Someone immediately poked him with a rifle.
“How are you?” Madeleine asked worriedly.
“Help me sit up.” He realized he was lying on the hard ground of the schoolyard. Someone must have dragged him here. Once he was propped upright, he looked at the two men guarding them. They were dressed in an eclectic array of rags and they carried—what else?—AK 47s. “Oh, Christ,” Ransom muttered, wanting to lie back down.
“We seem to me waiting for someone,” Madeleine murmured.
“Who?”
“El Martillo,” she replied.
The name drew a reaction from their captors. Ransom ignored them. “The Hammer? That doesn't sound very encouraging.”
“No, it doesn't.”
He looked searchingly at her. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you?”
“No. Scared me, mostly. I never even saw the first one until he grabbed me.” She frowned. “Do you think they're bandits?”
At the mention of a word he recognized even in English, the older of the two men expostulated angrily in Spanish. His thick, guttural accent was hard to understand, but the gist of it was clear: they weren't no stinking bandits.
“Not bandits?” Ransom repeated, eyeing the rifle pointed at his belly. “That leads to one rather obvious conclusion.”
“Doristas?” Madeleine ventured.
This produced an even angrier response from their guards. Clearly, the notion that they could be stinking Doristas was an insult very nearly worthy of murder.
“My mistake,” Ransom said apologetically as a rifle poked him in the shoulder. “Hey, don't point that thing at her! I mean it.”
The younger guard blinked at Ransom's tone.
Madeleine said nervously, “Please don't antagonize him.”
“Jesus, look at him. He's probably about sixteen years old. What a mess.”
“They're LPM, aren't they?”
“Looks that way.” He asked them. The young one confirmed this before the other man told him to shut up.
“What do you think this means for us?” Madeleine asked with studied neutrality.
“Well, LPM are hard-left fanatics, but their only known leader never expressed any anti-American sentiments before the Seguridores killed him,” Ransom mused. Of course, maybe the guy just never had time to express such sentiments before he was butchered. In an effort to sound optimistic, Ransom added, “So let's hope we can talk our way out of this when El Martillo gets here.” His head ached, and he couldn't seem to pull his thoughts together. “It's vaguely starting to make sense to me.”
“What is?”
“Remember that village yesterday? Such extreme hostility to city people, foreigners, and anyone with money.”
“Yes?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “with the Doristas already so influential in the north, it makes sense that this area would be prime recruiting ground for the LPM. Those villagers probably—”
The older rebel told them to stop talking. The younger one noticed the macaw perched in a nearby tree, and he raised his rifle to shoot at it.
“No!” Madeleine cried, leaping up. Ransom grabbed at her at the same time that both rifles were levelled on her. “No, don't!”
“Maddie!” Ransom snarled.
The rebels shouted orders at her. The bird left its branch and flew overhead. Madeleine pointed to it and begged them not to shoot it, feeling it was her fault that the creature was still hanging around. Realizing what she meant, the boy who had been about to shoot the bird now smiled condescendingly and agreed not to kill it. The tension dissolved, and Madeleine let Ransom drag her back down to her seat in the mud.
“Do that again,” he growled, “and I'll shoot you myself.”
“You could,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes on their guards.
The moment she said it, he felt the weight of the .38 strapped to his ankle, so familiar that, in his groggy state, he hadn't even noticed it until now. “They didn't search me,” he whispered incredulously.
“No. Or me,” she added significantly.
He blinked, “You've still got—”
“Yes.”
He couldn't believe their luck! No wonder the LPM rebels weren't anywhere near as effective as the Doristas. “All right. Here's what we're gonna do. You—”
He was interrupted by a strange animalistic call from the jungle. The rebels perked up excitedly, and one of them answered it. A moment later, three more scruffy-looking armed men came out of the jungle. The rebels greeted the newcomers enthusiastically, as if they hadn't seen each other for a long time. Ransom guessed they hadn't. The elusiveness of LPM probably meant its members lived a scattered life, constantly on the move. He certainly hadn't counted them among the dangers he and Madeleine were likely to encounter; he hadn't even known they were based in Las Verdes.
