The Bolivian Girl Read online

  Contents

  The Bolivian Girl

  Quote: T.E. Lawrence

  Map: South America

  The Bolivian Girl

  Antichay

  Chapter 1

  Qoyllurchay

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Illapachay

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Ch’askachay

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  K’uychichay

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Intichay

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Antichay

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Qoyllurchay

  Chapter 27

  Ch’askachay

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgements

  If you enjoyed this book

  Get more Action Stories

  About the Author

  By the same Author

  The Bolivian Girl

  The Bolivian Girl

  By Christoffer Petersen

  ‘Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.’

  ― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom

  The Bolivian Girl

  Antichay

  Tuesday, May 21

  Chapter 1

  His uncle had warned him about the Bolivian roads, but until they turned off the highway running through the Andes, Malcolm Madison had struggled to believe him. The driver held the steering wheel of the beaten 1980 Ford Bronco pickup in a loose grip, keeping his thumbs flat against his fingers in anticipation of sudden jerks and bumps that could break them if he held on too tightly. Malcolm knelt on a sack of rice in the back, one hand on the roof of the cab, and the other gripping the side. He peered into the failing mountain light shining on the road ahead, if it was a road and not just a dry riverbed. It could just as well have been. But Diniz Fontana, Malcolm’s Bolivian ‘fixer’ had called it a road when they climbed into the back of the pickup back in Tarija, several hours earlier.

  Several beers earlier too, Malcolm thought, as he watched Diniz toss another empty bottle over the side of the pickup. Diniz cheered as it smashed on the rocks, and cheered again as he popped a fresh one. Malcolm pushed the Bolivian away as Diniz slumped beside him to film a video on his phone. When Diniz fished a bottle out of the cooler and waved it at him for the sixth time, Malcolm declined. Again.

  “You don’t drink. You don’t smoke,” Diniz said, in a singsong voice. “Just what do you do Mr Boss Man?”

  Malcolm had been wondering the same thing, wondering just what he had said yes to in his uncle’s den, back on the ranch in Wrangell, Montana. The promise of adventure had been the major draw, that and the chance to pick up where his father, Woodrow Madison, had left off after his heart attack. “Madisons,” his uncle, Thomas Madison, Jr, had said, “are not supposed to die young.” Malcolm had no intention of dying young, even though he visited his doctor back in Wrangell more often than he visited his mother.

  It was part of the deal.

  Regular check-ups, in Wrangell, and then at a recommended physician in Tarija – the same one his father had used – were written into the schedule, starting the first week of his arrival in Bolivia. At thirty-six, Malcolm used to think he had control of what he did and didn’t do, but his father’s early death had changed all that. But it seemed as long as he had a clean bill of health, he was fit for adventure.

  Regular horseback riding on the Montana ranch, fixing fences with the cowpokes, and long rides tracking wolves kept him in good shape. He wasn’t just healthy, he was fit. Certainly in better shape than the drunk Bolivian singing in the back of the pickup. Malcolm cast another look at Diniz, fighting the urge to curl his lips at the younger man’s dirty beard and greasy black hair, then concentrated on the road. The potholes seemed to get deeper the higher they drove into the mountains. Malcolm thought about jumping out and walking alongside the pickup for a while, just to stretch his legs, but a quick look over the side changed his mind – the potholes weren’t the only things getting deeper. As the road narrowed, the sides of the valley steepened. The pickup spat rocks from the wheels into the valley as the driver continued into the dark.

  It’s a track, Malcolm thought, resisting the urge to look for goats that might be running alongside the pickup, or even in front of it. He pressed his chest against the cab, peering into the dark, wondering how the driver could see with just one working headlight.

  There were more lights ahead, growing brighter as they drove further along the track.

  “That’s Pequeño,” Diniz said, as he crawled across the bed of the pickup to join Malcolm at the cab.

  “It’s a village?”

  “A small one, yes.” Diniz tilted the bottle to drain the last of the beer, before tossing it over the side of the pickup.

  “They called the village small?” Malcolm said, as he tested the limits of his Spanish.

  “Why not?” Diniz said. “It is very small.”

  The driver slowed and the pickup seemed to sigh as they coasted past the first few houses in the mountain village.

  “Your uncle likes this village,” Diniz said. “Oh, yes, he likes it very much.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a fun place, if you know where to go.”

  Malcolm ignored a raised eyebrow and lopsided grin from Diniz. Instead he looked past him at the older men and women of the village, who closed their doors as Malcolm and Diniz passed, shooing their children from the windows. The teenagers glared at them, turning their heads as the pickup bumped past them.

  “They don’t seem to like me,” Malcolm said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Diniz said. “They like you plenty if you give them money. Then they give you whatever you want.” He shouted the last bit, then ducked, bumping into Malcolm as one of the teenagers picked up a rock and bounced it off the tailgate.

  “What the hell?” Malcolm pushed Diniz away from him, then slapped his palm on the rear window of the cab, gesturing for the driver to go faster.

