Ryker Read online

  She smiled and held out a hand. “Thank you very much,” she said. “The water is much welcome.”

  One stared down at her hand and said, “Why are you here?”

  She quickly repeated how she sought platinum here.

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s a valuable mineral, and it’s needed in the world.”

  “Potentially,” he said. “You sure you aren’t after the gold?”

  She shook her head. “The illegal gold mining in this area is vast. What’s that got to do with me searching for platinum?”

  “Maybe nothing,” he said, “but we have to at least check it out.”

  “Feel free to do that. I just don’t know how you would.”

  “We’re not so cut off from the world as you may think,” he said. “I already have men on it.”

  “Good,” she said. She went to lift her backpack off her back, when immediately several rifles were pointed at her. She froze. She lifted her head to stare at the leader. “I can show you some rocks of what I’m looking for and want to ask if you had seen anything like it.”

  He motioned at her to continue.

  Slowly she opened the flap to her backpack, wondering how this bag had even been left with her in the first place. Their other bags had been taken, but this one she had been given back to keep—which held her laptop and her samples. Her personal belongings were long gone though, she figured. She pulled out several rocks, looking for the one she wanted. When she found it, she held it up.

  “I’m looking for rocks like this,” she said, “that contain platinum. This is what we’re looking for,” she repeated. “Have you seen more of these rocks?”

  He studied the rock and then shrugged. “It looks much like the other rocks of our region.”

  “Yes, and no,” she said. “Look at these colors here and look at the markings.” With a disinterested shake of his head, she pulled out some of her maps and some of the satellite photos she had. Then she spread out the map and awkwardly placed on it several of the images that she had, as of course there was no table and nobody stepped forward to help her. “We’re looking for outcroppings like this. There’s a lot more to it than that, but that would give us a general direction.”

  “And why should we help you?”

  She just blinked at him. “Well, I suppose it would get us out of your hair much faster.”

  “I don’t have to worry about that,” he said. “Nobody is coming after you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because they’ll try to deal with our government, but our government doesn’t deal with us,” he said with a flat stare. “We’re in a cold war at the moment with them.”

  “Ah, I understand,” she said and then proceeded to act as if she had no clue what he just said. “So have you seen any of these outcroppings?” She glanced around at the rocks around them, then pointed. “It’d be like that but bigger and longer. We’re looking for different color tones here.” She pointed at the side of her rock sample, and he shook his head.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  But from the other side of her came a spat of Spanish.

  Manila understood most of it, but it was a different dialect than what she was accustomed to. Somebody thought that they had seen something. She glanced at one woman. “So, was that a yes that you have seen this?” she asked hopefully.

  A young woman stepped forward. She had on a camouflage T-shirt that hung down past her pants pockets and was dressed like many of the soldiers. She pointed off to the right. And then she talked to the leader in another spat of rapid-fire Spanish so thick with her accent that it was almost impossible to pick up.

  But the Spanish itself was fairly clear. This girl had seen something. A large series of rocks were a couple miles from here. The leader asked her if the rocks looked like this, and she nodded.

  “Any chance I can see it?”

  “Why would we let you do that?”

  “Well, the platinum is very valuable,” she said. “And, in the right hands, it would offer an awful lot of power and negotiation for your region.”

  He stared at her for a long moment.

  “And, of course, none of that makes any difference,” she said, “if I can’t actually see it and if we can’t take some samples back.”

  He frowned at that.

  And she could see that he was desperately trying to find the right response, but, at the same time, he didn’t really want anything to do with her and her plans. “I can probably tell when I see it,” she said. “I can’t tell if it’s platinum for sure until I see it and test it.”

  He frowned at her again for that and then shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. Then he turned and walked away. As he turned, he called and ordered to have them all taken back to a tent.

  She quickly had another sip of water and then tried to take the water with her, but it was removed from her hand. Expecting that, she didn’t say anything more, but they were all put into one tent, which was interesting. The rest of her team asked, “Are you okay?”

  “Of course I am,” she said. “Now it’s a case of whether we’ll get a chance to see that rock formation or not.”

  “Are you expecting them to take you?” Andy asked, surprised.

  “Expecting, no, but considering it could be valuable, it’s in their best interests. Besides, we have to do what we can to stay alive,” she said. “They don’t believe anybody will come to our rescue, but I do.”

  “And why would anybody?” asked her other team member. Andy was the young kid on the block, but Benjamin was the older, grumpier one and very pessimistic. “It’s not as if the company gives a shit.”

  “Well, considering I already told Global that I found one vein of platinum that looked very possible,” she said calmly, “I highly doubt that.”

  “Well, the chances are they had your GPS at the same time that they lost track of us,” Benjamin said. “All they’ll do is keep that for future reference. Not to save us now. Maybe to send in another team with more weapons.”

  “More weapons?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I had a handgun with me, and they took it.”

  “I did too,” Andy said.

