After tapping the earbud in his ear, Ajax beeped out a coded message over the COM from the keypad on his wrist.
“What's that? Morse code?”
“Yeah.”
“It can still be deciphered!” Natty spit out, gesturing. He was clearly still more dialed up than he realized.
“It's our own private language we worked out a long time ago. I'm just broadcasting your orders.”
“My orders!”
“We're a fairly democratic group. The one with the best ideas leads.”
As Ajax blazed a trail ahead, Natty fell into step behind him. “I have this idea to go home.”
“Keep it up, and I'll think you're a born leader.”
Ajax walked right into DeWitt, who he didn't see, because DeWitt was camouflaged. Ajax reflexively jabbed a knife in DeWitt's gut before realizing who it was.
They both looked down at his gut and the Kevlar which stopped the knife. “I was going to pay you the twenty bucks,” DeWitt said. “No need to get pissy.” He shoved the knife backwards by grabbing hold of Ajax’s hands around the blade. “Go on, I'll take over with junior.”
Natty overheard the remark, and grimaced at DeWitt. Ajax disappeared into the woods before Natty could complain, or thank Ajax, for that matter. “How much you get paid to babysit me?”
DeWitt sheathed his knife. “Play nice.” He spiritedly put him in a headlock. “We were told you needed friends.”
Natty twisted his way out of the headlock, unduly worked up. “My friends take me to a movie! They feel overly adventuresome - they buy the popcorn.”
“Sorry we're such a letdown.”
Natty gritted his teeth. “You're not a letdown.” He picked up his hat, set it back on his head. “Hey, I remember you. You're the guy who likes to eat strange things.”
DeWitt peeled some bark off a tree and chewed on it. “Yep, that's me. High metabolism. I'm worse than locusts. For a guy with such a good memory, you could stand to improve your facial recognition skills.”
“Sorry if all two-toned, black and green people look alike to me,” he said. With a sigh, he added, “How's Laney?”
“I imagine Leon is taking real good care of her.”
Natty charged him emitting a primal scream. He slammed DeWitt back against a tree and wailed at him.
“Don't bend up your wrist like that when you punch, you'll break your hand.”
Unfazed by good advice, Natty pounded away at him. “Okay,” DeWitt said, “when beating on the guy wearing Kevlar that can stop armor-piercing shells, you might want to look for a chink in the armor.”
Natty calmed down enough to look for holes where he could punch DeWitt to some effect. He took a couple of swings there.
“Better. Still pathetic. But better. You hit like my mother.”
“My mother could have kicked your ass! She was a Jewish Princess. She just needed a few words to kill you from an adjacent room.”
DeWitt laughed. Gradually, Natty got caught up in the laughter.
Eventually, DeWitt threw his arm over his shoulders and walked with him.
“Just for the record my friends don’t beat up on me either.”
DeWitt took another chew of his bark. “Maybe you need a better class of friends.”
***
Following tracks only he could follow, Leon came upon a totem made from three of his dead soldiers stacked on top one another and marked with tattoos and body-piercings. They weren’t guys from his inner circle. These were the less proficient killers, most of whom he’d left behind to protect the plane and supplies, and the ones that were even less proficient fighters, the engineers. These three from ALPHA UNIT must have been en route to resupply OMEGA FORCE.
Laney, hiking just behind him, seeing the totem a couple seconds later, gasped.
“We're hiding their bodies,” Leon said by throwing them into quicksand pits and piranha-infested rivers, “and they're leaving us trail markers. From the sounds you’re making, I can see which strategy you put the most stock in.”
He took her by the upper arm, and led her down the trail. “I'm afraid I'm going to have to put you on ice for a while. Things are getting a little too torrid around here.”
She shifted her attention from her hurting arm to his eyes, glaring at him. “Explain yourself.”
“I’m afraid this is one of those situations where a picture is worth a thousand words.”
Up a ways, the path cleared and widened. A couple ALPHA UNIT soldiers stood guarding a large square carrying case by a tree.
