by Leland Davis
Back on the river, it was a bit of a letdown as they paddled the next third of a mile. The lower water level meant the long rapids were much smaller than they had appeared in the satellite images. They arrived at the point which the GPS indicated was just upstream from the large falls, hidden behind the canyon wall at the inside of a bend in the river. They pulled over and found a spot back in the brush where they could conceal their equipment and settle in. The men opened cold MREs for dinner. There was no way they could risk a fire. They had brought enough food for three days as insurance in case something went wrong. Chip prayed that they wouldn’t have to eat this crap for that long. It was somewhere south of Ramen noodles in flavor, although he had to admit that it was probably much more nutritious.
After they finished eating, Duval sat the first watch shift while the rest settled in to get some rest. It seemed to take ages before the sun disappeared behind the towering canyon wall. Chip snuggled into his lightweight sleeping bag, surprised at how chilly it felt here in the misty bottom of the canyon. It had been a long but incredibly fun day. In his excitement he struggled to relax and fall asleep. His mind was spinning with memories of the rapids they had already run, and he played over and over the image of tomorrow’s waterfall that was now only a couple hundred yards away.
He rolled over and checked the gun that lay beside him for the hundredth time, a strange and foreign companion for him here in the wilderness. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it. In fact, he wished he didn’t have to carry it at all. Its presence sullied what for him was not a mission of aggression but a sacred journey of exploration and discovery. He was torn about the reasons for this trip. While he would take any possible opportunity to explore an unknown river like this, the fact that he was here to facilitate the killing of a man weighed heavy on his mind. He wasn’t even sure how he felt about the “war on drugs,” although he realized that he was directly participating on the front lines of it right now.
The other thing that troubled him was concern for his new friends. They had bonded over the preceding weeks, which scared him. What his new friends were about to do was incredibly dangerous. They were the best in the world, but would that be good enough? Daniel had been the best at what he did, but that hadn’t prevented bad luck or fate—whatever you wanted to call it—from snatching him from his element right in front of Chip’s eyes on a creek they had paddled together more than fifty times. If it had happened to Daniel, it could happen to anybody. Would these guys survive the river only to be killed in a firefight in some back corner of a forgotten jungle?
He turned his mind back to the waterfall and used it as a mental buttress against the hounds of doubt and violence that ran unbidden through the recesses of his mind. He wished again that Daniel was here to paddle it with him. Somewhere in the taciturn darkness, he finally drifted into a restless slumber.
*
Samantha sat in the candlelight and used the edge of her student ID to cut three more wide lines from a pile of coke on the bedside stand. She didn’t recognize the smiling college freshman in the picture on the card any more. That girl was gone, and good riddance. Little miss perfect, the straight A student, the senator’s daughter. She was as far from that as she could get.
They had brought her back to the small house farthest from the patio and locked her in a much smaller, windowless room this time. There had been men in camouflage with machine guns running everywhere. Before long the rumbling generator had shut off and all of the lights had gone out. They had passed her in a few candles, some matches, and a few bottles of water. She’d sat there doing lines through the night and the entire day today. The flickering candlelight cast dancing shadows on the white concrete walls that occasionally caught the corner of Sam’s eye, startling her with fear that someone was in the room with her. There were no sounds of anything moving outside, which seemed especially eerie after the chaos of men with guns from the night before.
She snorted back another huge rail of white powder. What the fuck. There was still plenty left, and she wasn’t going anywhere.
17
Monday, November 21st
CHIP AWOKE TO Harris shaking him and had the unsettling feeling that he’d only just gone to sleep. As he opened his eyes in the still-dark canyon, the rushing of the nearby river rose to a roar in his ears. Flowing water always sounded louder in the dark. He could see a sliver of moon rising over the canyon wall to the southeast, its wan light poking ghostly fingers into the mist. He could make out shapes but no distinction in the faint light. He quietly struggled into his body armor, camo suit, climbing harness, and paddling gear, and packed his camping equipment away in a drybag that would be carried on the raft.
Before he knew it, he was sitting in his boat at the edge of the river ready to launch. His MP7 was strapped in his kayak between his legs where he could get to it quickly. It held a loaded magazine, but the ride might be too rough to have a round chambered. His pistol hung from a horizontal shoulder holster under his arm; the confines of the kayak were too tight to strap it on his hip, and Chip didn’t want to wear it anywhere that it might hang up if he had to exit the boat quickly. The climbing harness was uncomfortable, but he would need it for the rappel over the falls. He also had a bag of rock climbing gear secured inside his boat behind the seat, as well as a length of high strength spectra rope. They did one more check to make sure the encrypted radios were working, then the other men gave him a thumbs up from where they stood next to the raft at the water’s edge.
Go time. Chip closed his eyes for a moment and steadied his breathing, consciously relaxing his muscles and clearing his mind. It wasn’t the first time he had paddled in the dark, but his past nocturnal rafting hijinks had usually involved easy whitewater, lots of beer, and hopefully some naked female raft guides instead of a team of commandos, submachine guns, and must-make eddies above sixty-foot waterfalls. He had tried paddling with the night-vision goggles a few times last week, but he found the narrowed field of vision didn’t allow him to read the whitewater well enough. He also worried that the bulky goggles would hinder his ability to roll the kayak back upright should he accidentally capsize. Tonight he would go without them, although they were tucked inside his boat with the climbing gear.
