The 6th Plague

by Darren Hale

  ‘I don’t think there’s much we can do about that at the moment… Unless we’re planning to live off roots and berries from now on. He’s going to need it to hunt with,’ said Simon reasonably.

  ‘We could send him hunting with a spear and a blow-pipe – just like the natives?’ Angus smirked.

  And with those words, the tension melted.

  Rufus started to laugh, and others followed.

  Even the professor managed a grin.

  24

  Sunday 15th October:

  The processing lab was no glamorous affair – no warehouse full of semi-naked women cutting vats of white powder while men in suits and sunglasses, toting machine pistols and wicked smiles, counted out heaps of dollar bills in the back room next door. Not that there was in fact anything that was glamorous about the drug, cocaine, beyond the high-flying, champagne-drinking, black-suited and sequin-dressed members of high-society who consumed a very small proportion of what was manufactured.

  And, had those wealthy few known exactly what it was they were sticking up their noses, they might well have thought twice about the habit.

  Of course, Ramon himself had never touched the stuff.

  And never would.

  The repulsive manner in which it was created had dispelled all curiosity.

  What had started as a pile of green leaves, would in its journey from field to nose, have been mixed with cement powder, diesel fuel, and a variety of toxic chemicals; then mashed, pulped, and stomped by sweaty men in wellington boots; before being heated, dried, and cut with other noxious chemicals to create the infamous white powder. No – this was money… White gold… A means to finance his operation, and nothing more.

  ‘So – when will they be ready to ship the product?’ Ramon asked. He was standing some distance from the huddle of shacks that comprised this multi-million-dollar enterprise.

  ‘They are preparing the last batches now and should be ready to transport it within the next couple of days.’ Enrique Barrera had been the popular choice for Ramon’s second in command. At five foot nine, he was just a fraction taller than Ramon and had a lean but muscular body that conveyed all the grace and energy of a greyhound. He’d joined FARC at the age of seven following the death of his brother and parents during a government raid; and though he was still very young, he’d risen rapidly through the ranks, fuelled by his vigorous hatred for those who’d taken his family from him.

  ‘Good – I don’t like being so close to the Englishman’s camp. It makes me nervous. They are attracting too much attention, and it is time we were leaving.’

  ‘We could have them disappear…’

  ‘No – it is too dangerous. We must not jeopardise our operation here for the sake of a few tourists.’

  ‘We may not have a choice…’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Enrique reached into his pocket and withdrew a crumpled piece of paper. ‘I was handed this communique just a few moments ago. It is from Manuel…’

  ‘Do you know what it says?’ asked Ramon, accepting the paper from him.

  ‘He seems to believe that our “tourists” have discovered some valuable artefacts and he is sending someone to investigate…’

  ‘And just how has he learnt of their apparent good fortune?’ Ramon spoke through gritted teeth. The question might as well have been rhetorical. He knew the answer of course.

  ‘Our friend Senõr Gonsalez,’ said Enrique, heaping his disdain on the word “friend”. Horaldo Gonsalez, the chief of police in Iquitos was a necessary acquaintance and nothing more. One who was inclined to over-estimate his own power.

  ‘The fool! All he has done is bring more unwanted attention our way. And for what? So he can protect his own little side-line! Fifty million in cocaine and he is risking it all over a few pieces of junk?’

  ‘Valuable pieces of junk… according to his man on the inside. And it seems that our sponsor is willing to pay him handsomely for them. He’s sending his man to investigate.’ Their sponsor, Manuel Rodriguez, was known for his obsession with ancient artefacts and it was a hobby he pursued to distraction. Cocaine was money, wealth, and power. But what good was such currency, if it couldn’t buy you everything you desired?

  Ramon crumpled the paper and threw it to the floor. ‘The man is an idiot,’ he exclaimed.

  Enrique remained silent, knowing better than to offer an opinion.

  ‘Very well… Enrique – I want you to take an advance party to the camp and secure it in preparation for Manuel’s representative. I will finish the preparations here, then join you in a couple of days with our shipment. See to it that we are ready to depart as soon as I arrive.’

