Page 19 of Touchdown
“If you want to watch my butt move up a tree, you can just say so,” I'd said.
He laughed. “Always. But, seriously, let's be strategic here. Wearing these sheets up a tree has a lot of drawbacks.”
Couldn't deny that. Light fabric catches the light. Any fabric can trip you up.
“We'll hang them around the place to catch their eyes. Create a little confusion.”
“Won't work if they're wearing night-vision.”
“Sure. But if they're using regular flashlights, it might distract and even separate them for a few minutes—and we might need those minutes.”
Considering how loud the chop of the helicopter blades was getting, I couldn't disagree. Noah's toga tore easily at the ripped place to make two pieces. With my toga, we had three white ghosts we could hang at various spots around the nearby forest.
“I feel ridiculous,” I grumbled.
“You? I've felt ridiculous for weeks.”
Scrambling up palm trees is for experts. We dashed into the forest and halfway back up the mountain. The perfect tree for our purpose would have a thick trunk with lots of well-placed sturdy branches. The best candidates were members of a species with broad leaves the size of an open umbrella.
Each leaf had five fingers that made it resemble a giant's hand. Their shadows were uber-creepy in the dark.
“This one,” Noah said.
He was the expert on life in trees, so I followed him up. We ended up on a perch about thirty feet high where a convergence of branches formed a natural platform big enough for both of us.
“This is... nice.” I was making too much effort not to sound unthrilled.
“Should we go higher?” he asked. “I wanted to make sure you were low enough to get a good bead on your targets.”
“It's perfect.” I couldn't do most of the other exercises I could do to psych myself up for a big play, but I could still breathe nice and deep. “Besides, we have a solid advantage.”
“Yeah?” Even this close, his face was mostly shadow. It was very dark by now, especially in the forest. “Besides having the high ground? What advantage is that?”
I squeezed his leg. “They don't want us dead.”
“True dat,” he said.
We both held on tight to that one truth.
They weren't coming to kill us. They'd do everything they could to avoid killing us. No matter how much we annoyed them, they wouldn't blast us out of the tree with an AK.
They'd invested too much time and effort to bring us here alive.
“You know they'll know how to climb a tree, right?” Noah asked in a more serious voice.
Of course I knew that. The know-how to climb a tree with lots of healthy, sturdy branches wasn't exactly the rare province of a few elite soldiers. Anyone could do it.
“They can try,” I said. “But it'll sure slow them down if I keep bouncing hard objects off their heads. This arm is serious business.”
Noah's smile flashed in the dark like a beacon.
Chapter 13
Nothing had changed. We were stuck thirty feet in the air. Naked in a stupid tree in a dark forest. And yet, with a simple smile, Noah made me feel like magic. He was better than any cheerleader.
Balling my right hand into a fist, I flexed hard to make the veins in my biceps pop. “You underestimate the muscle in this arm at your own risk.”
Noah squeezed. “That's rock hard.”
