The Bonita Protocol

by P J Skinner

  ‘It rains eleven months of the year. You missed the summer. We had it the month before you arrived at the project.’

  ‘That figures.’

  ‘It’s called the rainforest for a reason. Anyway, Mr Rhett told us to build a bread oven inside the house, so soon we’ll all be warm at night soon and the clothes will dry.’

  ‘I hope so. My bed is so damp, it’s like sleeping in a ham sandwich.’

  Using her copy of the analysis results, Sam selected the core boxes that had previously been sampled in order to review the remainder of the core for clues. Kennedy and Marlon, the geologists, helped her find the correct boxes and lay them out in order on the work benches. They set about comparing the analyses to the rock types.

  Despite the disappointing results from the sampling, Sam was energised by her week away from the project. Her time at the beach with Yannis had been a real fillip. The more comparisons she made between the results and the rocks they came from, the stronger became her feelings of doubt about the viability of the project.

  It did not alter her mission to find out what was really happening deep under the surface but if there was no deposit, she wasn’t going to succeed. She gave orders to the geologists to sample the remaining boxes of core concentrating on any signs of mineralisation or veining in the unaltered rock for Rhett to take to Calderon.

  The next morning, she made a fruitless attempt to communicate with Marina over the radio, before enjoying a mug of milky coffee. Her throat hurt with the effort of shouting clear instructions into the mouthpiece. She knew shouting was pointless but somehow, she couldn’t convince herself that it wouldn’t help. Slurping her drink, she made a list of pending tasks for the day.

  There was a commotion outside in the yard and the door to the canteen opened with a bang, making her jump. Three men entered. They wore muddy wellingtons tucked into jeans, bomber jackets and baseball hats. The tallest of them was holding a gun. He stood back while another of them approached Sam and laid a live chicken, with its legs trussed, on the table. It squawked forlornly. The third man placed a bottle full of transparent liquid topped by a metal screw top tightened over a piece of plastic beside it.

  ‘Are you the witch?’ said the third. ‘Señor Muerte send us to find you.’

  ‘Witch? No, I don’t…’ But she did. She remembered showing him her compass. The Spanish word for compass was brujula, and the word for witch was bruja. No doubt they had heard him wrong. There was no harm in them thinking she was a witch; it would provide protection from superstitious people.

  ‘He wants you to help us find the vein. It has disappeared.’

  ‘And what is your name?’ said Sam.

  ‘I’m Jorge Lara. These are my brothers, Roberto and Pancho.’

  The other men nodded and smiled as they were introduced.

  ‘Firstly, we don’t allow guns in here so you need to leave that outside,’ said Sam, in a tone that suggested a red line.

  Roberto hesitated but Jorge nodded and he went outside and left the gun on the steps, coming back in while looking over his shoulder.

  ‘No one will touch it,’ said Sam. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you all. My name is Sam Harris. Where’s the vein located?’

  Jorge opened his mouth to launch into his explanation when Sam noticed Selma signalling frantically from the kitchen.

  ‘Please sit down. You’ll have to excuse me one minute,’ said Sam. ‘Can we get you a coffee?’

  The men slid onto the crude wooden benches lining the tables, their backs to the two women. Sam entered the kitchen and Selma pulled her out of sight.

  ‘Señor Muerte? Did he say Señor Muerte?’ said Selma, crossing herself. ‘He’s the most dangerous man in Sierramar.’

  ‘Yes, I met him on my way up here the first time I came. I bought him a sandwich,’ said Sam.

  ‘Saints preserve us. I don’t know how you survived this long with no sense at all.’

  Sam laughed. Selma treated her like a lost soul instead of the boss.

  ‘Well, they’re here now. What’s the protocol?’

  ‘You must help them. The chicken and the alcohol are gifts which you must accept.’

  ‘Do we eat now?’

  ‘No. Do as they ask and I will prepare the chicken for you to eat later. You should invite them to dinner.’

  ‘Okay. Can you make us some coffee?’

  ‘I’ll bring it out shortly.’