“They seem to have forgotten us,” Madeleine murmured, watching the reunion. Smiling and greeting each other, these men didn't seem all that threatening now, and she harbored a faint hope that they'd let her and Ransom go.
“Oh, shit,” Ransom blurted a moment later.
“What?” She felt the blossom of hope start to wither.
“Look at them. Don't you recognize them?”
“Recognize...” Suddenly, she did. “Those are the three men who ate at the Pension Doragua our first night there,” she whispered.
“Uh-huh.”
Their young captor gestured to them a moment later, explaining how he had discovered Madeleine in the bushes. The moment the leader of the group—El Martillo—looked at them, Madeleine knew he recognized them. His expression hardened with hatred.
“What were they doing in Doragua?” Madeleine wondered.
“Probably coming back from the capital after looking for another way to hit the President,” Ransom muttered.
“We're in a lot of trouble, aren't we?”
“I can't believe my luck.” Ransom sounded outraged.
El Martillo and his two companions came forward and studied Madeleine and Ransom. The Hammer's Spanish was as clear as Madeleine remembered it, enabling her to understand what he said; it occurred to her with some surprise that he must be an educated man. His comments, however, were extremely discouraging. He said that he had met these two oligarchic pigs before, and he congratulated his men on capturing them.
“Now wait a minute,” Ransom began in Spanish.
“You think I do not remember?” El Martillo sneered. “You had an arrogant lackey with you then, a silly young braggart who openly boasted of his association with that murdering swine Veracruz and the whore he calls his wife.”
He prodded Ransom with his rifle. Ransom didn't react. El Martillo loomed over him and snarled, “He also boasted of your association with Veracruz.”
The two men who had captured them looked stunned, then appalled, then positively venomous. Madeleine became very, very scared. The two men started speaking simultaneously, suddenly excited and bloodthirsty. With cold fury and scathing bitterness, El Martillo repeated for them everything Miguel had said about Ransom in his good-natured effort to charm the provincial Gutierrez family. And upon realizing that they had captured a man who was not only a friend of Veracruz, but one who had actually made him harder to kill, the rebels now demanded the honor of killing their captive.
“Oh, my God,” Madeleine moaned, terrified beyond rational thought.
One of the men who had been at the pension grinned and said something to his companions that made them all look at Madeleine and laugh. Then he reached out and traced the neckline of her poncho with the barrel of his rifle. Cold terror immobilized her as he leered at her while fondling her with his weapon.
Ransom said something so insulting and vulgar to the man that all laughter ceased immediately. The man forgot about Madeleine and hit Ransom. Ransom barely blinked. He said something else to them all that made El Martillo furious, though Madeleine didn't understand the vernacular. The youngest rebel, flushing with insulted manhood, kicked Rans
om. Madeleine screamed and flung herself across his prone body even as struggled to sit up again.
“Please,” she begged them, “please don't do this!” Her meager Spanish deserted her, so she begged Ransom, “Don't make them hurt you!”
He ignored her, pushing her aside as he sat up and delivered a blistering commentary in flawed Spanish about how pathetic he found their obscure, cowardly, ineffectual so-called rebel army, and how all real men in this country became Doristas. Madeleine thought El Martillo would kill him on the spot.
But then The Hammer remembered his debt to the two men who had captured Ransom and said to them, “I have no time for this. Kill him now.”
“No!” Madeleine screamed, clinging to Ransom once again. It took two men to pull her off of him. They hauled her to her feet and dragged her several yards away.
The boy raised his rifle and pointed it at Ransom. Madeleine went still with horror.
“Oh, come on,” Ransom said, clearly enough for Madeleine to understand, “not in front of the woman. Do you really think she'll let you fuck her with my brains splattered all over her poncho?”
