“Not in a while.”
“There’s a formula for doing it. I was thinking about it last night. You figure out the volume by width times length times depth, then divide by the approximate volume of a jelly bean. I’m just winging it here, but if the average volume of a human body is, say, three cubic feet, it means that roughly three hundred to four hundred thousand people could fit in that thing. In other words, it’s almost big enough for half the population of Mungaza.”
She pumped her foot on the brake and looked at him. “So, what, do you think there’s another pit somewhere?”
“Probably not. Better than half the population here lives in shanty towns. I don’t think they’d bother to separate the bodies out from the debris. I think more likely they’d just bulldoze those things down. Sweep them away. Maybe start fires with them.”
“Shit.”
They were back in the edges of the city, both of them absorbed in private thoughts. Nadra pulled the car to a stop on a street of single-story shops, put it in park.
“What are you doing?” Charlie said.
“Parking.”
“Is that what Chaplin said to do?”
She looked at her watch and frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“What if you were to park and then walk away? What would happen to the keys?”
“I’m supposed to take them,” she said. “But, I mean, crap.” He saw the hint of a smile in her eyes. “Unless I happen to leave them.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Nadra got out and began to walk away. Charlie climbed across to the driver’s side. Shifted it out of park and did a U-turn. Then he began to drive back the way they had come, out toward the copper mine. He wanted to get a closer look.
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
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.”