  She nodded. “Of course. Enough predators are out here of the four-legged variety to justify any number of weapons. But, to kill the guerrillas, that won’t be wise.”

  “We didn’t realize they were in this area,” Andy said. “We did as much research as we could, but we certainly weren’t planning to do them any harm.”

  “No, but you came to Colombia,” Benjamin said. “You might as well be prepared to come up against guerrillas.”

  “How far off the coast are we, do you think?” Manila asked everyone.

  “Maybe twenty miles, twenty-five miles,” Andy said. “Why?”

  She shrugged. “That’ll be our easiest way out of here.”

  He snorted. “No way. That’s not just twenty-something miles but that’s miles of the Colombian jungle. More snakes and venomous animals are in this part of the world than anywhere.”

  “Sure,” she said, “but we have a scheduled pickup in just four days.”

  “Do you think that will happen?”

  “We were supposed to return the other direction,” she said, “to make our rendezvous. I highly doubt we’ll get there.”

  “So what good will the coast do?”

  “It’ll only do us any good if we can get some help there,” she said, “but it’s at least a decent option to try.”

  “Well, that won’t happen,” Benjamin said. “You know, no one is coming.”

  “They will,” she said. “For that reason alone, we need to make sure that we help the guerrillas in whatever way they think is necessary.”

  “And that won’t end well either,” Benjamin said. “Have you forgotten who is the white woman here?”

  She stiffened at that. “I’ve forgotten nothing,” she said. “I might be worth getting a ransom paid.”

  “True,” Andy said with a
smile. “Have you told the guerrillas that?”

  “No, not yet,” she said. “But they’re not stupid. They’re dealing with the drug cartels in this part of the world, so those might be the groups who are more interested in keeping me, just because I’m worth money.”

  “Keeping you alive,” Benjamin said with a snort. “Who gives a shit about the rest of us, right?”

  “I’m not even getting into that discussion with you,” she said in an exhausted voice. “Did anybody consider the fact that maybe the guides were in on this?”

  Silence came from the other two.

  She nodded. “I was thinking the older man was part of it. It sucks, but it makes sense.”

  “Well, it makes sense that everybody here is corrupt,” Andy said. “But you’re right. He’s the one who seemed to be always a little bit off to the side, as if waiting to be taken out.”

  “Right,” she said, “and I don’t know what happened to the younger one.”

  “Who knows?” Benjamin said, flopping flat on his back. “I wonder how long they plan on keeping us here.”

  “Until they figure out what to do with us is my guess,” she said quietly. “I don’t know how long that’ll be, but I highly doubt it’ll be anytime soon.”

  Benjamin stared up at the tent roof and said, “And will they feed us, or will they have us suffer a little bit?”

  “You could always try to stay positive,” she said gently.

  He shook his head. “I’m a realist. You can be the funny optimist.”

  She snorted. “I’m a geologist. We find a needle in a haystack, and you can go an entire lifetime without finding anything.”

  “But you did find something, didn’t you?” Andy asked eagerly.

  She smiled at him. “Yes, I think I did. But I know more is around here. If I could get to wherever that rock outcropping is that the woman talked about, that would be huge.” She pulled out her maps and laid them on the ground, then studied them. “So, based on where we’re at here”—she took a pencil and put a small X—“that’s the next-best location. And, if we can’t get there, Global has a location to check out in the future.”

  Andy leaned over and nodded. They pulled out their satellite images, and he said, “I think that’s the peak up on the back side of the tent here.”

  She studied that, nodded and circled it lightly. “So, based on that, and where the woman was standing …” She immediately lined herself up, looking at the photo, and then put a pointer in the direction the woman had indicated.

  Andy turned the photo ever-so-slightly to line up and said, “So she’s talking about anywhere in this direction. A couple miles or something, I think.”

  “Yes,” she said, “so that’s possible.”

  “Maybe,” he nodded, “but it doesn’t exactly match up to the terrain we were looking for.”

  “And that’s the problem with platinum,” she said. “Actually it’s the problem with any rocks. You’d think you’re in the best-guess location for its natural geography, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes we find something that makes no sense. Most of the time it works the way we think it does, but then there’s that one odd time where it’ll be something that you didn’t recognize, and it’ll be more underground than aboveground.”

  He nodded. “But still, what’s the answer?”

  She laughed. “The answer is easy. We need to return to the field.”

  Chapter 3

  Manila meant it when she said that they needed to return, but it wouldn’t happen this trip. She also meant it when she said somebody would surely come. She wanted to finish her job here, but that was looking impossible now. She turned to look back at the two men. “How many guerrillas do you think were out there?”

  She deliberately kept her voice low. She didn’t want anybody else listening in if possible, but chances were that somebody was parked right outside their tent. She could see long-enough shadows along three sides that confirmed nobody was terribly close, but she couldn’t tell if someone was sitting out front. Then again, the guerrillas were also probably confident that nobody could escape. Everyone knew how dangerous this area was. Her two team members looked at each other and frowned.

