Temple of Gold

by A. J. Stewart

  “I saw the pipe.”

  “It’s got writing on it. Chinese writing.”

  “So they’re using Chinese pipe. Whoopee.”

  “Where are they getting it? The CIA isn’t supplying Chinese pipe. And the government here is controlled by the Vietnamese—who were at war briefly with China over their invasion of Cambodia. So they’re not getting it locally, that’s for damned sure.”

  “Good point.”

  “And the sick people—from mining gold? I don’t know much about it, but is that a thing?”

  “I’m not buying that,” said Lucas. “In an underground mine, maybe. Any kind of dust can make your lungs crook. But in a pit? For a start, there’s more fresh air, but for seconds, this place rains a lot. When I saw gold mining in Oz, it was in the outback, and that was hot, dirty work. But mostly it was dry. They used rivers and artesian wells to keep everything wet to minimize the dust, but there was still plenty of it. And you know how many people I heard of getting sick from it?”

  “How many?”

  “None, mate. The rain here will keep the dust down even more, just naturally. But those people getting crook? That ain’t from gold dust.”

  “So what then?”

  “What did Jarani call it? The devil?”

  “Demons,” said Lenny.

  “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  “But what is it?”

  “No idea, mate. But here’s the thing. The kids here don’t look sick—malnourished, yes—but not sick. This Rangsay fella sweats buckets, but he doesn’t look like he’s about to fall off his perch, nor do Tan or his men. So whatever it is, it’s only really affecting the people from the village.”

  “So the source is either the village itself,” said Lenny, “or wherever the people are disappearing to when they get off that truck.”

  “And Jarani doesn’t look crook, so it ain’t the village.”

  “So where do they go?”

  Lucas lay back on the dirt. “Wherever it is, we won’t find it in the dark. And there’s no point wandering around out there with a loose tiger, even if it does have a full belly. I say we get some kip.”

  With that, Lucas closed his eyes and within minutes was snoring gently. For a while, Lenny watched the camp and the disinterested guards huddling at the lanterns. Nothing moved in the camp, and everything moved in the surrounding jungle. Lenny scooched down and lay with his hands behind his head, and then he closed his eyes and thought about fruity drinks and beaches, and then he slept.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Rush hour in the jungle happens twice a day, just as in the city. At sunset and at sunrise there is a great stirring, as the diurnal and nocturnal animals switch shifts.

  Lucas intended to beat the rush hour. He woke in the predawn darkness as if by silent alarm and glanced at Lenny, finding him already awake. The guards had fallen asleep. It was poor discipline but understandable. Few people knew they were out here and even fewer cared. Even the Vietnamese-backed government forces didn’t bother with sorties into the mountains. So guards here generally saw nothing at all during their long overnight shifts. The greatest threat was the tiger, who had eaten plenty the evening before.

  Lenny lifted the side of the cage and Lucas crawled under on his belly, and then they swapped roles. They were in the darkness within seconds. They didn’t head for the packs they’d left hidden in the trees, or for the track back to the village.

  The mining equipment was close by. They passed the concrete slab, and saw the pipe that had been placed but not laid. They reached the trommel, easily the largest of the machines. It was a good ten feet high and three times as long, and Lucas looked it over, and then, following the mining process, his eyes moved from the trommel to the sluice that ran down the hill away from the camp. Below, he saw a sorting apparatus, and then something he hadn’t noticed before, not live, not in the air surveillance photos.

  At the bottom of the hill, two guards sat hunched beside a burning kerosene lantern. In the glow Lucas could make out the start of a road that had been cut, very carefully, into the trees, so that a canopy still formed over top. A road that could not be seen from above. It was like an above-ground tunnel. Lucas called Lenny over to see.

  “Where the heck does that go?” asked Lenny.

  “Out to the main road.”

  “Which goes where?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Must go somewhere.”

  “We flew over it. It banks around and goes south, but eventually it peters out in the mountains.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “We need to see a map,” said Lucas.

