2

A Cut Above

Elliot slashed at the dense under growth on his right three times with vicious downward strikes before switching the sap soaked machete to his left hand and clearing the tangle of vegetation from the opposite side of the trail he was cutting. He pushed the vines and leaf cluttered branches aside, stomped on them, and then looked up and around trying to decide if the hole he'd cut in the dense strangle hold of Rain Forest flora would accommodate Rios' bulk. While he studied his handy-work, he sighed and flexed the fingers of his right hand. Beneath the calf skin leather glove, he could feel the slick, oozing puss from several, hours old blisters, that he knew tore through at least two layers of skin. Removing the glove would serve no purpose, nor would acknowledging the pain. So, he took a long sip of tepid water from his camelback and pushed ahead.

Salem was prone to complaining, although typically not in a serious manner, and today, even if he'd had a mind to, the 105 degree temperature and 100 percent humidity shuttered any of his remarks well within his sweat soaked, throbbing head. What right did he really have to complain? It was usually Rios' job to break the trail, but here, the rain forest's thick, twisted nest of undergrowth rendered it nearly impossible for the big man to move. So, the task fell to Elliot with his smaller, lither frame.

It had been three days since his fight with Clyde, and the sweat running into the stitched, yet still open, slashes on his head stung. Growling, he hacked angrily at a three inch thick vine while pretending that it was first Clyde's neck, and then Murray's. The feisty contract writer had been nothing short of cold and sternly professional with him since the debacle, and her behavior irked him.

"Fucking pious bitch." He spat under his breath, "What the fuck'r we supposed to do? Just take that prick's shit. Fuck the lot of you. I'll be a son of a bitch before I start kissing Phil…"

The site of a three and a half foot long Gaboon viper, coiled slumbering beneath a palm-like bush, halted his internal diatribe and without hesitation, he severed its thick, broad head and toed the carcass deeper into the dense foliage. A snake was a snake, and Elliot had no use for the slithering creatures unless he desperately needed food. The Gaboons, he knew, were particularly docile snakes, but he'd not risk Rios raising its ire and possible getting bitten. They were amazingly fast, accurate strikers and with the largest fangs of all venomous snakes, a bite, secluded as they were, could prove fatal.

Snake dispatched, he slashed his way another forty feet into the foliage and once again paused. He took the sweat drenched bandana from his head, and wiped his face wincing when he pressed a bit too hard on Clyde's wounds. Then, he gently probed at the gash on the back of his head, disgusted to find it caked with small biting midges. Cursing, Elliot emptied a palm full of water from the canteen on his side and flushed the voracious insects free of his hair and stitches. Content, or as close to content one could be slogging along a forsaken river in hellish heat, he soaked the cotton rag and wound it back onto his head, making certain that it covered the wound, checked his compass and began hacking again.

It wasn't long before thoughts of Murray skittered through his mind once more. Over all of the years that the trio had been a team, he'd done nothing to truly disappoint her in any serious manner as far as the job was concerned. Sure, he screwed up here and again, but who didn't. Besides, he thought, it was usually Tyson who bailed him out of a jam. Job wise, he was always on his game, if not considerably above it, blindly following whatever orders the petite mission runner or Tyson gave him. That was how his life worked. Do the job, go home and rest, and do the job again. Elliot did not live for Elliot. He lived for his team. He lived, fought, and suffered for Rios and Murray, and now, it seemed, she was going to treat him like some red headed step child, because he'd defended Rios and himself from Philip Clyde. No, he thought, he didn't think so.

"Fuck me!" He growled when his right hand spasmed, released the machete mid-swing and cramped into a rigor tight fist.

The pain was nearly un-bearable, and he took a series of deep breaths to get the strained, under hydrated muscles to relax. There was nothing for it though. So, he retrieved the dropped machete in his left hand and went back to work; annoyed that God was probably just finding yet another way to torment him for his non-belief and criticism of his colleagues. Finally, some hundred yards later, after a long uphill pitch to the southwest, his hand relaxed. Relieved, he stopped and drank while flexing it. The once slick puss had dried while his fist remained clenched and the blisters now tore open gifting him with yet another round of pain.

Elliot closed his eyes, visualized lying on his surf board, bobbing in the warm soothing water while taking in the pinking horizon just before sunrise. Vision firm in his mind's eye, he then breathed deeply willing away the pain. Finally, moderately pain free and after long pull of water from his nearly empty Camelback, a look at his compass and at the basketball sized, diamond shaped patch of azure sky that he could just barely see through the towering jade colored, Ficus choked canopy, he struck out again hacking away with his right hand.

