At three o’clock in the afternoon, Luis and his entourage reached the first checkpoint on their journey. Three flatbed trucks and two jeeps, covered with leaves and tree branches for camouflage, were parked at the beginning of a crude dirt path.
“Thank God,” Alvarado said. “We can ride for a while.”
Luis waved at the soldiers. “Get everyone into the trucks.” He turned to Alvarado. “At least we move the cows faster now, eh? I was ready to kill them all just so we could get here.”
Alvarado shook his head. “Fifty miles, and only a little bit faster. This road is a mess. Then more walking.”
“Fifty miles in a vehicle. Who cares how fast? It’s still much better than fifty miles on foot,” Luis pointed out.
Alvarado nodded. “True, but this part is dangerous. The gringos can follow the road from their Harpies.” Alvarado scanned the sky above him, looking for helicopters.
Luis watched, too. He slapped Alvarado on the back. “What goes up must come down, Alvarado. I’ve yet to see a Harpy you couldn’t shoot on descent.” Alvarado looked pleased at the compliment.
“But we throw out the sick ones here. We don’t have the room to carry them all,” Luis said. “Take that diabetic man out of here and shoot him.” He pointed at the weaker of the two diabetics. “The tall man, too. His infection will kill him in the next few days, and I am tired of looking at him.”
Alvarado frowned in disapproval.
“You have a problem with this order, Alvarado?” Luis glared at his lieutenant.
Alvarado pursed his lips, then shrugged. “The diabetic man will be in a coma soon.” He said nothing to Luis about the tall man. He thought the chances of him beating the infection were slim, but he’d survived this long, a near miracle. Alvarado snapped his fingers at a group of guerrillas that lounged against a jeep. “Take those two back on the path and kill them,” he said.
21
EMMA ROUNDED A CORNER AND SKIDDED TO A HALT. A SMALL group stood on the path thirty feet ahead. Foliage obscured her view, but she caught glimpses of the men between the swaying branches.
Three guerrillas stood in a semicircle around Sumner and another passenger. The extent of Sumner’s deterioration shocked Emma. He was unshaven, with five days’ growth of beard and a long red, swollen cut on his shoulder blade that oozed a yellow substance. He was naked from the waist up, his back was covered in bug bites, and his pants hung on his frame.
The other man was not much better off. His ashen face gleamed with an unnatural sheen, and he swayed a little. Sumner reached out and clutched the man’s forearm, lending what support he could.
The guerrillas passed a joint between them in silence. The pungent marijuana aroma wafted toward Emma. Each carried a rifle slung over his shoulder by a strap, one wore ammunition belts crisscrossed over his chest, and the third held a plastic water bottle.
They ignored the two passengers while they took their time smoking. The executioners, rather than offering a last smoke to the condemned, were taking one themselves. It was as if Sumner and the other man didn’t exist. As if the guerrillas thought the men were already ghosts. Emma felt a sense of dread just watching the silent group. She found herself staring at the guerrilla with the ammunition belts as he put the joint to his lips, inhaled with closed eyes, and then took it away in a slow motion. She knew that when his joint was over, something awful was going to happen.
The smoke curled into the air in slow patterns. The two guerrillas without ammunition belts sat down on the ground to roll another. The guerrilla with the ammo stayed standing, and continued smoking. Sumner and the injured man waited, swaying in silence.
Emma slid the pack off her back. She lowered it to the ground and carefully pulled out one of the pistols and a tiny bottle of scotch. She shoved the gun into her waistband, cracked open the scotch, drank half of it, and poured the remaining alcohol over the grease-soaked rag that she still had from her encounter with the guerrilla. She placed the neck of the bottle under her foot. The top broke with a satisfying crunch, leaving a jagged tip and a wider opening. She shoved the piece of cloth in the bottle and picked up the lighter. She crept toward them, until she was only fifteen feet behind the group.
