William Christie 02 - Mercy Mission

by William Christie

  "Oh." Then she asked brightly, "Will we be having pie?"

  "No. You'll see." Welsh gestured toward the hole.

  "I'm doing this under protest."

  "So noted. After a few days on the march you'll see why it had to be done. Remember, new toilet articles can be purchased once we reach civilization. As the old Ranger saying goes: Travel light, and freeze at night."

  "I've already done that. And I didn't find it personally fulfilling."

  Welsh gestured toward the hole again. Scanlan unzipped her pack and began firing articles into the hole. When she was finished he carefully replaced the topsoil he'd cut away and set aside. He rolled the excess dirt up in the tarp and scattered it well away from the campsite.

  "I hesitate to bring it up," he said. "But there's something else we need to do while it's still light."

  "Oh, I'm sure this is going to be good. Out with it."

  "Tick check."

  "What?"

  "Tick check. Every time you go to the bathroom, you should run your hands over your whole body. Any little bumps are probably ticks, and since they're big-time disease carriers, they need to be removed. Most you can do yourself. You can't reach your back, so someone else has to check it."

  "This time I'm not going to ask if it's a joke."

  "Ever take a tick off?"

  "No."

  "I'm sure we'll find one or two to practice on."

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The second night under the tarp passed much easier. Welsh's watch beeped them awake before dawn. He packed everything by touch and then, Beretta at the ready, waited for first light. It was known as a stand-to in the military, because one of the most favorable times to make an attack was out of the rising sun when it was just light enough to see. There was no attack. They had a few Fig Newtons for breakfast and began walking. Welsh was careful to first head upstream before looping back onto his preplanned route.

  By the afternoon they had made just over five miles, about what Welsh had expected. To guard against ambush, they were forced to move very cautiously. Welsh hadn't needed that first day to teach him that in the jungle the stationary always have the advantage over the moving. He walked with the Beretta in hand and the safety off, and tolerated no unnecessary conversation. He would take a single step, sweep his gaze slowly left to right, listening all the while, and only then take another step and repeat the process. Along with a ten-minute rest break every hour, they stopped and sat silently for a minute or so every half hour, alert for unusual noises or even smells in the air.

  The rules were simple. They never followed trails or paths, even those made by animals. They avoided all open areas like clearings and breaks in the jungle.

  The only unscheduled stops they made were when Welsh spied a familiar vine growing up a tree. He chopped the stalk off low to the ground, careful not to leave a cut on the tree trunk, and yanked the vine down. Then he sliced off the end, stuck it in his pack, and threw the rest away.

  "What is that?" Scanlan whispered the first time.

  "I don't remember the name. But I first saw it in Panama. The green growing tip is edible."

  "What does it taste like?"

  "Chicken."

  "Whaaat?"

  "All survival food tastes just like chicken," he said, grinning. "Always remember that."

  "Okay," she said with a laugh.

  Despite the common belief that jungles teemed with life, they encountered few animals other than birds and insects. Most creatures knew to make themselves scarce when two large predators were in the vicinity.

  But in that late afternoon, when the sun was at a low angle, Welsh's gaze happened to fall on one particular tree. A shaft of sunlight threw a circle like a spotlight on the trunk, about seven feet from the ground.

  He turned to Scanlan and held a finger to his lips. He silently thumbed on the pistol's safety and holstered it.

  Scanlan watched him sprint toward the tree and swing his staff like a baseball bat. When it hit the tree something large dropped off and writhed on the ground. Welsh drove the staff at it like a spear. Then, smiling broadly, he motioned Scanlan over.

  She came up and saw a large snake, a beautiful emerald-green tree boa, pinned to the ground by the crook on the end of the staff. The boa was very angry, striking at the wood while Welsh kept his weight on the other end.

  "Dinnertime," he announced.

  "Oh, no," Scanlan breathed.

  Welsh whipped out his machete and pinned the snake's head down with the flat of the blade. He grabbed it just behind the head with his left hand, and sliced the head off with the machete. The snake's body, acting on the last message from its nervous system, kept writhing.

