The Orchid Hunter

by Sandra K. Moore

  Though that wasn’t in my plans, I nodded and went inside.

  “Is he insane?” Two feet away, Kinkaid lay on his back in the stifling little hut. He hadn’t moved in a while or said much, for which I was profoundly grateful. I’d been thinking up ways to get out of the mining camp without being seen, and most of them were lousy.

  “Which one?” I asked.

  “The military guy.”

  “Probably. My guess is El Capitan was given this mine as a perk for a shoot-’em-up somewhere.”

  “Massacring the Indians, you mean.”

  I shrugged. “No telling.”

  My butt was starting to ache from sitting propped up against the hut’s timber frame. I wanted to stretch out like Kinkaid, but there are times when matching someone’s posture—in this case, lying next to Kinkaid on the floor—seemed too intimate. Too familiar. I wriggled a little straighter instead.

  Through the gap between the door and its frame, I could see a burly wrestler type standing guard outside. Powerfully built, he was still shorter than me. Compact stock, these Brazilian Indians. The thick scent of cooking meat wafted into the three-inch gap between the hut’s bark wall and the bare earth floor. Above us, the hut’s thatched roof had a single dinner-plate-size opening through which I could see kapok tree leaves.

  I was still puzzling over how to take out the wrestler when Kinkaid asked, “Do you think he believes what he was saying?”

  “About what?”

  “Mining being good for the Indians.”

  “Probably.”

  Kinkaid sat up. “They use mercury to process the gold. That was mercury they were dumping into the runoff.”

  “Yeah.”

  His glasses glinted at me. “Doesn’t it bother you they’re poisoning everybody downstream?”

  “What bothers me right now is the fact that I’m in here, and I want to be out there.”

  He didn’t say anything to that, but merely drew his legs in to sit cross-legged again, his back ramrod straight. After a moment, he asked, “What can we do?”

  I sighed. “To get out or to save the world?”

  “Let’s get out first, then save the world.”

  “How about we get out, then you save the world.”

  “Okay. Then we head for the research station?”

  Since the research station was where Carlos, as my plant-hunting guide, had planned to take me, I could only assume that it was in the general vicinity of the Death Orchid. He’d probably planned to approach someone at the station to identify Harrison’s medicine bowl. “Yep,” I said, “we head directly for your research station. First we get out.”

  I remembered how easily Kinkaid had one-armed my fifty-pound duffel bag into the plane. “You’re pretty strong. Do you think you can take this guy out?” I nodded toward the doorway and the guard.

  “Knock him out?”

  “Yeah. Knock him out.”

  Silence.

  Please don’t tell me you’re a pacifist.

  “Sure,” he said hesitantly. “I guess I can do that.”

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I replied. “Not without a weapon.”

  His back straightened more until I thought it would crack. “Of course I’ll help.”

  I plucked a stick from under the hut’s wall and started drawing the mining compound in the dirt between us. “Here’s the airstrip, and here’s the mine. The compound lies in this direction, with the main concentration of buildings here. We’re here in this little side complex—”

  “How can you tell?”

  I looked up from my maze of squiggles. “What do you mean?”

  “I thought we were on this side.” He pointed to the due south side of my drawing.

  “No, that’s where the dirt track heading back to Boa Vista is. We’re not far off from the mine, which is tucked into the hillside on the southeast.”

  “But I thought the road ran perpendicular to the airstrip.”

  I shook my head. “The airstrip lies north-west-west. You probably couldn’t see the compound layout from the air when you were landing the plane. Too many trees.” When he frowned again, I added, “I always know where I am.”

  “Photographic memory for terrain?” he asked in a faintly disbelieving voice that sounded like sarcasm.

  “Close enough,” I retorted, thinking about Scooter and endless rows of corn and grape Kool-Aid. I drew a strictly defined escape path between the buildings and out into the jungle.

  Kinkaid gestured toward the little map. “Look, I’m thinking maybe we can go this way—”

  “You have to trust me on this,” I said. “You landed the plane and saved our lives. I’m grateful, believe me. But I know better on the ground.” When he still looked doubtful, I added, “I do this all the time.”

