October 2004
Guaviare Department, Colombia
Day 2

Eliot was about 40 miles outside of town, following jeep treads, when they disappeared off the side of the road and down an embankment into the jungle. And there - crawling up over the side, dragging his carry-on and his briefcase behind him - was Nathan Ford. He was a mess - breathing hard, fresh scrapes on his face and neck, a wide dirt smudge down the front of his shirt and pants. He looked like he'd done a body slide down the embankment, probably after he jumped or was thrown from the jeep. There were twigs and leaves all over him, falling out of his hair, dropping from his clothes as he hauled himself back up onto the road.

Then he noticed the approaching truck, and Eliot had to admit that the oh shit look that spread across his face was almost enough to make up for all the trouble he had caused.

Almost.

For a moment, Ford hesitated. He glanced around nervously, looking back down the embankment, looking up the road, but he seemed to register that he couldn't outrun Eliot, and there was nothing he could use for a weapon, and his oh shit looked changed to something more like a resigned fuck it. He took a deep breath and pulled his bags up behind him, his briefcase spilling papers as he heaved it onto the road. He took two rubber-legged steps and stopped, bending over at the waist, trying to catch his breath.

He was still bent over that way, his hands on his knees, as Eliot stepped out of the truck and walked towards him. From the look on his face, Ford knew he was in trouble.

He held out a hand, palm up, the universal sign of stop.

"Time out," he gasped.

Eliot was incredulous. "Excuse me?" he said, still walking.

"I said-" wheeze - "time out."

Eliot didn't stop. He grabbed Ford's outstretched hand, bending it straight back. "Time out!?"

Ford grimaced and dropped to his knees, and Eliot kept pushing the wrist back, until he was standing over Ford, straddling his torso, and Ford's back was arched in a futile attempt to get away from the pressure. Eliot leaned over him, his hair sticking to the sweat on his face, eyes wild and angry.

"Time out!?"

Eliot pushed back on the wrist until Ford nearly did a back bend from his knees. His legs flopped out from under him, and he hit the ground on his back, a puff of rust-colored dirt rising up around him. Eliot jammed a knee into the center of his rib cage and kept the pressure hold on his hand.

"Is this some kind of a game to you, Ford?" he snarled. "Cause I ain't playin'." Eliot switched up his hold, gripping Nate's wrist in his left hand. "You set me up."

Ford was still breathing hard, features squeezed tight, and wincing at every movement of Eliot's knee, but when he heard Eliot's accusation, his eyes snapped open, dark with defiant.

"You set me up first."

Eliot pulled his fist back, coiled to strike, ready to deliver the kind of punch that would have a man seeing stars for a week, but Ford was still staring straight at him, sweaty and dirty, eyes wild and angry, face streaked with blood, and before he knew it, Eliot was pushing himself up and off away from him.

He took two steps back while Ford laid on the dirt road and stared at the sky, chest rising and falling with his heavy breaths, before he finally sat up, legs stretched out in a V in front of him.

A faint breeze came through, stirring up the papers that had fallen out of Ford's open briefcase, sending them swirling up and tumbling into the air, and Ford must have still been stunned, because he zoned out on them, head moving back and forth, then in a circle, as he followed their movement. Then he seemed to catch himself, and he hauled himself to his feet and walked over to the side of the road, heaved the bag up and started gathering up the papers.

"He's after both of us, now," he said. "We're better off together."

"That what you think? That's funny, Ford. 'Cause it seems to me like I'd be a helluva a lot better off leaving you right here for Cesar."

That it meant leaving Ford dead (or in no condition to try an escape) was left unsaid.

Ford was leaning down to pick up a crumbled piece of paper when Eliot said that, and he paused mid-reach. He knew exactly what was being left unsaid.

"Well . . .yeah," he said. "There is that, I guess." He straightened up stiffly and put the paper back in his bag.

Then he looked at Eliot. "I'll double your fee."

Eliot smiled at that - a joker's smile - eyes calm, his whole body calm. The detached calm he got when he turned everything off. It was the way he'd felt on some of his military jobs. The way he felt on his jobs with Chapman.

(It was a deceptively soothing feeling - separating yourself from yourself.)

And while part of Eliot appreciated that Ford was being so direct about . . . things . . . it didn't change the facts.

"We're way beyond the fee, Ford. This is what we call FUBAR."

"Fucked up beyond all recognition."

"That's right," Eliot nodded gravely. "And there's one good way to fix it."

"For you maybe," Ford said, and his voice was sharp enough that it stung Eliot just a little.

