But all she saw was soldiers and weapons and the things she’d imagined she’d find in a paramilitary camp. Transport trucks, jeeps, tents, lines for clothes, fire pits, and targets at the far end of what appeared to be a makeshift firing range. Two types of vehicles were noticeably absent. No pickup truck with or without blankets or tarps in the bed was anywhere to be seen. No beat-up van.
She didn’t know what that meant. Had they brought Adam here, then left? Had they brought him here at all?
“I still count thirty or so,” she whispered to Manny, who had rolled to his back and pulled the SAT phone out of one of the many compartments on his ALICE pack and was trying to reach Ethan. Manny’s rifle and his heavy pack lay beside her lighter one in the tall grass.
“Watch the angle of the glass,” Manny warned as he dialed. “If the sun catches it and they spot us, we’re up shit creek without the proverbial paddle.”
Lily cupped her palm over the top of the field glasses, shielding the lenses from the midmorning sun. “What are they doing?”
“Waiting,” he said, giving up on making a connection and rolling to his belly again. His St. Christopher medal clinked softly against the rock when it fell out of his shirt. “The question is, for what?”
Gaze still riveted on the camp, Lily tracked the glasses more slowly over the area. “I don’t see anything but soldiers. God. They look so young.”
“That’s because they are,” Manny said with a stoic look, and held out his hand for the glasses. “SOP.”
Standard Operating Procedure. Yes. Manny would know about that. He’d been young, too, when he’d joined the Contra movement. Young men boiling with testosterone, bloodlust, and passion made the best recruits. Some things never changed. Adam was sixteen—the same age as Manny when he’d joined the resistance against the Sandinistas. But Adam was her son. He was mentally strong. She counted on that. And he had spirit—like his father. Frankly, she didn’t know if that was a good thing in this situation. She didn’t want Adam doing anything foolish. Anything heroic.
“Do you see anything significant?” she asked because she had to quit thinking about what might be happening with Adam and concentrate on what she and Manny could do to find him.
Manny continued to scan the area. “I don’t know. Something’s not ringing true here. They seem kind of ragtag—even for rebels. And it’s a big camp for less than a third of a company of soldiers. It’s set up for more. Looks like the main purpose of the camp is training, but I don’t see much evidence of any going on.”
He lowered the glasses, frowned. “Maybe they’re just here to do recon. The question is, are there more of them? And if so, where are they?”
“The question is, do they have Adam?”
Anxious and restless, Lily wondered what would happen if she walked down the hill and asked them. She’d never find out. Manny had made it clear; they were here to recon, not act, until Ethan arrived.
“I’m thinking no.” Manny lifted the glasses again. “If they had hostages, they’d have a guard posted by one of those tents. Instead, they’ve got a heavily armed squad stationed by whatever it is that’s under that tarp.”
She’d wondered about the tarp. It was big enough to cover a large truck.
“Maybe provisions?” she suggested.
“In need of guards? I don’t think so,” he said calmly. “We’ll watch. We’ll wait.”
“And then what?” She asked the question she hadn’t wanted to ask but suddenly needed to know the answer to. “What if Adam is there? What do we do then?”
“Exactly what I said we’d do. We wait for Ethan and Darcy.” He lowered the glasses. “Then we go talk to them.”
“Talk? You know Tamil?”
He shook his head. “Don’t have to. I know a more universal language. Money.”
CHAPTER 16
Outskirts of Kandy on the road to Marassana
“What are we going to do?”
Ethan glanced in the rearview mirror, signaled a left turn, and headed back into the city.
“Haven’t made up my mind yet, but I’ll tell you one thing. These assholes are really starting to piss me off.”
Darcy and Ethan had been trying to get out of Kandy and meet up with Manny and Lily for the past hour. It wasn’t happening, though, because the white VW was back. The car had been sticking to their tail like the heat that clung to the city and beat relentlessly down on the Suburban.
“Are they getting bolder or are they just stupid?” Darcy asked as Ethan sped down the street searching for the best way to ditch these losers.
“I vote for stupid,” Ethan said with disgust. “But we can’t risk leading them—whoever they are—to Manny.
“Try to raise him on the SAT phone again, would you? Let him know we’ve been held up.”
“Still no good,” Darcy said after several attempts to connect. “Do you suppose they’re out of range?”
“Could be. As soon as we deal with our new best friends, I’ll check the unit.
“Hang on.” He jerked the wheel sharp left.
The Suburban careened around the corner on two tires.
“Still with us,” Darcy reported when Ethan cut another corner.
“Good.” He pulled into an alley.
As he’d figured it would, the VW sped past the alley, braked with a squeal of tires, and backed up.
“Uh-oh,” Darcy said when she saw the VW turn into the alley and creep toward them.
She glanced at Ethan. He was smiling as he pulled a pistol from the glove box and checked the clip. It was not a smile that would warm hearts.
“Oh. You wanted them to find us.”
“Damn straight.” He never took his eyes off the slowly approaching vehicle. “It’s time to have a little come-to-Jesus meeting. At which time,” he added with a dark look, “I plan to deliver the gospel according to me.”
