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Earlier that day, I’d been watching her as she gazed around at the jungle in wonder. I loved that she still had that sense of innocent amazement. When you’ve spent enough time in combat, you lose that: you start to see the places you go in terms of ambush points and sniper positions. But once I’d seen how Olivia reacted to the jungle, I looked around again with fresh eyes, taking in the purple and pink butterflies and the tiny blue frogs clinging to leaves, and you know what? It was amazing.
She was good for me.
About a hundred feet from the bottom of the valley, the path we were following turned to loose gravel and small stones. We had to go slow, testing each foot as we put it down, or we’d wind up tumbling head-over-feet all the way down. When Olivia slipped a little, I lunged and grabbed her hand to stop her falling. The instant I touched her, I felt something inside me lift: it was like I could breathe again. It felt right.
She steadied herself, then nodded at me gratefully and waited for me to release her.
I couldn’t let go. I knew that once I did, I’d most likely never hold her hand again. God, what’s wrong with me? But it was how I felt. I stared into those frozen-forest eyes, my chest aching…
And let her go.
We reached the bottom of the valley just as the sun was slipping below the horizon. As we emerged from the trees, all of us stopped and stared and Colton gave a low whistle.
We were looking at a house. A grand, hacienda-style home, right in the heart of the jungle. The setting sun turned the white stucco walls amber and cast deep shadows under the row of arches that ran along one side of the house.
Years ago, someone had cleared an area of jungle the size of a football field and then built this place at the edge, taming nature against all odds. But the place had been abandoned for decades and the jungle was taking the land back. What had once been a manicured lawn was now long, scrubby grass and the paved paths were overgrown and uneven. Young trees were sprouting up fast at the edges of the cleared area, shrinking it, and vines had grown up the walls and over the windows of the house. In another ten years, the place might not even be visible.
“How?” asked Danny. “There are no roads out here. There’s nothing out here.”
Cal pointed across the valley. “There’s a river, listen.” And when we all stopped and listened, there was the distant sound of water. “Probably brought everything in by boat. That’s what I did with my cabin in Idaho.”
“But why?” asked Danny.
“Drugs,” I told him. “Remember, we’re not far from the border with Colombia. Someone high up in the cartel built it so they had somewhere luxurious to stay while they were managing things out here. Then the police or a rival caught up with them and it’s been abandoned ever since.”
We crept cautiously inside. The entrance hall was huge, two stories with an elaborate stone staircase and a black and white tiled floor. Birds had built a nest in the chandelier that hung overhead. We did a room-by-room sweep just to be sure, but the place was empty. It was in surprisingly good condition too .Anything valuable that could be easily carried out was gone, but the windows were intact, so the place had stayed dry, and the bedrooms still had beds.
“Might as well make ourselves comfortable,” said JD. “But no lights.” He pointed to the windows: the curtains had long since been stolen. “They’d be visible right up and down the valley.”
No light meant no fire, but we had some chemical self-heating pouches and we used them to warm up some MREs. There weren’t many left: we’d had to travel light, so we’d only brought enough to last through the mission, plus a little for emergencies. I got chili with beans: edible, but I’d rather have been back at that little cafe in Mount Mercy. It bothered me that I’d never see that place again.
When we were done, and Colton had “tidied up” any uneaten desserts, he and I took the first watch. As the others spread out amongst the bedrooms, we went outside and started walking the perimeter. The sun was fully down now, and with clouds blocking the moon and stars, it was almost pitch black. JD was right: out here, any light would be visible for miles and bring the cartel running. I had to grudgingly admit that he knew his stuff. But I muttered a lot of curses, tripping over vines and banging my shins on rocks, before my eyes adjusted to the dark.
“It’s dark as the inside of a cow,” muttered Colton, when our paths crossed. “Next time, we could do with night vision gear.”
