Ballistic

THIRTEEN

The afternoon humidity clung to his skin like barnacles on a ship’s hull. Gentry drifted in and out of consciousness for the rest of the afternoon. The fever from his malaria caused him to shake some of the banana leaves off his hide, but he managed to shield himself from the sun by pulling the foliage back over his exposed skin.

Night brought relief from the sun. It also brought out a breeze that was strong enough to blow away his protective covering but somehow not strong enough to keep away the mosquitoes. With a weary hand he scooped mud off the ground next to him, wiped it thickly across his face and neck to try and cover as much skin as possible, but it didn’t really work.

The bug bites kept him awake all night, spiders scurried across his body, and he had nothing left in the tank to kill them or even flick them off. He just lay there like a fallen log as creatures made trails all over him.

The fever caused his brain to swell inside his skull, and with the swelling he lost touch with reality and began seeing visions. Several times he believed he had died; he felt no more pain or heat or hunger or weakness, only a lightness and a peace. But the visions were cruel, like a desert mirage they teased him with their tranquility, and just like in the desert, when they dissipated, they brought about renewed despair.

He saw a big Chevy pickup truck pull up next to the pond. From it stepped his father and Chase, his younger brother. They beckoned him to get up and jump in the cab; they told him they were heading into town for pancakes, and they wanted him to come along.

Court spoke back to them, and with the movement of his scratchy vocal chords, the vision dissipated, leaving him right where he’d lain for fourteen hours.

Dammit.

He wanted to die. He did not want to be alive when the sun rose the next morning.

In the bright moonlight a helicopter hovered just overhead, landed next to the pond, and from it leapt Maurice, his CIA principle trainer and long-time mentor.

“Get your lazy ass up, Violator!” the old Vietnam vet shouted, calling Court by his code name.

Court did not reply at first. He just shook his head. He thought to himself, I’m too damn tired.

“Charlie don’t care if you’re tired!”

“I can’t, sir,” replied Court aloud. “I can’t.”

But when he spoke, when he brought true noise to the night, the vision disappeared. He was alone. Frail, hurting.

Dying.

But he did not die that night; he lived to see morning. The three hours of daylight before the storms came were the worst of his ordeal. He prayed for rain, and when it came, it cooled him and quenched him, but the mud all around his body caused the water to pool, and it became deeper. A few times he even felt his body move slightly, he was floating in the downpour over the saturated earth. He wondered if he would be pulled into the pond, and he was horrified at the thought of drowning in the murky water.

But mercifully, the rain lulled him to sleep.

He awoke to the sound of birds, then voices, human voices. He knew it was day, the rain had stopped, and the sun singed through the humid air and burned his skin.

He heard voices once again; this time he assumed the voices to be nothing more than the beginning of another vision. He did not feel elation or fear; he only lay there, barely alive but drifting away.

The voices were soft at first, but they became louder, as if the speakers were getting closer. Court began to realize he was not dreaming, was not imagining this, and he felt a faint sense of concern. He had no weapon, not like it mattered — he wouldn’t have been able to thumb a safety catch or pull a trigger, much less identify a threat and point a weapon towards a target.

The voices were all around him now, and they were speaking Laotian. They had found him, and as far as he was concerned, they could have him. They could shoot him right here; that would surely be preferable to them dragging him up the hill and hoisting him into a vehicle only to bounce around on the shitty roads on his way back to a cell in which he would certainly die within hours.

Fuck it, he thought, his mind incredibly lucid on this one subject. He’d fight them. These little bastards weren’t taking him anywhere.

Two men knelt over him, peeled off the few banana leaves that were left covering his body. He reached up to punch one, but his arm just sort of wiggled a little next to his body. There was no swing, no punch.

More men came, and he was lifted off the ground and into the air; he screamed in protest and then in pain as his left arm was yanked in a different direction from the rest of his body. He felt himself being hauled up the hill; he heard the men’s guns clanking against metal on their belts as the weapons swung free; his legs were dropped once, and men fell along with them, yelled and barked at one another until he was lifted up again.

The steady slap, slap of boots in mud as they left the muddy pond behind.

Their clipped and impenetrable language felt like ice picks into his ears.

They hoisted him onto the road finally and hauled him towards a black van. Gentry was carried headfirst and faceup, but his head hung upside down and bounced with the strides of the soldiers. The back of the black van opened, and it was dark inside. The men spoke quickly and gruffly amongst themselves, as if they were arguing with one another. Their uniforms meant nothing to him, but their weapons were AKs and long SKSs, the same as the local cops and the prison guards.

They slid him into the back of the van, and the doors shut. The van lurched and sped off, bouncing on the gravel alongside the paved road. Court tried to lift his head but gave up, rolled it from side to side. It took a moment, but he soon realized none of the soldiers had gotten in with him.

He was alone.

Huh?

No, he was not alone. A figure moved into the back from the front passenger seat; Court’s weak neck muscles had dropped his head back on the hard surface of the van, and it rolled towards the wall.

A hand went to his forehead as if taking his temperature. “Bad news, Sally, no luck on the root beer. I brought you some Beerlao. It’s the local brew. That work?”

Court smiled and even that hurt; it stung his sunburned face. But a painkilling wave of relief began in his heart and shot out across his body in all directions. A new energy forced his neck muscles to fire one more time. He turned towards Eddie. He felt tears welling in his eyes, and he fought them. His voice was faint and rough. “Is it cold, at least?”

Eddie shook his head. His eyes were wide and relaxed. That big Eddie Gamble smile widened as he spoke. “Hot as hell, amigo. Tastes a bit like yak piss. Sorry.”

“The soldiers. Are they from Thailand?”

“I didn’t leave the country. You didn’t have time for me to get out and for some other group to come back and find you, so I went to Vientiane. Called in some favors I’d earned with an insurgent force. They aren’t half as badass as they think they are, but I figured they were good enough to help me scoop a guy out of the mud and toss him into a van.”

Court hoisted an arm up with all his might, and Gamble grabbed it and shook it. Court said, “Thanks for coming back.”

Gamble grinned, pulled a large backpack from between the front seats, opened it, began pulling out bags of fluid and syringes and medicines. “You start crying, and I’m gonna tell your buddies in the CIA. You’ll never hear the end of it.” He prepped an IV and jabbed it into Gentry’s arm. “Let’s get you home, amigo.”