C.O.I.L. Extractions: a Christian Short Story Collection Page 5

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  Extraction: Colombia

  by D.I. Telbat

  "Jackson! You can't do this! It's suicide!"

  Regardless of Eric Bosco's objections, Jackson Edwards ignored the Colombian missionary's warning. In the cockpit of his two-seater custom airplane, Jackson checked the fuel and power gauges, then reached for the bubble canopy.

  "No!" Eric clamped a hand on top of the canopy so Jackson couldn't slide it closed. "Hear me out. You have to know what you're up against!"

  "You have ninety seconds." Jackson checked his watch and smiled up at Eric, which seemed to cause the veteran servant's face to redden even more. "Go ahead, Eric. Speak your mind."

  "Okay." Eric lifted his hand. "First of all, you don't know if this is a trap or not. You could be flying into an ambush. The guerrilla leader who called on the radio could be just baiting more Christians to their deaths."

  "But what if his story is true? His conversion has put him on the run, he said. He needs to get out of the jungle now. That's what you read."

  "And that's another thing! I translated that distress message for you. You don't even speak Spanish!"

  "What does that have to do with flying to those coordinates?"

  "You don't know Colombia." Eric shook his head. "You're from Montana. You don't understand the ruthlessness of these FARC guerrillas!"

  "All the more reason to get this ex-guerrilla out of harm's way now!"

  "If you go down, you'll be in the middle of hundreds of miles of jungle."

  "I have a fully stocked survival pack. Remember, I am a Montanan."

  "What about your L-Z? There's no landing zone out there! And you'll need almost one thousand feet to take off."

  "The Dove is part seaplane if I use the hydrofoil blades." Jackson chuckled. "Eric, would you back off? Just pray for me, okay? In a few hours, I'll be landing here with not only a recently converted guerrilla, but a new asset to reach others. This guy could even be one of the men you witnessed to a few years ago when you went through Llanos."

  "Your wife is going to kill me." Eric stepped down the ladder and moved it away from the fuselage. "Are all Montanans as stubborn for Christ as you?"

  "Nope. Just the Christian ones!" Jackson laughed as he slid the canopy closed.

  Since The Dove had limited power, Jackson had already aimed his light plane by hand to face down the runway outside Villavicencia, Colombia. As light-hearted as he'd been with Eric, Jackson knew what lay before him was indeed no simple task. True, The Dove was a work of modern engineering with technology as sophisticated as an unmanned drone. But this was Colombia—nothing seemed to go according to plan in Colombia. Jackson had even developed an acronym to squelch his own complaining when things went awry: G-S-K. "God still knows," he often mumbled to himself.

  The Dove swooped into the afternoon sky moments later, her long, thin wings floating on thermal updrafts as gently as a glider. If he wasn't pressed for time, he could've switched off the single engine and glided for hours. But a man was in need. No time to experiment with his plane.

  On the flight northeast, Eric's words of warning did reach a nerve. His wife would've been unhappy at this reckless attempt to help a potentially new convert. Sure, Jackson was just visiting Colombia for a few weeks to try out The Dove's design on the mission field, but as a Christian, he wasn't deaf to pleas for help. Besides, he had to put The Dove to a true test. Pilots in Colombia wouldn't use her for future operations if she weren't tested and proven dependable.

  The bubble canopy provided a look behind him at the setting sun over the green field of trees. At an elevation of only two thousand feet, spotting a natural runway seemed unlikely. The jungle appeared unbroken, except for an occasional winding narrow opening in the foliage where a river twisted down the Andes slopes.

  "G-S-K," Jackson said with a shiver, then banked the plane northward two points. The nose lifted gently, and Jackson glanced at the copilot seat next to him. The Dove's take-off weight couldn't exceed the limit. As long as his passenger wasn't over two hundred and fifty pounds, there was plenty of room to whisk the man to civilization and safety.

  The glass vision maps synthesized the landscape below, supplemented by updated GPS renderings. As he tapped at the touch-screen, the collision avoidance system altered his altitude automatically by two hundred feet to avoid the cliffs of the river system—the headwaters of the Amazon.

  Darkness closed on the landscape, but The Dove's panels displayed the jungle in bright color contrasts from a nose camera.

  Jackson located one stretch of river on his maps that might work for a landing zone—if the river wasn't too swift. He could land easily enough on a swift river, but once he came to a stop, the plane would be washed away.

  The rescue coordinates and a small clearing were a few hundred yards to the west of the river. The river section would have to work. The speed of the water would have to be determined once he stopped, and by that time, it would be too late to turn back.

  Dropping in altitude, he measured the river section more carefully. It was closer to eight hundred feet long. But with the current opposing him, he wouldn't need as much runway. And taking off, if he could use the river current to gather speed . . .

  He had no signal flares, so he hoped the man below understood this engine coming over the river would be his ride out of the mountains.

  Jackson came in low from downstream. The slope of the mountain wasn't as gradual as he'd hoped, and he nearly stalled as he throttled back on power. When the hydrofoils touched the surface of the rippling river, Jackson maintained speed for another instant to survey the water with his own eyes, his LED landing lights as bright as the sun. The swollen surface didn't seem too choppy even with the early spring runoff from the higher elevations. There were no rocks or boulders visible. G-S-K.

  Decreasing speed, he started to edge toward the west bank when he realized his near-fatal mistake. His port side wing tip was already dangerously close to the brush that crowded the river.

  Since he'd need all the room he could get for takeoff, when The Dove slowed sooner than expected, Jackson applied more power to pilot farther up the river stretch. Before the river curved to the left, Jackson cut all power and steered sharply left. The plane pivoted in the middle of the river and drifted toward the west bank.

