Tuesday:

By morning, the number of critically ill patients had been reduced to two.

Andrew awoke to a commotion outside the tent. He turned to Sondra and shook her shoulder, but she grunted and shrugged him off. 

Shaking his head, he jumped out of bed, pulled on his jeans and boots and rushed outside. Everyone was gathered under a tent inhabited by two guys. Bruce's tent. 

Andrew pushed his way through the crowd and peeped through the tent opening. In the dim light, Andrew could make out that an emaciated Bruce lay motionless on his cot, his sweat-soaked shirt gaping, his cracked lips pulled back in a hideous grimace. 

"Out of the way, out of the way!" Boarensky's voice came booming from behind and before he could react, Andrew was shoved aside by the burly Russian as he peeped into the tent. 

"Crawford! Miller! Dennis!" Boarensky shouted, raising up. "You're on digging duty. Start digging, quick too cause in this heat we don't wanna waste time."

"Are you mad?" Andrew said incredulously, the words just jumping out of his mouth. He felt almost a dozen pairs of eyes on him, but he couldn't stop. "We need to break up camp and return Bruce to his family, not bury him in the middle of-"

Boarensky drew his gun, flicked off the safety and pointed it at Andrew's forehead in one fluid motion. 

"Stop this! Get ahold of yourself Boarensky!" Sondra's voice came from somewhere in his peripheral vision. Andrew didn't dare look around. He focused on Boarensky's finger inside the trigger guard and swallowed. 

"If you kill him, you'll have to kill all of us. 10 witnesses. You'll never get away with it."

"I could slip through the border with millions worth of gold and no one would know girl. I'd be back in Russia in days and no one would find me." Boarensky said smoothly, keeping his eye on Andrew. "Don't test me, I've done worse than this." 

No one moved, as Andrew closed his eyes and waited for the death, almost too numb to form a coherent thought. When one did come, it was to think that this was why these jungles were called the wild west. Andrew had lost count of how many miners had met grisly ends at the hands of other miners, with the killers going on the run for years. How many skeletons, how many rotting corpses had turned up in these forests? How many secrets did it hold? Hidden from civilisation, these were the perfect killing fields. 

But Boarensky wasn't ready to drop off another corpse in the jungle. Having made his point, he stepped back and lowered his gun.

"This is not a democracy. When I give an order, it is not so I have to debate with the likes of you." Boarensky looked around, his face crimson. "Where are my grave diggers!"

As Boarensky stalked off and the crowd dispersed, Sondra rushed to her husband's side. Andrew's legs turned to jelly as he sat down. Kairo appeared behind Sondra, looking down at him in pity.

"I told you." He said. "I warned you. More will die, if not from the malaria, then from the Russian madman. Unless we work together and take him out."

Andrew looked at his wife, who seemed to be wasting away before his very eyes. Looked at the men, who drudged listlessly towards the mining pit, a ten-minute walk from the camp. At Crawford and Dennis, who emerged from the tent with Bruce's body wrapped in his own bedsheet. 

"Fine," Andrew said. "We'll work out the details tonight."