by Leon, Judith
Escurra grabbed Nova and pulled her out of the chair as he signaled Gaucho to take Solange. Nova went easily, her mind clear as a crystal but lacking so far any possible idea of how to get them out of this. Solange twisted and moaned behind her gagged mouth as the Gaucho dragged her out of Escurra’s office. Juan remained behind with Bebe—Bebe’s torturer and executioner.
The shouting of the men packed onto the seats of the fighting pit doubled when Escurra appeared among them, and it actually doubled again when Escurra and the Gaucho hauled her and Solange into the center of the dirt ring. The dregs of the dregs. The stench of alcohol mixed with the odor of sweat and blood. The nearest drunken viewer had to be twenty feet away, and big brown patches of drying blood dotted the dirt floor.
Escurra signaled, and a minion dressed like a Texas cowboy with a ten-gallon hat and chaps rushed up to them carrying two machetes. Nova guessed this dual to the death between two humans had probably been Escurra’s grand finale for his boys for years. Escurra lifted Solange’s hand and put a machete into it. Nova reached out and grabbed hers from the cowboy. The crowd roared.
Solange had stopped crying and had stiffened her back. She would not look at Nova. Chances were good that Solange had decided to fight, and fight well, in the hope of sparing her father a slow, tortured death.
“If either of you take off the gag, I will shoot you both dead,” Escurra said. Escurra and the Gaucho backed away. Nova stared at Solange, who stared back, her expression unreadable. Solange rushed Nova, and swung the machete, a hard but poorly aimed swipe that Nova easily dodged. Escurra yelled from the view stand, “Either fight her, tourist agent, or I send a signal to Juan.” Solange swung again. Nova used her machete to block the swing, and returned it with a half-powered and poorly aimed swing of her own. The crowd booed.
Twice more Solange charged, and Nova could tell that the blows weren’t meant to hurt her. Poor Solange. Nova had both training and firsthand experience. So this fight was no fight, more like a potential execution, but she sure wasn’t going to kill Solange.
A thought struck, a possible way out, at least a stall. Nova switched the machete to her left hand. She lunged toward Solange, whose gaze of course followed the machete, and struck Solange a karate chop to the carotid on the girl’s throat, praying that she hadn’t hit too hard.
The blow was right on target. Solange halted, blacked out and went down.
The crowd roared, Nova couldn’t tell whether from approval or dismay.
Nova checked Escurra. He’d remained seated, but Gaucho strode toward Solange, a ten-inch Ka-Bar serrated knife clutched in his hand. Nova moved back, to put herself between Gaucho and Solange.
“I forgot to tell you one of the rules,” Escurra yelled. “If someone gets knocked out, we kill them on the spot. Then I pair the one still standing with the Guarani.”
Not Solange! No way! Nova flung herself at the Gaucho and with a quick machete swing, she knocked the Ka-Bar from his hand and cut at least two fingers with it. He howled, clutched his hand and spun around.
Every man present was now on his feet, and five more men ran toward her. She went into full defensive aikido mode, stunning the first man to reach her with a forward kick to his solar plexus. Letting momentum carry her around, she planted a back-kick into the side of the second man. He spun away and crashed onto the dirt.
With the machete, she hacked a slice out of the calf of the third man, but was brought crashing facedown into the dirt by the last two men, one of whom sat on her back. The other flung himself across her legs.
“Stay away,” she heard Escurra shouting to the men in the seats. “Stay away.”
Then she recognized his boots in front of her face. He stooped over, grabbed her braid, pulled her head up and looked in her eyes. “Just who the hell are you?”
The astounded look in his wide eyes pleased her. She couldn’t manage to come up with saliva, but she made a spitting motion and sound.
Escurra dropped her face back into the dirt. Solange was regaining consciousness. Escurra roared at two men, “Lock all three of them in a pen!”
