Runway At Dawn

Janet forced herself to look down at the ground. The mission had been explained in a few hurried sentences before they left the river landing. The commandos would move on the camp after nightfall. If the prisoners were freed, the Bushmaster would come at dawn. The aircraft needed a runway, and the jungle had offered them none.

They had no bulldozer. No explosives. No survey equipment. Their tools were a handful of shovels, axes, machetes, pry bars, and two battered metal rakes. None of them had ever built a runway.

Janet tightened her grip on the machete.

“Take the first twenty yards,” she said. “We clear everything down to earth. We don’t worry about the rest until we can see what we’re dealing with.”

Megan gave her a hard look. “And if what we’re dealing with is worse than this?”

“Then we work faster.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.”

For a moment, the jungle pressed close around them. Cicadas shrilled overhead. Something small moved through the dead leaves near Shirley’s boot, and Shirley jerked back with a muffled cry.

“Snake?” Vicky asked.

“Probably a lizard,” Shirley said, though her voice shook.

Janet stepped into the marked strip. A vine crossed the ground at ankle height. She brought the machete down. The blade struck with a wet snap, and the vine recoiled into the brush.

“Janet,” Pam said quietly, “what if the commandos don’t get them out?”

Janet kept her eyes on the next vine. “They will.”

“What if they do, and the plane can’t land?”

That stopped her.

The question had lived inside Janet since the moment the plan was given form. She had imagined the Bushmaster dropping through the dawn, its engines roaring, its wheels touching the earth. She had imagined her husband among the prisoners, thinner perhaps, bruised, but walking. She had not imagined the plane circling overhead because the ground was too rough. She had not imagined it turning away.

She swung again. The blade cut through a curtain of vines, opening a narrow window into the jungle.

“Then we make it land,” she said.

Megan moved beside her. “You’ve never done this.”

“Neither have you.”

“That doesn’t make it sensible.”

“No,” Janet said. “It makes it ours.”

They began.

The first hour became a struggle against green weight. Vines wrapped around their ankles and wrists. Ferns rose above their heads, their fronds slick with rain. Each cut revealed another stem beneath it. The jungle did not seem to thin so much as recoil, exposing fresh layers of itself.

Janet worked at the front, hacking a path while Megan and Shirley dragged the severed growth aside. Pam followed with the shovel, chopping at roots and scraping away the mat of leaves. Vicky marked the cleared edge with more red thread, tying it to branches whenever she could find branches thin enough to bend.

“Pull together,” Megan called.

The five women seized a vine as thick as Janet’s arm. They leaned back, boots sliding in the mud. The vine tightened, its barbs catching on their sleeves.

“Again!” Megan shouted.

They pulled. Something gave beneath the soil with a deep, fibrous crack. The vine sprang free and flung mud across Pam’s face.

Pam spat and wiped her eyes. “I hate this place.”

“Good,” Shirley said. “Keep hating it.”

A burst of gunfire rolled across the jungle.

This time it was followed by another burst, then a dull explosion that trembled through the ground beneath Janet’s boots.

Everyone froze.

The commandos had begun their raid.

Janet looked toward the unseen camp. The red thread in her hand trembled, though she could not tell whether the movement came from her or the earth.

“They’re in,” Vicky said.

“Then we’ve got less time,” Janet answered.

She drove the machete into a hanging vine and cut until her shoulder burned. Megan joined her. Their blades rose and fell in an uneven rhythm, metal flashing through the green.

“Janet,” Shirley called, “we’ve opened about thirty yards.”

“Keep going.”

“The ground is dropping.”

Janet pushed through the cut vegetation and saw it. The strip fell away into a shallow basin filled with black water and tangled roots. On the far side, the earth rose again beneath a stand of trees whose trunks were broad enough to hide a man.

She stepped down into the basin. Mud swallowed her boot to the ankle.

“No,” she said.

Megan came up beside her. “That’s not a runway.”

“It can be.”

“It’s a ditch.”

Janet tested the ground with the shovel. The blade sank almost to the handle. Water welled around it, cloudy and brown.

Behind them, another explosion thudded. Birds burst from the canopy in a frantic black cloud.

Pam looked toward the sound. “We can’t leave this.”

Janet stared at the water. The aircraft would need a firm surface, not mud that shifted under a boot. Even if they cleared the trees, the Bushmaster would sink into this basin or break a wheel in the roots.

For one terrible second, the jungle seemed to have made the decision for them.

Then Janet saw the trees along the basin’s edge. Their roots formed raised ridges, dry enough to stand on. Beyond them, the ground climbed toward a long shelf hidden beneath the undergrowth.

“The strip has to move,” she said.

Megan looked at the red thread. “Move it where?”

“Up there.”

“That’s steeper.”

“It’s drier.”

“It’s covered in trees.”

“So are we.”

Janet climbed out of the mud and grabbed the nearest axe. The handle was smooth with age, the head nicked along one edge. She handed the machete to Vicky.

“Mark a new line,” Janet said. “From this tree to the rise.”

Vicky hesitated. “How wide?”

“Wide enough for the plane.”

“That’s not a measurement.”

