Dead in the Water

DEAD

in the

WATER

Brian Woolland

First p
ublished in book format:

2010 by YouWriteOn Publishing

Copyright

Brian Woolland

Digital edition 2011

Copyright

Brian Woolland

First Edition

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library C.I.P.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

With thanks to

John Airs

John Comino-James
Pete Effamy

Bryan Robinson

Stevie Simkin

Rob Smith

and all those who have offered advice and assistance at various stages in the writing of this book

But above all to my wife, Hilary Garrett

Wednesday

the first week of May

A sudden screeching rasps through the tree tops. Rachel looks up from her perch in the precarious tree hide, hoping to catch a glimpse of green-wing macaws, but the trees dissolve into a blanket of dismal grey. The cloudbase has been no more than fifty metres above ground all day. Somewhere in the invisible canopy, the birds are shrieking wildly, but she can see nothing of them.

To pass idle moments she sometimes pretends to be a wildlife camera operator, looking out for rare birdlife or studying the secret love life of near extinct tree frogs. But she doesn’t have the patience. It’s human intruders she’s supposed to be filming. The villagers call it a watch, but she’s more of a listening ear, alert for mechanical sounds beneath the restless cacophony of forest life. When the bully boys come again, it’ll be by jeep.

She’s not yet seen them herself, but she’s heard the stories. They come roaring into the village, loosing off rounds of gunfire into the air, smashing cooking pots, killing dogs, terrifying children. Then, as quickly as they arrive, they disappear back into the forest. The intimidation seems impossible to stop – the loggers, the ranchers, the gold prospectors and their enforcers are as much part of the undergrowth of the forest as the army ants. The
One World
organisation is supposed to be offering support with modern technology: video cameras, satphones and high speed internet connections. Gather enough evidence, and maybe somebody in government can be persuaded to set up proper enforcement. In her gloomier moments, however, she wonders whether they can make the slightest difference. Several villages have already abandoned their settlements.

She’d thought she was well travelled, imagined she was well prepared. But nothing out here is as she expected. She knew about the heat and the humidity, of course, but not this absence of sun and shadows. There are times when she feels it pressing on her physically. She’s frightened. And she doesn’t know why. She only knows it’s not the obvious dangers of the forest: the snakes, the scorpions, the spiders, the biting insects. They keep you wary and alert, but this stifled fluttering dread, this is something else.

In the past she’s always found it easy to talk, to open up about her feelings. But this she has mentioned to nobody: not to Mum – who’d worry; not to Dad – who set the whole thing up; and certainly not to Stephen, her younger brother – he’d just laugh, tell her she was crazy for going to Venezuela in the first place.

In those idle moments when there’s time to dream, she fantasises about talking to Jeremy Peters, Dad’s friend in Caracas, the guy with all the local contacts. But what would she say?

When it’s good, I love it. The people, the laughter, the children. Today I made a flower necklace with a little girl. I learnt how to say, ‘You look so pretty’. And she tried to say my name but it came out Wayshah. Trouble is…

And Jeremy nods wisely and squeezes her hand

Trouble is … when it’s not good … I never thought I could be so lonely. And …

Jeremy tells her it’s OK, and he gives her one of his big safe hugs.

Except that she could never say any of that to Jeremy because she has a horrible feeling that he fancies her.

She wipes her forehead and, to distract herself, zooms the video camera in on kids playing football in the clearing below, then pans round to Pablo, sitting on a wooden stump outside the hut where he’s billeted. He picks his nose, rubs the back of his hand on chin stubble, yawns; then stands up, stretches, scratches his balls and wanders slowly back into the hut. Rachel smiles as she imagines the wild laughter later tonight as that little sequence gets replayed several times on the portable TV in the large communal hut. The whole village gathers to watch these screenings. The anthropology student in her is slightly worried by it – they are here, after all, to support the community, not to interfere in its way of life by dangling the temptations of Western culture. But the people of the village love these ‘home-movies’ and not showing them would imply secrecy and exploitation. She makes a wry note to herself that when she gets back to England, she must explore this little conundrum in her PhD. Whether she’ll ever own up to the kick she gets from seeing Pablo humiliated is a different matter.
Pay back, Pablo.
Culturally, of course, the behaviour of a predatory Latin American male in its natural habitat could be the subject of a thesis in its own right. Personally, he’s made her life hell. Bastard.

“
Raq – hel.” A shout from below interrupts her daydreams. The rope ladder twitching. Half a minute later José’s face appears. Thank God for that. José, not Pablo. He rests his chin on the wooden platform. “I come to take over your place.”

She forces a smile; and her mood begins to lift. She could climb down now, but she enjoys José’s company and is in no hurry to go back to the big village hut, which would be filled with smoke and noisy chatter. There’s hardly room for the two of them. The tree house her dad made for her as a kid was bigger and sturdier than this. The other nearby hide has walls and a roof. But this, the one they call base camp, is nothing more than a raft of hardwood planks the size of a small garden shed, built around the trunk of the tree, with two climbers’ ropes strung around the edges as a token safety measure.

“
Stay there, Raqhel. Don’t move.” He squeezes through the ropes, a wiry featherweight wrestler climbing back into the ring, and she lifts her hands in a gesture of ‘Who am I to argue?’

“
How you sit, Raqhel,” he says. “Like Pablo’s cooking is Organised Confusion. With you, the way you watch is Alert Relaxation.
La Pantera
. Silent, hiding in the trees.” He laughs. She grins and wrinkles her nose in embarrassment. Alert Relaxation is not the way she feels.

“
José, alright if I ring my dad?”

“
If you can get a signal through the trees. Is better in the clearing.”

She has her own satphone. Her mum bought it for her just before she came out to Venezuela – along with every conceivable industrial strength insect repellent: sprays, oils, wrist bands, creams, ankle bands, pills. ‘Don’t fuss,’ said Rachel at the time. ‘I’ll be OK.’ But she rings Mum twice a week, and every
time they talk, she thanks her for fussing; and she’s using insect repellent faster than a beach crazy albino slapping on the Factor 40. She hasn’t spoken to Dad for more than a week. He’s usually working late, but now’s probably a good time – it’ll be far too noisy once she gets back inside the hut.

His phone rings, but he doesn’t answer. Part of her is glad. It’s easier to play the Happy Bunny in a cheery message than in conversation.

“
Hi Dad. Me. Rache. I’m half way up a tree with a crazy man called José. He’s come to rescue me from terminal boredom. Weather’s dreadful. I haven’t got any clean clothes. And I’m having a brilliant time. Tell you all about it later. Call me if you can. Don’t know what time it is with you but here it’s about five o’clock. So any time in the next four hours. I know, early nights, or what. Lots of love to Mum. Byeee.”

“
A crazy man?” says José, grinning.

“
A little bit crazy. Crazy’s good.” She feels easy with José, safe, although she daren’t say anything to him about her anxieties, nor make a fuss about Pablo’s constant low level harassment. José makes her laugh. And he has a daughter of his own in Caracas, about to leave school. He’s shown Rachel photographs, made her promise she’ll come and stay with his family when they finish their stint in the forest.

“
You should go,
Pantera.
You been here many hours.”

“
I like it up here,” she says.

“
It’s you who is crazy. Go on,” he says. “Make your other call.”

“
What other call?”

“
Jeremy. Your special friend. Your Mr. Peters.”

“
He is not my special friend, José. And he’s not MY Mr Peters. And I don’t want to call him,” she says. And they both know her denial is too quick and too indignant. She will ring him later; not when José gives her permission, and not when anyone else is around to listen in on the call.

She’s about to say something about Jeremy when she stops herself. She glances at José. He’s heard it too. There’s an unfamiliar sound, a kind of rumbling noise. Neither of them speak. The phone goes into her pocket and she switches the video camera back on and connects it to the
One World
satlink. José nods approvingly.

“
What is it?” she whispers.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

They wait. Sound in the forest is very deceptive. Could be a mile away, or could be twenty miles. Briefly it fades, then surges back. Machinery of some kind. And now something else. A thumping in the air.

“
Helicopter,” says José.

“
Greenpeace
?”

“
Civilians can’t land in this weather.”

“
What then?”

“
Must be the military.”

“
What do they want?”

José shrugs. “Who knows. It is crazy times. Maybe they come to evacuate us. Who knows?”

A searchlight beams through the misty darkness from above, the thumping of rotors now so close that she can feel in her chest the rhythmic compression of air. Leaves, twigs, small branches are showering down, the wooden platform shaking in the machine-made hurricane.

Instinct forces Rachel down on her belly, grabbing hold of the tree trunk. She’s hoping that José won’t think her pathetic. But José is already making his way out through the ropes. When Rachel makes to follow him, he shouts, “Stay here. Get everything on the video.” He’s out of sight and down the ladder.

With the camera recording, she clambers back to her feet, steadying herself on the tree as if it were the mast of a raft tossed loose in a storm.

The helicopter appears immediately above the clearing, mist churning in vortices round the rotor blades, its searchlight illuminating the chaos below: leaves and sticks, clothes, cooking pots, flying in every direction.

The villagers have all taken shelter from the savage wind. The only living creatures in the clearing are a wiry brown dog tethered outside the largest of the village huts and a couple of tame capuchins chained to a stake nearby, their lips pulled back in grotesque parody of circus clowns.

The moment that the helicopter touches down, four men jump to the ground, as if entering a
combat zone. They’re wearing camouflage battle fatigues, full face masks, protective goggles. And machine guns. What the hell kind of resistance can they possibly be expecting? The only weapons in the village are arrows, spears and the hand guns carried by José and Pablo.