by Elle James
A dark-haired man with black, bushy brows entered. He wore a white guayabera shirt and a plethora of gold chains around his neck. He said something in Spanish to someone in another room.
The other person responded in Spanish.
The man crossed the floor and nudged her with his foot.
Ivy played dead, pretending she was still unconscious.
Through the slit in her eyes, she could see the man’s eyes narrow. He pulled his foot back and kicked her hard in the side.
Ivy grunted and opened her eyes, blinking as if she were just waking up. “What?” she said. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“So, you are not dead,” he said. “That is good. It’s hard to negotiate with a corpse.”
“Negotiate for what?” she said. “I don’t have any money.”
The man spit on the floor beside her. “We don’t want money. We want what we ordered and paid for.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, making her voice sound groggier than she felt.
“You don’t, but your mother does. We will get what we want, or she’ll get her only daughter back in a body bag.” He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her up into a sitting position. “The senator has demanded proof of life.” The man held a cellphone in front of her. “Say hello a tu madre.”
Ivy stared at the phone, her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Say hello.” The man demanded again.
When she didn’t open her mouth or say anything, he kicked her in the side, hard enough she fell over.
Pain shot through her where he’d kicked her and where she’d hit the floor. Still, she refused to say anything.
“Have it your way. Blood always makes these things move faster.” He yanked her up again by the hair and punched her in the side of the face.
The temple that had been injured in her last altercation exploded in agony. Warm liquid oozed down her face. She swayed.
If the man hadn’t been holding onto her hair, she would have toppled over.
He held the cellphone in her face and hit the record button. “You see, she is alive. But she won’t be for long if we do not receive the items we have requested in twenty-four hours. Your daughter has exactly twenty-four hours to live. It is your choice. Or her death sentence.” He ended the recording and released her hair. “You will do well to cooperate, if you want to live.”
He left the room, slamming the door behind him. The scrape of a key in the lock indicated they weren’t taking any chances of their bargaining chip getting away.
Her head still spinning from the blow, Ivy sat for a moment, waiting for her vision to clear.
When it finally did, she rolled onto her knees, leaned against the wall and worked at the tape binding her wrists. When she got free, she’d find a way to get out of the room. And if she had a chance, she’d give that man a bit of what he’d given her.
For over what felt like a lifetime but was probably only a little over an hour, she rubbed away at the tape until slowly, the threads of the material wore through and popped, one by one.
Hope built with every thread broken until she finally broke through the last one binding her wrists. She pulled one hand free and brought her arms back to her front and removed the rest of the tape and a layer of skin with it. Raw and red, her wrists were free. Quickly, she worked at the tape around her ankles until they too were free, and she could stand and work the blood back into her feet.
When she stood, the first place she went to was the window. She opened the shutter and peered out into bright sunlight. It blinded her for a moment. When her eyesight adjusted, she could see that the window had iron bars over the opening. There was no glass, so she reached out and tested the strength of the iron bars. At first, they didn’t budge. She pushed hard on the iron, and then pulled, bracing her feet against the wall to add leverage. Again, she pushed, leaning her entire body into the effort. The sound of stucco crumbling gave her the courage to keep going.
What she needed was a pry bar.
Ivy let go of the iron bars and turned back to her room. The single-wide bed was built with wooden legs and she suspected the frame was metal.
She hurried to the bed, dragged the mattress aside, and studied the frame—metal, as she’d suspected. Like the cracked stucco, the bed had seen better days.
If she could just…break the legs free. Ivy tested all the legs. Grasping the loosest post, she twisted it back and forth, wiggling and jostling. The screw holding it to the metal frame loosened. A couple more twists and the leg came off.
She ran back to the window and shoved the leg between the iron bars and the wall. Pulling the end of the post, she heaved all of her strength and weight into it.
The iron bars shifted suddenly.
The leg slipped from her hands and fell through the bars and onto the ground outside.
Ivy almost cried with her frustration. She pushed at the iron bars. Though they moved, they didn’t dislodge from the window.
She hurried back to the bed and eyed the metal frame, wondering how she could dismantle it without a wrench and screwdriver. She couldn’t. Instead, she worked at another wooden leg, hoping it would break off as easily.
It didn’t. It took her another thirty minutes, bending, pushing, stomping on, and bruising her fingers, arms, and legs in an attempt to break it free. When she was about ready to give up, it cracked at the screw holding it to the frame and came loose.
Holding the treasured bed leg in her hand, Ivy raced back to the window and wedged the leg between the iron bars and the wall again, this time in a different section. She pushed hard, leaning all of her weight onto the wooden leg. The wall outside cracked and shifted.
Ivy held tightly to the leg, refusing to lose another. She almost laughed at the thought of going through all the bed legs until she was on her last leg. Her internal pun put a smile on her face when it hurt to smile.
The iron bar grate snapped free of the outer wall at the bottom.
Ivy quickly moved the bed leg to the upper portion of the iron bars and shoved it between the bars and the wall. This time, she couldn’t leverage her weight; the position was too high.