Janet looked toward the jungle canopy, toward the distant gunfire, toward the invisible men fighting to bring their husbands home.

“Then make it wider.”

They attacked the rise.

The first tree took all five of them. Janet swung until the axe jarred her teeth. Megan hacked at the opposite side. Shirley drove the pry bar into a split in the trunk while Pam and Vicky pulled at the vines binding it to the surrounding growth.

The tree groaned.

“Back!” Janet shouted.

They stumbled away as the trunk cracked and fell, crushing ferns and smaller saplings beneath it. The impact shook loose a shower of leaves. A branch struck the ground inches from Shirley’s leg.

She stared at it, pale.

Janet reached for her. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Then pick up the rope.”

Shirley’s mouth tightened. She bent and lifted it.

They dragged the fallen tree toward the old basin. It caught on roots, forcing them to stop and cut it apart. By the time they cleared the first section, Janet’s palms had split beneath the blisters. Sweat ran into her eyes. Mud dried in ridges along her trousers.

The new strip widened by inches.

Not yards. Inches.

Every tree concealed another root. Every root opened a hollow beneath the soil. Pam found one with her shovel and fell forward when the earth collapsed under her.

Megan caught her by the collar.

Pam dangled above a dark hole filled with water.

“Don’t move,” Megan said.

“I wasn’t planning to.”

Janet dropped the axe and seized Pam’s arm. Together, she and Megan hauled her back onto solid ground. Pam lay on her side, breathing hard, her fingers clenched around the shovel.

“Did you break anything?” Janet asked.

“My pride.”

“That can wait.”

Pam pushed herself upright. “I’m fine.”

A low rumble rolled through the jungle, too distant to be thunder.

All five women looked up.

“Mortars?” Vicky asked.

Janet listened. The sound came again, followed by a tremor in the leaves. Somewhere beyond the trees, the raid was moving closer - or the jungle was carrying the battle in their direction.

Megan pointed to the cleared ground. “We have to stop.”

Janet looked behind them. The first narrow section was open now, a raw brown scar through the green. It ran perhaps forty yards before ending at the basin. The new line climbed beyond it, half-cleared and littered with branches.

They had begun. They had not built an airstrip.

She picked up the axe.

“Not yet.”

Megan’s face hardened. “Janet, we can’t clear three hundred yards like this before dawn.”

“We don’t have to clear three hundred yards tonight.”

“That’s exactly what we have to do.”

Janet met her eyes. “Then stop counting the distance.”

For a moment, Megan looked ready to argue. Instead, she turned toward the next tree and raised her shovel.

“Vicky,” Janet said, “keep the line straight.”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

“I am.”

The words came out sharper than Janet intended. Vicky flinched, and Janet saw the fear she had been hiding. Janet crossed the space between them and touched her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I need you watching the ground.”

Vicky nodded. “I know.”

“No, you don’t. None of us should be here.”

From the far side of the jungle came a burst of automatic fire. It lasted several seconds, then stopped so abruptly that the silence afterward felt worse.

Janet released Vicky’s shoulder.

“Keep working,” she said.

They did.

By the time darkness thickened beneath the canopy, they had opened a narrow corridor along the rise. The ground was visible now, but it was no more reassuring than the jungle had been. It buckled in long ridges. Soft patches collapsed under the shovel. Roots twisted across the earth like buried cables, some thick enough to stop a wheel.

Pam drove the shovel into one and struck wood.

“Another,” she said.

Shirley crouched beside her and brushed away the soil. “That one runs all the way across.”

Janet knelt. The root disappeared into the bank on either side. She pressed both hands against it. It did not move.

Megan stood over her. “Can we go around?”

Janet followed the line with her eyes. Around it lay more trees, a slope dropping toward the flooded basin, and a wall of thorny growth.

“No,” she said.

“Then we cut it.”

Janet rose and took the axe. Her arms felt hollow. The blade slipped once, biting the earth beside the root. On the second swing, it struck cleanly.

The root barely marked.

She swung again.

Behind her, Pam said, “Janet.”

Another explosion rolled across the jungle, closer than before. A flock of birds erupted from the canopy. Somewhere in the darkness, a man shouted - a single sharp cry, too distant to identify.

Janet lifted the axe.

The root waited beneath the ground, broad and stubborn, stretching across the path they had fought to make.

She brought the blade down.

The cut opened only a fraction.

Megan stepped beside her and raised her shovel. “Together.”

Janet nodded.

They struck the root again and again while Shirley, Pam, and Vicky cleared the dirt from its sides. At last, the buried wood cracked. The sound was small, almost lost beneath the distant gunfire, but the root shifted.

The women stopped.

Beyond it, the unfinished runway climbed into darkness.

Janet wiped her bleeding palms against her trousers and looked at the narrow section they had won. It was not level. It was not firm. It was not nearly long enough.

But it was open.

“Tomorrow,” Megan said, breathing hard, “we’ll need more than courage.”

Janet stared at the black basin below and the trees still standing ahead.

“Tomorrow,” she said, lifting the axe once more, “we’ll need the ground to give us something.”

End of chapter one. 7 more chapters and about 16,451 words in the full book.