  “Eight?” Andy said, his voice equally soft.

  She looked at Benjamin. “You?”

  He held up his hand as he started counting the ones he could remember. Then he shrugged and said, “Eight or nine.” He looked around. “Doesn’t mean another couple dozen aren’t close by though.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m wondering if this is an offshoot or like a warning party or if this is just one of the groups checking out the lay of the land or if somebody specifically told them that we were here, so they came with a small party to take us.”

  “Anybody’s guess,” Benjamin said as he stretched out on the ground. “What I do know is, if they plan to march us through the jungle, we need rest.”

  She thought about it and nodded. “I agree. Easier said than done though. We also haven’t eaten much.”

  “No,” Andy said, “and I could use food.”

  “You probably won’t get anything for quite a while,” Benjamin said. “So you might as well just give up on that concept.”

  Andy looked at her, and she shrugged and said, “I don’t know about that, but, if they want us alive, they’ll feed us. And, if they want us dead, why would they have kept us alive so far?”

  “Because they’ve gone back to their bosses to figure out what to do?” Andy guessed.

  She nodded. “I agree. Which means we should be okay until at least tomorrow,” she said cheerfully. She shuffled to the edge of the tent beside her maps. “You guys sleep. I’ll study these a bit.”

  Benjamin snorted. “Yeah, well, you do that. Waste of time though.”

  Andy laid down beside her. “Do you really think we’ll find anything here?”

  “It’s not that easy to tell,” she said, thoughtfully tapping the map. “Obviously, if the guerrillas would give us free rein to walk around, it would be a whole lot easier to do our job. But, if they won’t let us, then hopefully they’ll let us go, and we can return to Global, and they can deal with it themselves.”

  “And deal how though?” Andy asked. “Send out a bigger party?”

  She shrugged. “Honestly, there isn’t an easy answer. If this whole area is swarming with guerrillas who don’t want us on the land, then that’s a problem. If they wanted something that Global can give them to grant us free passage through here, that’s a different story. But mining in a state like this will be a problem too.”

  “Did you mean that about all the gold mines?” Andy asked.

  “You know about that,” she said. “The gold mining here is incredibly criminal. But it still only accounts for less than one point five percent of the gold pulled out of the world. So a lot of people want to keep the gold mining to themselves. I’m not looking for gold, and that could be part of the issue here. They might not believe me.”

  “And, if you are looking for gold, why do they care?”

  “Some people are in favor of mining, particularly if they’re getting the money. Those against it are losing something. Either losing out on the money, land, freedom and so on. I’m not for any of it because the illegal mining activity is done in such a way that it’s damaging the ground around it, and more care could be taken with the byproducts,” she said calmly. “That’s the part that I deal with, but you can bet nobody’s listening to me.”

  “Because too much money is being made, right?” Andy said.

  She smiled. As a university student, he was a brainiac but lacking any real-world experience. This was his first trip out, although he had done a couple trips into the northern BC area for uranium. Then she had too, but looking for platinum was a whole different story. And it wasn’t an easy mineral to find.

  Some people always wanted to stop you from doing what you wanted to do, and always a lot of people wanted to make sure they got in on whatever it was yo
u were doing. Commerce was the backbone of any society. She just wished that she was anywhere but here right now. And really she wished that she had a chance to check out the rock cropping that the woman had mentioned.

  Manila had been here for days with no luck finding anything. It wasn’t all that unusual, but, given their starting position, they thought that this area would hold pretty decent odds of finding platinum. And they had lots of rock samples, but nothing that looked terribly promising—except for the one site. Still, she wasn’t expecting that site to be a motherlode but more an indication that this area held promise.

  She had planned to be here for ten days, and they’d spent six so far. But, with the tour guides gone and them now prisoners of the guerrillas, she knew that her geological trip would get cut short. Yet her stay in Colombia may be extended.

  She hoped her faith in Global wasn’t misplaced and that someone was coming to rescue them. The last thing she wanted was for her aging mother to have to deal with this loss too. The loss of her father not too long ago and her sister when she was much younger had left just the two of them now. This wasn’t the way Manila wanted to go out. She wanted to see so much more of the world, and she wanted to do so much more. She sent out a silent cry in the night. If somebody’s out there and listening, please come help.

  The night drop had been successful, a textbook drop as far as Ryker was concerned, a landing though, that had been a bit of a bitch. No clear landing spot was always a problem, so, with only a thin strip of relatively open space available, yet surrounded by thick forests of trees, he knew it would be touch-and-go. He’d done his best, but, of course, his chute had hung up high above him. He quickly cut his ties and his harness and then slowly lowered himself to the ground. His comm connected him to Miles, and Ryker had already heard his friend fluently swearing as he came down in the trees too.

  Ryker muffled his laughter and whispered, “I’m down.”

  “Well, I will be too. Give me a moment,” Miles snapped. “I’m about twelve feet off the ground though.”