She looked and looked. “I can’t see what is not here, Nick! That makes no sense!”

  Nick smiled. “Jay left out Baroota! The camp, it’s not on the map; trees, hills, water sources, all there, but no Camp Baroota? Why?”

  Nõn understood now what he meant.

  “Tell me what you noticed when we left the camp, did you see anything weird or peculiar?”

  Nõn thought long and hard. This way of seeing the world was exhausting, challenging every detail and questioning every object’s purpose. She could think of nothing weird when they’d left the camp; they drove out of the gate and traveled down the road they’d been dropped on.

  Nick smiled. “You see it, but you don’t understand what it means. There’s one way in and one way out. We’ll have plenty of food and water soon enough, I promise you that. Drop the maps as well, leave them with the rest of Jay’s gifts. We won’t need them.”

  “Why won’t we need them? I checked them both, there are no trackers on them, we can use them.”

  Nick quietly said, “Drop the maps now, and follow me.”

  He started walking down the roadway, still talking. He said, “Stay in the tire tracks, they drive in the same ruts over and over, their tires will destroy any of our own tracks, they’ll have to hunt us old school style now, and we don’t want to give them an edge.”

  Nõn hadn’t followed him; she stood unmoving. “Nick, you are going the wrong way, we need to go that way!” she said, motioning towards the jungle. “That’s the way out of here.”

  Nick turned to her. “No, we aren’t going that way, that’s what they expect us to do. Death waits for us that way. We’re going back to Baroota.”

  “WHAT?? No, I’m not! You’re crazy, I am not going back there. Look, the way out is that way. That’s how we get out of here. Going back to the camp is insane! Have you lost your mind?”

  Nick stopped in the roadway. “Nõn, this is the direction they least expect. No one in their right mind would go back to the camp. So you’re right, but that’ll be the last place they’ll look for us. I can’t guarantee we’ll survive, but I do know this is exactly what they aren’t expecting. If you’re determined to go that direction, I’ll go with you. But I think we’ll regret it. It feels wrong to me. But I’ll leave that up to you. Which way, Nõn?”

  Nõn looked down the road towards freedom, every rational thought in her head said to go that way. She looked the other direction, just the thought of returning to the death camp caused her anxiety. Back and forth she looked, trying to decide what to do. Which was the right way?

  Finally, she looked at Nick. Angry, she said, “No more stupid jokes, let’s go! I am hungry!”

  Nick smiled. “Can’t make that promise, girl. Stay in the tire ruts, set the fastest pace you can hold, I’ll follow your lead.” They set off running towards Camp Baroota.

  Nick said, “You know, I could be wrong, but think of the look on Jay’s face when he finds the smiley face cut in the roadway.” Nick started to laugh so hard, he stumbled and fell, gasping for air as he said, “God, I wish I could see his face when he finds it. Where do you think he’ll look for us then? In the jungle, or in the camp?”

  Nõn stopped and glared at him. “Come on, funny man. We have to go now!”

  Nick giggled and gasped for air as he climbed back to his feet and started to run down the road.

  In the jungle, a pair of curious brown eyes watched as the man and woman spoke to each other in some kind of argument. Finally, they turned and ran down the roadway towards the camp. Waiting a few minutes, they followed and also went the direction of the camp.

  Back in the camp, Jay was sitting in the command post. The technician there spoke up.

  “Sir, they haven’t moved since they were dropped off.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. The signal is the best we’ve had on any of the group. They haven’t left the drop-off site. They haven’t moved at all. It looks like they just sat down and gave up.”

  Jay looked at the tracking screen. The tech was right; they hadn’t moved.

  “Give it a few more minutes. If they haven’t moved in the direction of the water source, then I’ll go out and kill them myself.”

  Jay left the camp a short while later in one of the trucks, speeding down the roadway towards the point where he’d dropped off the final two trophies.

  Nick and Nõn heard a truck coming long before they saw it. The jungle was quiet, and sound carried easily and clearly. They had plenty of time to hide before the truck finally sped past. They could see Jay in the cab of the truck, along with one of the workers.

