by Burke Bryant
He counted again. Four. Panic seized his chest.
“Where’s the girl?”
Nick pointed ahead, into the storm. The rain was coming down harder now, heavier than when they’d fallen asleep. The dense drops hammered to the ground all around them.
Natalia stood in the downpour. She was drenched, both arms tucked against her sides with her face turned up to the sky.
Chris rushed to Natalia’s side and dropped to one knee. “You okay?”
“Si.”
“Any idea what woke us up?” He was unlikely to get an answer, but the girl had surprised him before.
She raised one arm—the one not clutching the bear—and pointed at the sky.
“It came from the sky.”
This again. “What came from the sky?”
Natalia moved her arm, arching it as if tracing a pattern. Her hand spanned the sky, up and around behind them, and into the distance.
Chris spun around. Beyond the tree line a reddish orange glow lit the tops of the trees and shimmered off the wet leaves and branches. The color flickered, shivering in the night sky.
Flames.
“There!” Chris signaled in the direction of the tree line, but the thick foliage blocked Nick and Caroline’s ability to see. “On the other side. Something’s burning.”
He turned back to Natalia and scooped one of her hands in his. Hand in hand, he guided her back to the tree where Grace rested and helped her settle into the grass beside the older woman.
“I need you to wait here,” he said. “Stay with Grace, and wait for me to get back.”
Natalia nodded. Okay.
Chris glanced at Grace. Her eyes were already closed. His lips pressed together as he waited for signs of life, thinning until he saw her chest slowly rise and fall.
“I’ll be back soon.”
He resisted the urge to look back at the girl as he walked over to Nick and Caroline. She wasn’t his daughter, wasn’t Joy. But still, she was a child, and she was alone. He wouldn’t let another child die on his watch. Not again.
Nick and Caroline approached, standing a few feet off in the distance so they could speak without the civilians overhearing.
“What’s going on, Rake?” Nick asked in a low whisper.
“I have no idea, but whatever it is, it has to do with what’s behind us. Natalia said it came from the sky—” He held up his hand before his team members could protest. “Something loud—whatever it was, it’s lit up the jungle like a fucking Roman candle.”
Caroline already had her boots laced up, if she’d ever even taken them off. “Let’s go.”
The three dashed through the trees, moving in the direction of the glow. This late at night it was hard to see in the jungle, and who knew what might hang from the trees. Massive snakes had a tendency to hunt at night, and scorpions were abundant when the ground was wet. Their boots squelched in the mud as they barreled through tree limbs and vines, forcing through the underbrush and overgrowth of the dense jungle.
Chris pushed ahead, Nick and Caroline close behind. As they came to a clearing, they could see the orange glow just beyond the next row of trees. It flickered in the night, swelling larger in size.
“It’s a fire,” Nick said.
Caroline grunted. “Here we go again.”
Chris shook his head, but didn’t want to slow his pace to talk. This fire was not like whatever had ravaged the village of Natalia’s people. There was no scent of death, no stench of crackling flesh in the loud popping of embers, the whispers of the blaze as it continued to grow and burn despite the rain still falling. Whatever was burning was potent enough to fuel itself despite the storm. Bodies couldn’t do that, but many things could—none of them good.
They saw it as they pushed through yet another row of trees.
Fifty or so yards ahead a small, black, twin engine, plane was pinned between several large trees. The aircraft had crashed, and the front of the plane was engulfed in flames. Both wings had been ripped off, and the center of the fuselage gaped open. The body of the plane was crumpled and sat sideways, rocking just a few feet from the ground and wrapped in large vines and underbrush. Most of the windows seemed to be shattered and the tail section was all but gone. Soon the whole thing would be nothing but a ball of fire.
Chris blinked back surprise. A plane? Out here—in the middle of the damned jungle?
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he grumbled.
Caroline was already thinking ahead. The plane hadn’t crashed empty, after all. Whoever was onboard would be toast—or worse. “This is going to be so fucking messy.”
