. It’s gone.” His jaw fell open. “Como?” “They melted down the gold and hid it.” “Melted? Hid? Who did thees?” “Far as I can figure out, Waterston and Commanger were the head honchos. They used MacShane to do the melting. He knew what he was doing. He worked for years in steel mills and tool and die works. Then I guess Floyd Butler, who’s dead also.” “Ees dead, too? ” Kelly started to count on his fingers. “And you know Dad Edwards got killed, don’t you? Runaway airlift.” “Airlift?” “Tore his head in half. My guess would be exhaust gas from the compressor accidentally-on-purpose-fed to that hose but I think they were really after Waterston and got the hoses mixed up.” “Como?” “I think Earl was starting to get suspicious about Garcia and Celia’s real reasons for being here.” “Everybody else dead, why you still alive?,” he looked at me suspiciously. “I am Mister Kodak to the 9th. They want pictures of this uprising and asked me to cover this to-do here like Matthew Brady did the Civil War. But about the tunjos and coins and stuff. They were melted down but I have no idea what they did with the gold.” “Waterston did not tell?” I shook my head. “Not even when Garcia stomped him to death.” Kelly whistled through the space between his teeth. “The Curse of the Gilded Man,” he said softly. “That’s what Garcia kept saying as he played soccer with Garcia’s cabeza.” “Do not laugh at our old curses, my friend, they have ears of the ages to hear you - a radar of today to find you.” The jet’s snappish little whistle now sounded directly overhead. We both looked out the windshield at the rim of the crater, expecting the aircraft to cross it any moment, three hundred feet directly above us. “I don’ theenk he can see us under thees trees,” Kelly said, “everytheeng else is gone?” “Looks pretty much like nobody was ever here except for the cofferdam wall and they might miss that.” He held up his hand and listened. “Thees piloto he ees telling Bogota air force field they found the lake and he ees saying no tents, no rafts, no feelters. They are asking if he ees certain. They are tol’ to...wait...yes, look closer while they talk to the gringo Senorita again.” I recognized the small low-winged Colombian Air Force plane as it dropped below the crater rim. It was a Dragonfly; a relatively inexpensive, highly-maneuverable, fast, utility configuration which various South American, European and Asian nations had outfitted as recons, fighters, even light bombers. This one was done up in khaki paint, Colombian Air Force insignia and fuselage-mounted machine-guns. It was banking slowly around the lake and I knew that at least one pair of powerful binoculars was searching out any possible signs of life, either now or recently departed. “You theenk Annalee, my dove, has the gold?” “Hard to say. She was close to Waterston - as you know. He may have given it to her with plans to meet her later.” “Annalee was close to me, also. Many times. But I wouldn’t trust her with my family jewels.” I roared at his unintentional pun. He looked puzzled. “On second thought,” I said, “I don’t think Waterston trusted her. Remember that crack he made about putting the gold in two hundred pound crates so nobody could get away through the jungle with them, especially Annalee? I’m sure the gold is still here.” “Maybe you just might know where, my Yanqui fren’?” “I have an idea.” “Why don’ I tell the April 9th you know where ees? They use Indian ways to find out theengs. Celia Ascunsulo likes you, she pay me, no?” “ Pay you? Pay you?” I shouted at him. “Know what she’ll do? She’ll tell you the gold belongs to the April 9th and that you’re lucky she’s letting you live since you collaborated with the treasure stealers and you know what else, Kelly, she’ll tell you she’s liberating your helicopter, too - for the greater glory of the April 9th.” “No, she would not do that.” “You sure, Kelly? I watched her shoot her relative. Dead on without even aiming.” He held a hand up and bent his head toward the earphones. He listened for a moment, then straightened up and pointed at the plane. It was now banking steeply toward the center of the lake. “The Bogota General he say the Norteamericano Senorita say look for muy grande dam een lake. Ees there, she say look een cave. She even tell them to...,” he stopped and looked betrayed, “look for Kelly Karga.” The sleek little fighter swooped across the lake surface, skimmed the hillside in a steep pull-up, banked and came back across the lake directly toward our hiding place. It slowed maybe 100 feet above us, a sun glare reflecting off binocular lenses. I don’t know how they could miss the bright green fuselage of the helicopter even hidden by the thick canopy of darker green tree branches over it. The Dragonfly dove at the lake clearing and skimmed the now desolate stretch. One wing dipped as the plane passed the brush-covered cave opening. It reached the end of the clearing and suddenly snapped upwards, missing a sudden stand of trees by ten feet. The radio tin-eared again. Kelly repeated the conversation. “They see the cofferdam. Water inside ees clearer than the lake. No see cave. Too many trees and bushes. He