  His lenses caught a narrow band of sunlight, shielding his eyes from me for a moment. Then he nodded. “Your way then.”

  I drew a nice big X near the airstrip’s end. “I’ll meet you right there. The most important thing is not to draw attention to yourself on the way out.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m going to get the guard to come in,” I said. “When he does, be ready to hit and run.”

  Chapter 5

  Caterwauling. Laughing. Crying out in pain.

  None of these seemed like a good idea to get the guard’s attention.

  But fire did.

  Unfortunately, my lighter was in my day pack. The fear of fire would have to do.

  “Stand over here across from the door,” I said to Kinkaid, “and answer my questions. Then get ready to hightail it.”

  I hopped up to grab hold of the single crossbeam securing the hut’s roof. It felt like it’d hold my weight. “When I was a kid,” I said, “I used to climb trees all the time. I loved climbing trees.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “Isn’t it?” Still hanging from the beam, I bent at the waist to swing my feet up to my hands, then pivoted up onto straight arms like a gymnast on the high bar. “But I was awful with languages. Still am.” From my straight-arm position I leaned my body over the beam and got a foot on top. Simple matter then to hoist myself up, balancing on the stout wood. I turned slightly so I could see the guard through the crack in the hut’s doorway. “So tell me,” I asked Kinkaid, “what’s the Portuguese for fire?”

  “Fire?” He frowned a moment, but I couldn’t tell whether he was searching for the word or searching for the reason I asked. “It’s fogo.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

  “Fogo,” he said louder.

  The guard shifted his weight.

  “Okay, so if I wanted to start a fogo, what would I use?”

  “Matches or a lighter, I guess.”

  “What’s matches in Portuguese?”

  “Fósforo.”

  The guard did more than shift his weight. Now he turned and I could see his rough-shaven face as he peered through the door’s crack.

  “That’s promising,” I said to Kinkaid. “I’ve learned two new words today. Use them in the sentence, ‘I want to start a fire with these matches.’ May be you should kneel down while you say it.”

  Kinkaid’s smile spread slowly across his face. He knelt and swept his hand through my dirt map, then cupped his fingers together and said, slightly louder, “Vou provocar um incendio com os fósforos que tenho aqui.”

  Bingo. The guard silently unlatched the door, jerked it open, and charged inside directly underneath me.

  “Pare!” he ordered, brandishing a shotgun.

  In the time it took him to remember there were supposed to be two prisoners, I dropped behind him and laid a game-winning field goal kick between his legs. He hunched and groaned. Kinkaid’s eyes widened in sympathetic response, then he laid a right hook to the guard’s nose. Cartilage crunched. I grabbed the rifle from the falling man’s limp hands. The beefy guard thunked onto the earthen floor.

  Nighty-night.

  The rifle turned out to be an ancien
t bolt-action single-barrel like the one Scooter kept behind the freestanding cupboard in his trailer. I’d shot at and missed many a rabbit when Scooter was in town or busy at the bar. While Kinkaid shook out his hand, I opened up the gun. Empty. So Goldtooth didn’t trust the hired help. Well, you work with what you’re given. Maybe we’d run across a box of shells somewhere. I snapped the gun closed.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Kinkaid, slinging the rifle over my shoulder. “Remember your route?”

  “Yeah. What about the mine?”

  I stopped in the doorway and looked back. “What about it?”

  “Aren’t we going to do something to stop it?”

  “Against a dozen armed men?”

  His strong lips pressed into a thin line. I could sympathize. I didn’t like the mercury dumping, either, but now wasn’t the time to deal with it.

  “Look,” I said, “maybe you can get some of your friends together to come back later and do something. For now, I’ll meet you at the end of the airstrip. If they come after you, keep running. I’ll find you.”

  “All right.”

  Kinkaid bolted off along his assigned route, quickly disappearing. I headed into the compound to try to locate my gear.

  Five smallish buildings lay between our hut and the office where we’d been robbed. Most of the garimpeiros were out on the job, and the handful of guys loitering in the open-air food court were consumed by their card game. I threaded my way between buildings and through trees, keeping low, keeping my head down, keeping my empty rifle ready to swing.

