Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1)

by Dean C. Moore

  “That’s a lot of self-importance.”

  “Stems from abandonment issues. An absentee father. The step-father who raised him never thought he’d amount to much either; too much of a dreamer. Though Natty’d tell you that saving the world is everyone’s job, not just his. It’s what he calls civic responsibility.”

  “So how do building hi-tech toys for the military get him closer to that goal?”

  “You’d have to ask him. Though I imagine it has something to do with making sure the good guys, those would be the ones who champion the most socially liberal, humanitarian, pro-environment issues, are the ones who win every confrontation.”

  Leon nodded. “You realize we military types are fairly conservative?”

  “Walk softly but carry a big stick; I guess you’re the big stick.”

  Leon smiled. “And what really drives you?” he asked.

  “Those who would save the world need the most help of all.”

  “Ah, so you’re the enabler, and I’m the rescuer, tracking you now.”

  She smiled. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “Let’s hope my rescuing skills and your enabling skills are up to the task.”

  “I guess we’re both about to find out.”

  SEVEN

  Laney gazed out the cargo bay of the C-5 from one of the few windows at the jungle of the Amazon basin below. “Where the hell do you plan to land a small army in the middle of a forest?” she asked Leon.

  He frowned. “Girl, they cut down a patch of that wilderness the size of Kansas every year.” Throwing an eye out the window, he said, “Soon you won't be able to find the forest with a compass.”

  Laney’s body contracted in response to Leon's gravity. “You and my husband have more in common than you know.”

  “That a fact?” He eyed her leadingly.

  She tried to lock eyes with him but couldn’t. Looking away she said, “You name a social and environmental cause, he’s got a hundred and one patents in defense of it.”

  “You’d think that’d create some tension between him and Truman.”

  Laney exhaled forcibly. “It didn’t used to. He loves his toys and war is just another game to him. But of late… Who knows, maybe he’s finally growing up.”

  “Let’s hope not.” She glanced back at him surprised. “The boy wonder needs the child in him,” Leon said, “if it’s the font of all that free-thinking genius.”

  “Maybe. For a second there, I thought you had something else in mind.”

  “Just a second, huh?” he said, making no effort to hide the sexual innuendo.

  Once again she couldn’t hold the eye contact, and glanced away.

  She noticed DeWitt looked intrigued by something he was seeing through one of the plane's portals in his binoculars. “Leon. I think you want to look at this.”

  He handed another set of binoculars over to him, while keeping his own pair and his eyes on the target.

  ***

  Leon put the field glasses DeWitt handed him to his eyes, focusing in on the coffee-complexioned man with a white beard, in his sixties at the very least, who sported a sagely witch-doctor countenance and haunting eyes. Evidently a pure blood native of some tribe or another, he stood just at the forest's edge. He was carrying modern weapons - very modern - in tandem with more traditional ones. It had taken the digital zoom on the binoculars and picture enhancement handled by onboard computer chips to render the necessary detail at this distance, through a less-than-picture-perfect window no less. The autofocus correcting for the moving plane would have prompted a seasoned camera man used to manually focusing lenses to retire. And the resulting visual clarity would have made a film director gasp. There was no denying Natty’s gift for designing tech toys.

  “What do you make of the warrior out of time?” DeWitt said.

  “There’s no denying how fixated on our planes they are.”

  “They?”

  “There are at least a hundred men and women surrounding him amid those trees, all armed to the teeth.”

  DeWitt changed the focus on the binoculars. “I see a lot of lovely tropical birds. The forest is alive with color. But no natives.”

  “Those aren’t birds.”

  ***

  DeWitt fine-tuned the binoculars some more, playing pictogram puzzles with his eyes. What looked like pretty birds perched on tree branches were actually tattoos on the natives, both the birds and the branches colorfully etched into their skin! “Damn, you’re right! I count more like fifty, but I’ll take your word for it.”

