THE EXTRACTOR

by J. T. Brannan

  They became louder still, and Lee heard the foliage breaking on the ground beneath him, knew that they were coming into a position where they could see the lines, if they looked closely enough. From the voices and the sounds of their movement, Lee calculated that there might be five or six of them down there.

  “This is a waste of time, man,” one of them said, in Spanish.

  “You’re telling me,” another said. “There must be a million trees in this freakin’ area.”

  “Yeah,” another said, so close to Lee’s tree now, “but we found this, didn’t we? If his pack’s here, then he’s here. Somewhere.”

  My pack, Lee thought. They’ve got my pack.

  He wondered what they would make of it, what conclusions they would draw. There were no conventional weapons inside, but the sat-phone and mil-spec radio would – along with the parachute insertion – immediately make them think it was some sort of special ops insertion. It might seem strange that there was only one person, but they might assume they’d missed others, or there would be more to follow.

  “Yeah, but where?” one of the men said.

  “He could be watching us right now, man,” said the first voice. “So get those rifles ready, okay?”

  Lee breathed out, hoping they’d carry on past him; stuck thirty feet up a tree, he was a sitting duck.

  “Hey!” one of the men said, and Lee was already reacting to the tone of his voice, hand going to his cargo pocket to pull out some of the cord he had cut away and not used for the climbing loop, his heart racing, “what is that?”

  “What?”

  “There, up there in the tree, around the trunk!”

  Lee’s hands were working furiously, tying the spare line off onto the loop, where it lay tight against the trunk. He was still thirty feet up, and there was only about twenty feet of line, but it would have to be enough; before the men had a chance to get around the tree, Lee had slipped free of the climbing loop and – holding the line near the end – he jumped straight down.

  “Let’s go!” he heard the shouts beneath him, along with the sounds of feet running, and guns cocking.

  He was ten feet down when the first man raced around the corner, an old M16 in his hands. Lee let go of the line with one hand, withdrew his radio and hurled it down at the man, hitting him in his upturned face; and then the line pulled taut at the end of its length, the strain sending a sudden, shocking pain through Lee’s shoulder, but he ignored it as he dropped the last few feet to the forest. Even though the line was ten feet short, because he’d held it at the end, the additional length of his body and outstretched arm meant that the unsecured drop wasn’t too bad, and he landed lightly, grabbing the man’s M16 and twisting it out of his hands, before smashing it into the guy’s head just as two of his friends raced around the tree.

  Lee jabbed the barrel of the gun into the throat of the first man, who dropped to his knees, clutching at his neck, struggling to breathe; and then Lee jumped up, standing on the fallen man’s shoulder and planting a solid knee into the chin of the man who had been following close behind, sending him flying backward into the foliage.

  The others couldn’t be seen, and Lee realized they must have circled around the other side, to attack him from the rear; and without waiting for proof, he leaped to the side, just moments before the air came alive with the violent sounds of automatic weapons fire, Lee’s back sprayed with chips of flying bark.

  The tree was between them now, and it occurred to Lee that this was the old children’s game, where one kid chased the other around a tree, feinting one way and then the other; only this time, there were at least two people to play against, and they had assault rifles, which made it a hell of a lot less fun.

  Lee turned left, and withdrew as he spotted a man with a rifle, who fired after him; and like a kid, he feinted running back the other way, before going left again. The guy wasn’t expecting him to be back this way, and ran straight into a high front kick, the heavy rubber sole of Lee’s boot slamming him in the face and rocking his head back, knocking him out cleanly.

  And now it was even more like the kids’ game, one-on-one. Which way to go?

  He waited and listened; and soon he could hear the sounds of ragged, scared breathing – definitely from just one person – along with the crack of twigs, around to his right.

  Silently, his own breathing to a minimum, he followed the tree back around to the left, circling the trunk quickly but quietly, stepping over the bodies of the first two men he’d encountered and throwing a small rock back behind him to the right, to give the impression he was still there, or was moving in the other direction, toward the fifth man.

  A few seconds later and he’d completed his circle around the trunk, could now see the back of the last man. “Estevez!” he shouted nervously. “You there, man?”

  Three feet to go, and the man’s head turned, eyes going wide as he saw Lee coming up behind him, moving the assault rifle around with him moments later.

  Lee raced forward and kicked the barrel up, bullets bursting upward into the canopy above, the sound of gunfire followed by the loud squeal of monkeys and birds.

  Lee reversed the direction of his leg and sent his boot crashing down onto the top of the man’s foot, cracking the bones as he fired an elbow into the guy’s stunned face; and with the foot pinned, he fell straight back, pole-axed.

  Lee wasted no time, but quickly gathered up the weapons and checked the immediate area, verifying that there had just been five of them. He went to the spot where they’d emerged, checking the tracks through the undergrowth made by their boots, and was satisfied, for now at least. But he knew there could be other teams in the area, who would have heard the gunshots and would even now be on their way here. The density of the rainforest might have blocked the sound, but he had to assume the worst, and work fast.

