Insects: Braga's Gold

by John Koloen

  “What was left of it,” Suarez said.

  Grimaldi scratched his stubbled chin. The body of Victor Machado was fresh in his mind.

  “We had a man die in the forest,” he said.

  “We know,” Boyd said.

  “Oh, yes, you went back to find where he died.”

  “Don’t forget the body we saw,” Harden said, still wearing the soccer cap he’d found. “It wasn’t that far from where we pitched our tent.”

  “That was one of our men but not from this time. Some of the men, when they found the body, stopped working. We had to replace them. They were terrified.”

  “So you believe us?” Duncan asked tentatively.

  “I don’t know. The whole idea that insects killed these men is hard to believe.”

  “I know,” Duncan said. “Something else may have killed them. We don’t know. But Reptilus was there. I’m sure of it, which means there’s a colony somewhere and if it’s large enough and they’re hungry enough, you don’t want to be around when they go to work.”

  Noticing that Braga was watching from a distance, Grimaldi shook his head and chuckled. Stepping away from the canopy, he looked at the smoky sky above and beyond the slope the yellowish glow of approaching flames.

  “I think I’m more worried about the fire,” he said as he grabbed the chair and moved toward Braga. “You seem like good chaps. I don’t doubt you. I’ll talk to the boss. Maybe he will let you go.”

  80

  Harden could barely contain himself.

  “Did you hear that,” he said giddily, “they might let us go. Jesus. Just in time, too.”

  The others weren’t so certain. It was evident in their shrugs and humorless smiles.

  “What? Am I missing something?” Harden asked when it became apparent that he was the only one who thought they were going to be freed.

  “He’s just saying that to keep us calm,” Boyd said.

  “But he sounded sincere. And he speaks English so well.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Duncan said. “It’s not up to him. He can afford to be nice to us. But I wouldn’t count on him.”

  Nobody contradicted him. Harden shook his head disappointedly.

  “What about whatshisname, Josie?”

  “What about Josias?” Boyd asked.

  “Sorry, Josias,” Harden said. “Can he help? He’s got your gun, right?”

  Duncan sighed.

  “I have no idea whether he can handle it,” Duncan said. “I just gave it to him to keep it away from these guys. I think he’s still over there somewhere.”

  “He told me he wanted to help Mr. Cody,” Suarez said softly. “I believe him.”

  “Have you seen him?” Harden asked, “I mean since you got captured.”

  Suarez shook his head.

  “Has anyone seen him?”

  No one responded.

  “I’ve looked for him,” Duncan said. “But I imagine he’s really good at concealment. He could be staring straight at us, for all I know.”

  “Even if he’s there, what’s he gonna do?” Cooper asked. “There’s one of him and a bunch of them.”

  “He’s a warrior,” Suarez said.

  “What?”

  “The Munduruku used to be warriors, you know, headhunters. They don’t do that anymore but the boys grow up learning the traditions.”

  “What good does that do us?” Harden groused.

  “He won’t run away,” Suarez said.

  “We’re not getting anywhere,” Duncan said, frustration evident in his voice. “We’re helpless like this. We gotta find a way to free ourselves. Focus on that.”

  The men were constantly adjusting their positions to relieve the soreness of their wrists and to keep them from becoming numb. The discomfort grew worse as the day passed. The dry smokiness increased to the extent that some of them started coughing. Even so, they continued to address their situation, eventually coming up with two alternatives. The first one was to somehow communicate with Josias. It was Harden’s idea.

  “He’s got a knife and that’s all he needs if he can somehow get over here at night. He’s gotta be good at stalking and sneaking up on game.”

  Everyone agreed that it was a fine idea but they couldn’t very well shout instructions to him without the miners knowing about it. And that would make things worse by exposing Josias’s position. Boyd’s idea was to get Ramon Gaspar to help, the man he’d promised passage to Jacareacanga as a condition of leading them to the spot where his cousin Victor had died.

