Hellfire in Haiti by Jim Case

Author:Jim Case [CASE, JIM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780446566285
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

TEN

“That’s two klicks, Sarge,” Hawkins said, looking up from the pickup’s odometer.

“Slow down,” Cody told him. “The entrance to the path should be right along here somewhere.”

“There!” Hyacinthe exclaimed from the back seat. She pointed at the trunk of a tall mapou tree. One of its lower left-hand branches had been cut away at a sharp angle. It was just as the woman had described.

“Don’t stop,” Cody said. “Keep going past it. We’ll find a place to pull off and hide the truck, then we’ll double back on foot.”

Hawkeye drove around two bends in the road before he found a suitable flat spot on the uphill side. He stopped the truck with a squeal of brakes. Cody jumped out of the passenger door and charged into the bush. The foliage was dense, but there were few big trees to block the truck’s path. It was mostly green saplings, bushes, and hanging vines. Cody trotted back to the pickup.

“Reverse it to just past that pair of trees,” he said to Hawkins, who looked in his rearview and nodded. Cody went on, “Come in behind them at as tight an angle to the road as you can manage. They should help to hide the point where you start breaking bush.”

Hawkins backed up to the indicated position and then roared forward, squeaking so close to the trees that the trunks bent his side mirror flat to the cab. Saplings and bushes crunched under the four-by-four’s churning wheels; vines stretched across bumper and windshield, then snapped, vanishing from sight. The truck lurched and bucked, plowing deeper and deeper into the dark green shade.

When he had driven twenty yards into the underbrush, Hawkins let off on the gas and looked back. Cody was waving for him to shut the motor off.

“We had better cover our tracks a bit,” Cody said as he stepped up to the side of the truck. As the others got out, he reached into the bed and pulled out a machete. He unsheathed it and tested its edge on a sapling. The young tree fell under one swing of the broad blade. “Chop down a bunch more of these,” he told Hawkins and Caine as they, too, armed themselves with machetes. “Drag them over to the point where we drove off the road. We’ll stick ’em in the ground to screen off the tire tracks.”

“Won’t they turn color and give away the position?” Hyacinthe said.

“We aren’t gonna be here that long,” Hawkeye said, felling a young tree with a particular vicious chop. He tossed it onto the growing pile. “And if we are, most likely we’ll all be dead and it won’t make any difference who finds the frigging truck.”

Once their trail-busting route was well hidden, they returned to the pickup. Cody, Hawkins, and Caine dropped the tailgate and started off-loading gear. They left the CAR-15s behind this time and took out their FN FAL Paratrooper model assault rifles. The FN Paras were chambered for the heavier .308-caliber cartridge, which was less likely to be deflected by the heavy vegetation of the Haitian bush.

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