Several paces along, as he switched the machete back into his left hand for a bit, he realized he couldn't heard Rios plodding along behind him. They hadn't spoken in several hours. It was brutally hot and talking un-necessarily wasted precious energy, and moisture. Despite their silence, Salem could hear the bigger man crushing the brush and keeping pace about twenty yards to his six. Now, there was nothing but gloomy, humid silence, and concerned, Elliot turned to look for him only to see no-one. With his heart racing a bit, he cued Tyson up on comms, and began to backtrack down the steep slope he'd just clamored up.

"Rios?"

After along agonizing pause, Salem's ear piece crackled and Tyson's voice filled it.

"To your six a bit, took a breather."

"Roger that. I'm in bound, stay put."

Took a breather, a bit, Elliot thought, what the hell? Never, in all their years together, had Tyson taken a breather and it was wholly out of character for him to use such a non-specific term as a bit. Salem frowned at the odd exchange. They often stopped for him to rest, sure, but his size held him at a disadvantage when they were loaded down with gear. But, for Rios to need a break, that was as un-fathomable as hoping that it wouldn't rain on them until the op was over.

After skittering down the final few feet of the embankment and trotting along the ragged trail for nearly one-hundred and fifty yards Salem stopped short. Rios was sitting nearly right on top of the spot where he'd decapitated the Gaboon viper. For a brief moment, Salem feared that somehow he'd not completely killed the snake. He'd heard tales of snake's head staying alive and biting unsuspecting gawkers. As he forced his feet to move, he realized that no, Rios was actually just past the slain reptile. Still, Salem's heart thudded. The big man was sitting with his back against a huge tree root, elbows across his knees with his head hanging down between his them.

"Tyse, I'm here, talk to me." Salem said sternly kneeling down in front of him.

Rios looked up and shrugged his wide shoulders before dropping his perspiration beaded head again. Elliot shuffled his ruck off and grabbed at his med kit, trying to gauge Rios' condition. He was breathing rapidly, and the quick glimpse of his face betrayed to him that the man was in a good deal of pain. The situation was slightly un-nerving for the younger man. He was a trained combat medic, they all were, but by virtue of luck or the lack of it Elliot seldom needed to use the skills. It was typically Tyson or Giddy working on him. He knew the first step was to keep the person calm.

"Chill bro, you're probably just dehydrated. You drinking water? Do I need to baby sit you better?"

When the sarcastic quip went un-noticed Salem knew he truly did have a situation far outside of their normal operational paradigm.

"Look at me, Tyse." He pressed trying to hide the concern he was feeling from his voice. "Are you just cramping? An I.V. I could hook you up and we'll be moving in twenty mikes. Times a wasting you fat ass hole."

Again he received no reprimand for his insult, only Tyson's woozy muffled reply.

"Don't know, Salem. Just haven't been feeling right for a while now. Guts feel like somebody's twisting 'em in their fists."

"Snake didn't get you did it? Sometimes the heads can bite. Fuckin' scared the shit outa me. Just there, about seven, eight feet, back I killed a big ass Gaboon. Christ, when I saw you sitting here, I thought maybe I fucked it up and he got you anyway. Here sip this."

Tyson waved him off.

"No, and no snake. Everything I take in I puke up and the pain gets worse."

"Fuck Tyse, you gotta hydrate bro. Hang tight, there's a small eddy off a the main tributary, and some rain water was pooled there in some rocks, I'll be right back."

Rios gave a non-committal grunt, and Elliot slipped away. Once he was out of ear shot, he cued Murray up.

"Delta HQ, Delta HQ this is Green Giant do you read?"

Murray sat up straighter in her chair, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and stared at the flickering computer in front of her. She checked the laptop's clock and double checked a second one hanging on the wall of the old musty airplane hangar that the client had arranged for them to use as their T.O.B. twelve and a half klicks outside of Mbuji-Mayi. It was three and a half hours before team Bird's Eye was due for a comms check. She made note of the duo's GPS location, and found that they were on schedule, had made their easterly turn away from the Sankura River and were now, ten klicks along their new heading into the dense rain forest. With a practiced eye, she looked next at the screen displaying the read outs from their vital signs. What she read for Rios snapped her the rest of the way to attention. Salem's heart rate was also elevated and combined with the fact that he was calling in and not the older operative deeply worried her.

"Secour, open the line."

"Delta HQ to Green Giant, go ahead."

"DHQ I have a potential situation. I have…"

"Shit," Secour spat, "Green Giant I need you to take a static twenty. You are breaking up. I repeat, assume a static twenty. Do you copy?"

"I copy your last, take a static twenty. Can you read me now DHQ?"

"Good, Green Giant, much better. Go ahead."

"Sprout is down, I repeat Sprout is down. I don't know with what, but I know him and it don't look good."