They watched the fire grow in size, the fire fueled by whatever fluid leaked from the front of the plane, rolling down and across the body toward the tail section.
“If it’s a fuel leak keeping that fire going, we’re limited on time here,” Chris observed. “I’m not sure anyone made it through what we’re looking at, but we should take a look to make sure.”
“Let’s do this,” Nick agreed.
“At least we’re soaking wet,” Caroline added. “That should help.”
The heat of the fire licked against Chris’s face as he led his team to the side of the place gutted with the large hole—not burned, though it soon would be. When he was close, enough to feel the flames, Chris knelt down and clasped his hands, then looked to Caroline. She smirked, stepping into the cup of his hands with one foot as he lifted her up and into the hole of the plane.
Caroline grabbed onto a chair hanging just below the hole and pulled herself up and into the aircraft. Chris stepped back to watch her, covering his face from the heat, while Nick circled around to the back of the plane, searching for signs of life. Caroline moved through the wreckage with liquid grace, avoiding the sharp aluminum seat rails that had been ripped from the floor of the plane upon impact. The mid-section of the plane moved as the fire started to tear through the long vines holding it off the ground, and Caroline braced herself between two seats until the plane stilled.
“You don’t have much time!” Chris shouted as Caroline continued moving up and into the plane. He could keep eyes on her, but the smoke and the debris made it hard to get a clear visual. His thoughts raced, mentally calculating and reevaluating the chances of the fire spreading, of extracting Caroline, before flames caught up to her.
“It’s empty,” she called back. “Mostly just a bunch of papers, and—”
Her voice cut off and Chris’s hand swept to his side, to his knife. Even if there was someone still alive in the plane, there was no guarantee they were friendly.
“There’s a woman,” Caroline called. “I’m going to cut her free.”
Chris watched as Caroline inched toward the last row of seats. He’d missed it before, but now Chris could see a woman, face down and still strapped into her seat though the bench had turned loose from its holdings and been flipped upside down.
Caroline squatted and pulled her knife. She cut the seat belt and the woman’s body lurched forward, crumbled to the floor. Caroline put two fingers against the woman’s radial artery, searching for a pulse.
“She’s still breathing,” she called. “I’m going to check the cockpit and come back for her.”
“Take it easy, Hunter,” Nick warned, now at Chris’s side. “I don’t have anything for burns.”
Caroline pushed farther into the plane.
The door to the cockpit had been ripped off and left to hang on its hinges, and she pushed it to the side. Beyond, Chris could see the tops of two men’s heads. One of their legs jutted out into the aisle, snapped apart at the knee. The other man was bucked over, the steering column pushed deep into his abdomen, stuck between his chair and the plane’s dash which had moved forward at least three feet upon impact. The man’s head shifted to the left as Caroline entered the cockpit.
He’s alive? Chris squinted in an attempt to get a better visual.
The sound of popping glass momentarily stole Chris’s attention and he looked to
the plane’s few windows. The glass was beginning to buckle under the heat, veins popping across its surface as the metal simmered around it.
Without warning flames erupted through the plane. The remaining glass shattered, and the aircraft sagged, dipped, dropped. There was a loud, agonized scream—a man’s, one of the pilots must have still been alive—and Caroline was lost from view.
“Hunter!”
Caroline’s name flew from both men’s lips as the aircraft was lost in flames. A screeching, metallic bang muted any words—any calls for help that might have issued from inside the burning plane.
Chris began to shed his outer jacket to jump in after her, when seconds later Caroline appeared through the same hole she had climbed through. Sweat poured from her face and her skin was covered in soot, but she carried the woman’s body over her shoulder.
“Brannon!”
Nick rushed over to take the survivor.
“She’s alive,” he said, pushing past Chris to move the woman a safe distance from the wreckage.
“What about the pilot?” Chris asked as Caroline pushed through the plane.