  “Awesome!” Nick announced as they came from behind the foliage. “Do you realize what that means?”

  Nõn, still breathing hard from their run, said, “No, what does it mean?”

  “It means we got all the trackers; they drove past us, they didn’t slow down, even a little bit. They can’t track us anymore, we found all the trackers or left them there in the equipment.”

  Nõn realized it was true. It only made sense. Smiling, she said, “Let’s go, before they come back.”

  They ran back to the tire ruts in the dirt road and sprinted towards Baroota.

  In the jungle, a smaller pair of feet followed, staying carefully and quietly out of sight.

  Once inside the camp, they slowed down and carefully moved from one point of concealment to another.

  Nõn said, “What’s the plan now? We are here, now what insanity do you have planned?”

  Nick smirked. “Insanity? Me?” Laughing, he said, “You really aren’t going to like this.”

  “I know I won’t like it, I don’t like any of this. Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to hide in plain sight, under the building with the antennae. Under their command post.”

  Eyes wide, Nõn thought, Just like I believed, he really is insane.

  They ran from point to point in the camp, using the shadows in the afternoon sun to hide their movement as best they could. Finally, they arrived at the corner of the command post. There wasn’t much room underneath; they had to force their way under the building, and once under it they found there was a little bit more space.

  Nick whispered, “Now we wait for the right opportunity to turn the tables on Jay. Conserve your energy now, rest. When it’s dark enough, I’ll go out and scout the camp.”

  Jay arrived at the drop-off point and exited the vehicle quickly, ready for the ambush he expected, but never came. The whole day had been a pain in the ass. Nothing had gone according to plan, and now Nick was out here somewhere close by with Nõn. They were probably watching him now.

  He scanned the jungle, looking for any sign of the two trophies. There was none.

  Carefully, methodically, he slowly moved up the roadway, walking in the grass as he scanned the loose dirt for footprints. There were none.

  Finally, he arrived at the point where Nick had left the canteens, knives and RFID trackers. The smug bastard had left him a message: a smiling face carved in the dirt. Nick and Nõn were in the wind, untraceable.

  Jay breathed a heavy sigh. He could call in the cavalry as a last resort. He motioned to the driver to get back in the truck as he picked up the equipment. No point in leaving it here. That would be a waste.

  Jay told the driver to drive on to the kill site where they’d dropped off the two sponsors. They would need to be picked up and the plan changed. He couldn’t leave them out here in the jungle with no way to know where Nick and Nõn were.

  Had Nick and Nõn traveled down the road, away from the camp, they would have been dead already.

  Just as the sun set on the Darien Gap, Jay returned with the two remaining hunters and their guide. They all got out of the vehicle and walked to the command post, Jay just ahead of the group. Once inside, Jay asked the technician if there were any signs of the two missing trophies, anything at all? The technician had nothing new to relay.

  Nõn’s sponsor was barely able to contain his rage. He’d anticipated killing the woman in the most violent method he could imagine. He had no intention of shooting her from a distance. He wasn’t just interested in her death. He wanted her to feel incredible pain and suffering. He needed to hear her screams, smell her blood as it leaked from her wounds, wounds he’d looked forward to personally inflicting, slowly and mercilessly.

  Kerry, meanwhile, was just happy to be back in the compound. The jungle was filled with insects that had found his baby soft and overly sensitive skin to their liking. In a word, he was being eaten alive by nearly every insect in the jungle. His arms and face were swollen from the numerous insect bites. He was miserable and whimpered as he touched the swollen welts covering his cheeks and surrounding his eyes. No one had told him not to slather his favorite perfumed lotion all over his arms and face when spending time in a tropical jungle. For the insects of the Darien Gap, it had been a pheromone-filled beacon calling them in for a feast.

