Holiday in Eden, Chapter 10

Title: Holidays in Eden
Author: yeahlev
Beta: weaselett

Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action Adventure, Friendship
Warnings/spoilers: Cursing.  Some violence, commensurate with what you see on the show.  Blatant use of geographical and place details as needed.  Set pre-series.
Word Count: 182,943
Summary: Before they were criminals with hearts of gold, they were Eliot Spencer, retrieval specialist trying to make a break from Damien Moreau, and Nate Ford, insurance investigator and family man.  When Nate needs back-up on a dangerous job, he hires Eliot.  They immediately dislike each other.  Then they run afoul of a cartel enforcer, and Eliot has to decide just how far removed he is from being the man he was with Damien.

CHAPTER 10

Guaviare Department, Colombia

October 2004

Day 5

The next morning, Eliot let Ford sleep and scaled a tree.  It was time for some better perspective.

He’d changed into his spare pants so he could use the old pair like climbing gear.  He’d twisted and knotted them so they looked like a thick length of rope.  Then he’d slung them around a thick tree trunk, going up lumberjack-style, one end of "rope" in each hand, the insteps of his feet pressed hard against the bark.

Spikes are for pussies, he grinned to himself as he climbed.

He took deep breaths once he got above the dense underbrush.  There was a palpable feeling of relief -  like he was crawling out of a tunnel he’d been trapped in for years.  The air was less humid, the noise softer.  

Near the top, staring north and a little west, he finally - finally - saw the river.  He took another deep breath and tried to keep the rush of optimism under wraps.  It was a good sign, yes.  But they still had  one full day of hiking at least.  Which was going to be cutting Nate awfully close to his deadline.   

He scanned the rest of the area and saw no signs of movement, no signs of danger, but that almost worried him more.

The FARC would camp at night - they wouldn’t bother trying to track in the dark - and they would burn a fire until morning to ward off insects and animals.  The only reason they might not do that was if they knew they were close.  So either he and Nate still had a good lead or they bad guys were dangerously close.

On their first full day in the jungle, "good lead" seemed pretty plausible.  Now, on the third, it seemed a lot more like wishful thinking.

When he got back down, he unzipped Nate’s hammock.  “Up and at ‘em, Sunshine.”

Nate was laying on his back, forearms crossed over his chest, lips parted, but when the sound of the zipper his him, his eyes flew open . . . before they rolled back in his head and he closed them again.  “Uhh.”

“My thoughts exactly.  Now let’s go.”

Nate struggled into a sitting position, squinting and blinking, rubbing a hand over his face.  He was still pale, but he wasn’t flushed with fever, and he wasn’t as boneless as he had been the evening before.

Of course, he wasn’t all rainbows and sparkles either.

“What are you so perky about?” he grumbled, expression dark.  He clearly was not pleased about waking up.

Eliot looked at him.  He decided to keep his concerns about the FARC cto himself.  He’d been the muscle and the jungle guide and the nurse so far.  Now Ford’s mood was triggering his cheerleader instincts.

“I’m just rarin’ to go,” he smiled, pleasant memories of military camaraderie in his head.  Of the way guys would pick each other up when they were down.  “We got the river in the distance.  We’re in the home stretch, bubba.”

Nate brightened a little at that.  “Yeah?  How much further?”

“Thirty miles.  Give or take.”

Ford blew a deep breath, his cheeks puffing out, and Eliot could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t sure whether to be happy at how much ground they’d covered or depressed about how much they still had to go.

“Come on, man,” Eliot said, clapping him on the back.  “We can do that in a day.  Easy.”

(He didn’t mention that they hadn’t gone thirty miles in a day since they’d started this little hike.)

Ford schooled his features into a mask of determination, and he gave Eliot a little head jerk like he was ready to Let's do This Thing!  Then he swung his legs over the side of the hammock.

“That’s it,” Eliot told him.  “Just try not to get yourself bit by anything else.  Or eaten.”

Ford nodded as he got dressed.  Then something occurred to him.  “Wait.  Did you say eaten?”

Eliot shrugged.  “Did I?”

Ford narrowed his eyes, aiming a sardonic glare straight at Eliot.  “You know I hate you, right?”

“Mutual,” Eliot smiled.  “Totally mutual.”

*

They were two hours in when Eliot heard a noise he didn’t like.  Beneath the birds and the monkeys and the clean sound of branches moving overhead:  the heavy, flat-footed sound of dried leaves rustling on the jungle floor.

He stopped dead, listening.

Behind him, Nate pulled up, too.  “What is it?” He asked, way too loud.

Eliot held up a hand to shush him.  It was human nature to look when you thought there might be a threat.  Eliot didn’t bother to look.  He was listening.

And there it was.  Underneath the noises of the insects and birds.

The metallic springing sound from the bolt of an assault rifle being pulled.

Eliot whirled and dove at Nate, just as the first gunshot cracked through the air.