And as terrified as she was, she caught the significant glance Ransom sent her and realized that, appearances notwithstanding, he was orchestrating this entire scene. Only he hadn't had time to tell her her role! What did he want her to do? Oh, Christ, what should she do?
He was still sitting on the ground. His hand was close to his ankle, where the .38 was concealed. She reasoned it out in a split second, and realized what he needed from her. There were five men. He couldn't take them all at once. So, with a screech of sheer hysteria, she started struggling wildly with the two men who held her, taking all of their attention. She kicked out wildly, and one of them dropped his rifle.
Ransom made his move. Madeleine heard the shots. Deafening. Earth-shaking. Terrifying beyond belief. Two fast shots, then a whole round of confusing explosions from different weapons. She was down on the ground now, smothered beneath the body of one of El Martillo's companions. When she felt him try to rise, so that he could shift his rifle and join the fight, she clung to him. He fought her off. She heard him curse and then felt his hand scrabbling at her stomach. He had felt the gun concealed there and was trying to get at it through layers of rough poncho material.
There was a lot of shouting. Madeleine choked on muddy water, rolling over and over in various puddles as she fought for survival against this brutal stranger. She saw his fist coming straight at her, heard the dull smack of flesh against flesh, and saw blood splatter. Her blood. She felt no pain, only blind fury. Her knee found his groin with satisfying force, and while he was helpless with pain, she rolled away and climbed to her feet.
“The jungle, Maddie! Run! Run!”
It was Ransom's voice. Blinded by sweat and dirt and blood, she obeyed, turning around and running straight into the bush. She tripped and fell, then hauled herself to her feet and plunged ahead. After a moment, she realized he wasn't right behind her. She stopped and scrubbed at her tearing eyes. There was no way she was leaving without him. Where the hell was he?
She went back the way she had come, able to see a little more clearly now as she crouched behind a leafy bush. Two bodies lay inert in the schoolyard. Ransom fought El Martillo; both of them were unarmed. The man she had left lying in agony was now fumbling one-handed for his rifle, which lay several feet away from him; his other hand still clutched his crotch. Trembling wildly, Madeleine pulled the Browning from her belt, undid the safety, and fired at the man. She missed, but she got his full attention; and she nearly dropped the gun. It felt like a wild thing trying to escape from her hands, as if it had suddenly come to life.
Recoil, she realized with distant surprise, never having fired a gun before in her life. So that's recoil.
And the noise. It made her ears ring and her legs shake.
She held the gun more tightly, afraid it would jump out of her grip, and fired again, keeping the man pinned where he was.
She only counted four men, she realized, firing again from her leafy shelter at the edge of the jungle, keeping her enemy separated from his rifle. Where was the fifth man? She wiped at the blood still dripping from her nose as she looked for him.
Finding his advantage, Ransom did something horrible to El Martillo's knee. The Hammer screamed and wallowed helplessly on the ground.
“Ransom, come on! Over here!” Madeleine shouted.
Ransom rolled to his feet and ran. Someone peaked out of the nearest school building and fired his rifle. The fifth man! He had a clear shot at Ransom, who was running toward Madeleine, unarmed. She fired rapidly, again and again. A cloud of acrid smoke rose around her as she emptied the magazine.
The man on the ground heard the pause when she ran out of ammunition. So did the fifth man. He stepped out, raising his rifle just as the man on the ground finally reached his and seized it. Madeleine fumbled for the spare magazine in her pocket. Her hands were clumsy with fear and inexperience.
She finished loading the Browning just as both rifles sent a barrage of bullets into the bush.
“Go! Go!” Ransom shouted, just steps away from her. “Run!”
She ran. The sound of gunfire followed her. Through its deafening roar, she heard Ransom's loud, heavy, harsh grunt.
She turned around just as his body crashed to the ground.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Madeleine's hands operated independently of her mind. She raised the gun as two of the rebels tromped into the jungle just ten yards behind her. Both men fell back when she fired, ducking out of sight. She risked a glance at Ransom.
