Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of Scott McKay’s new novel, King of the Jungle, which has been released exclusively at The American Spectator in 10 episodes weekly since February. It will be published in full on Amazon on April 12.
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So far in the story, our narrator Mike Holman, an independent media man and podcaster, has agreed to write a biography and work as a public-relations consultant with his friend and old college roommate, the billionaire industrialist Pierce Polk — only to find that Polk has built a small city in the jungles of Guyana as a redoubt away from the corrupt Joe Deadhorse administration back home in America.
But Guyana has been invaded by Venezuela, as the corrupt Madiera regime in Caracas, doing the bidding of its foreign partners, seeks the vast mineral wealth of its jungles and the ocean off its coast. Now, Polk’s jungle paradise is on the front lines of a hot war.
Venezuela, backed by a host of global villains, is attempting to consolidate its gains against the near-helpless Guyanese military, but Polk and his jungle holdouts haven’t been fully heard from. How does the story end? Here’s the dramatic finale of our story…
June 24, 2024, Georgetown, Guyana
Jaganoo was as good as his word in not surrendering to the Vinnies that day, but his people put out a statement that he was going to address the nation at 9 a.m. the next morning.
And then he was arrested by the Guyana Defense Force at 8 a.m. It was Darke who addressed the nation. When he did, he said that Jaganoo had been arrested for treason and that Ishgan, the president, was out of commission for a “medical condition.”
Which turned out to be a fentanyl overdose.
Somebody had dosed him with three times the fatal amount, and the only thing that saved him was a miracle; Ishgan’s personal doctor had been a block away from the Marriott and had a Narcan pen in his bag.
READ the last episode: Disintegration: King of the Jungle
But he was still practically comatose a day later. For all practical purposes, Ishgan was knocked out of the game. That made Darke effectively the interim president. And as his first act, he announced that Guyana would not surrender to Venezuela under any circumstances, and he openly called for help from “the community of nations to help us restore the internationally recognized borders of the Republic of Guyana.”
There was good news and bad news on that score.
The good news came in the southern part of the country. The Vinnies who had been dropped into those little villages in the Rupununi river valley had generally been scattered into very small units, and they’d suffered a lot of losses to helicopters getting shot down. Not to mention the locals tended to be pretty well armed and fairly decently led, and the Guyanese were for the most part kicking their asses.
Of course, the plan had been that the Venezuelans would reinforce their initial gains. They couldn’t really do that in the south because of the trouble back home.
And that got worse and worse for them because just after the naval attack somebody hacked the central bank in Caracas and wiped out, well, everything.
Yes, you read that correctly. The hack all but destroyed all of the Venezuelan central bank’s current records and locked the Madiera government out of most of its financial resources.
Not to mention those hackers also hit the power grid in Caracas, Maracaibo, Ciudad Guayana, Puerto Cabello, and Barquisimeto, which plunged a big chunk of the population into darkness.
Then de la Vega flew to Curacao and took a helicopter into Coro, a coastal city west of Caracas. He said the revolution was afoot, and that Madiera no longer had the consent of the people of Venezuela to continue as the president.
Burnham, Darke, and Pierce were on a Zoom call that PJ and I sat in on that morning after Darke had taken over, and we had a surprising guest join in.
“Mr. President,” said Burnham. “It’s a pleasant surprise to have you.”
“I’m happy to be here,” said Trumbull. “And Tommy — I can call you Tommy? — Gilchrist says you’re a hell of a guy, so you’re all right with me.”
“Yes, sir,” Burnham laughed.
“Hey Pierce, how ya holdin’ up down in the sticks?” said Trumbull.
“I’m the King of the Jungle,” said Pierce. “I might never leave. No army is about to dig me out of here, I can tell you.”
Trumbull chuckled.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “Mike, is that Pauline you’ve got with you?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Wow!” he said. “I like what you’ve done with your hair. You look like that girl, oh, what’s her name…”
“Thanks, Mr. President,” PJ said, and I could tell she was in no mood to be compared to any dye-blond Chinese starlets.
