Limbs that would never be attributed to an owner.
Ken shook his head and then sucked on the wad of dip tucked into his lip before spitting again.
“Ten,” the guide repeated, and Ken just shrugged.
The reality was, it didn’t matter what unit of measurement the man was referring to. This was the last village they had to visit, and they were going to complete this mission whether it took ten seconds to get there or ten days.
Ken sighed and tossed the nut back into the jungle.
“Yeah, it’s good to see that someone agrees with me,” Weathers said. “Ten years from now, most of the drugs in the US will come through Mexico, you mark my words.”
Chapter 3
‘Ten more’ turned out to be miles. And, in the sweltering sun chopping their way through thick brush, it felt more like a hundred. Three times Ken had to take a break to sip on his canteen and catch his breath. And during each of these stops, he found his resolve waning.
What the hell is so goddamn important about this last village? If it was critical to anything at all, they would have built a road to it, wouldn’t they?
“You glad you answered my call now, Weathers?” he asked between sips of water.
Weathers grunted. Their playful back and forth about the merits of the war on drugs was inversely correlated with their fatigue it seemed.
Ken casually hacked another sapling, then wiped his brow and turned his eyes upward. Their environment couldn’t be more different than it had been in Iran. But in some ways, it was also the same. In the desert, you could pass over a single dune and then immediately be lost. There were no landmarks or structures or anything really that could be used to orient oneself. The jungle was like that, too. While the trees were all different, if you took a step back, they all blended into a single green swash, like paint on a canvas.
Ken knew that one could get lost here as easily as they had in the desert not that long ago.
“Weathers, you ever wonder—”
Another one of those damn nuts struck him on the shoulder, but instead of picking it up this time, Ken simply booted it aside. This was the fourth or fifth time that one had fallen on or near him, but for the life of him, Ken couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. Sure, the foliage surrounding them was incredibly varied, but he’d yet to identify a tree that produced these kinds of nuts.
“Goddamn fucking birds,” he grumbled before turning back to Weathers who was taking a break of his own. “You ever wonder what would happen if we decided not to have this war on drugs? If, instead, we decided to regulate them?”
Weathers shook his head as he drank from his canteen. Ken wasn’t sure if this gesture was supposed to mean that the man had never thought about it, or if he didn't know what would happen. In the end, it didn’t matter; Ken continued with barely a pause.
“Think about it; how many millions or billions of dollars are spent on fighting this war that never ends?”
Another shrug and Ken pressed on.
“Let's just ballpark it as a hundred million dollars, sound fair? All right, so instead of using a hundred million dollars to fight drugs, we use it to educate people on their effects, their dangers. We also put some of that money into drug rehab programs; real programs that help people with their addictions. How would that work?”
“It won't,” Weathers said bluntly.
Ken chuckled; the man was nothing if not obstinate.
“You know, I look at the war on drugs akin to taking Tylenol for a brain tumor.”
He had Weathers’ full attention now.
“Think about it; right now, all we’re doing is treating symptoms. In this case, the symptoms are drugs coming into the country. With every other disease, we tackle—or at least try to tackle—the root cause. Sure, we offer symptomatic relief along the way, but the main goal is to treat the cause. We might give Tylenol to someone suffering from a brain tumor, but we don't just wipe our hands clean after that; we use chemo, radiation, surgery. We treat the tumor. But what we don’t do, is treat addiction.”
“Yeah, but that's because chemo cures brain tumors—at least some of them.”
The comment piqued Ken's interest and he packed another lip full of chewing tobacco before addressing it.
“So, you're saying that… what? Addiction is palliative? That we can't do anything but—”
Another nut hit him on the shoulder and Ken whipped around.
“Jesus,” he swore.
His initial instinct was to look upward, to see if a pesky bird had dropped it on him, but, based on the angle it had fallen, Ken realized that this couldn’t be the case. The nut hadn’t hit him from above but from the side.
His eyes quickly darted to the thick brush to his right and he caught a glimpse of some of the leaves swaying as if someone had just disturbed them. Ken stared for a moment longer, his hand subconsciously tightening on the butt of the rifle strapped across his chest.
Subtle or not, these actions weren’t lost on Weathers. The man might be disillusioned and misinformed when it came to the war on drugs, but he was a damn good soldier.
“What is it? What do you see?” Weathers asked flatly.
Ken didn't answer; instead, he raised a fist, indicating for the scientists who were following him to remain still. Up ahead, the guides continued to make a path for them, but Ken ignored them.
He was focused now, homing in on the thick shrubbery to his right.
Did I really see something? Or is it just the heat, exhaustion setting—
“There,” he whispered, aiming a finger at a dark figure pressed between two trees. “Weathers? You see that? You see—”
The figure turned and then started to move.
Ken didn’t hesitate; he immediately broke into a run.
“Come on, Weathers, try to keep up,” he hollered over his shoulder.
Chapter 4
“He's there!” Ken shouted between breaths. Weathers stopped beside him and squinted.