  “He was excited when we told him we’d take him with us,” Boyd said. “He wants outta here as much as we do.”

  “How do we get him to talk to us?” Cooper asked.

  Boyd surveyed the area momentarily. The miners were working upriver, out of sight of the Americans. He had a clear view of the campsite, with the most prominent features the miners’ tents and the cook shack, at opposite ends on the sandbar, less than two hundred feet end to end. Only the cook, who was preparing the evening meal, was in sight, throwing occasional glances at the prisoners.

  “They have to walk past us to get to their tents,” Boyd said. “If we can somehow get his attention, alone, we could ask him. I mean, what do we have to lose?”

  “Yeah, I don’t see how we’re going to get out of this without help,” Harden said as he struggled to his feet, falling to his knees before finally succeeding.

  “What’re you doing?” Boyd asked.

  “I need to stretch. I’m cramping up.”

  It wasn’t long before the others joined him and the entire group was standing, their hands bound behind them, bending knees and waists and flexing their backs as they worked out the stiffness.

  “Does that feel good on my back,” Cooper said as he stretched his arms to a perpendicular position with his back while simultaneously trying to pull his wrists apart until it hurt. Within seconds all of them were testing their bindings before giving up, all but Suarez, the smallest among them, who quickly returned to a sitting position only to start squirming as he slowly worked his hands under his buttocks. Duncan noticed first and the others caught on quickly as they watched.

  “Hey guys, don’t stare,” Duncan whispered. “Just do what you were doing. Don’t let the cook see him.”

  81

  Everyone was smiling as they shielded Suarez from view while the wiry guide managed to make himself small enough that he could slip his bound hands under his bare feet. In seconds he’d wriggled his hands free of the zip tie, which he put in his pocket. The effect on the others was transformational. Even though their bodies weren’t flexible enough to do what he did, there was now hope that they could regain their freedom. One by one, they went to their knees awkwardly, their hands bound, resuming their previous positions, but energized and no longer doubting whether they had the means to escape.

  They were so excited everyone started talking at once.

  “Now that he’s free, what about the rest of us?” Harden asked pointedly.

  “We can’t do what he did.” Cooper said, nodding toward Suarez, who was sitting on his hands.

  “Look around,” Boyd said, “this place is like a junk yard. Maybe we can find a blade or something sharp.”

  “You don’t need that,” Cooper said. “Just something to pry the locking thing loose. A screwdriver, even a stick.”

  The idea of escape morphed quickly into action as the men realized that little stood in the way of success. Who needs a screwdriver when a mere stick would do the trick, and sticks were everywhere around them in plentiful supply, coming in all sizes, but none of them within reach of men whose hands were bound behind their backs. Only Suarez could actually grasp one and put it to use, but like everything else that had happened it wasn’t that simple even though each of the men had identified possible instruments within several feet of where they sat, some of them using their heads to point them out.

  “There’s one over there,” Boyd said, leaning toward it.

 
The others chimed in with their finds. Plenty to go around, yet Duncan shook his head slowly when Suarez looked to him for advice.

  “The cook’s got his eye on us,” he whispered.

  In fact Grimaldi had been watching them out of the corner of his eye when they first rose to their feet. Assuming they were stretching their legs, he thought little of it until they clustered together in a semicircle, like a curtain. His suspicion aroused, he took several steps toward the canopy when the men resettled themselves into their original circular formation, though he thought they seemed agitated. Even from a hundred feet away he could see how smoke was settling into the camp. He’d heard their coughs and realized that his throat was scratchy. The fire was getting closer. It was only a matter of time before it reached them and he was already thinking about what to leave behind when Braga rounded the bend, followed at a distance by his slow-moving men. The cook glanced at his watch. It was a little after five, not close to quitting time.

  “We were down to mud in the pond,” Braga said in Portuguese by way of explanation.

  “I heard the diesel shut down.”

