bullet or a bribe. They come to you and give you the choice of either taking a briefcase full of money or being killed on the spot. It’s very effective. There’s probably a whole chapter on it in the unexpurgated version of ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People.’ Point is, anyone here might be on their payroll, and frequently is. The question isn’t how they knew, it’s why they bothered. Me, Harrison, Okocha, we’re small fry, not worth setting up an ambush and dragging mortars halfway across the jungle for.”
I said, “Sophie.”
“She’s safe. I saw her get on the helicopter.”
“She’s not small fry. She’s a big deal.”
Lisa shook her head. “I doubt they even knew she was there. We told the Colombians we were bringing technical experts, but we didn’t give them names.”
I wondered if I should tell her about the mysterious link between Sophie and Kostopoulos, but decided against it. Not until I had asked Sophie about it myself. Assuming I ever saw her again.
“Listen,” Lisa said. “James, I’m sorry. I don’t even know how to apologize. I would never have brought you here if I had even dreamed this might be possible. I’m going to get you out of this. I promise.”
“I always wanted an extraordinary life. Should have been more careful what I wished for.” I tried to laugh. “They’ll come find us as soon as the rain clears, right? I mean the good guys. They’ll rescue us and it’ll be an amazing story to tell my friends.”
“Right.”
But she didn’t seem anywhere near as confident as I would have liked.
Chapter 10
“You’re Canadian, right?” Lisa asked, at our next rest stop.
“Yeah. What gave it away?”
“I noticed you bleed maple syrup. Also, your accent. How’d you wind up in California?”
“Sophie, mostly.”
“How’d you two get together?”
“A friend. Jesse.” A friend who might be indirectly responsible for our wretched state, I didn’t say. “At this crazy hacker party. First time we met we were on the roof of a warehouse in Brooklyn wearing biohazard suits and drinking absinthe.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t, actually. Not really my scene, and her dad had just died. She got pretty drunk, and kind of weepy, and Jesse sort of dumped her on me, and… ” I trailed off, remembering. “Somehow we wound up sitting up all night in this diner, drinking coffee and talking. You know how when you were younger, sometimes you’d meet a stranger, and there’d be something about them, and you’d just pour your heart out in a really deep conversation? I didn’t even think that could happen to me any more. I mean, I was thirty. But it did. Anyways, she lived in L.A. and me in Toronto, and I think once we sobered up we were both sort of embarrassed, but when I went to California a couple months later to see Jesse, we met up again, and it happened again. We’ve been together ever since.”
“Nice story.”
I shrugged, remembering how yesterday Sophie’s deceit, and the very real prospect of breaking up with her, and the thought of all the grief and dislocation that would follow, had seemed an almost unbearable weight. Compared to what I faced now those seemed like wonderful problems to have.
“How did you get into the DEA?” I asked, to keep the conversation alive. It was nice to have something to think about other than the paralyzing fear of discovery, abduction, captivity, torture and death.
Lisa considered. “Kind of fell into it, I guess. I used to be in the Army. Hated it. Someone was always ordering me around. They never told me that was going to happen. But I did like getting paid to shoot people, so after my discharge I looked for another job like that. The police and FBI wouldn’t take me because they said I had some kind of psychotic antisocial homicidal tendencies or something. But it turns out in the DEA that’s actually a big advantage.”
Despite the circumstances I laughed. Her deadpan was perfect.
She looked away for a moment. “My mother used to have a drug problem. So I take it all kind of personally. So I joined up.”
“She’s better now?”
“She overdosed when I was in Iraq.”
“Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“Let’s get going,” she said curtly, rising to her feet. “The narcos won’t stop for the rain, and they live here, once they find our trail they can probably follow us anywhere.”
I stared at her, pierced by renewed terror. I had been telling myself we were almost safe. “Seriously?”
“It’s possible. I vote we go get rescued instead of staying and finding out.”
We slogged onwards through the soaking rain. Her jacket got wet enough that I began to fear that the water might damage my phone, and I began to feel chilly when we stopped for breaks. Then it stopped, suddenly, as if God had simply turned off the tap, and the clouds began to disintegrate into blue sky. When we stopped in a small rocky clearing patch I took my shirt off to let the afternoon sun warm me.
“Keep it on,” Lisa said sharply. “The only way to dry your clothes out here is to wear them. You won’t want a wet shirt if we wind up spending the night.”
I gave her an alarmed look. “I thought we were supposed to get rescued today.”
“We’re supposed to do everything we can to maximize our chances. The rest is out of our hands.”
“That’s comforting,” I muttered, and put the shirt back on.
When we stopped the insects were almost unbearable, and when we started again the blisters on my feet were so painful they brought tears to my eyes, until they went numb and were replaced by the agonizing protests in my cramping legs. I forced myself to trudge onward behind Lisa, who marched like an unstoppable machine. I told myself she had an unfair advantage because she was smaller, the square-cube law made it easier for her to support her body weight. Though there was also the small fact that she had the physique and stamina of a professional athlete, while I was a casual runner.
In my haze of exhaustion I didn’t even hear the noise until she stopped, cocked her head, and said, “What’s that?”
For a second I couldn’t hear anything but my own pounding heartbeat. Then a strange high-pitched buzz prickled at my ears.
At first I feared another mortar attack, and my lungs seemed to squeeze shut with terror; but then I realized, no, this sound was a different. And yet oddly familiar. A rescue helicopter? No. But I was almost sure it was some kind of engine -
I started as if shot. “Oh,
Chapter 11
I didn’t need to tell her twice. She took off along the path of least resistance, and I followed, all my aches and pains forgotten in the face of imminent death, sprinting until I caught my foot on a root and sprawled facefirst into mud.
The growling engine dopplered closer. I rolled over to my back and caught a glimpse of it between two towering canopy trees as it soared overhead. It looked just like the one we had examined in the school. Its motor sounded stronger than our lab’s UAVs, and it looked sleeker in flight, more aerodynamic. In flight it reminded me of a dull gray dragonfly grown to monstrous horror-movie size.
Its buzz diminished into the distance. I exhaled with relief, then wondered if its belly camera had captured our
