32

Suz

 

 

The Forest, Refugio Tatí Yupí, Paraguay

 

 

The boys were lying with their heads in her lap as the heat filtered through the loose weave of Jack’s camouflage bush rag. They were well hidden from sight. After Jack left to help his unit, Suz had made the boys sit with their backs to the rock. She had stripped naked, her clothes right down to her bra and panties, were caked and heavy with mud. These clothes would never be wearable again. She washed herself clean in the cool spring water, then pulled out a different set of BDUs. Jack had packed her an array. This time she chose the digital print like Jack had on.

As they had hiked back to the camp Suz asked him why he wasn’t dressed in black, like she’d seen on TV. Jack had explained that black was all about fear – the shock and awe that would shut down a fight. They used black when they wanted to capture someone and take them into custody. People knew that when a unit, dressed in black with balaclavas hiding their identities, burst through their door, they had two choices – lie on the ground face down or die.

That had not been their purpose when they went to the camp. Their purpose was to sneak in and pull out Suz and the boys, then take care of the cell. Suz hadn’t pushed him on what “take of” meant. Though it looked like the boys were sleeping on Jacks shoulders as he carried them along, she couldn’t be sure. She needed to keep the conversation mostly G rated.

“When you’re out in nature, the trees and leaves don’t lose their color at night.” Jack explained. “There’s just no light to see them with. So it’s not necessary to dress in black. As a matter of fact, if a light shined on you, and you were in black against green, you’d stick out like a sore thumb. On covert missions the idea is to confuse the eye so you could stay operational.”

Staying operational being a euphemism for not dead. He said their BDUs were chemically treated to help protect them from thermal-imaging and the digital pattern helped to keep them hidden from night vision. High-tech. He had grinned. “Yours too. You only have the newest highest tech equipment.”

“Awesome,” she had replied. It was a filler word – something to stick in the hole of sudden silence. She was thinking through their situation. “I messed up,” she said after a while.

“How’s that?”

“If we were in the tent, you would have pulled us out. Put us on an ATV and powered us out of here while your friends did what was necessary.”

He was silent.

“Instead, I walked the kids into the forest and made this situation that much worse.”

“You had no idea we were coming. You did exactly what I would have done. I’m very proud of you.”

He was very proud of her. That thought didn’t bring a smile to her lips. Her thoughts were whirring since this whole misadventure started way back when he was recovering in the hospital. The rock solid ground she thought she stood on had a sudden fissure and shook with the aftershocks that kept her off balance. She wondered, as she stood beside the spring, pulling on her fresh panties, when her foothold would settle enough that she could draw some conclusions and understand her new normal. When she might feel confident about how she felt about the world around her. And Jack.

She pulled the straps of the bra onto her arms. Jack had packed these too. Funny how she had aggressively survivalist outerwear but the underwear he chose was all lace with silky ribbons. She hooked the strap in place behind her back and pulled on the long sleeve digital print shirt, though it was hot as hades that day.

Dressed and ready for what came next, she had the boys eat and drink, and had sung to them trying to cajole them into a nap during the greatest heat. Now that they had drifted off, she fanned them as they slept, their cheeks bright pink. She was falling asleep, too.

Suddenly, rifle fire erupted from the camp. A piece of metal hit the rock beside her and ricocheted away. She flung herself over the boys as another followed.

Suz pulled the cloth from over their heads and pushed the boys onto the ground. She flipped over to her stomach. “Crawl,” she whisper-commanded in her most authoritative teacher’s voice. The boys crawled along beside her. She got them to the lip of land that had fallen away with Jack’s and her weight. Down would be under the trajectory of the bullets, she reasoned. She had to get them down. She reached each of them over the lip and had them balanced on a tree limb that acted like a ledge. “Stay there.”

Suz scooted back to their camp, crab crawling on her belly the way she’d seen it done in the movies. She wasn’t nearly coordinated enough to make her body move that way. But the hell she was going to pick her stomach up off the ground. She grabbed their equipment, shoved it into the zombie bag. If she had to survive with the boys in the forest, she couldn’t do it without their supplies.

The gun fire stopped. Jack? What’s happening? Crouching behind one of the rocks, Suz picked up Jack’s Glock from where she had tossed it on the ground. She wondered where she should put it so it was safe.

A man chuckled. “There you are.” His English was thickly accented.

Her eyes jumped up from the rock that came just below her shoulder, and focused on a man dressed in black, not ten feet in front of her. Black was for fear. Black meant hostages. She wouldn’t allow him to take her and the boys as hostages.

He raised his hand with his gun aimed at her head. “Now, where are those boys?”

Suz moved without intending to. She did what Jack said, “Don’t even aim just put it in front of you at chest height, look at the target’s stomach and pull the trigger.”

BAM! Her hand jerked up. She was so surprised by the sound and the light. So confused by what she had just done. . .

The man fell backwards onto the ground. Agh! I shot him! Oh, no. Oh, no. I should help him. She started to round the rock when more bullets hit the trees.

The boys. Her priority was the boys. Jack! Where was Jack? Was he alright? Why wasn’t he here? She flung her pack onto her back and ran in a crouch to the falloff.

She grabbed Ari’s wrist. “You’re going to climb down the hill okay?”

He nodded apprehensively. But was doing fine skooching down on his bottom, crab walking with his hands and feet.

“Okay, Caleb do it just like Ari is.”

Caleb immediately started sliding. The earth loosened up as he pawed at the slope. He plowed into his brother who had been making his way carefully down. They were flipping. Rolling. Stopping.

The boys’ little arms and legs were splayed out on the ground and horror filled Suz like a balloon, pushing out against her until she thought she would pop. She couldn’t move. She was too afraid. Ari pushed to his knees and shook debris from his hair like a dog. Caleb did the same.

“I’m okay. You?” Ari asked.

Caleb grinned “That was pretty awesome.”

Before a “Thank God” could form in her mind, more gun fire sounded. Suz turned her head in the direction of the camp, looking for another man in black with his gun pointed at her. Something scalding hot pierced through her skin, and she reflexively clapped a shocked hand over the hole in her neck. An explosion shook the ground. Shook her from her one-handed hold. She fell backward from the precipice. In her mind, she screamed, “Jack!”