by C. L. Jones
The team patted Cowboy on the back and complimented him about being a kick ass guy. After a few minutes more the guys mentally and physically shifted back into gear and were ready to go. Before restarting the climb everyone asked Cowboy again if he was sure he could make it and with that old country boy attitude he reassured them he was okay, “It might be good to stretch my muscles out a bit.”
The other team members gathered their things as Cowboy looked at Pops and said, “Well that was easier than getting tossed off a horse or a hard landing in an old copter. It was a little bit of a fall but not as hard as some I’ve taken before.” Pops didn’t say a word. He and Cowboy smiled at each other, picked up their weapons and joined the rest of the group.
For years Pops had been a man who worked alone, never trusted anyone and never made any friends. The closest he came to being friendly with anyone was maybe a spotter or two that had worked on a mission with him or maybe an old handler. But even in those cases Pops had always maintained a degree of detachment between himself and what he believed were no more than temporary allies.
As they approached the wall again Indy stopped the team and did a quick recap, “Okay gentlemen, we have had the punji pit, the tree bridge, and now this treacherous rock wall where we’ve nearly had a fatal accident. I don’t know what to expect next but I’m sure it will be better than anything we’ve seen yet.” Many of the team looked at Indy with barely masked disrespect. In particular Pops noticed the daggers in Roadside’s eyes as he passed Indy and thought Indy was lucky that the eye daggers couldn’t kill you on the spot.
Cowboy walked up to the wall then stopped, glanced back at the team and then over at Pops, “Well Pops old boy, give us some midwestern farm boy words of encouragement.”
Pops was standing there looking up at Mother Nature’s high-rise; an intimidating shear wall of what he knew was going to be nothing less than hell.
When Cowboy made that remark, Pops looked at him, then back up the face of the wall and doubled up his fist in front of his chest in a victory gesture or one of determination. He looked at the rest of the team and said, “Never give in, never give up.”
Cowboy flashed a big smile that went from ear to ear and repeated the statement, “Never give in and never give up. That fits. Never give in, never give up, that’s what we have lived by and that’s what we will live by.” As he followed Surfer up the wall, Cowboy started to repeat it with each step, “Never give in, never give up.” Each man took the first step up the wall repeating the same words if not aloud then muttering it under his breath. They continued the chant as they took successive steps and found new hand holds.
The wall wasn’t as tall or as difficult because of Surfer’s knowledge of rock climbing. When Cowboy reached the top he clued Surfer in about the slogan. They greeted each man as they reached the top with their new phrase, “Never give in, never give up.”
CHAPTER EIGHT:
THE TRIPLETS
Pops reached the top and saw the others standing about twenty-five yards away with their backs to him. He was getting to his feet as he overheard Flame say, “Shit, oh shit, this is going to be the killer. Screw it, let’s turn back now.”
Pops walked to where the team was standing and got his first look at the next challenge. He was almost knocked off his feet. The next obstacle facing them was the back side of the rocky face they had just scaled. To make it even tougher, deep below at the bottom of the ravine was a raging river with white water rapids crashing against large ragged boulders that protruded out of the water. The boulders looked like jagged uneven saw blades. The raging water was so swift that over the years it had eroded the shoreline up to the solid rock base of the wall they needed to descend. It was apparent from their vantage point high above that the rock wall was worn down as slick as glass by the ceaseless violent flow of the water. It would be extremely difficult to find the handholds necessary to negotiate the cliff face down to the water. If that wasn’t bad enough there was a second rock face across the ravine on the other side of the river that looked to be a hundred feet higher than the wall they were on. Pops stood there like the others, looking at the very difficult climb that was staring them in the face as the noise of the crashing white water echoed off the rock wall. The water’s noise seemed to be saying, “Go ahead try me. I’ll win, and I’ll kill anyone who takes me on. Go ahead try me.”
