by Cindy Dees
It was jagged and rough, with plants clinging precariously to cracks and crannies scattered across its vertical gray face. It was huge. The portion of the cliff in front of them disappeared somewhere above the canopy of trees far overhead.
They jogged toward it for several minutes, and it grew appreciably larger with each step she took. Finally they got close enough so she could see glimpses of pale blue sky between the looming granite behemoth and the trees growing out of the jungle floor beside her. The cliff towered overhead until she had to tilt her head back—way back—to see the top of it.
Tex thought she could climb that?
He was smoking crack.
CHAPTER NINE
Tex looked grimly at the rock face before them. If Kimberly had been a trained mountain climber, or even an experienced rock climber, it might have been okay. But as it was, he didn’t stand a chance of getting her up that rocky face.
He glanced around quickly, looking for any other possibilities at all. This was the moment he’d dreaded. The end game. Now was when he would have to outthink and outperform the kidnappers if he and Kimberly were to survive.
There was nothing for him to work with. The undergrowth was thin in this area. Nothing to hunker down and hide under. The tree-climbing gambit had worked once, but it wouldn’t fool their pursuers a second time. Besides, he doubted he’d get Kimberly back up in another tree after her encounter with the snake.
Any second now he expected to start hearing the advance of the line of rebel soldiers behind them.
There was a pile of scree at the base of the cliff stones and debris that had sheered off the cliff face, but there weren’t even any boulders big enough for them to take good cover behind if it came to a firefight.
The kidnappers had picked their trap well.
He’d expected as much, given the efficiency of their initial attack at Quantico. He’d just hoped for a lucky break.
It looked as if he was going to have to create their luck himself today. He stepped back several yards to gaze up the cliff face, scanning for a route that an amateur rock climber with no upper body strength could negotiate.
Nada.
But he did catch sight of a couple really dark shadows a ways up the face. Caves, maybe?
He stepped back farther, peering closely at the suspicious spots. One looked promising, but he just couldn’t tell from this angle. He’d have to move well away from the cliff to see better, and they didn’t have time for that.
“Tex,” Kimberly murmured urgently. “I hear them coming! We’ve got to do something!”
He heard them, too. It sounded like dozens of men, beating the jungle methodically as they moved forward. They weren’t even bothering to lower their voices as they called back and forth to one another.
He and Kimberly were out of time and out of options.
“We’ve got to climb the cliff,” he announced.
“Climb that?” she squeaked, gazing up at the giant rock face.
“It’s that or surrender. Your call.”
She stared at him for an instant. He could see it in her eyes. She was weighing the idea of giving up.
And then she swallowed resolutely and turned to face the rock. “How do I do this?” she asked.
Sonofabitch. She hadn’t buckled under pressure. Pride in her surged through him. Quickly he showed her how to find and test handholds and footholds before committing her weight to them.
The first sixty feet up the cliff weren’t too bad. The rock was heavily pitted and cracked by erosion, and footholds were plentiful.
The sounds behind them resolved into words and orders to be thorough and make sure the Americans didn’t circle back and slip through the line.
“Hurry, Princess,” he urged her.
“I am,” she wailed back in a panting whisper.
He looked up and frowned. The cliff wall above them had sheared away recently, leaving a nearly smooth granite surface ahead of them. It wasn’t far beyond that he’d seen the shadow that might be a small cave.
He glanced back. They were maybe eighty feet above the ground. From his vantage point, he glimpsed the red berets that formed the human net. Once the rebels broke out of the trees, they’d have a clear shot at him and Kimberly on that smooth cliff face. The two of them would be easy pickings.
Since most politically motivated kidnappers expected to kill their hostages anyway, he didn’t hold out much hope that they wouldn’t kill Kimberly, too. They had to get to that cave before the rebels got out into the open at the foot of the cliff.
“Let’s go,” he urged her.
“Where?” she screamed in a bare whisper. “I’m stuck. I can’t find anywhere to grab on.”
He looked over at her. Like him, she’d reached the base of the sheared area.
To his experienced eye, he saw the tiny handholds and footholds that he would need to scale the surface. It was going to take a lot of strength to pull himself past some big gaps in the footholds, but he could do it.
“How are your arms holding out, Kimberly?”
“They feel like rubber,” she grunted.
Damn. Just as he’d thought. Even perfectly fresh, she probably didn’t have the upper body power to brute force her way up this stretch of rock. And after their earlier run, she was toast. He looked up, gauging how rough a climb it would be.
No way around it. That was going to be one hard stretch of climbing.
He looked back over his shoulder at the line of red berets. There wasn’t time for him to go on ahead and drop a rope to Kimberly and haul her up. Besides, if her arms were as tired as he expected they were, she wouldn’t be able to hang on to a rope anyway.
Maybe he could fashion a foot harness for her to stand in and haul her up that way.
A soldier shouted out in Spanish.
Tex grimaced. They’d been spotted on the cliff face. The line of soldiers broke into a run.
