by John Koloen
“He does not know where the men are.”
“They were here, though.”
Suarez nodded.
Duncan wasn’t sure what to make of it as they returned to their observation post. Where would miners go? Of all the unexpected things that had happened to him since arriving in Brazil, this was the most puzzling. It was obvious the miners couldn’t remain there with a huge brush fire headed their way. If they were fleeing the fire, why would two of them stay behind? By now Duncan had determined that Boyd and his companions were in one of the tents. Where else could they be?
The pilot would return tomorrow and already he felt pressured by time. His plan was simple. Get in, get Cody and get out. They were in but now he had to come up with another plan for which he had no inputs. It rattled his confidence. Looking at Josias, he couldn’t help but think he had the answers he was looking for.
Where was Boyd?
76
The answer presented itself with the appearance of Suarez’s cousin, Paulo, who stepped onto the dry riverbed, several hundred yards from where they watched, followed by two men with machetes. Paulo’s hands were bound behind his back and he struggled to keep his balance in the shifting sand. Walking slowly, barefooted, one of the men shouldered Paulo’s backpack. The miners walked in a lazy fashion, as if trying to stretch it out before resuming their backbreaking work. But it didn’t last long. Jets of sand erupted underneath them. A few at first, and then more. From a distance it looked like they’d started dancing and then they broke into a run, batting at the air.
Suarez tensed as his cousin drew near, squeezing the handle of his machete. Duncan put his hand on his companion’s shoulder just as a line of men appeared in the distance carrying the rest of their gear. The men seemed to be in a jovial mood. And then they too began running soon after entering the riverbed. Everyone was running until they reached the camp where they exploded into laughter as if it had been a joke, none the worse for wear. Most didn’t know why they’d been running, reacting like children to others who had started running. They pointed fingers at the men who had started the race, both of whom didn’t seem to get the joke.
Braga, who thought the men were having fun, took an immediate interest in the frightened Paulo, whom they’d positioned on a folding chair under one of the canopies. The boss sat on a chair facing Paulo. Suarez couldn’t make out what was being said but the conversation looked to be intense until Braga left his chair to confer with the cook. Moments later both men stood at one end of the camp, facing the thick vegetation concealing Duncan’s party, separated by a hundred feet of sand.
“We know you are there, Mr. Howard,” Octavio Grimaldi said.
Duncan and Suarez exchanged glances. Josias watched from behind them, not hearing what was being said nor curious enough to ask. Duncan didn’t think they could be seen through the brush, steeped in the shade of palmitos and palms, and remained silent. Braga directed two of his men to lead Boyd and his crew out of one of the tents, their hands tied behind their backs, their gait stiff as if they’d been sitting for a long time. Braga smiled as the trio joined him and the cook.
“As you can see, we have your friends, Mr. Howard.”
Braga nudged Boyd to speak.
“Don’t listen to them, if you’re out there,” Boyd said, before the cook cuffed him on the back of the head.
“You should listen to us,” Grimaldi said. “Your friends were trespassing.”
“We were not,” Boyd barked, earning a threatening gesture from Braga.
Duncan gripped his revolver while the cook talked, wondering whether he could take out both of the men before they could hurt their captives. But the thought was preposterous. He had never fired the gun and looking at it closely he detected rust on the barrel. Additionally, the cylinder didn’t spin freely. Besides, he couldn’t shoot them in cold blood. Couldn’t point the gun at them or even threaten them. He’d brought the weapon just in case they needed it, with no particular situation in mind. Certainly, he had no inclination to start a shootout with a .22. Besides, he and his companions were outnumbered as Braga’s men now stood with their boss, machetes at their sides. Though Braga knew they were there, Duncan was certain he couldn’t see them through the vegetation. He whispered to Suarez to remain motionless, to wait them out, but Braga ordered one of his men to bring Paulo forward. Handling the smaller man roughly, Braga forced him to his knees and held a machete across his throat.
“Eu vou cortar a cabeça dele, então me ajude,” Braga shouted.
Suarez recoiled with alarm.
“They are going to cut off his head,” he whispered anxiously.
“No they won’t.”
“Yes, they will. They’ll kill him as an example. I can’t let this happen.”
There was no stopping him. Suarez dropped his machete, stepped into the riverbed and approached Braga with his hands in the air. Duncan glanced at Josias who crouched behind him.
“Take this,” Duncan said, squeezing the tribesman’s hand around the pistol. “Hide. Vai se esconder.”
With Suarez setting the tone Duncan knew he had no choice. Even if he tried to resist, the captives would pay the price.
77
“How’d they know we were coming?” Duncan asked after he and Suarez joined Boyd, Harden and Cooper under one of the canopies, all bound behind their backs with cable ties. None of them looked confident. Their captors had stripped them of their belongings, including pocket knives and electronics.
“I told them,” Boyd said.
“What? Why?”
“I didn’t tell them you were coming, just that someone was coming. I needed to make it sound like there were more of us. To be honest, I didn’t know. I just made it up. I thought maybe they’d think twice about doing anything to us if they thought someone was coming.”
