Predator Island

by Douglas Cameron

  Cleve Barker saw it and yelled at his men, “get on the bridge” pointing at the last bay made. Jerónimo Romero had started moving back, but the bridge had momentum and it was moving – albeit slowly. Suddenly the noise of Toby’s D9T Caterpillar bulldozer’s engine broke the air. He had seen what was happening and had quickly climbed on the dozer he had moved twelve feet back from the bridge and set the blade down for the night. Putting the dozer into gear, he started the blade moving up and the dozer forward advancing at an angle toward the bridge. The men who were climbing onto the last bay stopped and hurried to get out of way of the dozer, setting off another change of the center of gravity but only by a bit. Fortunately, by the time Toby got his dozer close enough, the blade was high enough that it was eighteen inches or so over the transom, Toby stopped the dozer and started lowering the blade of the 108,000 pound dozer. When the blade made contact with the transom, all that weight moving down to stop the transom moving up caused the bridge to shudder and Jerónimo Romero lost his grip and he half fell, half jumped, into the river making a belly flop which would have brought the jeers from his compadres had they seen it, but they were busy with other things. When the blade had brought the bridge back down to “solid ground,” Cleve Barker organized the workers who carried sections of road decking, each weighing seven hundred twenty pounds, which were stacked on the last bay until Cleve felt that the structure was secure enough that it wasn’t going to move.

  In order to insure no further problems in the launch, three bridge bays were built and then the last of the nose bays launched. However, before the launch, with the nose launch held firmly in position, Jerónimo Romero, followed by the members of his team, made their way out and up to the furthest transom and dropped into the River Styx. Then the last two bridge bays were built, and the entire launch finished. Once the bridge was in position, each end was raised separately with two hydraulic jacks, the launch rollers removed, and the bridge lowered into final position. Then a concrete wall was poured at each end before the road was graded to meet the bridge. The decking was on the bridge before the walls were poured and wheelbarrows of concrete were taken across the bridge to pour the south wall – no bucket brigade needed.

  Fortunately, there were no further problems with the construction and soon the Mabey Compact 200 bridge was complete and concrete trucks (but not the Caterpillars) could move south to provide concrete for the Southeast and Southwest Hades Solar Panel Farms.

  Chapter 9

  While the bridge was being constructed, Jason turned his Caterpillar D9T south and started making the road around the southern end of the island, up the west side past Prometheus’s Aerie (formerly Colina da Rocha) and then back to the northern side of the bridge.

  Once the road reached the site of the Southeast Apollo Farm and the backhoes could reach it, work started on the farm and Jason continued with the road across the southern end of São Rochelle. The soil was only a foot deep at the south end and so the backhoes would clear the area for the solar panels and the concrete foundation would be built right on the bedrock. Digging the trenches for the power cables was to be done by Caterpillar Medium Hammer attachments which replaced the bucket on the front of each backhoe. It was an easy change done onsite. The decision was made to get the sites on both farms ready and the solar panels done before starting the trench. That way, the backhoes could be converted with the hammer attachment.

  The rock was all piled and loaded into dump trucks and taken to the pier site to be put into place by one front loading backhoe. Others would join it as their primary requirements were fulfilled. When a foundation for a solar panel was complete, the concrete specialists moved in making the frames and installing rebar, pipes for electric cables and bolts and plates necessary for installation. When that was complete, the solar panel specialist took over. Because the Southwest Hades Solar Panel Farm was the second one built that was where the trench for the cables was to be started.

  Matías Zapatero was one of the backhoe operators. He had worked for a big contractor in Argentina but when word of the job working on a remote island for two years reached his ears, he applied for it and happily walked into his boss’s office and turned in his resignation. His boss was not happy to let him go but understood that at triple the salary with transportation, lodging and food included, it would be difficult to refuse.

  Matías loved his job and was thrilled when his name was drawn to be the first to use the hammer to dig the first trench. No money was involved but to him it was a great honor. He and Ignacio Suárez, the other backhoe operator at that site, helped each other change their bucket for the hammer. Then Matías got on his backhoe he had proudly named Juana after his wife (“When I am on her I feel like my wife is under me pumping me as hard as I am pumping her.”) and started her up. He easily moved the backhoe to the starting position. All the other workers had stopped to watch this groundbreaking occasion.

  With great pomp and circumstance, Matías lowered the hammer’s point down to the chosen spot. Looking at his comrades, he gave them the thumbs up and started the hammer. The sound was deafening even through the headphones. Ignacio nudged the man standing next to him and said, “Suena hueco (It sounds hollow.)” As though the comment was a signal, there was a thunderous explosion and Matías and his backhoe disappeared as though the earth had opened up and swallowed them. And, in fact, the earth had opened up and the ground under the feet of the other workers was shaking and to a one they turned and ran. As soon as the soil under their feet had quit shaking and the roaring had subsided, they stopped and turned around. What they saw was awe inspiring: Where Matías and his backhoe had been was emptiness.

