The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story(34)
Elkins and Benenson had hired three British ex–Special Air Services officers to handle the logistics of making camp and navigating through the jungle. Their leader was Andrew Wood. Woody had served in many roles in the SAS, including senior instructor in jungle warfare, explosives and demolition expert, and advanced-trauma combat medic; he spoke Arabic, Serbo-Croat, and German. He was a skilled tracker, sniper, and free fall parachutist. After leaving the military, Woody had founded a company called TAFFS, Television and Film Facilitation Services. The company specialized in bringing film and television crews into the world’s most dangerous environments, keeping them alive so they could shoot their projects, and then getting them out safely. TAFFS handled the logistics for the extreme survival shows of Bear Grylls, and the company’s numerous television credits include Escape from Hell, Man vs. Wild, Extreme Worlds, and Naked and Marooned. Woody, himself a trained survivalist of the highest rank, had been asked many times to star in his own show, but he had always refused.
Woody brought along two partners from TAFFS, Iain MacDonald Matheson (“Spud”) and Steven James Sullivan (“Sully”). Despite their self-deprecating British manner, both were also ex-SAS and tough as nails. The three had very different personalities and each played a role: Woody the manager; Spud the friendly and laid-back doer; Sully the drill sergeant whose part was to intimidate, dragoon, and scare the shit out of everyone.
As we gathered for that first briefing, we had a chance to look around the room and meet our fellow expeditioners for the first time all in one place. A few of us had been involved in the original lidar aerial survey: Tom Weinberg, Steve Elkins, Juan Carlos, and Mark Adams, the crew’s sound mixer. Most were new: They included Anna Cohen and Oscar Neil Cruz, archaeologists; Alicia González, anthropologist; Dave Yoder; Julie Trampush, production manager; Maritza Carbajal, local fixer; Sparky Greene, producer; Lucian Read, director of photography; and Josh Feezer, camera operator. Bill Benenson and several other members would arrive later, once camp was established.
Woody proceeded to give us the deadpan, hair-curling lecture about snakes and disease that opened this book. Then it was Sully’s turn to speak. Sully, who had spent thirty-three years in the SAS, focused his narrow eyes on all of us with skepticism and disapproval. He finally lasered in on an important expedition member whom he accused of dozing off during the meeting and whose attitude he had judged lackadaisical. “You’ve got to tune in mentally right away now,” he said in a grim Scottish brogue. The poor man looked like a deer in the headlights. “Maybe you just think we’re talking for our health up here. Maybe you think you already know all about it. And so when you’re out there, you’re going to get into trouble—and then what? You’re going to be hurt or dead, that’s what. And who’s bluidy responsible? We’re bluidy responsible. So it isn’t going to happen on our watch.” His squinty gaze swept us all. “Not on our watch.”
The whole room fell into a heavy silence as we all strived to appear to be paying the utmost attention. After a long, uncomfortable moment, Sully went over the plans for the next day. Two helicopters, the expedition’s AStar and the Honduran military’s Bell 412, would fly into the valley to scout out possible landing zones. When landing areas had been chosen, the AStar chopper would drop Woody, Sully, and Spud in with machetes and chainsaws to clear the LZ. If the brush was thick and high, Sully said, the first few crews in might have to abseil (rappel down) from the hovering chopper. Steve had chosen a group of five people, including me, who would be in the first group to land in the forest, and Sully now had to train us how to do it safely.
We followed Sully to the outside patio of the hotel, where he had arranged a duffel bag of gear. He showed us how to put on a climbing harness, how to edge out on the pontoon of a hovering chopper, abseil down a rope using a mechanical slowing device called a descender, unclip, signal, and move away. I had had some experience rappelling down cliffs and frozen waterfalls, but that was always with the security of a vertical face to put my feet on as I descended. Roping down from a hovering chopper in free space seemed less secure, and if you didn’t properly release yourself once on the ground, the chopper might take off with you still attached. We each practiced the maneuver multiple times until we had nailed it to Sully’s exacting standards.
The small AStar that would go in first could only carry three passengers, or two with gear. The final question was who exactly, out of our lucky five, would get a coveted spot on the very first flight. Elkins had already adjudicated some angry disputes among members of the team as to who would be included. Chris argued successfully that he had to be on the first flight in, because he needed to make sure the LZ was not itself an archaeological site that would be damaged by helicopter landings. Dave Yoder demanded to be on that first flight, so that he could capture the moment when boots first hit the ground; one of his fundamental principles as a photographer was never to shoot a reenactment. Steve assigned the third seat to Lucian Read, the DP (director of photography) of the film crew, so he could record the moment on film.
I would fly in on the second trip with Juan Carlos and a load of essential gear. The five of us and Woody’s team would make a primitive camp that night. The rest of the expedition, including Steve, would fly into the valley in the succeeding days. Excited as he was to be fulfilling a lifelong dream, Steve had sacrificed his own early place in the helicopter for us, because he felt it was important to get the filmmakers, the writer, and the scientists into the valley first. He would fly in the following day.