by Vince Milam
“Our government’s judicial branch remains in Sucre. The Bolivian capital. The rest of the government, everything else, is in La Paz. Peculiar, I know, but it is what it is.”
“Do you have contacts in both places?”
Completing this job’s Bolivian portion would require I visit their government’s legal and administrative branches. Answers would be few, for sure, with muddy waters the day’s order. An ass-pain endeavor, but it would ensure I’d covered the bases.
“I do. And I will make introductions as part of our agreement.”
The thousand US dollar agreement. A logistical plan for the job began forming. Visit both mining locations, perform interviews, observe, collect intel. Do a run-through with the government’s legal arm and mining bureaucracies. Call it good and head toward Nevada. Can do, easy.
“Okay. Let’s get into the conflict’s details. How does it manifest? I mean, what does it look like?”
Two drinks arrived. Milky-colored, thick, cool, with a hint of cloves and cinnamon.
“Somo,” Esma said, taking a sip. “They make it with corn.”
It was refreshing, filling, and far superior to the beer I’d consumed. Esma was waffling—avoiding a factual presentation of what was happening at the mining operations. I eyeballed her and waited. She glanced around the open-air space again and leaned forward.
“Simko’s operation is not a mining business as much as a small collection of armed soldiers. Foreign soldiers. They shoot at and harass the Canadians. They have killed two Bolivian workers. Other workers consider leaving.”
“What is Exponent doing about it? I mean, are they fighting back?”
“They are a mining company. Not an army. Perhaps they require someone like you.”
“I’m not a hired gun, Esma. It’s not what I do.”
“But you can provide them guidance. You can provide them strategies and tactics. I am most certain these things are in your background. It is obvious for me.”
“Yes, I can give advice. If it’s asked for.”
“They will ask it.”
An uncomfortable underpinning accompanied her statements. Her premise reeked of Old West regulator activities. A hired gun brought in to clean up. It wouldn’t happen. There were other shadow contractors who performed such duties. Not me.
“Okay. What else should I know before I take off tomorrow morning?”
“Know you will be alone. There are no police, there is no law. Only you. You, and Simko’s small army. It is a very dangerous situation, Case Lee.”
Yeah, well, been there, done that, got the T-shirt. A chunk of me internalized disappointment that another benign-sounding gig held a razor’s edge. Man, it got old. Another part acknowledged the danger and accepted it. Maybe more than accepted it. Either way, I would head out the next morning, well armed and aware. Time to rock the Chaco.
Chapter 6
I had an early morning start, the day clear and warm as Santa Cruz faded in the rearview mirror. It was good and fine heading into the field, into operational turf. I covered the rifle on the back seat with a light jacket and kept the sawed-off shotgun and pistol on the passenger seat. My unpacked hammock hid them.
People and civilization faded, and the road surface quality deteriorated. The three toll stops, all soon after leaving Santa Cruz, were uneventful. At the first two, the police officer in charge glanced at my passport, pocketed the protruding Benjamin, and waved me through without a vehicle inspection. The third and last toll stop involved more commentary. The guy in charge pocketed the bill, returned my passport, and asked if I’d traveled this route before.
“No. This is my first time.”
“You understand it is dangerous? There are no police out there.”
“I understand. I have work at the mining operations.”
He lowered his fake Ray-Bans and stared at the passenger seat. I glanced at the same. The shotgun peeked out from underneath the folded hammock. We locked eyes.
“The Chaco is a poor place to die,” he said, arms resting on my window’s sill and his voice low.
“I don’t intend to die.”
“It is fine that you would say this. But intentions and reality are two very different things.”
He pushed the sunglasses back up his nose, straightened, and extended an arm eastward, toward my destination.
“Vaya con Dios.” Go with God.
Three miles later I pulled off the two-lane asphalt road and eased into scrub brush. I fired a dozen times with the Taurus pistol, becoming familiar with its aim and feel and operation. It took ten shots with the rifle, each followed with sight adjustments, until the scope’s accuracy satisfied me. Then the shotgun. Both barrels fired as the weapon kicked like a mule with each shot. I was good to go.