He glanced her way and offered her a Life Saver before popping one into his mouth. “Get down, babe. This might not be pretty.”
“Get down? I don’t think so, Lieutenant. No way am I leaving in the middle of this movie.”
He was gearing up to get all protective and bossy when the car pulled up behind them and cut the motor.
“Showtime,” she said, and with her heart beating in her throat, watched as another vehicle pulled into the other end of the alley and slowly rolled to a stop.
They were blocked in.
And they were outnumbered four to two.
“Now what?” Darcy watched as all four men got out of their cars and slowly approached them.
“Now we hope that that official-looking seal in the front corner of each windshield means what I think it means.”
“Police,” Darcy said, recognizing the symbol on the seal now that the cars were close up. “That’s a good thing, right?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Ethan reached under the seat and withdrew a handgun Darcy had heard him refer to as a Czech CZ-52. He set it on the seat beside him, slipped off the safety, and covered the gun with a map.
“Gentlemen,” Ethan said in English when the four men approached them. “Is there a problem?”
Yes, as it turned out. There was. A very big problem.
Four problems to be exact. All of them semiautomatic. All of them drawn. All of them in the hands of some hard-faced men who would not, Darcy was certain, hesitate to put a bullet through the center of each of their foreheads.
“Step out of the vehicle and come with us, please.” A short, swarthy Sinhalese with close-set eyes and a pocked complexion flashed a badge. “We wish you no harm. And as long as you keep your hand away from the gun you have hidden beneath the map, no harm will come to you.”
“I have friends at the American embassy,” Darcy said. “Friends who are aware we are here.”
“I assure you, Ms. Prescott, we are well aware of your friends—in fact, they have sent us to escort you to our international crime headquarters.”
; Darcy cut an uncertain glance at Ethan. He shook his head.
“Then you wouldn’t mind giving them a call—letting us talk to them.”
To Darcy’s surprise, someone produced a cell phone, then punched in a number and handed it to her.
The phone rang several times before a woman picked up. “Vice-Consul Griffin’s office.”
“This is Darcy Prescott. I—”
“Ms. Prescott,” the woman interrupted. “Mr. Griffin’s been waiting for word from you. Hold on please; I’ll connect you immediately.”
Ethan watched her with hooded eyes. She nodded to let him know she’d reached Griffin’s office.
“Darcy?”
“What’s going on, Griff?”
“Jesus, Darcy. Where are you?”
“At the moment? We’re being detained in Kandy by some lovely gentlemen with shiny badges and big guns.”
“It’s okay. I’ve had them tailing you to make sure you stayed out of trouble.”
“You put the tail on us? They have guns, Griff. Big ones.”
“Sorry about that. I just gave the go-ahead for them to move in and detain you—guess they got a little overzealous. Look, Darcy, we’ve had a development on the Adam Campora situation.”
She felt her heart turn over. Reached out and latched on to Ethan’s hand. “What’s happened?”
“We just received a video via e-mail.”
She wasn’t aware that she’d dug her nails into Ethan’s palm. Was only aware of the difficulty breathing as Griff told her about the content of the tape that had been shot earlier today and e-mailed to the prime minister’s office within the past hour.
“Oh God.” She disconnected and turned to Ethan. “We’ve got to get ahold of Manny.”
“Nothing,” Ethan said after attempting to call. “I’m still getting a no-service message.”
“Try Dallas.”
“Already on it,” he said with an urgency in his tone that matched hers as he dialed Dallas’s SAT phone.
Dallas, Darcy thought, and closed her eyes.
Based on the news Griff had just given them, Dallas had walked into the devil’s kitchen with little more than a match when what he really needed was a flamethrower.
And Adam and the Muhandiramalas had less than ten hours to live if the Sinhalese government didn’t turn over control of the UVA and Central Province to the Tigers by midnight.
The chances of that happening were the same as those of peace breaking out in the Middle East in the same time frame. Which meant that the odds of saving Adam’s life had just narrowed to a window roughly the size of the head of a pin.
Near the Wahala-purha temple ruins
“How much longer do we wait?”
Lily was impatient. Manny understood that. She was probably also hungry and stiff. They’d been fixed on their bellies on the stone, watching the camp, for the past hour.
“As long as it takes,” he said, although he’d pretty much come to the conclusion they were barking up the wrong banana tree.
He’d seen nothing to indicate there were hostages in the camp. No tents were under guard. There were no regularly scheduled spot checks to any particular location in the camp that would indicate concern over a hostage rescue.
The only thing that seemed to be of any consequence in the camp—aside from the fact that it was set up for a lot more personnel than were currently there—was the heavily guarded tarp.
He rubbed his palm over his jaw where a two-day stubble had started to itch. Guns, he was guessing. They probably had a shitload of guns—possibly some RPGs—stowed under the tarp. Which continued to make him nervous as hell. There was room under the canvas for enough weaponry to stage a major coup.
Which led to the logical question: Why would they need that much firepower unless they were preparing to launch an attack? And why would the Tigers risk it in the middle of Sinhalese territory? It wasn’t their style—and with good reason. Their military—regardless of this cache of weapons—was outnumbered ten to one.
