The Magdalena Curse by F.G. Cottam

‘Just a bad dream I had.’ The smile vanished from his face. ‘I was safe when the current was strong,’ he cried out. ‘I was safe!’ He closed his eyes and the breath left him. A moment later, he died.
    ‘I’m going into Magdalena,’ Hunter said, over the corpse. ‘I’m going to kill the bitch responsible for this abomination.’
    ‘You don’t know she’s there,’ Peterson said.
    ‘Oh, she’s there,’ Hunter said. ‘She’s the hostess, remember? And I’m sure she resides in some comfort.’
    ‘First, we bury our dead comrade,’ Peterson said. ‘We do it properly, with full decorum. It’s the least he deserves.’
    Hunter put a hand on Peterson’s shoulder and squeezed.
He felt ashamed. His haste was undignified. ‘Of course it is,’ he said. ‘Of course it is. Forgive me. I forgot myself.’
    They buried the Major deep in soft ground above and away from the ravine. Peterson erected a rough cross and they fired a volley over him. They observed a respectful silence and then returned to the camp. There were plentiful rations, now everyone but the two officers was dead. There were, too, plentiful arms and spare ammunition sufficient to defy a besieging army. But there was only one task that Hunter felt required urgent accomplishment. He looked at his watch. But his watch had stopped – he supposed in the black maze of the marquee, in an experience he could now barely credit. He asked Peterson the time. But Peterson’s watch had stopped too. He suspected both instruments had ceased to function at the same moment. No matter. He looked at the sky. He reckoned on four hours before sunset. In some ways, it had already been an industrious day. Before it ended, he intended to give it further, far greater significance. Before setting out, he asked Peterson would he await his return. The Canadian nodded. Until nightfall, he said, maybe a little beyond. And Hunter nodded back. He did not honestly think you could say fairer than that.
     
    It was after dark when he returned. The camp was struck, everything combustible burned, everything else buried. They marched the distance over two days through dense forest to the departure point in Brazil with barely a word spoken between them. They crossed the border without acknowledgement. There was nothing much to say. Each man had to deal with his own rationale regarding their shared experience. They were greeted at the base in Brazil with indifference. No one there knew about the specifics of their mission and no one seemed to care. This was a blessing where Hunter was concerned, he knew. A large
part of him wanted to scream and bellow about the ordeal he had undergone. Despite all the thorough and sometimes brutal training he had endured, he had no context for it. But he remained composed. He avoided Peterson altogether. And he suspected Peterson avoided him.
    He thought sanity might return with the eventual touching down of the Hercules he was aboard at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire a week later. He watched the pattern of green English fields and hedgerows and sought comfort from their familiarity. He watched the shadow of the aircraft undulate over the familiar ground. He saw the silver sparkle of a stream meander gently through sunlit pasture. And none of it brought a shred of consolation.
    He broke down at the debrief with Colonel Baxter. Baxter seemed to interpret this as a delayed show of grief for his dead comrades. Peterson, evidently, had been more composed and cleverer, giving his own account, a few days earlier. Baxter had it on his desk. They had stumbled into a compound run not by a cartel, but by members of a religious cult. Its members had been territorial, hostile and very heavily armed. Their mission had fallen victim to faulty intelligence (that part at least was true, Hunter thought). Their manpower was totally inadequate to the circumstances. The odds had been overwhelming. They would have needed armoured vehicles and at least another two