  “Not right now.” Lenny moved away from the hill edge and back to the storage shed near the mining equipment. From a distance, it had appeared to be another wooden structure, but up close they found it to be made of aluminum covered in a dull matte paint.

  “Looks new,” said Lucas.

  Lenny nodded but didn’t reply. He was focused on the lock. This one wasn’t a padlock. It was integrated into the door. He pulled a kit from a small pocket hidden in his trousers. Although this lock looked much better to Lucas than the padlocks, it took Lenny no more than thirty seconds to open the door.

  Inside, the shed was pitch-black. Lucas found and lit a kerosene lantern but kept the light low. There were no windows, but still they didn’t want any light to seep out under the door. He held the lantern up and found large, fifty-five gallon drums stacked in rows and stamped with Chinese writing. Lenny inspected one of the labels and then turned to Lucas with a puzzled look.

  “You get this?” Lenny asked.

  Lucas leaned in and amongst the Chinese script he saw the only letters he could read: Na2Co3.

  “Sodium carbonate,” said Lucas. “Soda ash.”

  “For gold mining?”

  “I think it’s used for purification, but honestly, I’ve never seen that done on site. Besides which, this is a small-scale mine, working by hand. For these guys, this is a lifetime and a half’s worth of sodium carbonate.”

  “Could be planning to ramp up production, with a new road and all.”

  “A secret road? Why keep a gold mine secret?”

  “No idea. But let’s get out of here before we’re noticed.”

  Lucas doused the light and slipped out into the predawn. The camp was still quiet and the guards clearly still sleeping. They crept around the periphery, back to where they had hidden their packs.

  Lucas said, “So do we take the track where we’re out in the open, or the trees where the mines are?”

  “Not the track,” said Lenny. “They’ll expect that.” He looked at the camp and then dropped his pack back down. “Give me a minute.”

  Lenny dashed back to the second of the storage sheds they had broken into yesterday. While he did, Lucas decided to rearm, so he slipped over to the armory shed and picked up some weapons. When Lenny returned he found Lucas waiting with an M16 in each hand.

  “You’re not the only one who can pick a lock,” said Lucas.

  “Good thinking. You get ammo?”

  “Come on, mate. What did you get?”

  Lenny held up a metal detector and a pair of headphones in one hand, and a Geiger counter in the other.

  “Equally good thinking. Let’s travel.”

  They loaded the magazines for the M16s and then put on their packs. Then Lenny tested the metal detector against the rifle and Lucas heard the faint signature squeal from the headphones. Lenny adjusted his pack on his shoulders and led the way into the trees. Lucas kept his eyes on Lenny’s feet, placing his steps exactly where Lenny’s footprints were, as with one hand Lenny waved the metal detector slowly over the ground ahead, side to side, his other hand pressing the headphone against his ear, clearly listening for the telltale sound of a hidden landmine.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  What Lenny heard was the camp bursting to life. Evidently, someone had finally woken up and discovered them missing. He wondered for a moment
if the snoozing guards would be held responsible, and what their punishment might be, or if their escape had been expected, perhaps planned in some way. He couldn’t see an endgame for that, but it had to be considered, given how easy the escape had been.

  But he would consider that later. For now he focused on his footsteps, and the sounds coming from the metal detector. The device constantly hissed and whirred in his ear—the earth’s crust was full of trace metals—but he was about a hundred yards in before he got the first hit.

  The metal detector screamed at him through the headphones, and he stopped, feeling Lucas stop right behind. Lenny waved the dish over the ground, back and forth, and then pointed at the spot where he was picking up the most metal. There was no way to know if it was actually a landmine, other than to tread on it, which was no plan at all. It could have been a massive gold nugget for all he knew, but Lenny wasn’t there to get rich. All he wanted was to escape with his body intact. He felt Lucas tap his hip, telling Lenny that he had seen the hand signal, and Lenny cut around the potential mine and kept moving.