  “Whatever you want,” Diniz said, as he rolled onto his side.

  Malcolm risked a last look at Pequeño as the teenagers took it in turns to throw rocks until the pickup rounded a bend and the village lights were extinguished. Alone in the dark, Malcolm mulled over the villagers’ reactions. He pressed his thumb against the pinch of his brow, then ran his fingers through his long blond hair, shaking his thoughts out of his head, filing them for another time.

  The road steepened. Diniz let gravity slide him down to the tailgate and the beer cooler which he opened, stirring his hand within the slush of icy water, cursing until his fingers grasped the neck of another bottle of chilled beer.

  “Last one,” he said.

  “Good.”

  “You want to share?” Diniz popped the cap and licked at the froth bubbling over the side.

  “No, Diniz, I don’t want to share. I just want to get this damned trip over with.” Malcolm gripped the side of the pickup as the driver shifted into the lowest gear and stomped on the gas. “How far after the village?” Malcolm slammed his heel on the corrugated bed when Diniz didn’t answer. “Hey? Diniz? I asked how far?”

  “I don’t know,” Dini
z said. He slid the beer bottle back into the cooler and leaned over the side of the pickup, staring into the gloom as the driver slowed to a stop.

  “What is it?” Malcolm shifted onto his knees to look over the top of the cab. “More lights? Is that another village?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  Diniz looked past Malcolm as the driver opened the door and got out. Malcolm turned, blinking in the beam of a flashlight that lit the track. He raised his hand, moving to one side. The beam followed him like a searchlight, before flicking back to the driver.

  “Who are they?” Malcolm whispered.

  Diniz crawled around the bed of the pickup, gathering his things – a small backpack and a satchel. He rubbed his hand over his chin. The beam of the flashlight flickered onto the windshield, shining through the cab and lighting his face. His uncle’s Bolivian fixer was, in that moment, the most sober Malcolm could recall seeing him. Which, given the strange circumstances, did little to reassure him that all was well.

  A word popped into his mind, and he whispered it almost as quickly as he thought it.

  “Bandits.”

  Diniz flicked his head to the left of the pickup, took a last look at Malcolm, then scrabbled across the bed and over the side, stumbling as he fell onto the track. Malcolm reached for Diniz, hoping to grab the strap of his backpack. But he was already beyond his grasp. His fixer was gone, tumbling down the side of the mountain, small clouds of dust pluming from his heels to his hips.

  Malcolm flinched at a shout from behind the lights, and then the beams clicked off, throwing the track ahead into darkness, as the Bronco’s one working headlight failed to light more than the first six feet.

  In the darkness, the sound of approaching feet thundered into Malcolm’s ears. He swallowed as the first shadows appeared, cutting through the weak headlight beam. He watched as the shadowy figures dragged the driver in front of the pickup.

  Malcolm saw the flash of a pistol barrel as the driver was forced to kneel on the track, and the smoke shadows solidified into two short men wearing dark jeans and baggy shirts. The man with the pistol wore a red bandana wrapped tightly around his head. The man next to him had a machete tucked through the belt of his jeans. The blade shone in the headlight as the man curled his fingers around the handle.

  “No.” Malcolm stood. He waved his hands above his head. “Don’t hurt him.” He licked his dry lips, searching for something to say in Spanish, but the crash course he had taken back in Wrangell did little more than confuse him, as random words popped into his head, much like the word bandit had done just a few minutes earlier.

  Minutes. It could have been seconds, or maybe an hour. Malcolm had lost track of time. A man’s life was being threatened in front of him. The driver – his driver.

  Malcolm moved to the side of the pickup. The two men turned as he clambered out of the bed and dropped down onto the passenger side of the car. Malcolm steadied himself with a palm on the side panel, running it over the passenger door as he walked towards the men. The exhaust fumes pricked at his nose and he felt the thrum of the engine, wondering then if he should try and run around to the driver’s side, if he should try and flee.

  No. I won’t run.

  Malcolm Madison didn’t run. Not when the horses bucked in the stables, kicking the feed bucket out of his hands. At just thirteen years old, that kick should have killed him. But it didn’t. Miraculously, his mother had said, after the stablehand brought the young Malcolm Madison back to the ranch house. Nor did an older Malcolm Madison run when the football jocks in high school caught him kissing his girl – Mollie – on the floodlight bleachers. They didn’t kick as hard as the horse, and he kicked back even harder. Malcolm had run back to Mollie that night, grinning when her father let him in the house, and her mother dabbed the blood from his shirt. “It’s not mine,” he had said, eyes fixed on Mollie as she leaned against the kitchen counter.

  But this wasn’t Wrangell, Montana, and somehow Malcolm knew that these men kicked just as hard as the wildest horses, even harder, he guessed, when he caught the steel look in their eyes.