If they were stupid enough to launch an attack, though, just where did that land Adam and the Muhandiramalas? Were they insurance? Or were they a catalyst for some brewing martyrdom plot? And if Manny was right about his suspicions that Adam and the rest were being held at another location, why did it appear that this particular camp may be planning a major battle so far away from the northern territory?
Christ. None of it made sense. Manny thought about Dallas. Wondered if he’d successfully breached the Tiger headquarters in the north and found any information of use. Dallas could handle himself; still, Manny couldn’t help but wonder if Dallas was all right. And hope to hell he was able to make some connections that would both clarify and help in Adam’s rescue.
Manny couldn’t worry about Dallas now. He had enough to deal with right here. He scanned the area again with the field glasses, and, not for the first time, it struck him how much Sri Lanka reminded him of Nicaragua. And not just that the people lived under the constant threat of war. Everything from the lush jungles, to the climate, to the coastal ports made him think of home.
The last time he’d been home as a citizen of Nicaragua, Lily had filled not only his nights and his bed but also his every waking thought. He was a U.S. citizen now. Glad for it. Proud of it.
But other things, he realized with weary acceptance, never changed. Lily still filled his head—though she no longer shared his bed. Right, wrong, somewhere in between, when this mission was behind them, that was going to change.
A lot of things were going to change. He was a father. He would know his son.
And his son’s mother—well. Other than fear for her child, frustration with Manny, and the occasional look that made him think she may be as aware of him as he was of her, he didn’t know what their future held. And other than having her in his bed, he wasn’t certain what he wanted from her.
“Why do you think Ethan hasn’t checked in yet?”
Lily’s question broke into his thoughts, jarring him back to the ridge.
“Wish I had a good answer for that. The simple one is that something’s interfering with our satellite link.”
“And a not so simple answer?”
Manny didn’t think she’d want to hear the not so simple answer. And he didn’t want to think about the possibility that whoever had been tailing them might have made a move and Ethan was not in a position to make contact. Manny didn’t want to think about that any more than he wanted to think about what was happening with Dallas.
Manny rolled a shoulder, then his neck, working the burn out of muscles grown stiff from holding the same position for so long.
“Whoa—” He stilled when sudden activity, lots of it, had soldiers scurrying every which way in the camp. “Something’s happening.”
He adjusted the focus on the field glasses, watched as the camp commander—Manny had spotted the rank of captain on the Tamil officer’s uniform—talked into a two-way and barked orders.
“Shit,” Manny swore when one of the fighters joined the officer and both of them trained field glasses on the rim where he and Lily were hunkered down. “Looks like we’ve been made.”
“They’ve spotted us?”
Before he could answer, a dozen rebel fighters ran toward the tarp. They quickly undid the bungee cords that held down the canvas and rolled it back.
“Moth-er-fuck-er,” Manny muttered when he got a bead on the piece of artillery perched on the ground like a great beached whale. It was a goddamn cannon! An M-102 howitzer, for chrissake. Talk about overkill. No wonder they had a two-and-a-half-ton truck. They needed something that big to tow it.
What the hell were they doing with that gun? More to the point, where did they get it? The M-102s had seen a lot of action during the Vietnam conflict, but the U.S. Army, for one, had pretty much deep-sixed those bad boys from their arsenal twenty-plus years ago. How one had ended up in the Tigers’ hands was anybody’s guess.
He refocused the field glasses and damn n
ear swallowed his tongue when they shoved a 105mm round into the breech and prepared to strike the primer. Then they set a trajectory that aimed dead center at the rock where he and Lily were lying.
The bad news: If the sucker was functional, Manny and Lily were charred toast. The good news: The gun was a relic. The chances were good that the rebels could smoke themselves if the weapon misfired.
He wasn’t going to wait around to find out who came out ahead in this deadly game.
“Move it,” he ordered, scrambling backward. He grabbed both his pack and hers along with his rifle. She’d make a good soldier, he thought as they crab-crawled at warp speed down the back of the slope. She didn’t question. She just moved—although she was falling behind him.
And then all he could think about was keeping her alive when he heard the unmistakable report of the big gun being fired.
He grabbed her ankle, jerked her down the slope toward him, and lunged on top of her all in one motion. Then he covered her head and prayed there’d be enough left of him to get her out of the line of fire when the smoke cleared.
The mortar round whooshed overhead, then detonated with a ground-shaking concussion that exploded through his eardrums like a pack of cherry bombs in a bucket of water.
He made a cave of his arms and hunkered deeper over Lily’s head, waited for the pain, for the rain of rock and dirt and blood that would follow.
Nothing.
The only thing moving in the aftermath of the explosion was the woman beneath him; the only sounds were the ringing in his ears, Lily’s muffled, “I can’t breathe!” and the unmistakable crackle of a roaring gas fire.
Stunned to be in one piece, he rolled off of her, made a quick recon of the immediate area, and saw not a blade of grass out of place. “What the—” and then he saw it. Smoke. Thick, black, and boiling out of the ravine behind them.
Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 05] Page 16