  “It’s a sinkhole,” one of the men shouted and that broke the hold the event had on them. They rushed forward to the edge of the hole, albeit carefully. What lay before them – actually below them – was a conical hole at the bottom of which was the backhoe. It was upside down with the hammer point straight up. Nothing of Matías was to be seen because surrounding the backhoe and starting to fill the hole was brown bubbling water.

  “Quickly,” Alan Constantine, the group’s supervisor said, “Move all the equipment away, at least three hundred feet. I include all of you in this. I don’t think that the danger is over.”

  “¿Qué tal Matías? (What about Matías?),” Ignacio asked.

  “He’s gone. There’s is nothing we can do. Now move,” and he pushed Ignacio toward his backhoe.

  Ignacio started back toward the edge of the sinkhole when there was another ripping crash and the base for a solar panel disappeared into the sinkhole as the ground under it gave way. That was all the motivation Ignacio and the rest of the men needed, and they raced to their equipment or just away from the area as they had been told.

  Alan Constantine was getting ready to notify the construction chief Walt Jefferies about the collapse when Tom Klondyke came running up.

  “Paul Goldman is missing.”

  “When?”

  “After the collapse.”

  Alan Constantine turned and raced to the edge of the sinkhole, Tom Klondyke on his heels. What they saw chilled their hearts. Three-quarters of the way down to the bottom they could see Paul Goldman clinging to a piece of concrete debris sticking out of the dirt. Below him was bubbling brown water that was halfway up to him and the hole was filling fast. It was obvious to them that the ground where Paul Goldman had been standing must have collapsed before he could move back.

  “Help me,” Paul Goldman shouted.

  “Hang on,” replied Alan Constantine. “Help is on the way.”

  Turning to Tom Klondyke “We need a rope.”

  “How about electric cable?”

  “That’ll do. Get the men also.”

  Tom Klondyke raced away yelling at some men starting back from moving vehicles. By the time Tom Klondyke and the men returned with a pickup truck containing a spool of electric cable intended for the solar panels in the bed, the water was lapping at Paul Goldman’s feet. As the cable spoo
led off the reel, lying on the ground like a coiled hose, Tom Klondyke knew that it wouldn’t reach Paul Goldman by itself. Grabbing the end of the cable, he walked to the edge of the sinkhole.

  “Feed it out slowly,” Tom Klondyke said and stepped over the edge of the sinkhole. As he started down the slope the loose dirt started cascading down toward Paul Goldman.

  “I’ve got to move to my right or I’ll bury Paul,” Tom Klondyke shouted. Several of the men grabbed the cable and moved it several feet with Tom Klondyke moving over. With the men serving as a pulley, Tom Klondyke moved down the slope until he felt his feet in the water, then he moved over to Paul Goldman who was covered with water up to his chest.

  “Thank God,” Paul Goldman said as Tom Klondyke grabbed his outstretched arm.

  Tom Klondyke helped him stand up and then, grabbing the cable with both hands, Paul Goldman started up the hill with Tom Klondyke right behind him. One group of men at the top of the hill was pulling up the cable and another was winding the cable back onto the reel. Everyone cheered when the two men reached the safety of solid ground.

  Paul Goldman grabbed Tom Klondyke’s hand and shook it vigorously. “Thanks for saving my life.”

  “No problem,” Tom Klondyke said. “I know you would have done the same for me.”

  Paul Goldman looked at Tom Klondyke quizzically and then said, “Maybe.”

  Everyone laughed at the two good friends.

  “Okay,” Alan Constantine said. “Let’s get everything away from the sinkhole.” Then he called the construction supervisor Walt Jeffries and reported the sinkhole.

  “Get pictures,” Jefferies said. “I’m up on the mountain. Be there in about fifteen.”

  When Jefferies got there, the workers were all somber, standing in small groups according to nationalities or native languages. They looked when the pickup arrived and knew who the driver was although most of them had only minimal contact with him. Alan Constantine knew him best of all and he not very well because they had never met before this project. But that was the same with most of the men. One or two might have known each other but the idea of the project was to keep it quiet and men were chosen individually for their expertise and experience, but they had to be willing to leave their current jobs.

  Jeffries looked at the sinkhole and the pictures that Alan Constantine had taken.

  “Quick thinking on the part of that man Klondyke. Which one is he?”

  Alan Constantine pointed him out.

  “Keep an eye on him. We’ll need thinkers like that. I’ll report this to the home office,” Jefferies said as he pulled a satellite phone from a holster on his belt. He punched in a preprogrammed number.

  “Hello, Mr. Jefferies,” Horus said almost before the phone rang. “What’s the problem?”

  “How do you know there’s a problem?”

  “Why else would you call?”

  “Right,” Jefferies said and then explained about the sinkhole.

  “There’s no sign of the man? What’s his name?”

  “What’s the name of the man on the backhoe?” Jefferies asked Alan Constantine.

  “Matías Zapatero,” Jefferies said and told Horus.

  “Any chance of retrieving the backhoe?” Horus asked.

  “Not until the water goes down,” Jefferies said walking to the edge of the hole. “It hasn’t risen any since I got here. I’d say based on pictures that the hole is about a third full.”