  The next thought sent chills running up DeWitt’s spine. “How did they know where we would touch down when we didn’t even know? And even if we managed to get on their radar the second we hit their air space, how would they beat us to the landing site simply by moving through the jungle? There are laws of physics to be respected here.”

  “Tell them that.” Leon lowered the binoculars. “It’s a damn good question, considering the region designated for…” he caught himself as he was in earshot of Natty, “our little adventure is the size of a small country.”

  “Let’s hope they’re just some drug lord’s hired guns. Second rate training and second rate natives. And it’s just dumb luck our landing where they have to protect their drug-trafficking interests.”

  ***

  Leon didn’t get a chance to consider DeWitt’s conjecture, before being forced to contemplate something even more amazing than tribesmen sporting high tech weapons.

  The witch doctor disappeared right before his and DeWitt's eyes.

  Not in a puff of smoke either. More like a solid mass sublimating to a gaseous version of itself before vanishing entirely. Their witch doctor hadn’t so much as moved, leastways until he was finished dematerializing.

  Leon found himself reflexively tapping the hi-tech binoculars. “Maybe the humidity is causing the lenses to malfunction.”

  “Technical glitch, my ass.” DeWitt threw an alarmed look at Leon who gestured to him subtly to calm down. But Leon could tell Laney had caught the undertones passing between him and DeWitt, even if Natty, just returning from his sparring with Crumley, all fluffed up, did not.

  “I feel like I could take on the world!” Natty said breathlessly. “Amazon jungle - do your worst!”

  Laney and Leon exchanged knowing glances that they did not share with Natty.

  Finally, Leon sighed and said to Natty, “Be careful what you wish for.”

  ***

  The C-5 transport plane touched down in a field abutting the forest, recently cleared out by one determined cow farmer. The uneven terrain bounced them about quite a bit. Laney’s insides felt like Jell-O still settling after just being put into the fridge. The lack of adequate topsoil was probably the only thing that kept the aircraft from sinking under its own weight. The stale atmosphere of the cabin had it smelling like a locker-room after this long in the air. The combined assault on her tactile and olfactory senses had her ready to hurl. She refused.

  Even with all four C-5s touching down, the cows barely moved, just gazed up at the curiosities before them, chewing grass. The first sounds from the Amazon rainforest to greet them were, ironically, the cows’ anachronistic mooing.

  For all his voiced fears back home about the hundred and one ways to die in the Amazon—before stepping off the plane—Natty was the first one up from his seat and making for the exit.

  In his wake, Laney shifted her attention to Leon, still seated beside her. “You said something about not getting a chance to be all you can be?” she said, speaking softly. “Maybe you should watch what you wish for.”

  EIGHT

  Jacko, the shaman for his people, stood side by side with his apprentices Panno and Mudra, who were also his son and daughter, watching Leon’s armada descend into the clearing in the Amazon basin.

  Jacko’s eyes seldom blinked as he was seldom out of trance state; this moment was no exception. His body was painted in pigments that broke up the pattern of his
body against the forest. The complex herbal ingredients infused into the oil plastering his skin, moreover, assisted him with maintaining the altered state so necessary to working his magic.

  Panno’s superfit body, which seemed uniquely designed for physical combat, belied his harsh training in the areas of his mind and soul. It took all that training now to restrain his tendency to action in favor of these passive disguises.

  Both he and his sister rose to 6’ 6”, veritable giants among their own people, and nearly a head taller than Jacko. All the better to curry influence among the laity.

  “What will we do?” Panno said in the native tongue of the Ubuku. His deep voice informed by his husky frame and powerful chest.

  Even with just one eye, the other of painted wood, the path was clear. “Learn their weaknesses,” Jacko replied, clenching his staff. “Then kill them all.”

  Mudra’s smile was like a snake stretching its tail.

  NINE

  They had landed in the Amazon basin in the northwestern corner of Brazil, in the state of Amazonas. Amazonas was largely unexplored jungle, enclosing an area 2.25 times the size of Texas.

