Pierre turned back to his waiting victims, leveling the .38 at Lewis’s chest. Lewis began to worry that the flare was going to be too late, and prepared to make a last desperate lunge towards Pierre instead, hoping to at least give the girls a running chance. Just as Lewis lifted his foot, the flare exploded in a burst of blinding light and billowing smoke. “Run!” Lewis shouted over his shoulder, sprinting through the cloud of smoke towards Pierre. Gonzalez had already grabbed Samantha’s arm, pulling her up the hill, angling away from the fire.
The deception worked. It took almost a second for Pierre to recover from the initial shock of the explosion. He fired two quick rounds towards where Lewis had been standing before being blindsided by a freight train. The train, of course, was actually Lewis, who had taken a slightly circular route to disguise his path of attack before simply lowering his shoulder while running at full speed. The impact knocked Pierre to the ground, sending the revolver skidding into the bushes. Pierre’s eyes rolled back in his head, apparently knocked out from the punishing tackle.
Lewis took advantage of Pierre’s unconscious state and ran for the bushes to get the pistol. Pushing the first few fronds aside, he spotted the revolver just a couple feet away. Before he could grab it, he was clobbered from behind by a stick. Pierre had recovered incredibly quickly, grabbing the first weapon he found then breaking the large tree limb across Lewis’s head. The stick was now only half as long, but the wiry Frenchman lifted it again and took another brutal swing at Lewis’s skull. Lewis recovered from the initial strike just in time to raise his right arm, blocking the second attack. He ripped the stick out of Pierre’s hand, throwing it back towards the fire before punching the climber hard in the throat. Pierre collapsed to his knees, clutching his throat as he gasped for air.
Pierre’s men were on their way up the hill, alerted to potential problems after seeing the flare’s explosion. Lewis wasted no more time, scooping up the .38 before bounding up the hill after his fleeing friends. He ran through a small thicket, stopping when he heard Gonzalez whisper from a large thorn bush growing along the dried banks of a seasonal stream. Lewis spotted Samantha and Gonzalez hidden deep within the bush. They were visible now that he knew they were there, but suitably hidden from someone passing by. Lewis raced up the hill and hung a torn fragment of his shirt on the jagged limb of a fallen tree, 100 feet above the girls’ hiding spot. He returned quickly, hiding alongside his friends while trying to calculate their next move.
“Is Pierre dead?” Samantha asked in a quiet whisper.
Lewis returned a slight shake of his head, saying, “No, he is going to have a sore throat for a while though.” He then put his finger to his lips, indicating quiet, before pointing back towards the smoke from the flare. Pierre’s voice sounded different, but his accent was clear as he explained the situation and ordered his men to hunt down their prey. “Stay still and keep quiet,” Lewis whispered. “Here they come.”
They heard the approaching footfalls before they actually saw the team of mercenaries stalking through the trees. Their pursuers all wore camouflage fatigues and carried assault rifles, giving the initial impression of a military background; however, their clumsy movements and lack of teamwork gave them away as paid amateurs. Either way, they were well armed and appeared ready to kill.
One of Pierre’s men was walking directly towards the bush where Lewis and the others were hiding. Lewis tightened his grip on the .38, ready to lift it and fire, knowing he had only two rounds remaining to somehow fight their way out of this canyon. As he walked, the gunman searched the rocky ground for tracks and scanned the steep hillside for clues, seemingly unaware of his proximity to his targets. Lewis held his breath as the assailant approached to within 10 feet of their hiding spot.
Suddenly, the gunman nearest Lewis began shouting for the others as he pointed up the hill. He had spotted the torn piece of Lewis’s shirt and was taking the bait. Lewis counted seven more armed men, all running up the hill towards the false clue. A wild-eyed Pierre soon followed, hungry for revenge, with an AK47 in his hands. The group momentarily convened around their newly-found evidence, scanning the hillside above. Lewis and his friends hit some luck: the dry creek bed curved up the hill, past the torn shirt fragment, all the way to a huge boulder pile at the base of a V-shaped cliff, about a quarter mile away. With such a perfect trail to follow, Pierre and his goons wasted no time, every one of them running up the hill in search of an easy kill.
Lewis waited until their pursuers were out of sight then whispered, “We don’t have much time. Let’s work our way back down and see if we can find a way out of here.”
Gonzalez and Samantha looked terrified, but each nodded their understanding. All three did their best to remain undetected while creeping back down the hill towards the fire where they had spent the night. Pausing next to the shaft they had escaped from less than twelve hours ago, Lewis tried to decide if they should hide there, or keep moving.
Gonzalez read his mind. “If we go back down now, we may never make it out again,” she said, shaking her head.
She was right. Lewis nodded his agreement while searching for a good escape route. It looked like an easy hike to the river from here, but Lewis knew that the canyon was layered with impassable cliffs, hidden from this angle. They would be easy targets if they got caught on one of those. Then he heard something.
Excited conversation was drifting through the trees; the helicopter pilots were discussing their share of the treasure while waiting with the choppers in the clearing below. Samantha and Gonzalez heard it too, each crouching lower as they looked to Lewis. “It’s the pilots,” he whispered, a wide grin filling his face as a thought occurred to him. “We should see if they’ll give us a ride.”
Without another word, Lewis turned and led the way through a small stand of pines to the edge of the clearing. Two men, hopefully they were actually the pilots, stood about twenty feet away, looking up and a little to the left, watching their comrades up the hill. Lewis hated to waste one of his two remaining bullets on what appeared to be unarmed men, plus he needed one of them to fly them to safety. Instead of shooting, he picked up a nice-sized rock and threw it at the nearest helicopter, cracking the front window.
As expected, both pilots wheeled around at the sound of breaking glass behind them. At that moment, Lewis burst from the pines, sprinting towards the distracted men. They heard him coming but it was too late. Lewis tackled them both, quickly landing a powerful punch to the first’s temple, knocking him out cold. The other man tried to squirm free, but Lewis gave him a quick forearm to the chest before grabbing the revolver from his waist band, and pointing it directly at the man’s head. “Can you fly that?” Lewis asked, gesturing towards the helicopter that still had an unscarred windshield.
The man looked to the chopper but didn’t answer. Lewis punched him in the stomach and pushed the gun hard against his temple. “Yes,” the pilot finally answered through clenched teeth.
“Let’s go then,” Lewis said as he stood, heaving the pilot to his feet and shoving him towards the helicopter.
Samantha and Gonzalez came running up, both yelling, “They’re coming!”
Lewis turned to see that someone above had spotted them, and there was now a trail of gunmen streaming back towards the clearing. There wouldn’t be much time. Lewis practically threw the pilot into his seat, telling him to get ready for takeoff before he climbed into the copilot’s seat, the girls jumping in the back. It took continued monitoring and occasional prodding but the pilot actually had the helicopter off the ground and rotating towards the open canyon before the gunmen were even halfway to the clearing. It looked like an easy getaway until gunfire erupted from the hillside above, bullets occasionally striking the fuselage of the defenseless helicopter.