The terrain became dry and flat, with scrub trees and brush. Air through my open windows blew warm and humid. Toward both the north and south an occasional mountain spine protruded above the landscape and extended several miles until they sloped back into the flatland. There were no villages or pueblos and no traffic. This was the Bolivian Chaco, where salinity hampered drinkable subsurface water, and there were few available streams or creeks. It was large, lonely country, isolated, and a place where you’d best haul in what you needed. I made steady cautious progress for two hours, avoided potholes, and then ran into other people.
They had spotted me from a distance and driven their old pickup truck across the road, stopped, and prevented passage. There were two in the cab and four in the truck’s bed. Road bandits. I eased to a stop fifty paces from them and kept the engine running. The six men hopped out. Three carried firearms, the others wielded machetes. The guns were old single-shots, rusted and wired together. Weapons that could kill you, sure, but it would take a lucky shot at any distance. They spread across the road and stood still. A few were shirtless, a few without shoes. They were young men, although the driver and his compadre from the truck’s cab were older.
Their motionless stance signaled other activities were afoot. On my left, in the distance, a faint wood-fire haze rose. A small pueblo, established no doubt with a shallow water well producing potable water. As for an avocation among the villagers, well, this was it. Rob and possibly kill lone travelers.
A glance in the rearview mirror showed coordination with a second vehicle and three additional men. One steered, the other two pushed. An old sedan without doors or an engine hood rolled across the road at my rear, another fifty paces distant. Once situated, the three gathered an old shotgun and two machetes. Then they too stood still.
I supposed the expected reaction from me was a vehicle exit with hands in the air. I turned off the SUV, exited, and shoved the pistol into my jeans’ waistband. I also toted the automatic rifle retrieved from the back seat. I racked a round and stood alongside my vehicle. It emitted the scene’s only sound—the occasional metallic ping as the engine cooled down.
This was spaghetti western stuff, and I had no intention of escalating the situation. Nine threadbare bandits arrayed across a middle-of-nowhere road. Dirt poor, this is what they did to get by. They might also have been killers and rapists, but I wasn’t perched in a judge’s chair. I was a guy who wanted to get on down the road.
Beside my vehicle was a collection of cracked and broken asphalt. I wandered over, retrieved a black piece, set a Benjamin in the road’s center, and secured it with the asphalt chunk.
“I will leave that for you. Now move your vehicle.”
My voice, calm and low, carried in the quiet. The vehicle’s driver at my front, his single-shot rifle held over his shoulder with one hand, spoke.
“How much?”
“One hundred dollars, US.”
The announcement created a stir among the gang at both my front and behind me. A nice payday, there for the plucking. But there’s always one asshole in these situations, and the bandit who’d spoken stepped into the role.
“Empty your vehicle. We will have it all. And remove all your dollars from y
our pockets. We will have that as well.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
Silence was mixed with chicken sounds from the nearby pueblo, their ruckus drifting through the scrub brush and stunted trees. My adversary brought the rifle into a firing position, aimed in my direction. I returned the favor, and kicked off the festivities with a round only an inch from the cat’s left ear. That got his attention. The shot sent him, and the others, scrambling for protection behind their truck. A glance behind me displayed the three advancing with caution and a fading commitment. I facilitated their immediate decision-making process and aimed at a machete a young man dangled in his hand. When the bullet struck the blade, his arm lifted at impact. He dropped the weapon like it was electrified and hustled to join his two compadres at their nonrunning vehicle. They hunkered down near the rear trunk.
A single bullet slapped and whined off asphalt several feet away. I knew who’d fired it, but I had zero intent engaging in a firefight with this motley crew. I was less concerned about myself and more focused on my vehicle. A long, lonely drive lay ahead, and a hole through the radiator was the last thing I needed. Plus, Esma would gouge me if I returned her Toyota with a bullet hole or three. Adios, deposit.
