The morning light was helpful in the trek down from the mountain summit. Brent had received word over his radio that everyone had landed safely and had begun the downhill portion of the mission.
As he continued, his radio squawked to life.
“Don’t think about trying to meet up and complete the exercise together.” The southern drawl gave away the voice on the other end. “You have each been dropped at a different spot and you all have different extraction points. If you join forces and work together, you will be disqualified and sent home.”
Brent’s attention was more on what Seven was saying and not on where he was stepping. That mistake caused him to step on a loose rock and slide about twenty feet on his back side. Up to that point, he had been cautious of his footing because the ground was wet and slippery. Dragging himself upright, he remembered being told that the area had been through a long rainy season and that numerous mud slides had been spotted earlier in the spring.
Brent reached for and turned his radio/satellite phone to text only.
“I won’t make that mistake again,” he said to himself.
The first half of the day was slow moving, but he plodded along and made good time. By thirteen hundred hours, the temperature had reached ninety four degrees and it felt as if steam was rising from the earth.
The smell started as a faint odor that barely registered in the olfactory area of his brain. It could have been an animal or plant life or the smell of fungus from all the rain. Within minutes, Brent’s eyes were watering and his throat was beginning to burn. Seven’s warning reverberated in his mind. He knew what lie ahead of him and he knew where he was going.
He stopped and checked his radio. There had been no communication since this morning. Hungry, he reached into his backpack for a MRE, the military’s idea of nutrition, but then thought otherwise.
I’m still two miles from the open field, he thought. If the smell keeps getting stronger, the last thing I want is food in my stomach. I’ll be throwing up all night.
He took small sips from his canteen and checked his map for a nearby stream. He knew he needed to fill up his canteen and soak his shirt with water while he was still above the ‘skunk grass’ field. If he waited until he was below it, the water might contain the same odor. It was not a risk he was willing to take.
He stopped at the stream to read his map. It told him to travel in the opposite direction and uphill for the better part of four miles in order to bypass the field. He would then have to traverse two miles and then trek back down the four he went up.
I’ll have to climb to a higher point on the mountain range than where I originally started from, he thought.
Surveying the map, he saw that the field was only a little more than a mile wide. On the other side, he could meet up with the same point on the map that would easily take him the better part of two days. Remembering the ear plugs, it didn’t take him long to decide on which route to take.
Brent removed the camouflage bandana from around his neck and soaked it in the stream. He scouted the nearby vegetation and pulled some moss off the bottom of a tree. He packed the moss into the middle of the bandana, folded it in a tri-fold pattern and tied it around his nose and mouth. He knew the moss along with the water would make a good filter and keep him from breathing in a lot of the odor.
He reached in his pocket and found the ear plugs. He tore the package open as he heard Seven’s warning about using all your senses while on the mountain. I better wait until I reach the field or until I can’t take the smell any more. He stuffed the plugs back into his pocket.
The next mile was slow, but it was manageable. The part that made it tricky wasn’t the natural terrain, but the degree of moisture that had soaked the earth from all the rain. For every two steps Brent would move, he would slip back one.
Brent stopped to catch his breath and to take a sip from his canteen. He didn’t dare remove the bandana, so he soaked it with his canteen and sucked the water through the moss. It tasted like a smoothie he once tasted in a café in Amsterdam.
The winds began to swirl and the clouds moved in fast. Before Brent could replace his canteen in his backpack, he saw a flash of lightening and heard the clash of thunder. The skies opened up and a wall of water fell from the heavens. That’s when things got interesting.