He remained in the fighting pit addressing his boys as she and Solange were manhandled away, telling his men that they had seen blood, just not the blood they had expected to see. The two men banged on the door to Escurra’s office. It swung open and they pushed Nova and Solange inside.
Bebe stood in front of the desk, unbound. Juan lay on the floor, bound and gagged. Joe stood behind the door. He slugged the first man, who let go of Nova as he fell to the floor. She spun around and karate chopped the thug holding Solange, who also hit the floor as Joe used his gun to knock out the first guy and then the second.
Nova hugged Joe and whispered into his chest, “Once again to the rescue.”
Chapter 42
“We can’t waste time tying them up,” Joe said, searching her face. They had two options: kill all three men to deprive Escurra of their help or let them live. Joe, a military man, was always of the view that all opposition should be “taken out,” but ever since the German operation he knew Nova’s preference. He knew that when she was in charge of an op, killing was never her first choice. He wanted to know her choice now.
She looked at Solange and Bebe. “C’mon! We have to run like hell.”
She grabbed up her bag from the corner and sprinted out of the office, turned away from the pit and headed for the cages that held Alex and the other boy. She pointed to the one she thought must hold the boy. “Get him out of there, Joe!”
The cage doors weren’t locked. A simple hotel-room-like hasp had been screwed to the outside. There just wasn’t a handle on the inside. She pulled open the door to Alex’s cell. As she feared, he was gone. “We have to get out of here!” she said.
The five of them dashed toward the shed’s far end, Nova leading and Joe bringing up the rear, his Glock in hand. If their getaway wasn’t clean, if someone were to see where she was taking them, Joe would shoot to kill.
She looped the bag’s woven strap across her chest and raced across the field that separated the shed from the jungle, looking back frequently to make sure everyone was keeping up. Joe had freed a short Guarani boy who was dressed only in jeans. No shoes. No shirt. The boy kept tight on Nova’s heels, obviously in good physical condition and unbothered by rocks or twigs underfoot.
They reached cover. Maybe they hadn’t been seen. The moon sliver that stood high in the sky made the dash across the field possible, but now the jungle smothered them in darkness. She and Joe gathered everyone close. Joe said, “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“Escurra and his men can’t either. And I have a pretty good feel for how to get us back to the road.”
Nova put her arm around Solange’s shoulders and held Bebe’s hand. “We’re going to move together. I know it’s dark, but we can’t stay this close to here.”
“They will come with lights,” Bebe said.
“When they figure out where we’ve gone. But I think we have some time. Escurra has to wish a Merry Christmas and good night to all his thugs and come back to his office to even know we’ve escaped. Then they have to think: did we head for the big house or maybe just steal a car? Their very last thought will be that we’d head into the jungle at night. And even if they try to search for us now in the dark, even if they have lights, finding our trail will be next to impossible.”
“They won’t search at all at night,” Solange said. “Everything human in the jungle stops at night.”
Telling them to stay no more than a couple of steps apart, Nova led them down near the lake, which they skirted. Her eyes soon accommodated to the severely reduced light. She could not risk using the flashlight and she could see shapes well enough to lead the way, but the sounds and near total darkness kept her nerves on edge. Once they heard a jaguar’s catty yowl. When they stumbled upon a bunch of caiman, the intimidated reptiles wiggled themselves into the lake.
Beyond the lake now and back into the jungle, heading for the s
pot where she had earlier parked the Jeep, Nova paused to let them nurse the bruises, stubbed toes and scratches they were collecting. While Joe called the SO coordinator, she spoke to the Guarani boy in Spanish and was delighted to discover that they could communicate. His name was Vitor.
Joe said, “Escurra’s thugs took Alex to a cave. I have the position. When we stop, we’ll look at a map. Special Ops will plan a raid to extract the kid.”
They moved on. Escurra might have a hard time figuring out where his captives had gone, but he had to know for certain now that Nova had help. When they reached the place where she’d hidden the Jeep, she stopped. “We spend the rest of the night here, close together.”
