by Dana Marton
She smiled and touched her cheek against his, rough with the beginnings of another beard. They hadn’t had a fire the night before to shave by, and during the day he never wasted time with it. She didn’t mind.
“Did you scare your adoptive parents?”
He groaned. “Don’t remind me. God, the torture I put them through.”
She tried to picture him as a mischievous, carefree little boy and the picture that blossomed in her mind softened her heart.
“I was trouble with a capital T,” he said.
“Probably not more than any other young boy.”
“I was definitely a restless spirit.”
She could hear the smile in his voice. “But they loved you anyway.”
“Yeah, they did. I owe them a lot.”
His words were full of so much love and tenderness toward those people, it made her heart skip a beat, wanting to be so good a mother that Mei would feel that way about her someday. She was beginning to see Brian in a different light from her first wildman-of-the-jungle impression. There were layers and layers to the man, a complexity that went beyond his identity as a prisoner or soldier.
The sudden upswell of emotion that constricted her throat left her bewildered. “Why don’t you sleep,” she said. “I’ll keep watch. You need to store your energy for tonight.”
He kissed her temple without saying anything, but after a while, she could feel his even breathing. She felt absurdly safe in the cocoon of his arms. It was ridiculous. They were in the wilds of the jungle, in the middle of an armed confrontation, both sides of which would just as soon shoot them as look at them.
She stared into the rain, listened for the sound of gunfire, but couldn’t hear any.
It made her nervous. What if the army was moving on? Should she wake Brian? Not yet. He needed rest. She would wait a few minutes. They might start fighting again and she would know then what their location was. Even if they moved, that many people would leave a wide enough trail to follow. She would let Brian be. Give him a chance to regain his strength.
She relaxed against him, and he mumbled something in his sleep. She squeezed her eyes shut. Dear God. If only one of us can make it out of here alive, let it be him.
He would have made it if it hadn’t been for her and the madcap rescue of her sister. After what he had suffered in this jungle, she couldn’t stand the thought of him dying here. She couldn’t stand the thought of anything happening to him, period.
BRIAN INCHED FORWARD in the darkness. It had taken them an hour to find the soldiers, creeping toward where he’d last heard gunfire. He glanced back at the bushes that hid Audrey. Her instructions were to not to move a muscle until he came for her. She hadn’t protested this time, a good thing since he didn’t have the energy to fight her.
He stole forward, cursing the pain in his legs. But he didn’t mind that as much as he minded the fact that his injuries slowed him down. He had missed that deer earlier. What if it had been a bullet he’d been ducking from? He crawled another few feet. Where the hell were the guards? He was nearly in the camp.
He could see men sleeping on the ground in a haphazard pattern, but there was no fire and nobody watching. A trap? They couldn’t have possibly known that he was coming. Were they baiting the guerillas? There was barely enough light to see the lumps of soldiers, no way to tell if they were grabbing their guns, watching from under hooded eyelids as he did. Then he was close enough to one of them to see the unnatural pose he was lying in.
Dead.
A cold feeling spread through Brian’s stomach. He crawled over, alert to any noise or movement, and reached out, even though he could see now that the man’s eyes stared blindly into the night. No pulse. His fingers came away sticky with blood. Damn. He’d been killed a while ago. And so had the rest of them. They wouldn’t have simply gone to sleep with a bloody corpse in their midst, inviting predators. The lack of guards made sense now. There was no one alive for guard duty.
The guerillas had won the skirmish.
Brian swore under his breath. How many other army units were in the jungle? He didn’t think the twenty or so men scattered around him was all. From the ruckus that had gone on all day long, he figured a larger force.
Where were the rest camping? He came to his knees, ready to go back to Audrey and break the bad news, hating to have to dash her hopes. But there was no sense in trying to do more right now, too dark to see. When the sun came up they could search the bodies for anything useful, then go and find the rest of the army. Then when night fell again, he would try the same approach.
A branch snapped in the woods to his right.
He threw himself to the ground, next to the dead body, and went still.
Where the hell was the man’s gun? He scanned the ground as a small group of guerillas walked out of the forest. Damn. Too late now. The rifle was probably under the soldier, and he couldn’t move him without drawing attention.
His first thought was Audrey, hoping that she would stay down and stay quiet. He’d left her far enough behind. Unless the men began to really spread out, she should be fine.
But the guerillas didn’t show any inclination to separate from each other. They walked through the carnage, lifting rifles, clipping hand grenades off the belts of the fallen. Why hadn’t they made camp for the night? He watched, his eyes only slits. Maybe they had a camp somewhere nearby and were heading back to it. Darkness had just fallen.
A few tense minutes passed, then it seemed they were finally moving off.
In Audrey’s direction.
His pulse quickened. A hundred feet and they would be right on top of her.
Brian grabbed a hand grenade from the body next to him, but he couldn’t throw it into the group. They were too close to Audrey now, he couldn’t risk hitting her with shrapnel. He judged the distance, aimed to throw it short. He still might wound a couple and it would certainly get their attention.
