The Same, but Different

There was no way in hell this wasn't going to get ugly. I was in the middle of Nicaragua, the rest of my team was dead and it was two hundred miles to where I had left the lone support member in Costa Rica. I worked for Centaur Security. We provided safe work environments in hostile situations, hostage rescue and paramilitary support for corporations around the world. This was supposed to be a little of both the first two. Our competitors had been guarding an oil compound and there had been a massive security failure. A group of rebel guerilla fighters had hit the compound. They wiped out the security forces and took over the compound. There were hostages, including the CEO of the company, his daughter and four geologists.

When I got involved it had been ten days since the attack. I dropped in with a team of six and we took up positions. At three in the morning we made our move, and it was a good one. Unfortunately, I had a newbie on my team. He was an ex-military type and thought he was a cowboy. He saw a group of six of the guerillas and opened fire. He got them but it was like kicking an ant's nest. They came boiling out and we killed them like flies for ten minutes. After that we started dying. I shot the cowboy myself when my last old timer went down. Now I was just interested in getting away. I ducked into a building and there were three of them inside. I took a bullet in my left thigh before I got them. When I burst through the door into the last room on my way out the back I saw her. She was handcuffed to the bed and she was alive. I hesitated for a minute. She was gagged and blindfolded and shaking. I unlocked the cuffs and took off the blindfold. I left the gag on.

"I'm here to rescue you," I told her. "Are any of the others alive?"

She shook her head. "What about your father?" I asked. She began to cry hysterically and shook her head again. "Are you hurt?" I asked her. Another shake of her head. I pulled her up and we went out the back door like our tails were on fire. I headed south as quickly as I could manage with my bum leg. She wasn't much faster with her hands still behind her and the gag on. When we stopped she began to make sounds. I motioned her to whisper and took the handcuffs off. She pulled the gag off and panted for a while.

"Thanks for coming," she said. "You're a little late for the rest of them."

"What happened?" I asked her.

"They figured out there wasn't going to be a ransom," she said. "They were going to sell me. There was some kind of big shot that was coming in tomorrow they were going to sell me to. I heard the shooting; where are the rest of your men?"

"They're dead," I told her. "We're going to be dead if we don't hump it out of here."

"Is there a chopper coming to get us?" she asked.

"Well, that was the plan," I said. "That went to hell when Jenkins went down. He had the radio and I don't feel like going back to get it."

"Christ, what kind of incompetents are you?" she asked. "Are you telling me we're out here in the jungle and we're going to have to walk out?"

"I guess you could still be back there handcuffed to a bed," I told her. "Maybe you'd like to go back. Maybe the slaver coming tomorrow will give you a helicopter ride. Maybe to some nice place where a nice little white girl would be appreciated and given helicopter rides. Then, maybe after she was raped about a thousand times they'd give you a nice comfy grave to sleep in."

She opened and closed her mouth several times. Plainly she was furious and just as plainly she wasn't used to being talked to like that. I didn't give a damn. My leg was hurting like hell and I was going to have to use it. The bullet was still in there and I wasn't looking forward to taking it out.

"Who the hell do you think you are, talking to me like that," she started. "Do you know who I am?"

"Sure," I said. "You're a spoiled arrogant ungrateful little bitch who doesn't have a clue how bad this situation is. Now shut the fuck up and start walking!"

I limped off and when I looked back she was sitting down, her arms crossed and every bone in her body yelling stubbornness. I kept walking and when I disappeared into the trees I heard her coming.

"Wait," she called. "Don't leave me here you son-of-a-bitch. Come back here!"

I kept walking. She had quite a mouth on her. She cussed me up one side and down the other but she kept walking. After we had two hours and five miles behind us I sat down on a rock and gave her a drink. She drank half a canteen and I finished it off. I looked her over. She was a cute little thing. Under the dirt and sweat I could see she would clean up nice. She had long, strawberry blonde hair, dark brown eyes that were very large and angry looking right then. She had a cute little nose and full red lips that would have been very cute had they not been pulled into a frown.

