Open Pit

by Marguerite Pigeon

  “Put your bags down there,” says the short man, marching down the line and nodding at a grassy, nondescript area to their left. Danielle goes first, stepping into what can’t even be called a clearing — no tents, no latrines. She unloads her pack with a thud to signal the others to let theirs down too. Her back is immediately cold as chilly air flows over copious sweat.

  “Stand there,” the man says, pointing away from the bags.

  Robotically, Danielle obeys. These clipped instructions have got to end sooner or later, like the walking. As the rest of the group comes to huddle around her, the taller masked man steps away, disappearing through the trees. The shorter one remains. Antoine, on Danielle’s right, is using his sleeve to wipe a runny nose. He has an honest face, and Danielle exchanges a glance with him that gives her a tiny burst of comfort. But Tina gasps, making Danielle look back. The tall one is returning, and he’s not alone. Two people follow, cracking branches as they emerge from the trees. Both are masked, both women. Tina starts to cry. Danielle is too tired for an emotional response. She can only do the math. That’s four altogether. Four bad guys against five weaklings.

  The women come directly towards the group, gun straps pressed across their chests, their arms full of green plastic. “They’re Rita and Delmi,” says the short one as the first, Rita, steps up to Danielle and throws plastic at her feet like it’s a bag of garbage, another chunk of it at Antoine. The other woman, Delmi, who’s plump, spilling out of a tight t-shirt, more sheepishly deposits three bundles in front of the others, then backs away with a slight giggle.

  “That’s Cristóbal,” the short man continues, nodding towards his tall accomplice, Mr. Hat Store Dummy. “And I’m Pepe.” He pauses, giving the group time to take in these names. “Now you’ll sleep,” he adds.

  The women accomplices eagerly pull up their guns, guarding closely as each member of the group unfolds a tarp. Danielle smoothes out the new-smelling plastic, creating a thin barrier between herself and the raw earth. Then she gets down and closes her eyelids tightly, blocking out the morning.

  11 AM. Mil Sueños mine, Municipality of Los Pampanos

  The photo caption in tomorrow’s paper will read: “NorthOre owner Mitchell Wall, recently targeted by terrorist threats, preparing to tour Mil Sueños with probable Democratic Alliance Party candidate Carlos Mendoza Reyes.” Mitch is banking on it. He and Carlos played around with the wording for some time. Now they tuck away their helmets, smile and shake on it. The camera snaps multiple frames.

  “Okay,” says the photographer, capping his lens, and Carlos walks over to run through the shots with him. Mitch stays put, trusting him to cherry-pick the very best, the one in which he looks his most cool, calm and collected.

  Sobero, who has come outside to join them, signals modestly from the edge of the tarmac. Mitch waves him closer.

  “Jefe. I’ve chosen two good men to begin making inquiries into where the foreigners might have gone. These individuals are very skilled. They will not fail.”

  “That’s fantastic,” says Mitch, though Carlos has brought news from his own contacts that suggests the hostages could be just about anywhere. It’s been twenty-four hours and there are no witnesses besides their bus driver, who says he knows nothing. “Let’s also see what the police can sniff out.”

  “I have more freedom than the police.”

  Mitch looks Sobero over. The top button of his white work shirt reaches nearly his chin. His too-round eyes blink quickly. “I don’t want anything dangerous, Manuel,” says Mitch, feeling, as he has before, a bit sorry for Sobero and his reduced position. He was “somebody” in El Salvador before the war. After it ended, Sobero had to start from scratch.

  “Nothing dangerous. Just what is necessary,” says Sobero, running his hand, not much bigger than a child’s, slowly down the lapel of his cheap jacket. He always speaks in general terms about his tactics, has ever since Mitch hired his fledgling firm, MaxSeguro, in ’96 to clear out squatters from the site of the future mine. Sobero did a fast, thorough job, but never specified his methods.

  Mitch looks towards Carlos, who’s returning from escorting the photographer towards the guard assigned to see him out. Mitch meets Carlos halfway and slaps him on the back in gratitude. The photo shoot was Carlos’s idea. The newspaper the photographer works for has the largest daily circulation in El Salvador. Carlos has known him for years and managed to talk him into driving up from the capital. Genius!