The ashen man’s eyes glazed over, and he sank into unconsciousness, falling quietly onto the thick bed of rotted leaves that covered the trail. The smoking guerrilla removed the joint from his mouth, pointed his rifle at the prone man, and blew his head off. Bits of bone and brains splattered against the thick foliage. The blast set a group of monkeys screaming in the trees.
Emma gasped in horror and fumbled with the lighter, flicking it at the soaked piece of rag. While she did, the guerrilla raised the gun and pointed it at Sumner, who stared at it with a resigned look on his face.
The rag lit. A tongue of flame whooshed upward. Emma moved into position behind the guerrilla aiming the rifle. She shoved the barrel of her gun into the back of his head.
“Don’t even think about it,” she whispered in his ear.
She felt his body freeze. The other two leaped up with almost comical speed.
“Get down!” Emma yelled at the top of her lungs and threw the flaming bottle of scotch at them. They dove back onto the ground to avoid it. Sumner jumped over and yanked the rifle from the standing guerrilla’s hands. He trained it on the others. Everyone froze, like some grotesque sculpture.
Emma grabbed the rifles away from the other two, still lying on their stomachs. She now had four guns that she didn’t know how to use, three guerrillas she didn’t know what to do with, and one man with wild, bloodshot eyes on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
And a corpse.
Emma’s hands shook as she held the pistol.
“Take off your clothes,” she said.
The guerrillas didn’t move.
“I said take off your clothes!”
This time she punctuated her statement with a kick to one man’s shoulder. He babbled at her in Spanish, clearly not understanding her.
“What in the hell am I going to do now?” Emma said, frustrated.
Sumner gave her a reddened stare before he turned to the guerrillas. He barked an order in Spanish, his voice hoarse. The men looked at him in surprise. He said the same words again, then knelt down and shoved the rifle into the face of one of the guerrillas.
Emma noted that whatever he said worked, because all three began to rip their clothes off. Sumner shot Emma a questioning look but said nothing as the pile of clothes grew.
“Keep the guns on them,” Emma said.
Sumner nodded. He still stared at her as if she was a creature from outer space. Then she remembered the mud that covered her body. She must have looked a fright.
“It’s mud. It stops the bugs from biting.”
Sumner said nothing.
Emma grabbed one man’s pants and took the pocketknife to them, cutting the pants into strips. She tied the arms and legs of each, shoved pieces of the cotton into their mouths, and wrapped another strip of cloth around to hold the gag in place. She grabbed the water bottle the guerrilla had dropped in his surprise. She held it up for Sumner to see.
“This is precious.” She shoved it in her backpack. She handed one of the T-shirts to Sumner.
“For you to wear. Your back’s a mess of mosquito bites.” Sumner took the shirt but made no move to put it on.
“Help me carry them off the path,” Emma said.
Sumner didn’t move. He continued staring at her. Emma felt her anger rise. Why didn’t he speak? Had he gone off the deep end?
“Help me carry them into the trees!” Emma made her voice sharp. “While I can’t kill them in cold blood, I would like to stop them from chasing us for long enough to get away!”
Sumner swung the rifle over his good shoulder, stuck the tail of the T-shirt into his waistband, and grabbed the nearest soldier by the armpits. Emma pulled on the man’s ankles, and she and Sumner carried him into the brush. When they were done, Emma stood over the corpse. She d
idn’t like to look at it.
“Should we move him?” she asked.
Sumner shook his head.
Emma hesitated. She didn’t want to touch the man, and she rebelled at the idea of leaving a human being sprawled on the path without any type of proper burial, but she would leave him if it meant extra time to get away. The anger she carried around with her flared, bringing with it a feeling of despair. She shoved the emotion aside. Most of the passengers on the plane were dead, this man was dead, and if she didn’t make a decision about moving him soon, another guerrilla would appear and then she’d be dead.
“Perhaps the body will reassure any tracking guerrillas that their buddies had completed their mission,” Emma said. “We’ll leave him here. Let’s get the hell out of here before someone comes.”
