lost. Then again, maybe the fact that Dewey hadn’t encountered a search party meant the horse was alone and the rider was safe. That’s at least what he hoped for.
The odd thing was, the more overwhelming the odds of finding someone, the more convinced Dewey became that someone was out there.
He thought back to his training, first Ranger school, then the year and a half he spent training to be Delta. Survival, they taught you, was about perseverance, calm, and self-reliance. Outsiders always thought that being Delta had to do with what you were capable of doing with a weapon and a team. It was the opposite: being Delta was about what you did when you had nothing.
If you think you have nothing, then you do, and that’s when you’re defeated.
Day one at Fort Bragg: Dewey and twenty-nine other young, carefully selected GIs were assembled in a windowless conference room.
“Welcome to Delta,” a man in plainclothes he never saw again said. “Put everything you have in your locker and be at the tarmac in five minutes.”
An hour flight in the back of a Hercules to south Florida, dropped into the Everglades, separated from the others by miles of gator and snake-filled swamp, armed with a knife and nothing else.
Twelve of the thirty recruits in Dewey’s class had to be rescued. One got bit by a cottonmouth snake. Another broke his femur trying to get away from an alligator. One of his classmates drowned. Of the ten who made it through, four more dropped out the day they got back to Fort Bragg.
Dewey spent the week in the crotch of an eucalyptus tree, staring at alligators. During the day, he speared the occasional fish with a harpoon he’d carved out of a branch. By day four, he was so hungry and tired that he would eat sunfish, mullets, and shiners raw. At night, he’d tie his wrist to a branch with one of his shoelaces and try to sleep; the lace acted like an alarm clock, waking him up if he started to fall off the tree branch into the dark, alligator-infested water below.
Then, as now, it wasn’t about stratagem. It was about buying time and hunkering down.
A huge lightning strike exploded in the sky, turning the black air into white light. To the left of him, he saw the edge of a giant slab of gray, black, and white rock.
Was it the north side of the butte that he’d passed so many hours ago?
He pushed Deravelle forward as blackness returned.
The lightning exploded again. He looked at the ground. For a moment, he saw the same empty plot of land, the lifeless plain of mud dotted with small green shrubs as far as the light allowed him to see. Then, it all changed. As if in a dream, a small, white ghostlike apparition arose in a hillock just a few feet in front of Dewey and the horses. What he saw caused him to jerk backwards in his saddle. There in front of him, less than ten feet away, was a body lying on the muddy ground.
Dewey climbed down from the saddle. He stepped toward the body, then got down on his hands and knees. He crawled, sweeping his hands along the ground as the rain poured down on top of his back. He felt the heel of a boot, then a small, thin leg beneath wet denim, bare skin above the waist, a thin T-shirt, then the back of a head. It was a young girl, long hair, facedown in the mud. Dewey turned her over and brushed the mud from her face. She was cold to the touch.
“Atta girl.”
She had to be dead, yet despite that he spoke again.
“It’s gonna be okay.”
Lightning hit again, a distant strike. In the light he saw the face of the young girl. She had a long, pretty nose. A deep gash cut across her forehead, down to bone.
He felt her neck for a pulse. There was nothing there. He moved his ear to her chest; then he heard it: the faint rhythm of a heartbeat.
He unzipped his coat, reached down, picked up the girl, and pulled her against his chest. For several minutes, Dewey remained on his knees, clutching the cold body against his chest, trying to warm her.
He had to think. She
The odd thing was, the more overwhelming the odds of finding someone, the more convinced Dewey became that someone was out there.
He thought back to his training, first Ranger school, then the year and a half he spent training to be Delta. Survival, they taught you, was about perseverance, calm, and self-reliance. Outsiders always thought that being Delta had to do with what you were capable of doing with a weapon and a team. It was the opposite: being Delta was about what you did when you had nothing.
If you think you have nothing, then you do, and that’s when you’re defeated.
Day one at Fort Bragg: Dewey and twenty-nine other young, carefully selected GIs were assembled in a windowless conference room.
“Welcome to Delta,” a man in plainclothes he never saw again said. “Put everything you have in your locker and be at the tarmac in five minutes.”
An hour flight in the back of a Hercules to south Florida, dropped into the Everglades, separated from the others by miles of gator and snake-filled swamp, armed with a knife and nothing else.
Twelve of the thirty recruits in Dewey’s class had to be rescued. One got bit by a cottonmouth snake. Another broke his femur trying to get away from an alligator. One of his classmates drowned. Of the ten who made it through, four more dropped out the day they got back to Fort Bragg.
Dewey spent the week in the crotch of an eucalyptus tree, staring at alligators. During the day, he speared the occasional fish with a harpoon he’d carved out of a branch. By day four, he was so hungry and tired that he would eat sunfish, mullets, and shiners raw. At night, he’d tie his wrist to a branch with one of his shoelaces and try to sleep; the lace acted like an alarm clock, waking him up if he started to fall off the tree branch into the dark, alligator-infested water below.
Then, as now, it wasn’t about stratagem. It was about buying time and hunkering down.
A huge lightning strike exploded in the sky, turning the black air into white light. To the left of him, he saw the edge of a giant slab of gray, black, and white rock.
Was it the north side of the butte that he’d passed so many hours ago?
He pushed Deravelle forward as blackness returned.
The lightning exploded again. He looked at the ground. For a moment, he saw the same empty plot of land, the lifeless plain of mud dotted with small green shrubs as far as the light allowed him to see. Then, it all changed. As if in a dream, a small, white ghostlike apparition arose in a hillock just a few feet in front of Dewey and the horses. What he saw caused him to jerk backwards in his saddle. There in front of him, less than ten feet away, was a body lying on the muddy ground.
Dewey climbed down from the saddle. He stepped toward the body, then got down on his hands and knees. He crawled, sweeping his hands along the ground as the rain poured down on top of his back. He felt the heel of a boot, then a small, thin leg beneath wet denim, bare skin above the waist, a thin T-shirt, then the back of a head. It was a young girl, long hair, facedown in the mud. Dewey turned her over and brushed the mud from her face. She was cold to the touch.
“Atta girl.”
She had to be dead, yet despite that he spoke again.
“It’s gonna be okay.”
Lightning hit again, a distant strike. In the light he saw the face of the young girl. She had a long, pretty nose. A deep gash cut across her forehead, down to bone.
He felt her neck for a pulse. There was nothing there. He moved his ear to her chest; then he heard it: the faint rhythm of a heartbeat.
He unzipped his coat, reached down, picked up the girl, and pulled her against his chest. For several minutes, Dewey remained on his knees, clutching the cold body against his chest, trying to warm her.
He had to think. She
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