She dragged the bedframe over to the window. Lucky for her, the legs she pulled off were on opposite corners, so the bedframe still stood flat, though not very secure. Ivy piled the mattress back onto it and stepped up. She gained a good six inches and a better shot at levering the bed leg. She pulled and tugged on the wooden leg but just couldn’t get the same amount of leverage she’d gotten below.
Sweating in the heat, she stared at the grate, her hopes diminishing with each passing minute.
I can’t give up, damn it.
Ivy threw herself at the iron bars, all the anger at being caught and held captive going into her final push to free herself. The iron bars shoved outward at an angle, held in at the top where she’d been unsuccessful at dislodging it from the wall.
She grabbed the bars, brought them in and shoved them back out, again and again, grunting with the effort.
About to give up, she shoved one last time and leaned all her weight into it.
The bars swung wider this time. Stucco worked free from the wall, showering down on Ivy, and then the whole grate crashed to the ground.
Ivy clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from shouting for joy. She ran to the door and listened for the sound of footsteps running toward her. If the men in the other room had heard the crashing sound, they would come running to check on their captive.
Apparently, the other room didn’t have an open window onto the same alley that Ivy had. No one came.
Ivy ran to the window and tried to climb up and over the sill.
The small window made it hard to do. She didn’t have enough room to pull herself up to sit on the edge. Ivy tried jumping up and through, using the mattress as a springboard. She got her chest through, but not the rest of her body before she fell back into the room.
The sound of voices coming toward her room
made her scramble to close the wooden shutters and move the now-listing bed frame and mattress back into place. She lay down on the floor with her back to the wall, her ankles together, and her hands behind her back, hiding the fact she no longer had tape binding her wrists. Hopefully, they wouldn’t notice that her ankles were no longer bound and that two of the bed legs were missing.
The scrape of a key in the lock preceded the big guy in the guayabera shirt’s entrance.
His lip curled in a sneer. “Tu madre refuses to negotiate. You will appeal to her to change her mind.” He grabbed her hair and pulled her to a sitting position and shoved the phone in front of her face.
It was all Ivy could do to keep from slugging the man in his fat, asshole face. She prayed he didn’t notice her unbound wrists and ankles. If he looked too closely, he’d see. He might not be as lenient on his second round of beatings.
Ivy played the cowed prisoner and spoke into the video. “Please, Mother, do whatever they say. I can’t take much more of this.”
The man ended the video and gave her a shove, pushing her over onto her side. She didn’t try to save her head from hitting the ground. If she had, she would have given herself away.
Guayabera Man’s lip curled. “You Americans think you own us.” He snorted. “You own nothing. You’re all puppets of your government. A government who wouldn’t dare send a rescue team into our country to reclaim one of their own.”
Ivy lay still, hiding her hands behind her. She could use a rescue about now. What did it take to call in the Delta Forces to rescue a senator’s daughter? Her mother said she didn’t negotiate with terrorists. A rescue wasn’t a negotiation. Would she pull the right strings to send in the US military to save her daughter?
Ivy loved her mother and, deep down, she prayed her mother loved her enough to send in the cavalry.
Even if she managed to get out of her prison, she still had no idea where she was or how to get back home. She could be in Mexico, South Texas or South America for all she knew.
The odds of finding her way to an American Embassy when she couldn’t even speak enough Spanish to find her way to an airport were looking pretty slim.
But staying in her makeshift cell wasn’t an option. Not when she had a window to get through.
Guayabera Man left the room, locking the door behind him.
Ivy leaped to her feet, folded the thin, flimsy mattress in two, and climbed on top of it. The added height was just enough to get her head, shoulders, and chest over the sill. To get the rest of the way out she’d have to go headfirst and drop to the ground on top of the metal grate and pray she could navigate her way through whichever country they held her in.
Chapter 12
Duff stared around the belly of the C130 aircraft transporting them to Costa Rica through the night and into the early hours of the morning. They had special clearance from the Costa Rican government to land at the Aeropuerto Internacional de Limón on the west coast. The same airport where the plane carrying Ivy Fremont had landed earlier that night.
Based on the flight tracking app on Zip’s cellphone, the cartel members who’d captured Ivy were a good six hours ahead of them by now.
Fortunately, they’d been able to get DEA agents on the ground in Limón before the plane carrying Ivy landed. They reported that the occupants of the plane were met by a dozen heavily armed men. They unloaded an item that could have been the body of a woman the size of Ivy Fremont.
The agents had followed the SUV they’d loaded the body into all the way into the jungle. The vehicle entered a village compound known to shelter members of the drug cartel that had connections to the Columbian drug trafficking syndicate running tons of cocaine between Columbia and the US.
The agents were outnumbered and out-gunned. They didn’t have the manpower to stage a rescue operation against the cartel.
They were told to stand down and wait for the extraction team.
Not wanting to miss any important events, the DEA agents remained in position outside the jungle village to capture any intelligence about movements that might involve the relocation of the hostage.
They reported via satellite phone every hour, keeping the feds in Washington and the Delta Force team in the loop.