  Then things got slow. The metal detector started going off every few feet. They had either discovered King Solomon’s loot, or the jungle was thick with landmines. It took another hour to walk the next hundred yards. Then Lenny found a clear spot near a thick tree and signaled for Lucas to stop. Lenny circled the tree, waving the metal detector, until he was confident there were no mines around the base. Then he slipped off his headphones.

  “We should take a break,” he said.

  “Brekky time,” said Lucas, carefully slipping the pack off his back. They sat with their backs against the tree, rifles in their laps just in case, but they both felt pretty safe for being on an island in the middle of a sea of landmines. Lucas took out muesli bars and they ate between sips of water from their canteens.

  “They’ve cleared the area around the camp,” said Lenny. “No mines there.”

  “Safety perimeter. Makes sense, I guess.”

  “What do you think we should do?”

  “Get a flight to the Bahamas?”

  “Before that?”

  Lucas slapped at a bug buzzing at his face. “Get them kids out. You reckon?”

  “I do.” Lenny sipped water and wiped the sweat from his brow. “You got any kids?”

  “Not that I know of. You?”

  “No. Not sure the job is conducive to a family.”

  “Roger that,” said Lucas. “But you’re a young guy. You won’t be doing this forever.”

  “Running around in Southeast Asian jungles?”

  “Yeah, all that.”

  “Suppose not. You thought about what you’ll do after?”

  “After the army? Not really. Not sure I’m cut out for regular living, though.”

  “You don’t want to end up like your pilot friend,” said Lenny.

  Lucas shrugged. “There are worse things. He’s got a plot of land, he’s got enough money to get by, he’s got a woman who seems happy enough to put up with him.”

  “He’s an alcoholic.”

  “There are worse things. He’s seen some stuff, you know? Bad stuff. The kind of stuff that sticks with a man. You can buy a house in the suburbs, put on a fancy suit, drive a nice car, but you can’t outrun your stuff. Fellas like him—fellas like us—best we can do is try to make peace with what we’ve seen and done, when all is said and done. I reckon he’s found some kind of peace. I can’t say I’ll want for more than that, after all the fun and games are over.”

  Lenny leaned his head against the tree trunk and thought about what Lucas was saying. Perhaps there was something to it. Sometimes he felt like normalcy was within his grasp. Recently, those times had always been in the company of Alice Brooks. They would lie in bed drinking coffee, reading the International Herald Tribune, talking about their jobs like they were bankers or lawyers or such. Lenny would look at her, usually so well groomed and buttoned-up, but on a Sunday morning, the sheets pulled up to her chest, her hair as disheveled as his almost always was, he would see something else. Not the professional, but the woman behind the professional. The person who might one day become a wife and a mother and at the same time Attorney General. But then he would glance out the window, and he would see a foreign city, never Boston or San Diego, and not for a long time DC, and the sensation would sweep over him that what he was and what he did would never allow for such a life.

  Every choice had an opportunity cost.

  “We need to get back to that village,” said Lucas, pulling Lenny from his thoughts.

  “Agreed.”

  “We need to figure out how many heads we’re talking about. How many we can fit in a chopper.”

  “And how many will even make it to the LZ.”

  Lucas nodded.

  “It’s going to be slow going, through this minefield,” said Lenny.

  “You got somewhere better to be?” Lucas asked.

  They finished their food and screwed the caps onto their canteens, and then Lucas grabbed the metal detector and headphones and took a turn leading the way. The trees blocked most of the sunlight, which should have made the going easier, but moisture rose from the ground, turning the jungle into a bain-marie, and causing Lenny to sweat from every pore. They stopped every hour, and took on as much water as they dared, always keeping some in reserve.

  The sun was low when they saw the outline of the village. The trees ahead ended and the silhouette of the huts looked like two-dimensional cutouts. They were at the farthest end of the village from the track, and the metal detector had stopped whining a good hundred yards or more before. So, the area around the village had also been cleared. Lenny wondered whether that had been by design or accident.

