She stared into the thick brush. The Dutch soldier went in there alone. At night. He never came out. The ATVs sat poised at the jungle edge. It was impossible to tell what color they were under the inch-thick coat of gray mud. The soldiers there looked around them, glancing over their shoulders at Laura and Hoblenz; "Scared to go back in there, Mr. Hoblenz?" she said it loud enough for his [garbled] to hear.
She then lowered her voice. "Mr. Gray said I had unrestricted access. I think that includes the jungle." Without waiting for a reply, she headed for the nearest vehicle. Hoblenz followed. Laura stuffed her hair into one of the baseball-style caps they offered her and put on a pair of clear plastic goggles. She climbed onto the slant-nosed hood, and Hoblenz helped her step over the low windshield, grumbling the entire time. Laura resolved to ignore the mud covering the front passenger seat. She settled into the mess beside Hoblenz, who took the driver's seat with audible sighs. Once strapped in, Laura was surprised to see two men climb onto the back of the vehicle and attach themselves by straps to the roll bar — their rifles at the ready. She was even more surprised when the second vehicle started its loud engine, drowning out the faint but constant whoosh of the wind and the surf. It drove up behind them with four more armed soldiers aboard.
She felt her pulse quicken.
"You ready?" Hoblenz asked, and with a sudden roar their own engine sprang to life. The vehicle's light fiberglass chassis seemed a minor adjunct to the ATV's main features: its thunderous motor and the two rows of huge tires that formed black rubber walls to the left and the right. There was no steering wheel in front of Hoblenz, just two thick grips protruding from long slots on either side of his seat.
He twisted the vertical throttle like on a motorcycle, gunning the motor to ever-louder growls and shaking Laura's insides with the disconcerting vibrations. It felt like her seat was bolted directly to the massive engine block.
Hoblenz revved the engine again and shouted, "Hang on tight!" He then thrust the two levers to the front of their slots. With a kick to Laura's back, the vehicle plowed straight into the solid jungle wall.
The ATV's sharp nose rose straight toward the sky. Laura's weight shifted. She thought for one horrible moment they were going to tip over backward and crush the two soldiers in back. She felt a lurch and a slip, and then a lurch forward and upward again.
One side rose above the other as Hoblenz worked the two throttles independently. But with a final roar from the engine, the vehicle rose onto the jungle roof — leveling and then scraping its way forward, half sunk into the scraggly brush beneath. She looked back through the legs of the two standing soldiers to see the second ATV rise up in their tracks. Its muddy belly was streaked white from clawing branches, and it crashed down onto the flattened path made by the lead vehicle.
They were going over the jungle brush instead of through it — the hull partially submerged in the upper reaches of the thick canopy. The giant tires thrashed at the branches with great violence, crawling forward at a snail's pace toward their goal.
"It's only thick like this around the edges of the jungle," Hoblenz boomed into her left ear. "It gets thinner when you get further in!" She barely heard him over the noise of the engine and the grinding of angry branches against the chassis.
After a short distance they began to sink into the thick growth like a submarine slipping slowly beneath the water. In jerking, side-to-side motions they descended further into the brush with every inch that the vehicle crawled forward. Laura's heart leapt into her throat with each slip downward, but the clinging limbs of the jungle growth kept them from plummeting to the ground in a great crash.
It grew dark as the green leaves closed in around and above them.
A watery slurp under the boat-like hull signaled their arrival on the soggy bottom. For a moment there was relative quiet as Hoblenz idled the engine. The jungle floor was immersed in perpetual shade, and it stank of a thousand decaying things. Laura flexed her fingers, which were sore from their firm grip on the dashboard handle.
"Here we go," Hoblenz said, and he gunned the engine with another twist of the throttles. A roar rose up, followed instantly by the high-speed whine of spinning tires. Great sprays of mud flew up, coating her goggles, stinging her face, and splattering her clothes.
Laura's T-shirt stuck to her skin — its contact cold and uncomfortable.
"Ye-e-e-e ha-a-a-aw!" Hoblenz yelled over the maelstrom of noise.
She reached up and cleared two small windows in her goggles. All she could see of Hoblenz was his white teeth. The rest of him was thoroughly coated in dripping gunk.
Another tidal wave of mud was thrown up, and it covered her face and arms and chest. She gave up trying to clear the goggles. All she knew now of her surroundings was the groan of the engine, the spraying of the mud, and the occasional slap at her head by an overhanging branch.
She settled back into that dark world, taking what solace she could from the protection of an ever-thickening [missing] mud. She couldn't tell how long it was before the engine fell silent. In the sudden quiet she thought they'd broken down, but when seconds later the other ATV cut its engine she knew they'd reached their destination.
Laura pulled the goggles away from her face with a loud slurp. She unbuckled her seat restraints and struggled to her feet. Large volumes of mud dripped from her lap onto the floorboard, and her running shoes squished in the deep muck already there. Laura sullenly climbed over the windshield in disgust, refusing all offers of assistance from the similarly filthy men. Despite the ledges of mud that cascaded from her clothes, she still felt thirty pounds heavier under the weight of the grime.
She stood erect on the slanted hood of the ATV. The jungle was thinner on the ground than she had expected. But it all grew together overhead, forming a thick canopy that blocked most of the light. The dark green leaves of the plants and trees seemed almost as black as the marshy ground from which they sprang.
The soldiers moved slowly and with obvious effort through the mire, great sucking sounds audible with every step. Hoblenz had issued no orders to his men that she had heard, but they all began to clean their rifles with pristine white rags. Trying not to cringe, Laura stepped off the front fender into the swamp. Her foot sank deep into the squishy mess, the water rising halfway up her shin to fill the hole she'd made, soaking her foot and jeans. It took surprising effort for her to pull her foot free of the clinging mud.
Her bright white athletic sock hung in the air above the muck. Her running shoe had come off and disappeared at the bottom of a muddy well, which quickly filled to the top with dark water. She balanced on one foot, her other sinking deep in the wet glue.
She had to await the soldiers' help this time. They probed for her shoe with bayonets. When they fished it from the swamp, it was unrecognizable inside a cubic foot of black mud. After a soldier carved most of the mess off with his knife, she sunk her foot into the shoe with a loud sound.
"I am woman, hear me roar," she heard Hoblenz say. The soldiers next to them laughed. "You happy yet, or you wanna take a piss standin' up?" There was more laughter.
Laura trudged through the swamp, muttering "Fuck you" to Hoblenz as she passed. Up ahead, the four men from the second vehicle had fanned out, their weapons in hand. The area was slightly elevated, and she climbed out of the swamp and into what passed for relatively solid mud. "Which way now?" she asked.
Hoblenz joined her, but he took his time in answering. "This is the place."
She looked down at the uneven ground. There was absolutely nothing to set this spot apart from the rest of the swamp. What did you expect to find, she thought, cursing herself silently.