  “Then we know the height of the water’s source,” Horus said. “Probably the same one that feeds the River Styx, but how it gets that high we have no idea. I’ll confer with the big boss …” referring to Issaack and his business partner Siegfried Schmidt.

  When he got back to Jeffries, he had two things to tell him. One was for Jefferies to tell the family of Matías Zapatero that they would be taken care of financially. The second was to build a wooden cover that would fit over the bottom of the hole above the backhoe because there was nothing they could do about it without a crane which they didn’t have. The cover, which was built in several pieces, was lowered using bulldozers and two backhoes with cables winches. When the cover was in place, it was covered with a one foot layer of concrete. Then dirt from the road, solar farm and railroad projects was brought in by dump trucks and the hole was filled. The cables were simply laid on the ground in a shallow trench and covered with concrete and then dirt. And the work proceeded apace.

  Chapter 10

  Two days after his best friend Matías Zapatero disappeared in the Southwest Hades Solar Farm Sinkhole, Ignacio Suárez had an afternoon off. There was still work to be done filling the sinkhole but when you have an afternoon off, you take it. There wasn’t a lot to do on the island. You could go fishing off one of the rocky beaches (“beach” is being nice) because many of the men had made handlines one could borrow if you didn’t have your own, but Ignacio wasn’t interested in fishing. He decided to do something that no one else had done – or at least that no one else had claimed to have done – and that was climb to the top of Colina da Rocha (or Boulder Hill or Prometheus’s Aerie.) Being Spanish, Ignacio preferred that name. It wasn’t difficult if you attacked it from the southwest or southeast side and the latter was Ignacio’s choice.

  The climb took him about half an hour and he was surprised by the flatness of the top. He thought it was big enough and flat enough to land a helicopter although he didn't know why someone would. He walked around the top and then went to the northeast side and looked over because that is where the Rio de Fonte (or Fountain River or River Styx) flowed from about two thirds of the way up. Lying flat, he peered over the edge and could see where the water exited from the rock face and flowed downward into a pool, and then continued over the front edge of that pool to a big pool at the bottom. Ignacio wondered how deep the bottom pool was and if it were possible to jump from the first pool into the second. He lay there contemplating what it would be like to make that jump or dive when suddenly there was a quaking he could feel and a loud sound. Scared, he scrambled back from the edge and sat on the surface with his hands around his knees. He had hardly assumed that posture when the sound and shaking were gone. He sat there for a few moments – maybe minutes, he was never certain – and then, certain that the terremoto (earthquake) was over, he stood and looked around. Nothing had changed. So he went back to the edge, carefully crawling on hands and feet and looked. The water still flowed from the rock out and down into the first pool and then … something was different, not wrong but different. He blinked and looked again. Something was in the first pool. It was difficult to see because the water was pouring into the pool and hitting whatever it was. He blinked again and rubbed his eyes. It was a person – someone with black hair, wearing a white shirt and black pants just like he did. Just like most of his friends did here. Just like Matías did.

  “Matías,” Ignacio shouted. “¿Matías, esre tu (is that you)?”

  Ignacio got up and ran to the place where he had come up the hill and started down. It was much faster going down, but then he was moving faster also. He reached the height where he thought the pool was and made his way across the hill to the pool but when he got there, the pool was empty. Where had Matías gone? He looked over the edge and there in the lower pool he could see someone. He knew it was someone – or at least someone’s body. He started back the way he had come to get to the spot where he had climbed up before, and then he stopped.

  Turning he walked to the edge of the pool and looked down. The bigger pool at the bottom loomed ominously – almost invitingly. He thought of Jerónimo Romero. “¡Sin coraje no hay gloria! (No guts, no glory)” he said and jumped. He had seen people jump off heights into water before, but he had never done it. He kept his feet together, held his nose with his right hand, crossing his left arm over his chest holding on to the right elbow. And prayed! And prayed! And … WHOMP! He thought he had hit solid pavement but if so, it was wet solid pavement. He opened his eyes and could see light – nothing distinctly. He tilted
his head back and could see a brighter light, so he started swimming toward the light and soon he broke the surface of the pond. He could hear water pouring into the pond from above near his left shoulder. Treading water, he looked around for what he was certain was that body, but he saw nothing. Where had it gone? He swam to the pool’s edge and pulled himself out of the water and stood up. He looked around the pool and saw nothing. Then out of the corner of his right eye he saw the black pants and turned, looking downstream from the pool. There floated a person … someone’s body … a man’s body … Matías’s body he was certain. He walked to the river bank below the pool and stepped into the river. It wasn’t too deep, just about a foot. He made his way out into the river until he reached the body, which was floating about waist deep. He grabbed the shirt with his right hand and looked carefully at the face. It was indeed his friend Matías. Fatter from bloating, bruised from something, most likely the fall on the backhoe. Tears welled up in his eyes. There was no one around to see them or to hear him cry and that’s what he did as he moved his friend’s body to the shore, pulled it up the bank and out of the river.

  Ignacio knelt by Matías’s shoulders, folded his arms across his body, closed his eyes, and then prayed over him saying what he could remember of the Rosary. He started with Our Father and then the Hail Mary:

  “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen”