Amazon Burning (A James Acton Thriller, #10) (29 page)

And of
course it was used to export their precious product.

“We were
lucky. I had no idea who the other two were until that Mitchell guy started
yelling at Turnbull. Once I heard that I realized the story had spread and
they’d need to be taken in.”

“Very
wise thinking on your part.” Chen rarely paid out compliments, especially to
non-Chinese, but Henderson had proven capable, and useful. He didn’t seem bound
by the usual morals that he encountered in Westerners. That wasn’t to say his
people didn’t have morals, it was merely that they thought of life differently.
In the West, it was a moral dilemma on whether or not to sacrifice one life to
save others, or to raze an old neighborhood to make way for the new.

In China,
you sacrificed for the greater good. If someone should need to die to save
others, it was done. It was insanity to leave someone with Ebola for example
alive to infect others, when their immediate execution and disposal could save
potentially hundreds of lives. It was also insanity to hold up progress for the
sake of preserving the old. The ancient? Yes, he agreed the past should be
preserved whenever possible, but China hadn’t hesitated to flood entire ancient
cities when building dams, because it was for the greater good.

And in
the United States? Where progress was held up because some group didn’t want a
century old building destroyed to build a new skyscraper? It was laughable. On
nearly every street in China you could find something older than the entire
United States.

It was
one of the many ways China prospered while the West buried itself in paperwork.
The Keystone pipeline? It would have already been built. To fail to see the
benefit to the United States was to be blind. China had its environmentalists,
but fortunately they had no platform to speak from, so their impact was
negligible. And their funding, usually from the West, quite often had them
vilified by the public.

“What
are you planning on doing with them?” asked Henderson.

“We’ll
treat the environmentalists as the useful idiots they are. Ransom them as if
they were captured by some rebels, then kill them, dumping their bodies
somewhere they can be found. No one will think they have any connection to us.”

Environmentalists!
If only Americans knew where their funding came from, they might not be so
willing to listen so trustingly.

With
countries like Saudi Arabia pouring tens of millions of dollars into the
campaigns against Keystone and other projects that might give the United States
its energy independence from the oil Sheiks of Saudi Arabia and the other
eleven OPEC countries—none of which are considered true democracies—it was no
wonder the debate had been muddied. Pipelines were the safest method of
transport for oil—that had been proven over the past century without a doubt.
Rail was far more dangerous, and truck even more so. To try and use trains and
trucks to transport oil would waste an incredible amount of fuel, contributing
to the very greenhouse gases that the environmentalists claimed to be against, and
it would kill thousands over time if all pipelines were to be replaced.

So the
alternative proposed by the truly nutty? Just don’t use oil. Chen and his
friends always had a good chuckle while watching CNN or the other Western broadcasters
when they interviewed the truly delusional. It was even more entertaining to
see that the press and the public were actually being swayed by these insane
messages. Chen had no problem with America shutting off the taps from the
Canadian Oil Sands. It meant more oil for China. China would continue to grow,
and as it did, it would need more and more of the world’s oil.

And if
America preferred to buy its oil from Islamic states like Saudi Arabia and
Iran, along with near-communist states like Venezuela, then so be it. It showed
the hypocrisy of the entire environmentalist movement in his opinion. Clearly
women were of no importance to them since these countries for the most part
treated their women as second class citizens, and some like Saudi Arabia, like
mere chattel. He found it quite humorous to see women’s groups protesting the
“tar sands” as they intentionally mislabeled it, while remaining silent on the
atrocities committed against the women of the countries they seemed to prefer
to buy oil from.

When was
the last time a Canadian woman was stoned to death for kissing the man she
loved? Or beheaded for witchcraft?

He shook
his head.

Thank
the ancestors I’m Chinese!

China
would never be handicapped by the idea that everyone’s opinion mattered. In
China it was recognized that some people truly were stupid, and that their
opinions weren’t valuable. In the United States they could get elected. Like
the Congressman who wasted everyone’s time grilling an Admiral because the
Congressman, elected to help lead his country, was concerned that stationing
eight-thousand extra Marines on Guam might cause the island to tip over and
capsize. In China he would have been ‘disappeared’, in the United States he was
allowed to try and suggest later it was humor rather than idiocy.

The same
man opposed Keystone.

Scary.

Chen
resumed walking along the perimeter, his heart, beating a little quicker than
it should, thoughts of the stupidity of others and the ability of his country
to capitalize on it like no other, usually causing it to do so.

“And the
other two? The husband and wife?”

“We’ll
hold them until we clean up the rest of this mess, then dispose of them with
the bodies of their compatriots. Again make it look like rebels.” Chen smiled.
“The Amazon is a dangerous place, people die all the time.”

“It
might not be so easy this time, though.”

Chen’s
eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“I just
found out before we arrived who this Professor Palmer is.”

Chen
stopped, turning to face Henderson. “She is a university professor, from
London, England, is she not? That is what your report said.”

“Yes,
but I now have additional information.”

Chen
frowned. “You mean you sent me an incomplete report?”

Henderson
gulped. “Well, no, I mean, yes, but I thought you would want at least the
preliminaries so you could make a decision on what to do. The financial
information hadn’t come in yet, and I assumed you wouldn’t want to delay my
report for information on a university professor’s credit report.”

“Yet you
bring it up now.”

