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I look around at where we’ve landed. Downed trees and broken branches litter the ground, making it almost look like the plane landed in a clearing. Well, I guess it did after we made said clearing by dropping a plane here.
“Alright, while she can’t hear us, tell me what you’re thinking.”
“I’m thinking we’ve been played. Set up to take the fall on this.”
“This, being?”
“Fucked if I know, but it’s bigger than rescuing an FBI agent.”
“I assumed a double-cross when we found the agent’s badge before take-off, but every agency has its bad eggs. That doesn’t mean the whole mission is phony. So tell me what I’m missing.”
“Greg let us know that we’d been compromised. That’s more than a rogue agent. And it sure as hell wasn’t the cartel. Our security is too good for that. If Greg didn’t want me to tell him our coordinates, it’s because someone was listening in or had hacked the system. He knows the danger we are in crash-landing here, so for him to delay help means whatever he’s up against is huge.”
“Fuck. I had a feeling you were going to say something like that.”
He moves to the side of the plane where the wing is hanging on by a thin strip of metal, and I follow, taking in the damage.
“Obviously, the damage makes it impossible to tell, but I’m guessing the fuel tanks were fucked with. There was no warning, nothing telling me we were losing fuel until we were too far to do anything about it.”
“Someone would have had to have overridden the warning systems, shutting down the alerts, making it so they only kicked in at the last minute.”
“Yep.”
“Well, fuck.” I stop for a second and look up at him. “At least, that limits the people it could be,” I say carefully.
He looks at me, crossing his arms. “And opens up the potential that the traitor could be closer to home than we would like.”
“Well, we know it’s not Greg. If it was, he just made his job a thousand times harder trying to find us.”
“Agreed.”
“Maybe we should talk to Salem. See if she has any enemies besides the cartel. I mean, what was she even doing there? A woman who looks like that and can do what she can do? It’s like handing Adam an apple and telling him not to take a bite.”
“I can resist anything except temptation,” Zig murmurs.
“Tupac?”
He rolls his eyes. “Oscar Wilde.”
“Well, that would have been my second guess.”
We move around the plane, checking the external damage, which is pretty fucking bad, but nothing looks like it’s going to explode.
“I think it’s safe enough. The smell of fuel is already fading. Them draining it actually did us a favor.”
I don’t point out that draining the fuel is the reason we’re in this mess in the first place.
“Let’s move out. I want to secure a perimeter around the wreckage, say ten feet out for now. I know we can guard it, but I want to at least see what the area around us is like. We’re safe for now. So, we’ll hole up here until we come up with a game plan. If not, we’ll have to take what we can carry and move out.”
“She’s slept some, but I think healing is taking more out of her than she’s letting on. I’m not sure she’s up for a trek through the jungle just yet.”
“I know, Oz, but we might not have much choice.” He sighs as we start circling the plane, moving outward as we do.
It’s shadier under the trees, but that doesn’t change the humidity. We keep moving outward, occasionally finding more parts of the plane, when Zig grabs my shoulder and points. I follow his finger and see a thin wisp of smoke, then smell the familiar scene of twisted metal.
Looks like we’ve found the tail assembly of the plane. We move toward it, guns drawn. If we’ve found it, it stands to reason someone else could have too. It’s easy to think you’re alone in a jungle this size, but becoming complacent will only get a man killed. When we reach it, Zig puts his fingers to his lips and indicates for us to circle it first, each going in the opposite direction.
“Clear,” Zig states when I meet back up with him.