“It’s just more bad luck,” Cooper sighed.
“It’s worse than that,” Harden said. “We’re fucked.”
“You don’t think they’re gonna kill us, do you?” Cooper asked.
“Well, yeah, that’s exactly what I think they’re gonna do,” Harden said.
“They’re not gonna kill us,” Boyd said. “They couldn’t get away with it. The deaths of three Americans would be big news, I’m sure.”
“But they could kill us even if they don’t get away with it. Right? People don’t commit crimes unless they think they can get away with it. So, maybe they think they can get away with it.”
“But the top guy knows this. And the cook.”
“Where are you going with this?” Duncan asked. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a big fire coming our way and I’ve seen plenty evidence of Reptilus blaberus.”
“Not to mention that we’re prisoners,” Cooper said.
“Yeah, not to mention we’re prisoners.”
While the Americans talked, Suarez translated for Paulo.
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying they can’t stay here for much longer.”
There were six of them against twelve. Each of them had run the numbers. One side was armed with machetes and at least one handgun. The other side had their hands tied behind their backs. Focusing on the fire made one thing crystal clear—the fire might make identification impossible, if the remains were even found in a blaze covering many square miles.
“You figure the boss guy must know this,” Boyd said.
“It’s obvious, really.”
“So what can we do? Tied up like this.” Cooper asked.
“Isn’t this what happened to y’all, back in the day?” Harden asked. “I read your book.”
Duncan shook his head.
“Not the same situation, right?”
“They didn’t have cable ties,” Boyd said. “Otherwise, seems similar.”
“What difference does it make?” Duncan said sharply.
“Well, you got outta that one, didn’t you?” Harden said.
“We were lucky,” Boyd said. “We were
surrounded by the bugs. We knew what to do and the other guys didn’t.”
“You hid, right?”
“Yeah. Antonio here climbed a tree,” Duncan said. “The rest of us hid under crates. But this is different.”
“What’s different?”
“There’s no place to hide,” Duncan said, looking around.
“I haven’t seen any bugs,” Harden said.
“What about the body we found?” Boyd asked.
“Yeah, that was bad, but, you know, maybe it wasn’t bugs. Maybe somebody killed him,” Harden said.
Cooper was astonished, staring at Harden as if he’d just declared the Earth to be flat.
“What are you saying?” Cooper said in disbelief. “You saw it.”
“Yeah, I saw it but I’m not a coroner. I don’t know what killed him and neither do you.”
Cooper looked at Boyd for support.
“It looked to me like he’d been attacked. Besides, one of the workers was killed and they buried him over there,” Boyd said, nodding toward a sandy mound several hundred feet from the camp.
“So, two bodies,” Duncan said. “We found one on the way in. I don’t know what killed the man. Maybe he was dead when Reptilus got to him but he was hollowed out like all the other victims I’ve seen.”
“If they’re around, why haven’t we seen them?”
“I think we have,” Duncan said, “or at least I have. You probably couldn’t see them, but those guys when they were coming here with Paulo and your stuff started running and waving their arms. I was too far away to see why they were doing it but it looked like they were being attacked by something. Maybe they ran into a scouting party.”
“Too bad we can’t ask them,” Cooper said.
Suarez whispered something to Duncan.
“Paulo knows something about this,” he said, nodding toward the Brazilian, sitting next to his cousin, who translated.
“We were walking when things started jumping out of the ground. Big things,” he said holding his thumb and forefinger three inches apart.
“They were that big. But there weren’t many of them. We ran and then when we were past them they laughed.”
“Too bad we don’t have a sat phone,” Harden groused, looking at Boyd.
“You have a sat phone?” Duncan asked.
“We did. It was in his pack, which is now who knows where.”
“I saw your stuff,” Duncan said. “They piled it behind that cook shack or whatever it is.”
“What I wouldn’t give for a gun,” Harden said. “You didn’t happen to bring a gun, did you?”
Duncan glanced at Suarez and then nodded.
“You brought a gun?” Harden responded eagerly.
“Shhhh,” Cooper said. “Not so loud. The cook speaks English.”
“Where is it?”
“There’s another guy over there,” Duncan said, nodding in the direction where he’d last seen Josias.
“There’s another guy?”
“Yeah. Your guide. I gave him the gun. He’s probably watching us right now.”
78
Braga assigned Grimaldi to keep an eye on the captives while the miners returned to work following the morning’s excitement. Rummaging through the Americans’ backpacks, he and Grimaldi had claimed most of the contents, including Duncan’s first aid supplies, small portable solar panels to recharge the GPS and phones they’d confiscated.
“What kind of phone is that?” Braga asked in Portuguese as Grimaldi pulled the satellite phone from Boyd’s pack.
“I’ve seen these. It’s a satellite phone.”
“Você fala com satélites?”
“No, you don’t talk to satellites,” Grimaldi said, amused, “it lets you call anyone in the world. Like a cell phone only better.”
Braga nodded approvingly and then had second thoughts.
“Can they hear us?”
