After he got that done, he pulled out the binoculars to check the other side of the river.
Scanlan dragged the packs over to where he was glassing the surrounding area.
Welsh said, "I think I have the answer to that omen."
"What do you mean."
"Someone is following us."
"Who's following us?" Scanlan said quickly. "The same ones as before?"
Welsh was still lying on his belly looking through the binoculars. "One guy, dressed like a peasant, a campesino. He's carrying a civilian rifle or a shotgun."
"Couldn't he just be out hunting?"
"Hunting us. When I first caught sight of him, he was running down the bank from upstream, trying to see where we came ashore. He's right on our track. I imagine there's quite a bounty on our heads."
"But how did he find us?"
"He could have just stumbled across our trail."
"What are we going to do?"
"Let's see if he has any friends with him."
Welsh kept watching. Scanlan found herself fidgeting, and sat down on her pack.
"No," Welsh said after a few minutes. "A loner. He's chopping trees and making a raft. Must not have wanted to share the reward. A little greedy, if you ask me."
"So what does that mean?"
Welsh kept his eyes on the river bank as he talked. "He may try to sneak up on us while we're sleeping, or he may just follow us and go for help as soon as we get near a populated area."
"Are we going to hide again?"
"In a way. We'll hide while we wait for him to show up, and when he does I'm going to kill him."
"Is that our only option?"
Welsh turned to look at her. "If you can think of a way around it, you've got the floor."
She surprised him by saying, very coldly and clinically, "How will you do it?"
Welsh recited, "'If somebody's trailing you, make a circle, come back onto your tracks, and ambush the folks that aim to ambush you.'"
"That doesn't sound like one of the classics."
"Ah, but it is. The Standing Orders of Rogers' Rangers, written in 1759 and still relevant. As a matter of fact, we've already followed most of them."
"Then I'm glad you remembered them."
"By the way, how do you feel about being the bait?"
"I figured it would be something like that. All right."
"All right?"
"Yes, all right," she said impatiently. "I suppose you were waiting for me to say, 'Rich, why do I have to be the bait?' so you could say, 'Okay, Maggie, you take the gun and shoot him.' Well, I'm filthy and hungry and tired, and more than a little mad about being chased through this stinking jungle. Right now I'd love to shoot the fucking asshole, but I couldn't do it as well as you. So I'll be the bait."
Welsh had no trouble grasping why throughout history warriors feared death in battle less than being taken alive and turned over to the women.
They left the high ground before the campesino put his raft in the water. Welsh guessed that, wherever the guy came ashore, he'd just work his way up the bank until he picked up their trail again.
Just as the pace count from the stream reached one thousand, one hundred meters, a beautiful dense thicket appeared before them. And right on their route of march, so it would look like a natural obstacle they'd been forced to go through.
He led the way with his staff, and Scanlan followed. Birds were screaming at them, but that was what Welsh wanted. He only hoped they didn't bump into a snake, or another beehive.
They'd crawled about forty yards when he stopped and took off his pack. "I want you to stay here and make noise," he said. "Nothing obvious. Every once in a while rattle the packs, break a stick. You'll be holding his attention to his front, and I'll be off to one side."
"Don't take this wrong, but what happens if everything doesn't go according to plan?"
He handed her the map and GPS. "Now aren't you glad you learned how to use these? If he gets me, leave your pack here and take mine. Follow the waypoints and you'll eventually run into civilization. From there you're on your own. If I don't make it, good luck. I think you're really special."
Before she could say anything else, Welsh slithered back into the thick vegetation. Scanlan looked around for a moment, then picked up a stick and with great concentration began breaking it into small pieces.
Welsh crawled slowly. The jumble of branches and twigs made it impossible to move very quietly, but that was what he wanted. When he thought he was nearing the end of the semi-circle, he periodically raised up to look for the wide groove they'd made passing through the brush. When he saw it he backed off until he was positioned beside the thin trunk of a sapling, with its branches spread out over him. He cleared the area of twigs and anything else that might make a noise, then got down on his stomach with the pistol extended before him and his elbows braced on the ground. He was between ten and fifteen feet from the original trail, and at a right angle. When he was settled he took the Beretta off safe, keeping his index finger alongside the trigger guard.