say ‘nother object under trees at end of clearing could be helicopter they lookeeng for. Bogota says stay in area. They sending anti-insurgent units. Motorcycles. Terrain vehicles. Coming from Chia. Already on way. Uno hora, maybe less, from here. He pulled the headset down around his neck and looked at me for a long moment. “Kelly Karga must leave here now to fly another day but I am still owed mucho dinero. You want to be a payeeng passenger?” “I’m not going anywhere. I have to stay here and finish the job I’m doing for her,” I held up the Arri. “You try to feenish the job, the Army feenish you first,” he challenged me. “But I promised her.” “You promise her what? You goin’ lose everytheeng for your little man down there?” Kelly pointed at my crotch. “You loco in the cabeza and the cojones.” Now I’m as sentimental as the next guy and as romantic as a once-divorced, 1975 New York bachelor can be but what good would I be to anybody if I was dead? Getting killed didn’t seem like the kind of martyrdom that would be appreciated by Celia. In fact, she would consider it downright ungrateful since she had already saved my life more than once. But, on the other hand, I had made a blood oath type of promise to her that I would get the story of her struggle out to the world. This far, I had one of the great television journalistic scoops of the twentieth century. This was undoubtedly the most complete on-the-spot reporting job ever done of legendary treasure, lost lakes, treachery and murder amongst the searchers, and to top off the qualifications for broadcasting’s version of a Pulitzer Prize, the birth of a bloody revolution including the totally unexpected bonus coverage of an exciting new political leader - a woman - who could kill men as easily with a smile as she could with an old surplus AR-15. Besides, what if the Army got me and my stuff? The film would undoubtedly be confiscated and used as death trial evidence against me as a spy and Celia and her people as revolutionaries. Even if the network and the State Department and all the ships at sea helped me survive the dungeons, prison cells, political and physical maulings, torture, even firing squads they traditionally employ against spies and traitors down here - the rescue would only be so the business affairs vultures could finish what the Army here started by hanging me from the airplane beacon on the RCA building for losing more valuable camera gear. I had an obligation to the world, I rationalized, to get out with this film. And, of course, to yours truly, as well. This was a nonstop route to the Cameraman’s Hall of Fame and to magnificent new status in TV specials and documentaries and maybe even my own production company with a three specials deal and screw Bob Deane if he didn’t want to give me that. We’d see how CBS would feel about me now. And then, of course, there was the gold. Millions in that bright, glittering stuff and all of it untraceable! My first reaction was, finders keepers. Under the circumstances, with just about all of the participants dead, I shrugged. Then an ugly shiver went through me. I thought of Celia down there in that murderous odds-against fire fight. How she needed the gold as ransom for the weapons she never got for the chance she wasn’t getting to pull off a once-in-a-lifetime miracle for the kicked-around little people of her country I kicked the steel deck plate in front of me, furious with myself that I wasn’t doing more to help. Rationally, I knew that the film could do for Celia’s cause much more than the deaths of a hundred Andy Coopers and Celia Ascunsulos in a people’s uprising like this. But emotionally I wanted to be the U.S. Army First Cavalry, not John Wayne’s pony riders but George Patton’s mechanized equalizers, riding to their rescue with a squadron of tanks. “Hey amigo, why you kick my Karga?” Kelly shook off my boy-hero daydream. Life is full of hard decisions. But one of them was easy. It was not to leave the gold anyplace where the Army and the government could find and reclaim it. If Celia and her April 9th followers were going to be massacred, I swore to myself there would be no pot of gold at the end of that bloody rainbow for the government troops. I had to get the gold out of there. I couldn’t do it myself. “Kelly, I might, just might, know where the gold is,” I finally decided on a course. I had his immediate attention. “Don’t you agree it would be a shame for me to die with that secret? I knew you’d agree. If I’m right, and you help me recover it and get me out of here and back to civilization so I can return to New York, and also pay off what these people owe you, I’ll give you, uh...half?” “No.” “Sixty percent.” “No.” “Seventy?” “No.” “Eighty?” “No.” “Well, what do you want?” “Just what I am owed. No more. No less.” “Okay, I promise you’ll get it - when and if I get the gold.” He nodded and went to work getting us out of here. The starter whined and Kelly held up crossed fingers. The rotors began to lift and whir, flicking the touching tree branches away like an unfaithful husband flicking blonde hairs off a navy blue suit. Leaves and twigs came showering down, slashed and