A distant rumble of thunder resonated across the treetops, and then there was silence, as if the jungle was holding its breath. Thirty seconds later, I felt the first splashes of rain. The noise of it hitting the leaves even drowned out the BUBs, then the thunder roared directly overhead. Another thirty seconds and the water had worked its way down from the canopy and back on to my head and shoulders.
I turned right and picked my way towards the fence line, paralleling the road about seven or eight metres in. Mentally I was preparing myself for a miserable few hours in the dark. However, it was better to kill time watching the target while I waited for Aaron than doing nothing down at the loop. Time in reconnaissance is seldom wasted. And at least I knew there was no need to crawl into position: the house was too far away for them to spot me.
I moved forward, trying to make a record in my head of everything I'd seen so far at the target. Every twenty paces or so I stopped to check the compass as thunder detonated high above the canopy and rain beat a tattoo on the leaves and the top of my head. I was displaying a builder's crack where my jeans should have been, but it didn't matter, I'd sort myself out again later on. I started to slip and slide on the mud beneath the leaf litter. I just wanted to get up to the fence before it got dark.
I fell on to my knees at one stage and discovered some rocks concealed beneath the mud. I sat there for a while in the dirt, rain running into my eyes and ears and down my neck, waiting for the pain to ease. At least it was warm.
I got up, still resisting the temptation to scratch my back rash to death. A few more metres and a large rotted tree trunk blocked my way. I couldn't be bothered working around it then back on to my compass bearing, so I just lay across it on my stomach and twisted myself over. The bark came away from the rotting wood like the skin on a blister and my chest throbbed from the beasting Sundance and his mate had treated me to in the garage.
As I got to my feet, looking down, brushing off bark, I caught a glimpse to my right of something unnatural, something that shouldn't have been there.
In the jungle there are no straight lines and nothing is perfectly flat;
everything's random. Everything except this.
The man was looking straight at me, rooted to the spot five or six metres away.
FOURTEEN
He was wearing a green US Army poncho with the hood over his head. Rain dripped from the wide-brimmed straw hat perched on top of that.
He was a small guy, about five five, his body perfectly still, and if I could have seen his eyes they would probably have been wide and dancing around, full of indecision. Fight or flight? He must have been flapping. I knew I was.
My eyes shot towards the first six inches or so of a gollock (machete) that his right hand was resting on and which protruded from the green nylon of his poncho. I could hear the rain pounding on the taut nylon, like a drum roll, before it dripped down to his black wellies.
I kept my eyes fixed on the exposed part of what was probably two feet of gollock blade. When he moved, so would that thing.
Nothing was happening, no talking, no movement, but I knew that one of us was going to get hurt.
We stood there. Fifteen seconds felt like fifteen minutes. Something had to be done to break the stand-off. I didn't know what he was going to do I didn't think he did yet but I certainly wasn't going to be this close to a gollock and not do something to protect myself, even if it was with just a pair of pointed pliers. The knife on my Leatherman would take too long to find and pull out.
I reached round with my right hand, and felt for the soaking, slimy leather pouch. My fingers fumbled to undo the retaining stud then closed around the hard steel of the Leatherman. And all the time, my eyes never left that still static gollock.
He made his decision, screaming at the top of his voice as he ran at me.
I made mine, turning and bolting in the direction of the road. He probably thought my hand was going for a pistol. I wished it had been.
I was still fumbling to get the Leatherman out of its pouch as I ran, folding the two handles back on themselves, exposing the pliers as he followed in my wake.
He was shouting stuff. What? Shouting for help? Telling me to stop? It didn't matter, the jungle swallowed it.
I got caught on wait-a-while, but it might have been tissue paper to me right then. I could hear the nylon poncho flapping behind me and the adrenaline pumped big-time.
I could see tarmac ... once on that he wouldn't be able to catch me in those wellies. I lost my footing, falling on to my arse but gripping the Leatherman as if my life depended on it. It did.
I looked up at him. He dinked left and stopped, eyes wide as saucers as the gollock rose into the air. My hands went down into the mud and I slipped and slithered, moving backwards, trying to get back on to my feet. His screams got higher in pitch as the blade flashed through the air.
It must have been a cheap buy: the blade hit a sapling and made a thin tinny sound. He spun round, exposing his back to me in his frenzy, still screaming and shouting as he, too, slipped on the mud and on to his arse.
As he fell, the rear of the poncho caught on some wait-a-while and was yanked vertically. With the Leatherman still in my right hand I grabbed the flailing material with my left and pulled back on it as hard as I could, not knowing what I was going to do next. All I knew was that the gollock had to be stopped. This was one of Chan's men, those boys who crucified and killed their victims. I wasn't going to join the queue.
I pulled again as he landed on his knees, yanking him completely backwards on to the ground. I grabbed another handful of cape and pulled, constricting his neck by bunching the nylon of the hood as I got up. I could hear the rain hitting the tarmac outside as he kicked out and I dragged him and our noise back into the jungle, still not too sure what I was doing.
He had his left hand around the hood of his poncho, trying to protect his neck as the nylon squeezed against it. The gollock was in his right. He couldn't see me behind him, but still he hit out, swirling around in desperation. The blade slashed the poncho.
Still screaming at the top of his lungs in fear and anger, he kicked out as if he was having an epileptic fit.
I bobbed and weaved like a boxer, not knowing why it just seemed a natural reaction to having sharp steel waved in my face. His arse bulldozed through leaves and palm branches. The struggle must have looked like a park ranger trying to drag a pissed-off crocodile out of the water by its tail. I was just concentrating on getting him back into the jungle and making sure the whirling blade didn't connect with me.
But then it did big-time sinking into my right calf.
I screamed with pain as I held on, still dragging him backwards. I had no choice: if I stopped moving he'd be able to get up. Fuck if anyone heard us, I was fighting for my life.
The crocodile thrashed and twisted around on the floor as there || was another almighty clap of thunder, a deep resonant rumbling that seemed to go on for ever. Forked lightning crackled high above, its noise drowning out his shouts and the clatter of rain.
The sharp pain of the cut spread out from my leg, but there was I nothing I could do but go on dragging him into the jungle.
I didn't see the log. My legs hit it and buckled and I fell backwards, keeping my grip on the poncho as I crashed into a palm. Rainwater came down in a torrent.
The pain in my leg was gone in an instant. It was more important to fill my head with other things, like living.
The guy felt the material round his neck relax, and instantly turned round. As he scrambled on to his knees, the gollock was up. I crabbed backwards on my hands and feet, trying to get myself upright again, trying to keep clear of his reach.
Cursing and screaming in Spanish, he lunged forward in a wild frenzy. I saw two wild dark eyes as the gollock blade swung at me. I thrashed backwards and managed to get myself on to my feet. It was time to run again.
I felt the gollock whoosh through the air behind me. This was getting Outrageous. 1 was going to die.
Fuck it, I had to take a chance.
I turned and charged straight at him, face down, bending forward so that only my back was exposed. My whole focus was on the area of the poncho where his stomach should have been.
