Hunted

11:40 p.m., November 14 Mae Hong Son Province, Northern Thailand Scared. The word didn't even begin to describe how I was feeling. Words like frightened, terrified, and sheer panic came closer. Yet, somehow, I tried to catch my breath and stay silent at the same time as my heart raced and every cell in my body told me to run. Beside me, my best friend, Mike, crouched next to the tree I was hiding behind, peering back into the darkness. The black Thailand jungle pushed in on all sides. Earlier in the day, the jungle had looked exciting to me, full of promise, mystery, and things to explore. Now, at just a little after midnight, it had become a humid, terror-filled nightmare. My two other rafting buddies, Hollis and Dave, were hiding ten feet away behind another tree. I could see only their vague shapes in the faint moonlight, and I couldn't hear them at all over the pounding of my own heart. Dear Lord, I don't want to die. I repeated the thought, like a prayer. Dear Lord, please don't let me die. Not now. Not here. The men who had been our guides, and who now wanted to kill us, crashed through the brush. It sounded to me like they were very close behind us. The noise they made seemed fantastically loud, like they were giant horror movie monsters. My mouth was completely dry and I wanted to throw up what was left of the fish dinner I'd eaten a few hours ago, back when everything was still wonderful, still a happy adventure. But I knew that if I did, they'd hear me. They'd find me. They'd find my friends. And our lives would be over. I took shallow breaths, trying to be as quiet as I could, working to calm myself, listening to every sound around me, no matter how small. A mosquito buzzed at my ear. I stopped myself from brushing it away. Swearing echoed through the trees, followed by shouting in a Thai dialect I didn't understand. Of course, I didn't under- stand anything but the most basic Thai words and phrases, just what I'd picked up listening to a language tape for a few hours here and there over the last couple of months. Two months ago, I hadn't even planned on coming here. "John, we have to move," Mike whispered, but his voice sounded more like a shout in my ears. The faint light of the half moon through the jungle canopy made everything seem surreal, almost dreamlike. I could tell the men who were after us were coming, somehow following us, crashing through the Mae Hong Son Province jungle like elephants on a stampede. I wanted to hold my hand against my chest to silence my pounding heart for fear that the men with the guns could hear it. "John," Mike whispered again. "If we move, they'll hear us," I mouthed back, my thread of a voice sounding to my ears like a shout telling everyone our location. Calm down! The thought, a warning ringing inside my head, helped me. Calm. Calm. Think. "Doesn't matter. They'll find us here," Mike said. "We have to keep moving. You ready?" I glanced back in the direction of the men chasing us. I couldn't see them, but I could hear them. There were at least ten of them. We were supposed to be sleeping. They had planned to wait for us to go to sleep before they tried to kidnap us. But Mike had overheard two of our guides talking about it earlier in the minivan, thinking we didn't understand them. Lucky for us, Mike knew just enough of the Thai language to get the gist of what they were saying. He'd traveled all over the world on his rafting expeditions, and had picked up bits and pieces of all kStoeker, Fred is the author of 'Hunted ' with ISBN 9781400070381 and ISBN 1400070384.