by Jacob Hammes
It pained her to no end to have to trudge away from her supervisor, team leader, and mentor instead of toward him. Realistically, however, she knew she had a better chance of getting to Henry. At least the people who took him were on foot, hopefully fighting against an angry UOD agent.
“Hurry it up,” Stephen roared as he slammed bushes out of his way. The weapon he held in front of him meant that anyone he saw would quickly meet their end. Cynthia was glad the man was on her side. “We’re gaining on them.”
With suggestions from Washington D.C., watching through the eyes of a high-flying U2 spy plane, they were able to make up a bit of ground on the individuals dragging Henry along. They had encountered no one along the way, even on the road they had crossed. No one seemed to want to stick around.
The sound of a river in the distance grew louder and louder as the three headed straight toward it. They all knew they needed to stop the men before they got to the water. The fact was only confirmed when a breathless Brenda came across the radio to inform them of what might be in store.
“There is a small boathouse up ahead,” she said, the radio crackling from the huge distance between them. “Seems to be three large boats—the kind that might be used for mining operations. If they get to those boats, we might have yet another problem on our hands.”
“Sounds like fun,” Cynthia said between heaving breaths. “What about the town back there? Anything we have to worry about?”
“Doesn’t seem so,” Phillip broke through. “I can see that none of their trucks have moved. Also, there’s still no sign of Marcus.”
Everyone felt a sense of frustration and sadness. They felt as if they were abandoning Marcus, but the team was full of realists. They could save Henry, or let him die at the hands of some mercenaries while they wondered whether or not Marcus had even survived the fall. Logical thinking drove them all in the same direction.
The going was tough, though the three of them cut through the underbrush as if they were experts in trekking through dense jungle. They had the rebels to blame for that—with their pre-established routes, they moved easily across marked and unmarked trails alike. At some points, Cynthia was worried they had lost their way, but then they would come to a trail that stood out like a paved road against the thick underbrush.
“We can hear the river,” she shouted into her microphone. “Can the U2 see anything in front of us at all?”
“Yes,” Brenda said. “It’s not good. You’ve got one boat launching already and another floating away. The third is still docked, but it looks like the rebels might have shot it full of holes.”
“Can you get a visual on Henry?”
“Looks like he’s in the boat with the rebels,” Phillip said. “He isn’t moving. What split you two up anyway?”
“I walked few paces into the forest to see if I could spot where all that gunfire was coming from,” Stephen nearly spat as he told the story. “I couldn’t have been ten feet away from him when they grabbed him and nearly shot me full of holes.”
“Great,” Phillip said. “At least you’re both alive…”
They ran into a patch of sparse undergrowth where they could see the boathouse and the large river. The burbling was much quieter here than it was farther up the river, but it still rushed along nicely. Cynthia could spot the fact there were less rapids in this part of the stream.
They could also see the boats. One of the rigid-framed inflatables floated lazily down the river while another was busy losing buoyancy and sinking rapidly. The third boat, full of armed men and a presumably incapacitated Henry, was motoring off down the river as quickly as it could go. The bow of the boat stuck up as it bounced easily over the deep water.
“Cover me,” Cynthia yelled.
Without a second thought, she dove headlong off the end of a narrow pier into the quickly moving river. The cool waters were somewhat refreshing after such a long and grueling run, but she couldn’t afford herself the luxury of the break. Her head broke the water and she started swimming freestyle as quickly as she could. Bullets splashed down around her as the quickly retreating kidnappers motored off, but she wasn’t afraid.
Either she would make that boat or she would die trying. From such a great distance, she knew she would hardly be a viable target anyhow.
Within a few seconds, she grabbed the side of the boat and hoisted herself up. It only took her a second to figure out where the controls were. This boat had also been shot, but only one hole appeared in the rubber inflatable material. It would mean they would have to act fast, but anything was possible.
She also noticed that her hawkeyed companions had taken one of the four kidnappers out. From this distance, it must have been pure luck, yet one of them floated down the river behind the rapidly accelerating boat.
She swooped around to the dock, slowing down just enough to give David and Stephen time to jump in. Once they were aboard, she punched the throttle as far forward as it would go. The little boat rocketed off down the river, skipping over small rapids like a four-wheel drive on gravel.
“What’s the plan?” Brenda said over the microphone. Stephen answered as best he could.
“They have Henry,” he said matter-of-factly. “We have to get Henry back.”
“But even if you get close enough to that boat to start shooting at them, you might hit Henry. Also, they are far better armed than you.”
Cynthia cursed. She knew Brenda was right, yet she wouldn’t give up. Losing Marcus was one thing; they couldn’t help him. Losing a man they could help was something completely different.
“Well why don’t you stop being the harbinger of bad news and give us something we can work with?” she yelled angrily.
“There are some large rocks ahead of you,” Phillip said, reporting what the U2 saw from high above. His image was a slowly moving display of what the spy plane was seeing at nearly seventy thousand feet high. “You might be able to catch them if you take all the right paths, but you’re still not going to outgun them.”
