The Orchid Hunter

by Sandra K. Moore

  But Marcello.

  As I got back to the circle with the orchid, Porfilio was saying, “I can put it in his food. Or his whiskey.”

  The others murmured agreement, even Yagoda. Then Rick shook his head and everyone stopped talking to look at him. “You’re already compromised as a traitor,” he pointed out. “We’ll have to find someone else to put it in his food.”

  Rick was the big dog at this gathering, I realized, the man expected to lead. The glasses-wearing, granola-eating entomologist had somehow worked himself into a position of respect and authority.

  I handed over the orchid to the shaman, who took it reverently, daring to stroke its lip with almost a lover’s touch. Firelight flickered over his broad brow and cast half his face into darkness. Fitting, I thought, as he turned away without a word and faded into the night.

  While the shaman doubled, doubled, toiled and troubled in his private lair, the rest of us worked on how we’d get the poison into the colonel. None of the miners, Porfilio assured us, would have the courage to help. They were too afraid of the colonel. We decided it’d have to be someone familiar with the mine’s layout. Someone who could sneak in, do the deed, and sneak back out without being seen. The choice was inevitable.

  I would head out as soon as the poison was ready.

  Chapter 12

  “You do this often?” Carlos asked me as we crouched under a low palm and peered at the airstrip lit up like a sports field under the compound’s bright electric lights. Carlos’s Cessna squatted, a fat fly, at the airstrip’s edge. Next to it crouched a smaller plane.

  “Murder Brazilian colonels or creep around in the jungle? No to the first and yes to the second, but it’s usually in daylight.” I raised my field glasses and started counting pistoleiros.

  “No. Give your men…the cold shoulder?”

  Night vision goggles would’ve been nice. “You’re not my man. Don’t disturb my concentration.”

  Six pistoleiros milled around the cooking compound, three loitered outside the colonel’s office, and two headed toward our end of the airstrip, clearly on patrol. All had semiautomatic rifles slung over their shoulders.

  The patrol looked tense. It was just after midnight. I wondered if the Yanomamo had made their presence known before our little group hiked the eight miles to the mine. These pistoleiros were edgy, nervous. And I hadn’t even gotten started yet. I glanced down at Rick’s backpack, which carried a couple of sticks of Porfilio’s dynamite. At least I’d enjoy some of the night’s festivities. Then I’d head on for Boa Vista and the quickest route back to the States, taking my beautiful, poisonous orchids with me.

  One of the pistoleiros walking toward us bent his head to light up a smoke. The other grabbed his hand before he could strike a match and scolded him. Too late. I’d already seen them.

  They kept walking. Had we been backlit, the patrol would have easily picked us out despite our greased faces and camouflage. When they got close to the jungle’s edge, the bossy one turned casually to glance over his shoulder at the compound. Then they slipped into the darkness and headed east.

  “Damned deserters,” Carlos murmured as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and the rest of them’ll take off.”

  “Listen,” he said, touching my arm, “You must let me make up to you—”

  “Save it,” I snapped. “I’m busy right now.”

  I couldn’t afford to let Carlos’s belated sense of responsibility get past my guard. I had shut out everyone and everything on the way here—Scooter, Rick, Marcello, my guilt, my newfound loneliness, anything that could make me weak. With each step, the black maw of anger had widened inside my heart and mind. I needed every ounce of steel in my blood and bones to do this job. And if the steel failed me, there was always the rage. If it didn’t swallow me whole first.

  “Do you recognize the new plane?” I asked Carlos.

  He shook his head. “It must have come yesterday after I left to find Porfilio.” He took the glasses and had a look. “It has no governmental or military markings. Must not be the colonel’s.”

  “What did you tell the donos when you left to find Porfilio?”

  “That Porfilio owed me money.”

  “Call him.”

  He pivoted and sent a low whistle into the dark. Moments later, Porfilio scooted up to join us. Once I offed the colonel, he’d handle the donos, probably with bribes. The donos, Porfilio had said to Carlos as we hiked to the mine, was a dog that needed only a few scraps to be happy. I personally thought appeasement would only spell more trouble, but Porfilio hadn’t asked me.