  “We didn’t do bad,” Braga said, holding up a glass jar filled with gold flakes and nuggets. “We finally hit a rich deposit and we run out of water,” Braga griped in Portuguese.

  “What do you think about the fire?”

  Braga gave him a puzzled look. Grimaldi pointed toward the billowing smoke clouds.

  “Oh, I think we got another day or two. We let the pond fill up tonight and now we know where the gold is, we won’t need as much water and we’ll make a nice profit.”

  “That fire will be here in a day or two.”

  “We’ll go before it gets here, amigo. Relax.”

  “Go up there and look for yourself. The wind is blowing it this way. Look at those guys. You can see the smoke all around them,” he said, pointing at the captives.

  “Who cares about them,” he said dismissively.

  “They’re Americans. You know someone will be looking for them.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Braga said. “I’ll let them go.”

  “You will?”

  “Of course. After we’re done. We’ll load what we can in the truck and never come back.”

  “I thought you wanted to kill them? I thought you said they were government agents.”

  “I say things. Sometimes I don’t mean them. I believe they are cientistas. Who else would dress like that? And those boxes and equipment they carry. What else could they be?”

  “Then why did we take them prisoner?”

  Braga dipped a spoon into Grimaldi’s pot and tasted the stew.

  “It’s true, I don’t trust them but I saw the effect on the men when they came back with Victor’s body. They looked like they saw the devil. I didn’t want the gringos looking for the insetos. I knew I had to do something even when I first saw them, because of Orlando’s hat. I didn’t want them snooping around.”

  Grimaldi seemed satisfied with the explanation, and relieved.

  “That’s good,” he said. “I don’t think I could be a part of that.”

  “I’m not going to do anything stupid, amigo,” Braga said, patting the cook’s shoulder, before heading toward the captives.

  “By the way, can all the men fit in the truck?”

  Braga gestured with his finger for Grimaldi to approach.

  “We’ll take what and who we can,” he whispered. “You and me, the hoses and diesel, you know, the stuff I can sell. The gold. After that it’s every man for himself.”

  “Like we’re abandoning ship,” the former mariner said.

  “Yes,” Braga said enthusiastically. “Exatamente.”

  82

  Braga ducked his head under the canopy as he moved toward his tent, smiling. He said something in Portuguese. The Americans looked at Suarez.

  “He asks how you are doing.”

  “Not fucking well,” Harden said.

  “Ask him if we can have some water,” Duncan said to Suarez, his voice scratchy from dryness and smoke.

  Braga gave a brief reply, got the attention of one of his men, barked instructions that caused the man to scowl, before moving on to his tent.

  “He said the men will bring water.”

  “When?” Harden asked.

  Suarez shrugged.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Great,” Harden said angrily, straining against his zip tie in a futile effort to break it.

  “Look,” Boyd said, “the guy’s coming with a jug. Relax.”

  “Too bad we’re still tied up,” Harden whispered. “We could take him prisoner.”

  “We’re not taking prisoners,” Boyd whispered heatedly. “We’re trying to escape, okay? That’s it. We got a plan and we need to stick to it.”

  “I was kidding, bro,” Harden said.

  “It’s hard to tell sometimes,” Cooper said dismissively.

  “So, I get emotional. It’s not a crime,” he said, looking at Boyd. “I’ve never been through anything like this before. Cut some slack for chrissake.”

  “Why you looking at him?” Cooper said.

  “I’m just gonna keep my mouth shut, okay. Does that make you happy?”

  Cooper smiled.

  “Stop it,” Boyd said. “Here comes the water.”

  83

  Josias did not stray far after Duncan surrendered. Concealed in the dense bush, with only one hundred feet of riverbed separating him from the Americans, he had set the handgun aside, having never fired one. He’d watched others use pistols but had no use for them since they weren’t used for hunting. He’d heard all the tales when he was growing up of Munduruku warriors, their fearsomeness in battle, though such behaviors had died out before he was born. It instilled in him a sense of pride in his people’s history but it was just as well they no longer fought battles since they could easily be wiped out with modern weapons. Machetes, spears and bows were no match for automatic weapons. Still, he felt a responsibility to help his customers whom he watched with the patience of someone whose concept of time knows only the present.