“Right. Anyway,” Trumbull said, “I heard what’s going on down there and it seems like it could be at least a little helpful if I did a quick fly-in and endorsed Ravi here — it’s Ravi, right?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Darke.
“Ravi. Hell of a guy, and bold stuff you’re doing. Anyway, if you guys think it’ll help, I’ll fly down from Palm Beach, say hi, give a speech about how Venezuela has got to go back, and I’ll say that when I’m back in office all of this will get put right, and in the meantime Ravi will keep up the fight. Y’know, buck up the folks a little.”
“I think that could only help,” said Pierce.
“If nothing else, it’ll shame Deadhorse into doing something,” said Burnham.
“I believe things will ultimately turn in Essequibo,” said Darke. “The southern part of the region seems to be returning to our control thanks to the efforts of the indigenous population.”
“That’s good,” said Trumbull. “That’s really good. You’ve gotta hang on. And Pierce, your guys have to hang on, too.”
“We’re doing more than that,” said Pierce.
“Right, great. I want you guys to hang onto that oil! You can’t let China” — he pronounced it CHY-na — “get those offshore rigs. Yuge to hold on to those. I mean it.”
“No, sir,” said Burnham.
“We have some plans in that regard,” said Pierce.
“So look,” said Trumbull. “They tell me you can’t really fly into Georgetown now, right? Airport is messed up?”
“The runways were hit with missiles,” said Darke. “It will be a few days before they’re operational again.”
“Well, then we could wait, or maybe I could do something else,” said Trumbull. “What if I flew in someplace close and then you came and got me in a chopper and flew me in that way?”
“That’s the best idea,” said Pierce. “We’ll fly you in to Paramaribo, in Suriname, and then chopper you to Georgetown. It’s like 200 miles away.”
“Oof,” said Trumbull.
“Oh, come on. You’ll get to ride in on the Sikorsky V-92. You’ll be here in an hour from the tarmac in Paramaribo.”
“You brought your Sikorsky down, Pierce?” Trumbull was impressed.
Pierce shook his head. “This is the second one.”
Trumbull chuckled. “They say I’m rich, but nobody’s loaded like this guy.”
PJ leaned in.
“We’re out of place with all these super-rich guys,” she said. “They’re talking about private helicopters.”
“Excuse me,” I whispered back, “but isn’t your dad rich like this?”
“I’m not my dad.”
“That’s why I love you.”
Blurting that out surprised the shit out of both of us.
“Oh, I…” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Hey,” Trumbull was saying, “Mike, are you paying attention?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “Sorry, Mr. President.”
“What I’m thinking is that maybe you could do the interview on the chopper tomorrow. Meet me in Paramaribo, we’ll get on the helicopter and then that gives us an hour.”
“It’s a great idea,” I said. “But PJ here — er, Pauline — will come with, because she’s pitching in as my cameraman now.”
“Yeah? Nice. She’s definitely welcome. Plus, she’s muscle. You always need as much muscle as you can get, right?”
“That’s my experience, sir,” I said, humoring him.
Trumbull signed off, and so we now had a former, and possibly future, American president coming to Guyana to raise awareness about the war. But when the president checked out, the conversation turned.
“The issue,” Darke was saying, “is the north.”
Pierce’s hit on that naval flotilla was a success, but the Santa Cruz didn’t pick off all of those boats heading into the Essequibo River. It would have been impossible. They didn’t have enough torpedoes. And more important was to protect the oil platforms to the north, because the Vinnies sent a bunch of their naval ships in the direction of the platforms. The sub gave chase and hit one of them with a torpedo, which turned away the little armada.
But in the meantime, the flotilla along the coast simply went ashore. And when it did, it disgorged several thousand Venezuelan troops, which were shortly commandeering vehicles from the locals and holding all of the lightly populated western coastline from the Essequibo to the Venezuelan border.
And they already held basically everything north of the Potaro in the interior.
