Читать книгу Whisper Quiet - Tim Longmire - Страница 7

Yea, I screwed up alright. The limited light provided by the moon exposes my victim. I have stabbed to death a 200 lb plus wild boar hog. In any other situation I could see the humor in this, Zach has always referred to my Mark II as a “Big Pig Sticker”.

But as fast as stuff rots and goes to smelling in a moist jungle, this is going to be like sending up a flare to anybody and everybody in just a few hours. His smell will fill the Jungle air for miles. Find the pig, find my trail and find me. Not to mention the fact 200 pound pigs don’t go around throwing themselves on knifes.

The flies are getting horrible already, the ants won’t be far behind claiming their piece of the pie. I get up, fold up my Ghillie, pig blood and all and put it in my ruck, it’s still too dark for me to move, my sense of time tells me I have at least an hour before enough light to move out of here. Flies are landing on me, biting me, looking for something to eat. I move a few yards away from the carcass of the pig and sit down with my poncho under me. No sense in wasting time, I open my ruck and take out a peanut butter packet, slowly eating it and drinking some water. As I am contemplating what to do, to some how try and salvage this situation.

I remember the little river I filled my canteen in yesterday, about a klick back. It holds the key to the problem. I decide to backtrack, it means I will be losing half a day. The bad thing? It means I’ll have to move faster to get to the target on time, and moving fast is risky when you are in hostile territory.

I move as soon as I think I can see well enough to follow the trail. It takes me just a short time to travel back down hill to the river. At the rivers edge I open the bolt on my rifle catching the live round it ejects. I push the round back into the rifles magazine and I leave the bolt open. It should allow the barrel and breach to drain enough so when I cycle a round back in I can fire it and not have it blow up in my face. I also take a short length of ranger cord and tie it around the top of both my boots sealing them, hopefully keeping river critters from getting in my pants and boots. Once done I slip into the river and immediately wash the fly attracting blood off my face, off my shaved head, my arms and rinse out my cravat and tie it back on my head. I head down river, its about three feet deep with a silty sticky bottom. As I move I am carrying my rifle at port arms, scanning the shore as I move.

The river is heavily shaded with overhanging trees and vines on both sides giving me pretty good cover. My hope is by moving through the river it will cover my trail and possibly deter anyone that follows me. I plan on staying in the river just long enough to wash the blood out of my clothes and off my gear, from time to time I dip down into it and let the water run out taking the blood with it. As soon as I can find a way to get out I’m going to take it, trudging through the muck on the bottom of this thing is taking its toll, tiring me out quick. I watch as the blood coming out of clothes continues down stream ahead of me, one thing I haven’t considered till now. I am in a South American river, following a trail of blood, Piranha? That would be the shit, to be eaten by a bunch of damn fish. Although, it would be ironic since as a kid, the fish my Dad caught were a mainstay in our diet.

I have been trudging down this river now for about a kilometer, and have yet to find an exit from it. I need to get out of this river ASAP, its starting to get deeper and the current is picking up, the rains that fall daily are making it swell I guess. No worry of being spotted yet, the shoreline is covered in dense undergrowth, in fact I have had to dive under three times to get under overhanging trees. The time I am spending is costing me. As I round what seems like the 100th bend in this snaking ass river I spot what I am looking for. On the shoreline to my right, is an animal slide, with a trail leading in the direction I need to go. At least I hope so.

My eagerness to get out and get back on track for the mission over whelms me and I stop paying attention. A big mistake in any situation. I step forward and immediately realize I’m in a drop off, the water rushes up around me, the weight and bulk of my ruck pulls me to the bottom and the current takes over, I am being sucked under.

I am swept by the current about 10 feet before I am brought to a sudden halt, still submerged in the murky ass water made even more murky by my struggles. The current has pushed me into a strainer, the limbs of a submerged, fallen tree. My ruck is snagged, trapping me in the grip of the rivers embrace. I realize there is only one option, shuck the ruck and force my way to the surface and the life giving oxygen it will provide me. I peel the straps of the ruck off and crawl up through the limbs leading the way with my rifle. As my head breaks the surface I freeze, scanning the area to see if all the flailing and splashing has drawn any attention, the river bank is quiet.