He didn’t have the strength left to haul himself, all his gear and Kimberly up the cliff. He could drop one or both of the rifles or abandon Kimberly. Christ, what a choice. Drop the gear they needed to stay alive or sacrifice a human life. Kimberly’s life.
“Hang on, darlin’,” he grunted as he wiggled out of the sling for the heavy sniper rifle. He popped out the clip, pocketed it, and then let the weapon go. It fell with a clatter behind him. Sixty-five pounds less. Good lord willing, he’d busted it beyond repair.
Every second counted now. He worked his way horizontally across the cliff face to where Kimberly clung to the vertical wall. “I need you to climb on my back, honey,” he directed with urgent calm.
“What?” She looked at him blankly.
“I don’t have time to explain. We’ve got to get up this stretch of rock and you’re not strong enough to do it. Climb on me piggyback and hang on tight.”
“I’ll throw off your balance!”
“They’re going to shoot us off this wall like flies. Now move!” he ordered her.
Her eyes went wide. She spared one glance for the sheer wall above her and then did as he’d ordered. It was a dicey moment when she let go of the rock face and transferred her weight to his shoulders.
He had no idea if he could do this, but it was their only hope.
“Wrap your legs around my waist and hang on tight, sweetheart. Lean in close to me so your weight’s right against my back.”
He’d never rock climbed with over a hundred pounds on his back before. The balance was completely different, and every few seconds he felt on the verge of oversetting and falling over backward.
His fingers cramped, then his entire arms cramped. Even his toes were knots of pain before long.
More crashing in the trees behind them. The rebels had to be almost close enough to break out into view.
The next handhold was over his head. He was going to have to do a chin-up without any footholds at all, and then let go with one hand, reach up, and pull himself another two feet or so vertically before he could catch another crack wi
th his foot.
“Hang on tight,” he grunted.
She plastered herself against him, her face pressed tightly against his neck.
He exhaled hard and began to pull. He thought of every pull-up he’d ever done. Of the ones he’d gutted out in Special Forces training when he was so tired he couldn’t stand up. Of the dozens of them he’d popped off to show the new recruits how soft they were. He thought about failure and the flat refusal of the men of the Blackjacks to give up. He thought about Kimberly’s mouth on his, of how bad he wanted to make love to her someday.
A groan of Herculean effort slipped out from between his clenched teeth.
And somehow he gutted through pulling three hundred combined pounds four feet up a cliff by nothing more than his fingertips and brutal determination.
He blew hard, took one breath and shifted all his weight to his right hand. He threw his left hand up.
It missed the handhold!
His fingernails raked the cliff and he and Kimberly lurched precariously. His right hand cramped with the effort of hanging on.
He flung his left arm up again. His fingers caught in a tiny crack. He reached deep in his gut and found one last bit of strength even he didn’t know he had.
He pulled one more time for all he was worth.
His right foot scrabbled frantically at the cold rock wall. He was losing it. He couldn’t hang on for much longer.
His toe caught. He shoved hard with his thigh, taking the weight off his trembling arms. Another foothold, two more hand shifts and they were past the granite sheet.
Shouts from below.
“Oh, God, they’ve broken out of the jungle,” Kimberly sobbed in his ear. “They’re going to shoot us!”
A small ledge came into sight at eye level. He pushed, pulled, and scrambled the last few feet and fell onto the tiny shelf with Kimberly sprawled on top of him.
A bullet zinged past them, nicking the rock and sending sharp bits of rock flying at them. His cheek stung from where the debris hit him. “Is there a cave?” he panted, too spent to turn his head and look for himself.
Kimberly scrambled off his back and lay flat beside him. “There’s an opening of some kind,” she panted back. “It’s pretty small, though.”
“Can we get through it?” He was too focused on the soldiers pouring out of the jungle below and on pulling out his AK-47 to spare a look at it.
“I’ll fit. It’ll be tight for you.”
“Go. I’ll hold them off until you’re inside.”
She scrambled toward the opening behind him.
The best way to slow down an army was to take out its leaders. He studied the posture and body language of the men pouring into the clearing. Then he took careful aim and shot the soldier all the others seemed to be looking at. The guy dropped like a rock, shot through the head.
He ducked back as an answering volley of fire sprayed more shattered rock all around him.
A grunt and an oompf from behind him and then Kimberly’s voice. “I’m inside. It’s pretty big in here. You’ll be able to stand up.”
Praise the Lord.
He wiggled backward on his belly as the soldiers congregated below. They buzzed like a horde of angry hornets. They’d stepped away from the guy he’d shot and were ignoring the body. A clean kill, then.
They looked as if they were waiting for someone else to arrive who could give them orders before they attempted to follow him and Kimberly up the cliff.
His feet hit rock. He glanced back over his shoulder. It was more of a slit than an opening.
Good thing he hadn’t eaten much for the last couple days or he probably wouldn’t fit through the narrow gap.
He slid back until he could stand up beside the opening. By shimmying sideways and sucking in his gut like crazy, he managed to squeeze through the jagged opening.
He got stuck momentarily, but with a hard tug and the rending of his shirtfront, he popped through the entrance. He didn’t look forward to squeezing back out of there. Please, he prayed, let that be a problem he had to face.
