Jessica fell instantly asleep with her night t-shirt over her face to block out the light. Mike lay back in his hammock and forced himself to follow her lead. He needed the rest. But instead his head was filled with Jessica, and the way she’d pressed against him. He wanted her. More than he’d wanted a woman in a long time. Maybe ever. It wasn’t only her beauty that drew him, but her courage and determination, too.
It had to be the close proximity. Once they were out of the jungle, away from the sultry heat and adrenaline caused by running for their lives, it would all go away. It had to. Because what the hell kind of life could a man like him have with a senator’s daughter?
None.
He pictured her, standing with a serene beauty behind her mother on the campaign trail, the only image he’d had of her before rescuing her from that camp. She was so controlled and untouchable. He tried to insert himself into the image, but drew a blank. That kind of thing wasn’t for him. The senator would want him far away from her next campaign, and fair enough, too.
There was no future for him and Jessica. He had nothing to offer her. Not that he wanted anything long-term, hadn’t considered it since returning to US soil after his final tour. His eyes darted to his pack, where the coin he carried was nestled in an interior pocket. His lucky charm. He scoffed at the thought.
Yeah, he definitely didn’t want to get too attached to anyone. Attachments led to pain, he’d learned that the hard way.
His gaze rose from his pack, only to lock onto Jessica’s. She was wide awake and staring right at him.
“You should sleep,” he said.
She gave him a tired smile. “Can’t settle. Too sore. And the light.” She pointed up to illustrate her point. The sunlight hit her right in the face, keeping her awake even with the t-shirt acting as an eye mask.
“You should try, anyway. Even if you don’t sleep, the rest will do your body good.”
She shrugged and shifted in her hammock, facing him. “Tell me a bedtime story.”
Mike frowned, wondering if he’d read her lips right. Then, he understood. He turned his body towards her. Since he hadn’t built a fire, their hammocks were closer than usual, and he could read her lips easily enough in the burgeoning light.
“What kind of story?” he asked.
“Tell me about the coin.” Her face was soft, and he imagined her voice would imply a gentle suggestion. But he tensed anyway, his mind shying away from the idea.
“You don’t have to,” she said, waving her hands. “Forget I said anything.”
Mike took a deep breath. “No, it’s okay. It’s not really a secret. I just don’t like talking about it.”
Jessica nodded, but she didn’t interrupt.
“I had this buddy. Ramirez. We were on the same team.” He paused. “The coin was his.”
Jessica curled her arm beneath her head and watched him steadily.
“It was his lucky coin. He’d won it in a poker game years ago, and from then on, he took it with him wherever he went. If he had a narrow escape, he would always say it was the coin that saved him. I think it might’ve been a joke at first, but he soon believed it. Wouldn’t go anywhere without it.”
An ache started behind Mike’s eyes. It had been a long time since he’d remembered Ramirez in this much detail.
“I was sent on a mission. A dangerous one. Ramirez gave me the coin, to protect me.” Mike sent Jessica a wry smile.
“What happened?” she asked.
“The base was attacked while I was gone. He…he didn’t make it.”
Tears blurred Jessica’s eyes, and she leaned out of her hammock to grip his hand. “I’m so sorry,” she told him.
Mike nodded and squeezed her hand in return. He was sorry, too. Ramirez was a good man. And even though Mike wasn’t superstitious, he couldn’t help but think if his friend had had his lucky coin that day, he’d still be here now.
“I didn’t find out until much later. That was my last mission. The one that lost me my hearing.” That whole time had been a total clusterfuck of grief and guilt and loss. He still couldn’t think of it without simmering rage and pain.
“That must have been awful.” Jessica’s gaze didn’t hold pity, thank God.
“It was. Believe me. If I’d known, I never would’ve taken the coin. He kept insisting.” He shrugged, but that familiar misery swept over him again.
Jessica tightened her hand in his, anchoring him. “You couldn’t know ahead of time what would happen.”
“I thought it was a silly superstition he had. That I’d get the coin back to him in a few days, and he’d be fine in the meantime.” He hadn’t believed in the power of the coin. He still wasn’t sure he did. But Mike couldn’t help thinking what if…
“It might have been a superstition. There are too many factors in something like that to attribute it to a lucky coin.”
Mike pressed his lips into a line. He’d told himself the same thing hundreds of times, but it never stuck. “Even so, his belief in it might have saved him if he’d had it.”
“And maybe that one change would’ve meant you died, instead.” Her eyes glistened at the words.
“That would have been better,” Mike gritted out. “He had a wife, and a kid.”
“That’s sad,” she said, swallowing heavily. “But it doesn’t mean your life is worth nothing.” Jessica’s expression was fierce, and a reluctant smile curved Mike’s lips.
“I just…I think about it a lot. The chances of fate. It’s not something I ever believed in before going to war.” He rubbed an absent thumb over the back of her hand.
“Fate?” she asked, and he nodded. “I think about that sometimes, too. How different my life would have been if I’d made different choices. The little moments along the way that sent me in one direction or the other. Or was I always meant to do this one thing I’ve chosen? It’s impossible to know for sure.”