Bebe and Solange fell to the ground, exhausted. The Guarani boy said he knew where he was now and was going to go home.
“Can you help us?” she asked. “Stay a minute, please. We need to look at a map to see where they took the other boy.” He nodded solemnly and sat down, legs crossed.
Joe pulled out one of their maps and a flashlight. Nova sat to his right, Vitor to his left. After a brief study, using the coordinates SO had provided, Joe said in Spanish, “There should be a cave about here.”
“Do you know this cave?” Nova asked Vitor.
“Where are we?” Vitor asked, gesturing at the paper. Nova traced the map as she explained. “You were held here. We came past this lake and this is the river that runs across the property. And this road—” she turned and pointed in the direction of the road “—is right over there, not too far.”
It was clear that the region where Special Ops said Alex had been taken was on the other side of the river, but not all that far from where they were right now. “I know the cave,” Vitor said. “Do you need me to take you there now? I want to go home.”
Nova looked at Joe.
Joe said, “Yes. If you can take us there now, that’s what we should do, because we want to be there when people come to rescue our friend.”
The boy stood. “Then let’s go.”
Nova smiled and took his hand. “Let us rest a moment more, please.”
Vitor sat back down and asked Joe if he could look at the flashlight. Joe shrugged and tossed it his way. The boy started tinkering with its different levels of lighting.
She struggled to decide whether to take Bebe and Solange with them. Special Ops did not have permission from Brazil to be in the country. The idea was to extract Alex secretly. If Bebe called a friend to pick up him and Solange now, at least one other person would be involved. The more people involved, the greater the risk of a leak with possible serious political repercussions. But she could not leave Bebe and Solange here alone.
She would take them to the cave site where they would all spend the next couple of hours together, until the SO team arrived. Then, after she, Alex, and Joe left, Bebe and Solange could call a friend to pick them up. By that time tomorrow they could surely concoct some believable story about why Bebe and Solange were alone in the jungle.
Well, they would try to concoct such a story. That would be quite a challenge.
She explained the plan to Bebe and Solange. They both confessed to being very tired, but agreed that if she set a slow pace, they could walk the distance to the cave. Solange was having the worst time of all because she wore only flimsy dress heels.
Vitor led the way. Nova sensed from the swing of his shoulders that he took pride in being able to help. They made the road, crossed the bridge and reentered the jungle.
She estimated the hike to the cave site took another forty minutes. Only once did everyone drop to the ground and huddle together in terror—when a jaguar roared so close that Nova thought it must surely be attacking. But nothing happened. The smell of that many humans was more warning than temptation.
With Vitor’s help, they picked out a slightly elevated spot with good cover overlooking the mouth of the cave. The boy said, “I’m going home now.”
She sensed Joe pressing the flashlight into the boy’s hand. “It’s yours, Vitor.”
The boy was standing at her shoulder. He turned the light on and she could see on his face for the first time a grin, a shy one. “Muchas gracias, señor.”
He left, moving back into the darkness, toward the road. She couldn’t resist the momentary thought she always had when she met children and young people in the third world: What will his life hold? She and Joe had saved him from an early death. Perhaps fate had other good things in store for him.
Joe contacted SO again. “How long?” he asked. A team was in the air, on its way, but it looked like it would be close to dawn before its members arrived, she figured only forty minutes away now. No one seemed ready or able to sleep on the damp earth. They fumbled their way over the aboveground roots of a massive fig tree and found back rests.
She explained that they needed to come up with a cover story for why Bebe and Solange needed someone to pick them up—why did they not just go back to Escurra’s place for their own car? And why did they spend the night in the jungle—or had they spent it somewhere else?
“I’m too tired to think,” Solange said. Nova could hear her settling down.
“I am too, Nova,” Bebe added.
Nova wiggled into the most comfortable position she could manage, and used the trick of going mentally into her “favorite place,” the place she always went when she wanted to sleep or bad things were happening.
The shriek of a macaw jolted her into consciousness followed almost immediately by the sound of an approaching helicopter.