  “Let’s get some air,” says Mitch, grinning, guiding his friend to the door of the helicopter and stepping up after him. Belting in, Mitch experiences a sharp anticipatory thrill. He loves aerial tours. Sure, they’re costly. But this is Carlos’s first visit to Mil Sueños. It would be rude not to take him around in style, exactly as the newspaper will report.

  The pilot starts his engine and a deep buzz builds to a high-pitched squeal above them as the blades begin to turn. Mitch puts on his headset. He glances towards Sobero, who is still on the tarmac, his hands clasped behind his back, looking put out. Sobero can be loyal to a fault. Last night, on the drive to the mine, he peppered his conversation with unflattering anecdotes about Carlos Reyes: Carlos’s history with women. His conniving politics. The unsavoury elements behind the new centrist political party, the Democratic Alliance, or DAP, that Carlos will represent if he runs in the next Salvadoran elections. Mitch took it all with a grain of salt. Sobero doesn’t seem to get how important Carlos will be to the future of the mine if he wins a seat — for any party. Then, this morning, Sobero had the gall to suggest that Mitch should cancel Carlos’s visit altogether for security reasons. Mitch told him to get a grip. Carlos Reyes is more than a contact. He’s a friend.

  Now Sobero’s thin hair sweeps up into a pointed triangle as dust swirls around him. He remains on guard, looking rather puny, as they lift off. Mitch considers the final bit of gossip he pieced out about Carlos last night. “You know, Jefe, Señor Reyes has a unique history with helicopters? He enjoys shooting them out of the sky.” When Mitch, stunned, asked Sobero to please expand, Sobero shook his head, blowing off the question, saying it was just an old war tale. Mitch didn’t press. He sympathizes with Sobero’s aversion to people, like Carlos, who’ve done so well since the Salvadoran war, even though they were once gun-wielding Marxists, while Sobero’s own career was snuffed out because of some bogus allegations of war crimes. But as they leave the ground, Mitch wishes he’d asked for details. Carlos shot down an actual helicopter! That can’t be easy. Especially considering the other tidbit Sobero passed along just before Carlos arrived: “He’ll flaunt his bravado,” Sobero predicted, exaggerating the word. “But Señor Reyes has a fear of flying. Poor man.”

  “Doing alright, there?” Mitch asks Carlos now, seeing sweat bead along the rim of his friend’s helmet.

  “Fine, thank you.”

  “We’ll just do a quick go-round,” Mitch assures him. He figures that if what Sobero says is true, getting airborne might actually help Carlos. No one can afford to indulge fear. If Carlos is going to get into politics, he’ll definitely have to leave his comfort zone.

  After lift-off they hover a moment above the boxcar-like portables housing NorthOre’s offices. As the helicopter’s nose straightens, Carlos wraps his fingers under the edge of his seat, his arms straight as boards. Mitch taps him on one taut shoulder and begins a running commentary, keeping the mood light. “This, my friend, is the power of believing.”

  After the portables, not far to the northeast, the helicopter next passes Mitch’s processing plant, its jumble of uneven pipe lengths glinting silver in the sun. “We’re retrofitting it to handle the output from the Pico expansion. Putting in the coin now so that this time next year, it’ll have the most cost-efficient production of pavé bars south of Mexico. We’ll get it all back in eighteen months at full production. Markets can’t get enough.”

  Next come the leaching fields. Mitch has always thought they look like stairs to some giant’s house. Reddish, sever
al soccer fields long, made up of finely crushed ore, they are stacked storeys high, black tubing running down each enormous step. “With this kind of mine, you want to clear the overgrowth, blast loose the ore, crush it, spread it out, then distribute a mild cyanide solution over it.” Even in Mitch’s own ears, his explanation sounds too much like a geologist’s summary. Getting a degree in the field was never his passion. More a matter of getting his father’s dream out of the way before he could go after his own. He aims for a less technical tone. “Basically, we gotta grab the gold chemically. Suck it right from the ore. Then we drain it away and catch it at the bottom.” Mitch points downhill. “But it’s not what people think. It’s harmless.” As he says this, they fly directly over the pressurized tubes, pocked with a regular series of holes, from which the cyanide solution, diluted with a steady supply of groundwater, flies into the air, creating tremendous arcs, before landing on the crushed ore. Gravity has already drawn some of the solution, with the gold it has taken from the ore, down to vast collection ponds — pools lined with a special material designed to prevent leaking.