If he listened carefully, he could occasionally hear Scanlan off to his right. He concentrated on slowing his breathing. There would be just one chance to do everything right. It was easy to hit a target on a sunny day at a well-organized shooting range, but conditions were never so pleasant when it was for real.
Hours passed, and it was afternoon. Welsh refused to move even to look at his watch. His thighs and chest felt on fire. He had to piss, and would have gone in his pants if he hadn't been afraid the smell would give him away. At least the discomfort made him concentrate. Bugs crawled over him and bit him relentlessly. But still he didn't move.
More time passed. How much he didn't know, though the light changed as the sun continued its leisurely movement. Then Welsh heard a very subtle noise off to his left. Come on, he thought. Come right ahead. He felt excited, but not at all frightened. That worried him a little.
An occasional sound grew closer. Very careful, Welsh thought, very deliberate. Like a good hunter. What was that short story: The Most Dangerous Game. Hunting man for sport. He thought he remembered an old movie too. Forget that, he told himself. Concentrate.
The sounds became a gentle rustling, noticeable only from a short distance. It started and stopped in a regular rhythm. His opponent was halting every few feet to listen.
When the sound of movement was almost opposite him, Welsh slid his finger onto the trigger, and popped up on his knees. He raised the pistol until the sights settled on the human shape in the path, then smoothly squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell, but there was only a dull click as the cartridge refused to fire.
The campesino whirled about; Welsh launched himself like a sprinter out of the blocks and charged. He let out a wild yell to tamp down his fear. The branches snagged and cut him like little whips as he tore through. It was only ten feet, but it seemed he'd never get there.
The campesino rose from the ground and brought his weapon up. He was also hindered by the thick brush.
A flash and thunderclap blew up in Welsh's face and blinded him for a moment. His right arm took a tremendous blow, but his momentum carried him on. Welsh hit the campesino at full stride, leading with the shoulder, and felt all the air go out of him. They rolled, Welsh lashing out with his elbows and knees, both of them grunting like wild animals. The secret of hand-to-hand combat wasn't fancy moves, but ceaseless aggression. In the tangle something steel hit Welsh hard on the jaw, but he didn't stop. Welsh finally got his left arm under the campesino's chin and yanked back. He had a height and weight advantage, but the smaller man was hard and wiry. Welsh grabbed his left wrist with his right hand and squeezed as hard as he could. The body in his grasp scratched and kicked and thrashed wildly. Welsh held on, driving with his legs to keep the other man's arms pinned against the ground. The body relaxed slightly, and Welsh squeezed even harder. He kept on until he couldn't feel his arm anymore and didn't even know if he was still squeezing.
He f
inally let go. The limp body dropped from his grasp and rolled over. The man was at least part Indian; Welsh guessed a professional hunter. The eyes were half open and dead, the face horribly contorted. Welsh felt for a pulse at the wrist, since the carotid arteries in the neck were probably ruptured. Nothing.
Then he realized that Scanlan must have heard the shot. If she started running he might not be able to catch her. "Maggie!" he shouted, disregarding the danger. "Maggie!"
"Rich?" It came through the wall of branches.
"It's all right," Welsh shouted. "It's over. Come here." He felt a little woozy, and put his head between his knees for a moment. Then it occurred to him that he might be wounded and pumping blood and not even know it.
He was bleeding. His right shirt sleeve was ripped to pieces, and blood was flowing down his arm. There was a lot of blood but Welsh didn't panic, knowing that even small wounds bled excessively. There was none of the powerful spurting that would come from a punctured artery. He felt along the arm until he found the wound, then applied hard direct pressure to it with his left hand. Shit, it really felt big. He called out, "Maggie, bring my pack." The blood was slippery, and it was hard to get a good grip on the arm. He held it over his head to further slow the bleeding.