The red team guys were generally a bunch of wisecracking smart-asses but nobody was making smart-ass remarks now. Indy walked away from the ravine’s edge and stood with his back to the edge and the raging water below. He started to pace back and forth not looking at the guys and said over the sound of the crashing water, “Please say yes, is there anyone here who knows white water?” Again the group’s irritation with Indy came to the surface. Indy seemed to be an ever growing pain in the ass so the team did not respond to the question.
Pops turned facing the team and said, “Okay here’s how I see it. There is no going back now. I don’t think the organization’s plan is to have the losers just walk away from this. Remember the kind of business we’re in. This training and test crap is about manpower cutbacks. They have too many people and the only way to pare down the group and find the best is to pit us against each other. Why do you think they had twenty-one men come out here when they only need about five out of this bunch?” He glanced around looking into the eyes of each team member and then said to them, “Remember they said some of us would come back as instructors for the new groups? They know some of us are getting up there in age and they need to make room for the young guys.”
Pops repeated again, “Okay here’s how I see it.” He pointed towards the edge and the sound of the raging white water and said in a tone he hoped would challenge them and push them to go forward, “We have to keep going and do what we have to do and never second-guess ourselves. When will any of us ever get a chance at one hundred thousand dollars again?”
After a few seconds, the team collectively looked back at the river. Some fully turned and glanced in the direction of the ravine and raging water, others walked to the edge and looked down while there were one or two who remained standing with their backs turned away from the edge but rotated their heads to watch the guys looking down at the hell they were going to have to face. Surfer was the only one to remark right then, “I could only see one small landing place down there. It ain’t much but I think it will do.”
Pops studied the guys’ faces as well as the downward climb. He then said, “Well guys do we go into the valley of death or what, turn and find another way back to the camp?” For whatever reason, the words seemed to encourage them to action. They were the words that were needed at just the right moment.
Surfer stepped to the edge and said, “Just do the same thing going down as we did on the way up except someone will have to stay here and watch the rope.” He pointed to a tree near the edge, “We’ll tie the rope to that tree. Then we’ll tie the rope around each man and one by one we will slowly help him down the wall. He can use any foot and hand holds he finds to help himself along.” Then after another quick look over the edge he said, “I’ll go down first to check it out then I’ll come back up and watch the rope. When the last man is down then I’ll untie the rope and climb down.”
Looking concerned Indy asked, “Will you be okay without a rope?” Tossing back a look like this was just child’s play to him, Surfer answered, “To a real rock climber this is first grade stuff.”
Indy turned to the team and said, “Let’s do it.”
Surfer sat on the ground and swung his legs over the edge. He looked down, then looking back at the rest of the team he smiled and said, “Maybe we should play it safe and tie the rope off now to give me a safety net.”
Cowboy and Flame went to the tree, Cowboy on one side and Flame on the other. The tree was clearly old and very large. Cowboy tossed the rope around the tree to Flame who caught it and walked it back around to where Cowboy was standing. This was repeated again and again and then Cowboy tied off
the rope with a couple good knots. They walked back to where Surfer was waiting. Cowboy bent down and jokingly acted like he’d just brought the car around, saying, “Sir, your key.” He handed the rope to Surfer.
Surfer stood up and backed away from the edge as he took the rope. It seemed he did not pick up on Cowboy’s light hearted humor and only gave polite thanks. Surfer tied the rope around his waist and then wrapped it again around his back and down between the cheeks of his butt. He pulled it up through his crotch and tied it to the waist rope in front. Without a word to anyone he took a good grip on the rope and turned and started to lower himself down the face of the cliff. The whole team watched him from the cliff face above, looking over the edge at him. Surfer hadn’t descended far when he looked up and announced, “Hey boys, this is even easier than the other one.” He looked back down then back up, “Remember how long the rope has to be. It will be like a piece of thread so don’t be doing any silly crap, stick to the business at hand.”