Then Ford took a deep breath, and he shook his head and smiled, but there was no humor in it. Only a flat recognition of his situation. He was alone in a jungle with hired muscle he barely knew whose best chance at survival was leaving him dead or injured on the side of the road. He was screwed, and he knew it.

Eliot expected him to try to talk his way out of it. He was looking forward to him trying to talk his way out of it. He hated Ford's talking. If he had to take Ford out, it would at least give him some satisfaction to do it while he was in the middle of some fast-talking one-sided negotiation.

When Ford didn't start talking, Eliot half-expected him to make a break for it, but the guy must have understood his physical limitations, because he didn't do that either.

Another breeze came through, came straight down the road, blowing more stuff around. Eliot watched Ford slowly move to retrieve the stuff. It was mostly his papers - the reports Eliot had seen on the plane, the file on Jorge Cabrera - nothing Ford was going to need now. Nothing he was going to need ever again.

"What are you doing?" Eliot finally asked. "What do you think you're gonna do with that stuff?"

Ford stopped and looked around at everything left to be picked up, and then he laughed, a short rueful, self-reproaching little laugh. "I don't know. What else am I supposed to do?"

It was the first indication that Ford was actually, genuinely rattled.

A small, rectangular piece of paper flitted through the air, and Eliot snagged it and turned it in his hands. It was a child's drawing, a trio of stick figures against a background colored in wide, thick, blue strokes - by a child pressing down far more than he needed to. The proportions were right - the first one was the biggest, with brown hair, the second one was smaller, with long yellow hair and a little red circle for a mouth, and the last one was the smallest, with brown hair and a big 'u' of a smile.

Eliot felt his pulse quicken, felt something like anxiety well up in him - something that threatened the peaceful, dead calm he needed to do what he had to do.

He kept his features calm, though, when he turned it around to show Ford. "So who's this?"

Ford rushed forward and snatched it from Eliot's fingers. He dropped his briefcase and took it in both hands and stood there, perfectly still, staring down at it.

It made Eliot feel ashamed.

"That's the pretty blonde wife and the cute kid," Ford said, looking right at Eliot. "You know, the ones you just guessed about."

Then he gave Eliot a smirk, or something close to a smirk. There was too much awful anticipation in it for it to really amount to a smirk, and Eliot thought back to the bar with Jacques, where he had pretty much convinced himself that this job - this idea of doing something legitimate - was nothing more than a fantasy, and if he had only listened, he would have been someplace else, anyplace else, instead of here in this moment about to kill Nathan Ford.

(Because he wasn't fooling himself. He could leave the guy here, but at the end of the day, that was no different than snapping Ford's neck himself.)

Everybody comes back, Chapman told him. Everybody.

Ford folded the drawing carefully, fingers unsteady, before he tucked it into his shirt pocket and pressed it there against his chest. Then he stared straight at Eliot, his eyes as clear as the Caribbean, revealing everything underneath - fear, sadness, determination, defiance.

And Eliot - looking at those conflicting emotions - found that he could not move.

He didn't want Ford to know it was coming, and he especially didn't want Ford to accept it. He wanted him to beg, to plead, to bargain, to run, because it would be easier to take care of him in a fight or in a chase than having to stare down the man at the moment he did it.

You're no different. Chapman's voice told him. Why don't you just get it over with?

Eliot thought back to the airport, to that loaded question at the check-in counter.

Do you want to change?

He stood there for a long moment. Staring at Ford and his clear blue eyes. Both men silent. Everything silent, until he heard a small voice in his own head.

Well, do you?

Eliot shook his head at the voices and he growled. Loudly.

Then he turned and stalked away from Ford.

Then he turned and stalked back to him, right back to the place he'd been standing, a foot away from the other man. He pointed a finger at him, eyes flashing. "I hate you."

Confusion flickered across Ford's face. Confusion, and then something else. Hope.

"I know you do," he said quickly, earnestly.

"I mean I really really hate you."

"Yeah, no, yeah. I get it. I can be a real asshole."

Eliot ran his hand through his hair and started pacing with more vigor. "Yeah! Why is that? Why do you have to be such a pain in the ass? Right from the start! From the minute I met you! Seriously, man. What am I supposed to do with that!?"

Nate nodded, going with the moment. "No, I . . . yeah . . . well. My wife says I should be more of a people person."

"You should listen to your wife."

"Absolutely. I absolutely will." Then he added, tentatively, "you know, as soon as I see her."

Eliot glared at him for one last long moment. "Good. Now go get your shit together and let's get going."