Chapter 9 #2
“Actually, I’d love to know that,” Jeff said. “Come walk with me.”
He led her through the smoking ruins of the tent camp to a place that had miraculously escaped being touched by the fire. There stood a tent, perfect and whole. Bonnie reached for the flap, but Jeff hastily put his hand on hers. He shook his head.
“We’re going in another way,” he said. Taking his knife from his pocket, he walked to the side of the tent and deftly cut a slit in the fabric all the way to the bottom. It opened enough for them to crawl in one at a time.
Jeff went first and called from within. “Come in carefully,” he said. “Don’t touch anything.”
Bonnie did as she was told and came in on her hands and knees slowly. There was something like a thin cord under her hand, but following Jeff’s instructions, she tried not to touch it and moved carefully.
The tent was dusty and smelled of dirt. Slowly, she stood up and moved to where Jeff was by the tent flap. It had been tied closed, and there was something in front of the door. A box and a contraption. It was the only word she could think of to describe it.
“What is that?” Bonnie asked.
Jeff was smiling. “It’s remarkable; that’s what it is.”
She stared at him. “Great. Want to tell me why?”
“See this thread?” he asked, pointing to something that was almost invisible.
“It’s attached to this contraption, which I’m guessing is an ignition point.
Troy and Lizzy will be able to work it out for sure, but from the fuse hanging out of this box, that’s the only thing that makes sense,” Jeff said.
“Then this fuse runs down like this to this other box here, which is full of sticks of dynamite.”
“Oh, my good gracious!” Bonnie said, her hand flying to her mouth. “And I almost pulled the flap up and blew us all to heaven.”
Jeff nodded. “Well, someone did earlier, and luckily the fuse is that long, so we could get far enough away from here before it blew up.” He frowned. “Although that doesn’t explain why the rest of the tents blew up.”
Bonnie considered the fuse and looked around the tent. She noticed something that looked like another fuse. She bent down and followed it.
“Jeff, look,” she said. “This goes out under the tent wall.”
Jeff inspected it and, to Bonnie’s horror, pulled the fuse cord up from the ground. “Yes, you’re right. If this ignited, then it would ignite the others.”
“But this one was faulty?” Bonnie asked.
Jeff held up the end. “It looks like it was cut.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps they ran out and couldn’t connect this tent to the others.”
“This is crazy,” Bonnie said as the full implication of what she was looking at hit her. “Who would go to so much trouble to trap and kill others?”
“El Aguila,” Jeff said. “He’s playing a whole new game now.” He looked down at the dynamite box. “I think I can pull the fuses out of the sticks and then they’ll be safe. We have to get this all back to Unity. Troy and Lizzy need to see this. And so do Andrew and Michael.”
While Bonnie prayed fervently that they wouldn’t blow themselves sky high, Jeff gently and carefully pulled the fuses from the sticks of explosives. Then they cut the threads and packed everything up and took it out of the tent.
As they were leaving, Bonnie trod on something that made her stop for a moment. She bent down and found a ring-bound notebook. It had been dropped and forgotten in the dirt. Perhaps it contained something useful. She picked it up and followed Jeff out into the sunshine again.
“What is that?” Andrew asked.
He and the others were seated in the shade of a large tree, and Julie, Emily, and Anita were seeing to them all.
Andrew had a bandage around his head and one on his leg. Michael sat beside him with a bandage on his arm and one around his middle. He looked pale and as though he was in a lot of pain.
“It’s the boobytrap that was waiting for us in the tents,” Jeff said. “We found one tent that hadn’t blown up. It’s quite the creation.”
Andrew looked at the boxes and nodded. “That it is. Troy will have to look at it. I’m not even sure what I’m seeing.”
Jeff nodded. “I thought the same thing. Troy needs to give it a good look-over. But I think this proves that our enemy has changed his tactics again. He’s trying to trick us now, luring us out like that with this place that was waiting to blow us all to heaven.”
“He’s definitely got something in mind,” Michael agreed. “But it’s time we head home, before it starts to get dark.”
Everyone agreed. Those who could ride went on horseback, while the badly wounded went in the cart. By God’s grace, although it had been a close thing, no one had died. The trap had ultimately failed in its main goal, even if it had managed to injure quite a few men.
As she and Jeff rode home with her holding on tightly to his waist, Bonnie wondered how long it would be before someone died at El Aguila’s hands and what the repercussions would be.
She was certain that Unity wouldn’t take this lying down. There was retribution in the air, and she could only hope it would be tempered with some rational thought, because, as she knew all too well from the events back home in New York, revenge brought nothing but dead bodies.