  “Is it not normally lit up like Christmas?” I asked, prepared to translate into international English, but Porfilio shook his head.

  “Planes cannot land at night here. Too dangerous.”

  “Has this plane landed here before?” I asked.

  Porfilio studied it through the field glasses, then shook his head. “It is not one of our regular suppliers. I do not know.”

  “The colonel looks like he’s expecting trouble,” Carlos muttered.

  Porfilio nodded. “He could. He has been acting…strange. Insane. More than usual,” he added at our stares.

  “Go find your miners,” I said to him, “and get them to the cookhouse. All the explosions will be in the processing area.”

  “What?” he protested, his broad brow furrowing. “You cannot blow up the—”

  “I’m not going to blow it up. I’m going to make the pistoleiros think I’m going to blow it up.”

  Doubt still lurked in the way he held his head, a little to one side like a shy child. He nodded hesitantly, like he didn’t believe me.

  “I’m not going to destroy your livelihood trying to destroy the colonel,” I assured him. “But I need the pistoleiros to leave the colonel so I can plant the poison.”

  He nodded more confidently then. “Good luck.” He drifted into the leaves and disappeared.

  “Come on,” I said to Carlos.

  We backtracked around the hillside where Rick and I had huddled in a cave waiting for Porfilio to bring us our gear. In the night, the generators’ roar seemed louder than I remembered, echoing down onto our heads as we climbed toward them. I guess they’d recovered from Rick’s personal fuel additive.

  We paused to survey the scene. If El Capitan was that paranoid, the processing shed should be bristling with pistoleiros. This was where the wealth happened. As it was, not a soul to be seen. Interior lights filtered through cracks in the shed’s walls, casting pale bars on the harmless-looking mercury waterfall. No lights shone directly outside. We’d have plenty of darkness to work in.

  Had El Capitan totally lost it? Why were there no guards?

  I set my orchid-filled duffel to one side and levered Rick’s backpack from my shoulders. With Carlos hovering over me, I gingerly pulled the two sticks of Porfilio’s Stone Age dynamite from the supply backpack. Dynamite gets unstable as it ages. Not only were these sticks old, they were probably bootleg and suspect to begin with. Porfilio had strapped the sticks together in classic Old West style and wired a timing device to it.

  “Looks threatening enough,” I murmured.

  “Will it blow?” Carlos asked over my shoulder. His sweat smelled acrid. Fear.

  I couldn’t blame Carlos for being scared. He’d be closest of any of us to the old, unstable dynamite until the show got started. “Hell, it’ll probably blow if you breathe on it hard.”

  Carlos retreated to the sluice’s edge, just out of the light. “I’ll keep watch while you plant it,” he stage-whispered over the running water’s splash.

  Good idea, Braveheart, I thought uncharitably. Rick wouldn’t have been cowering in the shadows. He would have been making himself useful, pissing in the gas tank again. If I’d let him come with us. His limp would have slowed us down.

  Deeper into the jungle, I found a hollow log that looked about right for the diversion. I set the timer for fifteen minutes, c
hecked my watch, then shoved the whole package down the log.

  “You know what to do,” I said to Carlos when I passed him to pick up my duffel and Rick’s pack. “I’ll be on the other side of the camp when this baby blows.”

  He nodded. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he said. Sweat gleamed on his darkly handsome face.

  “Timing is everything,” I reminded him. “See you after the fireworks.”

  He leaped lightly over the waterfall and disappeared into the darkness under the processing shed.

  One more trip around this hillside and I’d leave a donkey trail, I thought, moving as silently as I could toward the mining camp’s northwest edge. Carlos had been right. The well-lit airstrip suggested El Capitan wasn’t feeling safe. But he had no one protecting the processing shed. His guards were deserting him.

  What was going on? Had some bigger cheese shown up to wreak havoc on El Capitan’s little kingdom?

  I knelt and tucked my duffel next to a rocky outcropping. The orchids in their cylinders, two of them now, lay inside next to their CITES certificates and my passports. With most of my climbing equipment still hanging from trees back near the village, I’d travel home pretty light.