  He took some of the vines that covered the area and tied the unconscious men up, so they couldn’t pursue him; and then he went back to the assault rifles and removed their firing pins, rendering them inert.

  He searched the men, but found nothing except for some cash and cigarettes; but then he discovered a radio on one of them, turned on. It gave him hope that perhaps other teams weren’t in the area – for if they were, they would almost certainly have radioed through to check what was going on. He pocketed the radio, picked up his own backpack, and retreated to cover – further back into the rainforest, within a large clump of undergrowth that he first checked for snakes – in order to verify that everything was still in one piece.

  It soon became clear that the drop had caused a lot of damage. The pack itself was torn in several places, but it was only when he checked the equipment inside that he realized how hard the impact must have been. The electronic equipment – the sat-phone, the radio, even the hardened laptop and GPS unit – were out of action, some of their inner parts spilling out. He tried them all, but not a spark of life remained. The first aid kit wasn’t too bad, and he quickly dressed his wounds, cleaning and covering them as fast as he could.

  The NVGs were gone too, and the water had leaked everywhere, but the rations and water purification tablets were okay, as were some of his more old-school weapons, which he pulled out and started to distribute about his person. It was, after all, looking more and more likely that he would need them.

  It would have been good to get the parachute down, but going back up the tree to retrieve it was going to be more trouble than it was worth, and he decided to leave it.

  He then took the broken equipment, dug out a hole in the moist earth within the undergrowth he hid in, buried it, and covered it. The he swung the pack – much lighter now – onto his back, and headed back toward the tracks the men had made through the forest.

  He knew he was going to have to follow those tracks, back wherever the men had come from.

  It was a no-brainer, really; Lee had parachuted into roughly the same area in which the university team had last been seen, and there was obvious drug activ
ity in that very area. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together; if the team from Chicago had been here, they would definitely have been picked up by these guys. If Lee could find where they operated from, then he might even find the team – or at least, someone who might know where they were, or what had happened to them.

  He used his own radio to try and get in touch with Phoenix and Marcus, but they were too far away now, and he couldn’t get anything. He used his cellphone too, but – unsurprisingly – there was no reception here in the rainforest.

  He put the radio and phone away, moved to the point where they had entered this particular area, breathed deeply of the warm, fetid air, and started to follow the tracks, wondering what he would find at the end of it.

  Chapter Three

  Tracking was a laborious process, and required almost supernatural levels of patience and observation. It might be a broken twig here, a small patch of flattened grass there; sometimes the only clue would be a smell that shouldn’t have been there.

  It was, he knew, why the most successful special ops guys in Vietnam had started to eat the same foods as the Vietnamese; before that, the enemy could literally smell the US troops coming.

  It also reminded him of a rumor that jaguars had a particular liking for Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men, due to its use of civetone, a chemical extract that came from the scent glands of the civet, which was an animal the jaguar liked to hunt and eat.

  In this case, however, the drugs boys had made things a little easier for him – they’d hacked their way through the undergrowth with machetes, and trampled the rainforest underfoot. The place was so alive that it was already starting to heal, to close down the passage left by the men, but compared to other trails he’d followed, this one was easy. After all, the men weren’t trained professionals, or local tribesmen, and had made no effort to hide their route; and even if they’d wanted to, they’d probably lacked the ability, for moving through such terrain was a task as arduous and difficult as tracking, requiring the same qualities of patience and observation.

  It still took considerable time to track the route to its source though, as he still had to move cautiously in case there were other teams about; and it always paid to look out for the natural threats of the rainforest, which were many and varied. During the time he followed the trail, he saw three different kinds of snake – thankfully from a safe distance – and had a much closer encounter with a six-inch long wandering spider, which held the distinction of being the world’s most venomous. It was about to walk over Lee’s boot when he spotted it, and he’d moved swiftly out of the way and let the little guy carry on. But in a place like the Amazon, you had to be constantly aware of everything around you, and it was a heavy strain on the system.

  He had also had to respond to two calls on the radio he’d taken from the men, asking for updates on their progress. They had clearly not heard the gunfire, and also seemed to buy Lee’s Spanish replies – although he helped himself by fiddling with the transmit button, causing the line to appear worse than it was.

  The last call had been to advise the party to return to base, because night was drawing in, and Lee could see this was true; and in fact, by the time he had reached the place they’d set off from, night had fallen and it was completely dark.

  This provided Lee with opportunities, but also presented problems. It meant he coud break into the compound – which on first appearance seemed to be a cocaine laboratory – and search for the university team; but it also meant that he’d lost his window of opportunity to set up his own camp for the night. It would be difficult to do it now, in the dark, especially as he knew he would be safer off the ground, up in the trees.

  But, he supposed, he would have to just worry about that later; now it was time to see what he’d stumbled across.