  Sam emerged smiling and sat at the table on the bench opposite the brothers.

  ‘So, what can I do for you?’

  ‘We have lost the vein in our mine in Monterico,’ said Jorge.

  ‘Señor Muerte is not happy,’ said Pancho.

  ‘You must help us find it,’ said Roberto. ‘He’s not a patient man.’

  ‘Is it his mine?’ said Sam.

  ‘It’s ours. Our father came here ten years ago.’ Jorge hesitated. ‘But we must pay him a percentage or he will take it from us and give it to someone else.’

  Extortion. No surprise there. The desperation in his voice was palpable.

  ‘I’ll do what I can but I can’t guarantee results,’ said Sam.

  The men glanced at each other. Selma brought out a tray of coffee and biscuits to a row of admiring glances. She was a woman in her prime and her ample curves well suited to local taste. Pancho, the youngest brother, undressed her with his eyes, causing Roberto to slap the back of his head and release the tension in the room.

  ‘Tell me about the mine,’ said Sam.

  Despite Napoleon’s dire warning about the artisanal town, Monterico did not, at first sight, look any more threatening than Arboleda. As they approached the town, Sam could see the same muddy streets lined by the same wooden shacks with the same shabby clothes hanging on lines under the zinc eaves. But these houses held a secret. Open sewers ran underneath them filled with a mix of household effluent and tailings from small stamp mills hidden behind the walls of most of the larger houses.

  Rhett had insisted on joining them and Sam noticed him retching out of the corner of her eye as the smell of the town hit them. As they penetrated further, the streets seemed to close around them. The noise of a thousand generators oppressed Sam’s ears and the acrid smoke filled her lungs. Señor Muerte’s request appeared more and more onerous as she slogged through the mud and soggy plastic clogging the way to the mine.

  The usual population of plump, happy pigs snorkelled in the sewage, turning mud into meat. The toxic mixture in the water probably killed any liver fluke or worms in the gut. Why didn’t they die of cyanide and mercury poisoning? Perhaps they were immune to it, or maybe they were slaughtered before the concentration in their flesh became lethal.

  There were tunnels leading into the ground under most of the houses. It didn’t take much imagination to view the whole hillside as a fetid rabbit warren, ready to collapse at any minute. The rains kept falling, washing away the soil, a prelude to disaster. Minimum effort was put into digging safe tunnels as it all had to be done by hand and with back breaking toil lifting the material to the surface in sacks. Every now and then, an entire slab of earth and rock would slide down the hillside entombing dozens of miners where they worked.

  The villagers were tiny people of Andean stock, Sam felt as if she had grown a foot and towered over the vast majority of the men. The tunnels were not Sam-sized and her stomach clenched with fear at the thought of entering one of them. Not that she had any choice. Her chance meeting with Señor Muerte had seen to that.

  In her rucksack she carried her compass, torch and hard hat, insurance against going in without one. There were no safety norms in these mines. You lived to fight another day or you died suffocated or crushed in this hell hole.

  ‘You’re going to Monterico?’ Javier had said, his disapproval showing. ‘That place is like Dante’s vision of hell. It is full of whores and drugs and pushers.’

  ‘Only the whores and shopkeepers made money in the gold rush of California,’ she had retorted, trying not to le
t his pessimism get to her.

  Deflated now, her bravado having leaked away with the sewage from the houses, she forced herself to follow the Lara brothers up the hill towards a large house balanced on stilts. The top floor windows had mosquito screens and flimsy curtains. The bottom floor was occupied by a stamp mill and some crude tanks and pipes.

  As they neared the property, Sam could see the adit entrance. It looked as if it had been built for the seven dwarves.

  ‘This is our mine, said Jorge, pride colouring his voice. ‘We have one of the richest veins in Monterico.’

  A woman who had been scrubbing clothes at an outside concrete sink came over to them and planted herself in the mine entrance, stout legs akimbo.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she hissed at Jorge. ‘Women can’t enter the mine. They are bad luck. Surely, you’re not thinking of letting her in? The vein will be lost for ever.’ She turned to Sam. ‘You’ll be cursed if you enter. The mine will eat you.’

