Swarm, page 6
“Not just a cell phone,” I said. “You could easily train a neural net to target a license plate. Maybe even a face. Or even easier, a particular set of GPS coordinates, if there’s some building or home you’re after.”
“Well, that’s just wonderful.”
In the distance, the sound of the drone began to fade away.
“Hey.” An idea had just flickered alight in my head. “Give me your phone.”
Lisa stared at me. “What for?”
“We can make sure that drone doesn’t come back. And maybe make them think they got us, and blaze a trail for whoever comes to rescue us.”
Her eyes widened as she understood. “And for the narcos.”
“You think they don’t already have a pretty good idea?”
After a moment she nodded, produced an old-fashioned Motorola Razr from her pocket, and passed it over. I worried it might have been ruined by the rain, I didn’t want to sacrifice my iPhone and its precious GPS and area photo, but the Razr came to life readily enough. I waited just long enough to see if there might be a signal, hoping against hope, but no; so I folded it shut again, turned, and lobbed it onto the the mass grave.
“Come on,” I said. “We better hurry.”
I was still wracked by countless pains and complete physical exhaustion, but I felt a little stronger as we limped on down the trail. Maybe it was the food, or the coca; and maybe it was because I had just done something that might affect the outcome, and so felt like I had once again become, at least in part, the author of my own fate.
A few minutes later we hid in the bush while the drone flashed overhead. Shortly afterwards we heard a hollow bang, more penetrating than loud. It reminded me of explosions you heard sometimes on ski trails, when they tried to set off avalanches in nearby hills. Remembering myself on skis above Lake Tahoe was like remembering a dream of a different world.
“I hope that was a good idea,” Lisa muttered.
I didn’t answer.
Soon the trail intersected another. All directions looked equally unused. In the end we chose the one that seemed to head north, towards the Caribbean, but after five minutes it bent westwards into the heart of the mountains. I wondered if Lisa and I might wander here forever, the Flying Dutchmen of the Colombian jungle, lost for all eternity in this labyrinth of long-abandoned trails carved by those men and women who now lay slaughtered in that mass grave, or perhaps newly scattered by the drone’s detonation.
I couldn’t get the image of that tiny skull out of my head.
We waded across a trickling stream, and then another. The water reignited the agony in my blistered feet but I was grateful for the chance to drink. Then we struggled through an agonizing climb along an endless series of muddy switchbacks to the top of a steep ridge. My legs and lungs both felt filled with molten lava, and ahead of me even Lisa finally began to stagger and stumble. The rest breaks she allowed were never long enough. Sweat soaked my clothes as thoroughly as yesterday’s rain, and halfway up I was already parched with thirst. But I thought of those buried bones and kept going.
A fire had swept through the jungle atop the ridge, reducing it to a sparse and jagged army of charred tree trunks and branches, opening up the view in all directions. In other circumstances the panorama would have been heart-stoppingly gorgeous: snow-capped mountains surrounded by rippling green foothills, pockmarked by waterfalls and chalk-white cliffs, clothed in dense bushes and canopy trees so tall that their pale trunks looked like slender straws. Birds of prey soared across the sky, hawks in ones and twos, vultures in circling clusters. Dark clouds clustered in the north. The trail we had climbed switchbacked down the ridge again before disappearing into jungle.
“Look,” Lisa said urgently, pointing to a relatively wide and flat river about a mile away. There was something moving in the water, coming our way. I squinted in the flat light. Some kind of animal -
“Horses,” I said. At least three of them, being ridden by people. “More locals? Like that kid we saw?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” She looked around, worried. I realized what she was thinking; this burnt-out forest that afforded us the view also left us nowhere to hide. “Let’s not find out. Come on. Move. They’re not far away. Move.”
I realized she didn’t think they were locals. She thought they were the men hunting us. Less than a mile away, coming straight towards us. My breath seemed to stick in my throat. I doubled my pace, almost jogged downhill, skidded and fell on my back and came to my feet again, kept going almost without missing a beat, prodded onwards by the sharp knife of new fear.
Chapter 15
“OK,” Lisa said sharply, once we had left the burnt-out area. “You’re bigger. Get off the trail, go right for about thirty feet, break up the brush as much as you can. Then come back, cross the trail without stepping on it, and try to follow me without leaving any trace. Hurry. They’re on horses.”
I obeyed without discussion, ignored the jungle’s clutching vines and slashing branches, and left the equivalent of a big THIS WAY sign on one side of the trail before doubling back the other way as surreptitiously as possible.
“You think that will work?” I panted a few minutes later, as we thrust our way through a particularly tangled wall of brush.
“It might. At least it will buy us time.”
“Time for what?”
As if on cue, a fat raindrop fell on my outstretched palm.
“Rainy season,” she said simply, and I understood; she was counting on the daily tropical storm to wash away all traces of our true route.
Moments later the skies opened up with the fervour of a convert who had been convinced that all life on Earth should be washed away. At least the water quenched my burning thirst. The jungle caught most of the rain, but enough drizzled onto us that we were soaked again within minutes. By then we had both lost all sense of direction.