She coughed, expelling smoke from her lungs, and locked eyes with Chris. “Nothing I could do. He’s gone.”
“She’s going to blow!”
Nick’s voice carried across the small space, and Chris grabbed Caroline, pulling her along with him as they rushed as fast as they could away from the plane, arms up and covering her ears, mouth wide open in anticipation of the percussion.
A ball of flames exploded behind them as they dove to the shelter of the tree line, the force of the explosion an invisible fist punching through their innards.
Caroline raised from the mud, gasped for air. The blasts of percussion had knocked the wind out of her. Nick rolled over onto his back, also gasping for air, the body of the injured woman on the ground beside him.
Chris’s ears rang. He heard the explosion again, again, again, echoing through his mind.
“How do we continue to put ourselves into these positions?” Caroline asked as she sucked in a deep breath.
Nick chuckled. “I don’t know, but I’m glad we keep getting out of them.”
Caroline gave out a slight laugh which also sounded like a gasping grunt.
The medic rolled onto his knees, pulling the injured woman from the plane close. Chris could see her eyes were closed, her mouth slack.
“Pulse?” he asked. Did she make it?
“It’s weak but it’s there.”
There was a rip, about twelve inches long in the left lower quadrant of the woman’s abdomen. Nick peeled the torn fabric away from her stomach, revealing a laceration about five inches long. The wound pulsed blood, the red coming out of her almost as quick as if she was hemorrhaging.
“How bad, Brannon?”
“It’s deep but it does not look like …”
Nick paused, studying the wound.
“It doesn’t look like it went deep enough to damage an organ, though it’s a hell of a cut. Going to need a lot of stitches and bandages, but if this is all that’s wrong with her, she should make it.”
Chris nodded. Good.
Nick grabbed Chris’s hand and placed it over the wound. “Apply pressure, keep as much blood as you can inside of her.”
While Chris tried to stop the woman’s life from bleeding out through her abdomen, Nick pulled his shirt off and tore it into several pieces. He crumpled up one and held it above Chris’s hand.
“Okay, I’m going to stuff this into the wound. After I get it in there, I need you to hold it into place. Ready?”
“Ready.”
Chris removed his hand and Nick stuffed the fabric into the gash. As soon as Nick’s hand was out of the way, Chris returned his on top, pressing the cloth as deep as he dared without causing further damage. The cloth went damp beneath his hand, the blood already soaking through.
“I’m going to stuff another one in now.”
The two men locked eyes. Now.
Chris removed his hand as Brannon stuffed another portion of his shirt into the wound. This one held; the cloth stayed dry under Chris’s hand as Nick worked around the woman’s body to wind a third strip into a tourniquet, holding the makeshift bandage in place.
“Now we get her back to camp where I have what I need to sterilize the wound and suture it.”
Caroline, who was now standing over them, watched as they worked. “When will she gain consciousness?”
“Hopefully when I get done with her, and not a second before,” Nick said.
They all knew what he didn’t say—they barely had enough to keep her stable. There was nothing for her pain. What little Ibuprofen they had was already inside Grace.
Behind them, the plane burned, the entire structure crackling in giant flames.
9
Chris and Nick carried the woman between them as they pushed back into the jungle, moving in the direction of the makeshift camp. The night was still dark but soon the sun would begin to rise. The rain had stopped.
Natalia was sitting next to Grace beneath the same tree where Chris had left them. Natalia was braiding Grace’s hair, and both looked relaxed, rested, though Grace seemed even further diminished than she had the night before, as if she’d lost half her body weight overnight. Grace turned her gaze toward them as Chris, Nick, and Caroline neared.
Her eyes narrowed at the woman in Nick’s arms.
“Who have you got there—another one?” she asked. Her voice was very small, and thick, like it was full of phlegm.
Chris shook his head. He knew what she was really asking—is that another one like me. Another one dying of a mysterious illness.