clipped by the sharp silver blades. Kelly gave it fuel and stick and pedals and the helicopter bobbled, lifted a little at the tail, bobbled again and then rolled forward, free of the heavy, sucking mud that had closed over its tiny wheels. He taxied out slowly until we were clear of the trees and then gave it power. He pulled the old pregnant guppy up, up and over the rim of the crater and then ducked it partway down the other side. I kept my eyes on the clearing, hoping to catch a glimpse of Celia - alive and still gloriously in command of history in the making. “Hokay, my friend, where’s the gold?” he inquired. “Back there,” I jerked a thumb, “You make fun weeth Kelly here, I call Army say you hijack me.” “Honest to whatever multi-national God you believe in Kelly, if I’m right and I’m fairly sure I am, one or more of Waterston’s outfit put it back in the lake in a different form for temporary safekeeping.” He thought that over. “How long will this bird stay up?” I interrupted his thoughts. Kelly consulted his fuel gauge. “Hours, my fren’.” “Celia’s going to have to pull her people out fast. She couldn’t have missed that spotter plane and has to know the Army is on its way, right?” “Si..” “If she doesn’t cut it too close, sometime between when she leaves and the Army arrives, we can go in and get the gold. You heard they were coming from Chia? That’s a lot closer than Bogota right?” I pointed out the windshield. He nodded and made an okay sign with his curled forefinger and thumb and banked the helicopter off in a different direction. Within ten minutes of searching, we found the Army response column moving along one of the raw roads slashed upwards against the mountain. There were at least a hundred uniformed troops. They were moving slowly along in a curving single column, the small mountain goat Jeeps and motorcycles in the front, the heavy six by six trucks chunking up mud shrapnel behind them. Each truck held a squad of men; two rows of stiff, upright soldiers holding on tight, their guns butt down, barrels skyward. Two big-tired flatbeds at the rear were carrying a dozen chained-down dune buggy-type ATV vehicles, each equipped with a machine gun on a stanchion behind the front seat. Kelly slowed the chopper and paced the column’s speed. “They go like that, maybe thirty meenutes, maybe more, from Orphan,” he decided after checking the airspeed indicator. “Bueno! Now eef she gone, we have half-hour time to get the gold, yes, my fren’?” I nodded and he heeled the Big Green Machine over, headed back to Orphan Lake in a race to get the gold out before we got done in. Just as we started to climb, there was a loud wooshing sound. Karga rocked violently. “Jesus, what was that!” I yelled. “Ees not an angel of mercy,” Kelly pushed the tiller forward. I turned in my seat to check through the cockpit’s high back window. We had just been buzzed, front to back and the attacker was making a 180 degree bank. “It’s that Dragonfly from the lake,” I turned to Kelly, “he’s coming back.” “Ees probably telling Bogota he found Karga,” Kelly muttered. “Can we outrun him?” “Kelly Karga can not out outrun small boy on bicycle.” S-55 helicopters are the mules of the air. They were bred for loads and endurance and distance. Definitely not for speed. The lightweight fighter suddenly appeared off the Karga’s port side and throttled back to keep abreast of the copter. Kelly looked over. The Colombian Smiling Jack pointed to his radio headset and then to Kelly who had his off and in his lap. Kelly pointed to his head and then shrugged his shoulders, shaking his head, no. The Dragonfly driver then pointed down, pointed to Kelly, repeated the down motion, then motioned Kelly to go ahead of him like a motorcycle cop picking up a red light runner. “He wan’ us to land. Then they send soldatos to get us. Probably want information, no keel us now, maybe tomorrow.” He was looking down frantically, searching for something. “And if we don’t?” “He got speed, maneuverability, beeg guns, legal orders to shoot us down on his side.” “And we..” “Have Kelly treeks.” Oh, great. He nodded at the mustached Hero Flier, revved

Prof. H.B. (Stanford, CA)
Treasure, Adventure, Danger, History, Sex! A Great Read!,
By Prof. H.B. (Stanford, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: BLOODGOLD (Kindle Edition)
Terry Galanoy is a master at weaving an intricate plot at warp speed. It seems that the Spanish didn't get all the Aztec gold. The Indians dumped tons of it in a lake for safekeeping, and the challenge is to bring it to the surface. All of this is to be captured by an American TV cameraman, but he's forced to become a reluctant participant. The cast also includes an U.S. Navy diving specialist, the pilot of a third-hand helicopter, and a museum director, among others. Then of course, there is the lithe, gorgeous, and seductive Mestizo antiquities specialist, who is not quite what she seems...but neither is anyone else. Blood Gold is a fast-paced topical tale, brimming with adventure, suspense, plot twists, and surprises. It's a sure candidate for an action-adventure movie.
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