by Chuck Holton
Every muscle in her body hurt. The oozing mud sucked at her boots, as if she were wading in wet concrete. The vines and thorns tore at her hair and clothing. Before dark it had been as if she were a flea lost on the back of a big, wet, green dog. But now it felt like the jungle itself was a living, malevolent entity, bent on her destruction.
But it still beat the alternative. An image of Chombon’s leering face appeared in her mind, devouring her with his eyes. She pushed away a sob and thought of Carlos and Zack. Where were they now? Were they still alive?
And Alex! If only she could find their campsite, she imagined him waiting there. No matter what had happened between them, he would protect her. She wanted to cry out, to call his name, but that would certainly give her position away to the evil men who took Carlos and Zack.
But she would not make it there tonight. She was lost—plain and simple. Lost with no food, water, or shelter. And even if Alex had been able to summon help, there was a very real chance that they would never find her.
I will die here.
That thought surrounded her, clawing at her mind like the vines and thorns did her body. How she wished for a machete. She sank down and sat on the log.
God? Have You abandoned me too?
Tears rolled down her cheeks. Water she couldn’t afford to waste but couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry, God, for treating You like You weren’t important.”
Fernanda realized that she had been talking out loud, but it felt good to hear a voice, even if it was thin and full of despair.
“I’m sorry for not living the way I should. So much of my life lately has been wrapped up in the pursuit of insignificant things. This trip was supposed to be an escape from my problems. But now, in this place, I see how silly and meaningless so many of my problems were.
“Please lead me out of this place. I’m afraid! I don’t want to die here. Please protect Zack and Carlos. And Alex.” A wave of conviction swept over her. “I’m sorry for what happened between us. Please protect Alex too.”
She wiped her eyes and looked around. Though she couldn’t see a thing around her, a patch of sky was visible above. Through the hole she could see stars, almost blindingly brilliant compared to the complete darkness around her.
She stood on the log for a better look, steadying herself by holding on to palm fronds on either side.
If only I could fly.
It felt good to have her feet on something solid. Slowly, she felt her way down the log. She moved toward the gray area of the trunk at its base. As she got closer, she could see that a clearing of some sort was beyond the twisted roots of the tree, silhouetted against the lighter blackness of the sky.
She stopped and stared, wishing she could tell if the clearing consisted of dry ground. At the end of the trunk, she climbed down to find herself in waist-high grass on dry ground, woozy from exertion.
Though she was still intensely thirsty, she would find no water tonight. She had to rest. Finding water would be the first order of business when it got light.
Wading through the tall grass, she moved to the middle of the small clearing, as far away from the evil jungle as possible. There, she sank down, exhausted, but grateful to be out of the swamp.
Thank You, God. Help me find some water tomorrow. And please send help.
She curled up in the grass next to a bush and fell asleep.
Isla Coiba. 2330 hours
The whirring of the tree bugs had resumed after her passing. They did not normally stop their thrumming when he passed by. Nor did the forest animals quiet their calls, not for him. If they sensed his presence at all, they did not perceive him as a threat, because he was one of them. Not like the outsiders.
The man stood in the murkiest shadows on the edge of the clearing and wrestled with emotions that he’d forgotten even existed.
When he first caught up with the skinny one, it had been to do what he had always done—to gain strength for his own journey by freeing the spirit of another. He had never considered the killing to be evil, but good—like setting a bird free from its cage, especially in a place like this. But when he saw the skinny one up close, something had changed.
It had been so long since he’d set eyes on a woman that it wasn’t until she passed directly beneath him, standing motionless in a tree, that he realized she was more than just a skinny man.
The realization brought back memories long buried by a thousand sleeps, memories of his village, of his mother and sisters, whom he’d fought to protect when the outsiders came with their saws to steal the very forest they lived in.
But his blowgun had not been able to compete with the outsiders’ weapons. Their blowguns, which required no breath, had found him. He still had the scar where their dart had pierced his shoulder. And while he had been wounded, the outsiders drained the blood of his sisters, taking the women’s life force for themselves.
Part of him felt that he should drain the blood of this woman—his people would have called the skinny girl mali—and make up for what had been done to his own family. But another part of him believed that the reason the spirits had allowed him to be taken away from his home and brought to this place was that he failed to protect his own sisters. Perhaps the way to redeem himself was to protect this one.
So he kept the knife in its sheath and followed la mali to see where she went. But she moved like a wounded animal, crashing through the bush with no direction, walking in circles. She clearly did not belong here, and if she did not find water soon, she would die.
But he could not show himself. He had lived alone for so long that he had almost forgotten his own language and certainly did not know hers. He’d even forgotten his name. How could he meet someone if he had no name to give?
The man’s hand fell to the bag he had taken from the pirate camp. The bottle he had taken was still there, the cap on the end holding in the water. Its constant bumping had put a bruise on his thigh. He did not need it, because water was everywhere on the island. He had almost broken the bottle several times, thinking the shards might be useful for making spears. But now he knew what to do. The mali did not know how to get water. She could use the bottle.
