Under His Watch: A Brothers Synn Novel

by Light, Victoria

  "So, what's with the fucking baby?" the boss asked.

  "He wanted to bring his kid. I don't fucking know. I'm not paid to ask questions."

  The boss laughed. "Fucking Americans." He paced around, thinking. Then he drew his pistol. "I ought to kill you for what you did to my guys. But for now, I'll just fuck you up a little bit." He swung and smashed Bau in the side of the head, sending him to the dirt.

  "No!" I shouted.

  "Come on, get him up," the boss shouted. "Let's go."

  * * *

  They took our bags and bound our hands. Thankfully, I was allowed to carry Gustavo in his harness. The caravan led us through the jungle, with me in front and Bau behind me. His face was swollen, a line of blood streaking down from where he'd been hit.

  "I'm so sorry, Bau," I said, speaking over my shoulder.

  "I told you," he said, his voice grave. "I'm just glad I was here with you.”

  I was furious seeing them hit him. But the worst part was not being able to do anything to help him. This was my fault. Once again, I was the one responsible for his suffering. My fears had come true. I couldn't deal with the thought of him being taken away from me, not now, not when I finally understood that what I'd needed all this time was him.

  We arrived an encampment in the jungle nestled at the base of another rocky hill. There were several vehicles parked around the area and some blue tarps strung up for shelter. There was a line of large animal cages by the base of the hill, all empty except for one which had a live jaguar inside, glowering through the metal grating. The animal roared and pawed at the men as they threw Bau and I into two separate cages next to it.

  These men were fucking poachers. Scum.

  "Hey!" Bau shouted. "At least untie him so that he can take care of the kid. You want that baby crying the whole time?"

  The men cut my ties, and I pulled Gustavo from his harness and cradled him, trying to calm his cries. Bau slumped against the side of the cage, which was right next to mine, close enough that I could reach through the bars into his. I wasn't going to draw any extra unwanted attention to us, so I kept my hands to myself. In the main area of the camp, the bandits rummaged through our packs, arguing over claims. They tore away the GPS beacon and tossed it onto the table, apparently unwanted.

  After ripping through our stuff, they cooked food over several propane stoves. Bottles of expensive whiskey came out and were passed around. One of the men produced a recurve bow and arrow from the back of a truck and was aiming it at the trees, trying to shoot birds from the branches.

  "Bau," I whispered, and he turned to look at me. "I want to tell you something, just in case we don't get out of here."

  "We're getting out of here," he said.

  "Yeah, I know. But... just in case, alright? I want to tell you that I love you. Okay?"

  He stared at me, and it was hard to tell his expression from the shadow the cage cast on his bruised face. But then I saw his lips curl up into a smile. "I've never stopped loving you, Ryan. Never."

  I nodded. It was all I could do. I didn't want to risk speaking. I knew that if I opened my mouth, there was no guarantee I could stop myself from breaking down. I considered myself to be a pretty tough person. I'd long since developed a thick hide to shield me and keep my emotions in check, but all of that was ripped away when it came to Bau. I felt raw and exposed, everything inside of me spilling out despite my best efforts to hold it all inside.

  I lowered my head and squeezed Gustavo to my chest. I wasn't going to give up, and I wasn't going to just sit around waiting for us to get killed.

  A boot clanged against the cage. Startled, I looked up and saw the boss leaning against Bau's cage. He was holding the satellite phone, and he dragged the antenna across the bars.

  "Wake the fuck up, Army man."

  Bau glowered at him. "What do you want?"

  "It's time for you to make a phone call." He unlocked the cage and pulled Bau out.

  "If you hurt him, you get nothing!" I shouted as he dragged him away. "Nothing, you fucking hear me?" I felt pathetic. All I could do was yell. In the far cage on the opposite side of Bau's, the panther continued to pace around, anxiously. I had to do something, but what the hell could I do?

  A short while later, Bau was thrown back into his cage. With his hands still cuffed behind his back, he hit the ground hard, unable to stop his fall.

  "Thanks, asshole," he coughed.

  I crawled over to the bars. "What happened?"

  "Well, I managed to keep the ruse up. I called Sylus, and he managed to convinced them that some fucker from the American embassy is choppering in here at sunrise with a briefcase of money. Of course, when that time hits and nobody actually shows... But it'll buy us some time, at least."

  "Jesus," I muttered.

  Then I realized I could do something, but I didn't know if I had the tools to pull it off. I searched inside my pockets, looking for something small, something metal... I checked my boots. Nothing.

  Fuck.

  "What are you doing?" Bau asked.

  "Looking for something to get us out of here with. A bobby pin, a clip, anything."

  He wiggled himself around that he was up against the bars. "Check my pockets. Maybe there's something..."

  I reached through and dug into his pockets but turned up nothing. I did the same with his boots.

  "There's nothing," I said. "Shit. You don't happen to have anything with you, do you, kid?" Gustavo blinked at me, his brown eyes swollen from crying. He wriggled and rubbed his face with his tiny fists.