Darke was saying that what was needed was impossible, namely, a counterattack to dislodge them before they could consolidate those gains and — we all knew this was coming — bring in the Chinese to begin exploiting them.
“Wish we had an army to do that,” said Burnham.
“You guys are thinking about this the wrong way,” said Pierce. And I could see him moving aside to make room for Hal Gibson in the Zoom call.
“Hi everybody,” said Gibson. “Look, the day after tomorrow there is a ceremony at the waterfall. Madiera is coming and he’s going to declare victory at Kaietur Falls.”
“Is he really?” I said.
“We think they’re going to call a ceasefire and try to claim what they took,” said Pierce. “It’s really the only move they’ve got.”
“And the north has more economic assets,” said Darke.
“That they can sell to China,” said PJ.
“Well, how do we break up that party?” I asked.
“You let us handle that,” said Pierce.
“Do we want to know more than that?” asked Burnham.
“No,” said Hal. “You do not.”
“OK, then,” I said. “Brigadier Darke, can you make security arrangements for a Trumbull pop-in?”
“I believe so,” he said, “given that we have a true professional with us to show us the way.”
“OK, security pro,” said Pierce, “what do you need from us?”
I think PJ was the last to realize they were talking to her.
“Oh, wait,” she said.
Once she realized she had a job to do, PJ moved fast. She had Pierce send her six guys from Liberty Point, and she got Darke to set up the ballroom at the Pegasus Hotel, which was the other nice place in town, as the venue for Trumbull to speak.
Still, I sat there watching her work the phones, and then I rode with her as Desmond came to get us and brought us to the Pegasus, and she had the folks at that hotel jumping as she rearranged their whole setup in preparation for Trumbull’s arrival. Everything from closing the pool bar and rearranging the beach chairs, eliminating any possible vantage from which a shooter could get at Trumbull from the time he got off the chopper in the parking lot just on the ocean side of the hotel to his speech in the ballroom, to his exit out of the hotel’s side entrance to the convoy of SUVs she organized and to the reboarding of the chopper at the police college a block away. She spent the whole night, practically, coordinating with Trumbull’s team and the Guyana Police Force and Darke’s people. She was still doing it when I decided to head to bed.
“Can I do anything?” I asked.
“Nope. This is my stuff.”
I didn’t see her the next morning. Not until about 11, when Desmond came to pick me up and take me to what was left of the airport, where Pierce’s Sikorsky was waiting.
PJ was there, wearing a black business suit that reminded me very much of the Secret Service agent she’d been so recently.
“You look rumpled,” Holman,” she said. “You don’t have a tie?”
“Trumbull isn’t going to wear one,” I said. “So I’m not.”
She rolled her eyes, and we boarded the Sikorsky. And an hour later we were landing at the airport in Paramaribo, or better put the airport south of Paramaribo, because it was really nowhere near that city, and not long after, Trumbull’s plane zoomed in from the north and he got off on the tarmac.
The president of Suriname and a few of his people insisted on welcoming Trumbull as he debarked, and Trumbull spent a few minutes making pleasantries before he shook my hand.
“Hey, Mike,” he said. “Big times, huh? And look at Pauline! Back to the old tricks, right?”
“Mr. President,” she smiled. “I’m wearing two hats on this trip, but you know which one is most important.”
“Right,” he said. “So let’s go!”
He shook all the Surinamese hands, and Pauline and his two security guys hustled him into the chopper. I followed.
And for the next hour we did an interview which, honestly, I would have liked to take back. Trumbull, I could tell, was nervous.
Halfway through, he stopped.
“Hey, off the record?” he asked.
“Sure,” I responded.
“I’m kinda thinking this was rash, comin’ down here. I mean, it’s still a war going on, right?”
“Well, yes and no. It’s something of a stalemate and we’re hoping Venezuela’s government falls apart.”
“Yeah, I know your guy is doin’ everything he can to dick ‘em over. Think that’ll work?”
“I learned a long time ago not to doubt him, but this is a pretty big project.”