  ‘It’s none of your business. Move woman!’ said Jorge, pushing her roughly aside.

  They entered without further discussion. Sam did not believe in curses but she couldn’t prevent a cold shiver up her spine. Rhett did not move from the barrel where he had sat down upon arriving at the adit

  ‘You’re all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait for you.’

  His skin had a sheen of perspiration on it and he was as pale as a corpse. Sam almost felt sorry for him.

  ‘Okay then,’ she said, with false enthusiasm.

  She dreaded Rhett’s distain more than the danger of unsupported tunnels, but the threat of the unknown made a cold sweat break out on her back as she entered the mine. At first, she crouched, but she found it easier to crawl after a while when her back complained. Water ran along the floor, containing, horrors that Sam could only imagine. She tried to slow her breathing but the oxygen got thinner as they ventured further down the adit and her heart battered her rib cage.

  She made herself focus on the compass, taking the direction and dip and strike of the veins and wall rocks, noting it down in her already sodden notebook. Water streamed down the walls of the mine, picking up the reflections from their torches. They passed over a chasm on a spindly wooden bridge which creaked and bowed. Sam could stand up now but she stayed on her hands and knees, panting with effort.

  Finally, they reached the work face and indicated to Sam that she should go first. The tunnel was now so tight that Sam could not turn around and she wanted to scream. Instead she shone the torch on the walls around her and forced herself to think straight. Then she saw it. The tell-tale signs of a fault with its slickensides and fault gouge like orange clay filling the crevice. She caressed the smooth rock with her hand checking the direction of travel.

  She let out the breath she had been holding. Now soaked to the skin, both with filthy mine water and cold sweat, she allowed them to pull her back out of the drive by her feet. Signalling that she would explain outside, she made her way back out of the mine. Vomit rose to the back of her throat but she managed to keep it in until she finally emerged into the daylight.

  Once outside, she was violently sick. Sam had never admitted to herself that she suffered from claustrophobia but this was a normal reaction for her after her first visit to a mine.

  Rhett observed her but did not offer any help. Sam managed to get a bar of soap from a woman washing clothes in the next house and she scrubbed her hands and arms and wiped her mouth with her t-shirt. The brothers waited patiently for her to collect her thoughts. Sam took a swig of water from her bottle and rinsed out her mouth.

  ‘Okay, I think I know where the vein has gone. The earth has moved and the next block of rock has been shifted sideways to the left. You need to follow the shiny surface at the mine face down to the left.’

  Jorge Lara beamed at his brothers.

  ‘Thank you. If you need anything, you can rely on us.’

  ‘I hope you’re joining us for supper. That chicken won’t eat itself.’

  Selma had roasted the chicken with some peppers and she served it on a bed of rice. Sam, Rhett and the brothers ate with ferocity after their visit to Monterico. The delicious food went some way to healing the wounds opened by the terrifying experience. Sam let the juices sit in her mouth, adsorbing the smell and taste to drown the memory of the putrid streets of the artisanal town.

  When everyone had eaten, Javier produced some shot glasses and uncorked the bottle with ceremony.

  ‘What is it?’ said Sam.

  ‘Siete Pingas,’ said Javier, who looked embarrassed.

  All the men laughed.

  ‘Like Snow White,’ said Pancho. ‘The seven dwarves had a pinga each.’

  Roars of approval. Sam blushed.

  Rhett shrugged and gave her a questioning glance.

  ‘Seven penises,’ she hissed in English.

  ‘It’s got a kick like a mule,’ he said. ‘Go easy.’

  In the end, Sam got away with a single shot and they bid farewell to the brothers who were showing all the signs of making it an all-nighter. Sam sank down on one of the benches opposite Rhett. She took a cigarette out of the packet he had left on the table and lit it with trembling hands.

  Rhett put his head on one side and narrowed his eyes, blowing smoke out in a continuous stream.

  ‘You’re some sheila,’ he said. ‘I take my hat off to you.’

