The jungle was a contradiction.
Alive with sound, the trees were filled with hoots and trills and howls, underscored by the drip, drip, drip from rain that had fallen an hour before. In the distance, a roll of thunder. And yet nothing moved. The thick heat pounded the jungle into stillness; thick, green trees engulfed by thick, green leaves, dead still in the heat. Even the late afternoon light had a squat, solid quality.
Then one of the leaves moved.
“They’re not coming this way.” And what had been just another unmoving plant unfolded into a man.
“You’re sure?” the woman with him asked, looking back into the valley as she rose to her feet. She cracked her neck and shifted the rifle in her hands.
“Their line ain’t straight, but they’re definitely heading east.”
“What’s east?”
The man stretched his arms. “No clue. Might be an ammo dump.” He looked around. “Hell of a lot more than there is out here.” He shook his head. “What the hell is he doing?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Shifting the heads-up display on her sunglades, she rubbed at the skin around the socket of her missing eye, then shrugged. “Come on, trail’s back here.”
For the next hour, the soldiers made their way through the jungle, ignoring the heat. “Those guys might not be travelling in a straight line,” the man murmured, “but Chief sure the hell is.”
“Yeah,” the woman replied, studying the ground. “It’s like he didn’t care if he was followed.”
“He could have just told us where he was going.”
“Would have made my day easier. I can’t remember him ever—hold up.”
Even to the untrained eye, the small clearing had been disturbed. The grass was crushed flat, and there were several visible footprints. “Spent some time here,” the man said, scanning the clearing.
“Yeah.” The woman stepped forward, slowly and deliberately. Ten minutes later, she looked at her partner in confusion. “There’s no exit. Trail stops here.”
“Extraction?”
“Not a chance. Look at the treetops, nothing’s been near them. It’s like he was here for a while, then . . . just disappeared.”
The man stared as a drop of water slowly rolled down a broad green leaf. A shiver ran down his spine. “Even Chief can’t do that.”
“Yeah.”
They examined the clearing again, then conducted an outward sweep of the surrounding area. Finally, they came back to the centre of the clearing. “Nothing,” the woman sighed. “Let’s get the hell out of here. You sure that troop we saw cleared the area?”
“Just because I can’t find the Chief, it doesn’t mean—”
“Yeah, yeah—relax, I’m just tired.” She activated her com. “Ranncon Eight, this is Peck and Templeton, requesting lift at eighty-eight four three.”
Twenty minutes later a small craft came sliding over the canopy. Clipping themselves onto droplines, the two soldiers rose into the craft.
“Where the hell have you been?” the officer waiting for them barked as they strapped into a seat and the craft streaked back the way it came.
“Looking for Chief,” the woman said, her single eye scanning the treetops.
“Find him?”
“Nope.” The woman glanced at her partner.
“Well, don’t worry about it, whatever the Chief’s doing, I’m sure it’s part of his plan.”
“Yeah,” the woman said, staring at the jungle, unmoving in the heat.
It was still unmoving two hours later, long after the transport had gone, when it began to rain. For an hour the green rattled in the downpour, then the storm passed on, and the jungle went back to its contradiction of noise and stillness.
Two hours after the rain, a spot of black appeared in the centre of the green, and began to grow.