“I’m just saying, Mike. I don’t wanna be a pussy. But I got shot in Indiana of all places and here I’m goin’ to Guyana.”
He more or less mumbled his way through the rest of the interview, saying his usual things, trashing Deadhorse and promising that if he got put back in charge it would be “no trouble at all” to put the world back right, and to kick out all the Omobba spies and saboteurs embedded in the Executive Branch.
“These guys,” he said, “my first term they had an advantage over me. It’s gonna be different the second go-round. You know, the presidency’s a big job. You need a lot of help. Gotta have the right people or it’s all fucked. Wait, edit that out, will ya?”
“We’ll bleep it.”
“Right. OK, whatever. But Deadhorse, I mean, come on. I told everybody he was senile four years ago and they weren’t listening. But now? Nobody’s arguin’ anymore. Did you hear what he said yesterday? He said he was the lead singer for the Eagles before Don Henley. Where does he even get shit like that?”
PJ was happily rolling away with her camera. I thought it was interesting; she’d been a giant ball of stress from the time she’d gotten drafted back into her old job, and while she attacked it with a passion I found amazing she’d gone from friendly and polite to irritable and grumpy. But now? I was convinced that camera was therapeutic for her.
We ended the interview early, mostly because Trumbull was more interested in asking me questions.
“Mike, you’ve been down here most of the last month. What do you think of Guyana? What’s the deal here?”
“I think if the Vinnies…”
“Who’s the Vinnies?”
“Sorry. The Venezuelans. If they can get chased off, I think Guyana has some real potential. And I think what you’re going to want to do is knock out some sort of free trade deal with them.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. And because they’re going to need a big infusion of labor, especially for construction with all the industry that the offshore oil will bring in, I’d make plans to deport a bunch of those illegals you’re talking about getting rid of to here.”
“Oooh. That’s an idea. So the Guyanese would take ‘em in and make ‘em guest workers?”
“I bet they’d be open to it.”
“Who? This guy Darke?”
“They’re going to do elections in a few weeks. He’s not going to run.”
“Who is?”
“Not sure, but the guy I imagine might win is Earl Roberts.”
“Guy named Earl? Sounds like he fixes cars.”
“He’s actually a war hero. Pierce’s guy. I think you’ll meet him in Georgetown.”
Trumbull nodded. “Well, good. After this, have him call me and I’ll help if I can.”
We landed in a cleared-out parking lot, and I could see PJ tense up again. She and Trumbull’s bodyguards made a phalanx around him and walked him into the hotel. Security was tight as we made our way to the ballroom, where several hundred people had taken seats. The applause was thunderous as Trumbull and his party made their way through the side door.
Darke was on stage, applauding, and he and Trumbull shared a quick exchange and a handshake as the former president came to the podium. Then it was Trumbull’s turn.
And he held forth for about a half hour about how “lousy communists” were ruining the world and how the good folks of Guyana were the front lines against them.
“I know you guys have the fight in you,” he said, “and soon you’ll have your country back. All of it.”
That took the roof off, and the crowd rose to their feet yelling, screaming and clapping. It was like a rock concert.
And Trumbull shook hands with Darke and a few other Guyanese politicians, not to mention Burnham and a couple of other American businesspeople who were there. Then he shook Earl’s hand and took a picture with him and told him, “Call me, and I’ll make sure you get elected. You’re a hell of a guy.”
Then it was time to take Trumbull out of the hotel to the SUVs parked at the side exit.
That happened without a hitch. Then we were headed east along Seawall Public Road for about a block, then came a right turn into the Guyana Police Depot, which was half-destroyed by the missile strike, and then a left into the grass parking lot where the chopper had relocated and was whirling away, prepared for a fast takeoff, and then we all got out…
“Wait, no,” PJ said. “That’s not how we set this up.”
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“That pile of timber was supposed to be cleared!” she said, pointing at an unwanted obstruction to the right.
Two of Pierce’s guys took off running for the woodpile, and then PJ looked back to the left.
“Get down!” I could hear her say as she brushed past me…
…and then I heard the shot.
