The driver turned off the surfaced road onto a rose coloured logging track with the Landcruiser throwing up a cloud of fine dust behind it. The track led to a Korean logging camp that lay some seventy kilometres further into the jungle.
The sun was bright and shone with its full equatorial intensity; it was almost at the vertical in the sky and the light reverberated off the dense foliage of the undergrowth, which crowded the roadside.
The track was relatively smooth. The driver, used to negotiating the ruts and potholes, drove fast. Ennis held onto the bar of the dashboard, which he only then realised was obviously designed for that purpose. Riady was in the back with his brother, they were silent, their heads nodded and they offered little resistance to the sleep that was pulling at them after a heavy lunch.
In a second jeep, close behind, were Lars Ohlsson and Antonio Suarez, they had joined them at the last minute. Ohlsson had finally made up his mind to get a close look at the Korean camp and logging area. Suarez hoped to glean some technical data on logistics from the concessionaires.
Antonio Suarez, a Brazilian specialist in pulpwood plantations and tropical sylvaculture, had accumulated a broad experience in pulp mill projects constructed in his country under very similar conditions to the Barito project. He had been hired to join the Papcon team to compensate for their own lack of knowledge and that of the Indonesians in the creation and development of pulpwood plantations.
It was half an hour since they had left the village restaurant. They had eaten a copious lunch of grilled chicken and rice. The lunch had been washed down with Bintang beer, cooled with large lumps of uneven ice, hewed from a block of frozen water, the origins of which were doubtful. It had been simple but tasty. They had eaten the village chicken with their fingers, buzzed by numerous flies, and watched through the open door and windows by curious children.
The Korean concessionaire, through its Indonesian company named Sungai Barito Pty, operated the logging camp. Ennis had met the owners with other concessionaires at a meeting the previous week in Jakarta.
He recalled that the representatives of Sungai Barito from the outset the outset of the meeting had been poker faced, in contrast to the usual friendly Indonesian smiles. Ohlsson suspected them of bending the rules and as the meeting progressed; their mood became outright hostile, as pointed questions were asked on their methods and statistics concerning their operations and exports.
The concessionaires had not been happy for several reasons. There was first, the prospect of their having to participate in the capital of the mill, with their own money-a levy introduced by the Ministry, which was paid into a reserve investment fund to finance new forestry industries-an arrangement proposed by Wihartjo. The second was the idea of a parallel operation in their concessions, using their roads and their infrastructure.
In reality, it seemed that the loggers were certainly more afraid of being spied on, in their illegal operations. Declaring only part of the timber that had been felled, exceeding the restrictions imposed by the Forestry Department, depriving the government of royalties on the logs.
Sutrawan had provided the small group of visitors to the logging camp with a couple of his strong arm guards, who were also sleeping off their lunch in the second Landcruiser not far behind them.
He had been worried about their safety. Explaining to Ennis, he was concerned by the possibility of intimidation from local people, who could probably do no more than hinder them, in the hope of extracting a few dollars.
Ennis was not too worried; he knew that Indonesia was not a country where violence was an everyday event. Its rare, but most common, form was transmitted to the English language, by the word amok, which described the sudden shift to extreme violence, when one or more persons resort, or are driven to, a kind of lunatic and bloody violence.
He suspected that Sutrawan’s precautions were for other reasons, but he pushed the thought from his mind, reasoning that it was exaggerated.
Ennis had nevertheless sensed at that last meeting, an underlying hostility, a feeling that they were resented as intruders, that they would be resisted. They were not wanted.
The situation was totally opposite to all that they had been led to believe over the previous two years by Wihartjo and Sutrawan. Maybe they too, had been not suspected such a reaction from the concessionaires. Ennis was surprised; the Forestry Department was normally well informed, through a good information feedback system, from the provincial governor’s office, the army and a network of friends and business relations amongst the loggers.
The concessionaires were well organised with a strong lobby opposed to the introduction and implementation of the new laws controlling their logging operations. They had the money and influence to buy all the support needed to ensure that the laws were ineffective.
Dark clouds had started to form; a storm was brewing up. Ennis saw the driver eyeing the sky from time to time with a worried expression on his face. The first large drops of rain started to streak the red dust across the windscreen. The driver switched on the wipers, which squeaked noisily over the glass, transforming the dust into a thick uneven paste.
‘It’s raining!’ Ennis heard Riady’s voice from behind, he turned to see him sleepily stretching and peering ahead. Riady then spoke rapidly to the driver, who did not immediately reply. There was a silence, only the noise from the rain that was falling heavily, tapping hard against the windscreen.
‘Anything wrong?’ asked Ennis.
‘Maybe!’ said Riady as the driver finally replied to his question. ‘He says the tyres are not so good, worn! It’s the dry season, and they haven’t bothered to replace them, he said that they’re very smooth.’
‘What difference does that make?’ said Ennis, sensing that it was not a flat they were worried about.
‘If heavy rain continues, we could have a problem on this road.’
It was already raining heavily; the driver had reduced his speed, leaning over the wheel for a better view of the track ahead.
‘We should have taken the other jeep, it has better tyres.’
They were soon sliding in the ruts, as the rain fell in torrents. The driver, sticking his arm through the flap window waved the second jeep to overtake. They were down to little better than a crawl as the second jeep passed them, throwing up a shower of mud that splattered across their windscreen.