Leon rolled up her sleeve, injected her with a needle.
“What are you doing?!”
“It'll prevent ice crystals from forming when we freeze you.”
Her eyes popped wide.
“When you...!” Fading into unconsciousness, she crumpled in his arms.
He stooped down and attached a microchip device to her forehead. The miniature robot dug in with a hundred little insect-like metal legs. It fired up, its circuitry glowing. “Sweet dreams, princess.”
His fellow soldiers assisted him with putting her body inside the carry-case which was packed with a high-tech liquid nitrogen admixture. Ironically, it was yet another of Natty’s inventions.
Leon watched the soldiers close the lid on the case which triggered a special seal. The combination lock scrambled the unlock combination, randomizing the sequence of numbers for him. “She going to be okay here if they find her?”
The taller of the two young soldiers said, “An atomic blast won't open that box.”
“They could just as easily make off with her, work at hacking the lock at their leisure,” Leon suggested.
The shorter one replied, “Once the case is sealed, its specific gravity accommodates to that of a ten ton boulder.”
Leon sighed and eyed the case. “Just when things were heating up between us.”
He studied the jungle as he turned on himself three hundred and sixty degrees. Time to be all you can be, or your name isn’t Leon DiSparta.
Now that you don’t have to pretend to be half-human around her, you can embrace the monster that is the real you.
FOURTEEN
There! An opportunity too good to pass up. If it weren’t for the way the forest in this region glowed in the dead of night, he’d have missed it altogether. Leon placed his hands on the ant tree and let the ants swarm all over him. To hell with their stinging bites. It was the least of his problems. Then he took his hands and rubbed them together, smearing the ants’ crushed bodies like lotion all over himself. With the ant smell coating him, he’d be harder to track. A noteworthy point under the circumstances. He returned to his steeple sprint, vaulting over the fallen logs.
Leon hated running on these God damn slimy leaves. Never, ever agree to fight in the Amazon rainforest during the wet season—again! The slightest downward incline and you may as well use the damn thing like a child’s Slip ’N Slide. Which was what he was currently doing to get away from his trackers. There was no telling how many bird men, but they were hunting him with four jaguars. Their coughing grunts were not like the roar of any other big cat; there was no mistaking them. The cats couldn’t match the African lion for size, but they had the second strongest bite of any big cat, with a jaw crushing capacity of 1500 pounds per square inch. They could pierce the skulls and brains of any animal it preyed on. Of all the times to worry yourself about that troubling statistic, Leon!
He was gaining too much momentum. He appreciated the chance to get some distance and catch a breather at the same time. But it occurred to him he’d been herded down this path for a reason. And the reason might well be a cliff drop off up ahead. Or a bear trap or perhaps the welcoming arms of an entire clan of bird men.
Apparently his fanciful imagination wasn’t fanciful enough. The tall blades of glowing grass to either side of him, of two different varieties, started whisking their tendrils at him. Amendment to earlier proposition: Never ever hunt the bird men at night!
The roun
d-leaf grasses were getting hold of his neck with the idea of strangling him. So far his momentum was too great for them and he was ripping them out at the roots. But they were slowing him down in the process. Soon Newtonian Physics would turn on him as their cellular bonds overcame gravity. The sharp-edged grasses were no less the treat. They were whipping him with the equivalent effectiveness of flexible swords. If they didn’t flail the skin right off him, the other variety of plant would strangle him to death.
The more he bled the more the rounded grasses whipped at the trail of blood to soak it up, and the less attention they paid to his neck. Evidently the sword-edged grasses and the rope-shaped ones had developed this symbiotic relationship naturally, or the bird men, with their plant-breeding practices, had helped them to forge it.
“You’re worried about fighting off four jaguars at once, Leon? The fricking grass will kill you first!”
The Slip ’N Slide trick paid off. He was out of the Corridor of Death.