Without a sound, he padded softly over to where she was sleeping.
He stood looking at her dark form, curled up like a child. The conflicting emotions came to him again. But he put them away. He had chosen his path, and he would stay on it. He slid the bottle from the canvas bag and laid it next to her, then slipped away.
Over the Pacific Ocean. 0400 hours
A BLAST OF COOL night air hit Rip in the face as the rear door of the C-130 opened with a hydraulic whine. Lights from scattered villages along Panama’s Pacific coastline sparkled like diamond chips scattered on black velvet. The glowing pinpoints of light ended abruptly at the water’s edge, some thirteen thousand feet below, and picked back up again as stars on the horizon.
Rip stood in the aircraft’s darkened cargo bay with the rest of Task Force Valor, lined up on the ramp in two columns, waiting for the jump command. He watched the stars waver and blur in the superheated prop wash from the aircraft’s four powerful turboprop engines.
The ride to a drop was always a good time to think, since the roar inside the plane’s unpressurized cabin precluded any sort of discussion that couldn’t be accomplished with hand signals.
While the rest of the team had been trying to catch some sleep in the hour since they’d boarded the plane at a remote corner of Albrook Airfield, Rip had been thinking a lot about Gabi, worrying.
Couldn’t his sister see that she was gambling with the rest of her life? And for what? The girl was smarter than that. She’d always been top of her classes, an A student. And now she was dressing like a prostitute and staying out all night. She was barely a teenager!
He hated the powerless feeling it gave him, being here while this was happening. Hated it so much he’d actually considered leaving the Army for the first time in his career.
It had always been a foregone co
nclusion that he would complete his twenty years with the Special Forces. He couldn’t imagine any other job that would appeal to him. But maybe the nonstop, back-to-back deployments were getting to him. Maybe he needed a break, some time to help his family straighten things out. Gabi needed him. His mother needed him.
But what bothered him the most was that the situation with his sister had forced him to look at the whole concept of his own love life from a totally different angle. He’d watched over her when their mother was at work ever since she was just a few years old. She hadn’t known a father but had come to her big brother for many of the things she needed from a dad: acceptance, advice, and affection. He’d never been as close to anyone as he was to Gabi. Without a doubt, he wouldn’t hesitate to die for her. There had never been a girlfriend he would have said that about.
But he could see now that his girlfriends had been part of the problem. Gabi saw the way he went through women. Suddenly the idea that his cavalier attitude toward dating had been harmless fun was being shot full of holes. It wasn’t harmless. Gabi learned how to let a man treat her by watching her brother. And the realization was like a kick in the gut.
Rip was jerked back to reality by Bobby Sweeney, who turned to him and patted his chest harness, a smile evident under the black Pro-Tec helmet and jump goggles. Rip looked down at his own rig—the full-body harness that secured the MC-4 parachute to his back and the rucksack clipped to his waist. Earlier that night when they were given this mission, he had gone through his gear, carefully considering each item, trying to decide what was essential and what could be left behind.
It was just a reconnaissance at this point. They were to infiltrate the island and put eyes on the pirate’s camp to determine their assets and how many men they were dealing with, as well as whether or not the ITEB was still present there. Phoenix had informed the team that a platoon of Panamanian special police would be tasked to assist, as well as a pair of US fighter planes from Texas. But for the time being, it was simply a sneak-and-peek mission.
The plan was to HALO into a clearing near the pirate base just before dawn. As soon as it got light enough to move, the team would stash the majority of their equipment and move in on the camp. Once they were in place, they’d radio the information they gleaned back to Phoenix. If they were going to hit the camp, she would be the one to make the call.
After rechecking all of his buckles and straps, Rip flashed a thumbs-up at Sweeney, who gave an “okay” sign and turned back toward the ramp. John Cooper was on it, kneeling near the starboard hydraulic cylinder, peering at the sea below. As jumpmaster on this mission, it was his job to check the winds and spot for the drop zone.
Coop stood and held up an index finger. One minute.
Rip’s pulse quickened. This was the kind of thing he had signed up for when he joined the Special Forces. But this was no Hollywood jump done under perfect conditions just for fun. This was the first time he’d parachuted into a real-world mission. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and rotated his head back and forth, like a boxer getting ready for a fight.
It was always possible that he wouldn’t come home from this, from any mission. He’d been shot in the chest in Lebanon, and the ceramic plate on his body armor was all that saved his life.
But they didn’t bring body armor on this mission.
He’d made a habit of telling himself at the start of every mission that it could be his last. Every soldier thought it; Rip just made a point to bring it to the surface and face the fact, to make it okay in his mind before he went into battle. Somehow doing so made it easier to do his job. He had to be ready to lose in order to be able to win.
But something was different this time. He really wanted to come back from this mission. If he didn’t come back, his sister wouldn’t have anyone to set her straight.
He was surprised and angry at the fear he felt. This isn’t the time to think of this.