“I don't see him. Anyways, what the fuck does it matter? So, a guy threw a nut at you. It's not the first time that you’ve been nutted on by a man.”
Ken gaped at his friend.
Two jokes in one day? He might actually have heat stroke.
In truth, Ken wasn't sure why he was so driven to find the kid who had thrown the nuts at him.
Perhaps it was all the warnings about drug lords in this part of the country or perhaps it was the sheer audacity of someone throwing something at men strapped with assault rifles.
Or maybe it was simpler than that; maybe he’d just become bored of the jungle and needed some action. Whatever it was, Ken had a hard time letting go.
There was another flash of movement, and then it was gone. A few seconds later, the trees stopped swaying, giving no indication that there had been anybody there in the first place.
Ken shook his head.
“Ah, fuck it. Let's just keep going, get this shit over with. I think the heat is messing with my brain.”
Ken turned around and was surprised to see the two guides standing directly behind them, their hands gripping their machetes tightly, eyes wide.
“This way,” the one who spoke English said. “You go this way.”
Ken shot a glance at Weathers but then shrugged.
“Okay, we go this way,” he agreed. He had only taken two steps when Weathers cried out.
He was rubbing the back of his head, a nut on the ground at his heels.
“Looks like you got nutted on, too,” Ken said with a chuckle. Then he paused. “There! I see him!”
He broke into a run, pushing by Weathers as he hurried after the boy. The guides were shouting at him, instructing him to go the other way, but Ken ignored them.
He took five steps through the brush before finding himself in a clearing. The change in scenery was so surprising that Ken actually stumbled. Just as he caught his footing, Weathers bowled into him from behind, knocking him to a knee.
The man hit l
ike a truck, whether he meant to or not.
“Clumsy asshole,” Ken grumbled, turning his eyes up to Weathers. “You see the kid?”
Weathers shook his head, but then pointed over Ken’s shoulder.
“No, but you’re not gonna believe this… I see a church.”
“A church?” Ken nearly scoffed.
Not believing that anyone would set up a place of worship this deep in the jungle, Ken turned around, thinking that his friend had just beaten his all-time record of jokes in a single day.
“Well smack my ass and call me Sally,” Ken muttered under his breath. There, in a clearing roughly the size of a small parking lot, was a modest structure with a cross on top. “It is a church. The real question is, who or what are they worshiping?”
Chapter 5
“Where'd he go?” Ken asked, his eyes scanning the small church and the surrounding clearing. The place seemed deserted but couldn’t have been; someone had to have removed the foliage from the area. Instead of the soft vegetation of the jungle floor, Ken’s feet stirred up a cloud of fine dust or gravel that coated his slick skin.
Weathers shrugged.
“I don't know, but something doesn't feel right about this, Ken. Something—”
Ken rolled his eyes and took another step forward, ignoring his friend. He was starting to sound like a broken record.
Aside from the jokes, that is. Those were new.
“He couldn't have—”
A hand came down on Ken's shoulder, and he instinctively whipped around, leading with the gun. He lowered it when he saw that it was only one of the guides. But when he saw the fear in the man’s face, he didn’t let go of the weapon completely.
“We need to go,” the guide asserted, actually trying to tug Ken back towards the foliage from which they'd burst through. “We need to go, now.”
Ken shrugged the man's hand off and then looked to the other guide who was barely peeking out from between the trees.
“Yeah, I don't think so. Maybe the scientists want to survey this joint.”
Ken stared into the man's eyes as he spoke, trying to see if anything changed in them. He’d seen this expression before.
He’d seen it in the eyes of the dead.
The guide swallowed hard, and he took two steps backward, shaking his head the entire time.
“What’s your problem, anyway? It's just a church. You afraid of the church?”
The man shook his head even more violently, whipping it back and forth fast enough for sweat to fly off his damp hair. Then he slowly raised a finger and pointed at the church behind Ken. Ken was annoyed and didn't initially take the bait.
“Not God, not church,” the guide whispered. “El diablo.”
Ken's Spanish was rudimentary at best, but that was one term that he did understand. With a hard swallow of his own, he turned and followed the man's trembling finger.
“This ain’t like no church I've ever seen,” Weathers said, adjusting his gun so that it was aimed out in front of him now.
And yet, Ken still didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
“What? What’s going on?”
“There,” Weathers said, pointing toward the other side of the clearing. “You see that spike in the ground? Looks like a sapling, but it’s coming out of the gravel?”
Ken’s eyes finally fell on the item that had struck fear into the guide, and he felt his heart start to race.
“Stay back there, stay with the scientists,” Ken instructed the guides, his voice deadpan. “Stay out of sight until I call for you.”
Weathers wasn’t pointing at the spike, per se, but what was mounted on top of it.
Jammed on the sharpened end was a decapitated head. The man’s cheeks were blue and purple and swollen, and someone had crudely sewn his lips and eyelids together.
The guide was right. This was the work of el diablo.
