Page 64 of Jackson

She led us to a steep incline just as Ayen blew on his whistle once more from right down below us. He was coughing loudly by the time I leaned over to see him kneeling down in the dirt with the contents of his pack scattered around him and another inmate passed out next to him.

“Ayen!”

His head snapped up, his body wracking with more coughs.

I swung my pack from my shoulder and threw it down onto the ground. Ripping through it, I tossed a long tether rope to Mac and twisted around to find the grappling clips to go with it.

Roxy barked again and danced between us both as we worked, clearly anxious that she couldn’t get down there and rescue Ayen herself.

“We’re going to have you tie this around him, Ayen,” I called down to him. “You’re going to need to lift him up from there to help us pull him up over this incline.”

“Okay...” His cracked voice was fucking killing me.

Focus, Jackson.

He needs you fully functional.

Mac tossed one end of the rope down to him with a large slipknot already tied into it. With the other end, he walked backward around a large tree trunk and wound it around, coming back over to me to collect two clips that he attached to his belt. I handed him a set of gloves and shoved my own hands into a pair.

“Tell us when you get that around his waist,” I called down to him again.

“Do I just…” He began to choke again.

Fuck—with the way the incline was curved over them, it was creating a sort of vacuum seal for all of the smoke to collect under and not rise to dissipate into the sky like it should have already.

“Just put it around his waist for me.” I held back from ending that with ‘baby’ by the skin of my teeth.

If I wasn’t so good at catching myself before it was too late, I realized that breaking the news to Mac that I was sleeping with one of our inmates at a time like this would go down as one of the dumbest possible decisions I could ever make while staging a rescue operation.

“Okay...” he said.

“You do it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I stood and grabbed onto the rope, pulling the tension until it was taunt. Leaning back over to look down at him, I discovered Ayen was already trying to lift the other inmate up from the ground. His body was shaking, the other man’s dead weight clearly tough to bear.

“That’s it, just a little bit more,” I encouraged.

Mac and I strained as we pulled on the support line. The angle was awkward and not at all ideal for a proper load haul operation but we were working on borrowed time and trying to find a better solution was a risk I wasn’t willing to take with Ayen involved.

Mac took the brunt of the weight while I brought up the slack, keeping the tension around the trunk as tight as possible while we hand-over-handed it.

Finally, when the inmate’s head popped up over the side of the incline, Mac leaned backward in order to allow me to let go of the rope.

Dropping to my knees, I fisted my hands tightly in the inmate’s coveralls while hauling him up the rest of the way over. He was still passed out cold, but with a few quick taps of his cheek, his eyes fluttered under his lids.

Still alive.

Good.

With quick movements, I slipped the rope off of the inmate and loosened it up enough to toss back over the side to Ayen.

“Tie that around your waist. We’re going to help you walk up the side?—”

I was cut off by him dissolving into a deep coughing fit, choking on the smoke surrounding us to the point where he collapsed back onto the ground. He was bent over on his hands and knees, trying to pull in as much air as possible.

“Fuck,” I dug through my bag again.

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