by Dees, Cindy
“Run,” he ordered Katie low and urgent. “Into the brush. Hide.” Crap. He’d been afraid there might be some sort of alarm system in or around the bunker. He’d hoped the storm had disabled it, but apparently not. If nothing else, someone might have been watching the bunker from a satellite.
Katie dived across the road and into the scrub with him hard on her heels. A pickup truck with two soldiers in the cab and three heavily armed men in the back rumbled past.
And they didn’t look like just any soldiers. These men were big, physical and carrying their weapons—AK-47s—like extensions of their arms. If they weren’t special forces, he was losing his mind.
As soon as the truck rounded the bend, he turned to Katie and breathed, “When they see the bunker’s been broken into, all hell’s going to break loose. We need to make our way back to the moped and head south.”
“To Baracoa?” she whispered.
“No! To Guantánamo. We’re going to need help to get off this island, now.”
“But Gitmo’s on the south side of the island.”
“It’s under a hundred miles from here. If we can make it onto the base, it’s U.S. territory. We’ll be safe. If we get separated, head there on your own.” He pressed the second pistol into her hand and passed her the bag of taped samples. Still naked, he shouldered the pack. “Let’s go.”
“You’re going to get all scratched up,” she protested.
He started moving, murmuring over his shoulder, “That’s the least of our problems right now.”
Sure enough, about three minutes into their egress, shouting became audible behind them. In another five minutes, the sound of several more trucks floated to them on the cool evening air.
He’d set a course due south over whatever terrain that offered. He modified their travel to avoid open pastures and bare mountaintops, but that was it. The moped lay to the south, and they needed a motorized escape if they were going to make it seventy or eighty miles overland across the interior of Cuba.
If he was getting scratched up by the branches and brambles, he didn’t allow himself to notice it. He was too busy pushing Katie to her limits without actually killing her. It was a fine line to walk.
After maybe an hour of hard going, he paused under a giant fern and dug a bottle of water out of his pack. She drank while he, at long last, dressed. He noted vaguely that he was covered in bug bites and thin lines of blood from various scratches and small contusions. If he got out of this night without a serious infection he was going to be impressed.
He tossed down a bottle of water and a couple stim pills left over from his training. He passed Katie one of the pills as well, and she swallowed it dry.
“Ready to go?” he asked.
She nodded gamely and they rose slowly to their feet in time to hear a thwocking sound in the distance.
“Helicopter,” she bit out.
He swore under his breath. If that bird had heat-seeking technology on board, they were screwed. “Find water,” he ordered. “A stream or puddle. Anything.”
He moved out from under the big fern and she went the other direction.
“Over here,” she called out low.
A small rivulet, maybe two feet wide and no more than a foot deep, trickled past her. He raced down the hill, following the trickle as the helicopter got louder, fast. She crashed along behind him, panting.
“What are we doing, Alex?”
“Hurry.” There. Below them. The trickle widened into a shallow, oblong pool. It was maybe six feet wide and twice that long, where the trickle backed up behind a cluster of small boulders that formed a natural dam.
“Into the water,” he bit out.
She reached for her shirt buttons and he grabbed her hands to stop her. “Now. Just get in.”
Eyes wide, she followed him as he waded into the pool and sat down in it. “Omigod, it’s freezing,” she squeaked under her breath.
“When I tell you, take a deep breath and lay down. All the way under the water. The pool will camouflage our heat signatures. And keep your eyes closed. There could be nasty microbes in here.” She had precious little time to process that explanation, for the helicopter topped the ridge behind them just then. “Now.”
He laid down under the water, his own eyes screwed tightly shut. Something touched his elbow and he jumped before realizing it was Katie’s fingers. Her hand slid down his arm until she could grasp his hand.
Even fully submerged, the noise of the chopper was loud. He didn’t know if such shallow water would eliminate their heat signatures or not. But it was all they had. The chopper moved past with aching slowness, which made him think the Cubans were using heat-seeking gear, after all.
Katie’s hand squeezed his more tightly, and he realized they’d been under for nearly three minutes. Well beyond her stated ability to hold her breath. He sat up cautiously, letting just his mouth and nose break the surface. Katie did the same beside him. The sound of the chopper was fading now.
He sat all the way up, and Katie followed suit with alacrity.
“Well, that was fun,” she muttered.
“The fun has just begun. Now we get to flee through the jungle at night in wet clothes.”
They waded out of the pool and Katie frowned. “Should we check each other for leeches or something?”
“We should. But we need to get moving. The leeches can dine on our blood in the meantime.”
She made a face and shuddered as he shouldered the big pack, retracing his steps up the hill to put them back on course. And that was when he heard a different kind of engine. Crap. ATVs.
Alone, he’d have had no trouble avoiding the Cubans. But with Katie in tow, the two of them didn’t stand a chance when the Cuban special forces, riding all-terrain vehicles, came after them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KATIE CROUCHED IN TERROR. Now she knew exactly what a mouse felt like when the fox came after it, or a rabbit when a hawk circled overhead.
Shadows and tangled brush pressed in on her, threatening to entangle and trap her. But she still felt naked and terribly exposed. Her instincts screamed at her to run, but her head yelled even louder not to move a muscle. The result was frozen panic and a deep desire to vomit.
