33

Jack

 

 

The Forest, Refugio Tatí Yupí, Paraguay

 

 

“Jack!” his name echoed and reverberated not in his ears but through his mind, along his nerve pathways, into his skin, prickling his hair follicles with apprehension. Suz. Suz was in trouble. She seemed far away. Too far. He fought against darkness and finally slit open his eyes. His sight was fuzzy. His head pounding. He reached up and touched the sticky pool of coagulating blood on his makeshift bandage. He pieced the scene back together.

Rifle fire. The Mossad unit must be fighting the militants. He needed to get to that fight. Suz. Suz had called his name. Needed him. He had to get to her and the boys first. She was his priority. He flipped over onto his stomach, pushing himself off the forest floor, and walked his hands back to his legs. The lines of the tree trunks danced, and he scrubbed a hand over his eyes to clear his vision. He sipped some water from the hose on his shoulder strap; it helped. He checked his compass and took a straight legged step. That wouldn’t do, he couldn’t get to her like that. He bent and unlatched the brace. Took another step, his leg held.

A third step sent him flailing drunkenly sideways into a tree. He gripped the rough bark and panted. He thought about someone touching Suz. Hurting Suz. Someone putting Suz into their crosshairs and pulling a trigger. Something shifted in him, and he became a wild beast with a ferocity that he had never experienced before; he could tear a man limb from limb with his bare hands. When he was operational he was cold, calculating, and professional. Now, his anger boiled through him like an inferno. He felt bigger, stronger, more deadly than he had ever been. He locked his jaw as a growl rumbled past his teeth. Any pain and confusion was hidden under the red hot lava of his fury. He set off, racing through the brush.

Within minutes, he was near her coordinates, and he could circle around to get to where Suz and the boys were hiding. He dropped down as a bullet zipped past his ear. He crawled on his stomach like a lizard, keeping low as the bullets whizzed overhead. The rounds sent resounding cracks through the forest as they pierced the bark and split the trunks.

Jack didn’t know how many Mossad were headed down the path this morning and wasn’t sure what caliber of training they would encounter. If the militants were all like the tracker, Zulu unit was in trouble. The Mossad was made up of some of the best trained special operatives in the world. This unit had real world experience and surprise on their side. Jack wondered how much ammo they had brought with them, how prepared they had been since they were coming in on a clean-up mission. He and Strike Force were always prepared, took nothing for granted. Surely, this group was the same. He hadn’t seen misstep one since working with them – even if the Al Amman capture turned out to be a clusterfuck.

The Zulu Unit must have decided to engage, knowing full well what they were getting themselves into – otherwise they would have slipped seamlessly into the forest and disappeared.

Jack’s eye caught on the form of a man, lying on his back, dressed in black. Jack crawled over to make sure it wasn’t a Mossad operative in need of rescue and quickly saw this was an x-ray that had been killed. The militant had gotten damned close to Suz and the kids when he took a bullet. As Jack crawled away, he wondered if it was friendly fire that took him down or one of the Mossad. Jack worried that the x-ray had had a buddy as they tracked Suz and the kids to this spot, and the buddy had been successful at re-trapping them. Where were they?

Jack low-crawled toward the precipice now, where he and Suz had fallen earlier. He found the children’s foot prints, turning at the edge. Good girl, Suz. That’s exactly what you should have done. He pulled his binoculars from the front pouch on his molle pack and searched the ground at the bottom of the hill. He saw nothing. No humans. No animals. No signs of movement. Just a thickly overgrown forest floor that could hide most anything.

He inched around to lower himself over the side, and that’s when he saw blackened drops on the brown leaves. Jack pulled up his sleeve and touched a leaf to his skin. Someone or something was bleeding enough that they were dripping blood.

Jack slid down the side of the hill. At the bottom he came into a crouch. He cupped his hand and softly whistled the come-here signal he used to call Dick and Jane from their woodland adventures back in DC. In return he heard Suz’s sad attempt at a whistle. He had tried to teach her, but her whistles always came out as almost all air and almost no tune. He gave himself a moment to exhale. Fear had replaced the oxygen molecules in his blood stream. He sucked in fresh air. He moved forward to where two little heads and two sets of eyes peeked over a rock.

“Hey guys,” he whispered, moving toward them.

Over his comms the Mossad unit was speaking in Hebrew.

The boys were wide eyed as they looked at his head. “I cut myself. Heads tend to bleed a lot. Nothing to worry about.” He used the calm assuring voice that worked best when he needed to keep his precious cargo calm and functional.

“Miss Molloy is bleeding, too,” Ari said.

“Okay, I’m here now. I’ll help her.” Jack skated down the second incline and came around the rock to find Suz with a bloody t-shirt pressed against her neck.

“Hey sweetheart.” He moved slowly forward, knowing people who were wounded reacted with protective reflexes, and she had his Glock in her hand.

“Hey,” she whispered.

He moved up beside her and took the gun, sticking it in his waistband. “You need to work on that whistle. It’s still pretty pathetic.”

She gave him a weak smile.

“What happened here?” The Velcro on his aid bag rasped open.

“You know, just sitting in my comfy chair reading a good book, drinking a cup of coffee, when all of a sudden. . .”

“Okay, I’m going to take a look.”

Blood was still flowing from her wound. Suz wasn’t putting enough pressure on it to help seal the gash. The bullet had grazed her throat. Centimeters from...Shit. “This is a QuikClot bandage. I’m going to make the bleeding stop.”

“Yes, please.”

The shooting had ceased. The forest filled with an eerie quiet as if the animals were holding their collective breaths. Jack wondered what that could mean for them and for the Mossad unit. His gaze scanned their location, looking for any imminent dangers, potential threats, and a quick exit plan if one was needed. His mind ticked these off as he looked back at Suz. She wasn’t looking at him as he worked. “Hey Suz, do you know what day it is today?”

“No,” she said.

An explosion thundered out in the distance.

He pressed the hemostatic bandage over the gash. “Do you know where you are?”

Her eyes travelled around. “Trees.”

“Try, Suz, where do you think you are?” If she was going into shock, she’d need to be medevacked out to save her life and that just wasn’t going to happen. He applied pressure, knowing he needed to press hard directly over her artery.

“I’m in the forest. In Paraguay. It’s about a week since I was kidnapped to help the boys.”

“And what are the boys’ names?”

Her eyes went wild, and she sprang upright.

He pressed on her shoulder with his free hand. “Shh Shh Shh. They’re right here. They’re okay.”

She sank back against her pack. Her eyelashes fluttered closed.

“Their names, Suz?” Jack’s voice ticked up into a command to pull her back from her faint. “What are the boys’ names?”

“Ari and Caleb.”

“Good girl. Just rest.”

They were quiet for a few minutes while Jack kept the pressure on. He processed through their predicament.

He pressed his throat comms with his free hand. “Zulu, Zulu, this is Alpha two, over.”

“Alpha two this is Zulu actual. Welcome back to the land of the living. What’s your sitrep.”

“I have precious cargo times three. Injuries sustained, over.”

“Copy that. Present coordinates, over.”

Jack checked his GPS unit and got nothing. “Negative. GPS non-functional, we are northeast of the camp.”

“Copy that. Over.”

Over would be good.