hunting for fresh meat for their
Aimee joined Alfraedo Desouza, the mining manager, and Francisco, for a satellite link-up with the Paraguayan government officials who had recommended the shutdown. They needed to discuss the impact of the delays and the potential risks of restarting the rigs.
The city bureaucrats were sympathetic at first, acknowledging that the mining company was spending millions of dollars on ‘sit-down money’, but it soon became clear that they had little intention of cooperating. They were co-funders of the venture and subject to public scrutiny, they said; they felt their hands were tied. At least until they had proof that their investment was safe and the bandits were out of the area.
Aimee could understand their position, but she was also bored and homesick. The sooner she could get a sample of deep rock and help the engineers clean up and compress their gas, the sooner she’d be going home. Besides, with a bunch of Green Berets patrolling the jungle, she figured they were safe. She decided to create a little political competitive tension over the satellite link … just to move things along.
‘What concerns me is that your neighbouring states know of your gas discovery,’ she said with a sigh. ‘The stratigraphic imaging of the vast underground chamber showed it resided completely on Paraguayan territory. However, its northern-most chamber is very close to the Bolivian border.’ She let the information hang for a moment in the air. ‘Gentlemen, are you aware of the advancements in directional slant drilling? An amazing technique — it is now possible to drill for many miles at angles of up to ninety degrees. Be a real shame if you found your energy source of the future was being bled away from across the border while we sat on our hands down here.’
She grinned at Francisco, who nodded and raised his silver eyebrows at her. There was a muffled discussion on the other end of the phone, then Alfraedo cleared his throat.
‘
He sat back and folded his hands across his enormous belly. The unanimous decision to restart drilling was made within another three minutes.
Aimee pulled on a pair of khaki pants, still stiff with traces of red mud up to the thighs, and tucked a grey T- shirt into them. Thick socks and damp work boots were next, the boots lacing over the pants and halfway up her calves to seal her off from anything that decided to hitch a ride. Last to go on was a belt with a black holster. Their small security contingent had machetes for the jungle, but only Alfraedo, Francisco and Aimee had sidearms. Aimee hoped Alfraedo never needed to reach for his in a hurry as it was almost fully obscured by the paunch that hung over it. For that matter she hoped he never had to reach for
They set off just after eight in the morning, along a walking track the men had cleared through the jungle. Once outside the camp perimeter, Aimee was reminded why they didn’t bother bringing vehicles — the wetter it got, the deeper the mud. Eventually the trucks would sink to a point where they would need to be dug out. Best just to use leg power.
The small army of twenty riggers, half a dozen security men, manager, supervisors and Francisco and Aimee plodded along without speaking. The jungle was waking around them and the squelch of their footsteps seemed unnaturally loud in the dark green tunnel. As the sun rose, it lifted the moisture from every tree, bush and blade of grass, forming a thick, hot blanket that resettled over the jungle for the rest of the day. Aimee was breathing heavily and aching from knee to groin — the thick, viscous mud fought to steal their boots with every step. A single mile had never felt so draining, and when the rig superstructure came into view she almost whooped with delight.
The framework of the rig had been dropped into place by giant helicopters and pieced together on the ground. It stood like the skeleton of a blue and white ship in a sea of red mud, its hundred-foot mast the core of a metal framework over a central pipe that ended in a conventional rotary drill, that with all its spikes and knobs, it looked like a colossal insect’s feeding apparatus, ready to puncture the earth’s skin and suck out its blood.
Aimee sighed with relief as she stepped up out of the mud. She scraped what felt like pounds of the stuff from her boots against the steel grid platform that extended all around the machinery, then stamped her feet and stretched her back.
While the riggers set about checking the equipment in preparation for restarting the drilling, Alfraedo ordered the security team to make a sweep of the surrounding jungle — just to be sure there were no bandits waiting to place a bullet between someone’s shoulderblades. Aimee could tell by his relaxed manner that he wasn’t expecting any trouble; after all, it’d been quiet for days now.
With a whine of the generators and a deep thump, the machinery restarted and the drill began its descent once again. Due to the depth at which they were drilling and the dense matrix they were encountering, speed of penetration had slowed to around a dozen feet per day. At the time they had been ordered to stop drilling, they were already a mile down and not far from their target depth. Their seismography readings had shown they were within a few dozen feet of the gas chamber. Unless they encountered any deep-mass obstruction, they should be into the gas pocket by the early evening. Once there, they would withdraw the penetration drill tip and replace it with a drill head dotted with unlockable perforations that would enable the gas to flow into the pipe.
Alfraedo had promised that the final penetration drill bit was to be brought to Aimee, untouched and uncontaminated, before the gas began to fully flow. She needed a sample of the rock from the inner skin of the chamber, away from its centre, or floor, where the more mature and heavier gases would have settled over the millennia. She knew that if she were to find a viable sample of living microorganisms, it would be in the thin crust at the roof of the cavern where, theoretically, methanogenesis would have last occurred. Or, if she was really lucky, was still occurring.
Aimee had set up her equipment under a sheet of canvas stretched between metal poles at the outer edge of the rig. A table and single chair completed her South American office. Soon, after weeks of advising, she would finally be hands-on. First, she would need to ascertain how much gas scrubbing was required to bring the natural product up to international standards, and then she would need to supervise the compaction work. The gas had to be compressed 600 times to a liquefied state for shipping — a process that was extremely dangerous, but necessary to get any sort of economy on cost of transportation.
‘I’ve got something for you, Dr Weir,’ said Francisco Herrera.
She hadn’t noticed him approaching and jumped at the sound of his voice. He bowed slightly and Aimee wondered how he managed to stay so spotless. She only had to walk twenty feet outside her door to have red mud splattered up to her knees and perspiration stains like a football player. She looked down: his boots were only slightly reddened by the mud; and his crisp white shirt was as dry as if he had been on a gentle stroll through a Boston park in springtime. Aimee, on the other hand, felt and looked a wreck.
From behind his back Francisco produced a cream-coloured woven fedora with dangling seedpods strung around its brim. He placed it on her head and touched the pods so they swung back and forth, creating a nearly impenetrable barrier for the insect hordes.
‘I hear it works for the Australians,’ he said, giving her a smile that wrinkled his perfect little silver moustache.
Aimee laughed. ‘I love it, and thank you.’
The elderly doctor, from the tiny town of Rosario, was the only person she really spent any time with in the camp. His olive skin was an indication of his local Indian heritage, and she had enjoyed hearing the stories he told her about his people and their culture. Despite their friendship, however, he just couldn’t help being inordinately formal all the time, to the extent of refusing to call her by her first name. But rather than making him seem stuffy, it just made him more likeable.
She flopped back down onto her chair, her arms flung out at her sides and exhaled slowly. She pulled off the hat and pushed more of her stray hair back under the brim before replacing it and looking up at him.
Francisco looked at her for a moment longer and then became serious, leaning forward as if about to tell her a secret. ‘Something troubles you, Ms Weir?’
‘It’s nothing. I’m tired and homesick, and thoughts of old friends keep whirling around in my head. Aimee gave him a crooked smile.
Francisco’s eyes twinkled. ‘Hmm, something tells me this friend is a man, and not so old, yes?’
