Chapter 14
The jungle at night was a living thing.
Levi moved through it like a ghost, placing each step with deliberate care, reading the terrain through touch and sound more than sight. Behind him, Willow followed in his footsteps, literally. She stepped where he stepped, trusting his path through the darkness.
They'd been moving for six hours, covering ground slowly but steadily. No lights, no talking, just the whisper of their breathing and the endless chorus of insects that owned the night.
He raised a fist. Stop.
Willow froze mid-step, going completely still. He listened, filtering through jungle sounds for anything human. There … faint, maybe two hundred yards east. Voices. Spanish. A patrol passing through.
He felt Willow's hand touch his shoulder, asking a question without words. He squeezed her wrist once, which over the course of the last four days had come to mean wait. They stood like statues while the voices faded into the distance.
When silence returned, he touched her hand again, and they moved on.
This was their fourth night. Four nights of moving through hostile territory, sleeping in shifts, and living on MREs and water they’d purified from streams. Four nights of being so close that he knew the rhythm of her breathing.
He could tell when she was tired by the way her steps shortened, and he even recognized the particular sound she made when adjusting the pack on her shoulders.
The terrain changed tonight. The ground sloped upward, and rocks replaced mud. It was harder to walk, but it provided better cover. Levi found a game trail, followed it up the ridge. At the top, he stopped, checking their position against the mental map in his head.
Willow appeared beside him, barely winded despite the climb. She'd dropped weight over the last four days. Hell, they both had, but she moved with the lean efficiency of someone whose body had adapted to the demands being placed on it.
“How far?” she whispered, so quiet he felt the words more than heard them.
“Ten miles. Maybe twelve.” He pulled out his compass, confirmed their bearing. “We'll make the airstrip by dawn if we keep this pace.”
“And the patrols?”
“Con says they've pulled back. Morales must think we headed south toward the border.” He touched his earpiece. “We're in a gap in their coverage. Should stay clear if we don't do anything stupid.”
“Define stupid.”
“Anything louder than breathing.”
She smiled, and though he couldn't see it in the darkness, he felt it, sensed the shift in her energy. “There goes my plan to sing show tunes.”
“Oh, damn, I guess you’ll have to save it for when we're airborne.”
“Deal.”
As they moved down the far side of the ridge, the terrain opened up. There was less jungle and more grassland. Scattered trees provided cover, allowing for faster movement, so Levi increased their pace, and Willow matched him, stride for stride.
They had to keep moving. Willow stumbled. He was beside her before she fully regained balance, hand on her elbow.
“You good?” he asked.
“Yeah.” She gestured at the ground. “Root. Didn't see it.”
He should move on. Should keep up the pace. But something in the way she stood … Her weight shifted slightly off her left foot. Yeah, nope. That shit won’t fly.
“Let me see.”
“Levi, I'm fine—”
“Willow.” He cut her off and used the voice that meant Don't argue. After a moment, she sat on a nearby log. He knelt, took off her boot, and checked her ankle with careful fingers. Swollen but not badly. Probably just rolled it.
“It's nothing,” she said.
“It's something.” He pulled an elastic bandage from his pack and wrapped her ankle with practiced efficiency. “But it's not serious. Just needs support.”
“How'd you learn field medicine?”
“Guardian trains everyone in trauma care. You learn fast when your teammate's bleeding out and the nearest hospital is three countries away.” He tied off the bandage, checked the tension. “How's that feel?”
“Better.” She was looking at him, and even in the darkness, he could feel the weight of her attention. “Thank you.”
“Partners take care of each other.”
“Yeah.” Her hand touched his face, fingers tracing the line of his jaw. “They do.”
He caught her hand, held it against his cheek for a moment longer than necessary. Her palm was warm, calloused from years of working on planes and flying in conditions that would ground most pilots. Strong hands. Capable hands. Hands he was literally trusting with his life.
“We should move,” he said, but he didn't let go.
“We should,” she agreed, but she didn't pull away.
They sat there for a moment, probably breaking every rule about being in hostile territory.
But he didn’t care. For a moment, they just existed together in the darkness.
Finally, Willow squeezed his hand and slipped her boot on.
He helped her pull the laces wider so they didn’t cut off circulation.
The wrap inside the boot would give her support.
The boot didn’t need to cause her any more discomfort.