  Bau and I sat back to back against the bars, frustrated and disheartened.

  "Well, I guess this is one way to put Los Llanos in the international eye," I muttered, and Bau chuckled.

  All we could do was wait. We sat and watched as the men drank and did cocaine as the daylight faded. They shot guns into the jungle to entertain themselves, cutting down branches with the bullets. In the evening, a truck arrived with another caged jaguar and several small cages filled with parrots. They brought the cages over to where we were, taking a moment to torment us by clanging the barrels of their rifles against the bars.

  They started a bonfire inside a metal oil drum and broke open crates filled with bottles of liquor. I watched as one of them went around taking pictures of his comrades using my camera. A little while later, a fight broke out between two men. They stood up, shouting profanities at each other. Fists cracked against jaws. The man with my camera laughed and snapped photos of the fight. One of them produced a knife, slashing wildly. The other man dodged and swung a brutal uppercut that disarmed his opponent and sent him tumbling onto his back right in front of my cage, knocked out cold. They all laughed and went back to what they were doing, ignoring his lifeless body.

  He lay there for a good fifteen minutes before coming to. He stood up with a groan and wiped off the huge ants that were crawling over his combat vest and pants. Then he retrieved and sheathed his knife and went back to the bonfire, where he was welcomed by the same guy who'd put him on his ass.

  The man with the recurve bow killed a wild boar, and they cooked it over the open fire, torturing Bau and I with the incredible smell of roasted pork. The boss came over to my cage and squatted down on his haunches. He stuck his hand through the bars and placed Gustavo's bottle on the ground.

  "I've got a little one, too," he said. "A little older." He laughed to himself. "It was stupid of you to bring your kid with you here. Did you think this would be a vacation? Ridiculous."

  I said nothing, playing dumb. He tapped the bottle and stood up.

  "What about us?" Bau asked.

  "What about you? Share that bottle, if you're hungry. You get nothing."

  "Asshole," Bau grumbled.

  I fed Gustavo, ignoring my pangs of hunger. I could deal with it. Later, to my surprise, the boss came back and left a plate of grilled boar intestine and a bowl of water. Bau and I shared it, polishing it all off in seconds.

  I made as comfortable a
bed as I could for Gustavo using my shirt, and then leaned my bare back against the bars. Bau did the same. He pushed his hands through the spaces and took hold of mine. We sat there, back to back, gripping each other’s hands for comfort. The bandits were slowly starting to pass out around the fire, with just a few men drunkenly keeping watch.

  "If we get out of this alive," Bau said, "you're coming home with me."

  "Is that right?"

  "Fuck yeah, it is. You don't got a choice this time, pal. I'm really not gonna let you go this time. Not when I just got you back."

  After a few hours, the moon was high in the sky and the camp was quiet. Two men sat by the waning bonfire, their backs to us. I let go of Bau's hands and shuffled forward on my hands and knees past Gustavo, who was asleep on my t-shirt. I checked along the edges of the cage, looking for anything I could use as a tool to break the lock. I tested every screw, twisting until my fingertips were raw, but none of them would budge.

  "Any luck?" Bau murmured.

  "Not yet," I said, dropping to my stomach to inspect the cage's bottom seams.

  Come on, I thought. I found one screw that rotated freely in its socket and pried at it, trying to figure out how to loosen it. I clawed and pried at it but the damn thing wouldn't come out. My fingers were bleeding. I fell backwards, frustrated. There had to be a way to—

  Movement out on the jungle caught my eye. I looked up and stared into the inky darkness. Silhouettes resolved, highlighted by moonlight. That's when I saw it. Slinking amongst the leaves and ferns, barely visible, was a small grey cat with brown spots. Its amber eyes flashed in the darkness, locked onto some prey that I couldn't see.

  "Oh my God," I whispered. "Bau. Hey."

  "You found something?"

  "Look. Ten o'clock from my position, in the jungle. It's there. The Llanos jungle cat."

  He turned around and pressed his face up to the bars, squinting. "Goddamn. I see it."

  I laughed softly. "Son of a bitch."

  A tiny mouse darted across the ground and the cat pounced for it, trapping it in its paws. It took the rodent's tail in its mouth, glanced around with its huge eyes, and then bounded back into the jungle.

  Gone, just like that.

  I stared after it in amazement, more than anything else. We made it. No photo, but we actually saw the damn thing.

  "Damn," I said, leaning against the bars. "What a fucking disaster, Bau."

  He grunted. "It was worth it."

  My eyes moved down from where the cat had been and fell on something in the dirt, glinting in the moonlight. I sat up. No way. I immediately forgot all about the cat. There was a fucking paperclip laying on the ground where the guy had been knocked back during the fight. It must've fallen out of his pocket. I scrambled forward and thrust my arm out as far as it could go.

  "What is it?" Bau hissed.

  "Paperclip. Right there," I said, straining. "Shit! I can't reach it."

  "Boots, use your fuckin' boots."