  25

  Sunday 15th October:

  ‘Come on will you… This place is beginning to give me a bad feeling,’ Oki moaned. Martin’s was the last remaining tent, and he was beginning to feel acutely uneasy. Their searches had thus far failed to reveal anything of interest, and he was beginning to think it had all been a big waste of time. Angus had of course offered a contrary opinion, highlighting the fact that they had uncovered Carmen’s penchant for sexy lingerie – a discovery that had, in his mind, absolved her of all crimes, past, present, and future. Nevertheless, unconvinced by his assertion, Oki had resisted Angus’s suggestion that they take samples as evidence, having pointed out that this was supposed to be a discrete inspection of her quarters.

  ‘Every tent we’ve been in so far, has given you bad vibes,’ Angus retorted.

  ‘Yeh – well this one’s different. I’m not so sure I trust this guy.’

  ‘Then, all the more reason to check him out. Look, I have to say, I’m in agreement with the professor on this one. If there is someone plotting to sabotage this expedition, I’d kind of like to know who it is, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I guess so…’

  ‘So quit belly-aching will you and give me a hand. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get out of here.’

  Oki opened the plastic chest beneath Martin’s hammock and started hunting through it. ‘So, remind me again, what exactly are we looking for?’

  ‘Anything…’

  ‘Gee thanks for that…’

  The tents hardly lent themselves to any form of decoration, nevertheless, one or two of the girls had made some attempts to make them appear more homely. In contrast, Martin’s tent seemed Spartan in the extreme. The only furnishings were a hammock, and a table festooned with cages, pots, test tubes, and a couple of journals in near-mint condition.

  Angus started flicking through one of the journals. Its pages were empty. ‘What a waste…’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘All this… Martin gets a tent to himself, with ten times more space than he really needs, and I have to share with you.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ asked Oki indignantly.

  ‘You snore…’

  ‘And I suppose you don’t?’

  Angus shrugged. He probably did, but since he was never awake to find out for sure, he didn’t care.

  ‘Let me guess – you’d rather have shared a tent with Carmen,’ Oki continued.

  ‘Now there’s a thought… But you’ve got to admit it isn’t fair that Miguel gets to share with her. It should have been done more democratically. A lottery or something...’

  ‘And what if you’d ended up sharing a tent with the professor?’

  ‘Good point…’

  Angus gently tapped the front of one of the cages. Its occupant, a rather hairy spider the size of his hand, reared up and waved its front legs menacingly towards him.

  ‘Hey, cut that out will you,’ Oki protested.

  ‘Don’t panic, it’s in a cage. It’s not as if it can hurt anyone.’

  ‘All the same, I can’t say that I’m all that fond of spiders.’

  Angus looked wistful. ‘Just think… There are probably thousands of these things wandering around the camp at night.’

  Oki scowled at him. ‘Sometimes you can be a real pr
ick, you know that?’

  Angus smiled. There were racks full of test tubes standing next to the spider’s cage, all filled with cuttings taken from indigenous shrubs and flowers. He selected one at random and gently swirled it around, sending its content, a tiny purple flower, tumbling around inside. ‘So these are the medicines of the future? It seems hard to imagine that modern drugs are derived from these pieces of weed.’ He went to replace the tube in its rack. ‘That’s strange…’

  ‘What’s strange?’ asked Oki peevishly.

  ‘There have to be what… thirty or forty test tubes here, all containing different specimens? But not a single one of them appears to have been labelled.’

  ‘So what? Maybe he has a really good memory…’

  ‘And his journal’s a bit light on commentary as well,’ said Angus, holding the empty book aloft.

  ‘And he probably keeps his notes on a computer, just like Rufus. It doesn’t make him a criminal does it?’

  ‘No – I guess not. So what about you? Have you found anything interesting yet?’

