The Orchid Hunter. Sandra Moore K.
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unwedged himself from the pilot’s chair. “You all right?” he asked the floor, where Carlos was starting to unfold himself.
“Yes.”
Carlos and I looked at each other for a long moment.
“You’re fired,” I said.
I could hear shouts in the distance, growing closer. Time to start worrying about staying alive. I grabbed Kinkaid’s arm as he staggered to the tail section to check his gear.
“We’re scientists,” I said. “We’re just going to the research station. We are not journalists.”
“What?” He picked up his camera case.
“That stays here,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t—”
“If they think you’re a journalist, they’ll kill you.” When he stared at me, I added, “Don’t provoke anything. We’re going to the research station. That’s it. Nothing else.”
“Why would they kill us?”
“Because the mine is illegal,” Carlos answered from the cockpit. “This is Yanomamo land, and the miners have dug without government permission.”
“They’re paranoid about being stopped,” I said to Kinkaid. “Or robbed.” The voices outside grew louder. The distinctive, heavy, shung-clunk of a shotgun being racked made me lower my voice. “Don’t be stupid and we might get out of this alive.”
He nodded.
“That means keep your mouth shut,” I clarified.
He nodded again, shoving his glasses back onto his nose.
I shrugged into my day pack, ignoring my tender ribs. Showing weakness to a dog pack just feeds the frenzy. I needed to get out of this with Harrison’s ashtray, my forged CITES certificate, one cardboard tube for storing a Death Orchid, and my life.
Everything else was negotiable.
A strong brown hand gripped the door and a short man stuck his head through the cargo door. “Saia do avião!” Behind him, the shotgun’s nose beckoned us.
We climbed out and lined up beside the plane. Four men with rifles slung over their shoulders clambered in. In a moment, I heard my duffel unzipping and my stuff being pulled out. The short guy who’d spoken to us appeared to be in charge, probably the head donos, the mine foreman. Security would be part of his job. A much younger man held the shotgun on us, his face pasted with a “just doing my job” expression.
The donos smiled, revealing an archetypical gold front tooth. “You have come visit us,” Goldtooth said in English.
I felt Carlos tense beside me. “Bad fuel,” he replied. “We were lucky.”
Not quite as lucky as we might have been, I thought. The donos studied Carlos for a moment.
“We took bets whether you crash.” He slapped one broad hand into the other and grinned. “I lost!”
A tinkling bang inside the plane heralded the end of Kinkaid’s camera. In my peripheral vision, I saw Kinkaid’s jaw tense, but he kept his mouth shut. The donos shrugged. “Accident,” he said. “Too bad.”
When Goldtooth turned his attention to me, I dropped my gaze to his feet. I’m proud, but I’m not stupid. I’d save the I Am Woman tirade for when I was the one holding the shotgun.
“What you doing here?” Goldtooth asked. “What a woman need here?”
“I’m a scientist,” I replied. “Científico.” No, dammit, that was Spanish. “Cientista.”
I let my eyes wander from his muddy boots up worn work pants to his stout white cotton shirt. A few wiry hairs sprouted from the shirt’s open neck. “Studying plantas.” I chanced a glance at his face.
His black eyes had narrowed. I was starting to feel pretty good about those eyes not looking like a snake’s when I realized his nonviper gaze had settled below my neckline. Never mind my bulky, buttoned-up canvas-shirt look. This guy was interested in what lay beneath, which was a white cotton muscle tee, a white cotton sports bra—a not-too-shabby C—and a lot of sweat. Bugs buzzed my ear, but the deet kept them at bay. Too bad they didn’t make lech-repellant.
His fingers twitched. Abruptly he grinned. “Come to office!” he said. “You need Coca-Cola!”
The sullen young guy with the shotgun waved us down the airstrip toward the collection of hovels that served as mine headquarters. As we trudged along the airstrip’s rutted surface, the clatter of generators rose over the sheet-metal buildings. Now, at around ten in the morning, the sun was ready to bake us into crispy bits. I shrugged off the stray notion that we were descending into hell. I hadn’t been searched, I’d been allowed to keep my day pack, and the worst they’d done to my person was ogle.
All things considered, things were looking up.
The shotgun-toting guy stopped at an outlying building beside the airstrip. Beside the building, three Yanomamo women wearing brightly colored T-shirts and bowl-cut hairdos loitered in the shade, one holding an infant in her arms. A Yanomamo boy who looked about twelve chased a toad, aiming boy-sized arrows at it from his boy-sized bow.
The Shotgun Kid swung open the door and waved us inside the building. I’m glad I wasn’t expecting a blast of cool air because I didn’t get one. If anything, the heat was worse. Goldtooth motioned for us to move on through a small anteroom to the large office and sit down on the floor, then he disappeared.
A large metal utility desk sat square in the middle of the room with a wide wooden chair squatting behind it. A neat stack of papers held down one edge of the desk. A two-drawer metal filing cabinet hunched in the corner. Overhead, a ceiling fan vigorously flung stale air onto our heads.
I took the corner where I could see the door and the Shotgun Kid filling it. A third Brazilian lingered just outside the door. Kinkaid settled cross-legged next to me. For the first time I noticed he’d brought his own day pack with him. Good Boy Scout. Too bad his camera hadn’t made it. A thin trickle of sweat slid down his temple but he seemed calm. I wasn’t surprised. Landing the little plane the way he had took more nerve than I had.
Carlos hunkered down next to Kinkaid like he was sitting around a campfire. He looked a little too at ease for my peace of mind. Of course, he wasn’t one of two Americans in the room. Or a woman. My guess was that before this was over, he’d end up cutting a deal with the miners to make some of their supply runs into Boa Vista.
Goldtooth returned with three open glass-bottled Cokes. Refrigeration was too much to hope for, but a wet drink was a wet drink. He handed them out, let his thick, rough fingers scrape mine when I took the bottle from him. His grin, stretching through a fleshy face, made me think twice about taking a sip. I set the bottle’s warm butt on my knee.
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