Henderson
reached into his satchel, pulling out a folder. Chen waved it off. “Tell me
what you missed in your initial report.”

Henderson
edged himself away from the precipice only feet away. “It turns out she is
worth millions. Hundreds of millions.”

Chen
felt his chest tighten. “This changes everything.”

“Yes.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to eliminate them?”

He
prided himself on controlling his anger, and he did so even now as his arm
darted out, his knuckles drilling into Henderson’s esophagus, collapsing his
windpipe. As Henderson doubled over, gasping for breath, Chen circled behind
him, then pushed him over the edge of the pit with a single shove of his foot.

The
collapsed windpipe failed to produce any sound as another idiot fell to his
death, unable to fail him again.

Chen
turned as footfalls quickly approached. It was one of his Venezuelan men, one
who he was assured could be trusted.

“Sir,
I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, keeping a noticeable distance from the edge.

“What is
it?”

“It’s the
Lil’ Jag, sir, she broken again.”

Chen
shook his head. One of their trucks, an old workhorse that was used to pull the
runway camouflage into place was constantly breaking down. He had requested a
replacement from Beijing but one had yet to arrive. It had proven so
unreliable, the men had taken to calling it ‘The Lil’ Jag’, the TOYOTA
emblazoned on the tailgate painted over with ‘JAGUAR’. He sighed. “Do it by
hand.”

“Yes,
sir, we already are, I just thought you would want to know why we were
delayed.”

Chen
smiled slightly. “A wise decision. Now go see if you can get that piece of
Japanese garbage working for tomorrow’s departure.”

“Yes,
sir!”

He
watched the young man sprint away from him, casting a terrified look down the
pit. Chen was pleased the execution had been witnessed by at least someone. It
meant the entire camp would know before the morning, and discipline would be
all the more the order of the new day.

TikTik sat huddled on some sort of seat. It felt quite soft to the
touch, but the physical comfort it provided did little to make up for the
mental torture she was under. She and Tuk’s mother sat side-by-side, holding
each other as they sat inside the belly of this beast that would carry them to
the surface. She had never seen anything like it, and couldn’t comprehend what
it might be. When they had arrived earlier in the day at whatever hell this
was, it had been the most terrifying experience of her life. No one spoke their
language, no one could explain what was happening, and when they were forced
inside the beast, several of the men fought back, but were beaten until they
bled, then tossed aboard.

No one
had fought them getting on for the journey back to the top.

They had
survived being transported in the beast, its angry growl and stench almost
overwhelming, but it proved to be nothing to the pain and torture that awaited
them at the bottom.

Never
had she worked so hard in her life.

They had
moved, carried, pushed, pulled, more stone and other odd contraptions than she
had thought possible, and she now ached and bled all over.

And
poor Mother!

Tuk’s
mother slowly sobbed beside her, her body nearly broken, she far too old for
the demands being placed on it.

And her
heart was broken. No one had seen Tuk since the attack. In fact, TikTik was
certain he hadn’t returned since she had caught him staring at her, but others
said after she had awoken that they had heard him scream and someone had thrown
a spear at one of the Panther People.

It had bounced
off.

Many
assumed Tuk was weak, but she didn’t. She had seen him lift things that any man
would find challenging, and the fact that he had thrown the spear and it had
hit its target proved to her that he might very well be an able hunter but
lacked the confidence due to his failure at the skill when he was a boy.

She had
been surprised how all day, while toiling, her thoughts had been dominated not
by the death of her future mate Bruk, but by the missing Tuk. She couldn’t stop
worrying about him, wondering if he had survived, the Panther People sent after
him returning empty handed according to Mother.

From
what she had learned after waking during their forced march to this monstrous
scar on the Mother’s land, only Bruk had died. Other than Tuk, everyone was
alive and uninjured, for which she thanked the Mother. As they had travelled
they had all agreed that these strange creatures, wearing curious furs of black
from head to toe, must be the fabled Panther People. She had heard the stories
of course as a child, but never really paid them much mind when she got older,
realizing that the bedtime stories were meant to scare children into obeying
the laws laid out by their parents, the elders, and the Mother.

But now
that they had proven true, it made her wonder about some of the other
terrifying stories from her youth.
Could they be true? Could they all be
true?
She simply couldn’t believe it.

Yet here
she sat, in the belly of a beast of transport, having seen massive beasts deep
in the pit the height of several men, pushing stone and dirt around with ease,
a man at the controls, a man who looked similar to her—not like these Panther
People.

But
these men who worked the mine with them weren’t beaten, weren’t yelled at. They
were treated with respect, and often were the ones doing the beating and the
yelling. She wondered what made them different from her except for their
appearance and the odd skins they wore.

What
makes them better than us?

The
beast shuddered to a stop at the top of the hole, it gently growling as
everyone was herded off and led into the darkness.

What
more can they possibly do to us?

She
trembled at what her imagination produced and instead focused on Tuk and her
prayers that he was alive and safe, somewhere far from the horror they all now
found themselves in.

Barasana Village on the Rio Negro, Northern Amazon, Brazil

Tuk looked to the girl named Kinti, his eyes questioning, hers
filled with fear as she clung to the large spirit. She was clearly not afraid
of him, and in fact he had seen many Spirit People in their village. It made
him wonder if this village was blessed somehow by the Mother, or if they were
merely friends.