  Then I remembered Rick’s necklace, the one he’d given me to give to his brother when he was dying. It still hung around my neck. Reaching inside my shirt neck, I fingered its markings as if they were Braille, as if I could read the message engraved on it. Maybe I could send it back to him by Porfilio.

  Stop it.

  Yeah, I needed to quit thinking about Rick before I started regretting him. Regret was an armor chink, plain and simple. So was wishing things had been different, and wanting what you couldn’t have.

  I needed to get back to basics: do the job I came to do and stop getting sidetracked by nonessentials. I’d take out the colonel, then take care of Scooter. Nothing else mattered. The anger—of being used, of being hurt—spread like darkness over my heart.

  A thunderous boom punched the night air. A split second later, the ground shuddered under my feet just as every light in the mining compound died.

  Kudos to you, Carlos, I thought. You turned off the lights right on cue. They’ll think we’ve blown the generators.

  Pistol shots cracked and echoed up the hillside. Men’s voices rose in shouts, fading as the pistoleiros moved toward the mining pit and processing shed.

  Time to move.

  I ran toward the compound, strapping on my headlamp as I went. El Capitan’s office was deserted, papers strewn across the desk and floor like the room had been hit by a tornado. The supply room behind it was empty.

  Porfilio had said El Capitan’s personal quarters were housed in the large building set to one side by itself, away from deafening clatter of the mining pit and processing shed. I headed that way, snaking between outbuildings. Twice, a pistoleiro ran across my path, his assault rifle at the ready, but neither one saw me.

  The colonel’s personal quarters were housed in the one cinderblock building in the compound. It was eerily silent, with only a nervous guard at the front door. Given the general state of uproar around the mining camp even before the festivities started, I had no real way of judging how many guards would be inside.

  And contrary to popular belief, I was not a trained commando. That was one of the drawbacks of surviving the messes you made—people got the idea you knew what you were doing.

  I skulked around the building for an unguarded way in. On the eastern wall I found a size-two window that wouldn’t accommodate my size-eight ass. No good. I’d have to go through the front door.

  If I could figure out how to get rid of the guard. I peeked around the house’s corner. Uniform shirt untucked, sleeves rolled up over thin forearms, fidgety hands. The guard’s attention kept flicking toward the processing shed. His nervousness could work for me, letting me get the drop on him because he was distracted. Or it might work against me, because his keyed-up nerves would add quickness to his reflexes, make him trigger-happy. My only weapon was the rifle I’d taken from the pistoleiro who’d guarded Rick and me when we first arrived, and three remaining shells.

  I took a deep breath and hefted the rifle, hands steady. The wave of anger had grown until it felt like I was standing on an island, watching the ground fall away from all sides. The ground of goodwill. The ground of righteousness. The ground of happiness. The island got smaller and smaller, and the black waters got closer and closer.

  What the hell.

  I stepped around the house’s corner and leveled the rifle at the guard. He leaped back, shouted something, threw down his gun and ran. I dropped to one knee, keeping my head down. No shots pierced the wooden door. No crowd of booted men descended on me.

  What was going on?

  I slowly rose to my feet. Around me, nothing but jungle noise and darkness. I gingerly pressed my ear to the door. No sound from inside. My toe eased the wooden door open.

  Nothing. No shots, no click of cocking guns.

  I slipped inside. The headlamp’s lowest setting showed me an anteroom in as much disarray as the office. An overturned desk, broken lamp, smashed armchair. Looked like the guard wasn’t guarding much.

  A volley of muddy coughs scraped the darkness. The cold tide welled inside me.

  El Capitan. Take your medicine like a good boy.

  Behind the anteroom, two rooms lay off a short, dead-end hallway—if you could call it a hallway—that was about two feet long. The coughing had come from one of those two rooms. The west room was padlocked. The east room’s door was ajar. Hands clenched on the rifle’s soothingly cool steel, I waited for another cough. None came. I snapped the headlamp off.