“We better stay here.” For the first time I heard exhaustion that rivalled my own in Lisa’s voice. “No sense going around in circles.”
We sat side by side in the best natural shelter we could find, which wasn’t saying much, with our backs against a thick tree trunk, surrounded by the usual cloud of mosquitoes. For a long time neither of us said anything. We were still capable of pushing ourselves onwards in spurts, but once such an exertion ended, for a long period we were too drained to even think, much less speak. I was too tired to even change my position so that water no longer trickled down my neck.
Eventually I said, “Can I have my phone?” She still held it bundled in her jacket.
She looked at me warily. “What for?”
“I’ll switch it to airplane mode so it’s not transmitting. I just want to look at that picture.”
She acquiesced. I called up the photographs I had taken from the helicopter, zoomed in and panned around, trying to work out where we were. Eventually I narrowed it down to an area pathetically near to the schoolhouse. If I was right then we had travelled maybe ten miles since the mortar attack, probably less.
“Here.” I pointed. “Here’s the big river, here’s where I think the helicopter crashed, and here’s the other river we saw from the ridge. It looks like they join together right outside the picture.”
Lisa took the camera, zoomed the picture to maximum, and squinted at the rainwater-filmed screen. She panned from my estimate of our location to the two waterways I had pointed out.
“Looking for gold?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
She handed it back with trembling hands. It wasn’t fear; she was shivering with cold. I had half again her body weight, and thus a more potent internal furnace. I put my arm around her and pulled her close against me. At first her wet skin felt as clammy as a corpse’s, but slowly, despite the cold relentless rain, we managed to warm each other in the places where we could press our bodies together. It was better than nothing.
“My feet are killing me,” I said.
I wasn’t even sure it was hyperbole. They were so swollen that I doubted I could remove my shoes without cutting them off. Even my blisters had blisters. The first ten minutes after every rest stop was like walking on razors and broken glass, until the pain dulled. Now that the rain had washed the mud away my socks were visibly wet with blood, and we were trudging through a jungle teeming with bacteria. It wouldn’t take much for an infected cut to turn to blood poisoning.
I thought of a book I had once read, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, in which an American parachuted into South American jungle and joined an uncontacted tribe. His biggest problem had been his feet; his new friends had inch-thick callouses, but he was crippled by his soft, bloody, blistering soles. It had been more realistic than I had known.
“Try to enjoy the moment,” Lisa said.
“Yeah. Right.” I shook my head. “Ancient Chinese proverb say, if you wish to forget about your problems, wear tight shoes. Or cover your feet with fucking blisters.”
“Mine aren’t great either,” she admitted.
I looked at her shoes. “Are those Doc Martens?”
“They are.”
“Is that part of the official federal agent uniform?”
“No. Kind of a reminder, I guess. I used to be a punk, believe it or not.”
“No kidding.” I almost smiled. “You know, when I first met you I figured you for the straitlaced no-nonsense churchgoing fascist type.”
After a moment she said, “Believe it or not, not all churchgoers are fascist.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “I mean - that’s not what I meant.”
“OK. Understood.” She took a breath. “Just so you know, not that it really matters, but I’m pretty religious. In my own way. It’s a big part of my life, maybe the biggest. I just don’t usually talk about it.”
“Sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry about. You’ve been incredible.”
I grunted with disbelief. “You’re the one doing everything. I’m just following you and trying not to fall over too much.”
“You’re a civilian. You’re not trained for this. Seriously, you’ve been tougher than I could have hoped.”
“I bet you say that to all the civilians. Part of your survival training, right? Keeping up morale?”
She smiled weakly. “It is. But I mean it, too.”
“Well. Thanks.”
We rested in silence for a moment.
“Do you think we’re going to get out of this?” I asked. And when she opened her mouth: “Don’t do the morale thing. A serious answer. Please.”
She paused to consider her answer, which already told me all I needed to know.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think there’s more of them behind us, too, upstream is narco territory, that’s why I didn’t turn back when we saw the horses. So they’re all around us now, and they’ll be watching all the trails. We can’t hide in the jungle or count on the rain to cover our tracks forever. No sign of rescue since the helicopter. I don’t know.” She took a deep breath. “Listen. James. In case the situation arises. I’m responsible for this, I did this to you, I told you you would be safe. You’re a civilian, I’m a soldier. So it doesn’t matter what happens to me, you understand? My duty, my only duty, is to keep you alive and get you out of this. So if it comes down to you or me, you don’t hesitate. Get yourself out. Understand?”
I didn’t answer.
“Understand?”
I nodded, slowly.
“Good.”
“If they catch us, do you think they’ll kill us?” Actually saying the words brought the stark desperation of our situation home to me again. I couldn’t believe that such a question was actually germane to my life.
“Maybe. I don’t know. They might take us hostage, like the FARC. They’ve had some people in the jungle for fifteen years. Former senators, police chiefs, military officers. Two Americans would make for pretty good bargaining chips.”