“We will think of something by then,” Cynthia said, formulating her own plan in her head. “Can you get us close to that boat or not?”
“Yes,” Phillip said. “They’ve already taken the left path on the fork up ahead. It seems like it might be longer. Just stick to the right and you might gain on them.”
Phillip was correct. The team was both lighter and just barely faster than the men who held Henry. Taking the right fork in the river meant that they came up just under a hundred yards from the boat that had been motoring ahead of them quicker and quicker.
“Any more advantages ahead?” Cynthia asked loudly. “We can’t do shit from this far.”
“There’s another fork ahead, but both sides are just as long. Your best bet would be to stick to whatever side the bad guys don’t use. Maybe Henry can hear us and he will find a way to get in the water before you come out the other side.”
Cynthia doubted the fact that Henry might be able to hear them, but she hoped she was wrong. Even Stephen held out hope. He took to shouting into his microphone as loudly as he could while the team split down the opposite fork in the river. This time the island separating them was quite long, at least two hundred yards. It had dense foliage restricting their view of anything but where they currently were.
“If you can hear me, you old bastard, jump out,” Stephen roared. There was no response, just disappointment and silence. Whatever had happened to Henry, his communication system was destroyed. They would have to figure out how to get him back the old fashion way—kill whoever stood in their path.
Stephen started working out plans in his head. He knew the weapons they had weren’t worthy of sniper tactics, nor could they get ahead of the men. He seriously hoped something would come up that helped them out, though he had been in this situation before. It never ended well.
“You’ve got a couple miles, at least, to figure this out,” Brenda said angrily. “There’s a larger river down the way with gunships waiting, bu
t it’ll take a while for you to reach them. I’ve got a bad feeling…”
Her sudden pause made Stephen’s stomach drop. He never enjoyed hearing bad news.
“Oh my god,” Brenda hollered happily through everyone’s earpiece. “He did it! Henry is in the water.”
Cynthia hooted her own triumphant sounds of joy while David and Stephen gave each other stern looks of happiness. They knew that soon they would see their friend, though it wouldn’t be as easy as going around the bend.
“The boat with the captors has circled around,” Phillip said. “They’re combing the water for Henry. You are only about thirty yard from them. If you stop the boat and cross that little island, you’ll basically run right into them.”
“That’s not happening,” Stephen said, speaking for the group. “The foliage would make it damn near impossible to get across. How far from the opening are we?”
The overhead view of the area was slow to react and Phillip was inpatient. He could see the area, though if he zoomed in too far was tough for him to zoom back out on demand. As Henry had just decided to jump out of the boat, he had zoomed in too far and was now unable to gauge how long the little island was.
Answering from what he had seen meant they were coming up on the end of the island very rapidly.
Like an answer to his question, the island ended abruptly, leaving them only fifty yards or so downstream of the gunmen-laden boat. Here, the water was rough where the separated river came back together. Without so much as a word, Cynthia brought the boat around in a hard turn and steered it up onto the flat rocks of the island’s end. The team piled out and took up positions behind a few large boulders, intent on killing the men who had given them such a hard time.
The boat filled with gunmen bounced around in the tumultuous waters of the rapidly flowing river, but none of the men were looking downstream. They searched the waters for Henry, who had apparently not yet surfaced. Their heads were turned upstream, not knowing that the team had swiped the lead. Stephen didn’t wait for everyone to get ready. With his Navy SEAL background, he steadied himself as best he could and readied for the shot. The first round from his pistol was straight and true, leaving one of the three remaining men wounded and unable to continue fighting.
The others looked up as a barrage of pistol fire tore through the air all around them. They quickly realized they were facing an adversary they had not anticipated and punched the throttle. It was too late though, as more than thirty well placed rounds were shot in the matter of seconds between realization and the attempt to flee. All three of the captors were dead or dying as the boat motored its way up into the banks of the river and planted itself into the thick brush.
“Now where is Henry?” Stephen yelled, hoping that Phillip and Brenda had seen him floating about.
“I haven’t seen him come up yet,” Brenda said. Worry laced her voice. “It’s only been about a minute, but in that water you should have seen him float by.”
Cynthia felt a ball of worry in her stomach. She knew Henry had most likely been tied up along the chase. She hoped it would not impede his ability to keep afloat, though she thought otherwise. Henry was not in the best physical shape and at the moment, she doubted he could swim 100 meters without sinking.
She jumped back into the boat and told her counterparts to watch the river’s edges. In just a few seconds, she had the little boat bouncing up the quickly flowing waters, looking overboard in case he had been trapped underneath the water somewhere.
The search dragged on for another precious minute like nails being slowly driven into her chest. She could neither see nor hear anything relating to the old man. First, they had lost Marcus and presumed he had been either killed or was hiding out in a deep well, and now they had lost Henry to the river.