“I suppose it comforts people to put it all down to fate,” he mused. “They don’t have to worry they made the wrong choice, because it was fate they make that one.”
“Sounds more like wanting to absolve responsibility for their actions,” she said, twisting her mouth into a grumpy line. Mike grinned, the pain in his chest easing somewhat at the involuntary action. She was such an interesting mix of heart and fire. She had so much empathy for people, but she still wanted to hold them accountable for their actions—him included. It was refreshing and admirable.
“So, you keep the coin for luck?” she asked, turning the conversation back to its original purpose.
It would have been easy to say yes. To ignore the real reason he dragged that coin around like a weight on his back. She’d believe him, and then he could stop talking about it. But something about Jessica made him want to tell her the truth.
“I keep it to remind me of Ramirez, and of the debt I owe him. I came back from my mission alive, and he didn’t.”
“That’s not your fault, Mike.”
Death happened in war. It was unavoidable. But that didn’t stop him from blaming himself for Ramirez. He never should have taken that coin from his friend.
Jessica squeezed his hand, recapturing the attention he’d let drift.
“Think of it this way. From the sounds of things, you and Ramirez were close, right?”
Mike nodded cautiously.
“If it had been your lucky coin, and you believed it had the power to save one person, what would you have done with it? Kept it for yourself? Or given it to Ramirez?”
Mike stared at her, his heart pounding as a lump formed in his throat. “Given it to him.” He didn’t have to think about the answer, it was immediate and right.
“Do you think Ramirez would have done the same for you?”
Mike swallowed. “Yeah.” In fact, Mike knew he would have. That’s what you did for your brother, your closest friend.
Jessica didn’t say any more. She didn’t have to. Her point had been elegantly made. The guilt he’d been carrying with him a
long with the coin eased slightly, allowing him to breathe for the first time in a long while.
He lay there, staring up at the light filtering through the canopy, his fingers entangled with Jessica’s as he contemplated this new way of seeing things. By the time he looked back at Jessica, she was deeply asleep.
And soon Mike was, too.
Chapter 10
It was the noise that reached her, first. A violent crushing and grinding that was unlike anything she’d ever heard before.
She put a hand on Mike’s arm to alert him, but she had no way of describing what she was hearing, so she gave up and shrugged in defeat. The two of them moved forward cautiously until the trees fell away.
Beyond them was a huge open space, marked by tree stumps. Hundreds of them. Giant trucks holding logs at least ten times the size of Jessica hovered near the road, while cranes bigger than she’d ever seen lifted more on top of the stack.
The rainforest, so beautiful and pristine, was utterly decimated.
Loggers.
She and Mike hid behind some ferns, watching the activity on the far side of the clearing. This must have been where the trucks they’d heard had come from.
Jessica’s heart broke. All the untouched wildness of the place had been destroyed for profit by these people. It was this kind of thing that harmed indigenous communities, and put the rest of the world in danger. The trees in the Amazon also helped eat huge amounts of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a win for the entire world. She’d done enough fundraisers for charities protecting the rainforest that she knew how devastating logging could be.
But the corrupt government of Zolego didn’t care about any of that. They only cared about the under-the-table profits they could get from the loggers. Jessica had spent some time protesting and organizing against the loggers in Zolego and the surrounding countries, and she knew how they got away with it. All they needed was some forged paperwork and they could claim the wood they collected from this protected area was actually from the legal logging area somewhere else. Once the wood went into the processing plants, it essentially became invisible, since there was no way to tell where it had come from.
There were legal protections in place to stop this from happening. But in Zolego they were mostly for show, since the government agencies did nothing to uphold their own laws. It made Jessica utterly furious.
“They shouldn’t be here,” she hissed. She turned to Mike, but he wasn’t looking at her. He stared over the cleared area, a frown on his face.
Jessica nudged him with her shoulder and he glanced over. “Hmmm?”
“They shouldn’t be here.”
“I know.”
“We have to do something.”
His frown darkened. “No. No way. What can we do against this whole operation?”
“I don’t know,” she hissed. “You’re always the one with a plan. All I know is we can’t let them get away with this.”
“We have to,” he said firmly. “I’m not putting you at risk to sabotage such a massive operation. Particularly not with no plan, back up, or resources.”
“But, Mike—”
He cut her off with a frustrated shake of his head. “I know you want to help. I get it. This charity stuff, protecting others, it’s second nature to you. But this time, there isn’t anything you can do.”
Jessica set her jaw, mutinous.
“Jessica, please. You can protest all you want once I have you safely back in the US. I don’t care what you do after that. But I promised I’d bring you home safely to your parents, and I won’t let anything stand in my way. Not even you.”
The urge to argue welled up within her, but she tamped it down. He was right. There wasn’t really anything they could do right now, no matter how much she might want to. Two people—even if one was a highly trained operative—could do little against the forty or so people in the clearing. They’d most likely be caught, and if they weren’t killed on sight, they could be turned over to the rebels. The worst she and Mike could do was maybe slow them down for a day, but that would hardly hurt them, not in the long run. Better to keep herself safe now so that she could do more damage later, once she was back stateside. She had enough contacts from her charity work and protests that she was sure she could find someone who had the power to shut this place down once and for all.
