ENCOUNTER

by Hep Aldridge

  “No, Senor Colt, I can do it. I have been climbing rocks like this all my life, trees and buildings too. I can do this.”

  Before I could stop him, he ran to the wall and was fifteen feet off the ground in a matter of seconds. He came back down and said, “See, Senor Colt, I can do this.”

  “Climbing is only part of the problem, Eduardo. We have an explosive charge to set, and you have to get back down safely.” I stood there waiting as I tried to figure out another way to get up there. None came to mind. I turned to Dimitri, hoping he would have a solution, but he just stood there grinning.

  “What the hell’s so funny, man? This is serious.”

  “Oh, I know it’s serious; it’s just the expression you make when you get presented with the only solution to a problem, and it’s not the one you want to hear, that’s all.”

  All three of us had done our share of mountaineering, climbing, and rappelling, and I think we all had come to the same conclusion. Eduardo was the answer.

  “So, what do you propose, you crazy Cossack?”

  “Joe, let me see that area again. Eduardo, dig into that pack and pull out the green climbing rope that will be one hundred and fifty feet.” I stepped back and let Joe stand next to Dimitri as he looked at the scene the drone was transmitting. Eduardo had gotten the rope and threw it over his head and across his chest. Dimitri was staring at the screen intently and having Joe make multiple passes over the rock-filled area above. After a couple of minutes, Dimitri had Eduardo come over and look at the screen.

  “Okay, see that big rock there?” he said, pointing at the screen.

  “Yes,” Eduardo replied.

  “Joe, fly behind it and let me see the ground back there.” Joe obliged, and a minute later, Dimitri said, “Colt, here’s what we’re going to do. Eduardo, pay attention.”

  We were all peering at the screen as Joe moved the drone at Dimitri’s command, and Dimitri pointed to the critical areas.

  “Eduardo, see this rock? What you are going to do is place the charge right here at its base. Joe, take the drone higher; now, see this boulder field in front? With the right size charge, I can dislodge the big boulder and get it to roll into the boulder field in front of it.” Joe flew the drone right to the edge of the boulder field, and we could see ourselves below. The field of rocks came right to the rim of the gorge, directly over our heads.

  “I’ll get enough rocks moving that it should make this whole area impassible, at least for a while. Eduardo, I will put the charge together. All you have to do is place it in the right spot, flip the switch on the detonator, the red light will come on, and I’ll have the go boom button. Then, get the hell out of there; any questions?”

  Hearing none, he said, “Good, Colt, the kid is going to need an earpiece, so I can direct his placement of the charge from down here.”

  I reached in my pocket, pulled out the spare earwig I carried with me, and handed it to Eduardo. Dimitri was talking to him again as he was putting the C-4 charge together.

  “Eduardo, this will be perfectly safe. Just don’t beat this around or bump it, and don’t touch the arming switch until I tell you; got it? When you’re done, tie off the rope and use it to climb down.”

  “Si, Senor Dimitri, got it.” Joe handed Eduardo a pair of leather gloves, which he stuck in his pockets.

  Eduardo placed the strap of the small canvas bag containing the charge over his head and across his chest with the rope.

  I took him by the shoulders and said, “Are you sure you want to do this? We could find another way to get it done.”

  He looked me square in the eye with a grim smile on his face and said, “There is no other way.” Then he turned and started climbing.

  As before, the first fifteen or twenty feet went quickly. I checked my watch. Our preparations had taken fifteen minutes, but it seemed like an hour. We watched the boy climb slowly and methodically. I thought, eat your heart out, Spiderman, this kid is the real deal. About three-quarters of the way up, he slowed down dramatically as he tried to find a safe purchase for his hands and feet. Small rocks became dislodged and fell in a shower around us, but he kept climbing, reached the top without incident, turned, and gave us a thumbs up. I think we all started breathing again.

  Joe had given the drone a station-keeping command, so it had been hovering silently directly overhead.

  Dimitri said, “Okay, Joe, slowly move over that boulder field,” and then said over Comms, “Eduardo, you copy?”

