Snakehead

Alex almost smiled. What danger could there possibly be on the other side that was worse than this? As if to answer the question, there were three more explosions no more than a hundred yards behind him. Something hot struck Alex on the back of the neck. Without hesitating, he rolled under the fence, then got up and continued running across the ground on the other side.
    He was in a field. There was still no sign of the ocean. He was surrounded by trees on all four sides. He slowed down and tried to take his bearings. His neck hurt. He had been burned by the little fragment of whatever it was that had hit him. He wondered if Scooter and the others were looking for him. He would certainly have a few things to say to them…if he ever got out of here alive.
    He continued forward. His foot came down on something small and metallic. He heard—and felt—it click underneath his sole. He stopped. And at the same time, a voice came out of the darkness just behind him.
    “Don’t move. Don’t even move a step…”
    Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a figure roll underneath the fence. At first he thought it must be Scooter—but he hadn’t recognized the voice, and a few seconds later he saw that it was an older man with black, curly hair and the beginnings of a rough beard, dressed in full military gear and carrying an assault rifle. The bombs and the shelling seemed to have faded into the distance. They must have been redirected at a target farther away.
    The man loomed up next to him, looking at him with unbelieving eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “How did you get here?”
    “What am I standing on?” Alex demanded. Part of him knew the answer. He hadn’t dared look down.
    “The field is mined,” the man replied briefly. He knelt down. Alex felt the man’s hand press gently against his sneaker. Then the man straightened up. His eyes were dark brown and bleak. “You’re standing on a mine,” he said.
    Alex was almost tempted to laugh. A sense of disbelief shivered through him and he swayed a little, as if he were about to faint.
    “Stay exactly as you are!” the man shouted. “Stand up straight. Don’t move from side to side. If you release the pressure, you’re going to kill both of us.”
    “Who are you?” Alex exclaimed. “What’s going on here? Why is there a mine?”
    “Didn’t you see the sign?”
    “It just said danger—keep out.”
    “What more did you need?” The man shook his head. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near here. How did you get here? What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”
    “I was brought here.” Alex could feel a cold numbness creeping through his leg. It got worse, the more he thought about what lay beneath his foot. “Can you help me?” he asked.
    “Stay still.” The man knelt down a second time. He had produced a flashlight. He shone it on the ground. It seemed to take an age, but then he spoke again. “It’s a butterfly,” he said, and there was no emotion in his voice at all. “They call it that because of its shape. It’s a Soviet PFM-1, pressure-sensitive blast mine. You’re standing on enough high explosive to take your leg off.”
    “What’s it doing here?” Alex cried. He had to fight the instinct to lift his foot off the deadly thing. His entire body was screaming at him to run away.
    “They train us!” the man rasped. “They use these things in Iraq and Indonesia. We have to know how to deal with them. How else are they going to do it?”
    “But in the middle of a field…?”
    “You shouldn’t be here! Who brought you here?” The man straightened up. He was standing very close to Alex, the brown eyes boring into him. “I can’t neutralize it,” he muttered. “Even if I had the training, I couldn’t risk it in the dark.”
    “So what do we do now?”
    “I’m going to have to get help.”
    “Do you have a radio?”
    “If I had a radio, I’d have already used it.” The man laid a hand briefly on Alex’s shoulder. “There’s something else you need to know,” he said. He was speaking softly. His mouth was next to Alex’s ear. “These things have a delay mechanism…a separate fuse that you’ll have activated when you stepped on it.”
    “You mean—it’s going to blow up anyway?”
    “In fifteen minutes.”
    “How long will it take you to find someone?”
    “I’ll move as quickly as I can. If you hear a click—you’ll feel it under your foot—throw yourself flat onto the ground.