Besides a fourteen-man team of Deltas from Fort Hood, the C130 held three Ultralight Tactical Vehicles and one motorcycle. Sources on the ground in Limón were arranging for two trucks with trailers to meet them on the tarmac.
During the four and half hours it took to fly from Killeen to the airport in Costa Rica, Duff alternated between catnapping and worrying about Ivy. Were they treating her badly? Would they kill her when they realized her mother wouldn’t bend to the terrorists’ demands? Would the Delta team get to her in time?”
He knew he had to sleep to have the energy to fight whatever battles lay ahead. The rest of his team had leaned back in their web seats, closed their eyes, and at least got the rest they would need when they landed.
Duff’s gaze went to the motorcycle. His hands bunched into fists. He wished the plane flew faster. The cartel had given Senator Fremont only twenty-four hours to get the weapons they’d ordered delivered to them. If they didn’t get them in the timeframe, they’d kill Ivy.
Duff wasn’t going to let that happen. Not on his watch.
He’d thoroughly enjoyed Ivy’s company and found her to be the kind of woman he could see himself with for more than a single date.
Yes, they’d only been out on one real date, but he felt like they’d been together for much longer.
He checked his watch for the twentieth time since they’d left the airspace around Ft. Hood and headed south.
They’d be landing in the next ten minutes. He wished he could see the lights of the city below. Sitting in the fuselage with no windows frustrated him. However, he could feel the plane slowing and the landing gear lowering and locking into place.
The team stirred awake, checked their weapons and waited for the aircraft to touch down on the runway.
Finally, the wheels touched the tarmac and the plane taxied to a stop. The ramp lowered and the men filed out, greeted by two liaisons from the US embassy. They held the keys to two trucks equipped with trailers standing to the side of the terminal.
Duff and Merlin, along with Rucker and Lefty, the other two leads from the teams that had been assigned to the mission, were the last men out of the back of the C130. They drove the UTVs and motorcycle out and loaded them onto the trailers. The jungle village was over thirty kilometers from the small airport. The motorcycle would be fine on the road. But they had to get the UTVs closer before they took off on their own and infiltrated the jungle hideout. With the UTVs and motorcycle, they wouldn’t have to rely on well-traveled roads to get close enough to make a difference.
Once the lightweight vehicles were loaded and secured on the trailers, they received directions and a word of caution. The jungle would be dangerous. They couldn’t see into the dense shadows, but the enemy out there could see and hear them coming if they came down a major road.
Thus the need for the ultralight vehicles. With the smaller, toughened vehicles, they could avoid the main roads and go cross country to the village.
Like they’d practiced on the range at Fort Hood, they created a diversion so that Duff could slip past the guards and into the compound, extract Ivy, and get out before the cartel guards could be alerted.
It sounded easy. But Duff knew better. All good plans were only as good as the start, then all bets were off. He wanted to ride the motorcycle out to the SUV drop-off location, but he needed to conserve the fuel in its tank in case they had to make a run for it from the cartel. They might be on the road for hours before the cartel gave up looking for them and abandoned the village and relocated to another site to manage their drug trafficking operations.
“Load up,” Lefty called out.
The men piled into the SUVs. With the GPS coordinates the DEA agents had given, they took off headed away from the city and out al
ong a road toward the southwest, away from the coast and into the rainforest jungle.
As they left the city of Limón, Duff sat forward in the passenger seat of one of the SUVs. Merlin drove. Zip, Woof and Jangles occupied the back seat, leaning toward the windows, peering out at the lush, green landscape.
The sun was rising behind them, turning the sky a bright, light blue.
The road leading into the rainforest seemed to narrow. Trees rose around them, blocking the sunshine and making long dark shadows over the road.
“How long has it been since we’ve heard from the DEA agents on-site?” Duff asked.
Merlin glanced down at his watch. “Thirty minutes.”
“They know we’re on our way?” Duff asked.
“Lefty let them know we were coming, giving them an ETA of one hour from the moment we left the airport,” Zip said from the back seat. “I heard him talking to them as we left.”
Duff gave his friend a nod. “Good.”
“As briefed, if we get separated at the compound, make your way out and back to the coast. Don’t aim for Limón. That’s where they’ll look first. Head for the expat community of Cahuita, on the beach south of Limón. Duff has a friend in the community.”
“Yeah? Care to share?” Zip grinned. “Male or female?”
Duff frowned. “Male. Vance Tate. He was my neighbor a long time ago when I was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He and his wife moved to Costa Rica when he retired.”
Vance had been a buyer for a large chain store. Duff and Vance had exchanged numbers. Every once in a while, he’d get a text from Vance, asking how he was doing and where he was stationed.
Duff had always wanted to visit Costa Rica, hearing that the beaches were beautiful, and the interior was fun to explore. He’d wanted to visit the valley with the volcano and surf the western shore.
He wouldn’t make it to the western shore on this trip, but he’d get a little taste for the rainforest in their current operation. Not that he cared at that moment. What he was most concerned about was getting Ivy out alive and well.
