Totally Fishy (A Miller Sisters Mystery) (36 page)

The diesel engine was so loud I could barely hear myself think. How could drivers stand it day in and day out?
How does Armand fit into this equation?
Something still didn't add up.

I watched a truck rumble past us on its way down the mountain. I wondered how long of a trip it would be to transport the ore to its final destination. They probably transported it by ship, or turned it into paper money and transported it by plane…

Plane! Holy cow, how could I have missed it? Fish are transported by plane. Paper money could be transported by plane. Fish could not go through customs, because x-rays render fish sterile. Armand was looking for an arms dealer. If the fish were transported disguising the illegal arms, the weapons wouldn't be detected because they wouldn't be x-rayed.

I grabbed my cell phone and called Armand.

"Buzz?"

"Armand, I got it figured out! I just don't have the
how
yet."

"Well spit it out for God's sake!"

I ran through my theory and he added to it. "If the ore can be extracted on-site, then couldn't they transport a higher volume of product; in this case, probably gold? I'll ask Nunez how to go about exchanging large amounts of gold into paper money, but I'd bet much of it is going to finance the purchase of the arms you're after."

Armand thought a second. "Hank probably gets a piece of the pie and therefore keeps his mouth shut. Chavez might even be behind the transportation of the fish to the phony locations."

"But, Armand, where do those dead fish and the abandoned village come into play? I can't believe it's all part of a grand plan."

"I don't know, but you'd better call Sam and Fred right now."

"You're right, See you." I hung up and dialed Sam's house.

"Hello?

"Sam, it's Buzz."

"Hi, Buzz, how is it going? Where are you?"

"Going well, and on our way up the mountain. Look, I need you to check something. Would you check the world registry for Corydoras catfish and see if Hank recently discovered a new species in Venezuela?"

"Sure, Buzz, but why? He would have said something to us had he made a new discovery, wouldn't he? Wait! Are you talking about our new little guys from the poisoned lagoon?"

"Yes I am."

"Hold on and let me fire up the computer." As she turned on her laptop I proceeded to explain my theory on speakerphone. Fred and Sam went from disbelief to skepticism, to outrage as I ticked off the circumstantial evidence against their long time friend.

"Here it is," Sam exclaimed, as she pulled up an obscure ichthyologic website. Corydoras MacRoni."

"Macaroni?" I hooted. "As in elbow macaroni? As in '
and called it Macaroni?
' As in macaroni and cheese? What was he thinking?"

Sam sighed. "I think Hank probably wanted his new fish pronounced Macrone-eye to make it sound more Latin. The "a" is probably a typo."

"You and I both know everyone will call them Macaroni. Hank will be a laughingstock."

"I agree. Now we only have to figure out what the heck he's up to."

"That's what I hope to do at the top of this mountain. How's our patient?"

"A pain in the butt."

"Good. That means he's feeling better. Got to go, I'll call you later. Could you keep puttering away at the computer and see if you can find any more recent 'discoveries' made by Hank?"

"Will do, and thanks. Bye, Buzz."

"See you later." I slapped my phone shut and stuffed it into a pocket. I pulled out a topographical map of the mountain, and pointed to where I thought we were. My companions both pointed to a spot much closer to the top. I gave them thumbs up, and they did the same back to me. The driver downshifted as the incline grew steeper and just when I became apprehensive about falling off the mountain we leveled off and drove into a large clearing at the opening of the mine.

Our driver pulled to the far left of the lot, followed by truck after truck until a rumbling diesel barrier formed across the only exit off the mountain. My companions and I scrambled down from the cab, and the rest of the small army exited the other semis. I had an assault rifle stuffed into my hands as they pushed and shoved me along with them. I hunched my shoulders and tried to look bigger as we stood shoulder to shoulder (in my case, shoulder to hip) across the front of the trucks, weapons at the ready.