There was a crashing in the brash. "Over here," he kept saying, to give her something to home in on.
Scanlan appeared, fighting through the branches. She glanced first at the body, then him. "Oh, my God."
Welsh had a feeling he didn't look so good; she seemed more horrified at the sight of him than the dead man. "I think it might have gone better if I'd let you shoot the son of a bitch," he said. "Would you take out my first-aid kit?"
"Are you badly hurt?"
"I don't know," he said, trying to sound calm. "You're going to have to check."
Scanlan pulled out the bag.
"We're going to need a tweezers, a couple of gauze pads, and a tube of antibiotic ointment," he said.
Scanlan got everything out. She wiped back her hair with a dirty hand, and despite his anxiety Welsh had to smile at her face, so determined to be strong. He said, "I'm going to take my hand off, tell me how it looks."
The wound was bleeding much less now. Scanlan examined it closely, wiping the blood and gore away with the gauze. "It looks like slices cut across your upper arm," she said. "Not very deep, but the flesh is all torn up."
"Any holes, like a slug or a pellet?"
She probed with the tweezers, and he winced from the shivering pain. "No, whatever it was went across, not in. But there are little black spots all around."
"Powder burns," said Welsh. "They'll work their way out on their own. Take a look around for anything else."
She wiped his face with another gauze pad. "You're bleeding from little cuts all over your hands and face, and there's a big lump on your jaw, but that's it."
Welsh was overcome by a rush of pure relief. "If you can't be good, be lucky." He felt sick to his stomach, and knew the arm was going to hurt like a bastard as soon as the nerves woke up. "Maggie, there's a bottle of Percocet in the bag."
"Percocet?"
"That's right. Please get it."
She found the bottle, but Welsh's hands were shaking so bad she had to pop a tablet in his mouth and hold the water bottle so he could wash it down.
"A little shock and a lot of hyperadrenia," he said. "Fill the plastic bag up with iodized water from the bottles. Punch a little hole in one corner and use it like a squirt gun to blast the dirt out of the wound."
Scanlan cleaned it out thoroughly. "How do you happen to have Percocet?" she asked, if only to keep his mind on something else while she worked.
"You recall I mentioned I was a Mountain Leader Instructor? The school is in Bridgeport, California, up in the Sierras. We were on what they call expedition week, coming down off a ten-thousand-foot ridgeline on skis, and one of the guys broke his leg and couldn't be moved."
"Was it that bad a fracture?"
"No, but the strongest painkiller the medical corpsman carried was aspirin."
"Good Lord, why?"
"Rear echelon asshole military doctors. Better to let someone suffer than take the responsibility for letting their corpsmen carry narcotics like morphine in peacetime. A medevac helicopter showed up eventually, but it taught me a real lesson. My doctor's a backpacker too, and he prescribed me a painkiller strong enough to get me out of the bush if I broke something."
"Very prudent, as usual."
Welsh looked down at his arm. "Okay, the wound's too ripped up to close, and I don't have a non-stick dressing that big. Unfold a fresh gauze pad to the right size, spread a layer of antibiotic ointment all over one side, then slap it on."
She did it.
"Okay, let's wrap it up. We're going to need to check it every day, so we'd better use the ace bandage."
The small cuts on his face were from the branches and vines he'd run through. Scanlan washed them out and only applied antibiotic ointment, since in that climate Band-Aids wouldn't adhere. While she worked, he told her what happened. She finished and asked solicitously, "Did that hurt?"
"Yes," Welsh replied with a smile. "Very much. And thank you." The trembling in his arms had stopped; he took the bag and brought out a bottle of his other prescription drug, a broad spectrum antibiotic for the inevitable infection.
