runner airstrip where an uncertain rendezvous with fate awaited them. Did it get any better than this? Yes, it did. But not today.
CHAPTER 47
The ground sloped uphill from the river, and the trail was so narrow it almost didn’t exist. But it was better than cutting through the brush and vines, which could take hours. Brodie checked his watch. If this trail came close to the airstrip, they might be only a half hour late for their rendezvous.
He turned on the sat phone and got a beep, which was the battery’s way of telling him it was dying. If people had a dying beep, he would be beeping. He looked at his present grid position and tried to correlate that with the grid of the airstrip, but he’d need another reading to establish his direction of march. He shut off the sat phone. He hoped it had enough juice left to give him grid coordinates along the way, and also enough life so he could leave it on to get the call from the Otter pilot. If there was an Otter.
The jungle was quieter than he’d thought it would be, but now and then he heard howler monkeys and the screech of birds. The humidity was over a hundred percent, if that was possible, and the air smelled of rotting vegetation and dank earth. He brushed his hand through webs with spiders the size of walnuts. Vietnam was probably like this. Iraq was no treat either, and he was sure Afghanistan sucked. The U.S. should declare war on Bermuda.
He glanced back at Mercer and Taylor. Mercer seemed to be living up to his end of a bad bargain, but Taylor was falling behind. Brodie was starting to feel the difference between walking with boots and walking in his socks. He wondered how the Pemón trekked barefoot over this rough terrain. Brodie knew, as every infantryman did, that it’s not how strong your legs are, it’s how strong your mind is. Push on. Think about cool pools and hot babes, they’d told him in infantry training. Ironically, it was Mercer who looked okay because he’d swallowed a lot of water. Brodie hoped Mercer didn’t get the shits on the flight out.
It was still uphill, and Brodie put one foot in front of the other, which was the only way to move forward. He glanced back at Mercer and Taylor again, then slowed up so Taylor could close the gap. He was glad he’d kept Mercer gagged, because Brodie didn’t want to hear the Delta Force officer telling them to get the lead out of their asses and step lively. Actually, Mercer, with his hands behind his back and his body hunched forward, chewing on his gag, looked almost professorial, like an absentminded dean at an English school, mumbling to himself as he walked across the quad. Brodie wondered what Kyle Mercer would look like in a courtroom, dressed in greens and a tie. He could beat the desertion rap, and even beat his Flagstaff involvement. And as for the murders of the two CIA officers on opposite sides of the earth, that wouldn’t be easy to prove. If the trial officer and JAG threw enough at him, something might stick. But even if it did, Kyle Mercer, former hero and Taliban prisoner, might walk in a few years. Things that look crystal clear to the cops don’t look so clear in a courtroom. Especially when the accused is wearing his crisp uniform with a few rows of service ribbons, which often influenced the court-martial board.
Brodie had a mental image of Kyle Mercer knocking on his door someday. Or Taylor’s door—assuming they had different doors.
Brodie never thought twice about the men he’d put behind bars. They were mostly losers, malcontents, and stupid, and posed no post-confinement threat. Kyle Mercer, however, was another species, a smart killing machine with a big grudge.
So… maybe Worley was right, but for the wrong reasons. Maybe Captain Mercer needed to die—not just to shut him up, but also to make him pay for the crimes that could confuse the court—but not confuse anyone else involved in this case.
Brodie looked at the gun in his hand—Mercer’s gun. If Brodie had been alone, or with some other guy who saw it as he saw it, Mercer would have been dead a second after he dropped his gun and raised his hands.
He glanced back at Maggie Taylor. She had a moral compass, even if the needle wandered a bit. He