One by one, the workers noticed us standing there, and one of them rushed into the trailer, probably Chavez's office. I looked for a security force around the mine, and felt a bit surprised to discover that the only men who held weapons were those patrolling the perimeter. This Chavez guy was way overconfident he wouldn't be caught.

I watched as Ramon Nunez led a group of men toward the trailer. I slipped out of line and a hand snaked out and grabbed my collar. I twisted around and freed myself-scurrying along to catch up with Nunez. I peeled off like a Blue Angel when they neared the trailer, and ran around the other side of the entrance where a crude road carved a path out of the jungle and ran along the north end of the mine.

I inched along, watching for guys with guns and large hungry reticulating snakes. My foot caught on something and I looked down. I almost gave myself a heart attack when I saw a three-inch diameter monster hovering over the toe of my boot. I almost shot the damn thing until I realized it wasn't an anaconda, but a muddy fire hose. When my blood pressure finally dropped and my breathing returned to almost normal, I took one final shaky breath and followed the fire hose.

What I found at the end of that hose put the final piece of the puzzle in place.

29

I heard it before I saw it. The sound of water cascading over a waterfall drowned out much of the noise around me. I scrambled, slipped, slid, clawed, and slithered my way up a huge mountain of mud and remembered to check for snakes before I lay on my belly watching the mining operation from above. Behind a monstrous glass enclosure, the waterfall poured over a mountain of stone. I was so confused by what I saw; I yanked out my cell phone and called Sam back.

"Buzz?"

"Yeah, Sam, it's me again. Say, how coherent is Evo? I need to talk to him."

"He's a grouchy old coot because he's refusing pain meds, and unfortunately for us, he's very coherent. Hold on."

I smiled at the affectionate tone in Sam's complaints.

"Buzz? Evo. What's up?"

"Evo, explain to me about how gold mines pollute the environment. I didn't retain all of our conversation, but you said something about acid and ores and heavy metals."

"Sure. A relatively cheap way of extracting gold from ore is called heap leaching. The crushed ore is piled up and a cyanide solution is sprayed into it. The cyanide reacts with the gold and is collected in leach beds and in overflow ponds. They re-circulate the ore and through a process 'cyanidation' the gold is extracted."

"That would make the product more pure for transport."

"And a lot less heavy."

"Evo, I'm sure I just found the source of our poison. I'm looking at a pile of rock being bombarded by what looks like water from a huge fire hoses. The water falls through the rock into a trough leading to collection ponds."

"It sounds like you hit the mother lode. You're with the cops, right?"

"Well, sort of. So cyanide is our poison? Didn't Ian find traces of more than one heavy metal in the fish and the water?"

"Yes, and that could be because when cyanide breaks down heavy metals it can form other poisons. When cyanide combines with other chemicals it can create substances which are even more toxic than the cyanide itself."

Sam yelled from the background, "Freshwater fish are especially sensitive to exposure to cyanide."

"Wow," I said. "Do you think that with the heavy rainfalls this season, those ponds overflowed and ran down hill to the village, into the water supply, and ultimately into the lagoon? That would explain why Ian couldn't find heavy metal toxins embedded in the tissues of the fish–only in their stomachs. If the fish weren't native to the area, they would have absolutely no immunity to a fouled water supply. Those dirt bags at the mine poisoned the people of the village and anything that came into contact with the water."

Evo was on a roll. "Right you are. The cyanide actually blocks the absorption of oxygen by the cells, and ultimately causes suffocation…" I listened with half an ear to Evo when I heard a round chuck into a chamber, and felt cold steel on the back of my neck.

"Uh, Evo? I think I have to go."

"…Parts per million, whereas sixty to seventy micrograms per liter of cyanide…"

The gunman pressed hard against my neck and his other hand pressed down on my shoulder. I tried to interrupt Evo. The gunman flopped me forward onto the ground and gently placed a foot between my shoulder blades.

"Uh, Evo, there's a bad guy with a big gun pointed at my head. I have to hang up now."

