The Biggest of Bongos

Everything was red dirt. Out in the jungle, it was tamped down by moisture, hanging heavy in the air and constantly pouring from the clouds. But in the clearing where the town was built, it was dry. The wind picked the dust up like it was nothing, which it was. Red nothing, everywhere. Getting into everything. Making every ramshackle building look like a child’s elaborate sandcastle. It turned every shoe red, made every man’s pants look like they’d been wading in blood.

Which was why, when Knockout showed up, Kon’s first impressive of her was that she was clean. Her black boots shined so that it dared the red to get on them. Her khaki pants not taking the color either. Neither her lightly lavender blouse, her white safari jacket, her tan Panama hat. If it weren’t for the licks of golden skin that showed at her waistline and cleavage, the curls of red hair that set fire to her shoulders, and the green eyes that took Kon in like she was judging a bull for her herd, Kon wouldn’t be sure any color could get onto that glacier of a woman.

Five foot eleven. Worth the climb.

Still, what his eyes were most drawn to was her face. Eyes sizzling with green. Bee-stung lips. Every bone that structured her face, flawless. A diamond couldn’t have been cut more precisely… or end up more impossibly beautiful.

“Are you Kon?” she asked inside the cantina, where a working fan stirred around the red so when dirt got on you, at least it was new dirt.

“That I am,” Kon answered.

“I’m told you know your way around the jungle.”

Kon nodded. If she’d been told, there was no need to tell her twice. In the twelve years he’d spent south of the border, half of it had been in the jungle, a third of it had been drunk, and another third had been in jail. In that time, the one thing he’d managed was to learn the bush the way a boxer learned to take a punch.

“You know who I am?” Knockout asked. Despite her fashionable attire, her voice was big and husky. “Men don’t tend to forget me.”

“I can see why.”

“Because of my exploits, not how I look. I’m Knockout, the finest big-game hunter alive. When I’m dead, I’ll be the finest big-game hunter dead. I’ve killed or captured every animal that’s worth it—except for Ta’moona.”

Kon nodded solemnly. Ta’moona. The White Ape. Rumors abounded. Pictures were blurry. The only strangers in these parts came for a good look at it and left with a ghost story.

“I’ve used satellite imagery to scan the terrain,” Knockout continued. “If I’m right, the only possible lair it could have would be a hundred and seven miles to the north.”

“Lady, people march all day in the jungle and only get a hundred yards.”

“I’ve chartered a helicopter. I’ll be taking along the latest equipment. All I need is a guide.”

Kon raised an eyebrow. “’I’? Is it just you on this hunting party?”

“I came to bag Ta’moona, not crack cold ones with the boys in a duckblind.”

“And you have no reservations about being alone in the jungle with a strange man for however this expedition lasts?”

“I’ve handled man-eating tigers, Mr. Kon. I’m sure I can handle a man.”

And he bet the man would enjoy it more than the tiger would.

Twenty thousand dollars for his time, another forty thousand if they managed to bag Ta’moona. And Kon didn’t even want to think of how much less he’d do it for, so long as he got to look at a kitten like Knockout twenty-four-seven.

***

Kon had never flown in a chopper before. It made him airsick. Which took the teeth out of any ‘what I say goes, it’s my way or the highway’ he wanted to give. But he couldn’t regret seeing the miles of foliage pass under him without having to use his machete on a single vine.

It was the sound he could really do without. Even through the headphones, it was pure noise. In the jungle, things kept quiet. Something on four legs might hear you.

And in town, things kept quiet. Something on two legs might hear you.

Up here, there seemed no reason not to be loud. It struck Kon as obscene. Maybe blasphemous.

Knockout had no interest in the scenery. She eyed Kon with the same stud bull look as in the cantina, even with him bought and paid for. “Have you ever seen Ta’moona, Mr. El?”

“I’ve seen the color white, out in the jungle. A seven-foot-fall ape with human eyes and crocodile teeth… no, I haven’t.”

“Do you believe he’s out there?”

“The locals wouldn’t make something like that up. They don’t have the imagination.”

“And do you think we’ll find him?”

For the amount Kon was paying him, he’d be willing to say they’d find a whole nest. “Absolutely.”

The pilot cut into their nice talk before Kon could interrogate too deeply why he was buttering the huntress up so. “Something’s wrong with the engine—I’m getting red lights all across the board—everyone brace yourselves, I can’t keep her in the air!”

The helicopter seemed to drop straight down and Kon could only be glad he’d already been airsick and there was nothing left to exit his stomach. His father had always told him never to fly in a plane with one wing—a whirlybird didn’t even have that!

The world made less sense, than no sense. Kon saw the river below, as wide as a football field, the shore ill-defined, water wandering through brackish mires where the closest thing to solid ground was the gnarled mangroves. They were tall as redwoods, with thick, snaking roots to match. The only thing tough enough not to be swept away with the river’s weekly flooding. Kon thought the only place they could safely land would be in a stretch of water the mangroves hadn’t colonized yet.

They spun in, clipped a tree—Kon’s stomach seemed to teleport even further away from his body than it already was—and hit the river at an angle that turned the world to a shearing spray of water and the screech of metal as momentum peeled it like an orange. Then, violent impact! They hit something even more unforgiving than the water. The chopper lurched. Kon saw black.

When he came to, it could only be a few seconds later, but he felt like he’d been worked over by a whole biker gang. He forced his eyes open and saw Knockout. She was covered in blood! His heart held still until he realized it wasn’t blood—too dark, too smelly. It was some oil leaking out of their crumpled aircraft.

“Can you walk?” Kon asked her, reaching for her seatbelt, but she beat him to opening it.

“Let’s find out!” she said, sounding more like they’d been on a roller coaster ride than a crash landing.

She hurled herself to the door and gave it her shoulder. Loosened by the crash, it popped right off the hull. Then she dropped onto the sandbar they’d crashed on and began pulling at her clothes, evidently finding the smell as bad as he did.

Kon checked the pilot. He was dead—a million dollar chiropractor bill wouldn’t be enough to fix a neck like the one he was wearing. Kon shut the man’s eyes and tried not to feel too bad for him. He had been the one flying the helicopter; can’t do a bad job of that and then complain about not being alive.

He left the wreckage quickly, not wanting to be in the presence of death any longer than he had to be. He was greeted with Knockout cutting away her foul-smelling clothes with a Bowie knife. Already her trousers looked like hotpants and her shirt could’ve been one of Doc Savage’s hand-me-downs. Her boots were still on, but they seemed kinky when there was such a contrast between the petite, delicate feet that her body must terminate in and those black-leather hellions.

With only shreds of canvas in the way, he could see sculpted calves and lengthy toned thighs and a dimple of a waist and chiseled arm muscles and a beautiful tan. And her tits, what were they, Double Ds? Bigger? Every breath threatened to rip through the tawdry strands of fabric that still held together, a spider-web clinging to her bust and well-defined abs.

Even obscured by what little remained of her clothes, her body was indescribable. Kon was a bit embarrassed that, so soon after the specter of death had lurched up, he was feeling arousal like a leather band tightening about his loins.

As he watched, Knockout cut away the last of her shirt’s midsection, flinging it away with an expression of disgust. Then—all her supple muscles in harmony under creamy skin—she walked to the crashed helicopter and threw open the cargo compartment. Light came through the other end. The crash had torn through the hull and dumped some of their supplies into the river. Turning his head, Kon could see them carried away by the current.

“My clothes!” Knockout cried.