  They didn’t enter the village, and instead waited for the truck to deliver the workers back from the camp. There was no movement except for the insects, which seemed to multiply at dusk. Lenny saw no sign of Jarani, who did not appear to stoke the dormant firepit. When the breeze died, the village became eerily silent, as if life had ceased entirely to exist there.

  Then he heard the truck. It came as it had before and stopped in the middle of the village. Once again, the armed men jumped from the cab and yelled unnecessary orders; the workers in the back knew the routine, and the yelling and screaming served only to suggest who was nominally in charge. But, given the anemic look of the soldiers, they would have done well to save their energy.

  Once the yelling was done and the men and women had shuffled to their huts, the truck pulled away, headlights on, back up the track. Lenny and Lucas watched and waited. For the longest time nothing happened. No food was prepared, no water was brought to the huts.

  Then, from the hut closest to their position, he saw her. Jarani stepped into the darkness. She moved slowly, shuffling as the workers had done, toward the firepit. She seemed to be using some sort of cane or walking stick. She started the fire with twigs, and then stoked it with larger branches, but made no move toward the water well.

  Lenny followed Lucas out of the trees. They didn’t bother being quiet about it. Her head cocked in that way of people when they hear a distant sound, but she made no move to look at them.

  “Jarani,” said Lucas. “It’s us. Lucas and Lenny.”

  Jarani said nothing.

  The men eased up to the firepit, and as they dropped their packs, they understood why she had been so late in preparing the fire.

  Her face was puffy and bruised. One side looked like it had been punched several times, and the other side was worse. It had worn a rifle butt. Her right cheekbone and temple were black, her left merely purple. There were bruises on her arms and neck, and both men glanced over her light clothing to wonder what damage lay beneath.

  “What happened?” asked Lenny.

  “Those mongrels,” said Lucas, answering the question.

  Jarani watched the fire, the glow stabbing light and dark across her face. She didn’t take either man’s eye.

  “What happened?” Lenny as
ked again.

  Jarani shook her head. “You go,” she whispered.

  “Tan?” asked Lucas. “Did his men do this?”

  Jarani closed her eyes for a moment and then slowly opened them. It was clearly all she could manage.

  “Not Tan’s men?”

  Jarani took a deep breath that audibly hurt. “You go now.”

  “No, I’m afraid we can’t do that,” said Lucas. “We’re gonna get you out.”

  This time Jarani did slowly shake her head.

  “I’m not asking,” said Lucas. “We’re getting you out, all of you.”

  Still Jarani said nothing.

  “Can we get you some water?” asked Lenny.

  Jarani looked up at him and gently nodded, so Lenny took the pot from beside the pit and collected some water, and then placed the pot over the fire.

  “We saw the mine,” said Lucas. “We’re going to get the children out, too.”

  Jarani frowned, and then a single tear ebbed down her cheek.

  “We need to know how many of these people can make the hike out,” said Lenny.

  She shook her head.

  “None,” she said.

  “They won’t have to move fast,” said Lenny.

  “They dying.”

  “I know,” said Lenny. “The other man that we got out. He didn’t step on a mine, did he?”

  “I no say he did.”

  “You told us he did.”

  “No. I say Tan’s men say he step on mine.”

  Lenny nodded. She was very literal.

  “But you know what a landmine injury looks like, don’t you?” he asked.

  She nodded slowly. “Rice,” she said.

  Lucas took a bowl of rice and slipped the grains slowly into the boiling pot.

  “You know what happened to that man,” said Lenny. “He was attacked by a tiger.”

  She frowned at Lenny as if surprised he knew this.

  “We met the tiger,” he said.

  “He climb tree. Tiger climb, too. Attack his legs. Tan’s men shoot at tiger and it run away. It is dead?”