  At the building where we’d been questioned, low murmurs told me there were at least two men inside. Probably the principals—El Capitan and Goldtooth, which meant the Shotgun Kid wasn’t far away. Was my gear inside or had it been taken someplace else?

  I crept around front. When I poked my head around the north corner, the three still-loitering Yanomamo women and the kid looked at me curiously, then ignored me. I eased the front door open, and when no one came running to stop me, slipped inside.

  The small anteroom held nothing but a chair and a closed door into the big man’s office. Eavesdropping is something I do when it’s necessary and I don’t feel particularly guilty about it. Especially when the eavesdroppees have held a gun on me. I forgot about eavesdropping when they started yelling. Fortunately, these guys enunciated for effect when they yelled and my Portuguese was up to the task.

  “The only way to handle them is to get rid of them!” Goldtooth shouted.

  My blood warmed all over. Good thing Kinkaid and I hadn’t waited around to be shot. My nerves hummed.

  “Do that and start a war!” yelled someone else who was not El Capitan. “We can find a better way.”

  “They are stupid Indians,” the donos spat. “What do they know? What do I care about them?”

  “The village leader will work with us if we—”

  “He is a stupid old man. They will not do as they’re told. They come beg for food and whiskey and give nothing in return. I’m through with it. Get out of my sight.”

  I slipped back outside into the relative cover of the next building. In a few seconds, the sullen Shotgun Kid stamped out and headed toward the food court, clearly put out.

  So the Shotgun Kid showed some spunk against authority. Interesting development. Didn’t help me find my gear, though.

  I edged to the building’s backside and found another little room stacked floor to ceiling with supply crates, mostly dry beans, rice and glass bottles of Coca-Cola. True to my luck, no shells. And no day packs. No duffels. No nothing.

  I didn’t like the idea of being out in the jungle with no gear whatsoever, but it looked like I didn’t have a choice. First things first. Rendezvous with Kinkaid. Better there were two of us against the world if it turned out we couldn’t get our gear.

  Outside, a wave of muffled shouts caught my attention. Darting along the compound’s edge, I made my way toward the noise, following the wave to the rumbling, hissing hell of the mining pit. I skidded to a stop at an outbuilding near the pit’s edge. Between the leaves and slender tree trunks to my right, I saw two camouflaged gun-waving types running toward the mine. Ahead of them, Kinkaid’s crisp beige shirt flapped as he sprinted full tilt to the edge, took off, and leaped into the gaping, twelve-foot-deep hole.

  Fear clenched my gut as Kinkaid flew, arms pinwheeling forward like a long jumper’s. No way, I thought as he sailed, stopping time, defying gravity. Then Mother Earth decided she’d been denied long enough and he arced, impossibly graceful, into the pit, aiming for the moving conveyor belt.

  He missed.

  His leap fell a good two feet short of its mark; his body dug knee-deep into the mud. The miners howled with laughter, pointing and shouting. The man working the firehose shut off the water and stared. The pistoleiros stopped at the pit’s crumbling edge to tee-hee. Kinkaid struggled to pull himself out of the sucking mud, his glasses askew on his face. He got one leg out before the pistoleiros quit chuckling and raised their guns.

  You know those moments when your body overrides your brain and you do the next thing in front of you even though it seems insane?

  Adrenaline surged through my chest and arms, making me unsling the rifle from my shoulder. My legs sprinted toward the pistoleiros. On them before they saw me, I swung the rifle like a softball bat and clobbered one on the back of the head, knocking him out cold where he stood. The other turned, mouth open in surprise. He grabbed my shirt collar with one hand, nearly pulling me off my feet. I fought his grip, swinging wildly at his face. He dropped his rifle and caught hold of my upper arm just as the pit’s edge gave under our combined weight.