  “Si, loud and clear,” came the reply.

  “Great, you see the large rock I showed you?”

  “Si, I see it. I’m heading that way now.”

  “Alright, move slowly and carefully. If you fall and get hurt, we’re all in serious trouble.”

  “I understand.”

  We followed his progress as he made his way across the rocks. I looked at my watch. We had been stopped for thirty minutes. Our lead was getting eaten up, and time was not on our side. He got to the large boulder, one of the Volkswagen-sized ones, and Dimitri directed him in the charge placement. We were watching closely with the drone. When Dimitri gave the order, he reached down and flipped the switch, and the red light came on, arming the charge. He climbed back on the boulders and started back to the edge of the gorge; that’s when he slipped. There was a sudden inhalation of air as we watched him fall, hitting his head on one of the large rocks and rolling in between two of them.

  For a split second, the three of us stood there in stunned silence; things had been going perfectly, and now this. I guess one of us or all of us had cried out when we watched him fall because Doc and the others came running down the trail toward us.

  “What’s the problem?” Doc asked breathlessly.

  He looked down at the small video screen and could see Eduardo lying motionless in the boulder field.

  “Oh, shit, what happened?”

  I said, “He slipped and fell and hit his head; he’s unconscious.” Dimitri was trying to raise him on his Comm with no response. O’Reilly and Reggie had arrived and quickly assessed the situation, looking at the video screen and hearing Dimitri’s calls.

  O’Reilly said, “Did the charge get set?”

  “Yeah, that’s done; he was on his way back when he fell.”

  Reggie was staring intently at the screen, “He’s got rope?”

  “Yeah, plenty,” I said.

  “Gloves?”

  “Yes,” I acknowledged.

  “Great,” she said as she laid her rifle down and shucked her tactical harness.

  “Back in a minute,” she said as she hit the wall at a dead run and literally bounded up its face. I stood there with my jaw dropping while she scurried up the sheer wall. I had thought Eduardo had made good time but watching her was incredible. She dislodged more rocks than Eduardo on her climb, but that was because she was launching herself off her footholds and making unbelievable hand grabs, not slowing down for a second. The next thing we saw was her cresting the top and then disappearing.

  Joe was following her movements with the drone as Dimitri kept trying to raise Eduardo on his Comms. Joe gave her directions to get to Eduardo, and within minutes, we could see her lowering herself down to where he still lay motionless.

  Reggie’s voice crackled in our ears.

  “He’s got a pretty good-sized gash in his head, and he’s getting a real goose egg. Doc, I think we may have a concussion on our hands. I’m going to try and rouse him.” She had pulled her canteen off her belt and poured a little water on his face while saying his name, washing the blood from the cut on his head. She reached in her pants pocket, pulled out a small field dressing, opened it, and placed it on the wound. The dressing came with a gauze bandage wrap, which she applied around his head to hold it in place. We heard her say, “Hey, I think he’s coming around; yeah, he’s opening his eyes.”

  Doc said, “Check his eyes; are his pupils dilated?”

  “No, I don’t think so; it looks like they’re responding t
o the sunlight. I think he’ll be okay. I’ve seen my share of head trauma, and this may not be as bad as it first looked. We’re starting back.”

  We watched as she slowly helped Eduardo to his feet and then let him sit for a minute on a boulder. She carefully got him to his feet, and they started making their way through the rocks to the lip of the gorge. I looked at my watch. We were rapidly burning up half of our two-hour lead and still had to get everyone down safely. They made it back to the edge, and I could see Reggie peering over the ledge. She sat Eduardo down, leaning him gently against one of the rocks.

  We heard him say, “Senorita Reggie, how did you get here?”

  The kid was still out of it as Reggie said, “It’s okay, Eduardo. I’m going to help you get back down to Colt and the team, but you are going to have to do exactly as I say, all right?”

  “Si, I understand.”

  “Good, now let’s get this rope off you. I’m going to need to tie it off up here so we can get you down.”