Murray looked over at Secour and furrowed her brow. The timbre of Salem's voice had dropped to the deep baritone he used as his command voice, and both operatives could hear the nervous edge in it. While he wasn't prone to panic, on occasion he did, but Tyson could always rein him in. If Tyson was down though, well then, there could be a problem.

"Secour, can we drop the call signs, how's our security looking?"

"I don't advise it, Alice. We're bouncing comms off of five different sats and hidden behind a nearly impenetrable security wall, but it's a big ass jungle out there, and who knows what shady mercs are crawling around in it and what kind of gear they have. I get your point. It would bring him closer to us, but I don't advise it. We're just going to have to keep him in line."

"Get a link up with Giddy. I want him to hear what ever Elliot has to say."

"Three mikes and he'll be up."

"Good."

Murray took a deep breath, turned to the lap top on her far left and opened up an in depth medical resource, designed by SSC's doctors. Then, she put on her headset, adjusted the microphone to just in front of her pert lips and keyed up Elliot.

"Green Giant, this is Delta HQ."

At the sound of Murray's firm voice Elliot flinched a bit. Then, he rang out a little of the cool, fresh water he'd found in the rain water pool from one of his spare shirts, hefted the re-filled water bladder, stood and keyed his mike.

"Go ahead." He replied quietly, hesitantly, trying to tell if her voice held anger or animosity.

"I see that he's running a temp, 102.1. What other symptoms does he have?"

"Delta, gimme five mikes. I'm humping some fresh water back to him to try and cool him down. I'll probably lose you."

"Copy that."

While they waited for Elliot to check back in, Giddy piped up.

"Delta HQ this is, Snap. What do you have?"

"Snap are you monitoring comms?" Murray responded still scrolling through potential illnesses from that area of the world.

"Negative."

"Start, we have a situation. Green Giant just called and Sprout is down."

"Down how, Delta?"

"Green Giant will be back in two Mikes so just be prepared to listen and pull up Sprouts vitals, no vitals on them both, and the med resource."

"Copy that, Delta, and it's done. That's a high fever. I have him at 102.5 not a good sign. It might be off a bit. They are in triple digit temps. Heart rates up and B.P. is too."

"Copy that, Snap. He seemed fine when they left so…maybe a reaction to one of his shots?"

Before Giddy could respond Salem joined the conversation once again.

"Delta HQ, I'm back. I put a cool towel over his head and tried to get him to drink, but he won't, says that he just pukes it up. He's burning up. Says his guts are in agony. He's drowsy and I think getting, if not already, dehydrated. I'm gonna start an I.V. of…"

"Hold one on that, Green Giant. Is…"

"Giddy, thank fuck."

"Green Giant, we need to stick to call signs. We have a security concern."

"Copy that, Snap." Salem responded dejectedly, "He needs fluids though."

"I know, but depending on what's wrong I don't want to start using up your supplies until absolutely necessary. Let me talk to him."

Salem sighed and studied Tyson. He was drooping lower and lower, and soon, Salem thought, he'd have to lie him down.

"Tyse, Giddy needs to talk to you. Tyse, you hearing me, man? Tyson?"

Finally, Rios looked up, bleary eyed and nodded as if his head weighed a thousand pounds.

"Snap?" He grunted.

"Talk to me, big guy. What's ailing you?"

"Don't know. Haven't really felt right for a few days, but just figured it was a cold. My gut's in agony, I'm burning up, throwing up, every breath hurts. Losing fluids both ends. I…"

"Bug bite, snake, anything like that? You drink the water, eat anything off, you know the drill."

"Negative, like I said I think it started just as we were leaving. Had it on the plane. Just blew it off."

"Where's the pain?"

"Started, ahh fuck that hurts like a bitch, started near my belly button; just twinges. Then, moved to right side toward hip, around where Green Giant hit me with that elbow strike the other day. I just figured he pinched a nerve 'cause it hurt like hell at the time. It was weird that it hurt so much, little bitch barely tapped me, but… fuck it hurts to talk."

"Ok, hang tight buddy." Giddy told him, and then motioned for Zac to open a closed line to Secour, "Fruit Pie, gimme a closed line to you and Murray. Cut Sprout out and then after I talk to Green Giant him too. Green Giant, I need you to make him a safe place to lie down on. You know, no bugs, snakes, rain etcetera."

"Copy that Snap. Make a hidey hole, what's wrong with him?"

Giddy sighed and scratched at the back of his head. He needed to keep Salem moving. He needed the younger man to focus on something besides projecting situations that were possible. He knew that once Salem began that process, they would lose him to panic.

"Not sure. We are working on it. So, just build your hide. Just concentrate on that for right now, Fifty. Snap out."

"Copy that. Build my hide. Green Giant out." Elliot responded irritated that they'd pushed him from their net.

"Fruit Pie?"

"Go ahead, Snap. You are clear with a closed link."