A Time for Vultures
by
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The police van dropped me off out in the country at Brasilia's Alcatraz. I had not voluntarily entered the little room. The guard had helpfully put his boot to my bottom and moved me through the narrow door. I found myself prostrate on the filthy dirt floor, my introduction to the bowels of hell.
As the stench of the place penetrated my brain, I was certain that I had made a bad mistake. I should have signed the statement that De Silva wanted signed. All options were evil, so why fight it? But as the guard slammed the door shut and locked it, I knew that option had been eliminated.
My prostrate body didn't seem to disturb the cockroaches. They just continued to enjoy the meal. I eased up from the filthy floor and sat on a dirty straw mat that was wedged between the double bunks. I counted heads and discovered there were already fourteen individuals in that small space. As I looked around, I thought, It is at a time like this when we can learn to appreciate what we left behind.
In one corner of the small room and next to my straw mat was a hole in the dirt floor which served as the toilet. The hole in the ground had a bucket in it which was overflowing. The honey bucket was much too small to accommodate the traffic. Newspaper that had been used for toilet paper was scattered about the floor. The small room was enclosed, with not even a window for ventilation. The air was heavy with the repulsive odor.
The grimy mattress had large holes in it where the straw was exposed. Even in the diffused light I did not have to look very closely to see the bedbugs crawling eagerly through the straw, as though they knew that new blood had just arrived.
The unique lighting system was a bare light bulb sticking out at a 90-degree angle to the wall. Someone had wrapped a piece of newspaper around the bulb to diffuse the light. It was now charred brown, and traces of smoke rose from it.
By this time a number of the prisoners had awakened and were sitting on their bunks studying their newly arrived roommate.
I noticed that directly behind me on the top bunk was a big, mean-looking character who was now trimming his toenails with a hunting knife. As I looked around, I could see that knives were standard equipment in the place. Most of the prisoners had one stuck in the wooden wall next to their bunks. Perhaps this was a means of reducing the prison population. No sane person would want to start an argument in that environment. It made me feel extremely uncomfortable to be among society's rejects and not even be able to readily communicate with them.
The man closest started talking to me, perhaps wanting to know what I was doing there. All I could answer was, 'Sorry, eu nao fala Portuguese.'
He then said one word, 'Norteamericano?'
I knew the word yes, so I said, 'sim.'
A lengthy discussion began among those who had awakened. It wasn't difficult to determine that they were trying to establish what this Norteamericano was doing here interrupting their privacy. They were not yet aware that they were privileged to be sharing a room with a notorious atomic minerals smuggler.
Soon my fourteen roommates went back to sleep, leaving me to myself and my thoughts, and at the moment my thoughts were rampant. To say that I felt uneasy in this atmosphere of stink was an understatement. I was 7,000 miles from home and now in my eleventh day incommunicado on a diet of mud and stink, and occasionally a glass of commode water. Never in my life had I taken time to try smoking, until a few days before. My money had not been confiscated, and a guard at the holding room had been kind enough to get me cigarettes. I sat there on the dirty mattress trying to keep the bedbugs from surfacing. Every time I saw one crawling out of the straw I would give it a taste of my lighted cigarette, and the little creature would retreat.
Deadeye's plan 'A' had not gone well, since I had rejected the privilege of verifying his fictitious story. He now moved on to plan 'B.' This plan carried some incentive, and therefore he believed he would have no problem selling it.
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A Time for Vultures recounts a seemingly profitable business venture in a South American country which suddenly became dangerous when Joe Truhill and three other Americans were placed in the center of a political power struggle and found themselves in the local keep.
Reviewing what looked like a profitable venture, Truhill signed a contract with the Ralph Dial company to airlift tantalite ore from Brazil to the Fan Steel Corporation in Muskogee, Oklahoma. The undertaking suddenly turned sour when a tide of political unrest swept over Brazil.
Doing business in some Latin American countries requires paying an appropriate amount of respect to the local authorities. The particular turf in question was under the jurisdiction of General Riograndino Kruel, the head of the federal police, known in Brazil as the DFSP, Districto Federal Seguranca Publica. Riograndino's brother, General Amauri Kruel, had his sights on the presidency. In the one candidate election, Branco, the incumbent president, was not in agreement. He had already picked his successor.
The Americans had arrived in Brazil at an opportune moment. They could provide a smokescreen to discredit Branco. General Kruel claimed Branco was handing the country over to the Norteamericano imperialistas, who were supposedly, smuggling radioactive ore out of Brazil. His brother, a man of integrity, he claimed, needed to take over and save the motherland from foreign possession.
During months in a filthy Brazilian jail, Truhill engineered various escape attempts. However, escaping by surface transportation was a dangerous undertaking. He had his wife visit him and she returned to the United States with plans for a flying escape attempt. A friend posing as a tourist would fly an airplane to Brazil. The proposed escape route, a 7,000-mile trip, would take them across some of the world's highest and most treacherous mountains, the Andes. Many of those mountains are over 20,000 feet high. The airplane had a service ceiling of 18,000. The attempted escape would have to cross ten foreign countries and land at seven of those for fuel. The five men would attempt to baffle various foreign authorities with two good passports and one fake.
A Time for Vultures recounts a journey through Latin American justice under the scope of a political jungle characterized by some Anti-Americanism that made an escape more alarming.
About the Author
Joe Truhill had his introduction to aviation as a teenager. In 1937, in the backwoods town of Hurley, New Mexico, he and 14 teenagers bought a two place trainer and formed a flying club. Truhill and four of the other members went on to teach themselves to fly. From there he went on to teach Air Force pilots for nine years. Many moons and many flying hours from the little dirt strip of Hurley he had a fleet of large transports that he contracted to various corporations for special flying assignments. Not all assignments ended in glory.