I jogged into the scrub trees and brush on my right, disappearing from their sight. The understory was dry and brittle, which worked to my advantage for this little psyops maneuver. The area remained dead quiet, except for the footfall crunches working toward the pickup truck gang. Hidden from their sight, they’d focus on my movement’s sound, aware the boogeyman approached. I continued past their spot, which caused a mad scramble and general mutiny.
“He is behind us!” the leader called. “Get on the other side of the truck.”
I heard but couldn’t understand the unanimous response, the Spanish expression perhaps unique for this area. But the meaning came across loud and clear—screw that noise, boss. Brush and brittle ground limbs crunched from the road’s other side as they made a hasty exit toward their pueblo, no doubt hoping I wouldn’t follow them. The boss screamed at them, using every Spanish curse word in the book.
It may have been machismo or an act upholding his standing as their leader, but the boss remained. Oh, man. I backtracked, this time slow and quiet. At a point that would correspond with the pickup’s side facing my SUV, I dropped and crawled. A tiny break in the brush appeared and displayed the boss with his old rifle across the truck’s hood aimed toward my last known location. I eased onto my belly and aimed my rifle, the scope’s red dot centered on his head.
“Leave the rifle on the truck. Walk away.”
With the rifle still pointed toward my old spot, his head snapped in my direction. His next set of actions would remain a mystery. Whether filled with certainty I’d never shoot him, wild confidence in his own abilities, desperate actions where life was cheap—I’d never know. He straightened up with the rifle, and calmly opened his truck’s passenger door. The window was down, and he slid behind what he thought was protection, the vehicle’s door. He used the open window frame as a benchrest.
“Don’t do it!”
He fired a shot toward my voice. The bullet buzzed eighteen inches past my head. The dumb bastard stood straight, cracked open the old rifle, pulled the spent cartridge, and dug in a pocket for another bullet.
“I won’t miss, cabrón. Drop the damn rifle!”
He ignored me, produced a round, and dropped it into the weapon. Closing the breach, he once again took calm aim, resting on the door’s sill. I shot him in the forehead.
The entire scene irritated the fire out of me. Stupid actions, needless death. I stood, entered the road, and checked the doorless sedan behind my SUV. Its occupants had fled along with the pickup truck bunch. Jeez Louise, this one now-dead idiot had refused to do the smart thing. The lone rational act. So irritating. I opened their truck’s hood, pulled the pistol, and shot the fuse box, alternator, and distributor. It would be a while, a long, long while, before the truck would run again. I put it in neutral, shoved it halfway off the road, and returned to my SUV. Another body racked up, Lee. Left on crumbled asphalt in the Chaco’s desolate midst. Great. Just freakin’ great.
Several uneventful hours later, I rolled into Santa Ana. The pueblo’s thousand inhabitants had ensured their small village centered around a dusty plaza with three scraggly trees, two benches, and a statue of the Virgin Mary. A stick-and-mud shack displayed three old folding tables and a few chairs scattered near its entrance. The town bar. In my experiences around the world, you couldn’t beat a bar as a base of operations.
I parked nearby and took an outdoor seat with my back against the shack’s wall, the pistol shoved into the front pocket of my jeans, and the sawed-off shotgun eased onto the tabletop. Joining the shotgun, a full Grey Goose vodka bottle. Case Lee Inc.’s Bolivian branch office was now open. An old lady wandered out, eyeballed the shotgun and booze, and asked me if I’d like anything.
“I would like a glass and ice. I’ll pay the same price as two beers.”
An English-accented voice drifted from the shack’s interior.
“I’m afraid, old sport, the only available ice is at the brothel.”
Chapter 7
He ducked the low entrance as he exited the shack. Chambers, a British spy.
“I’m sensing a trend,” I said with a light headshake and a half-grin. “MI6 has a mining department, and you’re their guy.”