  An hour later, and he’d got a good impression of what he’d found. The compound covered an area of about twenty yards by twenty, and Lee noticed that they’d not cut down any trees to make space, obviously needing the canopy cover to protect them from aerial surveillance. They’d built around the tree trunks, although they’d cut down all of the low-lying vegetation. There was a bunk house, a kitchen and open-air dining area, and the lab itself. It was quite a big operation for such a location, and Lee was impressed that they’d managed to build anything at all. He supposed they would have had to drop supplies by helicopter, so remote was it from civilization.

  There were twelve men in the camp that he’d identified, four on sentry duty with M16s, the others sleeping in the bunkhouse smoking, drinking and listening to music in a central rec area. They kept the light levels low, and Lee knew that it was because they were worried that it would penetrate through the canopy above, and make them visible at nighttime, and he was impressed with their discipline. With no light from the stars or moon to guide him, it was a struggle to see the detail of the camp, and he actually found himself wishing that the NVGs hadn’t been broken in the drop.

  Such light levels meant that he could move around the camp unobserved however, and he made the most of the opportunity, checking it over inch by inch.

  Search as he might, however, he could see that there was nobody in the bunkhouse, and no sign of the team from Chicago anywhere.

  He retreated back outside the camp and wondered what he should do. Earlier on, when he’d first seen the place, he’d backtracked into the forest to radio the base, to say that his team wouldn’t be back for another couple of hours, as they were finding it difficult to follow the track in the dark. The man he’d spoken to was concerned, asked if they had torches, and told them to be careful, and Lee didn’t blame him; if the forest was dangerous during the day, then it was deadly at night. They certainly weren’t going to send any men out to find them until morning. It gave him some leeway, but he wondered if the boys here would get suspicious if the recon team didn’t come back. Would they eventually figure out what had happened, and break out all the weapons, for fear of a major attack on their camp?

  He would rather wait until most of the men were asleep, but if he waited too long, they might get spooked and not go to sleep anyway; and then he would have twelve armed men to deal with, instead of just four. As it was, there were just the sentries with guns, and eight men relaxed and chilled out, in one area.

  Yes, Lee decided, he would act now.

  The team weren’t there, and he could just move on, bypass the drugs lab and see if he could track the team some other way.

  And yet someone there might know something, and Lee knew he had to question them if he could.

  He also frowned strongly on the use of drugs, and – irrespective of his mission here in the Amazon – he wanted very badly to shut down the little operation they had going on here.

  And – almost more importantly – it was nighttime, he had no camp of his own, and the beds in the bunkhouse looked very comfortable.

  Chapter Four

  Lee took the sentries out with the same blowpipe he’d used back in Utah. After all, he figured, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? It was a motto he believed in, sticking with the tried and tested methods, and he’d been pleased when the pipe and darts had survived the crash landing.

  It had seemed the perfect weapon to use in the rainforest at any rate, stalking up to targets through the undergrowth, like so many hundreds – perhaps even thousands – of generations of hunters before him, using the forest as cover before taking out the target with a single shot from the pipe. It connected Lee to his spiritual ancestors, humanity’s near-lost hunter-gatherer past, and he felt as one with his surroundings as he moved around the camp, picking off the sentries, one by one.

  But the sentries were the easy part, Lee knew, although he’d received a gift when one of the eight remaining men had wandered just outside the camp to urinate. Lee had pounced on the opportunity, dropping him with another poisoned dart, leaving seven in the central courtyard of the small compound to deal with.

  He’d planned on creeping up on the men, keepi
ng low as he stalked through the camp, but the gift of this guy leaving the compound was too good to pass up, and he quickly put on the man’s shirt and cap, and picked up the rifle he’d carried out there with him – obviously SOP when leaving the camp.

  Leaving his backpack next to the unconscious body, Lee stood and walked back into the compound as if he belonged there, mimicking the guy’s half-drunk stumble, the cap pulled low over his face as he approached the others.

  They sat under a tarpaulin, drinking what smelled like moonshine whisky from plastic bottles. A couple sat on upturned ammo crates, four more reclined in sun loungers, while the remaining guy was stood up, fiddling with the stereo, cursing the music that was playing.

  They all had weapons nearby, Lee could see in the dim light of the single, low-wattage bulb that hung from a post that supported the canvas roof, but they weren’t paying any attention to them. It looked like some of them had knives in sheaths on their belts, and the one standing up seemed to have a revolver stuck in the back of his pants, which meant that Lee had to assume everyone else had one too.

  He wanted to get as close as he could to the group before it all kicked off, as he knew that the closer he was, the better chance he would have; if they spotted him from too far away, then they might have a chance to grab a gun and fire at him, which might make the day end even worse than it had begun.

  But his confidence grew with each and every step he took, as he passed the lab, and came within a few feet of the small group of drug-runners.

  One of the guys on the loungers, his eyes bleary, looked up at him. “Hey Rafi,” he slurred, “what took you so long, eh? You know not to have a dump after dark, right? You don’ want a jaguar biting you in the ass, man.”

  Everyone laughed, and turned toward him, and Lee knew the moment was upon him, that they would soon realize he wasn’t Rafi at all; and so he moved, before they could.