Chapter 19

Thursday

I woke early, dressed, and finished a peaceful, pre-dawn ten-klick run that gave me time to think about the businesses I was starting. I was just getting ready for a shower when reveille sounded over the base’s PA system. This bugle player was good. I waved at him when I ran by on my way back to the barracks.

“You’re awake,” Cooper chuckled when he saw me.

“Are you kidding? You were still sawing logs while I ran ten klicks already,” I teased back.

I don’t think he believed me until he saw my sweaty T-shirt. “Why would you run ten klicks?” he asked.

“It gives my mind time to digest everything, and the quiet lets me think about problems,” I replied. “It’s amazing how much wildlife is out there just before sunrise,” I said, motioning to the jungle beyond the outer perimeter of camp. “There’s even a jaguar a few klicks from camp. I saw it kill a peccary. The peccary never even knew it was in danger until it was too late.”

“That close to camp, we should kill it before it hurts someone here,” Cooper warned.

“I intended to, but it headed the opposite way after making its kill. If it had come this way, I’d have gone after it.”

After breakfast, I spent the day evaluating people in the detention compound. The helicopters we used two days ago to bring everyone here were in use once again, ferrying people back to the towns, cities, and villages they had come from. Aside from Fire Team 1, the rest of the platoon helped to shuttle them back, too. Fire Team 1 stayed with me in case some problem arose.

The only problem all day was a young woman whom I noticed several times as she constantly slipped out of position and moved to the end of the line. I kept an eye on her all day. Aside from moving to the end of the line each time a new group of detainees was brought in, she didn’t do anything else suspicious, and I didn’t sense any danger from her.

Throughout the day, I only identified 238 people that I felt should be detained further due to their involvement in the rebellion. About fifty of them were just so we could find out why they rated a danger rating of 3 instead of a 1 or a 2. “You’ve been avoiding me all day,” I said to the nervous young woman when she was the last person remaining. I hardly expected her to collapse, sobbing.

I barely managed to grab her before she hit the ground, but I hit the ground as I grabbed her, bringing Cooper and the others running over. I waved them off and sat up, holding the sobbing young woman. “Relax, everything will be fine,” I repeated over and over as I held her and stroked her hair.

“I have no place to go,” she finally sobbed.

“The men from the drug cartel killed the men in our village and took all the women. One of them forced me into his bed every night. The others killed him when he refused to surrender. Now I’m pregnant with his child. I have no family, no husband, and no home,” she sobbed.

I was on my com unit right away and sent her picture to Sally. “Her village was wiped out by the drug cartel. One of the cartel men raped her repeatedly. She’s pregnant. The ‘husband’ is dead. She is terrified and has no home to return to. Suggestions?” I texted.

Idania commed me a minute later. “Sally wants me to talk to her,” she said, so I gave my com unit to the girl. They talked for ten minutes, the girl becoming less apprehensive by the minute. I only heard one side of the conversation, but I was quite sure she was being interviewed for a position as a wife or concubine. She handed me the com back grinning broadly.

“Give her a kiss,” Sally said, so I did.

“Okay, now what?” I asked Sally, only to find Idania back on the com.

“Claim her as a concubine for now. Once you bring her back, we’ll determine whether she’ll be that or become a wife,” Idania chuckled.

“Interesting interrogation technique,” Cooper commented from behind me.

“My wives did the interrogating. I just held her. They told me to claim her as a concubine and bring her home,” I replied.

“That explains the kiss,” he chuckled.

An hour and forty minutes later, the obligatory forms had been filled out and filed. It was a bit simpler since the U.S. had already claimed Nicaragua as a state. She had to agree to be claimed as a concubine and had to show that she understood what was expected of a concubine. Then I had to fill out one more form claiming her as a dependent.

We finally made it to the mess hall. The cooks had the last of the barbecued gator ready for me, so I had Lurdes try it. “It’s good,” she murmured appreciatively.

“It’s alligator, like a big caiman,” I explained.

“Caiman is good, too, but most don’t have much meat,” she replied.

