He drove to the northern edge of town and then west out into the scrub country. Parked in the woods and began walking uphill through the yellow weeds and grasses, stopping several times to look through his binoculars. It wasn’t just a pit. There was more within the chain-link fences: two rows of cookie-cutter barracks-like buildings among the trees.
Charlie walked to an overlook, where he had a clearer view of the pit across the valley. And he saw something else: what looked like plastic water slides twisting from the tracks to the lip of the pit.
Suddenly, the silence was broken. Mallory turned, saw movement through the trees: a caravan of vehicles, crunching up the gravel road toward him. He ducked for cover among the trees, but there was nowhere to go.
Then he heard something else: machine gun fire. Bullets ripped into the gravel and the dirt on either side of him, slamming into the trees. He stayed in a crouch, his heart thumping. The firing stopped. Jeeps mounted with machine guns skidded through the grasses around him. Charlie stood and held up his arms. White-skinned contractors aimed a dozen automatic weapons at him. One of the men told him, in an American accent, to take out his gun and drop it on the ground. He did. A pick-up truck rocked along the gravel drive behind them. Stopped. A man got out, pointing a rifle at him. Another weapon was holstered at his waist, Charlie saw.
“How you doing?”
A short, muscular man, huge arms hanging from a sleeveless shirt. Ponytail. Ruddy face. It was John Ramesh, Isaak Priest’s lieutenant.
Two other men frisked him as Ramesh lifted Charlie’s 9mm handgun from the dirt. He nodded for Charlie to get in the truck and tossed his rifle in back. Ramesh smiled, showing dark and uneven teeth.
“Charles Mallory, right?”
FORTY-FIVE
JOHN RAMESH DROVE BACK along the gravel road into a valley of eucalyptus trees. Charlie sat on the passenger side, trying to figure a way out. The road inclined gradually, winding north and west in the general direction of the copper pit. The Jeep vehicles cut back and forth behind him until they came to a fork in the road and they all turned away. Ramesh, chewing on a toothpick, lifted his hand and waved.
He passed through a chain-link gate, past a sign that said “Construction Site” and “No Admittance.” Lifted the radio mic from the dash and spoke into it, then accelerated up a dirt road, bouncing along the rough surface. The truck was cluttered with crumpled paper bags, protein bar wrappers, newspaper pages. There was an empty energy malt drink bottle between the seats. The windows were streaked and dirty.
“You seem mighty interested in that copper mine,” Ramesh said, smiling again.
Charles Mallory didn’t speak.
“Who you working for?”
“Omega Aqua.”
“Not something they’d be interested in, is it?”
Charlie was silent. He looked at the granite outcrops in the distance.
“Want to tell me what’s so interesting to you about it?”
“Not a lot. Except I don’t think it’s really a mine.”
“No?” Ramesh seemed amused. “What would it be, then?”
“Part of a post-disaster preparedness plan, maybe? If I had to guess.”
Ramesh drove on in silence for a while, his arm out the window. “You’re a pretty smart guy, aren’t you?”
“Not really. That’s just what I hear in town. People are talking. They seem to know something’s up.”
“Do they?”
Charlie glanced at Ramesh, saw the small droop of his right eyelid and suddenly realized why he seemed familiar. Ramesh resembled a man who had been in the news once, who worked for Black Eagle Services, Landon Pine’s military contracting firm. He looked like one of the contractors who had been accused of killing civilians in Afghanistan.
“You have anything to do with what happened last night?” Ramesh said.
“Last night? How do you mean?”
Ramesh gave him a once-over, chewing his toothpick. The breeze was blowing cool and moist through the open windows.
“I’m sure you heard some I.E.D.s go off.”
“I.E.D.s?”
“It wasn’t kids with firecrackers. Anyway. We’re going to drive up the hill over here and then I’m going to give you a firsthand look at that mine you seem so interested in. How’s that sound?”
Mallory was silent, figuring. Ramesh drove steadily along the bumpy, gradually inclining road. Self-assured, not in a hurry. “If this thing does comes through here—this thing that you’ve been hearing about in town—what do you think’s going to happen?”
Mallory didn’t reply.
Ramesh smiled and repeated the question.
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to tell you?”
“Sure. If you’d like to.”
“It’s going to be bad for a week, ten days, maybe. And then everything’s going to be good again. I’d say ‘back to normal,’ but that’s not accurate. It’ll actually be a lot better than normal.” The ground sloped steeply uphill, and Ramesh shifted gears. Charlie watched the mouth of the open mine, widening in front of them as the truck bounced along the dirt road.
“I’m just sorry you’re going to miss it,” Ramesh said.
“Am I?”
“Because I think you’d find it interesting. Maybe even educational.”
“What am I going to miss?” he said.
“What are you going to miss? A marvel of engineering, that’s what.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“That’s how you see it.”
Ramesh made a throaty sound but didn’t speak right away. “In the long run, that’s how everyone’s going to see it. A lot of problems are going to be fixed very quickly. People are going to be amazed.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yep.”
“You mean, that eight and a half million people died?”
This time, Ramesh didn’t smile. He made the sound in his throat again.
“You’re a funny guy, you know that?” Ramesh said, and then he went quiet again. Charlie needed the silence to ponder what was coming. To understand what Ramesh was going to do once they reached the pit. How he was going to execute this.
They passed another sentry post and a gate, this one a single wooden barrier. Jeeps were parked on either side of the gate, one with a Browning machine gun mounted on the back, the other with a light anti-aircraft gun. Contractors. As he approached, Ramesh lifted the wireless radio mic from the dash and said, “8-C 13 coming through.” Moments later, the gate lifted.
Ramesh waved at the guards, and the guards waved back. They looked bored. He accelerated, the wheels spitting gravel as the truck sped up the slope toward the open-pit mine. Then he took his foot off the pedal for a moment. Not in any hurry. “I mean, do you really think anyone’s going to notice if eight million poor Africans go to sleep one night and don’t wake up the next morning? Honestly?”
Charlie didn’t say anything. Anger wouldn’t serve him now. He had to concentrate on what was going to happen. The immediate future. Meaning the next five or ten minutes.
Ramesh gunned the accelerator pedal, let his foot off it again. “You have to look at it in context,” he said. “Have you ever spent any time in those shanty towns? Do you really think they serve any purpose? Half those people are starving to death, anyway. Most of them are illiterates. Suffering from AIDS, malaria. Horrible diseases. Many of them earn nothing. Don’t have electricity or running water. Where you and I come from, most people have never even heard of this country.”
“I see,” Charlie said. “So put them out of their misery, you’re saying.”