  Jackson slid back the cockpit canopy and reached behind his seat. As the plane nose nudged vines on the uneven bank, he tossed a ten-pound anchor into the bushes. Not waiting to see if the anchor held against the current, Jackson climbed out and jumped the four feet into the water on which the plane fuselage settled to a bobbing float.

  The water tugged at the tail of The Dove that was nearest the center of the river, but once Jackson waded through waist deep water and reached the bank, he took hold of the anchor line. He easily brought the plane into submission, then wound the anchor line around a tree and stomped the weight into the soft ground.

  "And that was just the easy part," he said to the sky. "G-S-K."

  No one emerged from the forest. Jackson returned to the plane and climbed up the submerged hydrofoil to reach the cockpit. He used a digital compass to determine a heading toward the coordinates, then he returned to the bank. After a cautious look at The Dove, he jogged into the trees.

  Just a few paces into the moon shadows of the trees, he heard sounds. They were sounds that were foreign to nature. Though he hadn't spent much time in Colombia, he'd hunted and hiked his whole life in Montana's untamed mountains. He knew the difference between animal sounds and human noise.

  Jackson crouched in the bushes, breathing soundlessly through his mouth. Insects pestered his exposed skin, but he remained motionless. Though he expected his extraction subject to approach the plane, he knew all of eastern Colombia was crawling with communist militants. And they regularly persecuted Christians.

  A man and woman came into sight, moving clumsily and loudly through the forest. The woman supported the man on one side, as if the man were wounded, but t
he lighting wasn't good enough for Jackson to see how bad his injuries were. Was this the man who was supposed to be his passenger?

  Directly behind the couple a child carried a bundle of belongings. The boy was small, probably younger than ten-years-old. The three were moving directly toward the plane.

  Stepping from the bushes, Jackson went up to the nose of the plane. The three Colombians huddled close together, but Jackson smiled and extended his hand. Here in the open, he could see the red wetness on the man's left side leaking down his green fatigues from a gunshot.

  "Mi amigo," Jackson said. "My brother in Christ. Mi hermano en Christo."

  "Hermano," the man said in response and weakly stretched out his hand and shook Jackson's. "Necesitamos proteccion, por favor."

  "Su familia?" Jackson asked, and smiled through his grit teeth as the man nodded. Of course. I came for one and God gives me three.

  Glancing at the anchored plane, Jackson could see the current tugging at the fuselage. There were only two seats, and if he were going to clear the trees on takeoff, he needed to avoid anything close to the weight capacity.

  He did the math in his head. The wounded man looked to weigh about two hundred pounds. Jackson was about the same, so both men together made up the weight limit. The woman was small, not over one hundred and thirty pounds, and the young boy with the bundle was probably under sixty.

  Since Jackson had reached the limit of his Spanish, he didn't try to explain what he needed to do. Besides, they couldn't take their time since militants were sure to be in the area. They must've seen or heard the plane land.

  Climbing up the hydrofoil, Jackson leaned into the cockpit to retrieve the survival pack then tossed it onto the riverbank. It was forty pounds and contained everything from a digital GPS to a sewing kit and five days' worth of rations.

  Next, he recalled his flight path to the river, and programmed a return course back to Eric's landing strip. If The Dove didn't have her programmable autopilot functions, he would've been forced to fly his new friends out one at a time.

  Jackson waved the man out into the water. The woman came with him, and together, they helped the ex-guerrilla into the cockpit. Next, the woman climbed up and sat in the pilot's seat. Then the boy was positioned on his mother's lap, and their small bundle on the man's lap. His side leaked blood onto the seat, but there was no time to treat before they departed. Eric would know how to treat the man when they landed in an hour.

  "Don't touch anything." Jackson gestured to the controls. "Uh, no manos. Automatico, sabes? Okay?"

  They nodded, and Jackson implemented the autopilot. He closed the canopy and splashed in the water to cut the anchor line as The Dove attempted a course correction even then. To help them on their way to safety, Jackson waded farther into the river, and hung onto the tail so the rest of the plane could swing around. As soon as The Dove was aimed downriver, the engines increased in power. Breathing a prayer, he released the tail, and The Dove shot away, the current helping her gain speed.

  Too nervous to look away, Jackson watched from the middle of the river as the plane reached take-off speed and soared into the dark sky. With feet to spare, she cleared the trees, climbed, and then banked west.

  Leaving the water, Jackson splashed ashore and recovered his survival backpack. He dug out the sat-phone that doubled as a GPS locator. Though Eric would need to be told before the plane touched down, Jackson had to get moving. Guerrillas were sure to be nearby.

  It was seventy miles back to Villavicencia, a two day hike under good conditions. But this was the Colombian wilderness of rolling jungle and steep hills. The trek could take three or four days, or longer, depending on the militants.

  Jackson clipped the phone onto his belt, shouldered the pack, and started south along the river. After a few yards, he cut into the jungle. As he hiked uphill, he considered The Dove's reliable features. She'd proven herself on the extraction mission, but yet to be determined was whether or not Jackson would get to pilot her on other missions. This part of his journey would be perilous.

  But three lives had been saved, among them a man who claimed to be a Christian convert. Jackson stretched his legs into a lengthy stride, and decided the trek was worth it all. Seeing God work out the details, even through surprises, was just one of the many things he'd take back to Montana to share with other believers.

  On the first hill above the river, Jackson looked down at the water. There was movement there—more than just the river's swollen current. He would need to keep moving if they were already on his trail. Even if this was their backyard, Jackson figured he had the militants outmatched. After all, G-S-K!

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