“We have to split up,” Alex breathed to her.
She looked around at the wild trees and looming darkness in terror.
“No!” she cried back in a bare whisper. She clutched at his arm frantically. He couldn’t abandon her out here! She didn’t know the first thing about jungles. She needed him. And she bloody well couldn’t do this running around evading bad guys stuff by herself!
“It’s our only chance,” he explained. “I’ll draw them off while you make a run for the moped. Take it and get to Guantánamo. I’ll make my own way there. It may take a few days, but wait there. I’ll join you.”
“No—”
He grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hard, cutting off her protest. “I believe in you. I know you can do this.”
“I barely speak Spanish, and I don’t look remotely Cuban.”
“There are blond, fair people in Cuba.”
“I can’t do it!”
“You must.”
“It’s suicide for you to engage those soldiers. They’ve got numbers, equipment, technology. They have every advantage. I’ve heard my brothers talk. You’d never survive.”
“Trust me. I’m very good at what I do. But I can’t do it with you here. I need you to go.”
Not a chance. “But—”
He gave her a hard push that sent her stumbling, sliding and ultimately half falling down a steep slope. Muddy and covered in leaves, it was so slippery she stood no chance of stopping her descent. Some hundred feet down the slope, she turned and frantically tried to run back up it to Alex.
To no avail. She might as well be trying to climb an ice mountain. She was not getting back up that hill any time soon. Appalled, she listened as someone shouted above her. For all she knew, that was Alex trying to get
spotted by the Cubans. Damn him!
He’d pushed her. The man she loved had actually shoved her down that hill. Why? Confusion rolled through her. Was he that eager to get rid of her, or was it some misguided attempt at altruism from a mind too convoluted for her to follow? She didn’t know whether to be grateful or furious. Opting for the latter, she took off running through the trees. If he was going to be a giant idiot and get himself killed being a hero, far be it from her to waste the escape window he’d given her. He was insane. And stupid. And heroic. And did she already add being a giant idiot to that list?
At some point in her frantic flight, it dawned on her that tears were streaming down her face. Was she ever going to see him again? Or had he just consigned himself to a terrible death to save her?
Whether her horror or her panic spurred her harder, she couldn’t say. But she ran until her legs felt like burning rubber and her lungs felt consumed by fire. And then she ran some more. It was awful beyond description.
Only the sound of the ocean on her left and the moon sliding gradually to her right kept her from running around in circles out here. The terrain was difficult during the day, but at night it was brutal. She twisted her ankles and wrenched her knees more times than she could count. She fell on her butt, and fell on her face, and ran into trees, skinned her knees and got poked in the eye. But she didn’t stop. Somehow, she forced her feet to keep moving no matter what.
She tried to distract herself by thinking about Dawn and what they’d do together when she got home. But that just made her cry too hard to see where she was going.
She tried cursing out her personal trainer, which carried her for a good ten minutes. But then she had no more anger left to summon. Exhaustion set in. Her only motivation now was what she would do to Alex the next time she saw him. That, and a fierce determination to survive long enough to do it to him.
The spine of ridges she’d been crawling up and down forever finally gave way to a rolling plateau. But with the level ground came open fields. Farms. She wasn’t worried about locals spotting her. There were practically none here. The soldiers looking for her and Alex—they were a different matter.
The moon wasn’t quite set, either. She ended up crouching by the edge of a huge pasture for nearly a half hour while she waited for the moonlight to finally disappear. At first she was grateful for the rest. Then the vigil became a terrible fight to stay awake. She was only barely cold, damp, sore and terrified enough to keep her eyes open.
At least she was too exhausted to dwell much on the terrible truth that Alex had abandoned her. Damn him. She was not strong or smart or sneaky enough to make her way across Cuba by herself.
Wearily she pushed to a crouch and started across the open field. No one swooped down on her to arrest her, and the sky was finally quiet, the helicopters that had crisscrossed the jungle overhead for much of the night gone.
On the one hand, she was relieved as she reached a tree line and followed it around another pasture. On the other hand, she fretted that the absence of the helicopters might mean they’d found Alex. Captured him. Hauled him away for torture and interrogation until they broke him and then killed him.
She was desperate to call André or Uncle Charlie and beg for help. For someone to come save her and Alex from this waking nightmare. But Alex had the satellite phone in his backpack. All she had was the bag of samples...which she could only pray hadn’t broken in her mad flight and weren’t slowly killing her already.
Where was Alex? Was he okay? How was he going to get all the way across Cuba on foot by himself? Yes, her brain knew he was a trained spy who could handle those sorts of things. But it had looked like half the Cuban army was after him back there. And she was allowed to worry about him, dammit.
The familiar iron gates leading to nothing came into view ahead as the first gray light of dawn tinged the eastern horizon. A sob escaped her throat. As tempted as she was to run for the shed, caution prompted her to kneel in the last tree line prior to the homestead. To wait and watch for signs of movement. For a trap. Alex’s paranoia had obviously rubbed off on her.