“I’m Canadian.”
“Oh, well, never mind then, they’ll just waste you on sight.”
I smiled grimly.
“No. I don’t think they’ll kill us. They probably won’t even mistreat you too much, is my guess.”
“You said they’d cut my dick off and make me eat it,” I pointed out.
“That was sort of… speculative incentivization.”
“Nice phrase.”
“Thanks. I mean, who knows. You’re a Canadian civilian, a man. You might be tortured to death, you might be treated OK. Depends on what kind of animals they are. Me, an American, a DEA agent, a woman… I’d really rather not find out what kind of entertainments they might have in store if they catch me alive.” I didn’t even want to think about it. “So I don’t intend to let that happen. Don’t get defeatist. We’ve still got a strong chance. You might be back in your girlfriend’s arms tomorrow.”
The idea of being with Sophie in our warm safe bed was so piercing, and so different from the awful and agonizing reality of my situation, that I wanted to cry.
“What about you?” I asked, eager to change the subject. “You got a boyfriend waiting for you?” A thought occurred to me. “Or a girlfriend?”
“No. No boyfriend.” Lisa sighed. “Lately I’ve been kind of married to my job. I don’t know. The older I get, the angrier I get.”
“At who?”
She shrugged. “Us and them both. Our crazy drug laws and the dealers who live off them. Fucking vampires. My mother, when I was a kid I saw her go from occasional user to addict, and they just fed off her, they bled her dry, body and soul. You know what it’s like to have your mother bringing tricks home? To have them trying to make nice to you after, while she’s still in her room crying?” Her voice was steely with ancient fury. “No. Of course you don’t. You grew up in a nice nuclear family, didn’t you. I can tell. Lucky you. You know what the hard part is, sometimes? Not shooting them when I bust them. Especially when they’ve got weapons and I could claim it as self-defence. No one would investigate, even if they knew. It’s always so tempting. It’s all they deserve.”
I didn’t reply.
“You don’t agree, huh?”
I quoted Tolkien: “Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement.”
“Easy for someone like you to say,” she said savagely, and immediately winced. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap. I’m just kind of end of my tether here.”
“Understood. No worries. Me too.”
“Anyway, I like Clint Eastwood’s take better. ‘Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.’” She rose to her feet. “Come on. The rain’s easing up. We better get moving.”
But we didn’t get far.
Chapter 16
Three waterfalls fell like pale and graceful veils down a rocky cliff. The pool of water at their base drained into a wide river that was fast but smooth, with only a few whitewater eddies. A tangle of driftwood the size of a tractor-trailer had formed where the pool met the river; logs swept over the waterfall had caught up on several large boulders there and accumulated into what looked like a roc’s nest, or the biggest game of Pick-Up-Stix ever played. Something had carved a weird muddy hollow the size of a pickup truck into the grassy riverbank next to the logs.
“You think we can cross that?” I asked doubtfully, looking at the jumbled bridge of trunks and branches. It didn’t look stable.
To my relief Lisa shook her head.
“Maybe we can go behind the waterfall,” I suggested. “In fantasy novels there’s usually a secret tunnel that leads to the dragon’s lair or something.”
She gave me a worried look.
“Don’t worry, I’m not delirious, I’m always like this,” I assured her.
“Oh. Well. No, I don’t think so. But there’s a ford, or a stepping-stone bridge, or something, at the trail crossing. Where we saw the horses, from the ridge.”
I looked downstream and inwardly cringed at the thought of bushwhacking through yet more jungle. But it didn’t seem we had a choice -
“Wait,” she said thoughtfully.
I waited.
Eventually she said, “I don’t think time is on our side. Sooner or later they’ll find us. Probably sooner. We can’t count on another rescue attempt. They probably figure we’re already dead. If we don’t do something to change this game, we’re going to lose it.”
She turned and looked at the untidy heap of logs that spanned the river.
“You just said you didn’t think we could cross that,” I objected.
“I’m not talking about crossing it.”
“Then what?”
“I think we should make a raft.”
I stared at her, then at the logs, then at the fast-running river. It was wide and deep as far as we could see. But beyond, especially when it merged with that first river - I thought of that whitewater, those jagged rocks, and shivered. If it was like that we would be lucky to survive two minutes.
“I know,” she said. “It’s a desperate choice. But I think we’re desperate.”
“Speak for yourself. Me, I’m way past desperate.” It was intended as a joke, but it didn’t come out that way.
“We’re in this together. If you say no, I won’t do it. But I think it’s our best shot.”
“You think they won’t see us on a raft?”
“Not if we go at night.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, appalled.
She waited.
“I feel like I’m on Survivor,” I muttered. “Except they decided to spice up this series with guns and UAVs and fucking murderous Colombian drug cartels. So it’s build a raft and sail down the river of doom in the middle of the night, or keep wandering through the jungle hoping they don’t find us, is that it?”