Surfer reached a ledge near the bottom about five feet above the raging water. Without untying the rope he slipped out of it and motioned for the team to pull it up for the next guy. Roadside, Pops, Cowboy, Indy and Rocky one by one took their turns. Just before they each reached the ledge Surfer would tell them, “Real careful, this puppy is wet and slicker then crap. When some of the bigger waves hit the wall below us it makes you think you are moving. You’re not really moving so just watch your footing.”
The only problem Pops had was the extra ammo he had stashed in the cargo pockets of his pants. The ammo would sometimes shift and get in the way of his legs movements but Pops did his best to not let on. Surfer was right. After the first man had descended, the wall seemed to get easier for each of them.
As Pops waited for the others to complete their climb down he thought that so far the competition had been too easy. He knew the organization wouldn’t be able to eliminate the extra agents by setting up a walk in the park for them. If Pops was right then at some point the other shoe would still need to drop.
After Surfer climbed back to the top of the cliff he retrieved the rope from around the tree and made his solo descent to the ledge. The entire team was now huddled on the wet ledge, standing quietly and staring at the river just a couple of yards below their feet. The river was a bubbling, foaming, angry looking monster lapping away right below where they were standing. It was nothing less than hungry killer water waiting to be fed. Each man watched and waited with the same crazy thought running through their mind: How deep was it?
Indy looked at Pops and loudly yelled out a few well-chosen words, “Well now what the hell do we do Einstein.” Indy turned away. Pops wasn’t afraid of the water and he sure as hell wasn’t afraid of swimming. In fact, he was a good swimmer. In the past he use to swim to help keep in shape but this was not the pool at the local health club.
Flame asked, “Guys, I can’t swim so is this a good idea or is it out of the question to tie a bunch of logs together and make a raft?” Everyone agreed more or less since it wasn’t as if they had many choices.
Indy popped in, “Okay where do you think we are going to get the logs for this super raft?”
The team didn’t have tree cutting tools so they scouted upstream and downstream to find trees that had fallen and were wedged in the rocks near shore or were within reach as they floated past in the river. Cowboy used the rope he’d retrieved from above and fashioned his lariat once more. He was successful in lassoing the trees nearby that they needed. After a couple of very difficult hours of working on a very limited area of the ledge, they had tied together enough logs to create a makeshift raft. It looked more like the skeleton of what could have once been the remains of a wobbly and unsuccessful raft. Everyone stood around looking at this death trap, when Rocky reached out and kicked it with his foot and said, “Well hell, let’s give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?”
The team slid it to the edge of the ledge and dropped it into the water. The water wanted to snatch it from them before anyone had a chance to get aboard. Cowboy and Rocky managed to hold on to it while the rest of the team got on and found places in between the logs for handholds. Four of the men had slender trees they had chosen for poles that they wedged into the river rocks to hold the raft in place. The guys kept the raft as close to the ledge as they could which was just long enough for Rocky and Cowboy to get on.
The team had no more than dislodged the poles from the rocks when the river took them for the run of a lifetime. Pops could tell that the river was deeper in the center as the current moved them to the middle of the flow. The raft was tossed and turned and spun around but the team held on. Some of the team tried to stand but found that standing wasn’t a good idea. The best the men could do to ride this out was to kneel or sit as they fought with the water in their own battle for survival on the raft. There was no bow or stern on this unprofessional wooden mess pile so who ever was in the front of the raft as it turned in circles was temporarily in charge.
The poles were swinging and bouncing off each other as the raft continued to turn. The men’s heads, shoulders, backs, butts and arms were banging and bumping into each other and on the bottom of the raft. It was harder and harder for the men to stay on the raft and to top it off, they were traveling so fast that the mist would sting them when it hit their faces and eyes. The raft seemed to pause at one point and Pops got a second to look around and check to make sure they hadn’t lost anyone. All of the sudden there were two large muffled booming explosions. The raft was hit by a wave so hard on one side that it was almost lifted completely out of the water and turned over. Luckily the men managed to claw and hold on.