She wasn't talking, for which I was grateful, and after we rested ten minutes, I started off again. We walked south the rest of the day and just before dark we came to a small river. It was a fairly clear one, and I turned down it. We came to a clearing in the jungle after a few minutes. It had a game trail along one side and there was collared peccary drinking when we came to the edge of the trees. I screwed the silencer on my .45 and shot him twice. He dropped and I ran and cut his throat. I used a cord to pull him up on a limb and field dressed him. She looked like she was in shock.

"I can't believe you killed that cute little pig," she finally said.

I ignored her. She watched while I strung a tarp up to keep off the inevitable rain and started a fire. I found the kind of green sapling I wanted and two more with forks in them. I cut the back straps out of the peccary and impaled them on the sapling. I put it on the two forked branches and we had a nice spit to roast him on. There was a flat rock near the river and I sat on it while I boiled water. When it was rolling, I took off my pants. The leg was soaked with blood and the bullet hole was oozing.

"My God," she said. "You've been shot! You were walking all day on that!"

"Yeah, I noticed," I growled. "You know anything about bullet wounds?"

"Actually, I do," she said. "I'm in medical school. I'm going to be a trauma surgeon."

"Good girl," I said. "Will you help me?"

"What do you want me to do?" she asked. "This isn't exactly an operating room."

"No," I laughed. "You're not exactly a doctor and I'm not exactly an emergency room patient. We'll just have to make do." I could feel the bullet on the back of my thigh. "I need you to cut this bullet out. It won't be hard; you can see it. Then I need you to sew me up. I have alcohol. We'll pour that in. I have suture materials, too."

"I've never really operated on anything but a dead cat," she said.

"I'm going to be a dead cat if we don't get this cleaned up," I laughed. "You'll do fine. Help me, please."

I got the boiling water and put the supplies on the rock. I poured alcohol on a scalpel out of the medical kit and held it out. I lay on my belly on the rock and she hesitantly made the cut. I could feel the bullet pop out and then there was pain when she cleaned the wound. She stitched it up and I rolled onto my back. There was a lot more pain when she cleaned and stitched up the wound on the front of my thigh. I was lucky it hadn't hit a bone or a big artery. I got up and took my pants down to the stream to wash out the blood. Nothing came out of the water to eat me so I stripped off and walked to my backpack. I could feel her eyes following me. I got a bar of soap out and waded out into the river at a shallow spot. I bathed, washing away the blood on my thigh and washing out my clothes. She stood on the bank and watched me.

"How long since you had a bath?" I asked her.

"Days," she said. "I smell worse than that pig you killed."

"Come on in," I told her. "It's cool, but it's clean."

"I'm not taking my clothes off in front of you," she said.

"Okay, suit yourself," I said. "We're going to be together for weeks. The pig is going to be a delicious bouquet of fragrance compared to you by the time we get there. There won't always be somewhere to take a bath."

"I'll wait until you're finished," she said. "You can turn your back."

"Forget it," I said. "You don't have any soap anyway."

"I can use yours," she said. "I sewed you up and cut out that bullet."

"Yes, and I saved you from slavery," I told her. "I'll call that even. I'm going to protect you until we get out of this."

"You're an asshole," she said. "Are you telling me that you're going to make me take off my clothes or you won't let me use the soap?"

"No, I was just kidding you," I laughed. "I'll let you use the soap, but I'm not turning my back. I'll get out and I won't watch much. I'm going to keep an eye on you though. Something might come up out of the river and eat you. I'm not going to let that happen."

"What might be there," she asked.

"An alligator, a crocodile, a boa constrictor or a jaguar might come out of the jungle," I told her. If you stay in the shallows here you should avoid the first two."

I got out and walked back past her to the fire. I turned to pig and he was starting to smell pretty good. She stripped and waded out. I was a gentleman and I didn't stare, but what I saw was spectacular. This was one fantastic looking girl. No wonder they kept her alive. She would have brought a fortune on the slave market. She washed her clothes and put her underwear back on before she came out to the fire. I got dressed and foraged around for something to eat with the pig. I quickly found sapote fruit, mammee apples, and plantains. I picked my shirt full and carried them back to the fire. She had turned the pig and I put a flat rock in the fire and placed the plantains on it.

I got camp plates and forks out and split the fruit. She ate the sapote fruit and loved it and the mammee apple not so much. I told her it was rumored to be an aphrodisiac and she blushed prettily. The pig was done and I took the spit off and cut a portion for her, then one for myself. I had salt and I gave her some. I popped open the plantains and we dug in.

