DEEPER by Jeff Long

Author:Jeff Long
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-12-24T19:48:28+00:00

How to Operate in the Dark, part four

11. Defecate

Procedure. Select a low site with good earth and good ground cover. Put tissue paper in blouse pocket. Keep weapon and equipment at arm's length. Dig a hole. Straddle the hole and squat with trousers pulled forward. Put used tissue paper in the hole. Cover hole with earth. Replace ground cover to camouflage. Wash hands.

Techniques

· Excrement is a reflection of diet. U.S. excrement smells different from the enemy's. Minimize smell by burying all excrement immediately.

· Use an antidiarrheal to avoid having to defecate. This is NOT recommended by doctors, but can be used in certain missions.

· Carry excrement in plastic bags out of area of operations. Certain missions may require this to avoid evidence of activity.

24

FIRST WEEK OF JANUARY As they cast themselves across the lake, Ali reached back with her light. She hoped for a glimpse of the receding shore, but there was not even a suggestion of land. It took her breath, this all-encompassing night.

Gregorio had made a chain of three rafts, one behind the other. The last two were filled with fuel and supplies. Scavenging the villages had taken time, but had also given them time. They could last for months now, and still feed the children if they found them, and ferry everyone back across the lake to Port Dylan.

Hour after hour, they plowed across the black waters. Ali shrank into herself. Despite the NASA map and legends of the lake's immensity, no one knew Emperor Lake's actual size. The other side might lie a day, or even weeks, away. Part of her wished they had gone on hugging the shore. But their caution would have come at the children's expense, and so they had settled on this direct passage, or diretissima as Gregorio called it.

Gregorio refused to show fear, of course. But it was there in his constant vigilance. No sooner did he set down the night binoculars than he picked them up again and made another sweep. His beautiful dark eyes grew darker. If the raft had been larger, he would have paced. Instead he ran one fingertip in circles on the rubber hull. The miles passed by with them squeaking like mice.

The farther they traveled from shore, the more Ali's old terror of oceans grew. She stayed deep inside the walls of the Zodiac, as far from the water as possible. She didn't need the captain's sea serpent to picture all sorts of creatures swimming rampant beneath the skin of the lake.

Then there were the noises. It was as if the water were whispering to her. As if Maggie were the water. Mommy, she heard.

They continued purifying their drinking water, which they dipped from the lake. Ali hated leaning over the hull with the quart bottle. Once upon a time she had looked into her daughter's cold eye and it had been as bottomless as this.

Gregorio measured their progress in gallons of fuel.

Ali measured it by minutes.

She could not seem to take a full breath of air.

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