Brodie recalled that the Code of Conduct stressed a soldier’s duty to escape from captivity, and every escape and evasion course strongly advised that you do so in the very early stages of your captivity—while you were still psychologically and physically fit, and before you were starved, beaten, or restrained in a POW camp. Captain Mercer knew that too, but apparently had not acted on that advice, which resulted in two years in a Taliban hell. The E&E course also pointed out that your place of capture would probably be close to a place where you could reach the safety of friendly forces or the relative safety of no-man’s-land. And finally, you were reminded that the frontline soldiers who captured you were not trained to deal with prisoners—which all sounded good in theory, and which was actually true in the case of these six jokers, who hadn’t even bound their wrists or blindfolded them.
And on the subject of blindfolds, as Carmen and everyone knew, if you were blindfolded, that could mean your captors were going to let you live—or at least consider it. But if you saw everything you weren’t supposed to see, that would be the last thing you saw.
All things considered, maybe Mr. and Mrs. Bowman didn’t want to meet Kyle Mercer. Maybe this was Warrant Officers Brodie and Taylor’s last opportunity to make a break for freedom, before they got into the bowels of Mercer’s camp.
The jungle here was thick and offered good concealment, but not muchcover from AK-47 fire. Also, the jungle wasn’t made for sprinting. Still… He said to Taylor in a low whisper, “When I say break, you break right and I break left, and we run a zigzag. We can lose these guys.”
“We can’t outrun a bullet.”
“We’re betting they want live prisoners and will hold their fire and pursue.”
“Bad bet.”
Emilio looked over his shoulder. “Silencio.”
Taylor ignored him and said to Brodie, “Whatever we do, we are not splitting up.”
“Doubles our chances—”
“Cállate!” Emilio looked very pissed and drew Brodie’s Glock and pointed it at him.
Taylor said something to Emilio and he seemed to calm down.
They pressed on, then turned left on another path, which, if Brodie’s internal compass was correct, was taking them in the direction of the mudflat, but farther from the river—the fifteen-minute walk that Carmen had made to the camp. So they were going to the same place, but the difference was that Carmen was ready to fuck every man in the camp, and Brodie didn’t think Maggie Taylor was ready for that.
An escape attempt was still an option, but maybe there’d be a better time and place to try it. Like at night, if they lived that long. Or… they could do what they’d come here to do—what he would have done in the Hen House if Mercer had been there: talk to the man and see if he had a shred of Captain Mercer left in him, or a memory of the soldier that Al Simpson had seen in basic training. Or better yet, maybe there was something left of the kid from San Diego. If none of that was true, then Brodie and Taylor had one card left—the good cop card that almost always worked with a criminal.Tell us, Kyle, what happened to make you do that?Or,Who made you do that? Was it Brendan Worley? Tell us about that.
Or Brodie was putting too much faith in his powers of persuasion and bullshit.
They kept walking, and Brodie could see that Taylor was starting to drag.
They came to a small clearing where an open-sided hut stood, and in the hut were three Pemón men sitting on logs around a long table, cleaning fishand tossing the guts into plastic pails. The Pemón stopped what they were doing and stared at Brodie and Taylor as they approached.
Brodie saw bottled water on the table and called out, “Agua! Por favor!”
One of the Pemón took a bottle of water, stood, and came toward Brodie and Taylor.
Emilio barked something at the man, and he stopped and looked at the two prisoners, then back at Emilio, who repeated his command. The man went back to his fish-gutting.
Brodie whispered to Taylor, “Faint.”
Taylor shook her head. “You faint.”
Well, tough is good. But heatstroke, as he and Taylor recalled from their respective deserts, could kill you. Maybe that’s what she wanted.
Emilio continued on the path and one of the men behind them shouted, “Caminad!”
The jungle path wound through tall trees that blocked the sunlight, and the air was thick with the smell of decomposing vegetation.
Brodie could hear the crack of single-round shots, so Mercer’s men were now practicing marksmanship instead of having fun mowing down targets on full automatic. So what was this camp all about? They were close to an answer.
They approached a clearing with a few huts around the perimeter, and also a fire pit in the middle where Pemón women were burning what appeared to be food scraps and other garbage, and what smelled like raw shit. Another Pemón woman was sweeping out one of the huts. So apparently Captain Mercer taught and practiced good field sanitation, meaning he hadn’t gone completely off the rails, so hopefully they wouldn’t meet Mercer in a dark room filled with human skulls.
The Pemón women, who probably also worked in Kavak, glanced at the two outsiders, who were obviously prisoners. One of them looked closely at Taylor, and if Brodie could read minds as well as he could read faces, then the woman was thinking,Oh, that poor pretty girl. What they will do to her.
Brodie felt his gut tighten.
Ahead, Brodie saw more huts and what looked like a long, open-sided mess hall, and he had the sense that they were reaching the center of camp, and thus whatever it was that passed for a headquarters building. He picturedKyle Mercer, el comandante, standing in front of the HQ building, waiting for them. He wondered if Mercer had his own flag flying on a pole—a large nut would be appropriate.