  Now that they were on the ground, a familiar beehive of activity followed the unloading of the C-5 transport planes.

  Leon thought he saw the same tribal shaman of earlier at the edge of the forest again. But he couldn’t be sure.

  Natty came running up to him with two hats, a baseball cap in one hand, an old-style safari helmet in the other. “Which one?”

  Leon put the hard hat on Natty's head.

  “Oh, I get it. So if we have to catch rain, we can.” He took the hat off and held it upside down as if he were catching rain. “And so we can use it as a bowl too, to eat out of.” He gestured fingering food into his mouth.

  “No. It's because you live inside your head too much.” Leon put the hat back on him. “And when it rains on that hard hat, it'll drive you right out of your skull.” He pounded on the hat to illustrate.

  “Ha-ha, very funny. You must be related to my wife.”

  Laney, catching the last part of their exchange as she walked up on them, smiled at Leon, continuing to traffic in private transmissions on the wavelength only they shared. Natty caught the smile they were giving one another and frowned, evidently not appreciating just how well they communicated without words.

  Leon scrutinized the edge of the clearing, certain he saw Jacko disappearing before his eyes again.

  Natty followed his sight line. “What are you looking at?”

  “The edge of the forest.”

  “You're kidding?” Natty squinted to see better, and found it didn't help. “You must have the eyes of a hawk.”

  “Or so I thought.” He regarded Natty. “Been meaning to ask you, that invisibility cloak I read about on bbc.com a while back...?”

  “The one I designed for the military?” Leon's eyes went wide. “Years away in all likelihood,” Natty said. He donned his hat proudly, trying to secure the chin strap but failing miserably. “There isn't enough money in all the world to perfect all my ideas at once.”

  Maybe not everyone working on perfecting Natty’s ideas worked for Natty, or for Truman, for that matter, Leon thought.

  Laney and Leon bumped into one another reaching to help Natty at the same time. Laney stepped back and let Leon fasten the strap properly. Natty lightened up further at the attention he was getting from Leon.

  The job done, Natty ran with excitement toward the plane to continue to ferret prizes out of his backpack.

  Leon said, “He actually likes it when I baby him.”

  Laney sighed. “He had an absentee father. And he and his step-dad, well...”

  When he glanced back at her, she said, “Sorry, I forget we’ve been over that already.”

  “He doesn't seem to mind you doting over him either.”

  “Everyone in Natty's life is there to make sure his every need is met - and reality never gets too close.” She let out another sigh. “He really thinks being adorable is repayment enough.”

  Leon chuckled. “He thinks he's adorable?”

  “It's the logic of a child. He never made it past his terrible two's. I'm sorry to have to break it to you like this.”

  “Must get exhausting.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Responding to the weariness in Laney’s voice, Leon said, “All the skill and worldly knowhow in the world will be humbled before a child’s imagination.” She did a double take his direction. “Something my father once said.”

  She smiled no less dejectedly at him. “Appreciate you trying to get me to look on the bright side. But I think we may be past that.”

  “Let me apologize then in advance for doing my happy dance every time you sound like you’re over him.”

  Catching the last part of Leon's exchange with Laney, DeWitt stepped up to Leon, making throat clearing sounds. She released Leon from the vague look she was giving him and retreated to attend to Natty.

  Leon and DeWitt both watched from a distance as Laney helped Natty make the tough choices of which of his treasures in his backpack to play with first. “Frayed jeans, faded Metallica tee shirt,” Leon mumbled. “The woman turns dressed down into Vogue chic. Of course, she’s helped by the well-formed cheek bones, large eyes, high eyebrows and lips of medium thickness.”

  DeWitt said, “You're just torturing yourself, you know that?”

  Feeling unmasked, Leon took his eyes off of Laney.

  “She knows her place in the world, and so should you, Leon.”

  “Oh yeah? And what's that?”

