Escape From Interrogation

Skint was a helicopter pilot in the war . One of the things he liked to do was cutting back the thick jungle canopy , to provide the infantry on the ground
an open to the sky and more importantly a taxi ride back to the base camp where the army had installed a hospital tent and a make shift barracks .

Even though the jungle was thick and covered by a thick foliage of green .
When things were quiet Skint went lawn mowing through the jungle
He had a rare gift of being able to pin point exactly with precision the rotor blades to the leafy growth on the tops of the trees in the middle of the jungle .

He was dubbed The Lawnmower by the troops on the ground .

During one of the lawn mowing operations the chopper got into trouble .
Lucky for Skint it wasn’t that high and when the chopper came down he managed to escaper with his life . There was no one about and because his radio was on board the chopper Skint had no means of communicating
his position back at base camp .

He started to walk through the jungle in the hope he could make it back to base . He never saw the small group of jungle fighters hidden around where he stood .
Before he knew what hit him he was surrounded by the enemy who placed a blindfold over his eyes and a rope around his wrists .
He was now a prisoner and at the mercy of his captors .

Skint was walked through the jungle like a dog on a lease .
At the end of their journey on foot he was placed inside a chopper .
When the chopper lifted off the ground the captors began to question him about who he was and what mission he was on .
Skint refused to say anything and suddenly without any warning Skint was thrown from the choppers side hatch . Without any idea of how he was going to survive the fall he thought to himself ,
Now this is going to hurt when I hit the ground .
He free fell for what seemed miles until with a kind of relief he splashed into the ocean. Pulling the blindfold from around his eyes he checked for some familiar landmark . He saw a small island nearby and decided that was the place he had to get to .

Skint wasn’t a strong swimmer and he had a fear of sharks .
He swam with all his strength and somehow made it to a small island,
where he staggered from the surf and threw himself on the warm sand .
There he sat , motionless for a while thinking in the peace of a safe shore .
He thought about the chopper and what had just happened .
He said a silent prayer for still being alive .
Finally he walked from the sandy shore to the cover of the trees in a green jungle full of singing birds that he had never heard or seen before .

He was still in shock and grief from where he had just been and walked slowly in a kind of daze into the jungle where the dapple light went .
Shadows fell through the trees and suddenly before he could relax with those memories he was brought back to earth again .

There he stood looking at a wild boar with its eyes shining madly at him in the shadows . Eyeing him up and down as if he was the last strands of food on the chain . Skint stood very still and the boar charged until it was about two feet away . There was a ripping sound of a bullet fired from a gun and the boar fell dead at Skints feet .
The shot was fired from a second group of soldiers who surrounded him .
He was blindfolded again and led away for a second time into a chopper that lifted off into the air.
More questions were asked of him .
Skint played the fool .
The enemy threatened to throw Skint out of the chopper if he didn’t answer them . Skint had no idea of how high the chopper was up in the air and made a few mental images what was going to happen next .
They could have been of either six feet or sixty feet off the ground , he didn't know. Then he felt this hand on his back and another that pulled him to the hatch door of the chopper .
The nest thing he knew was the back push that sent him out .
He came back to cold reality very soon as the chopper was only two feet off the ground. What a shock that was .
He heard the enemy soldiers all laughing at his predicament .
He thought to himself ,
It’s a soldiers duty to try and escape and so before any further he made a run
For any where with the blindfold still over his eyes .

He never got far . Skint was pulled up fast with a tackle around his ankles that sent him tumbling to the ground .
He was carried away by a group of men and put into a car that took off at pace . The ride was bumpy and Skint was jumpy . He wondered if he threw himself from the car if he would survive . Just as he was ready to give it a try the car pulled up to a stop .
Skint was taken from the car and brought into what seemed to be a tent .

The blindfold was taken off and Skint was sitting in front of a number of men who had black hoods over their faces . He wasn’t sure who or where these hooded men were and whatr they were going to do next .

They started questioning and Skint asked ,.

“What exactly are you trying to prove ? “

The hooded men left the tent and Skint found himself in isolation .
The next day the hooded men returned and again the interrogation commenced .
This time Skint had a pair of handcuffs placed on his hands and feet .
Again Skint asked the question ,

“What exactly are you trying to prove ? “

An answer returned ,
“The cuffs are to restrict you to move.”
After a number of questions he still refuses to talk and so he felt the punches and the slaps . He was kicked and then he heard the click .
He knew what that click was .
The blindfold over his eyes was removed .
Then he had to embrace the gun in his face .
Skint was now able to cope with the situation much easier as he had resigned himself to the fact that very soon he would be killed .
Then he though about the after death thing and wondered if they would just leave him there dead . He thought about his loved ones at home and the boys back at base camp .
He watched the hooded men as they drew straws to see who would fire the shot into his head . He though about all his blood that soon would be all over the ground where he sat .
Suddenly Skint’s facial expressions changed and right there and then he spoke his final words to his captors ,
“When it’s over and done and the chambers been spun , you can all walk away but hooded men never get anywhere because its my lucky day “.
Iy was much too late for the enemy . The entire area had been invaded by soldiers from Skint’s regiment .
A volley of shots were fired and all the hooded men lay dead in a pool of their own blood .
The enemy had been overcome and as if miracle Skint survived and walked away a free man alive to tell the tale of his escape from interrogation .

By Paul McCann