He pulled the ring and tossed the grenade, then took off running in the opposite direction, just as the explosion shook the night.
They came after him with a vengeance. He dashed through the forest, ignoring the pain that throbbed through his legs and made him trip a few times.
Go. Go. Go.
He couldn’t outrun them, but he hoped he could lead them away from Audrey enough so they wouldn’t bother going back that way.
She would make it out. He had to believe that beyond anything else, because that was the only thing that kept him going.
He ducked behind a tree and leaned against it to catch his breath, and could hear them gaining on him. He darted forward. Just a little more. Just a little more.
Then they must have spotted him, because bullets began to fly.
Damn, he hated to leave her alone. He scanned the ground for somewhere to hide. If he weren’t injured he could have gotten far enough ahead to lose them. He ducked behind a tree again and drew his knife. He wasn’t about to let them just pick him off as if they were on a deer hunt. He owed it to himself to go out fighting.
When his ears told him they were right on him, he jumped out and threw himself on the closest man, buried the blade in his chest, then before the rest could react he was on his feet, ready to face the next.
He lunged for the guy, but a loud crack split his skull. It seemed literally. He felt like he was falling, but not just the short distance to the ground. His last thought was Audrey, that if she followed his advice and fled for the river, there was still hope for her.
People were talking around him, but it was all a ringing noise in his ears. When darkness came, more complete than even the jungle could produce, he didn’t fight it. He had done what he could.
Chapter Eleven
Something had gone wrong. There wasn’t supposed to be a fight.
Audrey crept forward from her hiding place, listening for anything suspicious, hoping she would hear Brian calling to her. She had waited all night in the bushes for him to return for her. Instead, there’d been an explo
sion, then gunfire that moved off into the distance.
The only logical explanation she could come up with was that the soldiers had discovered Brian before he managed to make contact and they had pursued him. Not a large group, judging from the sound of their guns. She hadn’t dared move all night, fearing they’d left some men behind, not wanting to break the promise she’d given Brian about staying put and staying safe. But the sun was coming up now, and she needed to find out what had happened.
She moved in a crouch, careful where she put her feet, watching for small branches on the ground that would snap under her weight. If she did make noise, she stopped and waited several seconds like she had learned from Brian.
The overnight downpour had stopped at dawn, but now and then a fat splatter of water still landed on her hat or shoulders, making its way down from the leaves above. It startled her each time, but she kept quiet and focused on the woods ahead of her.
She heard no voices, no movement, no man-made noise of any kind. It filled her with unease. She was sure she was close enough and the soldiers would be awake by now. Surely there were at least a few left behind to guard their camp.
And then she could see them on the ground through the leaves, and they were obviously dead. All of them.
Had Brian done this? Confusion swept through her. No, he couldn’t have. He didn’t have a gun. But then what had happened?
She hesitated, unsure of what to do. The sun was up. Brian had said if he hadn’t returned by daylight she was to make her way to the river on her own. And yet she couldn’t make herself walk away.
Watching for the slightest sign of danger, she came out into the open. Whatever she decided to do, her chances of survival would be better if she had a weapon. Strangely, the first couple of men she looked over, didn’t have their rifles anywhere near.
Then she did see a gun, a pistol next to a body a little farther off. She walked among the dead and picked it up, tucked it into her belt. A few broken branches caught her eye. Somebody, a bunch of people, had rushed through this way. Had they been pursuing Brian?
Did she dare attempt to follow the track? Could she follow it? She knew nothing about tracking beyond the obvious. Right now she had a fair idea in which direction the river was and it wasn’t far away. But if she ran off blindly, got turned around, lost her way…
Brian was in trouble. If the tables were turned he’d be on his way by now to save her, instead of sitting around weighing his options.
There was an extra clip of bullets on the man’s belt and she reached for it, even though she had no idea how to put them in the gun. But by God, she would figure it out.
A slight sound reached her ear and she froze, almost dismissed it when it came again. Something was moving in the bushes on the other side of the field of bodies—something big.
She flattened herself to the ground behind a trio of basketball-size rocks, hoping those and some over-hanging vines camouflaged her enough. She saw a flash of yellow.
The tiger came out into the open and looked among the bodies, meandering, sniffing. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Audrey held her breath as the animal moved in her direction.
Stay still. Stay still. She repeated the words in her head, although they were unnecessary, her limbs truly and completely frozen with fear.
The tiger stopped a good thirty feet from her and let out a rumbling, coughing sound that scared her witless and squeezed her insides until she thought she would wet her pants. Then the animal locked his tremendous jaw over the shoulder of the man in front of him and dragged the body into the forest.
She began to shake, her stomach revolting at the sight of the soldier’s disappearing feet. She could hear the noise of the body being dragged on the ground for a while. Some time passed before she could get up, move. She took a few steps into the opposite direction, then leaned against a tree and threw up water, the only thing that had been in her stomach.
