Jiang Feng's concerns weren't baseless. While they were brushing their teeth and chatting cheerfully at the school construction site, Anthony, deep in the jungle over a hundred kiloters away, encountered a problem—
He realized that he and his team had walked the entire night in the wrong direction!
"Sothing isn't right!"
Holding the map in his hand and comparing it against the surrounding terrain, the more he looked, the more he felt sothing was off.
They had thought they walked at least fifteen or twenty kiloters since last night, but when dawn ca and they checked the map, the place they thought they should have reached didn't match the actual terrain they were seeing.
"Everyone stop! Stop!"
Anthony shouted, running to the front of the team to stop Godwin, who was leading.
Godwin was a lieutenant, born into a hunter family in the Tbilisi Mountain Range jungle, and had joined the ELN militants for a whole ten years, a veteran guerrilla.
That's why everyone had chosen him as the guide last night, entrusting him to mark the route and direction on the map and lead the team.
The team finally slowed to a stop.
Everyone looked at Captain Anthony with a surprised gaze, his face tense.
"What's the matter, Captain?"
Godwin turned around, looking puzzled at Anthony.
"It seems we've taken a wrong turn!" Anthony said.
"That's impossible!" Godwin firmly denied.
He took out the map, placed a compass on it, aligned the direction, and pointed around, "This is east, this is west, this is south, this is north!"
Then he pointed at the map's starting point from last night.
"We started here last night, and the school is to our north. Look now, the sun is over there, that's east, right? Look, isn't the direction we're heading now north?"
Anthony checked again.
Godwin was indeed correct.
The team was indeed heading north.
The direction was correct.
But he felt there was a problem.
"No, I feel sure we've made a mistake!"
Anthony stuck to his view.
"It's not possible to be wrong, I've lived in the jungle for so many years, I absolutely won't make a mistake in identifying directions or navigating them, at least not a big one!" said Godwin.
"Co with !" Anthony said.
After saying that, he dragged Godwin to walk back.
The two circled around the team, passed through a stand of trees, and ca to a relatively open area.
Anthony pointed to a mountain ahead and said, "Before we left last night, we did our own positioning, then marked the route on the map. Now I ask you, do you see a mountain on the right side of our marked route on the map?"
Godwin paused for a mont, then imdiately opened the map to check.
After checking for a while, he scratched his head and said, "It seems there isn't..."
"Exactly! There isn't!" Anthony flared up, "You took a wrong turn! How could you lead us this way?"
Godwin's face suddenly felt hot.
In fact, when everyone chose him as the guide last night, he was quite proud.
After all, it was a recognition and honor from everyone.
This batch of "elites" had pinned their hopes on embarrassing Song Heping by letting Godwin lead them all to the camp and then publicly ridicule the instructor for using such childish stuff on them, the "elites."
It was under this pressure that Godwin, encountering an unsure mont midway and unable to determine the route, relied on his own experience to make a subjective judgnt.
Thinking back, perhaps it was that critical mont of hesitation that caused the current route deviation?
"This is the jungle, anything unexpected can happen..."
He muttered, trying to explain himself.
Anthony wasn't buying it and imdiately snapped, "Don't give that nonsense! Did you know you were wrong midway and still kept going!?"
"I didn't!"
Godwin retorted loudly, then his voice deepened, "There was one ti I couldn't determine the direction, I couldn't even see the stars in the sky, so I made a judgnt based on my own experience..."
"Experience?! What experience!?"
Anthony suddenly felt sothing was off and quickly questioned Godwin.
Godwin hesitated and said, "It's just... when unable to determine the exact path, one can track the traces and follow the route because traces prove that soone has passed through..."
"Oh, God! You idiot!"
Anthony almost exploded on the spot.
He now understood.
This was the first experience mode of the Colombian jungle hunter.
When you get lost in the jungle, if unable to determine the direction and route based on terrain or celestial bodies, one can find nearby human traces to follow and find a way out.
This experience works fine for a hunter, with no fault at all.
Because hunters only need to get out of the jungle without getting lost inside; following the traces left by others will eventually lead them back to human settlents, where they could survive.
But such experience could be deadly in military terms.
Military topography requires not just escaping the jungle to survive, but also reaching a specific location within a designated ti.
It's a completely different scenario from a hunter's jungle escape.
Godwin had obviously adopted the wrong criteria leading to an economical route choice.
Though it was just one mistake, it had led them astray by a thousand miles.
One wrong step led to many more.
Now the entire team didn't even know how far off they had deviated.
What worried Anthony more was that these fifty people hadn't brought any provisions; they had not anticipated being forced into a wilderness survival scenario from the start.
Moreover, as warned by the Chinese instructor last night, they had all sneaked in illegally, with illegal identities, and carrying guns...
If discovered by the border troops, then the consequences...
Thinking of this, Anthony's spine chilled.
"Get lost!"
He snatched the map and squatted down in an open area, continuously comparing it against the terrain, trying to ascertain their location.
The entire route was mistaken, leading to their current misplacent.
Because repositioning without GPS required a significant amount of ti.
Anthony was one of the few among them who had received so topography training.
He had been in the Colombian governnt army and had studied military topography in the Army Officer School, but he was only half-trained, otherwise he wouldn't have let Godwin lead last night.
It was a case of learning the hard way.
Anthony now regretted dozing off during the topography classes at the Officer School.
Even a little more seriousness back then wouldn't have led to their current plight.
Finding the matching terrain inch by inch on the map was a laborious task.
Finally, after pondering for half an hour, Anthony roughly determined the location of himself and the trainees.
"We need to cross this river, get to the other side, and then head west for five kiloters, then circle back north! That's how we can return to the correct route!"
Under the leadership of Captain Anthony, the highest-ranked officer, everyone, although full of complaints and so even cursing Godwin to his face, imdiately organized to cross the river.
It wasn't the rainy season, the river wasn't deep, stretching twenty to thirty ters wide with the deepest part only reaching the chest and the shallowest part just to the knees, posing no difficulty at all.
Just as they were crossing the river in a column, the dull sound of a helicopter's rotor suddenly ca from the sky.
"There's a helicopter!"
The mber at the front spotted a dark spot flying towards them and shouted.
"Run!"
Anthony panicked.
A helicopter?!
It had to be a Venezuelan military helicopter.
At that mont, the correct strategy would have been to let those at the front run towards the opposite riverbank while the rest retreated.
That would have been the fastest thod.
It could also divide and confuse the enemy.
But in his panic, he only shouted "Run!"
All the trainees on the riverbank scattered like rats fleeing their nests.
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