  “Well, as I've come to understand it, the free world collapses into a heinous dark ages the instant that guy's mind goes off line. She must make a virgin sacrifice of herself nightly for the good of all.”

  Leon laughed.

  “And you,” DeWitt continued with the tongue lashing, “your destiny is to watch yourself grow too old to fend off my constant attempts to overthrow you as top dog.”

  “Amazing how ridiculous the truth sounds coming out of your mouth.”

  DeWitt nodded in the direction of the tree line. “What do we do about what's out there?”

  Leon passed his hand over his polished dome of a scalp as if rubbing a crystal ball as he contemplated the matter. “When natives go hi-tech, I'm guessing it's not because they love our way of life or what we stand for.”

  DeWitt grunted a wordless acknowledgement.

  “So let's not piss'em off anymore by trampling over their homeland with our heavy artillery.” Leon eyed their armada. “Have ALPHA UNIT figure out how to put these C-5s into stealth mode. I want them taking off in the dead of night with the same noise in which we came, but I want them landing sound-cloaked, far enough away to make the locals think we left. Then camouflage the planes.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell the men to follow suit. Skimp on any hardware they’re packing, and prepare to go native on their asses in a hurry.

  “They aren’t the only ones who can disappear into the woods.”

  As before, DeWitt's snort communicated agreement. He headed off to pass the word along.

  ***

  Over by one of the planes, Laney struggled to hold the over-excited Natty still as she finished dressing him. “You understand the stakes, right?”

  “Yeah, stay alive, get a nice tan.”

  “No, mature, keep the wife.”

  He studied her cautiously. “I'm serious, Natty. Only adults get to have sex, you follow me?”

  “Newsflash, the genius IS the child in me.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that.”

  She walked off and he tilted his head to appreciate her sexy sashay. “Yeah, me too.” He gulped. No sex, huh? I guess I can afford to dumb down a little. I mean, wise up.

  TEN

  Hiking through the thick of the jungle, Natty swatted a mosquito taking a bite out of his neck. He pulled away his palm to gawk at the blood. “See that? That's malaria is what that is, follow
ed quickly by vomiting, diarrhea, and delirium. Of course the delirium will be welcome by then.” He checked the faces of the others. Startled by their lack of urgency, he said, “I'm dying, and the curious thing is no one seems too bent out of shape.”

  Leon and Laney listened to Natty carry on with a certain detached amusement. Leon gave a nod to one of his boys, Ajax, in his twenties, to intercede and redirect Natty. Ajax had these wild, feral eyes and unruly hair that didn’t look like it wanted to behave any more than he did. Natty took an instant liking to him.

  Ajax grabbed Natty and led him off by the hand. Natty looked at the way Ajax was holding him, then glanced up at Laney, embarrassed. “Why's everyone treating me like a kid? I'm not a kid!”

  Ajax took his machete and chopped a vine and drank out of it. He handed the machete to Natty, who aped what he did. With the water running into his mouth by his own doing, he smiled at Ajax. “Hey, look what I can do!” After a couple of gasps to catch his breath, he said, “You know, I think I was delirious.”

  He ran ahead and chopped a vine for another one of the soldiers, who regarded him quizzically, but took the drink. Natty continued to puff up and sprinted further up ahead on the trail.

  Just as he was about to cut the vine for this soldier, Crumley put his hand over Natty's wrist with the machete, and put his other hand over Natty's free arm and drew him backwards into himself in a gentle restraining motion.

  When Natty gazed up at him to explain what was going on, Crumley gestured with his eyes to pay attention to where he was looking.

  Together, they watched as a lime-green tree boa leapt at a bird in mid-air, capturing it in flight. Natty gulped. “Whoa!”

  Crumley sized up Natty's Army-Navy store faux camo cargo pants with extra pockets topped by the neon orange concert tee shirt. He ripped off the tee-shirt. “Hey!” Natty balked. Crumley smeared green and black camo paint on Natty's bare torso and face.