A narrow shaft of light fell on the floor. The cave was probably thirty feet across and fifty or more deep, based on the echo from his movements.
Using a cigarette lighter, he did a quick sweep of the cave. They had five, maybe ten, minutes before soldiers would start popping up over the edge of that granite wall.
“Do you see another way out of here?” Kimberly asked hopefully out of the darkness to his right.
He swept the flame along the cave’s walls, floor, and ceiling. Nothing but solid rock.
“Nope. Nothing.”
“How are we going to get out of here, then?” she asked. Desperation coursed through her voice.
He thought fast. He had twenty-two rounds left in the AK-47. If he was conservative, and lucky, he could take out roughly that many men before he ran out of ammo. But the twenty-third guy up that cliff would kill them.
There’d been at least fifty guys at the base of the cliff when he’d ducked in here. The rebel soldiers were expendable to their leaders. He had no illusions about the twenty-third guy. He’d get sent up the cliff. It was just a matter of time. He needed a different plan.
“Okay, Kimberly, here’s what we’re going to do. The first guy up that cliff is likely to be a scout type. He’ll have more training than most of the other grunts down there. I’m banking on the fact that he’ll have some sort of radio with him for reporting back in to his bosses.”
She nodded, listening intently.
“You’re going to sit in the back of the cave where he can see you if he points a flashlight through the entrance. You’re going to act scared and indicate that I’ve left you here and climbed on up the cliff. You’re alone.”
Kimberly frowned.
“You’ve got to make it look convincing. Play the helpless female to the hilt. Make him think all he has to do is waltz in here and tie you up. Do you think you can do that?”
“Yes,” she answered crisply, all business.
Thank God, she apparently wasn’t one of those women who fell apart in stressful situations. Snakes excepted, of course.
He continued. “I’m going to hide over here by the entrance. When the scout comes in, I’m going to jump him and take him down. I’ll search him for his radio. When I find it, I’ll toss it to you. In a minute I’m going to give you a series of radio frequencies to memorize. Whichever one works on his radio, you dial it up and start shouting for help to whoever answers you. With me so far?”
She nodded.
“Once we’ve got a radio, I’m going to take the gun back from you and hold the doorway. I’ll pick off whoever pokes his head up over that ledge with the AK-47.”
“Until when?” Kimberly asked innocently.
“Until I either run out of ammo or somebody answers your radio call and comes to rescue us.”
“What if—” she started to ask.
He cut her off. “Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.” She frowned in consternation and he added, “I’m trained in hand-to-hand combat and I’ve got a knife. Any guy topping that granite face is going to be easy to push off the cliff. We can hold out here for a good, long while.”
She nodded, her expression uncertain.
He rattled off a series of emergency radio frequencies, all monitored by satellite around the world, all fed directly into Blackjack Ops. He made Kimberly repeat them back to him until he was sure she had them down cold.
He gave her the final instructions. “If I go down before I find a radio, fire the gun at anyone who steps through that opening. Work your way over to the corpse and search for a radio. Got it?”
She stared at him, her eyes wide as he shoved the AK-47 into her hands. “Don’t go down, Tex,” she murmured.
He moved into position by the door and grinned back at her briefly. “I’m not planning on it, darlin’.”
She took her place on the floor directly across from the door. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he co
uld see her seated there bravely, the rifle hidden out of sight beside her.
He took his place on top of a boulder just inside the entrance. From there he could jump down on top of anybody who stepped through that opening.
“Kimberly,” he called low across the space.
She looked up nervously.
“In case I don’t get another chance…well, just in case, I wanted to tell you how well you’ve done the last couple days. Not too many women could’ve rolled with the punches the way you have. You did good.”
Her smile warmed him all the way across the cave.
“Thanks,” she replied simply. “I couldn’t have made it without you. I owe you my life.”
The sound of voices drifted up from below. It sounded like an argument of some kind, but the acoustics of the cave distorted the sound so much he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He glanced at his watch. About two minutes and somebody should be climbing through that opening.
Four minutes passed. He strained to hear the telltale scrabbling sounds of people scaling the cliff.
Nothing yet.
His watch hit the six-minute mark.
Still nothing.
He glanced over at Kimberly, who was alternating between staring at the door and glancing fearfully at him. He saw her lips moving periodically, reciting the radio frequencies to herself. Or maybe she was praying, too.
He didn’t have the time for prayer on most missions, and he preferred to put his stock in being better prepared and trained than the other guy. But as long minutes of waiting ticked by, he found himself offering up a plea for their safety to whatever higher powers that were.
Ten minutes passed. Still nothing. What the hell was going on? He didn’t hear any voices at all now.
He waited another five minutes. No army was dead silent for that long. Kimberly was starting to fidget on her side of the cave. He gestured her to stay put and risked moving into the opening to see if he could hear something from there.
Silence.
In fact, a few birds were starting to call out again.
What the…
He moved over to Kimberly’s side. “Give me the gun,” he murmured.