Coop signaled thirty seconds. Jaw clenched, Rip forced the fear from his mind. Almost as an afterthought, he crossed himself. God help me.
Coop had taken up his position at the head of the stack, and Rip tightened it up, pushing forward until he was touching Sweeney’s pack tray.
Beside him, Hogan let out a yell over the roar of the plane. “Let’s do this, y’all!”
Coop’s right hand counted down from five. At zero, the team charged off the end of the ramp as one and disappeared into the night.
C-130 rolling down the strip …
Three miles above Coiba, six black shapes exited the C-130 and plunged into the night in a tight formation. Rip arched his body hard, stabilizing himself in the slipstream while honing in on the muted green chem-lights the rest of the team wore on their Pro-Tec helmets. For some reason, an old cadence from airborne school ran through his head.
Sixty-four Rangers gonna take a little trip.
The air was cool at this altitude, and the beginnings of twilight formed in the eastern sky. From this vantage point, Rip could see the curvature of the earth on the horizon. He never got over the feeling that free-falling gave him.
The difference between riding in a plane and free-falling was sort of like the difference between riding in a boat and swimming. It felt more like floating than falling, especially at night with the absence of any visual cues. But it was floating at 120 miles per hour, and that feeling of speed was what made his adrenaline flow.
Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door.
Being careful not to collide with any of his teammates, he flew toward where two of them had already linked up, not surprised that he recognized Hogan by his big head, even in the darkness.
With his left hand, Rip latched on to the big Texan’s right arm and pivoted slightly toward him. A moment later, he felt a hand catch his right arm in the same manner. Within a few seconds, all six men were falling together in a circular formation, just as they had rehearsed on the “dirt dive” practice run on the tarmac before climbing aboard the plane.
Jump right out and count to four.
The plan called for the team members to open their chutes a little bit higher than normal, because they needed more time under canopy to steer themselves to the small clearing chosen as a landing zone.
Rip checked his altimeter. They were already passing through twelve thousand feet. Directly below, he could see a single pinpoint of light, which he assumed was coming from the ranger station on the north end of the island. Other than that, the only lights he could see were in the distance on the mainland.
Twenty seconds later, he could just make out the black shape of the island. Coop was directly across from him, distinguishable by the backlit GPS strapped to his forearm. At four thousand feet, Coop waved the formation off, and everyone released his grip on the man next to him. Rip spun his body away from the group, tracking into open space so he wouldn’t hit anyone when he deployed his chute.
If my chute don’t open wide …
After one last check of his altimeter, Rip reached back with his right hand and found the pilot chute secured to his hip. He compensated for the movement by bringing his left arm up over his head.
I’ve got a reserve by my side.
He flung the pilot chute away from his body and waited for the reassuring jolt of his main canopy catching air. He felt the familiar tug of the Para-Flite MC-4 parachute leaving the pack tray on his back and then … nothing.
He looked up and his heart almost stopped. Instead of a beautiful square canopy silhouetted against the night sky, he saw an ugly, snarled mess streaming above him by only one riser.
His hand flew to the harness near his left shoulder, confirming his worst fears. Only one riser was still connected.
If that one should fail me too …
Rip could almost feel the ground rushing up at him, but it felt as if his mind went into slow motion. That little guy in his brain was screaming that time was running out—the malfunctioning parachute had done very little to slow his rate of descent.
Look out below, I’m coming through.
He fought off panic. There wasn’t time to think about what he should do, only time to react with his training.
Look, grab, look, grab, arch, pull, pull. He’d done the drill a million times in HALO school and hoped he’d never had to use it. Rip grasped the quick release for the remaining riser connected to the harness on his right shoulder.
Jerking hard on the release, he felt the main canopy detach, and he was again in free fall. Then just as quickly he pulled the handle at his side to deploy the reserve parachute, which fluttered then opened with a satisfying pop.
Rip checked the inflated canopy and started breathing again. Everything was in good order. But then he looked down.
He had another problem.
He’d lost so much altitude that the rest of his team was still somewhere far above. Not only that, Rip wasn’t sure he had enough altitude left to find and land in the agreed-upon clearing.
Peering off to his right, he could just make out three patches of lighter gray surrounded by the black jungle, illuminated by only the faintest sliver of moon. From the map reconnaissance they’d done during the briefing, he recognized the clearings. They looked sort of like a lopsided Mickey Mouse head—one large round area with two smaller “ears” nearby. The plan called for the team to land and assemble in the large clearing.
But as he turned his parachute toward the clearing, he realized that he was far too low. Even with his canopy’s forward motion of up to twenty-five miles per hour, it would be tough to make the drop zone from his present position and altitude.
There didn’t appear to be much wind aloft, and he got a sinking feeling as he looked between his boots at the black jungle below. If he landed in the trees, he might find himself hung up, too high to climb down the lowering line for his rucksack, and most likely lost.
He tried not to even think about the likelihood that something might get broken in a tree landing. The rest of the team could ill afford to spend hours trying to rescue him, and doing so might easily compromise the mission.
