Chapter 22: Wreckage
Well, I was three for three in terms of surviving crashes. The Darrex cruiser, the Nova, and now this jet. Depending on how you looked at it, I was either very lucky or very unlucky. I leaned toward the latter at the time--why did the universe see fit to keep punishing me? Couldn't it just put me out of my misery already? I was getting too old to be banged up like this cosntantly.
I came to when Sag splashed water on my face. My eyes opened to see him hovering over me, impatience in his eyes. "Hurry up! The bastards are gettin' away."
Yeah, great. "What about Mr. Quispe?"
"He, ah, wouldn't wake up," Sag euphemised. Unsteadily, I rose to my feet, reorienting myself. The way my body felt, I knew I'd been tossed all around the cockpit when we "landed." The entire plane was tilted toward the port side. Odds were good we'd ripped off one of the landing gear with that last move, and drove the nose of the plane into the dirt.
I knelt beside Mr. Quispe, who was face down in the cabin, a pool of blood outlining his head. No pulse. No respiration. "Looks like he hit his head pretty hard," I noted grimly, turning my attention to the corner of the narrow corridor that led into the cockpit--a small spot of blood right on the edge, from where he'd struck.
The rear emergency exit remained open, no doubt engaged by the Shining Path gentlemen so they could make good their escape. I didn't want to waste too much time, since following them would be our best lead. "Let's go, Sag. Grab whatever guns and ammo you can find, and let's move."
He nodded, acknowledging me silently for once, and we grabbed our bags, stuffing the available weaponry into them, and disembarked the plane. Since I, for all intents and purposes, was a non-person in this era, I didn't worry too much about leaving the plane behind. Someone would find it and try to figure out what happened, but I don't really exist here. And Sag was an Australian national, so it's unlikely the Peruvian authorities would be able to figure out who either of us were. They'd find Mr. Quispe dead, identify the remaining bodies as either Shining Path hoodlums or innocent bystanders, and classify it a kidnap-ransom gone wrong. I felt bad for Mr. Quispe, having to die in such a way, never knowing the fate of his son. If nothing else, I owed it to him to get Huayna back, one way or another. I'd find the boy, send him home to his mother, and let the family sort out the rest. I didn't belong here--there was little else I could do. In fact, I started to consider myself a fool for taking on this job in the first place. Me, going down to a country I knew nothing about, in a time I'm not even from. What was I thinking? I thought it would be structured, orderly, disciplined, like the military. But it wasn't. Not at all. Chaotic, indeterminate. I was accustomed to bad guys who wore uniforms, who fought under a known flag. Here, anyone could be Shining Path. Anyone could be the bad guy. And I'd have no way of knowing the lackeys from the big bosses.
Sag and I found ourselves in an open field, a verdant valley surrounded by dark mountains. I glanced over our conveyance--the port wing nearly torn off, both nose and port landing gear mangled and crushed. The overall structure was intact, but this baby would never fly again.
I turned my attention to the rest of our surroundings, next. I saw no buildings except a couple distant farmhouses. As the sun set, however, I made out a group of figures moving in the distance. My enhanced vision confirmed they were our boys. I scanned the ground from their position to ours, picking out their tracks, so we could more easily follow. Depressions in the grass wouldn't last long, so we had to make haste.
"I see them up ahead," I told Sag. "We can follow them into the night. They shouldn't notice us if we keep our distance."
"Can't we just go home?" he complained, rubbing his right thigh with one hand. Guess he'd hurt himself somewhere along the way. I didn't have much pity to spare.
I thought about shooting him right then, just for whining about it. Fortunately for him, I have a bit more self-control than that.
Chapter 22
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