by J C Ryan
“Hola! You made it!” He was sitting dry and cozy in the mouth of a shallow cave. “It looks like there’s room for all of us and the llamas in here. I don’t see any wildlife spoor. I think this is a good place to stop for the night.’
Rex agreed. “Next time, it’s my turn to find shelter. If you don’t mind, I’m just going to send Digger in to make sure this isn’t some unfriendly wildlife’s home. His nose is better than ours.”
Junior shrugged. “Be my guest. Shall I go get the olds?”
Rex didn’t like the phrase, but he didn’t detect any derision in Junior’s tone. So, Rex left it at that without comment. Maybe it was some new slang he wasn’t familiar with.
“Sure, go ahead. We should have it all clear by the time you get back.” He shouted for Digger to come as he watched Junior crash down the trail to the Markses. Digger arrived moments later, and Rex commanded him to scout. If there was any wildlife around, it would probably be scattering now.
It’s lucky we don’t have to rely on hunting for our food.
***
FLO STOPPED OUTSIDE the cave entrance and called out, “Halloooo?”
Digger ran out to greet her, with Rex right behind. “Looks like Junior found the perfect spot to spend the night.”
Flo suspected the younger men had stopped early on her and Barry’s account, and she was grateful. The last bit of trudging through the mud in the sudden downpour had taxed her, and she could see Barry was done in as he plodded, yards behind her.
“So, we’re not going any farther today?”
“Nope. Time to circle the wagons, get some grub, and turn in for the night,” Rex said.
“Did you suddenly become a cowboy, Mr. Davis?” She smiled mischievously as he wagged his finger at her and grinned. “Shall we try to start a fire while we wait for the others? Though I doubt there’s any dry fuel,” she added.
“I’ll try to rustle some up,” he answered, his sly smile making her laugh out loud.
She went inside the cave to wait, and in a few minutes, Barry came lumbering up to the entrance. “Come inside, love. There are some dry rocks to sit on in here. Ray has gone to find some dry wood for a fire. Where’s Junior?”
“Right behind him,” Junior called out. “These llamas are giving me grief. You’d think they’d want to get under shelter. They’re soaked.”
“Oh, dear. Are our sleeping bags dry?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. We covered the packs with waterproof tarps. We planned for the rains.”
“I thought it was summer here,” she complained. “Why is it so chilly and wet?”
Junior explained that the temperatures were basically uniform, with the weather more defined by the dry and rainy seasons than temperature. “It’s only chilly because it’s just rained. Remember, we’re south of the equator, so we’re headed into summer, not winter. The rains are a little early, but not completely unexpected. They’ll happen every afternoon, probably. It won’t get much hotter, though. The higher you go, the cooler it is.”
She thought about it, then looked over at Barry, resting on the flattest rock she’d been able to find for him inside the cave. She lowered her voice.
“Just how high are we going?”
Junior caught her concern and answered in a lower voice as well. “The village is around thirteen or fourteen thousand feet. The ruins, maybe eighteen thousand. Is he going to be okay?”
Flo sighed. “I hope so. We may have to take it slowly for him.”
“That’s all right. We planned for extra time to rest, too, even if it’s for a day or two. I knew you weren’t used to this altitude.”
“Thank you, dear.” Flo saw Rex outside, clearing a spot to put down an armful of twigs and small branches. “Did you find anything dry?” she called. She got up to watch him start the fire and offer her cooking expertise.
“Would you like help with the meal?” she asked.
“If you’d like,” Rex answered. “That’s if you’re okay to cook over a campfire.”
“Young man, you’ll be surprised to know Barry and I camped out for every vacation we took when we were younger. We couldn’t afford anything else, and we thought it would be good for our son to learn to love nature from a young age.”
Rex remembered lessons of that sort from when he was a kid. His family had enjoyed nature together – hiking, fishing, hunting, camping, and skiing. Since then, he’d honed his skills in the wilderness to a fine point.