Pops saw flat calmer water coming up and knew the team could use a break. As they floated into the more tranquil clear water Indy said, “Relax but only for a minute boys, I don’t think this is over just yet.”
As the words were leaving Indy’s mouth, Pops looked further down river and pointed, “Break time is over, dig in and hold on.” Everyone looked downstream and all they could see was mad-dog crazy white water waiting for them. The section of roaring water coming up made the one they’d just come through look as flat as the kitchen table. Pops and the team watched as they grew closer and closer to the white water, looking at what might be their very own fate. There was no backing down or getting off now.
Someone on the raft yelled, “Time to rock and roll.”
Cowboy yelled out, “Grab a hand full of rope and hold on and if she flips try to get another hand full of rope and just keep holding on.”
As Pops put a death grip on some of the ropes of the raft he thought to himself that some people go on vacation and pay a lot of money for this. The raft entered the unwelcoming mouth of the turbulence taking a hard nose down, back end up orientation. It must have been damn near standing straight up for what seemed like a few minutes before the nose and rear of the raft leveled out. The guys were momentarily hanging on by a hand full of rope. If they’d slipped free or let loose that would have most likely been it for them.
Pops took a moment to glance over at Flame who it seemed was being more violently tossed around on the raft than the rest of the team. It was clear Flame was scared more than the others, looking pale with his head bobbing up and down. Pops was worried that Flame would be sick which would cause him to weaken his grip or be less focused on staying on the makeshift raft. No matter what anyone says when you are in a situation like that, you have a certain amount of fear pumping through your body which keeps you focused. If you lose concentration for one moment it could mean the difference between life and death.
The raft was twisting around and around, spinning like a kid’s toy top. With each rotation Pops thought the team was looking more and more like a bunch of rag dolls being flung around in a washing machine. Pops could feel his body beginning to give in to the onslaught. He tried to reach with a free hand to grab the ropes of the raft and give a break to the hand he’d been using. The effort was costing him more strengt
h as he tried over and over to get his free hand under the rope but the jerking of the raft made it nearly impossible.
The raft stopped for a second and then suddenly started spinning in circles in the opposite direction. The spinning continued faster and faster and the men’s bodies were slamming into each other, getting tangled up like wet clothing in the washing machine. There was a big bone-crushing boom as the raft slammed down as if it had been dropped off the top of some high-rise. It was like they had just experienced a nuclear explosion. Flame went sailing through the air and hit the water in the middle of the worst part of the turbulence. He’d been ejected so violently that his body was vertical but he was upside down so his head hit the water first. Someone yelled his name but that was it, he was gone. Everyone continued to hold tightly to the ropes but at the same time they scanned the river watching for some sign of Flame. No one ever saw him resurface and the team was tired beyond description. They’d all known from their training and experience that you never leave a teammate behind and you hate being helpless when it looks like you might have to.
Shortly after Flame was ejected the raft entered a wider spot in the river and the violence of the water subsided. The team had lost the poles during the ride so they used their hands as paddles. Except for Indy, each of them continued to scan the water looking for any sign of Flame. They lay on the dilapidated raft depleted of most of their strength and paddled. It was only because of the team’s mutual effort that they made it to shore.
Once on dry ground Cowboy, Indy, Rocky, Roadside, Surfer and Pops all stood on the bank searching the water and shoreline for any sign of Flame. Cowboy and Pops walked downriver a ways to see if Flame had washed ashore. The rest of the team lay at the river’s edge and tried to recover from their death ride. Pops and Cowboy were walking along the beach when Cowboy turned to him and said, “He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I won’t cry too much if he is gone. He should have never been here, not at a place like this. You and I both know you have to develop a hard body, mind and soul if you’re going to dance with the devil. In my opinion neither Flame nor Tracker should have been brought here.”