“Point to Team, moving out,” Chip said quietly into his throat mic.
He slid into the water and felt the first surge of motion as he was swept up in the current and around the bend in the river. As his speed increased toward the rapid, he could make out the narrowing of the canyon downstream and the horizon line pinched between the walls where the river disappeared over the edge into an abyss of murky black. As he entered the rapid he cast his gaze toward the eddy just before the lip of the falls, focusing on the tiny patch of dark water beside a chaos of white. ‘Look where you want to go,’ was a main mantra of paddling, so Chip stayed focused on his destination and tried to shut out everything else.
It was surprisingly easy. The boat snapped into the small eddy and came to a stop, bumping against the rocks at the river’s edge as the water surged up and down. Swift current flowed by him only a couple of feet away, rushing deliberately toward the precipice. Chip carefully placed his paddle on a two-foot-wide rock ledge that was about three feet off the water, right at his eye level from the seat of his kayak. He gripped the ledge with his left hand and glanced behind him at the edge of the falls. It was frighteningly close, maybe five feet from the tail of his kayak. It was going to be a delicate process trying to climb out of the squirrelly craft onto the ledge. If he slipped and fell in, he was going for a big ride, and the others would be trapped in the canyon upstream.
“Point to Team,” he said into his radio. “I made it. Getting out.”
With his right hand he grabbed the release loop on his spraydeck and pulled it loose from the boat’s cockpit, then he worked his hand all the way around to make sure it was totally free of the rim and wouldn’t snag when he stood up. He unstrapped the MP7 and placed it on the ledge next to his paddle, then
pulled his knees out of the boat and bent them into a position from which he could stand. Turning his torso to face the rock shelf, he put both palms on the ledge and pulled as he stood up, using the solid shore to steady himself against the pitching and rocking of the boat. As he lifted his second foot out, he quickly reached down to grab the boat and pull it up beside him. The ledge was wider upriver a ways, so he scooted along carrying the kayak until there was space to put the boat where it wouldn’t be in the way. He returned and retrieved his paddle and gun and prudently chambered a round.
“Team, this is Point. I’m out and getting set.”
“Roger that, Point. Standing by.”
Chip pulled the drybag of climbing gear from inside his kayak and opened it, then donned the night vision goggles that were packed on top. He walked back a short distance to where the series of cracks led upward and examined the width of the fissures. Satisfied, he returned to the bag and pulled out the appropriate gear. He chose several active camming units—these were Black Diamond Camalots—mechanical advantage devices used by climbers as safety anchors. They were activated by pulling a trigger to retract them before placing them into a crevice in the rock. When the triggers were released, the cams would expand and wedge tightly in place. Because of the clever design, the harder you pulled on the cam the wider it would get—thus wedging it more firmly. Each one could support over three thousand pounds of force. Chip set three of them then clipped on carabiners and webbing to sling them all together. He yanked on the anchor a few times to make sure it was secure.
Next he measured out about twenty feet of the spectra rope. He clipped it onto his anchor with a clove hitch knot, then walked down the ledge to stretch the rope until it pulled tight. The end of the rope reached to about six feet from the edge of the falls—too close for a thirteen-foot raft. He walked back upstream and shortened the rope so that it only reached to about twelve feet from the waterfall. He knotted the free end and attached a carabiner there as well. He braced himself about ten feet upstream of the anchor on the ledge where he could get a good toss with the end of the rope, being careful to keep the strand downstream of him so it wouldn’t sweep him off the ledge when it pulled tight.
“Team, this is Point. Ready on this end. You’re free to launch.”
“Roger, Point,” the reply came immediately. “Team launching. See you in a few.”
Moments later, the shadowy outline of the raft hove into view. It looked like an island of inky darkness racing toward him, a floating hole in the surface of the sparkling whitewater. The men were backpaddling to slow the boat, easing gently across the current toward him. The raft floated so close to Chip that he reached out and handed the end of the rope to Harris, who quickly clipped it to the webbing safety strap that ran around the outside of the raft. Time seemed to slow as the rope slowly pulled tight between the raft and the anchors, then the boat jerked to a halt and swung against the ledge with its front end hanging precariously over the lip of the falls.
In seconds the men were crowded onto the ledge around Chip, running backup lines to secure the raft. This was the part where they were most vulnerable if discovered, so they were moving fast. Roberts and Duval began the process of lowering the bulky raft down the falls using a system of pulleys. Meanwhile, Harris provided a safety belay by holding a rope attached to Mendez, who began climbing lithely up the cracks in the canyon wall. The smaller man looked like a green spider as he scrambled with amazing agility toward the top of the cliff maybe thirty feet above their heads. He trailed several strands of rope behind him. He’d been chosen for the job because he was the best climber in the group, aside from maybe Chip.