It would probably have taken Trumbull’s head off. He’d crouched down in front of the chopper, and the shooter had positioned himself behind one of those decorative cinder-block walls that was constructed in a checkerboard-type fashion, next to the road.
Instead, it hit PJ. She dove in front of Trumbull just in time.
Everything was a bit of a blur at that point. Immediately, the guns began blazing in the direction of that wall, and Pierce’s six-man team closed on the shooter in no time flat and before he could get into the getaway car he was down. So was the getaway driver.
Meanwhile, Trumbull’s bodyguards whisked him into the chopper, and it launched about as quickly as I’ve ever seen. Up and away it went, and for a moment it was just PJ and me on the grass field.
“PJ!” I said, rolling her over gently. “How you doing, honey? Are you hit?”
“You know I’m hit, dummy,” she said. “You saw me get hit.”
“Where?”
“Think hard. No, wait — please don’t roll me on my back.”
“Oh, no. You didn’t…”
“My ass,” she said. “I got shot in my beautiful, half-Asian ass.”
She was laying on her side, crying and laughing at the same time.
“Well, you saved Donny Trumbull’s life, hon,” I said.
“That’s it,” she said. “I quit.”
The shooter didn’t die despite taking eight bullets from Pierce’s guys and the Guyanese cops who fell asleep rather than stopping that car when it drove around their barricade on Seawall Public Road. It turned out that his name was Mohammed Hosseini, and he was Iranian.
Because of course he was.
And the getaway driver’s name was Enrique Contreras of Cienfuegos, Cuba, who turned out to be in the employ of the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional, or the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela. Contreras even had his SEBIN ID on him. That’s how arrogant these assholes were.
All of that we found out later.
I helped as Pierce’s guys gently laid her across the back seat of the SUV, with her head on my lap and my belt tightened across her hip, her jacket pressed tight against her derriere in order to manage the bleeding, and tried to joke with her as we raced the few blocks to St. Joseph’s Mercy Hospital down the street. They took her immediately into an operating room, and the next time I saw her she was in a hospital gown lying on her side with a big wad of gauze wrapped around her stitched-up right butt-cheek.
PJ was all tranked up on whatever they’d given her, but she still had plenty of gas left in the tank. And as soon as they let me in to see her, she was awfully chatty.
“I got an email from Trumbull,” I said. “He wanted me to pass along his thanks for saving his life. He said you can have any job in his administration that you want. Just name it.”
“Forget that,” she said.
“Really?”
PJ shook her head.
“You’re gonna give me a damn good job as your videographer,” she said. “Like, I’m not hearing no from you. That’s the last bullet I’m taking for a politician. So it’s on you now. Make me a job offer.”
“What is this, emotional blackmail?” I said.
“Hey, I get to do that to you.”
“Since when?”
“Since you said you love me.”
She had me there.
July 31, 2024, Lake Lanier, Georgia
I finished Pierce’s biography a lot faster than I expected. It’s coming out on August 15, and we went with the obvious title:
King of the Jungle: How One of America’s Greatest Industrialists Held Off a Communist Invasion
I think it’s going to do well. We’ve got over 400,000 copies already sold via pre-order.
And I’m publishing it through Holman Media. Tom did a fantastic deal with a printer and a distributor, plus we already had the online store on the site, so we’re going to make a killing off this thing.
It’s a good book, though I feel a little guilty taking credit for it when Flip, Colby, and a couple of the other writers at the site pitched in with the writing and editing. It was really more of a community project than something I did. Of course, all of the background and history leading up to Guyana was my stuff. That was the part I could write in my sleep, and I practically did. The rest came from a bunch of group interviews we did with Pierce via Zoom. He was starting to turn into a hermit down there, though I guess I couldn’t blame him.
And we didn’t put that in the book.
The title is accurate, by the way. Guyana did win that war. In fact, they managed to get their whole country back.
How? Well, the government changed over in Caracas, and General de la Vega was only too happy to pull his troops out of there.