A bullet struck a tree close enough to Nate’s head that Eliot could see the splinters pelting his neck and ear.  Eliot grabbed him by the shoulders and started moving backwards, belly pressed on the ground, dragging Ford with him.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!”

A quick scan showed him a cluster of rocks and trees near an ditch-like indention in the ground, and he yanked Ford up and pushed him towards it, bullets cracking into trees and whizzing by in the air around them.

They made it behind the shelter without any serious injuries, but Eliot had had to abandon his machete to drag Ford by both hands, and the gunman kept firing, one round after the other.  He didn’t seem to be thinking about stopping either, despite the fact that Eliot and Ford were well-protected.  The shots kept coming, quickly - .

Mechanically, Eliot thought.

Which meant one thing.

Decoy.

Eliot pushed Nate further down in the ditch and threw the packs on top of him.  He turned just in time to see a rifle barrel edging from behind a tree on the other side of their ditch.  He lunged for it.  He grabbed the barrel just behind the sight tab and pulled it hard - to the side and around, making an arc and bringing the FARC guy with it.

It was funny how human instinct could go so wrong, Eliot thought.

The FARC guy would have been better off letting go of the gun and attacking Eliot while he was still whipping the gun around.  But of course he didn’t.  Once you used a gun - really used it - it was hard to let it go.  The gun was life.  And so when someone tried to pull that gun away from you?  Well of course you held on tighter.

Except in this case, that meant arcing around in a semicircle that led straight into Eliot Spencer’s fist.

The guy let go of the gun then.  He dropped like a stone as soon as Eliot’s fist connected with his jaw.  Then Eliot pitched the rifle hard against the rock outcropping closest to him.

The FARC guy wasn’t done, though - only stunned.  He kicked out at Eliot from the ground, catching just enough of his calf to put Eliot off-balance, and when he stumbled, the FARC guy lept up, and they tangled, wrestling.

Even as the guy wrapped himself around Eliot like a python, a voice of warning cried out in the back of the head.  The other guy wasn’t firing anymore.

“Jesus,” he grunted, digging his fingers into a pressure point behind the guy’s collar bone.  “Fuck!”

The guy wailed and started to loosen his hold, and Eliot looked towards Nate.  He had gotten himself out from under the packs and was watching Eliot’s fight with a rock in his hand, as if he were going to leap in there and participate if necessary.

Isn’t that cute, Eliot thought on one level, his natural smartass instincts unable to overlook how ludicrous it was that Ford thought he was going to do anything but get in the way.

On the other level, every alarm bell in his head was going off, because the other gunman was coming up behind Ford, holding a machete.

“Nate!”  He yelled, but even as he did, he knew he had no time.  He couldn’t stop the machete guy before he attacked.

Ford cocked his head a little when he heard his name, like a confused pup.  Then he registered the warning.  His eyes went wide, and he whirled to see what Eliot was looking at, and Eliot could only imagine how wide his eyes went when he saw a guy standing over him with a machete.

Then Eliot heard a thhpt.

The man with the machete froze like a statue with his arm raised over head his head.  Then he fell forward like a tree going down - rigid and straight - hitting the ground face down at Nate’s feet.

A long, thin dart was sticking out of the back of his neck.

When the other FARC guy saw that, he disentangled himself from Eliot and started to run, an awkward, panting, panicky run.

The guy made it about ten feet before there was another thhpt sound, and a dart landed in the side of his neck, just beneath his jaw.  He reached up to grab it, but just as his fingertips brushed against the thin wood, he collapsed.

Then men started to emerge from the underbrush - not like they were hiding behind anything, but like they were transforming from the underbrush itself into men.

There were over a dozen of them, barefoot.  Some wore loincloths, but a couple wore shorts they must have found.  (Or if the FARC men lying on the ground were any indication, perhaps taken.)  Their chests and arms and faces were painted a rusty orange-brown, and they were all carrying homemade blow-dart guns or spears.

Nate stood slowly, and Eliot narrowed the distance between them, so they were shoulder to shoulder.

“Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”  Nate whispered to him, as the men slowly moved in, cautiously surrounding them.

Eliot looked at the FARC men.  The one he’d been fighting was laying motionless, eyes wide open.

“Well, we’re not dead yet.”

*

As best Eliot could tell, it was a case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”  The tribesmen didn’t seem overly friendly or overly antagonistic to Nate or Eliot, but they clearly hated the FARC.

Even Eliot had turned away when they started the geim process of disposing of the bodies.

Then the two of them were ushered through the jungle.  They seemed to be heading due west - which was not the right direction for them - but Eliot wasn’t real sure the timing was exactly right to try for a polite break.

“Just be cool,” he said in a low voice to Nate, who was clearly anxious about the fact that they might be losing time.

It was still morning when they made the tribe’s camp, which was located on a large tributary to the river.  Some of the women  led them to an area downstream where the water was a couple of feet deep, and they urged them to get in.

They gave them sticky, coarse leaves and pantomimed rubbing the leaves on their bodies.  One of them waved her hand in front of her nose and made a face.

