The Exfiltrator by Garner Simmons (read after txt) 📗

dense layer of cumulus clouds had gathered during the predawn hours, cloaking the mountain like a shroud.  Awake and dressed, her short hair, still damp from washing, Ella made her way from her tent to where Corbett stood beside the front passenger side door of the lead Land Rover, two paper cups of black coffee in his hands.  She wore a loosely buttoned white cotton blouse and tight-fitting jeans.  Corbett smiled as he offered her a cup.

“Here you go. Hope you like it black.  We seem to be short on cream and sugar. Put some wind your sails,” he smiled.

Pleased, she accepted it gratefully. Taking a sip, she held it with both hands absorbing the warmth.

“Thanks,” she said.  “You always so cheerful at this hour of the morning?”

“No… strictly the caffeine, ” he answered.  “Don’t trust anything I say before noon.”

She smiled, enjoying his casual flirting. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Turning, he reached for the handle and opened the door, holding it so that she could enter.   Her body brushed against him as she slipped into the front seat only to discover Gorka already behind the wheel.  He flashed a gap-toothed grin. “Ongietori, pretty lady…” he welcomed her in Euskara. “Up early… catching worms.  Fast we go, yes?”

From the look on her face, this was obviously not the arrangement she had expected.

“I’ll jump in back,” Corbett volunteered shutting the door behind her.  “Better buckle up.  Looks like we’re stuck with zero visibility for the first couple of miles at least.”

“Gorka knows road,” the old man grinned.  “Not to worry.”

Climbing into the backseat, Corbett stretched out as the old man turned the key.  As the engine coughed then roared to life, Ella buckled her seatbelt and looked up only to find Corbett’s face in the rearview mirror.  Averting her eyes, she stared straight ahead.

“Now I show you real Euskal,” Gorka said.

“Euskal…?” she repeated, uncertain.

“That’s what the Basques call themselves,” Corbett offered from the backseat.  “One of the oldest indigenous peoples on earth.  Unrelated to the Spanish or the French. Distinctively different.  Just like their culture.”

“Oldest and best,” the old man behind the wheel added as he engaged the clutch and slipped it into first gear.  With a shudder, the Rover began to move down the mountain and into the cloudbank.

“So, where did they come from?  The Basques, I mean,” she asked trying to make the most of an awkward situation.

“Come from nowhere,” Gorka shrugged. “Here from the beginning of time. Always these mountains.”

Ella eyed the old man with askance.

“Owe allegiance to no one.  Not Spain, nobody,” the old man added with an obvious sense of pride.  The clouds engulfed the car as the road before them all but disappeared.  Ella nervously glanced from the old man behind the wheel to Corbett’s reflection in the rearview mirror.

Sensing her discomfort, Corbett recalled the rocky drive up the mountain the day before and attempted to assuage her concern. “Don’t worry.  Gorka knows the way.“

“Bai…,” the old man said.  “Was born in these mountains.  Not to fear.”

“Do you think he could slow down… at least until we can see?” She managed.

Hearing the edge of panic in her voice, Gorka turned to look at her with a grin. “No hay problema, pretty lady.  In Euskararen we say, ‘Zure ordu da, zure ordu da.’ When it’s your time, it’s your time.”

“Wonderful.  But if it’s all the same to you, when it’s your time, I’d just as soon be somewhere else.”

The old man laughed.  “Trust me.”

“Maybe if you could keep your eyes on the road…” she suggested.

The old man laughed again as he guided the car into a series of blind turns while barely touching the brakes.  “No fear, Missy.  Must learn to live a little.”

Ella closed her eyes. Why, she wondered, had she been so quick to volunteer?  She made a mental note that if she survived, she would never be so foolish again.  Feeling the Rover sway, its tires squealing as Gorka guided it through the turns with seeming equilibrium, Ella felt a mild sense of deja vu.  It reminded her of being nine, the year before her parents’ divorce, when her father had taken them with him on business to San Francisco.  Although she had not been fully aware of it at the time, it had been her parents’ final attempt to save their marriage.

Renting a car, her father had driven them across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin Country to see the giant redwoods.  The narrow torturous two-lane road had twisted through thick forests only to be unexpectedly engulfed by fog.  Feeling unsafe, her mother had demanded they turn back, but her father persisted.  Eventually, as they argued, they had become lost.  Refusing to admit defeat, her father had driven too fast and momentarily lost control, skidding off onto the shoulder of the road before stopping.  Ella could still recall that sense of queasiness followed by the deafening silence of the ride back.  Looking back now, she found herself wondering how two such different people could have remained married for as long as they had.  The answer, of course, was Ella.  They had done it all for her.

By the time Ella opened her eyes, Gorka was downshifting as they finally emerged from the cloudbank.  Ahead and below, she could see the steep, twisting mountain road that descended before them like some primeval roller coaster.

Attempting to control her sense of panic, Ella tried to focus on the rugged beauty of the land.  Spotting a herd of long horned sheep grazing in a meadow under the attentive eye of a Basque shepherd and his dog, she found herself marveling at how this way of life could somehow exist in a world now ruled by the Internet.  Occasional red roofed caserios, farmhouses that Gorka called “baseri,” now dotted the landscape.   Far below, she could see