“Indeed, I underestimated you,” he said. “In that case, please help me. I’ll bet you can make a tastier stew than I can from what I have here. I’ll just get the fire started, and then I’ll get the supplies out.”
Soon Flo was stirring the meat into boiling water and cutting up an onion to go in next, while Rex scrubbed mashua and olluco for her to cut up after that.
“Are you sure those are edible?” she asked, looking with doubt on the tubers Rex was preparing. What he’d called mashua looked like orange, purple, and white carrots. He answered her by popping one into his mouth.
“It’s a little peppery raw, but it becomes milder when cooked,” he answered. “And the other one, the olluco, is basically a potato.” As he cut into one of the latter, he uttered a surprised, “Oh!”
Flo noticed Digger looking closely at what Rex had in his hands, his nose almost buried in it.
“Get off,” Rex complained, pushing Digger gently away with his forearm. What he had in his hands was bright orange, but with green skin.
“What’s the problem?” Flo asked.
“It’s olluco. I didn’t know it was orange inside.”
“How did you learn about these, and what makes you sure they’re edible?” Flo demanded.
“I asked in the market back in Santa Teresa,” he admitted. “I figured there’d be plenty of edible stuff we could harvest in the forests we’re going to travel through, which means we wouldn’t have to carry so much. A woman told me these things grow wild all over the mountains and are the basis for a lot of native dishes.” He opened his cell phone and showed her the pictures he’d taken in the market and some he’d collected from the internet. “I made sure I’d know what they looked like.”
“Oh. Well, that was very sensible, Ray,” Flo said. “So why didn’t you know it was orange?”
“What was in the market was yellow,” he answered. “Must be a cultivated variety.”
“You’re sure it’s the same thing?”
“Yes. But I don’t know if this variety is sweet. It might not taste good in stew.”
“Of course it will,” she said. Truthfully, she wasn’t sure. But he’d been proud of his foraging, and she didn’t want to discourage him. Besides, she’d tasted many new dishes since she and Barry had arrived in Peru, and they were all delicious. She loved the purple corn pudding they’d had in Cuzco, especially.
Soon the delicious aroma emanating from the stew pot, lured Junior and Barry out of the cave.
They didn’t need the ground covers inside the cave, where the ground was dry and there were patches of soft, powdery soil, free of plant life. So, they arranged them around the fire to sit on, cross-legged for Rex and Junior, and on a couple of logs from downed trees that Rex and Junior dragged over for Barry and Flo. When the stew was finally ready, they ate every last morsel.
“I nominate Flo to be the chief cook every day. Couldn’t have done it without her,” Rex said.
Barry and Junior supported Rex’s proposal, and Flo basked in the praise. Even Digger had enjoyed some of the stew, which Rex had picked free of onion pieces before mixing it with his kibble. It was one of the few occasions when Digger had no complaints about eating his own food.
They sat by the fire until darkness fell, and then doused it and went to bed, cozy inside the cave. Barry and Junior had done well, situating the sleeping bags of the younger men near the front of the cave and partially across the opening. One or the other of them would keep watch through the night, taking turns. Digger would, as always, i
nsist on remaining close to Rex, and with his keen sense of smelling and hearing, it was highly unlikely that anyone or anything could surprise them.
Flo and Barry lay in their zipped-together sleeping bags, the inflatable mattress shielding them from the ground. No matter how soft the dirt underneath, their aged joints didn’t appreciate sleeping on the ground.
As she lay her head on Barry’s shoulder and his arm came around her, she asked if he thought he’d be able to walk to the elevation Junior had told them.
“Of course. I’m all right, Flo. Stop fussing.”
She whispered, “I’m your wife, and it’s my privilege to fuss over you. And dear, please note the use of the word privilege, not duty.” She kissed him and closed her eyes. Barry smiled, let out a soft sigh of satisfaction, turned on his side, and fell asleep almost instantly.