  Still holding the headless snake, he shucked off his pack. "Maggie, would you take out the pot and pie pan?"

  She handed him the small aluminum cooking pot. Welsh released his grip on the snake's neck and drained its blood into the pot. He counted off the seconds in his head, and didn't get to ten before she asked, "What are you going to do with that blood?"

  "Cook it into a broth. Lots of salts and minerals."

  "You mean we don't get to drink it raw?" she asked, feigning disappointment.

  "It would be the badass thing to do," Welsh conceded. "But you'd also be drinking raw bacteria and viruses."

  "In that case I'll wait for the broth."

  "So you'll have some?"

  "I might as well. If we survive I'll be able to dine out for years on the stories from this trip."

  Welsh slit the snake's belly and scraped the innards out onto the ground. Then he made a circular cut, just through the skin, about four inches from the tail.

  "Here's your chance to help," he said.

  "Oh, great," Scanlan groaned.

  He offered her the tail end. "Hold on real tight. Use both hands and dig your heels in for traction."

  Scanlan grimaced at the touch of the snake. "Just what are we doing here?"

  "Pulling his coat off." Welsh cut a little of the skin free from each side of the belly incision and got a firm grip on the two flaps of skin. He was facing Scanlan, as if the snake were the rope in a tug of war. He'd left her that four inches of dry skin for a good grip. "Got it?"

  Scanlan gritted her teeth and nodded.

  Welsh pulled the two flaps down and toward his body. The skin came away from the meat with a wet tearing sound.

  "Oh, God," Scanlan moaned, looking off in the distance so she wouldn't have to see it.

  Welsh kept pulling and backing up. The trick was to use just enough force to get the skin off but keep it in one piece, like the peel of a banana. The snake turned into a tube of light red meat, except for the four inches of tail skin Scanlan was holding onto. "You can let go now."

  She dropped her end as if it was on fire.

  "Wasn't that fun?" Welsh asked, wiping his bloody hands on a handful of leaves.

  "Terrific. I can't wait to see what comes next."

  "Your work is done." He trimmed the bark from some green sticks, sliced the snake into chunks, and threaded the meat onto the sticks. "Snake kebobs," he announced.

  "I'm thinking of becoming a vegetarian."

  "All the more for me then."

  Welsh took the twelve-inch pie pan and filled the bottom with dirt. He gathered some wood, placing the largest piece in the center of the pan, and leaned the smaller twigs against it at an angle. "Let me show you the secret of making a fire with permanently damp jungle wood, and not waste twenty matches doing it."

  "Oh, I love those reality shows."

  Welsh arranged a clump of the very smallest twigs in his palm, produced a butane cigarette lighter from his pocket, flicked it alight, and applied the flame to the twigs. The twigs smoked, and then caught. Welsh pushed the flaming clump into the center of the twig lean-to, and soon the whole thing was burning.

  "No fair!" Scanlan protested.

  "The continuous flame dries out the wood, then sets it on fire. Works no matter how wet. A candle works
too."

  "I still say it's not fair."

  "The next time we have a day to kill, I'll let you try flint and steel or an Indian bow and drill."

  When the fire burned down to coals, he laid the kebobs on top, the sticks supported by the outer lip of the pie pan. He peeled the vine tubers he'd collected that day, cut them into pieces, and buried them in the coals.

  "Wouldn't it be easier to just build a fire on the ground?" Scanlan asked.

  "It would leave a deep blackened ring, very hard to conceal. After I dump the ashes and dirt from the pan in the nearest stream, you'd never know there was a fire here."

  "Very crafty. But I was hoping for pie."

  "Some people are never satisfied."

  Despite her proclamation of vegetarianism, the smell of grilling boa constrictor had Scanlan hovering over the fire.

  Welsh picked up a skewer, checked the meat for doneness, and handed it to her. "Sprinkle a little salt on it. I've also got a bottle of hot sauce if you need it."

  "Hot sauce?"