Grimaldi shook his head, his attention focused on the phone’s LCD screen and keypad, toying with the device like a curious child. Braga, meanwhile, examined one of the solar panels, plugged in a cable that came with it and then tried to plug it into his long dead flip phone, which turned out to be incompatible, finally tossing the panel onto the pile of backpacks and sleeping bags.
“This is worth money,” Grimaldi said in Portuguese. “We can sell it.”
“Sell what?”
“Everything. Some of this stuff is expensive.”
Always alert to profit, Braga told Grimaldi to put the most valuable items into one of the packs, which he stashed in his tent.
“Let the men have the rest,” he said generously.
“They’ll fight over it.”
“Idiotas,” Braga snarled.
“What do you expect? They’ll fight over anything, even stuff they don’t need. They are like children.”
“Then leave it here.”
“You can bet one of them will take something and the others will follow and the ones who get to it too late will be pissed off and—”
“Then burn it. I’ve got what I want,” Braga said. You take what you want and be done with it.”
“They won’t like it if we do that.”
“Then let them fight over it.”
79
Whenever the men had a problem, they would go to Octavio Grimaldi for advice. Unlike them, he’d seen the world, had done many things, knew many things. And unlike their boss, he was even-tempered, approachable, avuncular. He helped them recover from the aches and pains of mining, the pulled muscles, bruising and occasional bouts of illness. Where Braga saw malingering, Grimaldi saw men who slept poorly, worked too hard for their own good and were happiest whenever a break in the routine occurred, such as when the boss sent them to retrieve Duncan’s gear. Six of them went. Two led Paulo to camp while the others collected the gear, rummaging through it, pocketing smaller items they could easily conceal knowing that everyone wanted a souvenir of some sort and that if they didn’t take it now the boss would keep everything for himself or at least get first shot at the pickings.
However, one of them got more than he bargained for, having run with the others through the gauntlet of flying Reptilus but unlike them having emerged with several painful gouges on his calves. The tiny wounds oozed and looked as if they’d been caused by sharp instruments. The man hadn’t felt anything until he saw what he called baratas hanging onto his flesh which he managed to shake off. The pain made its appearance when he touched the wounds. Grimaldi had never heard of cockroaches attacking people and doubted the man’s story but could not come up with a better explanation. He verified with several of the others that they’d encountered bugs of some sort but descriptions varied. None of the others reported injuries.
Grimaldi smeared a salve over the wounds, bandaged them using items from Duncan’s first aid supplies, and sent him back to work before turning his attention to preparing the midday meal. The men were largely uneducated and superstitious and he knew better than to take their observations without a few grains of salt. The Americans claimed to be there to collect insects, which Braga considered a lie. The more Grimaldi thought about it, the more he believed they were telling the truth. They obviously weren’t sent by the Brazilian government, since they weren’t armed or fluent in Portuguese. The appearance of Duncan and Suarez substantiated what Boyd had said. They weren’t there to interfere with the mining operation, but it was hard to believe they had come this far to collect insects in a country filled with uncountable species of insects. Why here? Why now?
After setting a large pot on the stove to boil, the cook wiped his hands on his dirty apron and approached the Americans, who sat in a circle talking quietly until they saw him and clammed up.
“So, gentlemen,” Grimaldi said, “how is your day going?”
“How do you think it’s going?” Harden said curtly.
Duncan and Boyd shook their heads. Neither wanted to antagonize their captors.
“We’re getting thirsty,” Duncan said.
“Yeah, it’s hard to drink without hands,” Harden said, straining against his bindings. “Or water.”
Grimaldi nodded in acknowledgement.
“Perhaps I can help with that,” he said, leaving momentarily, returning with a folding chair, a two-liter bottle of water and a metal cup, which he refilled for each man, holding it while they sipped. Then he directed the men to make room and planted the chair in the sand joining their circle. Upriver from them the miners worked, slowly excavating the slope with jets of water and sluicing the material for treasure.
“Tell me something,” Duncan said. “Why are you doing this to us?”
All eyes were on the cook.
“Senhor Braga doesn’t trust you, I’m afraid.”
“Why?” Boyd said. “We told the truth.”
“I know what you told him. It’s just inconceivable to him that you would come here of all places when the jungle is filled with insects. Why here?”
“Because, this is where they are,” Boyd said.
“Yes, yes. But insects are everywhere.”
“These are called Reptilus blaberus,” Duncan said. “It is a peculiar species. As far as we know, this is the only place where they exist. At least for now.”
“They look like cockroaches,” Cooper said.
“Baratas? You’re looking for baratas?” Grimaldi said skeptically.
“They look like cockroaches,” Boyd said. “But they’re not cockroaches.”
“I just bandaged a man who said he was attacked by baratas. He had cuts on his legs. Very painful.”
Duncan and Boyd exchanged glances.
“He probably ran into a scouting party,” Duncan said.
“A scouting party?”
“Yeah,” Boyd said. “They’re organized something like army ants. They don’t forage so much as hunt.”
“What are they hunting for?”
“They’re carnivores. They eat meat. As far as we know that’s all they eat. We found a body of a man,” Duncan said.