When the boot was back on, she sighed. “Come on, sunshine. We've got a plane to resurrect.”
He rolled his shoulders. “You're the one resurrecting it. I'm just moral support.”
“And demolitions backup,” she reminded him.
“Obviously.” He shouldered his pack, and they pushed on.
Dawn found them on a ridge overlooking the ghost runway.
The airstrip stretched below them. The concrete was cracked and broken, with weeds and vegetation pushing through every gap. A maintenance shed sat at the north end. The tin roof was partially collapsed, and the walls were stained dark brown from decades of rain. It was literally painted in rust.
And beside the shed, covered in vines and what was quite possibly a four-inch layer of bird shit, sat a DHC-2 Beaver.
“There she is,” Levi said softly.
Willow had her binoculars up, studying the plane with focused intensity.
“Fuselage looks intact. Pontoons are still attached, which, no shit, is really surprising.
I can't see the engine from this angle, but if it's been sitting for thirty years …” She lowered the binoculars. “This will be a nightmare.”
He nudged her shoulder with his. “You've fixed worse.”
She turned to look at him, her eyes wide and her mouth open in shock. She snapped her mouth shut before sighing. “Ah, no, I haven’t. Name one plane I've fixed that was worse than this.”
“That Beaver at the cartel airstrip.”
She shook her head. “No, that had been sitting for five years, max. And it had most of its parts.” She gestured at the plane below.
“This thing's been rotting for three decades.
The engine's probably seized. The fuel systems are probably corroded. The avionics are no doubt deader than dead. Hell, the tires are flat.”
“But it's possible.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she nodded. “Maybe. If Guardian's supply drop includes the parts we need, plus fuel. Oh, and if the airframe's not compromised. And if we can get the engine unseized without breaking something critical.” She looked at him. “That's a lot of ifs.”
He shrugged and lifted an eyebrow. “We're good at ifs.”
Despite everything, she smiled. “We really are, aren't we?”
They watched the airstrip for another twenty minutes, making sure it was truly abandoned. No movement. No sounds except wind and birds. Finally, Willow nodded. “All right. Let's go see what we're working with.”
They descended carefully, weapons ready, checking for signs of recent activity. But the runway was empty and had been for years. Nature was slowly reclaiming it, turning concrete back to jungle.
The Beaver sat like a rusting, forgotten monument. The windows were opaque with grime, and one wing drooped at an angle that suggested some kind of structural damage. Levi’s gut dropped. Damn, up close, it looked even worse.
“Oh, baby,” Willow whispered, running her hand along the fuselage. “What did they do to you?”
Levi watched her circle the plane, cataloging damage, checking components, muttering to herself in the language of mechanics and aviation.
This was her element. The same way he understood explosives, she understood aircraft.
She could look at a dead plane and see the ghost of what it had been, what it could be again.
“Engine's seized,” she said, checking the propeller.
“How can you tell?”
She tugged at the propeller. It didn't move when she tried to rotate it. “Prop doesn’t move.” She pointed to the engine compartment. “From what I can see, the fuel system's probably completely corroded. We'll need to replace every line, every seal.”
“Con says Guardian's dropping supplies at 1400 hours. Should have everything you need.”
“Should have.” She put her hands on her hips. “I hope someone at Guardian knows these birds. They’re old, but they’re solid. If they’re just guessing, we could be screwed.”
“We have the best helping us. They can fly and fix anything. They took the specs on the plane and basically ordered everything she’d need,” Con said in his ear.
“You’ll have what you need,” he assured her. She made a sound that displayed her doubt before climbing up to check the cockpit. “Damn it. The instrument panel's been stripped. Someone took the avionics for parts or to sell.”
“Can you work around that?”
“I guess I'll have to.” She opened the door wider and disappeared inside. Her voice drifted out, muffled as she moved around inside. “Seats are rotted through. Control cables look okay, though. That's something.”
Levi moved to the maintenance shed and forced the door open.
Inside was exactly what he'd hoped for. There was a workbench of rusted tools, assorted parts, and equipment he couldn’t identify.
Most of it was rusted and useless, but some was still salvageable.
Maybe. He began sorting through it, setting aside anything that appeared to still work and might be useful.
An hour later, Willow emerged from working on the plane, covered in grime and bird shit, but her eyes were bright.