  Eduardo lifted the rope over his head and handed it to her. Reggie untied it and looked around, trying to find a suitable anchor point. She finally found two smaller boulders that were elongated enough to get a good wrap around. She got back to Eduardo and looped the rope around his chest, under his arms.

  We watched her move very efficiently and quickly, and all felt helpless standing there viewing things playing out on a 12-inch video screen—nerve-racking.

  She said to Eduardo, and for our benefit as well, “What I’m going to do is hold you with the rope while you climb back down; can you do that?”

  “Si, I think so,” he said.

  “Okay, turn around, and I’ll start lowering you; talk to me on your way down. Tell me when you get a good handhold and you get your feet planted, and I’ll feed out more rope, but you are going to need to move as quickly as you can because the bad men are getting closer.”

  It sounded like she was talking to a small child, but I knew in Eduardo’s condition, she wanted to make sure he understood what he had to do and the urgency of the situation. Eduardo was about five inches taller than Reggie and outweighed her by at least fifty or sixty pounds. I was concerned about her ability to support him as he came down and said so.

  “Reggie, are you sure you can support his weight?”

  “Guess we’ll find out. It’s not like we’ve got much choice in the matter,” she said as she stepped in and ran the rope behind her back and braced her feet against a large rock, feeding the rope out with her left hand while keeping tension on it around her with her right. Eduardo started down. It was slow going, and Eduardo miss-stepped a couple of times and lost his footing, but Reggie was able to hang on and stop his fall enough for him to find new footholds and handholds. Eduardo kept up somewhat of a stilted dialogue with her as she had told him. You could tell he was still fuzzy in the head, but he was trying.

  That is until about twenty feet from the bottom when he said, “I feel dizzy, Senorita Reggie; I don’t know…” Then he went limp and became dead weight. He lost his footing and his grip as he passed out and hung on the end of the rope. Reggie had pretty much thrown herself back to the ground and was lying with her feet braced against the rock. If she hadn’t figured out what was happening before it happened, Eduardo’s sudden dead weight could have easily pulled her head-first over the edge. But she was in a bind. “Guys, I’m losing my grip. I’m going to have to lower him down pretty quickly; I’m not going to be able to hold him.”

  “Roger that,” Dimitri said as he bolted for the wall. “Give me two seconds.” With some effort, he was able to get within eight to ten feet of Eduardo’s feet.

  “Okay, lower away; he’s almost within my reach.”

  Reggie started feeding out rope, and Eduardo began moving down the face of the wall, hanging limp. His speed kept picking up as Reggie’s grip deteriorated. When he hit Dimitri, it was a pretty good jolt, but Dimitri’s ability to take some of the weight off Reggie and her still having control of the rope allowed him to get Eduardo to the ground slowly.

  While this was going on, Doc and O’Reilly had gone back to the mules and consolidated one of the loads. They brought the unloaded mule up, and Doc quickly gave Eduardo a cursory exam while Dimitri removed the rope. He dug into his med kit, brought out the smelling salts, and was able to rouse Eduardo. O’Reilly and Doc helped him get to his feet and move to the mule.

  Dimitri said to Reggie, “Off rope.”

  “Roger that, on my way down.” She kicked over the edge, and with the rope still behind her back, began feeding it out and walking backward, perpendicular to the rock face, down to us. It was a semi-controlled rappel. The smell of hot leather permeated the air as she hit the ground, shedding the leather gloves she had gotten off Eduardo.

  “Well, that was exciting,” she said as she stepped out of the rope, pulling off the gloves. “Can’t say I’ve done anything like that in a while.”

  “Great job,” I said to both Reggie and Dimitri. “That was an impressive climb, girl; we should have gotten you to do it from the beginning.”

  “Yes, you should have. You forgot how I made my living before joining you guys. Do you think we just followed footpaths through the mountains when I ran Extreme Expeditions? This kind of stuff was my bread and butter. Next time, let all of us in on the plan; it might make it easier and safer.”

  “Point well taken; things just evolved quickly on this one. It won’t happen again.”

  “Yeah, we need to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Employing the skill sets of your team is critical to success, guys.”