***
WHEN IT WAS his turn for the watch, Rex went outside the cave, and Digger followed. He sat down against a rock about twenty yards away from the cave and switched on his smartphone. Surprisingly, he had a signal. Counting it as good luck, he spent the rest of his watch with his ears attuned to the jungle noises and his eyes and hands on the smartphone, creating the rudimentary blog he’d claimed to have when Flo had asked what he did.
Before he woke Junior to take another turn, he got curious about how he could possibly have a signal in this remote area. Taking advantage of it, he used his smartphone to find the reason and learned that before the turn of the century, most of the cell phone coverage in Peru had been on the coast, along the Pan-American Highway, where more than half the population of Peru lived. It was in 2000 that a third provider was licensed, and coverage in the highlands began to spread, and by 2007, the positive effects on household income had proven the experiment valuable. Rex was reaping the benefits.
He also realized he may have found the way to make his findings known for real, while maintaining his cover. The Ray Davis persona hadn’t been used anywhere except here in Peru, and bloggers enjoyed a certain amount of legitimate anonymity if they wanted to. It was something to think about. If he decided to do it, there’d be a lot of work to do on the blog, but it could be worth the effort.
He woke Junior and slept lightly for another two hours before taking the second half of the third watch as he’d agreed with Junior the night before. Neither thought it was a good idea for either Marks to keep watch.
In the morning, though everyone would have enjoyed a hot breakfast, they made do with fruit and some sweet buns they’d brought from Santa Teresa. Now that the rains were starting, they wanted as early a start as possible to make the hoped-for progress before they’d have to find shelter again. This time, they’d start looking for it before the clouds got so dark.
With Junior in the lead again and the rest of the procession arranged as it had been the day before, they went back to the main trail and started up the mountain again. Just before they stepped onto it, Mrs. Marks waited for Rex to catch up.
“Barry didn’t have a good night. Will we make it to the village before we run out of food?” she asked. “And by the way, how is it you can keep up with Junior as well as you do? He must be ten years younger than you.”
Nonplussed, Rex reflected for a moment on the bluntness of the elderly while he decided how to answer her.
He wouldn’t tell her the whole truth. His former work as a black ops assassin for CRC was beyond top-secret, so compartmentalized the President didn’t even know about them. He’d been trained to the most rigorous standards in military and espionage techniques, which included missions in mountains, jungle, and desert, on almost every continent and under every condition. Staying fit meant staying alive.
And then it had all come crashing down in the ambush where all his team members, including Digger’s former handler, were killed. That ambush was orchestrated by powerful people out of America, and its sole purpose was to kill him. That much he knew, and that was the reason he’d disappeared off the radar. In the back of his mind he was slowly but surely working on a plan to go back to America when the time was right and avenge the death of his team. But for now and the foreseeable future, his take on it was, to stay alive he had to remain dead. He and Digger had been wandering as they pleased since then, with occasional forays into personal missions they’d taken on to help people in need of his and Digger’s skills and expertise.
“Well,” he began, “you know, I told you yesterday I love history and wanted to write about my travels to the historical sites across the world. I’ve spent a lot of time in primitive conditions and at altitude. Only just recently realized I could maybe make a living with my observations.”
She fixed him with a gimlet eye. “Ray Davis, my gray hair is not a sign that I’ve gone stupid. What is it you’re trying not to tell me?”
Rex didn’t know whether to laugh at her persistence or be alarmed at her insight. With a grin he knew would charm her, he dissembled. “I’m not hiding anything, ma’am. Not really. I find that people don’t really want to hear about my military experience, and, well, I don’t really like to talk about it myself. But you’ve probably heard the saying, ‘once a Marine, always a Marine’. We tend to keep ourselves healthy like we were taught.”
It seemed to satisfy her for now, but Rex realized he needed to be careful not to underestimate her intelligence and powers of observation. As she went on ahead and he hung back to keep the same distance as the previous day, he muttered to Digger, “She’s pretty sharp for her age, isn’t she?”
Digger grinned.
