Chapter 11, part 2

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 11, Part 2

Guaviare Department, Colombia

October 2004

Day 5

When Ford was asleep, Eliot started moving.  He was bone tired.  His head was throbbing, and his knee was on fire, but he knew that if he laid down and slept for two or three or four hours, his knee would stiffen to the point of being unusable.  He couldn’t afford to really rest it.

So he worked it in intervals, dozing for 15 minutes and walking for 15 minutes.  It was a hard process to get started, but once he’d gone through a few repetitions, it had an almost zen-like calming effect.  When he was resting, he slept.  When he was walking, he was focused only on his knee and on taking the right kind of steps.

(He didn’t admit to himself that the zen approach also saved him from thinking about whether or not he had any kind of code whatsoever.)

Near 2 a.m., just as he was coming off a rest interval, he got the smell of smoke in his nostrils.  Their own fire still burned, but the smoke was headed away from where he stood in the cave.  He jerked up, standing, and his knee nearly buckled on him.

He took a few tentative steps until he felt like he could take more.  Then he went to investigate.

It took him over half an hour to go a mile, and while he was being deliberately slow, to avoid any kind of detection, he could have accomplished the same task in half the time if his knee hadn’t been such a cluster fuck.

He’d barely gone a tenth past the first mile when saw the guard.  He was just a kid, maybe fourteen, fifteen, and he was slouched against a tree near the edge of a rocky ledge, dozing.  Down below, there was a camp - men in homemade hammocks, men in tents.  He did not see Cesar, but he knew, of course, that he was there.  And the natives had it right.  There were well over a dozen of them, and if there weren’t twenty, it was only because there must have been others standing watch at strategic intervals.

Eliot eased himself away, his knee threatening to expose him at almost every step.  When he was at a safe distance, he picked up the pace as much as he could stand.  Then he went faster.

By the time he reached their cave, sweat was rolling off of him, and he was nearly gasping with the pain from each step.   

“Nate!”  He hissed.  “Get up man!”

He’d half-expected to have to drag Ford out of his slumber, but the insurance man must have heard the urgency in Eliot’s voice, because he jerked awake, groggy but tense, alarmed.

“What?  What’s wrong?”

“Ventura.  He’s just over a mile back.”

Nate started moving.  He tugged on his bloody-watery socks and grabbed for his shoes,  grimacing as he yanked them over the raw sores on his feet.  “They’re coming?”

“They will be.  They’re in camp now, but once they’ve got daylight, you can bet your ass they’ll be coming.”

Nate’s hands flew around the laces of his boots, his voice breathless as he spoke.  “Okay, okay.  So.  We get moving now, and we keep moving and we stay ahead.”  

“That’s the idea.”

Nate hauled himself up.  He hobbled on his bad feet towards the jungle, and Eliot hobbled on his bad knee right behind him.

When Nate got to the mouth of the cave, though, he hesitated.  The cave was faintly lit by the firelight; beyond it, there was nothing but jungle noise and impenetrable darkness.  It seemed impossibly forbidding.

Then Eliot spoke.

“Just follow the river,” he said, “you’ll be fine.”

Nate turned, and even in the dim light, the stunned look was plain to see.

You’ll be fine.  Not we will.

Nate’s face was lined with fatigue, his blue eyes questioning, and for the first time, Eliot noticed a few strands of grey along his temples.  He looked twenty years older and twenty years younger all at once.

“What are you doing, Eliot?” he asked, and his voice was almost a whisper.

“I’m getting you home for your son’s birthday.”