  “I should have been paying more attention to that too. I may have gotten a little too wrapped up in the Go Boom stuff,” Dimitri added.

  “Ya think?” Reggie said with a slight smile and a mildly stinging slap on Dimitri’s back. “You best hope your Go Boom stuff does the job.”

  Dimitri winced slightly, not from the slap but more from her comments.

  “Oh, no problem there, it will get the job done,” Dimitri said, now smiling as we headed to where our pack animals waited.

  But right now, we’ve got to check on the kid and get the hell out of here. We just burned over an hour of our lead, so load up,” I said.

  Doc and O’Reilly had gotten Eduardo up on the mule and were headed back to where the pack animals were tied. Joe had retrieved and packed up the drone and was heading up the trail.

  I said, “Joe, we need to set up a trail cam in this area, so we know when to blow this thing and see what the results are.”

  “Got it, I’ll put one just ahead. It will be out of the blast zone but still give us a clear shot of the fruits of our labors,” he said with a chuckle.

  Chapter Twelve

  Eduardo was doing better and riding the mule. It had been forty-five minutes since we left our booby-trapped site, and we had just made it to the Inca Road. This is where we knew we had to try and make up time. It wasn’t long before Joe said, “Colt, we’ve got movement.”

  We stopped, and I told Doc to get Eduardo down for a short break and headed back to Joe, who was bringing up the rear of our group. He was staring intently at the screen of his pad as Dimitri and I approached.

  “I just spotted a guy getting to the choke point; here, look.”

  It was one man carrying a machete and looking very skittish, his head swiveling all around and moving cautiously. He walked past our rope still hanging on the wall of the gorge and stopped and looked back when he saw it. He turned and called back to someone we could not see. In a moment, a group of men carrying guns came trotting up to him as he pointed to the rope. They gathered in a group and were looking up when I turned to Dimitri. He had the “go boom” trigger in his hand with the safety cover flipped back, finger on the red button. It was then that another group joined the first, milling around the rope, talking, and pointing up.

  “Time to go boom,” I said, and Dimitri pushed the button. The result was almost instantaneous as we heard the explosion through the
speakers on the tablet coming from the mic on the camera and watched the men frozen in place as a thunderous storm of rocks and boulders rained down upon them. A few seconds later, we heard the noise of the blast from where we were standing. A huge cloud of dust soon blocked our view, but not before we saw men being smashed and covered by the falling rocks.

  When the dust started clearing, we could see that the blast had done its job, and several of the men did not survive. The gorge was completely blocked, just what we had hoped for. It was then that the lone man who had been out front came back into view from up the trail. He must have taken off running as soon as he heard the blast and gotten to safety before the rockslide occurred. He stood there, staring in what must have been disbelief. He looked up and then began looking around as if expecting someone to jump out at him at any minute.

  Reggie and O’Reilly had joined us and were looking at the screen—the carnage and aftermath of the explosion.

  “Damn, Dimitri,” Reggie said, “when you say go boom, you aren’t kidding. Nobody’s going to be coming through there anytime soon.”

  We were standing there when O’Reilly said, “Did you guys hear that? Joe, can you turn up the volume on that trail cam?”

  “Sure,” he said, and in a minute, we could just barely hear a popping noise in the background.

  “That’s gunfire,” and, as if on cue, our scared rabbit ran toward the rubble. A couple of seconds later, as more popping occurred, he turned and ran up the trail in our direction out of sight.

  Dimitri turned to me and said, “Sounds like our Vatican mercs have just introduced themselves to the Brotherhood.”

  “I think you’re right; they caught up pretty quickly. We’ve got no time to waste, though; let’s move out. Now we know the mercs are only about an hour behind us, plus however much time what’s left of the Brotherhood and the landslide buys us.”

  Doc had stayed with Eduardo, who seemed to be rebounding from his fall. Ah, youth, I thought, to be able to bounce back that quickly. He climbed back on the mule without protest. Smart kid, he doesn’t jump back into the fray too quickly. As I walked up next to the mule, I asked, “How are you doing, Eduardo?”