  "I always bring hot sauce to the field."

  "You like your food hot."

  "Not really. Enough hot sauce and you can't taste what you're eating. That can be handy in a situation like this."

  Scanlan took a cautious bite of snake. Then more. "You know," she said with her mouth full, "it really does taste a little like chicken. How did you see it in the tree?"

  "I didn't at first. I was looking at where the light was falling. It's a tree snake, but cold-blooded. It crawled down the trunk to catch the last of the day's sun."

  They finished the snake, and then the tubers. The hot sauce went on the tubers. Welsh added some water to the snake blood, and put the pot on the fire.

  "You know," Scanlan said, after a cautious sip this time. "It's really not that bad. I think it's because the idea of drinking snake's blood is just so gross that the actual taste is nothing compared to it."

  "How about dessert?" Welsh asked, after rinsing out the cooking pot.

  "Pie?"

  "No, not pie." He grabbed a broken piece of Fig Newton and disappeared into the trees with the cooking pot. He returned fifteen minutes later with the pot covered with a large leaf and a piece of wood. "Promise me you'll keep an open mind?"

  "What's in the pot?" Scanlan demanded, her voice reeking with suspicion.

  Welsh set the pot on the coals, and periodically banged the side with a chunk of wood. "It might be better to just give this a shot without actually knowing what it is."

  "No way."

  "Okay," he said. "They're ants."

  "Ants!"

  "Please lower your voice."

  "All right. You're cooking ants?"

  "Yeah, you have to cook them to break down the formic acid."

  "I wasn't talking about the cooking, I was talking about ants."

  "I saw them going into a rotten stump. Chopped it open, and it was loaded with big black carpenter ants. I left a little trail of Fig Newton crumbs, put the rest in the pot, and they piled right in. In the jungle you've got to be careful, because fire ants or army ants would ruin your whole day if you tried to herd them into a cup. Black ants are the best eating, in my humble opinion."

  Scanlan slumped back against her pack. "I'm so glad to hear that."

  Welsh took the leaf off the top of the pot. "That was just to keep them from climbing out They get a little agitated when you heat them up." He scraped around with his metal spoon. "Want to take a shot? They shrink down to little black balls. Not even any legs. Just the abdomen."

  "Thank you, no."

  Welsh helped himself to a spoonful. "Just like powdered sugar in a crunchy shell. Great for dessert."

  "Don't feel you have to lie on my account. I'm not having any."

  "Don't be chicken, you already had snake blood. We'll be eating a lot of things that'll either look or taste like crap. Might as well get started."

  After an angry look, Scanlan took the spoon and jammed it into her mouth. She chewed quickly and with her eyes closed. "They are a little sugary," she admitted. "But just the thought of eating ants makes me want to puke."

  "Think of them as Nature's little candies," Welsh suggested. "Bears love them."

  She accepted the pot, shrugged, and helped herself to a larger portion. "They are better than those vines."

  "That's the spirit. If you'll permit me another quote, 'Hunger is the best sauce in the world.'"

  "Okay, now who said that?"

  "Cervantes, Don Quixote."

  "Do you intend to keep quoting from the classics?"

  "Only when necessary."

  "Yeah, ants were necessary."

  After a short rest period for digestive purposes, they continued walking, away from the smells of food and cooked meat, until Welsh found a suitable bivouac site.

  It was in thick brash on the side of a hill. On the chance, however unlikely, that anyone had caught sight of them, they walked right past along the base of the hill, waiting until it was completely dark to circle back, using the night-vision goggles to set up the tarp.

  "We spent all day walking along the sides of hills until one of my legs is longer than the other," said Scanlan. "Do we really have to sleep on a slope?"

  "The short answer is yes," Welsh replied. "But to keep you from getting pissed, I'll give you the long one too. Every road was once a human footpath. And every footpath was an animal trail first. Animals don't waste energy, they take the easiest route from one point to another. The easiest route is always along valley floors, the long axis of ridgelines, and streams and rivers. So, if you want to lay an ambush with a strong expectation of someone walking into it, those are the places you set up in. Therefore, those are the places we don't walk.