  Duncan and Suarez talked about how to communicate with Josias. Without him they would never find their way out of the wilderness, not in the daytime and especially not at night. Suarez volunteered to cross the riverbed when the miners were asleep. Hearing this, Boyd interrupted the conversation.

  “I thought we were going to get loose first.”

  “We are,” Duncan said. “If we’re gonna get out of here we gotta make sure Josias is still here. How will we find our way out without him?”

  “I thought Antonio could do that.”

  Suarez shook his head.

  “I don’t know this place.”

  “Okay, I get it,” Boyd said. “But we’ll free ourselves, first. Right?”

  “Of course,” Duncan said. “With any luck we’ll leave tonight.”

  “Yeah, if we don’t die of smoke inhalation first,” Harden said, coughing.

  84

  Grimaldi had cooked up enough stew to feed the miners and the prisoners. Whether out of spite or simply because he could think of no better way, he placed a large aluminum bowl filled with stew in the sand under the canopy.

  “You’ll have to figure out how to eat it,” he said.

  “Maybe you could untie one of us, you know, give him a spoon so he can feed the rest of us,” Duncan said.

  Grimaldi scoffed at this.

  “I don’t think the boss will allow it. Sorry.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Harden asked brusquely. “It’s not like we can run away.”

  “What would stop you?”

  “We’d get lost,” Duncan said. “Anyway, just one of us to help the others.”

  “Otherwise, just take your bowl with you,” Harden said harshly.

  Grimaldi sighed, shaking his head as he looked at Harden’s ruddy, bearded face.

  “That’s not a good attitude to have,” he said. “I’m trying to help you. If you want, I�
��ll take the bowl. How do you say it, no skin off my nose.”

  “No need to do that,” Duncan said quickly, his tone apologetic. “It’s hard to just sit around like this. And it hurts. He’s just frustrated. You would be, too.”

  Harden was about to say something but Boyd gave him the stink eye.

  “Please,” Duncan said, “ask your boss to let one of us help the others. You can tie him up again after we finish eating. You can have somebody guard us. I don’t care. We just want to eat.”

  While Grimaldi conferred with Braga in his tent, out of earshot of the prisoners, Suarez slipped into the zip tie he’d removed. Returning moments later, the cook opened his pocket knife, eyeballed the men and moved behind their backs, squatting behind Paulo, deftly slicing through the tie.

  “Now you can eat,” he said, pulling a small ladle from his apron, dropping it in the sand.

  “Bon appetit.”

  85

  Paulo Dias winced when Grimaldi tightened the zip tie.

  “Too tight?” the cook asked in Portuguese.

  “Sim.”

  “Sorry.”

  The campsite was thick with shade even before sunset. Lanterns were lit but most of the light came from the fire, visible as a surging glow beyond the top edge of the slope, reflecting off the expanding, smoky sky above. It had been a long day. The prisoners were tired. The workers were tired. However, sleep did not come easily for the prisoners as they kept watchful eyes on their captors and surroundings. Duncan felt stupid after suggesting that everyone get some shuteye. It was what everyone wanted but none would achieve as they anxiously waited for an opportunity to remove their bindings. But vigilance had its downside. The passage of time slowed to a crawl, which resulted in some of them focusing on their parched throats and pressure to relieve themselves with their hands bound behind their backs. Cooper was becoming desperate when Suarez offered to help. With the others maintaining a lookout while shielding the two from the miners’ tents, the Brazilian helped steady Cooper as he faced the hillside, undid Cooper’s fly and backed away as the American mostly aimed his stream into the sand, the front of his khaki shorts darkening from dribbles as he finished. Staring at the rocky hill, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Things were moving on the hill. Shadowy figures.