  “If people could see how well-made these are. Maybe it would shut them up.” Mitch knows that critics consider the ponds flawed, always harping about overflows during the annual rainy season, heavy metals seeping out. But anyone sitting where he is could see the system works. And where’s their evidence? If the extremists had their way, everyone in this country would be sorting coffee beans for a living. If they want to talk about overflows, how about the local coffers overflowing with his tax dollars! “From there,” he says, shaking away echoes of his opponents’ constant whining, “the gold settles at the bottom, we gather it up, melt it into bars, ship it, and there you are. Quarterly results!”

  Further along, an even rarer view: the open pit that has already made Mitch richer than he ever expected to get (not to mention his father’s much humbler expectations, God rest his soul), and which has convinced his investors that he can successfully expand. From the air the pit looks like a moon crater, multiple rust-coloured layers deep. Around the edge run crude roadways where trucks on oversized wheels bump along, carrying out yet more ore to stack on the giant’s steps.

  “Quite the sight, eh?”

  Carlos just stares out his window.

  “Wait until you see what’s next,” says Mitch, though he wonders if Carlos is going to make it without tossing his cookies. The helicopter blades thwack as the pilot banks hard, bringing a mountain into view. “There she is. El Pico.”

  Mitch has never understood the name. To him, Pico looks more like a colossal tooth than a bird’s beak. Its rocky tip, sharp and exposed, widens into green, more gently sloping sides, and finally into a slowly extending base where, because of the new road and stacks of cut trees and massive drilling equipment and tractors, it isn’t easy to picture the settlement of Ixtán that Mitch knows was here before Manuel Sobero got rid of those squatters. Wait — is it them? Has one of the former squatters dreamed up these demands out of sour grapes? Mitch strains towards the window, examining his land, asking himself whether there really could be dead bodies here. Fifteen years ago, this was a war zone. But if you go back far enough, isn’t every place? There’s probably traces of conflict covering every square inch of the planet. Why should he be the one railroaded into putting the innards of his property on display?

  “Incredible,” says Carlos, admiring the mountain.

  Mitch beams. Even now, Carlos looks handsome, more or less composed. The man is 1,200 feet above ground, flying against his better judgment, all to help out a friend. Comfort zone breached!

  When the blades come to a stop, the pilot gets out and opens the door. He offers a hand to Carlos, who looks unsteady. Mitch invites his friend inside for coffee. “We’ll save the champagne for the launch,” he says, winking.

  Carlos doesn’t return the smile. “El Pico will be a great achievement, Mitch. But today, it is only an idea. It can only succeed if you handle this abduction.”

  Mitch smoothes his hair against the hot breeze. Any fear Carlos felt up above has apparently burned off. His voice is rock solid, and his warning strikes Mitch as overly dire. Usually they’re too busy dreaming of the future — of the Pico expansion, of how they’re going to help this shithole of a country grow — to get bogged down by obstacles. “Someone is trying to hurt me,” he says, feeling wounded by the change in his friend’s demeanour. Then he realizes. “It’s not the squatters. It’s that Committee!” Mitch doesn’t like to use the full name of the group that’s had it in for him since day one. The Committee for the Environment — like they know anything about it; he’s the one with environmental science Ph.D.s on staff. “From Los Pampanos. The ones who are always bad-mouthing me,” he says, recalling every trick, every ruse those nuts have tried against him so far — none successful. “They want to derail El Pico.”

  Carlos gives him a long, assessing look. “It is important to find out who took the hostages, obviously. But maybe not as important as it seems. The Canadians have to live, regardless of who is responsible. That is the priority. Your ambassador has already understood this. Her own reputation is at stake.”

  “The ambassador? What’s she got to do with it?”

  “One of my contacts tells me she’s requested meetings at the top political levels. She’s nervous about casualties if the police intercede.”

  “But she can’t really — she’s not a factor here.”

  “Oh?”

  Just the way Carlos says it, Mitch begins to doubt.

  “It would be worth deciding for yourself,” Carlos adds as they begin walking towards the portables.