  I lost my stomach. Mud flew as we plunged down the muddy side, rolling twice. We whacked bottom, me on top, and slid through the slime into a shin-deep puddle where the fire-hose guy stood. The pistoleiro lost his grip on me as I wriggled off and scrambled to my knees. He crawled after me. The useless rifle tangled in my legs. I fell on my butt. I heard a heavy clunk, then the pistoleiro stared blankly over my left shoulder and fell face-first into the mud.

  The firehose guy standing over the pistoleiro waved the heavy hose nozzle and smiled. I heaved for breath, rocket fuel in my veins.

  The garimpeiros were really laughing their asses off now. On the other side of the pit, Kinkaid had freed himself from the black mud and waded slowly but single-mindedly for the conveyor belt.

  “Don’t!” I yelled as I gained my feet. “That feeds a rock grinder!”

  “I know!” he shouted back.

  Above me, Kinkaid rode the conveyor belt’s long slope to the top, about halfway to the point where he was about to become ground round. I started to yell again but a gunshot cut me off. Kinkaid ducked and spun. I glanced up at the pit’s edge. The donos had a rifle aimed at Kinkaid.

  The fire-hose guy shoved the hose under my arm and cranked the lever. A blast of water shot out of the nozzle—no arc—and plastered Goldtooth with several hundred gallons a minute of filthy water, blowing him off his feet and me off mine. The fire-hose guy leaped back. My butt hit the ground and I slid a few inches back, driving more muck under my shirttail and into my pants. Somehow I held on to the hose, spraying water into the air. Laughter, dampened by the soft mud, echoed thickly in the pit. When Goldtooth looked like he wasn’t going to reappear, I jumped up and threw the hose down where it writhed like a snake, firing everywhere at once.

  The conveyor belt hadn’t shut down yet and Kinkaid had nearly reached the grinder. I hightailed it over and climbed onto the belt, sprinting to the top where Kinkaid jittered like a nervous cat trying to decide exactly how far that jump really was.

  The noise fell on my head like an anvil. The belt emptied into a massively toothed roller grinder, which had been rigged to sit at a forty-five-degree angle. A few small rocks danced in the hopper, chewed off of larger rocks and waited their turn to be caught in the teeth and ground to powder. A work platform had been built about six feet away from the hopper. Between t
he hopper and the platform was nothing but empty air down a few feet to where the fuel tanks that fed the generators sat. We steadily backpedaled on the conveyor belt to stay out of the hopper.

  “The ledge!” I yelled over the clatter and crunch. “Get a running start!”

  Kinkaid shook his head. “Let’s take out the generators!” he yelled. “Stop the gold processing!”

  “We don’t have time!” I shouted back. “We gotta get outta here!”

  “Come on!”

  He jumped down through the gap. The fuel tank ponged when he landed. Then he disappeared.

  Well, hell. I drew the line on this one. There was no way I’d help him with his little sabotage activity when I should be concentrating on getting out alive. I backed up a few steps, glancing behind me to see how much space I had for the jump. Movement on the pit’s opposite side caught my eye. More pistoleiros had arrived, and El Capitan stood next to the dripping Goldtooth, who shouted and waved his arms. At least ten rifle muzzles pointed at me.

  Shit.

  I dropped into the gap after Kinkaid, where the conveyor belt provided a wide swath of cover from the rifles. Kinkaid hunkered a few feet away, twisting off the tank cap.

  “You gonna water down the diesel with spit?” I asked.

  He flashed a cheeky grin. “Nope.” He turned away from me slightly and unzipped.

  Good grief.

  “You’re gonna need a full bladder,” I informed him.

  “Fait accompli,” he replied. After a moment, he zipped up, then started grabbing handfuls of mud off his boots and cramming them down the nozzle for good measure, smearing muck all over the tank in his hurry.

  His hurry was the only thing I agreed with. While he did his best to foul the generators’ blood supply, I watched the fresh batch of pistoleiros figuring out how to get to us without crossing through the mud pit. Our way out was simple: duck under the shed housing the generators, which would probably render us both deaf, and slip out over the runoff spillway. One of the gunmen started down the slippery slope while El Capitan motioned the Shotgun Kid to run the long way around the pit to cut us off.

  “Are you done yet?” I yelled over crunching rocks and growling generators.