  “Don’t hurt him,” Malcolm said, gesturing at the driver, as he shuffled around the front of the Bronco. His brow creased with a sudden irritation, but not at the situation, or the men with their pistols and blades. No, it bothered Malcolm, all of a sudden, that he didn’t know the driver’s name. That he hadn’t even asked. I should have asked, he thought, searching again for some words of Spanish, to discover the driver’s name, the man kneeling in the pathetic yellow light of a busted pickup on an anonymous dirt track in the Andes. “I need to know his name.”

  The men, the bandits, looked at Malcolm. They stared at him, as the mountain dark descended, just as the man pressed the pistol to the driver’s head.

  What is his name?

  Footsteps, beyond the reach of the headlight, drew Malcolm’s thoughts away from the driver. A third man, taller than the other two, stepped into the light. He wore a rain jacket, dark blue, with a single canvas bandolier across his chest. He held a rifle in his right hand, fingers curled around the stock, just in front of the curved magazine. He clicked his tongue at the man with the machete, pressing his hand on the man’s chest, pushing him away as he stepped forward.

  “I speak American,” the man said.

  “American?” Malcolm frowned for a second, before recovering with a nod of his head. “I’m American.”

  The man laughed. “I know.”

  “Then this man,” Malcolm said, gesturing at the driver. “You can let him go.”

  “Let him go?”

  “Yes. Let him go and take me.”

  He might not know the driver’s name, Malcolm reasoned, but at least he could plead for the driver’s life. It would make things right. And if these men are from the village, Malcolm thought, wondering if there were more things to make right, then he should do what he could, not only to protect this man, but to protect the company. That’s why his uncle had sent him to Bolivia, to pick up where his father had left off.

  “I will let him go,” the man said.

  “Yes,” Malcolm said. “Take me instead.”

  Another thought teased its way into his mind, as he heard the words of his uncle, saying Madisons are not supposed to die young.

  But the thought extinguished as quickly as the driver’s life, as the man with the pistol pulled the trigger.

  “No,” Malcolm said, reaching for the driver’s body.

  The man with the bandolier slapped at Malcolm’s hands, and then pushed him against the pickup’s hood. “I let him go,” he said, gripping Malcolm’s chin between wiry fingers. “And now you come with me.”

  Qoyllurchay

  Wednesday, May 22

  Chapter 2

  Chief of Staff Aaron Barnes sighed as his boss worked the line on the way into the venue. It happened every time President Murray Sheppard had an opportunity to get out of the White House. Every time he did it Barnes reprimanded him, reminding him – respectfully – that the President’s schedule just didn’t allow for showboating, as Barnes called it, on the way in to a public event, and certainly not afterwards.

  “Every damn time,” Barnes said, running his fingers through his white hair and gripping a clump of it to still the shakes in his hand, another sign that his Parkinson’s was accelerating. Regardless of his illness, it frustrated Barnes that, just a little over two years into Sheppard’s first term of office, things weren’t getting any easier. They were running out of time to get things done, and, adding insult to injury, Barnes was convinced the days were getting shorter. Another Republican plot. He even managed to startle a secretary as he entered the washroom earlier that week, when a quick look in the mirror suggested a need for more sleep, and more sun if he was ever going to beat the vampire look. He smirked at the memory and let go of his hair.

  Barnes’ secretary, Patience, pressed a slim folder into his hands.

  “You’re all set,” she said, as B
arnes read the first page.

  “You arranged the President’s meeting?”

  “A whole five minutes.”

  Barnes nodded, and said, “Senator Wilkes puts on a good show, but tech is her Achilles heel.”

  “You need to fix your tie,” Patience said.

  “Later.” Barnes flipped through the next few pages. “If Wilkes endorses the President’s initiative for silver mining in Montana, it could cost her her seat.”

  “After which she gets a seat on the board of the Mad Mining Co.”

  “Probably.” Barnes smiled. “You’ve been with me too long, Patience. Don’t call them that. It upsets them.”

  “Really?” Patience shrugged. “I can’t imagine why.”

  Barnes watched Patience walk away. It wasn’t the first time she had used one of his derogatory nicknames for companies and people he didn’t like or approve of. Barnes guessed it was her way of making him aware of it, letting him know that if she had heard it enough times to repeat it, then other people had too.

  “Lesson learned,” he said, before switching gears to prep the President.

  “How long is my meeting with Wilkes?” Sheppard asked, as Barnes approached him.

  Barnes checked his watch. “You’ve got two minutes. You would have had more if…”

  “If I hadn’t walked the line.” Sheppard laughed as they climbed the stairs to the first floor. “It’s the same old story, Aaron.”

  “You don’t have to remind me, Mr President.”

  “All right,” Sheppard said. “Let’s move on. Talk me through it.”

  Barnes pressed his hand on the President’s arm to slow him down as they reached the top of the stairs. The Secret Service detail flanked them as they walked along the plush maroon carpet leading to the conference hall.

  “Wilkes is concerned about the environment,” Barnes said.

  “Because her constituents are?”

  “Yes. Mostly middle class – soccer moms, teachers etc.”