  He often drops hints like this, morsels that Mitch will later conclude are in fact good ideas. Mitch recalls the first time he ever saw Carlos Reyes. He received an invitation out of the blue to a speech Carlos was giving and thought, why not? Carlos showed up looking elegant and told his audience that countries like El Salvador are being forced onto new ground, politically, that no one can afford to dwell in the past. He emphasized that El Salvador needs large-scale investment to survive. And then he used the example of Mitch’s mine, saying the name, Mil Sueños, making it an example. Mitch was so pleased he proudly elbowed the man seated beside him. Carlos ended his speech by saying that too many Salvadoran ex-guerrillas are afraid of the future. But he isn’t. He will be the first to take the leap, wear the brave face. Mitch approached him afterwards to shake his hand. They’ve been in touch ever since.

  A guard opens the door. The air-conditioned hallway feels cold after the noonday heat. Mitch leads the way to his office.

  “I’m seeing them tonight, by the way,” says Carlos. “That Committee for the Environment.”

  Mitch stops, the air suddenly icy.

  Carlos just laughs at Mitch’s discomfort, coming alongside him and wrapping a warm palm around the base of Mitch’s neck, a Latin move Mitch would normally find too intimate. Somehow, Carlos pulls it off.

  “Don’t worry,” Carlos adds. “You need all the information you can get.”

  2:00 PM. Wooded area, Morazán

  “First say your name.”

  “Tina Chiblow.”

  Danielle looks down at the handwritten note: “Now repeat: ‘I am a member of the Partners for Justice in the Americas delegation to the municipality of Los Pampanos, El Salvador.’ ”

  Tina says the words quietly, looking straight into the camera, the chords in her long neck clearly defined, her cheeks shining with tears or sweat. Probably both.

  Danielle consults her paper again. “ ‘I urge the government to do whatever is necessary to secure our release by Monday, April 11th, 2005. Otherwise, these people will take our lives one by one.’ ”

  Tina pauses then lets the same words fall from her mouth like lead weights.

  Danielle looks over at the kidnapper who calls himself Pepe. He pulls his attention away from the small viewing screen and nods her on. Danielle is struck all over again by the oddness of interacting with someo
ne wearing a ski mask. “Now you have a minute to say something to your family,” she says, looking away. She hates that steady pressure Pepe applies with his eyes.

  Tina is on a low stump about five feet off, her hiking boots planted in a scatter of dry leaves, her kneecaps forced up near her chest. She looks momentarily horrified at the idea of addressing her family. Danielle wants to say that she understands; this is not exactly a cozy setting. Stuck out on an ant-eaten tree trunk in dirty clothes, underslept, hot, traumatized, strangers ogling you — four of them wearing balaclavas and carrying rifles. But Tina’s eyes also seem angry, maybe at Danielle for overseeing the translation of the videotaping. And so Danielle also has the urge to defend herself. She can’t exactly go off script here. Pepe’s gun hangs with nauseating heft from the strap on his shoulder. So she nods at Tina as empathetically as she can and silently begs her to get on with it.

  The young woman pulls nervously on the tip of her ponytail and looks back into the camera. “Um. Okay. Well. What can I say? Mom, I’m fine. I’m not hurt. I don’t want you to worry.”

  This Tina is much more hesitant than the one Danielle spent a half day with in the capital city. The cool, knowing tone is gone. Tina continues ad-libbing what she seems to understand can’t sound like the last message she’ll ever send her family. “Uncle Ralph, we’ll have to wait a while on that presentation I promised you. . . . John, looks like we’re in the same boat now. At least you have a lawyer.” She nearly smiles, touching her hair again, tilting her head.

  So this is what full-time yoga does for you. Tina’s shapely face (only slightly swollen with bug bites) and her body are simultaneously soft and firm. Danielle wishes she could put up a barrier so that all the men — not just the kidnappers, but the other members of their group — couldn’t gawk so blatantly. Danielle scans the faces of her fellow Canadians. Pierre is checking Tina out with a blend of judgment and boredom. Beside him Antoine has a worried, questioning expression, like he’s silently asking her to please tell him when he can go back to peaceful, self-contained Quebec City. A few feet away Martin shifts his rump and stares at Tina with open, hopeless attraction.