  With the rifle ready in my right hand, I pushed the east room’s door further open with my left. I snatched my hand back. Silence. Crouching low, I slinked inside. My nose told me this was storage. Cloth, maybe. Musty. The headlight’s dimmest beam cut a dusty darkness. Old linens, bags of unidentified supplies, cockroaches sprinting from the light.

  I stepped back into the hallway. If El Capitan was in the west room, why was it padlocked from the outside? As a security measure, it sucked. No sound of movement on the other side of the west room’s door. No shuffling boots or cocking guns. The cough rasped. El Capitan was definitely inside.

  So much for subtlety. I’d have to hope the noise I made went unnoticed in the general confusion outside. I struck the padlock with the rifle stock a few times. No go. I lowered the muzzle and squeezed off a shot. The padlock hung from its busted haft. I quickly recharged the bolt-action. Still no noise from inside.

  I shoved open the door, then leaped into the pitch-dark, windowless room.

  The stench hit me hard—human feces and stale vomit, and an underlying putridness worse than either.

  “Whiskey.” El Capitan’s voice graveled in the distant darkness.

  I’ll get your whiskey, old man, and a little shot of something extra to go with it.

  My hand reached for the vial of poison in my zippered inner shirt pocket while my headlamp cast a dim vee toward the voice. I froze.

  The colonel lay naked on stained and bloody bedsheets, his body twisted at the waist as though he’d tried to reach for something on the battered bedside table and failed. Gaunt, his thin chest struggled to rise with each breath. On the bedside table, an overturned glass sat next to a nearly empty whiskey bottle.

  “Amalia?” he rasped. He grunted, then added, “The cockroaches.” He gasped for a breath. “Make them stop.”

  I raised my lamp’s light level. The colonel’s skin gleamed like wet, gray clay. Beside his head, a cascade of dried vomit caked his pillow. I looked around, wondering if his cockroach comment was literal or figurative. Probably literal. Judging from his state and the room’s mess, he’d been desperately sick for several days, uncared for by anyone. Not even fed.

  “Make them stop,” he croaked.

  Then I realized what was going on. The guard wasn’t outside to keep anyone from getting in. He was there to keep th
e colonel from getting out.

  El Capitan had been left here to die.

  He was a sick old man, clearly too delirious to give orders or even know what the hell was going on. He hadn’t ordered the attack on the village last night. He wasn’t capable.

  I couldn’t kill this man. Not like this. I couldn’t even hope he’d attack me so I could shoot him in self-defense.

  I lowered the rifle’s muzzle, defeated, hands and gut trembling with nerves. What was I supposed to do with the horrible blackness in my heart? Where was I supposed to put the rage? The hate?

  Who would pay for Marcello?

  The electric lights stuttered, then popped on. Outside, I heard Porfilio talking to someone. The front door banged open. Footsteps racketed off the wooden floor. The bedroom door shoved back and Porfilio walked in.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he said in a hushed tone as he came to stand beside me.

  The bare bulb overhead blazed. The bed, I realized abruptly, was much filthier than I’d thought, the smell worse. The colonel shivered, sweating. I drew the stained sheet up to his chest. The old man clutched it in clawlike hands, opened his toothless mouth but said nothing, a fish gasping for air.

  “Do you know what’s wrong with him?” I asked.

  “Mercury poisoning,” said Father João’s voice from the doorway.

  I turned. The padre looked beat. His arm sling wore smears he’d picked up hiking through the jungle. Bumping his broken arm must have hurt like hell. His good hand carried a medical bag.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I thought there would be wounded.”

  “Can we get the colonel to Boa Vista?”

  “I thought you came to assassinate him.” The padre moved to the bed and laid a hand on the sick man’s forehead.

  “There’s no need,” I replied. “He’s dying. Someone locked him in here so he could do that alone.” I jerked a thumb at the busted padlock. “The colonel isn’t the man we should be worried about.”

  “Indeed, he is not!”

  I heard the words at the same moment my peripheral vision registered Goldtooth, pistol in hand. My rifle muzzle came up. The donos fired a round that flew high and outside. I squeezed the trigger. Nothing. Jammed shell.