Jon Evans - Swarm

“Ask them when they find us. Better yet, don’t.”

I sat up straight. “Oh shit.” I felt like I had just swallowed a bowl of icewater. “There’s a cell phone on that thing, I’m sure there’s GPS too. If they can communicate with it, they know where we are now, within maybe a kilometre, a lot less if it triangulated. Oh fuck.”

Lisa took absorbed that, then said grimly, “So get up. Only thing we can do is get away from here as fast as we can.”

We hustled onwards in terrified silence. Eventually we reached the river again. It had grown even wider and wilder, roared through a steep-sided canyon carved by its sheer whitewater churning past rocks the size of SUVs; there was no chance of crossing back to the other side. To the west the sun had vanished behind the hills, and the clouds were beginning to redden.

I wondered too late if we should have tried to lose ourselves in the jungle. Our pursuers knew roughly where we were, and probably guessed we would head for the river. But we didn’t have any choice, if we wanted to be rescued. The only way our rescuers might find us in the jungle was if we turned on our phones, which would get us killed. Our only hope was to be seen from the air. It seemed like a thin one.

My bleak mood brightened considerably when we saw the helicopter.

The river was so loud that we saw the vehicle before we heard it, flying just above the canopy trees about half a mile downriver, heading our way. It was different from the one that had carried us, smaller and lighter, more civilian than military. Lisa hesitated, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing: government or narcos? But it had a Colombian flag painted on its side.

“What do you think?” I asked her.

“I think it’s the good guys. The narcos wouldn’t dare bring their own helicopters up here right now, with the air force looking for us.”

I sighed with relief so intense that I staggered. She began to wave her arms, and I did the same. The helicopter’s course didn’t change, but it was moving towards us, flying slowly, obviously looking out for us; they would see us soon enough.

Then I saw a dark blotch in the sky, above and behind the helicopter, moving fast.

“Oh, no,” I said. “No, no, no, no, no.”

Lisa followed my gaze and froze.

The drone stooped downwards like a bird of prey, heading straight for the helicopter and the signals emanating from within. One or more of its passengers had left their phones on, phones that were sending out here-I-am! radio bursts, hoping for a response from a friendly cellular tower.

“Look out,” I muttered, hoping they would somehow notice, if they sped up they could easily outrun it, “come on, look out, look out, look out… “

The UAV flew straight into the helicopter’s whirling blades, and transformed in an eyeblink into a bright flower of flame. It was like watching a magic trick.

A moment later the dull boom hit us, but I hardly noticed, I was too busy staring aghast at the helicopter, groaning as if I too had been struck. The explosion had caused the Jesus-nut that held its rotor to seize. That in turn had instantaneously transferred the angular momentum of the blades to the rest of the vehicle, causing the whole aircraft to spin wildly in the air for a moment like some kind of demented carnival ride. Then it fell sideways, tumbling head-over-tail like a thrown stone, and disappeared into the jungle on the other side of the river. The roaring water swallowed up whatever sound it might have made.

I stared at where it had vanished for what felt like a long time, as if it might yet rise up unscathed to save us. There were no flames or smoke, it had neither burned or exploded, but I couldn’t imagine anyone surviving that crash. Not that it made any difference to us. That other bank was about as accessible to us as Antarctica.

Eventually I demanded, in a voice that sounded worryingly like that of a lost and frightened child, “What do we do now ?”

After a long moment Lisa answered in a voice so quiet I could barely hear it over the roaring whitewater, yet so determined it brooked no dissent: “We keep going. We don’t give up. We’ve still got a chance.”

But I could tell that she was just trying to keep up my spirits. We weren’t going to be rescued. The narcos would get us first.

That was easily the worst night of my life, even worse than the redeye flight the night my father died. The clothes on our back were still damp, Lisa’s jacket was soaked, and we were a kilometre above sea level, the jungle was freezing. A thick cloud of mosquitoes swarmed us, eating us alive. We huddled together beneath a miserable blanket of ferns and leaves, close enough to the river to find it by sound in the morning, distant enough that we would be able to hear oncoming intruders. My head throbbed, my muscles burned, my various contusions ached, and all these agonies and the cold seemed to add to each other’s potency. But worst of all was the fear.

“Breathe deeply,” she murmured to me, as I shivered. We were so close that I could feel her breath against my cheek. “Tibetan monks can keep themselves warm in subzero conditions with breath alone.”

I tried to follow her example. Her whole body rose and fell with every respiration. She was all taut muscle, holding her felt like holding a wild animal. Our bodies lay pressed together tightly, like lovers, but there was nothing even remotely sexual about it, we were just two desperate creatures trying to survive.

“Do you think they’ll come after us tomorrow?” I asked.

“You mean the narcos or the air force?”

“Either. Both.”

She paused to think. “They’ll send someone after the missing helicopter, the air force, but they might think we got picked up before the crash. If they can even find it. Wouldn’t be the first time a chopper went missing in the jungle. God damn it.”

“Yeah. We were so close.”

“Not what I mean. Harrison would have been on board.”

I flinched, horrified. It hadn’t occurred to me that people we knew might have died in that crash. “Oh my God. Sophie. She might have come along to track our phone signals -“

“No way in hell Harrison would have allowed a civilian on a rescue mission. Don’t worry. That I can absolutely guarantee.”

I relaxed as much as I could. “Did you know him well?”

“Not really. But he was a good soldier.”

That reminded me of her military tenure. “How long were you in the Army?” I really just wanted to keep talking, about anything. It was better than silent misery.

“Four years.”

“Why did you join?”

She snorted. “You ever been to Hondo, Texas?”

“No.”

“It’s famous for one thing, the sign outside town that says ‘This is God’s Country, Please Don’t Drive Through It Like Hell.’ They need it, because people take one look and stand on the gas pedal. If you’d grown up there you’d have done anything to get out too.”

“You don’t sound Texan.”

“I have done everything humanly possible to expunge the stain of Hondo, Texas from myself.”

“Oh.”

“And my mom was Mexican via Minnesota. Anyways the Army seemed like the only way out. Everything else looked like a dead end. And I guess maybe I wanted some structure in my life. Never exactly got much from my mom.”

“What about your dad?”

“Dad who?”

“Oh.”

“Don’t get the wrong idea. She always loved me. She was just seventeen different kinds of fucked up.”

I didn’t say anything.

“But the army was good to me. Straightened me out. Mostly.” I felt her smile. “Paid for my degree, too. And sometimes they let me shoot rocket launchers. You ever fire a rocket launcher?”