The base commander made special arrangements to allow me access to the PX where I bought more clothing and feminine necessities for Lurdes. She was hesitant to have me spend any money on her until I told her that I owned a gold mine and the land where more mines would be started, as well as a farm a hundred times bigger than the entire military base. I was surprised at how cheap things were here until I remembered that Central and South America had missed the Welfare Wars. It meant that their infrastructure, what little they had in Honduras, was still intact. Their conversion to being full-fledged states of the U.S.A. was a gradual process and most goods made here were still cheaper than in the original states.

Regular troops would have found the goods even cheaper because active-duty military personnel paid a reduced rate. We carried her new things to the base housing apartment we had been assigned. I left her putting them away and went to get my things. “Are you going to leave any single women in Nicaragua?” Torres teased me.

“I’ll think about it,” I quipped.

Despite what she’d been through for the last six months, Lurdes joined me in bed tonight. “I want to think that the baby inside me is yours,” she admitted.

“It is mine. You’re now mine, so your baby is now mine,” I replied. She must have liked that answer because it was two hours later before she let me go to sleep.

Friday

She was still on top of me when I woke up this morning. Looking at the bedside clock, I saw that it was only 0300 and wondered why I was awake. Then I felt the sense of danger. The damn jaguar was close to the base. Lurdes awoke when I tried to scoot out from beneath her. “I need to get up,” I explained.

“But it’s so early,” she protested.

“There is a jaguar outside the base that may hurt someone here or in town. I can feel it and see it,” I explained.

“It’s true?” she asked.

“You are Lucky Jim?” she asked when she saw that I didn’t understand her first question.

“Yes, I am Lucky Jim. That’s why I came here, to help locate the rebel tunnels,” I explained as I got dressed.

“Oh, no, you must use a bow to kill the jaguar,” she protested when I grabbed my rifle. “Only the best and bravest hunters will hunt a jaguar with a bow.”

“Or stupidest,” I thought to myself.

Grateful that my compound bow and my crossbow were in my gear, I pulled the compound bow out and strung it. “Why are you getting dressed?” I asked as I pulled on the hunting moccasins Lacey had given me for my birthday--after I made sure nothing was hiding in them.

“It’s my job to skin the jaguar for you,” she protested.

“I can bring it back on the sled.

“I will still go with you,” she insisted.

“She’s definitely going to end up as a wife. She’s already bossing me around,” I thought to myself with amusement.

Two klicks from the base, I landed the sled and got off. “Stay on the sled so I don’t have to worry about you being safe,” I whispered, then cloaked the sled and had it rise fifty meters into the air. I programmed it to stay two hundred meters behind me so the jaguar couldn’t sense it. Lurdes could watch on the targeting screen as I stalked the jaguar. I made sure that I stayed between the jaguar and the base. Half an hour later, I chose the position to take my shot from and was ready. I still had to wait nearly five minutes as the cat cautiously crept silently closer, following a trickle of water that would be a rushing stream after a heavy rain.

I drew back on the bow slowly and silently as the cat neared the gap in the trees where I intended to shoot it. Instead, he sprang up into the last tree and chose a sturdy branch upon which to crouch. He, too, was waiting in ambush for his prey. Using my extended awareness, I carefully checked every centimeter of ground between my location and where I needed to be to take the shot. The ground was littered with leaves, but there were places where I could safely step to get where I needed to be without stepping on any sticks and alerting the jaguar.

Still, I made each step slowly, cautiously feeling the ground beneath my foot before putting my weight on it. I kept the arrow nocked and my eyes on the jaguar the entire time. Feeling like it took half an hour to move one meter, I drew back on the arrow again. The cat looked right at me just as I released the arrow. Despite his feline reflexes, the arrow caught him in the neck and then embedded itself in the branch just a few centimeters from the branch he was on. The cat struggled for a few seconds and stopped moving.

I still put a second arrow into it, this one through the head. The hardened steel tip was designed to penetrate an alligator’s skull. The silence in the jungle all around me was unsettling, but even back home in the swamps it was normal after killing an animal. Still, I checked the area around me for any danger before approaching the cat, pistol drawn. It was definitely dead. I climbed the tree and worked both arrows out of the tree and out of the cat before calling the sled to my position.

I secured the cat on the sled tender and rode back with Lurdes hanging onto me as she rode behind me. “Many times, I watched as the men from our village hunted. Never have I seen a hunter move so slowly and quietly,” she raved excitedly. “You looked like a stalking jaguar as you crept through the trees hunting, able to see where you were going even in the dark. Had it not been for the display, I would never have seen you.”