To her passionate relief, he was hauling himself to his feet. His face was contorted in pain, and there seemed to be an enormous amount of blood in his lap all of a sudden, but he was alive. Relief made her stupid, and she stared at him as men shouted just a few yards away.
“Where's the other magazine?” Ransom demanded, taking the gun from her. He turned and fired twice more, silencing the raised voices coming from just beyond the trees.
She pulled the last spare magazine out of her pocket and handed it to him as he fired again. Then he shoved her and said, “Let's go. And don't turn around again. Just keep going.”
Breathless as she shoved her way through the thick bush, she tried to protest, “But—”
“I've got the gun now, okay? You just keep going.”
She wouldn't, but this wasn't a good moment for argument, so she just kept plunging ahead, frantically wondering about his fresh wound, heedless of the branches and bugs hitting her in the face, careless of the thorns scratching her arms and tearing at her clothes. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that he was limping so heavily he almost seemed to be running on one leg, propelling himself forward by pushing against trees and thick plant stalks.
It was her painful breathing, rather than her other senses, which finally made her realize they were running uphill. She stopped for a moment when Ransom did, finally hearing what he'd heard; people crashing through the jungle behind them. Shoving her ahead, he crouched low and fired until the magazine was empty. The crashing stopped. He reloaded the gun, then turned and followed Madeleine again, gesturing that they should be as quiet as possible now.
When they reached the summit of the hill, he steered her to the left and slightly downhill, into the thickest jungle growth in sight. She heard more shouting behind her, but it was farther away than before.
“We're losing them,” she whispered, afraid to hope.
“Keep going.” He steered her in a new direction.
“But your leg,” she began, horrified by how much blood there was.
“Keep going,” he gritted.
After ten minutes, the came to narrow river. “You shouldn't get into this water with an open wound,” she protested as he plunged unsteadily into the moving water. He pulled her in with him. “Ransom!”
“I'm leaving a trail of blood, Maddie,” he panted. “If they pick up on it, they'll find us. But this
,” he gestured to the water which was carrying away his blood, “will be harder to track.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned, thinking of parasites, amoebas, infectious diseases, and predators as she followed him through the waist-high water. It seemed a good quarter mile before he finally hauled himself up on the opposite bank and led her into the bush again. He was pale with blood loss, drenched, shivering from the cold water, and sweating. Madeleine decided it was time to put her foot down. “We're stopping now,” she said in a voice that had made CEOs and corporate lawyers all over America do her bidding.
“No, let's—”
“You'll die if we don't stop the bleeding,” she snapped, pushing him down against a fallen log, so worried about him that she forgot to check it for snakes and other hazards. The fact that he was so weak she could push him down scared her even more.
The river water had cleared away enough blood that she could now see where the wound was. A bullet had pierced his inner thigh from behind.
“At least the exit wound isn't bad,” he said, looking down at the front of his thigh.
“It's not?” she repeated disbelievingly. It looked horrible to her.
He shook his head. “Probably a seven-point-six-two millimeter bullet. Missed the femur and the artery—and, thank you God, my balls.”
“And what a loss to womankind those would have been,” she said, striving for a dry tone. She failed miserably, but he smiled weakly even so. She met his eyes steadily. “I don't know anything about this. You'll have to tell me what to do.”
He looked down at the wound again, which was still bleeding profusely. “Put pressure on it to stop the bleeding. Then we'll need to make some kind of pressure bandage.” His eyelids drooping with exhaustion, he tried to think. “Here, we'll have to use my shirt.”
“Let's use my shirt. I've got this poncho.”
“No, I don't want you wandering around shirtless when we finally meet more people,” he said wearily, stripping off his shirt. “Damn, this is my favorite shirt, too.”
That's why she had chosen it for him the night they had fled Doragua. “Ransom...”
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