“Not sure. That sound that woke us tonight was a plane crashing just on the other side of those trees. She’s the only one left.”
“A plane?”
Even though she wasn’t as accustomed to jungle warfare as the Rake team was, Grace was savvy enough to know that a low-flying plane over the isolated, nighttime jungles of Nicaragua was unlikely to be up to anything good.
Chris situated the mystery woman on her back against a neighboring tree while Nick grabbed his medical pack. Caroline moved to Grace, pressed the back of her hand against the older woman’s forehead.
“How are you doing, Grace?” she asked.
Grace let out a sigh, struggling to get her words out. “I have no energy anymore—just turning my head takes effort. My chest is tight. It feels like it’s half the size it used to be.”
Grace paused for a moment pulling in more air. “And now I’m holding everyone up.”
Chris leaned in.
“You’re not holding anyone up, Grace. We’re here for you, and we’re not going to stop until we have what we need to make you better,” Chris said. “You hear me?”
Grace lowered her head.
Chris went down to one knee and moved in closer. He touched Grace’s chin. “Grace.”
The woman’s head bobbed slowly back up.
“We’re not going to stop until we have the help we need to get you better. I promise.”
Grace’s lips pushed into a half-smile, her eyes staring into Chris’s.
Chris lightly smiled back and rose back to his feet.
Natalia had been fidgeting with her stuffed animal while the grown-ups talked.
Caroline looked at the girl, seemed to study the burlap cloth still wrapped around her eyes. One hand reached toward her, but she pulled it back and patted Grace’s knee instead.
“We’ll all get through this. One way or another. Don’t you worry.”
The statement was uncharacteristically comforting, but this time Grace’s smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“I wish I’d gotten to know you better,” she said. “Where did you get your name?”
Chris diverted his eyes as Caroline bristled. The woman didn’t like questions, least of all those about herself, her life away from the team. But to his surprise, she answered.
“My father bought my moth
er a horse right after they got married—when she was four months pregnant. While they were riding one day, they stopped to have a picnic somewhere up on the property. They were trying to decide on what to call me—apparently I was a hard baby to name.” Caroline paused, let out a small laugh. “At some point the conversation got lost, and instead of choosing a name for me, they decided to figure out what to call the horse. My mom named it Macaroni after what they were having for lunch. When the picnic was over, and my mother was back on top of Macaroni, my father stopped and looked up at her. He said she looked as happy as another famous little girl sitting on top of her horse, who also happened to be called Macaroni.”
“The famous photo,” Grace interrupted, no doubt recalling the picture from the archives of her photojournalist’s brain. “TIME magazine?”
Caroline clicked her teeth. “That’s the one. March 30, 1962. Caroline Kennedy sat on top of her pony and called it Macaroni.”
Grace smiled. “I’m glad I asked.”
“I’m glad you did, too.”
Caroline pushed herself to her feet, offered one last smile to Grace and Natalia, and walked back over to Chris and Nick.
While Caroline had taken care of the other two women, Nick had already retrieved his medical kit and it lay open on the ground in front of him.
He peeled the fabric he had stuffed into the woman’s wound. The blood began to flow freely as he opened an irrigation solution and flushed, then wiped, the wound multiple times. When it was clean, he grabbed a syringe and loaded it with Lidocaine and injected the surrounding tissue.
“This is in case she wakes up,” he explained. “It’s not much, but we don’t want her first few moments to consist of loud screams in an unknown place, surrounded by unknown people.”
Chris nodded. “Good thinking.”
After injecting the tissue, Nick flushed the wound two more times and then pulled out a suture kit and a pair of surgical scissors and went to work on sewing the tissue, first creating an anchor stitch and then working his way up the wound. Thirteen stitches later and he was done.
Nick finished with her wound, wrapping an elastic bandage tightly around her midsection to help stabilize her abdomen for the long walk ahead. There was no one to help her, so she was going to need to walk alone.