We quickly returned to the base and Lurdes knelt outside the front door of our apartment and skinned the cat while I put away my bow and cleaned the two arrows. Next, I changed into my boots. I know they let me get away with a lot here, but I didn’t think they’d appreciate me showing up wearing moccasins. I heard someone exclaim outside and knew it was the man from the next-door apartment.

“Where did that come from?” he asked nervously.

“I sensed it near the base this morning and went out to kill it before it hurt someone,” I explained as I reached our open front door.

“You must have used a silencer, or it would have raised an alarm with the perimeter guards,” he replied, still staring at the cat.

“I used my bow,” I said, causing him to gawk at me slack jawed.

“Damn!” he finally said. “I gotta run or I’ll be late,” he muttered and then started jogging towards the mess hall. Lurdes looked at me questioningly since our conversation had been in English. I explained what he said, and she laughed. Having never prepared a jaguar hide before, she didn’t know what to do once it was skinned so I called Idania. She said that we should be home today, so just roll the pelt with the fur on the outside and bring home the head and paws.

While I took the cat’s carcass out to the jungle to dispose of it, Lurdes showered and changed into clean clothes. We made it to breakfast just before the platoon arrived. “Someone looks happy this morning,” Torres teased me, nodding at Lurdes.

“Well,” I replied thoughtfully, “One reason she’s so happy is because she came with me this morning to watch when I killed the jaguar that was getting too close to the base.”

Lurdes heard the word jaguar and began a rapid explanation in Spanish about watching me hunt the jaguar.

“You used a bow?” Cooper gasped. I quickly found out that all but three members of the platoon spoke fluent Spanish and several people were quickly asking Lurdes questions about the hunt.

“Show them,” she insisted, knowing that I had a copy of the vid on my com unit. I fast-forwarded to just before the cat jumped into the tree and let them watch.

“Damn, you’re scary,” Cooper hissed when the first arrow hit the cat.

After breakfast, Lt. Commander Ferguson told us to get ready to leave. The remaining detainees had been flown out earlier this morning and would arrive at Fort Bragg sometime later today where they would continue to undergo interrogation while their fates were decided.

“Jim, I understand that you have a meeting today and a press conference tomorrow. You can take your gear home since we’re technically done here. You need to come by Monday or Tuesday to fill out a final ‘After Action Report,’ and pick up your share of the gold and silver from the tanker and the rebel capital. I also understand that you have a planeload of horses being delivered to Fort Polk each day beginning Monday, so be sure to make arrangements to have them picked up.

“I know that the brass is talking, hoping that you’ll agree to do something similar in Colombia, and then in China, so don’t be a stranger,” he said as he shook my hand.

Everyone else lined up to shake my hand, too.

I quickly secured our things aboard my two grav sleds. Lurdes insisted on riding with me, so I tethered the second sled to my sled tender and headed skyward. Before heading home, I made four fast passes along the four-hundred-klick wide band where most of the Honduran silver had been mined. I detected a major silver deposit which had some gold and copper, too. I also noted an area with a dark gray aura, and one that was a whitish blue. I marked my navigation computer with each location and did the same along the one hundred fifty-klick long band in northern Honduras where I found a large gold deposit.

From the north coast of Honduras, I headed for home at top speed. I commed Sally and warned her that we were inbound when we were about ten minutes away. The whole family had formed a large circle in the back yard when we approached, so I headed for the circle and uncloaked at about ten meters. They quickly adjusted the circle to allow room for the second sled as we settled. I got hugs and kisses from my women and then they hurried Lurdes inside while my mothers and sisters greeted me.

“Feel up to a lunch meeting?” Don asked, grinning.

“Sure,” I replied. “They might be done grilling Lurdes by the time we finish.”

We took the time to unload most of my gear and Don let his wives know where we were headed. We each took a grav sled and made the quick trip to New Orleans. It took another ten minutes to find the restaurant, and five more to find a nearby spot where we could safely uncloak and exit our grav sleds without being observed.

We were still a few minutes early but got a table anyway. “We’d like a table for three where we can talk without interruptions and without other tables overhearing us,” Don told the attractive hostess as he shook her hand. From the surprised look on her face, he must have slipped a large bill into her hand.