I’d met Chambers in New Guinea during my investigation into a gold discovery. He’d helped Bo, Catch, and me. His wasn’t a major effort, but a real one, and that’s what counted. He sidled over, took a seat, and addressed a perceived flaw on his khaki shirt, brushing it. Give the Brits credit—this guy came from central casting. Tall and thin with perfectly groomed light-blond hair. He carried the demeanor of someone who would fit right in at a university dinner party. But if you knew what to look for, there was also an underlayer of stainless-steel resolve. This cat would whack you in a heartbeat, then join friends in their elbow-patch tweed jackets for martinis.
“Hardly,” he replied and addressed the old woman, speaking Spanish. “If you would, dear lady, send Juan for a bucket of ice.”
He handed her some bolivianos, the Bolivian currency. She called for a young man inside, perhaps her grandson, and sent him on his way while admonishing him not to linger “in such a place as that.” Chambers retrieved a briar pipe from a shirt pocket, tobacco in a fine leather pouch from his khaki pants pocket, and futzed with the loading and tamping.
“How was your drive out here?” he asked.
“There was one hiccup.”
“Were you able to mitigate the gastrointestinal distress?”
“Yeah. So you don’t find this unusual?” I asked. “Running into each other smack-dab in the middle of nowhere. Is the ice safe?”
“I’d immerse it in the vodka. It has been a while, Lee. How have you gotten on?”
“If I was any better, I’d be you.”
He smiled and tamped the pipe tobacco.
“I understand you and your associates’ New Guinea efforts were a resounding success. I am duly impressed.”
“Less than resounding. But the rescue effort worked. I seem to remember telling you not to bet against us.”
“You did indeed, sport. Huzzah for the three of you. And I mean that.”
“So what did you guys hire me to do on this job?”
He produced a gold-plated lighter and fired the pipe. He lifted both eyebrows and shot a glance my way. Satisfied with the pipe effort, he said, “Hire you? Why, in the name of all that is good and decent, would we do such a thing?”
“Then you’re vacationing here in Santa Ana. Solid choice.”
“Allow me to expound on some background information. Ah, our courier has arrived.”
The young man hustled up, carrying a tin bucket filled with ice. The old proprietor plonked two glasses on our table. I opened the vodka bottle and splashed a small amount in each glass. Chamb
ers and I, driven through long and too often unsavory experiences, each dipped our fingers in the alcohol and ran them around the glass rims. We added ice and covered it with vodka.
“Bloody hell, that’s good,” he said after a large sip. “The beer here, served warm, is atrocious.”
“You could try icing it down. And I’d bet the whorehouse has cold beer.”
“I have performed the former with little effect on the taste. And I’m afraid I am persona non grata at the latter.”
“Is there an interesting story behind that?”
“Not really. Are you familiar with the players out here?”
“The Canadians operate Exponent’s efforts. British mining interests are partners. Which makes it curious why your outfit would hire me.”
“You should shift away from that lane. We didn’t hire you. If we had, an act that lies far beyond unlikely, then why in the devil would I be here?”
He had a point. Maybe. I liked Chambers as far as it went. An MI6 spook who’d assisted me in the past. But he was still a spook, and any expectations I had of him delivering straight answers and full disclosure were nonexistent.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Three days. More than sufficient time for lay of the land and all that.”
“What I’m hearing is you’re here to babysit British interests.”
“I am here, Lee, because fair play is no longer integral to our competitor’s game plan.”
“KDB Mining. Your competitor.”
“Quite.”
He puffed on the pipe and sipped Grey Goose. We sat in the shade, and the day began to cool down. The locals would soon begin their daily promenade around the town plaza. In the distance, semitrucks rattled and rolled past on the lonely highway. Esma’s caravan, restocking Exponent’s supplies.
Chambers referenced the road noise and said, “The supply train you hear rolling past is being delivered through a Santa Cruz company. A company run by one Esma Mansur. You should meet her when you get the chance. She’s quite helpful.”