I pick some sturdy limbs to lay my rifle across, it sucks but I have to go back down and get my ruck, it’s mission essential. I wrap the sling off the rifle around the limbs locking it in place, problem is I will have to unwrap it before I can use the rifle, in a pinch I am screwed, but I have no choice I can’t risk losing it too. I take several deep breaths and slip back under the murky water pulling myself down through the limbs, to my ensnared ruck sack. I get to the bottom and fear floods over me, my ruck sack is not where I left. I realize the current broke it free and took it. I am in such deep shit. I continue to grope around till my lungs start screaming for oxygen. They force me to return to the surface. Damn, this is not good at all.

I hang suspended in the river feeling the current flow past me. My mind is racing for ideas. I take a few deep breaths clearing my fears and restoring my brain with clear thinking oxygen. That’s when I see them, just out from where I am, about ten feet. It’s a steady flow of bubbles coming to the surface, and heading down river with the current. The kind of bubbles something would make as it slowly filled with water forcing the air out. My mind hatches a plan.

I will leave the protective cover of the overhanging tree. Swim upriver the ten feet or so out to the general vicinity the ruck is in, let the current drift me downstream towards the bubbles, the whole time holding my breath while groping around the muddy, murky, stagnant bottom of this river, and fighting to stay submerged. Find and recover my rucksack, then continue to swim the thirty five to forty feet across the river to the opposite shore, the whole time holding my breath and staying submerged under the water for cover.

My rifle is slung over my left shoulder, with the stock up and barrel down, I had opened the bolt, this will allow water to flow out of the barrel as soon as the breach and the top of the barrel clear the surface. With just a slight push of the mouser action, I can send a bullet into the breach from the magazine with a non-obstructed barrel ready to fire. I have attached a three-foot length of ranger cord to my rifle sling and one of my belt loops. This will give me a retrieval leash in case it is dislodged from me during the trip out from under the tree.

I have always been a strong swimmer, my father taught me at the young age of five, he had a unique but cruel way to teach a kid to swim. We were in a small flat bottom boat fishing on a lake near Fort Bragg, I asked my father if he would teach me to swim, simple question. But I had made a fatal mistake that I wouldn’t make again, I lost count, count of how many six packs my father had drank, a big mistake. He looked at me with a glare of hatred in his eyes, followed by an evil smile, got up from the boat seat and threw me over the side of the boat into the water. No, I did not have a life jacket on, and yes, the water was deep, to me at that moment it was an abyss. His words to me were loud and clear, “Swim or drown, you worthless little shit”. I was able to dog paddle and tread water on the surface for a bit, slowly following my father and the flat bottom boat as he rowed away. Watching as it got smaller and smaller, surely he wasn’t going to leave me here to drown. I realized yes he was. As my strength started failing and my lungs started filling with water, my screams were echoing back at me from the shoreline, my father never slowed down, never looked back. It hurt, both the water in my lungs and the realization that my father was going to let me drown, no he was drowning me. I lost the urge to fight it any longer and I began to sink into the dark watery grip of the lake, actually it was more a swamp. I felt the water close in around me, and I saw him, the devil himself coming for me up from the deep.

Then one of my heroes kicked in, good old Johnny Weissmuller, yep, Tarzan himself. I remembered the Saturday matinees, watching this guy swim through crocodile infested waters like a fish, remembered playing Tarzan with my younger brother and having to get away from the crocodiles in our back yard, air swimming to get away. And I started kicking and stroking like good old Johnny.

My face broke the surface, I coughed out the water from my lungs and started swimming like a fool for the nearest shore. Obviously, I survived that day, and because of it, I swam every chance I could. I also remember the look of first astonishment, then anger mixed with hate on my fathers face as I sauntered up to our big old black Buick road master and climbed unceremoniously into the back seat, not a word was said. It was a quiet ride home.

Years later as an older kid around ten, while my father was fishing on the sand bar on the Oklahoma side of the Red River, I would swim across the river from the Oklahoma side to the Texas side and visit the bait shop to get a snack, usually a Royal Crown cola, the big sixteen ounce bottle and a bag of peanuts. After eating the snack, I would swim back across the river. People must have thought I was crazy, a damn ten-year-old kid swimming across the flowing river, a river that usually took at least one life every year. Swimming this river almost on a daily basis, taught me how to handle river currents, how to make them work for me, no, how to work with them. Dealing with river currents rendered a deep respect for their power.

I need to move, I am running out of time. It’s now or never. I have to get my ruck back and get it quick.