He used a slim-trunked palm tree to pull himself up. When he felt jaws nipping at him all over. For a second he thought the four jaguars had caught up to him. It was another damn plant. A variety of Venus fly trap. Only way bigger, with way better jaw-crushing capacity. Adapted to snakes, frogs, rodents, birds; they could probably even handle jaguar cubs. And like every other plant in the region of the bird men, they glowed, flicking their fiery red tongues at him even as their piranha-inspired teeth were determined to have their way with him. He broke free and dashed in the direction he was going.
Another fifty yards and he was in a circular clearing. He noticed the ground littered with the ivy-version of those glowing Venus fly traps. This was a killing field. Otherwise the Venus ivy wouldn’t be so dense through here. Growing to take advantage of the fallen prey and spilled blood. So this was where the natives were herding him. He edged toward the perimeter but the jaguars already had him encircled. Three of them pacing about him.
God damn it, Leon! These are endangered animals. Their pelts fetching close to ten thousand dollars on the black market for any peasant migrating from the coast that could get his hands on one in the hope of a better life. You can’t kill them! But if the bird men are breeding them for the hunt, then they aren’t endangered, right? Yeah, go ahead, keep telling yourself that.
The animals had been trained to overcome their fear of tackling a bigger creature by being taught that there was strength in numbers and learning how to hunt like wolves. He was all for self-transcendence, even in animals, and evolving in the direction of a world where everything was so potentially deadly, no one messed with you. Maybe they’d all become Breatharians in the years ahead, living on nothing but air, rather than mess with the chemical warfare experts of Amazon rainforest plants and their descendants, eschewing even vegetarianism in the process as being too barbaric. But for right now, he could really use some leverage on this situation.
He knew he didn’t want to tussle on that ground where he could add the countless snapping jaws of the Venus ivy to the snapping jaws of the jaguars. He picked up a stick, one of many lying about; the forest floor wasn’t thick with jungle plants as was commonly believed. The overhead canopy trees ensured that no more than ten percent of the sunlight filtered down here. As a result, the ground was fairly clear, mostly just rotting wood and some orchids, vines hanging from trees, and the endless blanket of wet leaves rotting away. Most of the dense ground level vegetation hugged the coastline. But the plentiful supply of rotting wood wasn’t going to help him. He reached instead for the iron wood. Damn thing was so hard they used it once upon a time to make rifle stocks, as far back as the 1700s. It might well hold up to the 700 PSI of a jaguar bite. He was about to find out.
As the fourth jaguar joined the circle, the animals overcame their hesitation to pounce. He shoved the three-inch diameter branch into the mouth of the first one to reach him, forcing the stick to the back of the throat to minimize how much downward pressure it could get on its bite. And he swung the jaguar at the others. Using its own extended claws and frantically flailing limbs to scratch at their hides and their eyes.
As the first jaguar swung clear of the ironwood and another one leaped at him, he repeated the stunt. And he kept repeating it until each or them was scratched up enough to be thinking twice about continuing the fight.
One thing even a wounded animal knows is that the smallest scratch can be deadly. Most jaguars would have backed off with comparatively minor injuries. But the bird men had bred more dauntlessness into these creatures. It took one of them missing an eye, courtesy of one of Leon’s eye gouges, one of them with a broken rear leg, secondary to a kick from Leon along a vector it was not meant to bend at, one with a broken forepaw that Leon had jabbed his heel into, and one with a laceration from the fangs of one of the other jaguars, applied unwittingly when he went flying off the stick, disoriented, the gash running pretty deep, for them to call it a day. They were in bad shape, but the bird men would doctor them back to health.
Speaking of the bird men, his captive audience the whole time, beating their drums rhythmically, possibly in the hopes that Leon could keep time during the fight, ceased their drumming. The chanting of “Mudra. Panno. Jacko.” came to an abrupt halt in perfect sync with the last drum beat.
The indigenes retreated into the darkness. Under orders not to kill him, just to test him? Or out of professional courtesy for a warrior they respected who’d played by the rules and won? He was a little too winded for the philosophical speculation to quite take. So he lumbered back in the direction of camp.