Sumner shrugged on the shirt. Then he nodded.
Emma shot him a glance. Perhaps he didn’t speak English? Well, she didn’t speak Spanish, so he’d have to do his best to understand her.
“I hate to go back toward the airplane, but following the rest is no longer an option. Once the others realize these guys are missing, they’re going to double back. I saw a small trail that branched off a few miles back. Let’s take that and hope for the best.”
Sumner looked at her but again said nothing.
“Come on.” She waved him forward.
He fell in behind her.
Emma thought that what they needed the most they didn’t have—a machete. She stepped gingerly over what was left of the dead man and started down the path at a slow jog.
Two hours later, shooting pains arced from her feet through her overworked calves and through her already fractured shin. Emma swore under her breath. The microscopic fracture hurt like hell, and the only way to cure it was to lay off running until it healed.
That’s not going to happen anytime soon, Emma thought. She grimaced and kept going, maintaining a grueling pace despite the stabbing pain in her legs and the load on her back. She noticed how Sumner struggled to keep up. His shoes were cut in several places and he winced with each step. He stumbled. He needed a rest, but they had at least four hours of light left, and Emma intended to use every minute of it to get some distance between them and the guerrillas. They passed a huge palm tree, and she stopped to stare at it.
“I’m a little surprised to see one of these,” she said.
Sumner stood on the path, his chest heaving. He leaned back to view the palm.
“It’s called a traveler’s palm. I didn’t think they grew wild in this part of the world.” Three more of the trees were scattered around in a semicircle, looking as if they’d been planted. “It’s pretty distinctive; see how the fronds are fan shaped and stick right up into the sky?”
Sumner nodded.
“When I tell you, put your mouth at the base,” she told him.
Emma walked to the first tree’s trunk, which was twenty inches in diameter. The fronds wrapped around it and overlapped one another at the base. Emma followed along the edge of a frond with her fingers.
“Put your mouth at the place where this frond meets the trunk.”
Sumner raised an eyebrow at her.
“Trust me. You’ll like this,” Emma said.
He kneeled and lowered his mouth to the frond.
Emma gently pulled the base of the frond from the trunk, and as she did, clear water poured from a channel between the frond and the trunk.
Sumner drank greedily.
When he was finished, he sat back on his heels. A small smile played around his lips.
“Pretty neat, huh?” Emma said.
Sumner nodded, still looking at her with a whisper of a smile.
“All traveler’s palms collect water in their base. They got the name because travelers used them to drink. Pull another frond back for me, will you?”
Sumner repeated the procedure and Emma drank from the tree. She wiped her arm across her mouth.
“Let’s go.”
Emma started out at a brisk walk, and they kept that pace until sundown. She left Sumner sitting on the trail, collecting his breath, as she walked in a semicircle to look for a place to camp.
They should have kept going, but Emma didn’t think Sumner could make it. He still hadn’t said anything, nor did she. She preferred to focus on putting one foot in front of the other at a speed that would keep her ahead of any possible pursuers. Emma retrieved Sumner after she’d set up the tent and cleared a place to sit. He sank down with a sigh.
“Food,” she said as she handed him an airline package.
He barked a soft laugh when he saw the package but wasted no time ripping it open. The rancid smell of spoiling meat wafted from the tray, but Sumner didn’t seem to notice. He ripped at the meat with gusto. While he did, Emma pulled out the first-aid kit and walked over to inspect his infected shoulder. She lit the lighter in the darkness to have a look. The cut was eight inches long and filled with yellow pus.
“What caused this?” she said, although she already knew.
“Machete,” he said in perfect, unaccented English.
“I need to lance this and pour alcohol on it as a disinfectant,” she said. He stopped eating and stared at her, his eyes gleaming in the lighter’s glow.
“Can you hold the lighter? I don’t want to start a fire that would attract them.”
His hands closed over hers in the dark. His palm felt wet and clammy. Too clammy. He was working on a fever.