Having completed the task for which he’d traveled all this way, Chip stood out of the way on the narrow ledge upstream of the group near his kayak, nervously clutching his silenced MP7. Once the others were gone, his job was to lower his own kayak and rappel quickly to the bottom to meet them. He heard Mendez radio back that he had reached the top and secured the ropes, then watched as Harris snapped a pair of ascenders onto the ropes and began sliding quickly up them. Roberts and Duval finished lowering the raft and tied it off, then they came over and took their turns on the ropes to the top of the cliff.
Alone on the ledge, Chip scooted carefully to the edge of the falls to have a look. Holy shit! It looked more like seventy-five feet than sixty. He assessed the drop carefully through his night vision goggles, finding that there were no obstacles visible in the landing zone. His heart pounded in his chest, blending with the roar of the falls and the terse communication of the other men on the radio to create a cacophony of distraction.
He took a deep breath. This was it. This was what he had come for. The lip looked good, rolling smoothly from horizontal to vertical. The landing zone was perfect and the water level just right. He headed back toward his boat before he lost his nerve. Seventy-five feet! This would be the biggest waterfall he had ever run. Adrenaline tingled to the ends of every hair and fiber of his body, jazzing his senses until the nerves of his skin seemed to reach out in all directions to echo back every tiny detail of the looming walls and the fine mist in the air. He was in a sort of hyper-alert trance, moving inexorably toward a goal that had captivated his thoughts for the last forty days. He slid into his kayak and replaced the MP7 between his legs before he sealed the spraydeck and grasped his paddle.
He sat still for a moment calming himself, preparing to scoot off the rocks into the flow. He struggled to clear his mind to reach that point where fears were put aside in favor of trusting his skills, experience, and concentration to carry him through a seemingly insurmountable task. Suddenly, the staccato clatter of automatic weapons slashed through the night over the thundering of the stream, reverberating off the canyon walls in harsh echoes that chilled Chip to his core.
Harris felt Mendez grab his arm and give him a tug, helping him over the top of the cliff. They were concealed in vegetation near the round, thatch-roofed palapa—which was about twenty feet to their left along the canyon rim. Harris took the other man’s place near the ropes as Mendez scrambled up a point of rocks to their right for a quick recon. By the time Mendez was in place, Harris was helping Duval over the top.
It took a bit longer for the larger Roberts to make it up. Meanwhile, Mendez radioed back that all was clear. There was no sign of anyone in the compound from his vantage point above. He could see across the patio to the door of the house where they hoped their target was sleeping soundly.
Damn it feels good to be back in the saddle, Harris thought. This was the part he had missed the most over the last few months—the time when his motor was in high gear, his senses fully alert, his body and mind filled with the electric buzz that told him he was totally alive in this moment. The years of arduous physical training, meticulous study, and his extensive stockpile of past experiences filled him to bursting with an aura of his own competence that he could feel projecting into the night. It wasn’t enough to think you were the best. To go to these sorts of places and do these sorts of things, you had to be absolutely sure you were the best. It was the only way. Without that confidence, how could you manage the fear? How could you get the job done? He’d seen enough of the best go down to know that there was no force field of invincibility around him, though. Experience gave you confidence, but it also kept you in check, kept you smart. Being smart was how you kept breathing. In the back of his mind he knew this wasn’t the smartest mission, but it was the mission he had been given—the only mission he had left. Their target was a different kind of terrorist than Harris had been hunting for almost all of the last ten years, but he was a terrorist nonetheless. Harris only knew of one solution for terrorists, and that was two four-gram slugs of hot lead delivered through the pipe of his HK416. It sounded like this man richly deserved that fate. Harris and the boys were here to deliver.
With Roberts covering from the edge of the brush and Mendez from the point of rocks above, Harris and Duval crawled into the shelter of the palapa. Each secure
d the middle of a seventy-meter rope to a different leg of the building then tossed the excess rope over the edge of the cliff. There were now four strands dangling to the bottom of the falls, one for each of the men to make their exit.
Harris and Duval moved to take cover behind the posts closest to the patio and trained their weapons toward the open stone area and the house. They radioed to the others when they were in position. Mendez scrambled down from his perch to where Roberts waited, and the two men joined the others in the palapa.
With Mendez and Roberts covering them, Harris and Duval moved out again, running swiftly into the open area and skirting a table and chairs. They took up positions on either side of the wooden door of the house. Harris tried the handle and found that it wasn’t locked. In fact, there wasn’t a lock on the door at all. He looked at Duval and nodded. They each knew their assignments—high, low, left, right—it was predetermined how they would clear the room when they entered. Harris wished for a moment that they had intelligence on the layout inside. He didn’t like working blind like this. Even more, he missed the voice of God on his radio, a far away controller giving him constant intel on where human thermal signatures could be seen in the house using a real-time satellite or drone view. There would be nothing like that for him any more. This part of freelancing sucked, bit it couldn’t be helped. He’d tried the infrared setting on his goggles, but the thick block-and-concrete walls prevented him from picking up anything on the other side. He was going to have to just say fuck it and go, trusting to his instincts and training to carry him through. It wouldn’t be the first time, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.