  Oki shook his head. The plastic chest had contained nothing more than clothes. ‘Not really…’ Having diligently repacked the crate, he was about to return it to its resting place beneath the hammock when he saw something glinting from the mud. He teased it up with his fingers and gave it a quick clean.

  ‘What have you found?’ Angus asked.

  Oki displayed the object in the flat of his hand. ‘Looks like a bullet to me…’

  ******

  The sound of raised voices rippled through the trees like a brushfire. To have called it an argument would have been to render an inaccurate description of what appeared to be a most heated disturbance, and might have implied that the discourse was two-sided, though nothing could have been further from the truth.

  But what was unusual about this “argument” was the fact that the louder of the two voices did not appear to belong to the professor, and the fact that (for once) Angus and Oki were both pretty sure it had nothing to do with them…

  They looked at each other, bemused.

  Site B still lay some way ahead of them, so they redoubled their pace, intrigued to discover the cause of the commotion, and arrived just in time to see Carmen stomping away from a rather bemused-looking professor.

  Angus watched appreciatively as she departed, the swaying of her hips accentuated by the broadness of her stride. ‘Nice lines…’ he suggested wistfully.

  Oki jabbed him in the ribs. ‘Angus! Until your most recent discoveries, you had no interest in the woman.’

  ‘I think I’ve matured…’

  ‘A rather spirited young lady, don’t you think?’ stated the professor, as if in explanation for the outburst.

  ‘What was that all about?’ Angus asked.

  ‘I don’t think she’s very happy that I’ve asked her to help us here at the excavation. She seems to feel her talents would be put to better use examining the queen’s body.

  Angus shrugged. ‘She’s probably got a point…’

  ‘Yes – she probably does at that…’ the professor conceded.

  ‘So, are you going to let her go now?’

  The professor grinned. ‘Not yet. It won’t do her any harm to get her hands dirty for a while.’ He looked Angus in the eyes. ‘Still… It would be a shame to have kept her here for nothing…’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid you’re not going to be disappointed,’ said Angus grimly. He opened his hand to display the bullet. ‘We found this on the ground in Martin’s tent.’

  The professor took the bullet from his outstretched palm and turned it over in his fingers. ‘So, you think Martin’s our man?’

  Angus shrugged. ‘I’d say he’s beginning to look like a candidate – wouldn’t you?’

  Oki interjected. ‘Hey, hold on. Aren’t we being a bit quick to judge? He spends a lot of his time in the jungle alone. Surely, he’s allowed to carry some kind of protection? There are a lot of predators out there.’

  ‘Yeh – right! Especially those of the two-legged human variety,’ Angus retorted.

  The professor frowned. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Angus retrieved the bullet. ‘If I’m not mistaken, this looks like a round from a three-fifty-seven magnum. And take a closer look at the tip. This is hollow-point ammunition. It’s useful for hunting, if you want to see your prey splashed all over the jungle floor!’

  Oki looked amazed. ‘And how in the hell would you know something like that?’

  ‘My uncle used to be in the military,’ Angus explained. ‘And he would take me shooting every once in a while.’

  ‘Figures…’ said Oki, eyes upraised.

  ‘Only problem is… I’m not so sure how any of this helps us.’

  ‘Of course it helps us,’ the professor growled. ‘If we’ve got some kind of armed lunatic in the camp – I want to know about it!’

  Angus remained calm. ‘Yes – but it’s not as if we can do much about him, is it? He’s hardly likely to humour us if we go asking him for his gun, now is he?’

  ‘You could just take him out into the jungle and put a cap in his arse,’ said Oki unhelpfully. Coming from him, such ghetto-speak seemed rather incongruous.

  ‘Hmm – I have to say you’re probably right,’ the professor agreed.

  Angus and Oki both looked at him in surprise.

  Oki recovered first. ‘I hope you realise I was only joking.’

  The professor fixed him with a stern look. ‘And I hope you realise that I was ignoring your fatuous remark. I was in fact referring to Angus’s plan to ask him to hand over his weapon. We can’t have him running around with something like that, can we?’