Emma dropped the lighter into his palm. He tried to flick the lighter on, but his slick fingers slid off the starter twice. On the third try he managed to light it. He held the flame while she used it to heat the knife. When it cooled, she pushed the blade into the oozing blister. He groaned, but didn’t move as she used the airline napkins to soak up the infection.
“Incoming alcohol,” Emma said. She poured a small amount over the wound. He groaned again. She covered the mess with a bandage and patted his arm when she was done. She sat next to him to eat her own filet.
Emma waved at the tent. “It’s supposed to hold two, and we’ll sweat to death, but it’s a lot better than being eaten alive by mosquitoes all night. You’re welcome to join me.”
He nodded again; his eyes flashed as they caught a shaft of moonlight. Emma crossed her fingers that he hadn’t gone over the deep end, and crawled into the tent. Sumner joined her a minute later. Their bodies lay against each other from shoulder to ankle. Emma moved as far away as possible, which in that closed space meant about two inches. She lay awake a long time, sweating, with the sounds of the night pressing down on her.
22
THEY WOKE AT DAWN AND ATE A LITTLE BEFORE HEADING OUT. Two bright red circles on Sumner’s cheeks indicated that he was feverish.
“Can you walk today? You look like you have a fever,” Emma said.
“Yes,” he said.
It was the last thing he said for the next eight hours.
The only bright spot in the day was when they found a stream.
“Oh, thank God, water.” Emma’s relief was profound. “We need to stay along this stream. If there are any villages in these mountains, they will be near it, you can bet.”
They spent the rest of the day following the river. As good as finding it was finding the cattails that grew alongside. Emma collected them as they appeared.
“We can eat these. What a great day!” Sumner raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Emma used a vine to attach them to the outside of her pack. Sumner watched her without interest. That his mind was elsewhere was obvious. Emma didn’t bother to try to snap him back to the present. Perhaps his thoughts consisted of things more pleasant than their current circumstances. Far be it from her to force him back to the grim reality they faced. It seemed they were to be forever silent.
By late afternoon, Sumner’s eyes burned bright, and the two spots on his cheeks expanded to cover his face and neck. Emma continued to march him through the jungle despite his rising fever. Each hour his cheeks grew more flushed and his
eyes more glazed. The only thing that kept him going seemed to be sheer determination. Emma was familiar with the type. Endurance runners have the same undivided drive to push themselves against all reason. Except Sumner had a reason, a very good one. They could hear chopping sounds.
Emma knew from her many trips to search for medicinal plants that while the jungle foliage made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead, it also magnified, rather than dampened, sound. It was a paradox she never could figure out. The chopping sounded close, but in reality the person making the sound could be miles away. While Emma knew this intellectually, she was having a hard time accepting it. Her adrenaline surged every time a sound echoed through the forest. Her mental state was deteriorating with each hour in the jungle.
Sumner stumbled, and this time he stayed down. He rolled onto his back and waved her off.
“I need a break,” he said.
Emma squatted next to him to wait. He had lapsed into his usual silence, but she felt compelled, finally, to break it.
“Your name is Cameron Sumner, isn’t it?”
He shot her his signature wary look.
“Yes,” he said after a long minute.
“Don’t worry, I’m not psychic or anything. I saw you hide your luggage from the guerrillas. When you left I retrieved it and read your business card. Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense.”
“I saw you at the airstrip. Why were you trying to get into the truck?”
“The Smoking Man had a spare field phone. I was trying to steal it.”
Sumner shook his head. “That was an incredibly risky move.”
“Thanks for diverting their attention to the capybara. I thought I was done for when that thing shot out of the forest and the woman screamed.”
“How did you manage to avoid capture in the first place?”
“The crash catapulted me out of the plane, free of the fuel.”
“Lucky you. That was a scene from hell.”
“Where were you thrown?”
“To the rear. I landed right in the group of guerrillas.”
“You didn’t have a chance,” Emma said.
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