Especially after what happened to Madiera.
Anybody could have told that arrogant bastard that going to Kaietur Falls and bragging about winning the war, when they’d really done anything but, was a bad idea.
It was the last idea he ever had.
Madiera was at the little airport a little ways from the waterfall, and they’d put a little podium festooned with Venezuelan flags out for him to speak in front of the cameras and the little crowd of sycophants he’d brought with him. His party had walked up to the waterfall to look at it, and then they actually toasted each other with champagne. Then he came back to that podium to give his dumb little speech about how they’d decided to split the difference with the Guyanese en aras de la paz.
In the interests of peace. What bullshit.
You probably know what came next. The bullet came next. Right in the forehead.
Nobody saw the shooter. It was estimated he’d had to have been in one of the trees set back from the little airport building. The shot had to be a good 1,500 yards away. To this day it’s completely unknown who’s responsible.
And I don’t know, either. I don’t even have a theory.
I do have an idea, and it makes me smile. My idea is it was a very well-preserved, handsome middle-aged black guy. My thought is that he lined up his shot, and under his breath he said, “Here am I. Send me.”
Then he took a breath, then slowly exhaled and pulled the trigger.
And when Madiera went down, on national TV in Venezuela — interestingly enough, the power came back on all over the country just a couple of hours before the proceedings at the waterfall — there were people in the streets.
Not rioting. Celebrating.
After that it was de la Vega, and the end of the war. The Venezuelans came home from Guyana, and even, in a surprising number of cases, from the U.S. and elsewhere in North America. And the Cubans all got packed off and sent home, where they could be a problem for the Castro gang instead of the Venezuelan people.
Pierce even cut Cabrillo loose and let him go home, though we found out that his wife had filed for divorce and split with all of his money as soon as he was captured. One rumor had it that she was in Panama. Another was that she’d taken up with a cartel boss in Monterrey.
Meanwhile, Darke proved to be a lot cleverer than anybody thought, though I suspect he had help. Sino-Petro found their portion of those offshore oil fields nationalized and then leased to a brand new public company, Guyana Petroleum Export Company, or Guyanapec.
Which is expected to have its initial public offering when the Exchange of the Americas opens on January 6.
And yeah, I did get around to selling my house in Buckhead. I was thinking maybe I’d hold onto it after all. But when I brought PJ home a few days after that incident in Georgetown, she waddled around the place and just looked at me with her nose scrunched up.
“No?” I said.
“I can see you living here by yourself,” she said. “But we can do better. You’re big-time now, and you’ve got me.”
Instead, she found us this VRBO on Lake Lanier. I almost passed out at the price, but she told me not to worry about it. I suspected her dad was going to foot the bill, and I later found out I was right. He might have hated the idea of her throwing in with me, but at the end of the day PJ was his little girl.
“It’s so you can take care of me while I recover,” she said about that ritzy rental. “Then we’ll find something more our style.”
I will say this — there are few things more conducive to getting a whole lot of writing done in not that much time than a big, luxurious lakehouse with a deck out on the water. And a hot chick in a bikini watching you from the lounge chair a couple of feet away as you bang away at your laptop.
Even if she does have a telltale scar on her ass.
Trumbull had us come to Milwaukee for the convention. He brought PJ up on the stage and said she’d saved his life.
“She’s a hero,” he said, as the crowd went wild. “And believe it or not she’s with that guy Holman. Can you imagine that? There’s no accounting for love, right?”
I didn’t mind taking shit from Trumbull in front of the whole country. I was too happy for PJ. She was beaming. She told me that her career exit was even better than John Elway’s, if maybe a little more painful.
By the way, there are rumors that Deadhorse is going to drop out of the race right before his convention next month. Are they true? Maybe. But after that incident at that black church in North Carolina where he went off script and told the parishioners, “You dumb n***ers had better turn out the vote for me,” it’s a good bet he’s done.
But if he goes, who knows who they’ll replace him with?
Maybe we do. You might have to watch our next podcast if you want to find out.
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