  Angus shifted his weight nervously. Plans like this had a funny way of falling back on Oki and himself, and he didn’t much like the idea.

  ‘What is it man,’ asked the professor gruffly.

  ‘I’m just not so sure that this is a very good plan…’ said Angus dolefully.

  26

  Sunday 15th October:

  Bradley Leavenworth was leaning against the railings, gazing out across an ocean that had been whipped into foaming crests by the lash of a cruel westerly wind.

  The Blue Yonder II’s prow tore through the waves, sending water boiling like liquid mercury beneath the ship’s lights.

  ‘Something up?’ Raymond Marquez approached, his feet braced against the surging deck and his hands locked around the handles of two steaming mugs.

  ‘Not really. Been cooped up for so long, I thought I might catch a breath of fresh air and watch the sunrise,’ Brad replied.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’

  ‘Sure thing… Pull up a chair…’ Brad pointed to a vacant stretch of railing.

  Raymond handed him one of the mugs. ‘Hot tomato soup. I thought you might like some,’ he said, heaping emphasis on the word “hot”. In recent days they’d made do with little more than sandwiches and bottled drinks, ever since an unfortunate episode involving Toni and the hot content of a microwaved vegetable lasagne. ‘I’ve had a word with the chef, and he’s promised us a full cooked breakfast this morning. The works…’

  ‘Good… It’s about time we had some real food around here…’

  ‘So – are you going to tell me what’s bugging you?’

  Brad cupped his hands around his mug. ‘I don’t know. I guess this storm’s kinda put the wind up me… Left me with a bad feeling. We’ve had a few emails passed on to us, addressed to Cenes Pharmaceuticals. It appears that the Brits have lost touch with their expedition and they wanted to know if we knew anything.’

  Cenes pharmaceuticals was in most respects a perfectly legitimate medical research facility located in Philadelphia, staffed by roughly one hundred and twenty perfectly legitimate employees engaged in the development and marketing of pharmaceuticals ranging from simple painkillers through to the cancer treatments of tomorrow. All except for one employee best known by his codename – Snake Pit.

  Raymond swallow
ed a mouthful of his soup. ‘How long?’

  ‘Two days I believe. There was apparently no fixed schedule to their communications, but one of their associates back in Cambridge seems to be getting a bit excitable and thinks they may have been on the verge of some major discovery.’ Brad braced himself as the ship mounted an oncoming wave, showering him with spray in the process. The move was reflexive; as was the tipping of the hand that had kept the soup in his mug, where it belonged. He’d been at sea long enough.

  ‘Any word from Snake Pit?’

  Brad took a few sips of his soup. Thanks to the brisk wind, it had been cooling rapidly. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. According to his last contact, he was following a lead north along the Tamboryacu, having uncovered evidence that the cartel has been smuggling product down the waterways disguised in shipments of fish. But as of yet he’s been unable to locate the source.’

  ‘Does he know that the Brits have lost contact with the camp?’

  ‘Yes – he’s been informed.’

  ‘And…?’

  ‘And – nothing. He doesn’t seem to think there’s anything unusual in the news. According to him, they’ve probably just forgotten how to locate the “on switch”.’

  Raymond laughed. ‘Doesn’t sound like he has much confidence in our British friends.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Bradley, drowning his own grin with another mouthful of soup.

  ‘So, if Snake Pit isn’t worried, what’s got you so stirred up?’

  ‘Just that bad feeling that comes from trying to digest too many coincidences.’ He turned to face Raymond. He finished his soup and upended the mug over the side of the ship, discharging the dregs into the sea. ‘The Brits’ last contact suggested that they were on the verge of some “major discovery”, and next thing we know, they’ve gone radio-silent. Surely, if they had indeed made some kind of discovery, they’d have wanted to tell someone? Factor in our intelligence from Granite relating to his boss’s love of antiquities, and this Horaldo Gonsalez character, our friendly Chief of Police in Iquitos who’s been going to such lengths to see their permits revoked, and I think we’ve got all the ingredients for trouble.’