  Jay explained to the two men that the hunt would begin again in the morning, and he suggested to the two men to return to their rooms. They would need their rest if they wished to continue the hunt in the morning. They would have to actually find and kill their trophy. Their kills would take some skill and luck. The trophies would be out in the jungle the entire night and had a head start on them. He ended the speech with an attempt to sound confident. “Don’t worry, gentlemen, we’ll get you the kill you paid us for.”

  Nick and Nõn listened to the conversation between the sponsors and Jay from a mere 3 feet away. Lying facedown under the floor the men stood on, they might as well have been in the room with them. The sponsors left the command post, unhappy with the day’s results but willing to try again tomorrow morning. Jay was relieved to have them out of his office. Once they’d left, he removed a hardened suitcase from a large sheet metal cabinet. Opening it, he removed the latest in night observation gear. It was fourth generation, military grade, with infrared heat sensing ability as well. If Nick and Nõn were anywhere hidden in the nighttime fauna of the jungle, the night vision gear would locate them. Jay prepared for a long night of tying up the loose ends of the final hunt planned for this mission at Camp Baroota. He told the command post technician he would return in the morning, at just before dawn, earlier if he was successful with the night vision gear.

  Before he left the camp, Jay stopped into Fossum and Green’s sponsor rooms and told them they would be leaving in the morning. He would escort them to the airfield and get them on their way. He congratulated Green’s sponsor on the successful hunt and then apologized to Fossum’s sponsor for the ‘unfortunate incident’, as he called it. Fossum’s sponsor was just glad to have survived the incident and thanked him for saving his life. Jay left and walked to the now running truck with his driver waiting.

  “Let’s go find that asshole,” Jay said as he got into the truck. Nick and Nõn heard the entire conversation about the night gear.

  Nick whispered, “Time for me to scout our camp. Stay put, sleep if you can,” and he silently crawled out of the crawlspace and disappeared into the night.

  Nõn was nearly asleep when Nick returned. He smelled like he’d been standing in a campfire while it burned. The first thing he shoved into the command post’s crawlspace were several bottles of water, then came the remains of an opened MRE he’d found in a garbage can near the trophy room.

  “Enjoy, be back in a few,” he whispered.

  Nick didn’t return for some time. Nõn drank one of the bottles of water and saved the rest for later. There was no guarantee of any resupply. They had to conserve resources. She did eat the remainder of the MRE. Funny, she thought as she finished the thrown away food, she couldn’t remember the last time anything tasted so good, much less someone else’s garbage. When Nick finally did return, he could hardly contain himself. Crawling quietly back under the command post, he was in much better spirits.

  “God, I love the dark,” he whispered as he began to tell her what he’d found, done and planned. Before he could really get started, she said, “Nick, you smell like smoke, did you fall in the fire pit?”

  “No, I crawled up to the fire pit and covered my face, arms and clothes with ash. I’m too shiny in the jungle heat; sweat reflects light, and the clothing they gave us is too light to effectively move around in the dark. It’s simple camouflage, that’s all.”

  Nõn nodded and listened as Nick continued.

  “Jay has his favorite saying by Sun Tzu, let me tell you mine. There are many different versions of what Sun Tzu has said, but they all basically say the same thing in different ways. My favorite quote is something like this:

  ‘The opportunity to secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.’

  “Jay is about to get a reality check. While I was out, I found a gold mine.” Nick was beside himself with the mischief he’d been into.

  “On the first trip, I found the water and the MRE, and I thought that was probably as good as it would get. Jay has the place running like a well-oiled machine, but I think he’s slipping. Yesterday’s hunt with Fossum has really knocked him for a loop. He’s made some critical mistakes, and now we can take advantage of them. First, he left the storage building where they put all of our stuff from the plane unlocked. ‘The sponsors’, as Jay likes to call them, get to pick and choose what souvenirs they want to keep, and then Jay destroys the rest. Anyway, I was able to get in the building and get some of our stuff back.”

  Smiling in the dark, Nick said, “Close your eyes, I have a surprise for you.”

  Nõn was suspicious as ever, but Nick insisted, “Go ahead, close your eyes and hold out your hand.” Nõn looked at Nick for a moment and finally took a big breath, closed her eyes and then held out her hand. Nick placed something heavy and cold in her hand. “Now open them.”