There were many varieties of ironwood. And depending on the age of the tree, the wood wasn’t just hard but flexible. Harvested at the age when it was still pliable, the wood made for excellent archery bows that the natives took full advantage of. Was it dumb luck he’d found a piece of it, aged with just the right properties? Or was it that one of the things the bird men were testing was his knowledge of the forest? His respect and admiration for it, and therefore his worthiness to walk back out of the jungle alive, where few others had survived the trials?
He needed to get back to camp, or find the nearest stream, and in a hurry, to wash the gunk off of him he’d picked up rolling in the leaves. There was another reason you didn’t sleep on the groundcover in the Amazon rainforest. The preponderance of exotic mites, whose tick-like bites could convey an exotic fever against which there was no known antidote. The only thing he had going for him was his thick skin—literally. Like with the natives, prolonged exposure to the jungle, in his case, via jungle warfare, had left him with a few adaptations, including a leathery skin, perfect for fending off the bites of blood suckers of all varieties. But he wasn’t pressing his luck.
For the time being, he’d fulfilled his mission. Offering himself in sacrifice to the bird men each night kept them off of his men. His life for theirs. Luckily for him, the indigenes were even happier to see him victorious than to see him die. Perhaps for no reason beyond the fact that it gave them a chance to up their game.
Now he just had to pray none of his men caught on to his treachery. They would have interpreted the act as a sign of disrespect, and they’d have been right to do so. They’d get their chance to earn their stripes soon enough. The bird men weren’t all about one-on-one games; he was sure of that. They’d already shown a propensity for several-on-one and group-on-group conflicts. But these were more get-to-know one another recon missions than true no-holds barred battles. Soon the courtship would be over, and having “held hands” long enough, true marital intercourse would begin. In the meantime, his stalling tactic offered one advantage, not waking up to find any of his men picked off at night. And dragged away to face a trial Leon was only too happy to face for them.
FIFTEEN
“Aren’t you supposed to be wrestling with alligators, soldier? Considering the part of the world we’re in, you’ll thank me later.”
“Sorry, sir. I thought you were joking.”
“What led you to believe I have a
sense of humor?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I never considered that you might simply be insane.”
Patent fought the impulse to smile. That involved restraining ten distinct muscles, if the How Stuff Works article was to be believed. Resisting a frown would require restraining only six muscles. Having never done so, it was fair to say, those muscles were pretty out of shape.
He had to admit he was intrigued by the doughnut-shape tech she was working on, about the size of a life preserver. Only this one came with glowing LED lights. “If I’m not convinced this is worth your time, soldier, I’ll make sure to season you myself before I throw you into that alligator pit.”
“The blue prints are over there, sir.”
It wasn’t helping that she was engineering her toy in nothing more than a sports bra and cotton-spandex-like shorts. Both were admittedly colored in camouflage patterns. He couldn’t fault her in ninety-two degree heat and eighty-six percent humidity—that it dropped to in between flash rainstorms—for taking proper countermeasures. She even had the sense to go with Gore-Tex fabric to help wicker the moisture away from her, as hopeless as a cause as that was. If he had his choice, he’d be walking around naked, but his position vis-à-vis the cadets required a bit more decorum.
He bent over the two work horses, across which had been thrown some 2 x 12s, and pawed over the schematics, separated by cellophane sheets the way an architect’s drawing of a building was viewed one layer at a time.
By the third gelatin layer Patent let out a steam-kettle whistle to vent the blood pressure building in him of which he was previously entirely unaware. “Fuck me.”
“It’s meant to solve the problem of expanding our range of fire in the jungle, sir. As you well know, shooting any distance is all but impossible anywhere the foliage may get too thick. Even if it’s never too thick at ground level unless we’re near the water, aiming at tree people up in the trees—and the bird men do love their trees—well, it requires some sort of stratagem.”
Mind of a Child: Sentient Serpents (OMEGA FORCE and ALPHA UNIT Book 1) Page 10