Midnight Jungle Flights
by Cole Banner
Category: Fiction

A down-on-his-luck bush pilot finds gold in the jungles of Venezuela. September 1971 finds the pilot, Jack Weston, flying smokejumpers in the mountains of Canada. the crashing of his plane leads to some soul searching, and he debates on what to do with his life. He leaves Canada broke and down on his luck. Jack receives word from an old friend of a crop dusting job in Venezuela. While hitching a ride on a southbound freight ship to get there, he witnesses a murder, a shark attack, and more. He escapes in a leaking wooden lifeboat and is soon looking into the jaws of death again. Jack reaches Venezuela and begins to fly again. Soon, his crippled floatplane is swept over a 1600-foot jungle waterfall where he finds a ton of buried gold coins, hidden by pirates two hundred years ago. Getting the gold out of such a remote location proves to be a daunting task, riddled with bloodthirsty banditos and foul play. With the help of Layla, a stunningly beautiful Venezuelan woman he is attracted to, and his rowdy outspoken pilot-friend Austin Riley, they get involved in an all-night operation involving gunfire, low fuel, and a sizzling lightning-packed thunderstorm.