"Wow," she exclaimed. "This is very good. I'm amazed. Sorry about bitching when you killed it. The banana is good, too."

"I forgive you," I said. "It's a plantain. It looks like a big green banana, but it needs to be cooked. I'm sorry I was so hard on you earlier. We're just in a jam here and I needed you to wake up."

"I don't even know your name," she said. "I'm Kalen Osborne."

"I know," I said. "Dace Maron. We had a hell of an introduction, Kalen."

"Are you in the Army or something?" she asked.

"No, I'm private security. Better than what you had, though. Your father should have hired me. I'm sorry about him, Kalen. I know it must be tough on you."

She nodded. "Thanks. We were pretty close. It was eight days ago and I'm sort of cried out."

I looked her over. She was scrapped up quite a bit and she had some bruises. She was gorgeous! She just had on her bra and panties and she could have been the centerfold in any magazine on the planet. She must be smart, too, if she was in medical school. She was rich and I guess she had the total package going on. She got up and put her shirt on. I regretted seeing all that golden skin disappear, but she said bugs were on her. The fire and the smoke would keep them away for now, but they were going to be brutal later. Luckily, I had mosquito netting and DEET.

"Kalen, I hate to break up our new found unity, but I only have one set of blankets and one pad," I told her. "I only have one mosquito net, too. You're going to have to share with me. I'm not making a pass at you or anything, that's just the way it is here at the Ritz jungle."

She laughed. It was the first time I had heard it and I vowed to make her do it again. "It's okay," she said. "You were right about me. I'm a spoiled brat. I'm going to bitch and moan all the way back. I apologize in advance."

I cut the rest of the peccary up and she helped me put it over the fire to smoke. We built it up and put green wood on it to smoke and last the night. I took a quick rinse in the river and it was time to turn in. My Ensolite pad was seven feet by four feet. It rolled up small and compact, and it was very high density. It was as comfortable as it gets sleeping on the ground. I didn't use a sleeping bag unless it was cold and it was anything but cold. It was damp, especially after it started raining. I had dug a trench around the tarp and built up a dike around the inside. The trench led off toward the river and the water ran down it in a stream.

I hung the netting, spread out our blanket and we lay down. Our clothes were making us sweat like pigs. It wasn't long before I was smothering. "To hell with this," I said. "I'm stripping off. I'm sorry Kalen, but I can't stand this humidity."

"It's okay," she said. "I'm just as miserable as you are. I'm going to join you."

We stripped to our underwear and lay back down. The fire hissed and the flame died a little. The rain stopped and the humming of insects filled the air. We were safe under the netting and I eventually fell asleep. I think Kalen was still awake when I went to sleep. When I woke up, it was very foggy. Steam rose from the river and drifted across the camp. It was quiet and the sun would burn the fog off in an hour or two. Kalen was still asleep. I couldn't help giving her a once over with my eyes. I felt like I was molesting her, and I quickly turned away. I got the fire stirred up a little and I had a loaf of hard bread in my pack and a package of sharp cheese. I cut some fat from the peccary and fried the bread. I put cheese and slices of the pig on the bread. Kalen was stirring and she sat up. She must have been a little disoriented but when she saw me she crossed her arms across her breasts and quickly found her shirt. It was long and she didn't put on her pants yet. Her legs were bare and beautiful. She was tall and slender and her legs looked like they rose forever. She came out of the netting and sat on a log by me. We ate the bread and it was delicious. I rolled up the meat in paper and we packed up. Crossing the river in the shallows, we put our boots on and started south again.

I wondered if the guerillas would look for us. We hit them pretty hard and I doubted they wanted any more of what I would give them. Their profit was gone with Kalen, and they had nothing to sell the slaver when he came. If they survived that encounter they would be lucky. We would cross another small river in the evening, if everything went well. My leg was stiff as a board and as sore as a boil. It limbered up as we walked but it still hurt like hell. Kalen began to talk as we walked. I liked hearing the sound of her voice. It was low, husky and musical. I wondered if she sung and thought it would sound like one of those old jazz singers from the depression era. She talked about everything; where she lived, where she went to school, her friends, her fiancé, the route we were taking and I made the appropriate responses to keep her talking.