Chapter Eight
THE SECOND DAY and night passed uneventfully except for Flo’s continued obvious concern for her husband’s physical condition. They covered only half the ten-mile goal, and Rex paid as much attention to Flo’s condition as to Barry’s. She seemed to be adapting to the altitude well, though.
By the middle of the third day, they’d passed the eleven-thousand-foot mark and were now at the highest elevation the Markses had been exposed to on their trip to Peru. Junior was evidently used to it, as he only kept his pace slow to accommodate the others. Rex had no problems either, for him this was like a relaxing stroll in the park. He stayed behind the Markses at a leisurely pace and made sure they got frequent rest stops. Digger seemed to be totally unaffected by the altitude, since he periodically ran forward on the trail and then back as if he was deliberately trying to get rid of some surplus energy.
Rex didn’t know what was in Digger’s mind at those times, but he assumed the dog was checking on Junior’s whereabouts. He’d stopped growling at him every time he got near, though he still acted leery of the kid and did let out the occasional growl just to let him know, “Don’t push your luck, I still don’t like you.”
They’d had a long lunch break, well over an hour, and Barry stood to indicate he was ready to go. That signaled Junior to move out while Rex tidied up and saw Flo and Barry well started on the trail again. As usual, Flo waited a minute until Barry was out of earshot.
“I wish I’d thought to have you bring some oxygen along. Do his lips look blue to you?”
Rex thought about it. “I don’t think so. But you know him better than I do. Do they look blue to you?”
“Only sometimes. Should we turn back?”
It was a good question, and Rex thought they probably should have turned back the previous day. He also thought Barry would have nothing of it. He’d been increasingly vocal about how excited he was to see the unexcavated ruins. Neither his wife’s concern or the advice of a man he’d known for less than two weeks would be enough to turn him back. Only if he began to have acute problems breathing or walking would he do so, in Rex’s opinion.
He said as much to Flo.
“That’s what worries me. Why didn’t I think to ask how high this village was before we started? We could have brought oxygen. Another llama could have carried several bottles.”
“Even so,” Rex said, “it wouldn’t have been likely to be enough. And what would Barry have thought or s
aid?”
“He’d probably think it was for me. He’s never thought I was as strong as he was. And of course, I never was… Maybe I’m worrying for nothing.”
Rex hoped it was so but began thinking of ways to get Barry to a lower elevation in a hurry if a crisis arose. He wondered how one of the llamas would react to being ridden.
Digger came flying around a bend in the trail, excited to be back on the trail. He skidded to a stop beside Flo, licked her hand, and gave Rex a look that clearly said, “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”
Flo laughed. “Well, at least he isn’t having any trouble.” She turned away from Rex and hurried up the trail to catch up with her husband.
“Everything okay up there, buddy?” Rex asked.
Digger woofed. Then he wheeled and tore back up the trail in Flo’s wake.
Rex picked up the llama’s lead and clicked his tongue indicating to the animal it was time to get moving again.
Two hours later, the clouds were beginning to form, and it was time to make camp. They hadn’t found a cave again, but the tents were weatherproof, and with the groundcovers under their sleeping bags, everyone but the llamas stayed dry, and they didn’t seem to care. Rex suspected their thick coats kept their skin dry in even the worst of the rain.
Today, however, though the clouds were thick and almost black, the rains held off. Once they’d made camp and stashed MREs in the tents for their dinners, Flo headed across the trail and started to step into the jungle undergrowth on the other side, when Junior suddenly yelled, “Don’t move!”
Everyone froze, unsure who he was talking to. Rex turned his head toward Junior and noticed the gun in his hand at the same time Digger did.
Digger moved first. In a flash, Digger sprinted toward Junior, whose gun was pointed in Flo’s direction.
Rex had just enough time to think, what the… before his own gun was out and pointed at Junior. He didn’t have a clear shot because Digger was in the way. The dog took a flying leap and grabbed Junior’s forearm, dragging it down a split-second after the shot rang out.
