Strangely enough, they released me. Their Chief jabbed me with the butt of a rifle so that I fell to my knees on the muddy jungle floor. “Mierde, gringo,” he said. Which, for some reason, they all found very funny.
I was puzzled when I realized I’d been left alone. They knew I was from Covert Ops. The Colombian rebel chief, despite his army fatigues, was a Harvard-educated South American. Nor was their HQ some ratty jungle enclave. Before I was captured, I had a glimpse of an air-conditioned, hi-tech facility with banks of equipment that outdid anything at MIT – including a particle accelerator. Jeez! What cocaine money can buy.
I had failed to find out what they were up to. But now I had to get back alive. The only obstacle in my way was three hundred miles of uncharted jungle.
My jungle survival skills clicked into operation as a conditioned reflex – conditioned, because that was standard Ops training. Thus I emerged at a small town on the river five weeks later unscathed, merely leaner and meaner. I located a ham radio, the only one in town, and MTC’d. That is, I Made The Call.
When the chopper came to pick me up, no one said much, mainly because they were all in Contam-Suits. When we reached HQ - a heavily camouflaged bunker in the middle of Jungle Nowhere - there was another surprise. HQ had something like 2,000 staff working on a 24-hour roster, and yet the place was deserted.
I was dumped on a mechanized trolley and sent through a series of decontamination scans. These did everything except make me feel clean. When the tech geeks were sure I wasn’t carrying some lethal bio-hazard, a stony-faced Med appeared on the overhead video and said, “Proceed to cubicle 8 on foot. There you will find clean clothes, shaving gear and food. Be ready in fifteen minutes...on the dot.”
Something was up, but my apprehension was overshadowed as always, by simple physical mundanities. Namely, the desire to shave, change, eat and, above all, take a dump in a flush toilet. My guts had started to hurt; roots and berries wreak havoc with regularity, no matter what they say in the fiber ads.
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I lay naked, a score of gadgets attached to my body. Thick plate glass separated me from the Med Team. The top Med, Neil, keyed the talkback and said, “Jack, you’re carrying something.”
I got the same cold feeling I’d had all the way through my jungle trek, that the rebels had done something to me. Bright lights, operating tables, sedation, drugs, the scene played back before my eyes.
Neil delivered the bad news with clipped precision: the Colombians were manufacturing tactical nuclear devices as small as a child’s marble. What’s more, I had one buried in my head.
My senses reeled as Neil said, “The timer is a weak isotope with a rapid decay. It will detonate at noon tomorrow.”
“Is there nothing you can do?” My own voice sounded distant, my ears were roaring.
“The area has been evacuated,” replied Neil, “but that was just in case we made a mistake.We need our staff back now, so we'll have to get you out.”
“To where?” I said numbly.
“Somewhere we can watch you safely until the deadline has passed.”
Deadline. Right, DEADline. Neil was really saying that I was the only one going to be dead.
“Jack, we’ve run out of options. Trying to take it out will also detonate it.”
I’d always been aware that someday I might be called on to lay down my life for the cause, but knowing the precise moment was different. Neil realized that, too. His face softened and he whispered, “Sorry, Jack.”
Which is why I found myself sitting on a hill five miles away from HQ, shackled to a steel post. They were taking no chances; I might go crazy and do something irrational.
I was left with food, drink, and enough recreational drugs to turn on half of San Francisco, in case I wanted to cloud-nine out. My comrades were strangely taut. No one wanted to break down. We were soldiers.
But when they all turned to face me and saluted, with the Stars and Stripes playing on a small CD unit, my lips started to tremble. I lowered my head so they could not see me crying. When I raised it, I was alone and, I really cried.
I had taken the watch proffered me, but I refused radio contact. There was nothing to talk about. What do you say to a dead man?
Folk lore says your life flashes before your eyes, but after three bourbons and three tokes of the best Colombian marijuana, I almost dozed off. I jerked awake and my eyes shot to the watch: 12.40!
I lay for some minutes, trembling, then I stood up, hope welling in my chest. Suddenly I was blinded by a gigantic flash, and slammed to the ground.
I came to, stupified, and gazed across the jungle at a gigantic crater where HQ had once been. Then I realized I had not been the bomb, but the trigger, and 2000 people were dead.
But how?
Then it came to me. I had left something behind. Something that had been attached to my gut. I recalled the pains. The implant in my head must have been triggered by the scans to detach the bomb and initiate peristalsis. It had ended up in the septic tanks.
Mierde, gringo. Right.
A noise behind me made me turn. It was Neil with two medics. I glanced back at the crater, shocked.
Neil shook his head, smiling. "We did evacuate after all - just in case. But how about you? How are you feeling?"
"Like sh-"
I stopped myself.
I don't think I'll ever use that word again.