John Gilstrap - Damage Control

Jonathan dropped the partially spent mag out of the grip of his MP7 and exchanged it with a fresh one from a pouch on his vest. He made a point of not engaging the enraged teenager. He pressed his transmit button. “Mother Hen, scene is secure. Six visitors sleeping.”

“I copy six sleeping,” she confirmed. Her voice telegraphed her stress.

“How could you do that?” Tristan railed. “What kind of coward hides in the bushes with an arsenal of weapons while the unarmed kid damn near gets killed?”

“I’d go easy on the C-word, there, kid,” Boxers growled from the other side.

“Fuck you!” Tristan yelled, whirling to face the Big Guy. Think Chihuahua versus mastiff.

Boxers recoiled, his face a combination of surprise and amusement. Not many people talked to him that way. Fewer still remembered it afterward.

“What, you think this is funny?” Tristan asked. “This is fun for you? A new game to see how close we can come to getting the precious cargo killed? Is this what you do for grins? Jesus, do you know how many people you’ve killed in the past two days?”

“Which is it?” Jonathan asked. He kept his tone soft and reasonable.

“What?”

“I said, which is it?”

“Which is what? What are you talking about?”

Boxers was already at work collecting intel from the pockets of the deceased, stripping them of identification, notebooks, and anything else he could find and stuffing them into his rucksack for later evaluation. When that was done, he’d move on to the Sandcat and strip it, as well.

Jonathan continued, “Well, on the one hand, you’re pissed that we didn’t shoot sooner, and on the other, you’re pissed that we’ve killed too many. I don’t think you can have that one both ways.”

“You know what I mean,” Tristan said. “That guy was this close to blowing my brains out.”

“Yet your brains are still tucked in and his are hanging out his forehead.” Jonathan holstered the MP7 and made his first real eye contact with Tristan during this exchange. “I did not use you as bait. I left you alone so that if shooting started, the bullets aimed at me would in fact stay away from you. Sometimes Lady Luck gets in the way. You happened to be right where that point man walked.”

“But you waited-”

“-until exactly the moment when I had no choice but to shoot.” Jonathan completed Tristan’s sentence for him. “As for the numbers killed, trust me. I’d be thrilled if all I had to do in my job was to ask for the peaceful return of hostages and then get them. It so rarely happens that way.”

The sound of radio chatter drew Jonathan’s attention to the Sandcat. Someone was asking for a situation report.

“Big Guy!” Jonathan yelled.

“I heard.”

“Let’s drag these bodies off the road and get the hell out of here.”

“What’s happening?” Tristan asked.

Jonathan grabbed a corpse by his shirt collar and started dragging it back toward the vehicle he’d arrived in. “These guys are from the Mexican Military Police,” he explained, a little embarrassed by the strain in his voice caused by the physical effort. “They knew the terrorists who kidnapped you by name, and they were out here specifically looking for the vehicle that we took from the church. In my book, that ties them to the terrorists who took you and your friends.”

Tristan stepped over to help, grabbing the guy’s pant legs and lifting.

“Thank you,” Jonathan said. He was liking this kid. He even liked the flashes of anger. They meant he was working his way out of the poor-me funk and could actually become a helpful player in his own rescue. When Jonathan hefted the body onto the floor of the backseat and went back to grab another, Tristan went with him.

“Anyway,” Jonathan continued. “These guys clearly called in the fact that they had found the vehicle, and they’d clearly been given orders to kill us on-site when they found us. Now, their commanders are calling them back, asking how things went. The smart money says that when there’s no answer, somebody’s going to come looking for them.”

“Plus, what would happen if somebody else just happened to drive past on this road?” Tristan offered.

“Now you’re getting it,” Jonathan said. They lifted a second body and carried him to the Sandcat as well.

“I just don’t understand why all of this is happening.”

“At this point, none of us do,” Jonathan said. “Right now, we’re at that a stage that we used to call ‘adapt and evade.’ ”

“Used to? So you were in the Army or something?”

Jonathan answered with his eyebrows. It never paid to get into details about the past.

Clearing the road of the bodies didn’t take long at all. Clearing it of the blood would be a job for Mother Nature. Jonathan didn’t worry about that. (They called it a rain forest for a reason.) By the time he and Tristan had finished with their third corpse, Boxers was already done and in the process of rummaging through the front seat of the Sandcat.

“Hey, Scorpion,” Big Guy called. “You’ll want to see this.”

Tristan followed. He was becoming a shadow.

“Whatcha got?” Jonathan asked.

Boxers handed him a sheaf of papers. Printouts of pictures. Each of the kids from the school bus, plus airport security pictures of both Jonathan and Boxers. As Jonathan paged through them, he cast a glance toward Tristan. The sadness had returned to his eyes, but he managed it.

“Well, they definitely knew who they were looking for,” Jonathan mused aloud.

“I don’t like this at all,” Boxers said.

“Why?” Tristan asked. “Aren’t the police supposed to be looking for us? I mean we were kidnapped.”

“The police weren’t supposed to know that,” Jonathan explained. “That’s why Big Guy and I were here in the first place. Keeping the police in the dark was a specific element of the ransom demand. Our job was to drop off the ransom and take you home. Now, it turns out that the police were involved from the beginning.”

“Not just the police,” Boxers corrected. “The military police.”

“The chaperones aren’t here,” Tristan said.

Jonathan cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

“The chaperones,” Tristan said. “Their pictures aren’t here. All of us kids, but none of the chaperones.”

“I thought they were all killed,” Boxers said.

“They were,” Jonathan said, catching Tristan’s drift. “But how did the police know that?”

The question stopped Boxers dead. After a beat, he snorted out a laugh. “Yep, it just gets better and better.”

Five minutes later, they were ready to go. With the bodies and the vehicle stripped of weapons, ammo, and any conceivable intel, Jonathan and Boxers made sure that the corpses were all tucked inside. Boxers restarted the engine, turned the wheel just so, and then used a stout stick to lean on the gas.

The Sandcat lurched forward, then slowed to a steady roll downhill. For a second or two, it looked as if it might hit the Pathfinder, but then, in the final few feet, it veered as it should, and rolled off the edge of the road. It crashed through the underbrush, tearing up ferns and bushes. Gaining momentum on the hill, it grazed a tree, then flipped onto its side, beginning a roll that ultimately took it over the edge and down a hundred feet or more into the rocky gorge below.

When it was gone, Jonathan high-fived Boxers and then they turned to see Tristan staring at them, dumbfounded. “You know, they had families,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything to celebrate.”

“How about the fact that that’s not us?” Boxers said.

Jonathan put a hand on the Big Guy’s arm. “Not now,” he said, and he led the way back to the Pathfinder.