“Not a problem,” she agreed and led us into a section that was roped off. “Your server will be right with you.”

“We’re expecting another guest who will be looking for Don Reynolds,” he told her before she left.

The server took our drink orders and had just arrived with the drinks when the hostess returned with another man. “Edward Scott?” Don asked.

“Yes, and you’re Don Reynolds?” he asked.

“And this is my son Jim,” Don introduced me as he motioned for Mr. Scott to take one of the empty seats.

“Before we go any further, I need to warn you that I’m recording our entire meeting. There are unscrupulous people out there who will try anything in hopes of costing me my job,” he explained suspiciously.

“Yes, I heard about your reputation from Dorothy Shaw when I told her what we were looking for,” Don replied. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Yes, I know Miss Shaw quite well, but what exactly are you looking for?” he asked once the waitress left to fill his drink order.

“Do you remember in Lucky Jim’s journal where he hired a man to oversee his offshore oil exploration?” I asked.

“I remember that quite well,” he replied. “Far too often I’ve had to deal with Congressmen who are upset with me because one of their donors failed a mine inspection. I go home that night and enjoy a sip of good Scotch while rereading that part of his journal. It helps to remind me that there is always hope for someone trying to do their job the right way,” he replied wistfully.

“We’re looking for someone willing to approach a new, large mining operation the same way. The mines will be spread over seven thousand square kilometers of Nicaraguan mountains. We want the land left as untouched and pristine as possible. Much of it used to be biosphere preserves decades ago. Jim wants to turn as much of the land as possible into a preserve again. He intends to help the Mayangna Indians who live in the numerous villages in the area learn how to farm without having to use the slash and burn method, and he wants to replant the areas that have already been clear cut,” Don explained.

“This Jim?” Mr. Scott asked, motioning to me.

“Yup,” Don replied.

“No offense meant, but he doesn’t look old enough to make those kinds of decisions,” Mr. Scott remarked.

“Normally, I’d agree with you,” Don replied. “However, Jim is a very remarkable young man. He’s dressed the way he is because he literally just returned from Nicaragua where he was a civilian contractor with SEAL team 17. He also has the backing of the Lucky Jim Trust, the Lucky Jim Foundation, and Lucky Jim’s grandson Jim the Third in Meridian. He just bought over 500,000 hectares of farmland in northern Louisiana and is starting a large commercial agribusiness there. We won’t take offense if you com Dorothy Shaw and ask her opinion of Jim,” Don suggested.

“Okay,” Mr. Scott agreed and commed Dorothy, all while carefully watching and judging our reactions. “Miss Shaw, this is Ed Scott from the Federal Bureau of Mines,” he said. He was quiet for nearly a minute afterwards except for a few quick affirmative answers.

“Really?” he exclaimed excitedly and stared at me. “You’re sure of that?” he asked. “Okay, thank you,” he said and finished the com.

“Suddenly I feel extremely lucky,” he said with a grin.

“It has much less to do with luck than with your dogged determination to do your best to make sure the mines in this country are as safe as possible for the men and women working in them,” Don replied. “Dorothy knew instinctively that we wanted someone like that to oversee our mining operations.”

“You said mines, as in more than one,” he said questioningly.

I pulled out my computer and displayed a map of Nicaragua. Then I highlighted the area we just bought. “When I was there, we discovered these tunnel complexes through the mountains,” I said as I overlaid the tunnels on the map.

“These two areas used to be biospheres,” I told him, adding in shading where the preserves used to be. “Right here at the northeast exit of the eastern tunnel complex is an abandoned open pit gold mine. The rebels had underground towns here and here,” I explained as I marked the locations of the two towns.

“Alongside the smaller, northernmost, town they had an operating gold mine. There is still a lot of gold around the mine they haven’t reached yet. In addition, I noted a large concentration of gold here,” I said as I made a G where I found the gold deposit.

“That’s incredible,” Mr. Scott gasped.

“I also noted some copper and silver mixed with the gold deposit. In the central section, I noted a concentration of a mineral with a light gray aura, but I have no idea what the light gray aura represents.

“How do you know that there is gold, silver, and copper in some locations, but have no idea what the other areas represent?” he asked.