Chapter 6
Cpl. Ken Smith hunkered low as he moved sideways, crossing one foot over the other so that his shoulders, and thus his rifle, remained trained on the church at all times. Meanwhile, Weathers did the same thing, only in the opposite direction. When there was a ninety-degree angle between them and the church, they started forward, moving slowly, deliberately, carefully.
Even though he was in stealth mode now, in the back of his mind, Ken reminded himself that the person who had thrown the nuts was only a boy.
He’d seen enough dead children in Iran to know that he didn’t want to see any more. They weren’t here for him; they were here for whoever had set up the grisly medieval welcome.
At first blush, there didn't appear to be anyone inside the church. The walls of the simple structure were mostly made up of bamboo, and Ken could glimpse through several vertical slits in the side. The interior was too dark to make out anything except for movement, of which he detected none.
As he continued to move forward, Ken noticed a sign out front of the church that contained Spanish writing that he couldn’t understand. As he passed it, he nodded to Weathers and then brought a finger to his chest and then pointed at the door.
I’m going in.
Weathers nodded.
Ken had taken roughly a half dozen paces before the door to the church suddenly blew open and a man in a white T-shirt barreled out. He was holding a silver pistol out in front of him.
“Hands up!” Ken shouted.
The man turned to look at him, pulling the gun along for the ride. The last thing Ken wanted to do on this mission was to use his weapon, but he had two young boys back in New York; he didn’t want to go home in a body bag, either.
Just as he tensed his finger on the trigger, something struck him on the shoulder drawing his attention.
It was another one of those damn nuts.
That’s when he spotted the three men wearing bandannas over their noses and mouths, all brandishing silver handguns, burst from the jungle.
Ken didn’t want to fire a single round, but now he saw that he had no choice. A split-second after Weathers opened fire, Ken did the same.
As usual during combat scenarios, Ken didn’t think; he let his body, his muscle memory, his training take over.
He saw a muzzle flash from the pistol gripped by the man on the left just before his chest spurted red and he stumbled backwards. He was lucky; the other two men didn't even get a shot off before Ken systematically trained his rifle on them and fired in short bursts.
Like the first felled man, their chests also erupted in a geyser of thick red fluid.
Ken quickly strode forward in his half crouch, approaching them to make sure that they were indeed dead and that they wouldn't be rising from the grave with pistols waving.
After confirming that they were dead, he turned to Weathers and was shocked to see that his partner was now bent over awkwardly.
Cognizant of the fact that more thugs could be hiding in the jungle, Ken kept his eyes on the green foliage as he walked sideways over to Weathers.
“You all right?” he asked over his shoulder.
“I took a bullet, but I should be fine,” his partner replied.
Ken nodded and continued to strafe, his eyes scanning for movement. Other than the gentle sway of the leaves in a sudden breeze, there was nothing.
“Anyone inside?”
“Not sure,” Weathers answered after a sharp inhale. “I took out the bogey that came out the door, and he ain't getting up.”
Ken nodded.
“Can you move? Can you walk?”
The man didn't answer; instead, Ken sensed Weathers rise to his feet at his right. He was grunting and breathing heavily, and a strange hissing sound accompanied every breath.
“Where are the scientists?” Weathers asked.
Ken shook his head.
“Don’t know,” he said, hoping that the guides had huddled them to safety. There was another question on his mind, too: Where's the kid? Where's the kid who threw the nuts?
Ken hadn’t overlooked the fact that this d
istraction had alerted him to the thugs coming out of the jungle, which had likely saved his life. But he couldn’t think about that now; the first order of business was to clear the church.
He and Weathers were back-to-back now, seamlessly moving toward the church. Ken was facing the shrubbery near the fallen men, while Weathers had his weapon trained on the church door which still hung open.
He could tell that his partner was laboring, and he felt growing concern now that the hissing sound had taken on a wet quality.
It sounded like a punctured lung.
Ken was suddenly back in the desert, looking for the men that they were supposed to rescue, men that weren’t there.
It was all just sand… in every direction all I see is sand…
Sgt. Loomis had warned them that they would be alone on this mission, which made Ken wonder how long it had been since they’d left the last village.
And how long it would take to get back there.
Ten… something.
“Any movement from inside?” Ken asked, trying to bring his focus in check.
“No; nothing,” Weathers replied.
In his periphery, Ken noticed movement off to the right.
“Hold,” he whispered, training his weapon on the area.
When the trees swayed, and a figure pushed through, Ken’s finger tensed. Then he pulled it off the trigger upon recognizing the RAND scientist.
The man looked terrified and the front of his khakis was moist from where he’d pissed himself. Behind him was a man in a bandanna, pressing a pistol to the back of the scientist’s head.
“Put down your gun,” the thug demanded in an accent so thick that Ken could barely understand him.
No matter; his intentions were clear.
“They've got a hostage,” Ken whispered over his shoulder.
“Put the gun down,” the man hissed again.
Ken focused on what he could see of the man’s face above the red bandanna.
He had dark eyes that were narrowed to slits. Beads of sweat dotted his creased forehead.
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 2 Page 61
