Brotherhood
January of 1992.
Opiekun, Bolivia.
I had never seen a sunset quite like this before. I had been so focused on starting the mission last night that the beauty of this place was lost on me. Opiekun was surrounded by boulder fields, congregations of small rocks scattered over rolling foothills. When the sun started to set, each boulder cast its own shadow that slowly grew over the plains like groping fingers, and by the time the sun reached the shoulder of the mountain, the shadows created a crisscrossing pattern that overwhelmed everything. Between perimeter scans, I watched the shadows move, wondering if my friends back home would ever see anything like this.
Shortly after nightfall, the plains took on a new, more sinister look. Hundreds of boulders sat perfectly still, cloaking the world around them in shadow, hiding threats and making the landscape nearly impossible to navigate. It was the perfect time to stage an escape.
A sharp whistle came twenty minutes after the sun was gone, alerting me to the return of the SEALs. I never saw them, never heard them, but suddenly there were two on the roof with me, crawling across the sandstone until they were right upon the edge. One was Thompson, and the other was lying on his nametag, stone-faced and silent.
"No sign of a party moving toward the mountain," Thompson said, his voice barely audible, "Go northeast and Axe will find you. We'll stay here and keep an eye on the southern road. Sam has the light. One flash for stand down, two for move." He shoved a vest toward me. "Put this on. I know spies like to go naked, but I smell gunpowder in our future."
Listening to his breathless rundown gave me a jump of adrenaline. The planning part of our mission was over. It was time for the chase. I strapped the vest on and left the roof.
It took me over an hour to navigate the boulder field and go around to get back to the foothills, where Sam was waiting, to avoid anyone seeing me leave town. If anyone was watching, they would think the whole team was up in the mountains, following that witness' tip. Now would be the time to move the asset.
Thompson had only told me to go northeast, with no other indication of where Sam Axe might be hiding, so I stumbled on through the foothills for a while looking and listening for any signs of the SEAL. He could be nearby, watching me, laughing at me, or he could be much closer to the mountain, or much closer to town. It was impossible to gauge distances in this boulder-filled wasteland.
But then I heard the bird.
It sounded oddly familiar, and certainly out of place here. I had only heard a few harsh bird calls since arriving in Bolivia. This was more of a trill, a short, whistling song.
I followed it, pausing every now and then. Each time I stopped, the sound came again, drawing me closer until I nearly tripped over Sam.
"Look who came to party," Sam whispered, patting a flat patch of rock beside him and handing me a pair of binoculars. "We only have three pairs, so don't break 'em. Calibration is on the top, put that strap around your neck. Town is that way."
I slipped the strap over my neck and put the lenses over my eyes, immediately fascinated by the way the world now looked. It was green – an entire field of green, with big dark green boulders and a dark green sky and pale green buildings in the town. Even at regular magnification, the details in the horizon were crisp. I leaned over to look at Sam. His face was made up of reddish outlines as the goggles tried to assess his shape. He must have been watching me stumble around out there as a pile of red rectangles.
Sam smiled, motioning down the hill. "I said, town is that way."
Our stakeout began, but we did not lay silently on that hilltop.
"I heard that bird out in Florida once while we were docked. I thought you might recognize it."
"How did you…?" I had never told him where I was from. Larry had told me to never, ever admit anything personal about myself unless I wanted my family dead.
"Relax. I have connections, too. Spies aren't the only ones allowed to know things. Listen, Michael – can I call you Michael? – I think we got off to a bad start. You know, me going pro-wrestler on your ass, and making you sleep in the lobby, and all that. We should just start over."
I was silent, scanning the road outside of the village.
"Here, I brought a peace offering. Thompson said not to bring any food out here, but he has to know by now that I'm always packing. Deer jerky, all the way from home." He nudged my arm with a plastic package. "Plus, your stomach is gonna give our location away."
It might have been more graceful and mysterious to turn down the offer, but I was ravenous. I set my binoculars down and dug in. "Thanks."
"I'm a Michigan boy myself. I can't stand this heat. But you must feel right at home."
He was probing, maybe trying to further verify his information, but I left the bait dangling. Something was going on in the town. Four roughly people-shaped blobs were moving around by the edge of town, heading toward the foothills. But they were not on the same path the SEALs had taken earlier. I traced the path up, and it seemed to go west toward a distant forest.
Almost at the same time I noticed the people, there was a flash from one of the rooftops in town. Sam brought out a flashlight and glanced at me. "I'll tell them to move."
"No, wait." I tracked the blobs. Something was making me uneasy. "We should follow them."
"Follow them where? We can take them down now."
"Something about this feels wrong." I scanned the town again. "There's no way to know if the asset is with them from here, and if your team moves, their location is blown. We only get one shot."