"But when you are talking about a contained water source like the lagoon…"

"
Evo!
I'm hanging up! No offense man, but there's a guy here who wants to shoot me!"

The man holding the gun nudged me and fired off orders, none of which I understood. He pressed his foot across my shoulders and exerted enough pressure to make it hard to breathe. I didn't have to be bilingual to know he wasn't inviting me to luncheon al fresco. He was trying to crunch-in my el-chest-o. I heard Evo still firing off statistics and ignored him.

"Two-hundred micrograms per liter would pretty much decimate anything which ingested–what did you say? Shoot you? Buzz, Buzz! Are you there?"

I puffed pretty hard, and couldn't get enough breath to answer. I remember some grunting and wheezing going on, but as the guy with the gun practically stood on me. "Evo, (
puff
) they got me. If I die, (
wheeze
) get these bastards!"

I dropped my phone without hanging up and someone booted me in the ribs and flipped me onto my back. Gasping for air, I found myself staring down the barrel of a very large rifle. Crap. I stayed perfectly still while two guys argued back and forth. My eyes were watering, but I could make out a total of three bodies–all of whom were armed and assuredly dangerous. Crap again. I was definitely in deep doo-doo. I heard the tinny voices of Evo and the girls coming from my cell phone. I didn't dare move to pick it up, but one of my captors must have heard the yelling and picked up my phone.

"Allo?"

I heard Evo on the other end and prayed he would distract these morons until I got a head start. The guy on the phone laughed and gave the phone to one of the others. Already on speaker, they carried on a four-way conversation with Evo. I started to squirm away, but the only way to go was downhill. I didn't want to risk falling into the leach pond, so I scooted back the way I came. Head first, I inched my way over the crest and began to slither down the hill.

One of the men threw back his head to laugh at something Evo said and happened to look to where I should have been lying on the ground. He spun around and looked around the immediate area and down toward the cyanide pond. I tried to squirm faster about the time the man spotted me sliding through the mud backward on my way down the opposite side of the hill. He shouted and shoved the others. I thought I'd better exit fast, stage left.

I flipped over onto my stomach and gave a mighty shove with my feet. I hit a slick spot and surged forward. Water from the leaking fire hose slicked the hill like an old Slip-n-Slide. I began picking up speed as the guys at the top dropped my cell phone and fumbled for their weapons. I positively flew down that hill. Paddling with my hands, I shot like greased lightning over a hump and caught some good air before I hit ground and scooped up a mouth full of mud. I heard gunfire, but felt nothing as I accelerated to warp speed. I swiped at my eyes and realized my new buddies from the plane and truck ride were firing on the guys at the top of the hill who were firing on me.

The bottom of the hill rushed up at me and I remember thinking that Dad always joked that a fall off a cliff wouldn't kill you, it was the stop at the
end
of the fall. I saw my doom approaching at breakneck speed and wondered fleetingly if death by anaconda would have been less painful than death by mudslide. Over my screams I heard a colossal
boom
and wondered briefly if I'd broken the sound barrier.

I hit the bottom of the hill and catapulted into the air. Lord knows how far I flew before I crash landed. I curled into a ball and hit the ground with tooth-jarring impact. Though I'd prepared myself for the stop, the collision knocked me into tomorrow. When I finally came to, I thought my eyeballs must have blown up because my head hurt like hell and I was stone blind. I soon realized that mud packed every orifice of my body and not only could I not see, I couldn't hear and could barely breathe. I shook my head like a wet dog.

Noise exploded all around me, and a stabbing pain in my chest made me suck in a much-needed breath. I clawed at my eyes to remove handfuls of mud. I reached down to wipe my face with my shirt and found only mud covered skin. Oh no! I was blind and deaf, and somehow my shirt burned off on my way down that hill. I felt someone wiping the mud out of my eyes, and when I could see again, I couldn't do anything but laugh, and it hurt like hell.