As the sky turned pink and wan light washed over the farm, she finally grew too sleepy to wait anymore. She had to move or pass out.
She went to the shed cautiously, recalling that Alex had left a few surprises in place to discourage would-be looters. A glance at the garden plot behind the house, the final resting place of the last looters to pass this way, made her faintly ill.
She approached the shed door. Thank God. The trip wire was still in place. She stepped gingerly over it and opened the door an inch or so. Just enough to wiggle her fingers inside and detach the second trip wire from the latch on the inside. She eased the door the rest of the way open. The bulky tarp was still in place over the moped.
Before she wheeled the motor bike outside, she searched the shed for anything that might be of help to her. She stuffed a hand spade, an empty plastic water bottle and an old flashlight into her bag with the samples. The batteries were dead, but maybe she could find some along the way.
And then she hit the mother lode. A rusty gas can. Perhaps a gallon of gasoline was sloshing around in the bottom of it. She poured it into the moped’s gas tank and prayed it would be enough to get her all the way to Gitmo.
Speaking of which, time was a’wasting. If she timed this right, she should hit Baracoa at midmorning when people were most likely to be out and around and less likely to notice her. No way could she make this trip cross-country. She was going to have to take the coastal highway around the eastern tip of the island to the south shore and the U.S. facility at Guantánamo.
People had been at work clearing and repairing the roads since they’d passed this way before with Oscar. As she neared Baracoa, she was actually able to motor along at a decent speed. She did, indeed, pass through the now-familiar city without incident. She debated trying to buy gas while she was there and decided it would call too much attention to herself. That, and she spotted a truckload of soldiers headed toward her as an operating gas station came into sight. That decided her. She kept moving.
Not far past Baracoa, the highway cut inland, due south. The condition of the road was terrible and she was forced to pick her way painstakingly around huge ruts and washouts as she headed up into the hills. Coconut plantations gave way to mango orchards and then to jungle. If Alex thought this wasn’t rough jungle, she’d hate to see a bad one.
Eventually, the road came down out of the Sierra Maestra mountain range to hug the coast. Debris and the occasional sandbar slowed her progress, but the sky was blue, the ocean breezes cool and the day generally beautiful.
A hodgepodge of vehicles drove along the road—mostly military and police trucks. But a few farmers were returning to their homes in flatbed trucks piled high with kids and belongings. If the roads held up and she didn’t run out of gas, she would reach Guantánamo in the late afternoon.
Of course, the roads didn’t hold up, and she did run out of gas. She debated whether to push the moped along or just walk, and ended up opting for walking. Once she got to Gitmo, she wasn’t planning on ever coming back to this place.
The highway, which had run due west along the south shore of the island, started to cut inland across the last peninsula prior to Guantánamo Bay. The sun was setting as she stopped in front of what looked like it had once been a major intersection. A blown-over road sign lay in the ditch with the words Naval Station Guantánamo Bay on it.
Great. Which direction would the sign have indicated she should go if it wasn’t torn off its posts and lying by the side of the road? Was this even the right intersection? Or had the sign flown for miles before landing here?
This was exactly why she needed Alex. Or at least the GPS on his phone. Frustrated and scared, she noticed a cluster of lights in the distance. Was that the naval base? Or was that a Cuban city at the north end of the bay?
Cursing Alex, she took a deep breath and turned to the left. If she wasn’t completely lost,
she was heading south, toward the mouth of Guantánamo Bay. She hoped.
She’d walked no more than ten minutes when a camouflage green jeep streaked toward her, coming fast. She jumped into the ditch, but was too slow. The vehicle stopped on the road above her and a man shouted angrily at her in Spanish. Something about coming out and something else about her hands. She expected the soldier wanted her hands in the air. Oh, God. She was so dead.
CHAPTER NINE
ALEX CROUCHED IN the steamy heat of the jungle, listening to the Cuban soldiers barreling past. It was shocking how much this resembled his training last summer. The aggressors wore different uniforms, and these ones would torture and kill him for real if they caught him, but otherwise, it all was pretty much the same.
The mud he’d covered his skin with was drying and stretching his face uncomfortably tight. Katie would tell him how wonderful his pores were going to look after he washed off the mask.
His gut clenched. He’d hated with a passion sending her away from him. But it was the only reasonable course of action. He prayed, just in case there was a God, for Katie to make it to Gitmo safely.
In the meantime, he needed wheels. He didn’t relish spending the next week or more making like a monkey tramping through the jungle. On top of his other problems, he was starting to feel a little feverish. If he was lucky, he’d merely picked up some sort of infection from one of his numerous lacerations. If he was unlucky, he needed serious medical care fast if he wasn’t to die of sarin poisoning.
He retraced his steps carefully toward the Zacara factory. He was counting on it being the one spot his pursuers would not expect him to go. It was the likeliest rallying point for whoever was chasing him around out here, as well. Which meant there should be vehicles. Uniforms. A cover.
He topped the ridge above the factory. Sure enough, a half dozen trucks were parked in front of one of the smaller buildings. The helicopter that had made his life a living hell last night was parked in the big open area in front of the dock. And from here, he could see three soldiers in various stages of patrolling or lounging on the grounds.