  I hurriedly unlaced and yanked my boot off. It added just enough reach to drag the clip towards the cage. I scooped it up. Freedom in my fingertips.

  "Fuck yeah," I breathed.

  I unfolded it and then snapped it in two. I used my teeth to bend one end in a wave shape, the other in an L shape. Bau stuck his hands through the bars and I got to work.

  "Can you really unlock these with that?" he asked.

  The cuffs clicked and fell off his wrists.

  "Yeah," I said, grinning.

  He reached and grabbed my face. "I fucking love you." He pulled me in and kissed me.

  "Alright. Now the cage. A padlock is going to be a lot harder, but I can do this."

  "Careful," Bau said. "I'll watch your back."

  I pushed the L shaped wire into the lock hanging from the corner of the cage, and then inserted the other rod, gently moving it back and forth. With my fingers all fucked up from trying to remove the screws it was a lot harder to muster the dexterity needed to move the pins inside of the lock, but I was good at this. I'd spent years on the street as a teenager. Not the proudest time in my life, but I'd gotten plenty of practice with unobtrusive breaking and entering.

  I applied careful pressure, slightly twisting the lock as I felt the pins moving into place. Then I felt them drop back down, putting me at square one. My damn fingers. It was so hard to feel anything. My face was drenched with sweat.

  Then, in one of the most gratifying moments of my life, the lock slid open with a loud click.

  11

  Bautista

  It was nearly morning when Ryan cracked the lock. I resisted the urge to shout with excitement. The two guards sitting by the fire were half-asleep, their backs still facing us, but who knew how long that would last.

  Ryan carefully opened the cage and set to work on unlocking mine. The lock fell loose a few minutes later. I grabbed him and pulled him into my arms, hugging him tightly. It felt incredible to hold him because I'd accepted the possibility of not being able to again.

  "How are we going to get out of here?" he whispered. "Steal a truck?"

  "I don't see any other way. With them pursuing us, we won't make it far on foot, not with Gustavo."

  "Then we steal a fucking truck."

  Ryan got Gustavo and made a makeshift carrier with his t-shirt, tying the sleeping baby to his chest.

  "Wait. I have to do one thing." Ryan hurried to the jaguar's cage and fiddled with the lock.

  "C'mon, we don't have time for this."

  "Just a second. I know the locks now." It clicked open. He went to the remaining cages and quickly unlocked them, leaving the doors slightly ajar. "Okay. Let's get the fuck out of here."

  We crept quietly past the main camp, where a portion of the gang was sleeping around the fire pit.

  "Go to the truck," I whispered, pointing towards a green Toyota. "I'll meet you there."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "I need a weapon. If we're gonna have a chance to get out of here, I need something to defend us with."

  "Right. Hurry."

  Sitting on a table just across from the fire were the contents of our backpacks, including Ryan's camera. Next to it sat a hunting bow and a quiver of several arrows. Not ideal, but just past all of that stuff one of the bandits was passed out in a chair with his AK-47 lying at his feet. Bingo.

  I made my way over, moving silently behind cover. I got to the table and quickly snatched Ryan's camera, stringing it around my neck. I was about to make a go for the rifle, when a call went out.

  "What the fuck are you doing?"

  I turned. Over by the car, Ryan had his hands in the air. One of the men must've been sleeping in the bed of the truck. He was standing and had a pistol pointing right at Ryan's face. Gustavo started to cry.

  I didn't hesitate. I grabbed the powerful hunting bow from the table, drew an arrow and released. It hissed silently through the air and caught the man dead in the neck. This was a bow rated to take down huge wild boar, with seventy pounds of draw weight behind that arrow. The man flew off the end of the truck like he'd been swiped by the hand of God.

  The camp was awake. I dove to cover and fired another arrow at a man who'd been sleeping against a tree. He made a grab for his rifle but found his arm pinned to the trunk. He screamed and grabbed at the shaft, trying his hardest to pull it free. I drew another arrow and put him out of his misery.

  The others fired their weapons at me. Gunshots came from the direction of the trucks, and I saw Ryan blasting away using the downed man's pistol. He caught two men in the chest, dropping them. Then there was a blood-curdling scream. The men whirled around in confusion and found themselves at the paws of two angry jaguars. The animals had figured out they were free and were wreaking havoc. One man clutched at what used to be his throat as the jaguar stepped over him, fangs dripping with blood. I rushed forward, taking advantage of the pandemonium, and grabbed a huge, drum-fed M249 machine gun from the ground as I sprinted for Ryan.

  "Thank
s for saving me," he said.

  "Anytime. Get down and cover his ears." I swung the machine gun onto the bed of the truck, flipping down the bipod. I gritted my teeth and laid onto the trigger.

  The dawn darkness of the forest was lit up by the lightning and thunder that poured out from the end of the machine gun. This was a weapon that only one or two men in a squad carried, meant for covering fire and suppressing the enemy with a maelstrom of bullets. Dozens of empty shells clattered down into the truck bed as I emptied the entire drum. Men dove for cover, trying to escape both the gunfire and the rampaging jaguar.