She couldn’t risk being recaptured by the rebels. Not for herself, since Mike had already pointed out that they wanted her alive. But she could easily imagine them hurting Mike, even killing him since he held no value to them, and that was something she couldn’t allow.
“Fine,” she said, and Mike nodded in satisfaction.
“We’ll need to go around the clearing.” He sighed. “It’ll add another half day to our trek.”
Jessica stared at him for a long moment, and then around the clearing. He was right. The area was so large that it would take them most of the day to circle around it.
“We won’t ever get out of here,” she lamented on a sigh. “Like we’re on a treadmill, fixed in place.”
Mike grinned. “We’ll get out. It’s slow progress, but I promise we’ll get there.”
She gave him a smile to show she appreciated his effort, but inside her heart sank. She wanted to be home, and showered, and eating something that wasn’t parrot or fruit.
“Is there some way we can make up the time?” she asked. She didn’t want to be out here any longer than necessary.
Would her parents be worried about her? Surely Mike’s colleague, Charlie, had told everyone what had happened at the airport. But it had now been nearly a week since anyone had heard from her or Mike. She hoped Charlie would wait for them. Mike seemed confident he would, so she had to trust that.
And if not, then she’d rely on Mike to get her home safe, anyway. He had a backup plan and contingency for everything. He hadn’t been frustrated, or ruffled, by anything the rebels or this rainforest had thrown their way. It really was incredible.
“I don’t think we can—” He paused, cutting himself off. His gaze shifted to the trucks and a speculative look crossed his face.
She nudged him. “What is it?”
“Well, the road we crossed headed the wrong way, back closer to the city, right?”
“Right,” she agreed.
“But look at that truck.” He pointed to one easing out of the clearing now. It took her a full minute to understand what Mike had. The truck turned left, away from them. It would head in the opposite direction to the one they’d come from.
Jessica’s eyes went wide. “It’s going the right way,” she said, excitement fusing her voice. “Why are they heading towards the border?”
Mike shrugged. “They might have multiple processing plants. Or, if we’re lucky, they’re sneaking wood into another country. Then, they won’t have to claim it on their forms and there’ll be no record of it.”
“So it’s possible we can take the truck all the way to Colombia? That would save us days!”
Mike gripped her wrist. “Don’t get too excited. It’s a risk, because we don’t know exactly where the road goes. It could loop back around. We also need to figure out how to get on the truck undetected.”
“I don’t care. Finally, something is going right. I fully intend to be excited about it.”
He grinned and chuckled. “Fine. But don’t blame me if it turns out to be a disappointment.”
“I won’t.”
They skirted the edge of the clearing. It took hours to reach where the action was, since once they got close they had to fight through the undergrowth without the use of the kukri blade. They didn’t want to draw attention to themselves by sight or sound.
The sun began its descent beneath the horizon, sending a golden glow across the clearing. Darkness loomed, and that would be the perfect time to sneak aboard one of the vehicles.
The huge trucks loomed above them, stacked high with tree trunks, blocking the view of the action. They were secured using heavy chains so the
y wouldn’t slip during transport. Jessica suspected they were filled higher than was safe, and wondered if illegal loggers followed any safety guidelines. Since the trucks had to travel long distances from the center of the Amazon to the processing plants, they would stack as much wood in the back as would fit to cut down on trips.
She studied the truck nearest to them. She couldn’t immediately see a place to hide. Only the cab of the truck, where the driver would be, and the flatbed at the back where they’d put the tree trunks. There wasn’t even a back seat to the truck’s cab that they could sneak into. Clearly, the loggers used whatever space they could for the valuable wood.
She turned to Mike. “What’s your plan?”
He twisted his face, showing he was thinking, and returned his gaze to the trucks. “We can’t hide on top of the wood, we’ll be seen. Can’t hide underneath it, because we’ll be squashed.”
“So you don’t think your plan will work?” Her heart sank. She wanted home more fiercely than she’d wanted anything.
“I’m not giving up yet.”
“We could steal one?” she suggested, doubtfully. He’d shoot the idea down, but she had to try.
He shook his head. “Too risky. They’d catch up in no time. No way they wouldn’t notice.”
“Do they work through the night? Maybe we could wait for it to go dark and do it then?”
He shrugged. “Since they were on the road last night, they must have a twenty-four-hour operation. Probably cutting back the trees and loading them during the day, driving them to the plant and back at night. Or working in shifts, some day drivers, some night drivers.”
“That makes sense.” She sighed, exhaustion and misery lapping at her edges. “Shit.”
He sent her a smile. “Don’t give up yet.”
“What more can we do? I can’t see any place to hide on these trucks.”
They circled around farther, still keeping the trucks in sight on their right but staying behind the tree line. Through a gap between two trucks, a group of men talked with bored expressions. All wore hard hats. One held a clipboard. Management? Behind them, a man waved his arms vigorously at a crane operator lifting one of the tree trunks. He stopped immediately when he caught sight of the man on the ground. Business as usual.
On the Move: Soldiering On Security #6 Page 12