The Percocet began to hit with a soothing warmth. Even so, it was a while before he felt like getting up, and the arm was very stiff. He had to poke through the brush until he found the Beretta. He racked the slide back and examined the ejected round. There was no pit in the primer, which meant that the firing pin either hadn't hit it at all, or too lightly. He thumbed down the lever to release the slide and chamber a new round, aimed at the brush, and squeezed the trigger. This time the pistol fired.
Scanlan had been watching. "I think there was some rust accumulation around the firing pin," he said.
"But you clean it every day."
"I know, but this climate is hard on metal, and hair oil isn't a manufacturer's recommended lubricant. I suppose I could have tried to chamber another round, but if that one had misfired I would have been dead."
"So it was just as well you did what you did."
"Probably. Sometimes giving in to that old fight-or-flight instinct isn't the wrong thing to do."
Welsh went over to the Indian's body. Jeans, check shirt, straw hat; it was hard to find someone in rural Guatemala who wasn't wearing that combination. The man had been carrying a single-shot 12-gauge shotgun.
Holding it Welsh felt a sudden chill, and his whole body began shaking so badly he had to sit down. He'd only been hit by the very edge of the pattern of shot, which must have been super tight at such close range. A few pellets had grazed his arm as they went by, and the rest had chewed up his shirt sleeve. A small error in aim was the only reason his arm was still attached to his body. The shotgun action was open; the Indian had been trying to get another round in the chamber.
The ants had already discovered the corpse. In the pockets Welsh found a Guatemalan national identity card, some papers, and a few quetzal coins and small-denomination notes. The Indian had a machete, a skinning knife, and a shoulder bag made from a flour sack that held shotgun shells and a stack of flour tortillas wrapped in newspaper.
Welsh replaced everything but the tortillas and one of the papers. He handed it to Scanlan. "Ever been wanted dead or alive?"
The paper was a sort of wanted poster, with brief descriptions of Welsh and Scanlan in Spanish. But it had nothing at all to do with the Guatemalan government. There was a telephone number to call and give information or claim the reward.
Scanlan did the currency conversion in her head. "Fifty thousand dollars. It doesn't say dead or alive."
"It doesn't have to," said Welsh. "Nobody's going to risk having all that money run away from him."
"That's like a million bucks to the average Guatemalan:"
"It means every asshole who can pick up a mach
ete is going to be beating the brush for us. You notice the reward won't be paid without our bodies and all belongings. They want those flash drives very badly."
Scanlan motioned toward the body. "What do we do with him?"
Now his voice was cold enough to make her shudder. "Fuck him. The jungle will take care of everything."
"Are you going to take the shotgun?"
"No. It would make too much noise to hunt with, and I wouldn't want to run into anyone who might recognize it." He held out the tortillas. "We do have dinner, though."
"A year ago I never would have thought that I'd help kill a man and then eat his food. Now I'm so hungry I don't care."
"It'll do that to you," said Welsh.
Chapter Thirty-Two
"You told me we were going to San Ignacio," Margaret Scanlan said accusingly. "Now I'd like you to explain to me why I can't go into town and take a shower. And, yes, the really long explanation this time."
"Take a look at the map and imagine you're the bad guys. We missed the two gringos, Welsh and Scanlan, on the road. Then we lost them in the jungle, and it's a damn big jungle. So let's say no one sees them or collects the bounty on them, and they actually make it out of the jungle. Where's the one place we look for them to show up?"
"San Ignacio," Scanlan replied in defeat. "The biggest town close to the border, on the single highway into Belize City. No matter where the gringos come out of the jungle, they're still going to have to go through San Ignacio."
"A brilliant deduction," said Welsh. "So since we're Guatemalans and can't dump a million hit men into Belize, all we have to do is stake out the bus station in San Ignacio. Town of eight thousand people, a couple of strange gringos are really going to stand out."
"But they could just as well stake out the bus stop in some other town along the highway."
"Why bother? San Ignacio, the bus stations in Belize City, and you're covered. Just sit back and wait for the gringos to show up."
William Christie 02 - Mercy Mission Page 22