The road was cut into the side of the hill and it rose and fell as it followed the lie of the land. Within minutes, it was transformed into a quagmire of thick red mud, making it increasingly difficult for the driver to negotiate the slippery slopes.
Suddenly the rain stopped, as quickly as it had begun. The sun was shinning again, sparkling on the wet leaves. The second jeep had disappeared from view. It would take a couple of hours, before the road dried again.
They descended yet another hill, the engine whined with effort, as the jeep slid into the soft waterlogged red mass at the bottom of a gully. The driver accelerated, ploughing ahead through the mud, hoping to gain enough momentum to climb the slope ahead. They were out of luck, after ten or fifteen meters the engine stalled with a jerk and the jeep started to slide slowly backwards.
‘We’ve got a problem!’ Riady said, as if they did not know.
‘We’ll have to get out, he’ll never get up the hill with us inside!’
They gingerly stepped out into the mud, Ennis walking on the points of his shoes to the rough grassy verge of the road. The driver gunned the motor, throwing up a wall of mud and water, in an attempt to climb the slope.
It was no use; the jeep did not make the least progress. It simply slipped, slithered and whined, with a cloud of steam and mud thrown out by the spinning wheels.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Ennis.
‘Walk! We walk to the next crossroad. The driver says there’s a company check point there,’ Riady replied, with a fatalistic expression on his face.
‘They’ll have to come with another jeep and use the winch to tow him
out of this.’
They walked to the top of the slope and saw the road stretching ahead; it was straight and almost flat. In the distance, they could see Ohlsson’s jeep, stopped on the side of the road. They waved, but they were either too far away, or the others were not looking in their direction.
They started walking, the going was heavy; the sun was directly over their heads. It was hot and steam rose from the large puddles. Their shoes were soon heavy, thickly coated with the sticky red mud. As they neared the other jeep, they saw that it was parked at an angle, the bonnet was open. Suarez was standing to one side with Ohlsson, as he saw them, he lifted his hands to the sky, indicating that they had a problem.
‘Probably waterlogged, the rain!’ Riady offered his explanation.
They were about one hundred meters away.
Ennis decided before joining them he needed to relieve himself. With his inborn British modesty in such matters, he stepped into the wet undergrowth and finding a likely spot proceeded to aimlessly spray the vegetation whilst glancing at the rampant tangle of green climbers. He had a good view of the road, there was no hurry and he took his time.
A moment later, the deep rumble of a heavy motor drew his attention-help was arriving he thought. He saw the dark form of a heavy truck in the distance, a logging truck. It was making its way towards them, travelling fast, very fast.
Riady was then about one hundred meters away from the parked jeep. His brother and Suarez stepped back from the road, as they saw the truck. They lifted their arms to wave it down.
Things happened very quickly, the truck neither slowed down, nor did it pull over to avoid the jeep, it appeared to accelerate, as it roared towards them.
Riady did not know whether to run for cover, or run towards the jeep, whilst Ennis struggled with his fly.
The truck struck the jeep with an enormous crash of shrieking metal and breaking glass, it thundered by in a fountain of mud and a choking cloud of diesel fumes.
Ennis could clearly make out the driver, in a black tee shirt crouched over the wheel, his teeth clamped together, wearing a pair of gold rimmed sunglasses.
Ennis ran towards the jeep, which had been thrown onto its side, overtaking Riady, whose mouth was open gasping for air, and seemed to be trying to shout something at the same time.
The driver was lying in the thick grass. Ohlsson helped Suarez who was kneeling and cradling his elbow. Riady’s brother was leaning against the roof of the jeep, holding his head in his hands, which were covered with blood.
Riady helped his brother, speaking in Indonesian. Ennis, seeing that Suarez was not seriously hurt, turned his attention to the driver who was unconscious. He was bleeding slightly from the forehead and Ennis saw that his left trouser leg was glistening with blood.
‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ said Ennis shaken. ‘That bastard did that deliberately!’
Only he and one of the army men were in any condition to go for help. They set off in an urgent jog in the direction of the crossroad, which according to Riady was about one or two kilometres away.
More than an hour later, they were in the infirmary of the Sungai Barito logging camp. The driver’s injuries were serious; he seemed to have several fractures to his left leg. After examination and first aid, the camps medical assistant confirmed the diagnosis; luckily, it did not appear that his days were numbered, as long as he was got to hospital quickly.
Riady’s brother had been struck on the head by the edge of the motor hood. He needed a dozen stitches to his scalp and was in a state of shock.
The guard had lacerations to his right arm, and probably a fractured leg, that would need to be x-rayed at Bandjarmasin, as would Suarez’s elbow. The rest of the injuries required stitching and bandages, as well as anti-tetanus injections and precautions against the risks of tropical infections.
They looked a sorry sight. The camp manager, who was sullen and barely cooperative, almost accusing them of causing the accident, did not help the situation. The logging truck he declared was not one of theirs, which Ennis doubted very much.
Ennis was forced to invoke the name of the Minister with threats, to persuade the camp manager, to radio a helicopter to transport them back to Bandjarmasin.
One thing was certain: they would not be visiting the logging operations of Sungai Barito that day!
A LESSON IN THE JUNGLE
Borneo Pulp Page 31