“You think they’re trying to tell us something,” Eliot said, wryly.

“Are we . . . what . . .we’re just supposed to strip right in front of them?” Ford asked, mortified.

Eliot pulled his shirt off.  “What, you too shy?”  Eliot asked, and he smiled at the women, rolling his shoulders a little, flexing his pectorals.

They giggled.

Nate rolled his eyes.

Eliot pulled off his shoes and his pants and his underwear without any modesty whatsoever.

Nate watched him (but not too closely), and Eliot knew he’d put the insurance man in a lose-lose situation:   he could either strip and be embarrassed or not strip and be embarrassed.  From the look of consternation on Nate’s face, he knew it too.  He groaned and started unbuttoning his shirt.

The women were clearly entertained at having two white men stripping in front of them.

After Nate got his shirt off, one of them moved over to him, stretching her dark-skinned forearm in front of his pale torso for the others to see.  They all nodded, amazed.  When she went back to stand with the other women, she pointed to her eyes and then to the sky, and the women all chattered.

“I think she’s got a crush on you,” Eliot said.  “She likes your eyes.”

Nate scowled, dismissive, but he blushed, too.

Ford joined Eliot in the water, and they both started rubbing the leaves over their skin like washcloths.  As they did, the leaves let off a sharp, clean smell, almost like pine, and the rough surface scrubbed the filth off them.  Eliot had to admit, it was actually pretty refreshing.

One of the younger women was gazing at him, mischievous and shy, and Eliot smiled at her.

“Tell me you’re not hitting on a native girl in the middle of the jungle,” Nate murmured.

Eliot rubbed a leaf over his chest and kept smiling at the girl, ignoring Nate.

“You know her father’s gonna shoot you with a poisoned dart, right?”

Eliot gave him a sarcastic little laugh, as if to say whatever.

But then he reined in the flirting.

Ford had a good point.

*

After their bath, the women led them to a thatched, open-sided hut and let them get into dry t-shirts and skivvies.  They cleaned Nate’s bare feet with water from a dried-out, gourd-like container and they covered his blisters with a honey-colored sap that dried into a kind of second skin.  Then they used the same goop on his bug bites, and Eliot’s too.  

When they brought food - some kind of charred meat and taro root pressed into a paste with fruit - Nate said to Eliot in a low voice, “We don’t have time for native hospitality.”

“Remember the poisoned darts,” Eliot mumbled

*

As they ate, a group of men came around, bringing a gourd of fermented fruit juice with them.  They passed it around, each of them drinking, their eyes focused on Nate when they passed it to him.  He took it with a nervous smile, raising his eyebrows.

“Oh look, I get the gourd . . . wow, yeah.  That looks . . . great.  Smells . . . whew.”

Eliot fought the urge to cuff the man on the back of the head.  “Just drink the fucking juice!” He whispered harshly, smiling through clenched teeth at the tribesmen.

Nate took a tentative sip, and one of the men raised his hand, gesturing to Nate to drink more.

Nate smiled at them.  Then he took a deep breath.  Then he took a deep drink.  He tilted his head back, lifting the gourd as he went, his Adam’s apple bobbing with one, two, three long swallows.

Eliot raised his eyebrows.  The man must have been a god at college keggers.

After the third swallow, Nate lowered the gourd with dramatic flourish, blue eyes swimming, his face bright red.  The room erupted in cheers as he wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm.  The men whooped and laughed and clapped him on the back, while Ford sat there, with his lips pressed tight together, like he wasn’t so sure that juice was going to stay where he’d put it.

“How was it,” Eliot asked in a low voice, once the room had settled down.

Nate turned to him, an evil glint in his eye.  “Oh,” he said, passing him the gourd.  “Oh, you’ll see.”

*

There was an easy air about the room as they drank, and Eliot used his finger to draw the river in the dirt, a long, groove that stretched and curved.  Then he used the tip of one fingernail to draw the thinner tributary that they were camped by.

The men watched with interest, and when Eliot drew 12 triangles to represent the huts that made up the camp, the men began nod and talk.

Eliot pulled two buttons from the cuff of his hiking shirt and placed those near the huts and pointed at he and Nate.  He drew circles and pointed at the men.  Then He drew two Xs to represent the FARC guys, and he pantomimed being hit in the neck and falling over.

The men laughed, but the friendly fraternity was gone from it.  This laugh had an unsettling maliciousness, and one of the men pantomimed the dart attack again, showing once again how they had finished off the FARC men.  They clearly reveled in the demise.

Another man spoke up, though, chastising the display.  He pointed to the two Xs, and he said something stern to his fellow tribesmen.

Then he started to draw more Xs.

These were further from the village, further from the place where the FARC had ambushed them, in an area that would be south east of where they were now.  He drew X after X until there was a cluster of 20.

“Shit,” Ford breathed.

Eliot nodded grimly.  “Those two guys were just an advance party.”