“No,” she muttered to herself. She wouldn’t let either of them die in this ridiculously blown mission. First, she needed to find Henry, and then they would go back for Marcus.
Something caught Stephen’s eye from the side of the river. He had been looking far up the river, anticipating that Henry might have been able to swim. It was only out of despair that he looked downstream at all. He spotted Henry, gasping for air, just as he bounced up and over a particularly large rapid.
“Oh hell,” he roared. “Cynthia, I’ve found him!”
Marcus wasn’t very excited about the prospect of setting the locals up to fight a guerrilla war, here in the middle of Nigeria. He hadn’t anticipated such tragic turns of fate, either. He didn’t know where his team had gone to, nor did he have any way of contacting anyone. In fact, the only way that he could reach anyone would be to get back to his trucks and grab another radio.
Instead he was sitting in a damp cave with three dead men and many more live ones, contemplating how they were going to take their village back from the rebels. The few prisoners that Marcus had managed to save went out and saved even more from nearby groups. They had slain another ten men and now stood at twenty strong.
The fact that the men who had been imprisoned knew the area worked to their advantage. Within just a half hour, they had managed to sneak up to and kill quite a few bad guys. Marcus didn’t feel bad for the ones being killed—he had witnessed what these monsters were capable of firsthand.
“You’ve got enough firepower here to take the village,” Marcus said, motioning to the seven AK47s, the truck-mounted machine gun, and various other weapons they had found. “You’re going to need a plan, though. That plan should involve not getting killed.”
“Marcus,” Jahar said happily, patting his new friend on the back. “We will not die. We are all well trained ex-military. The only reason we did not fight back is because we do not house enough weapons in the village. Those are kept at the guardhouses, which were riddled with holes. We are miners and we are paid well for what we do.”
“I understand,” Marcus said, accepting Jahar’s friendship wholeheartedly. “I feel as if I should be helping you fight, though.”
“This is not your fight,” Jahar said happily. “Besides, you have done enough in freeing us from our captors. It is our turn to help you. You will get to your vehicle and go home. We will fight for our village, our country, and our mines. You tell Mister Frederickson if he ever wants his mines back, he had better come himself.”
Marcus was proud of Jahar for sticking up for what he believed in. If it were up to Marcus, they would all pile into as few trucks as they could and hit the road. Unfortunately, the locals were hell bent on taking back what belonged to them. It meant they might die in the process, but after losing so much they undoubtedly cared very little.
After deliberation, they were able to come up with a tentative plan. Between the weapons the natives had and Marcus’s ability to plan the logistics of the counter offensive, he felt pretty sure they would stand a chance. Besides, Marcus really needed to get to a radio and highly doubted he would be the deciding factor in whether or not the locals would win this war.
“I’ll be taking three men with me,” Marcus said aloud. “Those men need to be the best shots out of all of you. We’re going to conduct a maneuver called the flank on the men who have taken over your village. The majority of you will be shooting through the trees, directing the attention of the village toward you. The rest of you will wait until the shooting starts before you can begin picking individuals off. This is going to box them in. They will have nowhere to run but into the river.”
“How are you sure this will work?” one man asked from somewhere in the back of the handful of men. “You do not know what sort of weapons they hold.”
“True,” Marcus said. “If they have more weapons than you, they might win. That being said, you’re going to be hidden and take advantage of the surprise. Stay low and don’t get killed.”
No one had any objections to Marcus’s plan. They were going to take their village back if it was the last thing they ever did. The voices of the men had been that of mourning for their children, women, and brothers. They were
nothing short of vengeful.
Knowing more of their family would die meant nothing to them at this point.
The group started out once they had plenty of supplies. Marcus made sure to lead a string of six riflemen down the flank before positioning them. Looking back once more, he quickly moved off with the other three sharpshooters. The signal was simply to start shooting before everyone attacked, but Marcus had given them a time limit of twenty minutes before starting the assault. That would ensure all elements of the attack would have enough time to get into position.
Once the men in the village started running, Marcus was sure there would be no mercy from those who had lost their loved ones.
Marcus got the rebels into approximately the same position he had been in before moving toward what he had thought was the low-walled well. The bodies of the drivers and Stewart had been moved. Only bloodstained dirt remained in their place. Marcus wondered whether or not Stewart had just been thrown down the well with the rest of the villagers. He desperately hoped none of his friends had joined Stewart in death.
They had a good view of everything that was going on in the village. The sun was starting to sink lower in the horizon casting long shadows, but there was more than enough light for Marcus to see the twenty or so men roaming between buildings. They were well equipped, far more so than the villagers currently were, yet Marcus knew his plan would go off without a hitch.
A shot rang out in the distance signaling the beginning of the onslaught. Marcus counted five more before the rebels started reacting, quickly dodging toward the nearest buildings or running headlong toward the sounds. He didn’t tell the three riflemen with him to hold their fire—they sat patiently like hunters, waiting for the perfect shot.