The dawn light now revealed the mouth of a cave surrounded by vines and roots, and leading from it a well-worn but narrow trail. And kneeling beside the cave’s mouth, hidden from the view of the approaching Special Ops helicopter, were four of Escurra’s men, two with stinger missiles on their shoulders. Escurra had figured out that someone big was on to his operation and he’d prepared.
“Oh God, Joe,” she moaned. “Call them. Tell them those bastards know they’re coming!”
Chapter 43
Suleema stood with tears streaming down her face in front of the Christmas tree that her daughter, Regina, had put up in defiance of what Regina most feared.
“They will find Alex,” Regina had insisted as she’d helped Clevon haul the seven-foot tree into their living room. “So when he comes home we’ll have to be prepared for Christmas.”
The tree was so beautiful. The lights twinkled and the angel hair glowed with the color of the bulbs behind it: soft red, green, blue, yellow. I thought when Raymond died that my heart would never heal and it could never break again. But maybe this is just different. This time I’m not breaking. I’m being crushed to death.
Last night, near midnight, the Marshal’s Office had called to let the family know that a successful rescue attempt had taken place and most of the hostages were now free and on their way to their families. But not Alex.
Suleema had awakened when she heard Regina scream, and she ran from the guest bedroom to Clevon and Regina’s to find her daughter walking in a circle and tearing at her hair. The scene of the distraught woman in her pajamas looked like something out of a horror movie. When told that Alex alone was still missing, Suleema herself had broken into sobs. Thank God for Clevon, strong and calm, even though his heart was in agony for his son.
Hearing footsteps coming down the stairs, Suleema swiped the tears away. She thought she ought to turn and smile bravely at Regina and Clevon, but a smile was completely out of the question. She just stood staring at the tree.
Clevon put his arm around her shoulders as Regina went toward the kitchen saying, “I’m going to make coffee. And then we are going to have breakfast. And we are going to continue to hold to faith that Alex will come home.”
Clevon gave Suleema a comforting squeeze. “She’s right, Sulee. We have to have faith.”
Suleema patted his hand. “Yes. Faith.”
Keeping faith was important to help bring Alex to them, but faith could not help her resolve the dilemma eating
at her for nearly six days now. In two days, on the twenty-seventh, the Supreme Court would hand down its decision on Sharansky versus the U.S. government.
She had decided to vote as she’d originally intended, against the government and for the lieutenant governors and the people of the United States. Actually, for the people of the world.
I must make the call now. Whatever the cost.
Clevon let her go and shambled toward the kitchen.
Suleema wrung her hands. The trade-off some villain had forced upon her was between Alex’s life and letting offensive weapons be put into space to create God only knew what kind of hellish future.
She bowed her head and closed her eyes. Dear Lord, I have decided to sacrifice my grandson, my posterity. I’m not sure I can ever live with myself again, even if Alex does come back to us alive. You sacrificed your own son for others. I guess maybe you would say I shouldn’t do less. I do know that these weapons have no business leaving our planet. Lord, give me the strength to do this. And live with myself afterward.
She turned from the tree and walked down the hallway to Clevon’s office. She knew the phone number for the Marshals by heart, had memorized it days ago, perhaps preparing herself for this moment. Some traitor wanted to rig the court.
She called and recited her story twice, and was told by the second marshal she talked to that someone would be out to speak with her within the hour. “You do understand,” he said, “that this changes entirely how everyone’s been looking at the case. This suggests that money is perhaps not the chief motivation for the kidnapping. The kidnapping and ransom demands may have been convincing cover for securing your vote. We may need to look somewhere right here at home to find the true forces behind this mess.”
After she hung up, she searched her feelings and realized that some small weight had come off her heart. She was not alone with her secret now. The authorities could start looking for whoever had terrorized her. Presumably whoever was behind the whole scheme. And her vote, her sacred duty to her country and its people, would reflect her conscience, not her fear.