  "Now, sleeping. If you're a bunch of guys after one or two, and you think you've got a good idea where they are, you put everyone on line and sweep through the area. Hard to do in regular jungle. Nearly impossible in thick brush or along the side of a hill. So there we are.''

  "You learn something new every day."

  "Glad you feel that way. Make sure you sleep with your head uphill from the rest of your body. Otherwise you won't be happy when you wake up in the morning."

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The next day they were traveling through a stretch of jungle so thick that the light only came through the canopy in tiny shafts, creating a continual twilight. They'd already gone about two miles out of their way, forced to detour around a large swampy area. Welsh couldn't make out the contours in the terrain, so he was pushing his way through the greenery, stepping carefully with one eye on the GPS and the other on the ground ahead, when he heard a low-pitched humming. He stopped and raised the pistol.

  "What's that?" Scanlan whispered.

  The sound grew louder, and suddenly Welsh's brain made the connection. "Run!" he yelled.

  Behind him Scanlan shouted, "What?"

  "Fucking run!" Welsh bellowed.

  The humming evolved to an angry whine, and the cloud of bees enveloped them. Welsh felt white-hot needies driving into his face and neck and hands. There didn't have to be an allergy; enough stings and you died. That spurred him to run even faster; legs pumping, hands shielding his eyes, blindly breaking a path with his body. All the hollering in his ears told him that Scanlan was right behind.

  They crashed down a small hill. At the bottom Welsh saw a scattering of grass hummocks and launched himself in between them. He belly-flopped onto the greasy wet mud and felt it envelope him. The Beretta was still in his right hand, and he managed to keep the muzzle out of the mud. He felt Scanlan hit with a splat right beside him.

  When his breath ran out, Welsh very carefully shoved his left hand above the surface of the muck. Nothing stung it, or at least he didn't think so. The little bastards had gotten him so many times, he wasn't sure if he could even feel another sting. He stuck his head out. The bees were gone. The mud had a fulsome aroma of rotting vegetation, and his first move was to spit it out of his mouth.
<
br />   Scanlan popped up a few seconds later, also spitting mud. As soon as she could see, he took her arm and they waded the short distance back to dry ground. "What an indignity," she exclaimed, grabbing a handful of grass to wipe the mud off her face and neck.

  Welsh only grunted. He set the Beretta down in the dry grass and pulled off his muddy and sodden pack. He tore it open, hunting in the first-aid bag for tweezers. He could feel the venom surging through him like burning oil; it was making his arms and legs shake.

  Scanlan was really swelling up. He began removing stingers from her face, neck, and arms. Even after the mud bath some of the little venom bags were still attached, and still pumping away.

  "Are you allergic to bee stings?" he asked, trying to make the question sound unimportant.

  "No, but I feel cold, and a little sick to my stomach."

  "That's okay. Any trouble breathing?"

  "No, but my tongue feels a little thick," she replied, the slight lisp to her speech confirming it.

  When he was done he rolled over on his back, completely exhausted. Scanlan took up the tweezers and went to work on him. "God," she moaned, "I can't remember anything hurting this much. My skin feels like it's on fire."

  "We'll be swollen up like soccer balls pretty soon." Welsh touched one of his throbbing ears; it felt like a bunch of grapes. "Not very sanitary, but cool mud probably isn't the worst thing to have on us right now."

  Poised over him and busy plucking out stingers, Scanlan said, "Hey, amigo, were those the South American killer bees?" She used a broad Spanish accent, and a goofy smile was accentuated by her mud-slicked face and hair.

  Despite the pain and his general mood, Welsh had to chuckle. She really was priceless. Almost anyone else, male or female, would have been either completely hysterical or else withdrawn into a tight sullen cocoon. "I didn't get a chance to check their dog tags, but I think so."

  "They certainly were pissed off."

  "We got too close to their hive and they attacked. These Africanized strains are really territorial. Run your ass down and keep stinging until you're dead."