  ‘No wonder they call him Señor Muerte,’ said Sam. ‘That bastard nearly killed me.’

  Chapter X

  Sam pushed her way past the moss-covered trees which had reached saturation in the constant drizzle. A fine sheen of droplets quivered on her waxed jacket and her bun. Ahead of her, Kennedy and Marlon clambered and pulled their way up the slope above the adit entrance at Cerro Calvo. She struggled to follow behind them using a stout pole to lever herself upwards.

  They had started out after breakfast and were now deep into the high-altitude rain forest ringing the mine. High above them, the canopy bristled with birds and lizards hunting for insects to feed themselves and their young. Sam found a large beetle with spindly legs and what looked like an Inca design on its back. She showed it to the geologists but their glazed expressions indicated that insects had a low priority on their scale of fascination.

  She took a photograph of it and placed it carefully back on a branch while Kennedy and Marlon forged ahead. Scrambling to keep up with them, she swore under her breath as a large leaf upturned and poured its water content on her head. She tasted the water as it streamed down her face and spat it out in horror as her tongue encountered something that wriggled.

  The geologists had waited for her, grinning at her bright red face and dishevelled appearance. Both young men had become more comfortable and confident with their boss as time went on, their original reticence dissipating as they realised how much they could learn from her. Sam shared her technical knowledge with them and encouraged them to think for themselves and propose new models for the deposit.

  ‘Look at this Sam,’ said Marlon, pulling aside a sheet of creepers and moss to reveal an outcrop of rock with a thick vein of quartz through it. Sam made notes and took measurements while Kennedy and Marlon took channel samples across the vein. The drizzle permeated their clothes and sat in droplets on their bobble hats but didn’t dampen their spirits.

  As they worked their way up the hill, they came to a small plateau where the forest had been cleared and had not regrown on the thin soil covering the rock underneath. There was an overhang in the rock which offered respite from the rain.

  ‘This looks like the perfect place to have lunch,’ said Sam.

  While the boys were laying out the picnic for them to eat, Sam took advantage of their distraction to find a quiet spot to urinate in peace. One of the trickiest things about being a female geologist was the relative difficulty of emptying one’s bladder without an audience. Sam was philosophical about the chances but it didn’t stop her from trying.

  She headed for a clump of bushe
s around the corner from the overhang and pushed her way into them moving a pile of leaves away with a stick in case a snake slept within it. She squatted down and released her pent-up urine. Too many cups of tea as usual. Will you ever learn?

  She tried to pull up her trousers and got one of the many pockets caught on a twig. This caused her to overbalance and fall backwards towards the rock face. She braced for a thump, but instead of hitting the wall, she rolled backwards into an opening. Surprised, she examined her surroundings. She had fallen into the entrance of a tunnel. It had been impossible to see from outside the bushes and she had not even seen it while one metre away in the dim light afforded by her shelter.

  Picking herself up, she cracked her head on the roof and let out a yelp, and an Anglo-Saxon exclamation which brought the geologists running. She staggered back through the bush and they found her rubbing her head in a rueful manner, her trousers still at half-mast. She swore again and pulled them up. It was hard to say who was more embarrassed.

  ‘What happened?’ said Marlon, smirking. ‘Did you get bitten?’

  Kennedy bent double with laughter.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Sam. ‘I fell into a cave and cracked my head on the roof.’

  She offered her head for feeling. A large bump had appeared at the crown but the boys didn’t show any sympathy.

  ‘A cave?’ Kennedy’s eyes widened. ‘It’s more likely to be an Inca working. I didn’t know there was one up here.’

  ‘Where is it?’ said Marlon.

  ‘Right behind those bushes. Let’s explore after lunch. I need a sandwich, and some arnica for my head before I turn into a cartoon.’

  Sam whizzed through her lunch, swallowing the sandwiches without tasting them and chucking the crusts out into the forest for scavenging animals. Despite her haste, the other geologists had finished long before her and they did not disguise their impatience with her slow progress. Sam did not rise to the bait, as they had cheated, having, in her opinion, swallowed their sandwiches whole to be finished so quickly.