  Nõn opened her eyes and could barely see the familiar object in her hand. She gasped and grabbed Nick by the neck and hugged him. “Thank you,” she said over and over. Nick had found her knife.

  “Shhhh…not so loud; there’s still someone in the command post,” Nick whispered. “I thought that might brighten your spirits a bit.”

  Nick continued, “So I went through all the stuff that’s remaining from the last two kills. They haven’t gotten rid of what’s left, and guess what they have in Fossum’s equipment?”

  Nõn had no idea and said so, but Nick was having too much fun. “Come on, you can guess. Remember the briefing way back at Moses Hole?”

  “Moses Hole? What are you talking about? Do you mean Moses Lake, the mission briefing with the flight crews and Jay and everyone?”

  “Remember when I mentioned that back in the early 80s, I was actually stationed there when I was in the military? It was only for one summer, but it was a very long and hot summer. We gave the town the name Moses Hole, because there was nothing to do there and we were all bored beyond belief.”

  “Did Jay know you had been there before? I mean, did you mention it to him?”

  “No, I never mentioned it; seemed like the less he knew, the better. I’ve always had issues with authority, and Jay instantly got on my nerves.”

  “So what else haven’t you mentioned?”

  “Nothing important! Anyway, you’re changing the subject. Guess what I found in Fossum’s gear?”

  Nõn just waited as she continued to make eye contact with Nick; she knew there was no way he could keep the secret for long. Finally, he erupted, “OK, OK, you won’t guess it anyway. He had Det Cord in his gear. Like 50 feet of it on a spool!”

  “I don’t know what Det Cord is, Nick, but from your excitement I can guess you think it is a very good thing.”

  “Oh, hell yes it’s a good thing. It is like Christmas in July good, like Eva Mendes moved in next door and sunbathes nude good, like -”

  Nõn impatiently interrupted him. “OK, OK, I get it, it is good, but why is it good?”

  “Det Cord is an explosive, a really cool one. It can do all kinds of really cool stuff, but what’s even better is that he has so much of it and the blasting caps to make it work. It’s very stable and won’t blow up unless you have the right igniter, and now we have it, we have all of it! Jay is going to shit a brick when he sees what I have planned for his Camp Baroota!”

  Nick’s enthusiasm was starting to excite Nõn as well, and she said, “So what do we do now? What’s next?”

  “Next? Oh, nothing. Now we wait. I overheard the two remaining sponsors talking about leaving tomorrow and that Jay would be driving them. Guess Fossum nearly killed one of them and they want to get out of here ASAP. As soon as Jay returns, I need to borrow that knife and go back out into the night for a moment to do some underhanded dirty deeds, and then we relax for a while. We’re still outgunned, and outnumbered. We just have some huge assets now in our favor!”

  Nõn sighed; the man was fifty-four years old and still acted like he was twelve or thirteen. He was childlike and playful one moment, and deadly the next. An enigma wrapped in a mystery, that was Nick, she thought, as she gave him a dirty look and then let out a long, slow breath of air. He could be exhausting.

  “Oh, and I found more food. Here.” He handed her an unopened MRE, and she tore it open. They shared the meal silently while waiting for Jay’s return.

  The turn of events for Jay had continued after he went out in the jungle to look for Nick and Nõn. Once he actually got out of the truck and into the foliage, the insects had been relentless. Using the night scope had been a smart idea. It enabled him to view large areas clearly, and he was able to take up observation points on high hills and in trees that enabled him to increase his coverage. Problem was, they’d just disappeared. There was no sign of them. Zip, zero, nada. Finally, after several hours of searching, Jay decided to call it a night and come back in. Besides the insects feasting on his exposed skin, the batteries on the scope were dying quickly. The scope hadn’t been used since the camp had opened for business, so the batteries weren’t fully charged when he left the camp. He told the driver to pack it up, and he headed back earlier than he’d planned.

 

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