Sam spun the light around in his hand, considering. "Right." He flashed it once, and the answer was also one flash.
"Well, let's get a closer look," Sam said, resigned.
Sam and I left out hiding spot and darted between boulders, moving adjacent to the traveling people, but ahead of them on the trail. We stopped on a ridge, looking down at the group.
When they were almost up to us, Sam whispered, "Oh, yeah, that's him. That's Honeywell."
"Honeywell?" I wondered. It was one of those operations where I was supposed to know little and ask no questions. I was given a task – assist the SEALs in bringing the asset back to the US – and I was expected to get it done. I had seen his face, but never heard his name.
Honeywell was a name Larry sometimes mumbled in his sleep, his hand clenching his knife.
The group neared, and we both slipped out of sight, hugging the shadows and barely breathing. The men were not speaking and barely made a sound as they passed by. Honeywell did not appear to be a prisoner – he was walking on his own, appearing relaxed.
I looked at Sam and found the same realization on his face. He flashed the signal twice this time.
"Traitor," Sam whispered, scorn in his voice.
Up ahead there was a bend, and we could not see the path beyond it. I nudged Sam and nodded toward it. "We need to keep up."
We walked shoulder-to-shoulder, stepping onto the path behind the group with guns drawn. Each step around the bend made me more aware that our backup had not yet arrived, and that it was the two of us against four hostiles in the dark.
Several minutes passed as we followed a winding trail, and a ravine opened up on the left. We heard the group in front but did not see them.
And then, the sound.
Sam brushed against a dead bush, and the limbs all scraped against one another, producing the first major sound in this silent mission.
We looked at each other, equally surprised, and then the group of four had come back around the corner with guns of their own. Sam fired first, clipping someone in the leg. The gunshots were blinding in the dark, flashing over and over. I hit the ground and fired up. Someone screamed. Someone fell into the ravine and made a sickening thunk at the bottom.
Sam struck a flare and made the trail a shuddering red, showing two more attackers, and the asset on the ground, clutching his shin. They were too close too fast to shoot. I jumped to my feet, avoiding a kick, and grabbed my attacker by the shoulders.
He headbutted me, dazing me, and shoved me backwards.
I scrambled, trying to aim my gun, but the ground was suddenly gone from beneath my feet. I flailed, striking crumbling dirt, and slid into the ravine.
I was only sliding for a moment, though, because a hand locked around my wrist. Sam was there, on his belly, flailing his other arm and shouting at me. "Grab my hand!"
I thrust my other arm forward and grabbed his free hand so that I was suspended, my feet scrabbling at dirt that just kept giving way. My shoulders ached. Fear gripped me like it never had before. There was nothing below me but a long fall and certain death.
"I got you, kid!" Sam shouted. Another SEAL appeared behind him and started hauling him backward, dragging me up the side of the ravine. Sam never let go.
When I was on flat ground again, I rolled onto my back, my heart hammering. I grasped my throat, sure that the veins within were going to burst.
Sam sat down beside me, laughing. "Whew! Warn me before you do that next time."
His laughing brought me back down to earth, and soon I was laughing with him. He was ridiculous, but I was grateful.
His team had arrived in the middle of the fight, just as I was going backward into the ravine and Sam was diving in to catch me. Two of the four men we had been pursuing were dead, one was unconscious, and the asset had a fresh leg wound, but otherwise the mission was counted as a success.
We headed back out of the foothills, to the village, where lights had come on all over in response to the nearby gunfire. No one was curious enough to leave their houses, but I saw faces in the windows as we passed.
In the little hotel, the captives sat tied to chairs in the conference room. Thompson went up to the roof with a satellite phone to call in and report their success, and request an extraction, and the two other SEALs sat guarding the asset. I stood by the front windows, looking out at the town, and Sam rummaged around in his bags.
"Still can't find those peanuts?" I wondered.
Sam laughed. "Well, no, but I was actually looking for something else."
I glanced at him, uncertain, "Thank you… for saving my life."
"No problem."
"I thought you didn't like spies."
"Hey, when we're fighting for the same things, we're brothers, right?" He pulled out a glass beer bottle, his face lighting up. "Ahh! I brought one of these to celebrate a job well done. Want some?"
"No." I followed him into the miniscule kitchen. "How did you guys get this place to yourselves, anyway?"
"Paid the owner to go home for a few days." Same pulled out a glass, popped a few ice chips in, and poured his beer over it. "Listen, kid, you're not so bad for a spook. I don't offer to share my beer with just anyone." He brought out another glass and put ice in it, pouring a small amount over it. "So, drink with me."
It seemed to mean a lot to him, so I took the glass, clinked it to his, and drank. Sam looked pleased. He downed most of his in one swallow.
"Now all we gotta do is wait for sunrise, and get the hell out of Bolivia."