Blowin' up Like the World Trade

No, that's not me in the above shot. I don't get off dressing up like a Brazilian federal police officer and marching around with an assault rifle. If I did, I'd be kind of kinky, but I guess I'm not. But I was there when that picture was taken and I am responsible for the shot. Here's the story:

After U.S. Nun and rain forest defender Dorothy Stang was murdered I was the first foreign correspondent to arrive in the town where she was murdered. I got there and photographer Paulo Santos, who arrived the day before, came to pick me up at the airport in Altamira, some hours away over the TransAmazon Highway. While I waited for him and for him at the airport I encountered her coffin returning from the coroner's office in Belem. It was accompanied by all these government officials and I managed to do most of my mornings work there at the airport. Lucky me. Then me, Paulo and another photographer Paco (it's spelled Paco but pronounced Pac-Oh) headed down to Anapu where Stang was killed. We accompanied the body through town along with hundreds of people and all the way to the burial site in a wooded area. Then the next day we didn't really know what to do. Paulo wanted to hang around town and wait for the army that was arriving and I wanted to go to site where she was shot deep inside the rain forest about 50 or 60 kilometers down a bad, dirt road. Paulo was not in the mood and we had a bit of a fight. He was afraid he'd miss the arrival of the army, who the president had ordered sent in to keep order. I figured they might or might not come but it was worth sitting around waiting. Worst case we'd buy the picture from another paper. This really pissed Paulo off, as did my suggestion that I take the pick-up truck and he get around town on a moto-taxi. He is a rather portly man and he argued he had a lot of equipment and it was he through his connection to the Senator (who he was "married" to) that secured us a pick-up truck and driver. He had a point, but I somehow prevailed. As we were heading along the dirt road we ran into a truck load of federal police who weren't able to make it up particularly steep and muddy stretch of road. We said we were going to try and two of them came along in the back of our pick-up. So the first federal police to arrive at the crime scene we're given a lift by the AP. Anyway, we made it there and there was this little cross fashioned from tree branches marking the spot. The federal policemen poked around and Paulo got the shot. When we got back to town, the army hadn't arrived and Paulo became convinced his shot would make the cover of the national news weekly Veja. I told him if it did, he owed me a dinner and he asked why, having totally forgot that he didn't even want to make the trip. Later that night the owner of the hotel let us know he had bought the bottle of whiskey Paulo had asked him to. After drinking for a while with cops, the owner of the hotel came up to me and said pointing around the room: "Michael, Mr. Paulo wants another whiskey but he's got one that's almost full there and there's another one there, and another there." I told the guy to cut Paulo off. The next day I was taking a motor taxi to the accounting office where we'd arranged an Internet connection on the back of the moto-taxi when I heard the helicopters bringing the soldiers rumbling above. And where was Paulo?