Around noon we stopped and ate some trail mix and pig jerky. I had filled my canteen with water from the river, boiled and filtered through the filter in the top of my canteens. We drank heavily. It was very hot and humid and we sweated rivers. I killed a snake in the path. It was a pit viper and I thought about butchering it, but we weren't that hungry yet. We made pretty good time, and by the time we got to the river it was about five. There was a roaring we heard about a half mile away. It got louder as we approached the river and when we came out onto rock there was a small canyon below us. There was a waterfall that was making the roar, and we crossed above it at the first riffle. We descended into the canyon and it became much cooler. There was a pool below the waterfall, and it was beautiful. The water was clear and cold and we got in immediately. It was deep enough to swim but not so large that I feared anything living in it that would eat us. I soaked for a while and went to make a fire. I got out the soap and we washed our clothes. I took them and hung them up by the fire to dry. I was surprised that she gave me her bra and panties. I guess my casual nudity had relaxed her, and she bathed while I hung up our clothes. When I looked around she was gone. I called, and she appeared out from under the falls.

I swam over and we stood under the water and let it cascade down over us. She turned toward me and we looked each other over. She was amazing. Her breasts were very large on her slender form, firm and high and gloriously shaped. She had small pink areolas and little pink nipples. They were crinkled and erect in the cold water. Her ribcage fell away to a tiny waist and a firm toned belly with a cute little navel low in the center. Her hips flared dramatically and she had a little V of strawberry blonde fuzz between her thighs. Her legs took my breath away. I wanted to reach out and pull her in, but she gave no indication she wanted that so I restrained myself. She looked me over and I felt a little naked. She said something but the sound of the water made it impossible for me to hear. I pointed at my ears and we swam away.

"I said, you have a lot of scars," she said. "You've been in a lot of fights, haven't you?"

"More than I wanted," I told her. "You're beautiful, Kalen."

She blushed. "Thanks. I don't want to get out. We're going to sweat as soon as we do."

"I don't think so," I told her. "I think this water is going to make it feel good as long as we stay in the canyon. I'm going to try to catch a fish."

I carried a line and hook in my pack and we baited it up with a piece of pig and I caught a big catfish in about ten minutes. I cleaned it and cut some fat off the remains of the pig. I used salt and pepper and fried it over the fire. It was very good. I'm not a big fan of catfish, but this place and this girl made it special. We were as naked as the day we were born, and we stayed that way when we went to bed. We talked for a while and it was even getting a little chilly. She rolled over against me and cuddled up, her skin chilled a little by the cool air. The feeling of that fantastic naked body against me had me erect before two minutes had passed. She didn't notice for a while and when she did she went quiet for a while.

"Dace, I'm engaged," she said finally. "You know that."

"Yes, I'm not doing anything," I told her. "I'm just lying here. There's a naked girl here, and that's what happens to me when I'm in bed with a naked girl; especially one that looks like you. I'm sorry, but there isn't anything I can do about it."

"I'm not accusing you of anything," she said. "I'm having the same reaction, you just can't see it. Well, I guess you can see my nipples are hard. I'm just telling you that when we get out of this, if we do, I'm engaged. I'm going to get married. Whatever happens here has to stay here. Life is different in Philadelphia."

She propped herself up on one arm and moved half on top of me. Her luscious lips pressed against mine and I put my arms around her. She felt amazing! She was long and gorgeous and her body moved against mine in a sensuous dance. We kissed eagerly for long minutes, bare flesh seeking contact and bodies moving together. I rolled her onto her back and my hands roamed at will. She felt like smooth silk under my fingers. Her skin was flawless. Even in the midst of a jungle and with biting insects everywhere the DEET had done its job and she hadn't been bitten. Her breasts were perfect. They were big and firm and jutted from her chest without a hint of sag. They were like the breasts you see in magazines but without the implants that keep them in that perfect shape. She tasted delicious. We had been sharing a toothbrush and it had been vaguely erotic to know we had done that. Now it was straight from the source and she tasted like mint and ripe fruit. Her skin was just clean girl, a faint fragrance from the soap and Kalen.