Survival instinct gave her strength and pushed her forward. She clawed her way through some vines, then saw another body a short way ahead. This one was dressed differently than the soldiers. She walked closer and paled when she recognized him.
He was one of the guerillas who had captured her in the village at the beginning of her journey.
And the dead soldiers made sense all of a sudden. The guerillas had won the fight with the army. They were the ones who gave chase to Brian.
She tipped the body over with the toe of her boot, saw the familiar knife sticking out of the man’s chest. Brian had gotten one of them. She pulled the knife, looked up to where she could barely make out a track in front of her and started forward again.
She’d gone no more than a hundred feet when she spotted a pair of boots sticking out of the bushes, similar enough to Brian’s to make her heart lurch. She moved closer to investigate, her hands shaking from relief when she pulled the branches aside and looked into the face of a stranger. He was a soldier, apart from the others. Had he run when it became obvious that they were losing the fight? Her gaze caught on the top of a backpack that peeked from under the body.
He was covered in blood, his whole chin missing, taken off by a bullet probably. She heaved again, but there was nothing in her stomach to bring up. She didn’t want to touch him.
Brian would.
He would leave no resource behind that might save their lives. Who knew what was in the bag—food, a map, matches. She took a deep breath and rolled the body, tried to pull off the backpack, but the man’s arms had stiffened into an angle that made it impossible for her to work the straps. She pulled her knife and cut them.
She dragged the backpack away from the body before she opened it, pushed aside the clothes on top and gasped at the sight of a compact radio unit. There was something else too, a smaller electronic device that looked like one of those handheld organizers. She pushed the red button and some kind of a picture came up with numbers. Not just any numbers, she realized after a moment—coordinates. She had a GPS unit, Global Positioning System, that showed exactly where she was.
She knew her location and had the means to call for help. She sank to the ground as tears of relief filled her eyes. But the feeling of optimism didn’t last long. Nothing but static came through the radio when she turned it on, no matter which way she twisted the dial.
Brian would know what to do with it. He could be even now lying somewhere in the woods, wounded. She turned off both units, threw them into the backpack and got up, started out again.
She didn’t have to go far before she came across the spot where the men had camped for the night. She had not found Brian’s body so far. But she knew his pursuers wouldn’t have rested unless they had caught him. Which meant, he was most likely once again a prisoner. God knew what they were doing to him. She pushed on.
She didn’t stop again until she had to relieve herself. She was weak with hunger, but at least no longer cold. Although her clothes were still damp, the temperature had risen enough to be comfortable. She opened the backpack and turned on the radio, turned the dial slowly, from one end of the spectrum to the other.
Then finally she found something, a man talking rapidly in another language.
“Hello.” She grabbed the speaker. “I need help,” she said, and realized there was probably a button somewhere she needed to push to transmit. She found a rubbery spot on the side of the receiver and pushed that in. “I need help,” she repeated, her heart in her throat.
Silence.
Oh, she probably had to let go of the button. She did so, and the response came after a few seconds.
“Identify yourself. Out.”
“I’m an American. I’m lost in the jungle. My partner was taken by guerillas.”
A longer period of silence this time.
“How did you get this radio? Out.”
“I found a group of dead soldiers a while back. They’re a few miles from the river.” She fished the GPS out, turned it on and read the displayed numbers to the man.
“Stay where you are. I’m sending a man to get you. Out.”
She thought of Brian, that he might be injured, what Omar’s men might be doing to him. “I’m going to follow the guerillas. I’ll let you know where I am again in an hour.”
To her surprise, the man didn’t protest or forbid her. “Let us know as soon as you spot them. Don’t try to approach them. We’ll be there as fast as we can. Out.”
She thanked him and turned off the radio and the GPS, wanting to save the batteries and not wanting the static from the radio to alert anyone to her approach.
Despite the shade the trees provided, the rising heat got to her more and more as the day wore on. Walking in the jungle was drastically different without Brian. It was much scarier and savage, and she had no one to distract her from it.
The sound of a single shot made her duck into the bushes before her brain registered that it came from far enough away not to pose an immediate threat. At least it confirmed that she was still going in the right direction. The tracks she’d been following had crossed an old animal trail a while back and since that point she no longer had broken plants to guide her. She hoped the guerillas had followed the trail, instead of having simply crossed it and covering their tracks.
When she saw a body slumped against a tree up ahead, she kept walking toward it, thinking it was another casualty, then his hand twitched, and she realized the young guerilla was sleeping, probably on guard duty.
She stepped off the trail, behind a tree, and waited. Nothing. She peeked out. It didn’t look like he’d moved. She crept forward in the woods, keeping the trail in sight, glancing back frequently at the man.
She didn’t have to go far before she heard noises up ahead. She radioed in her GPS location, not daring to raise her voice above a whisper, then shut off the radio. Bugs be damned, she got into the thickest of the brush for optimum coverage, moving forward one slow step at a time. Her progress was excruciating, not only because the dense vegetation held her back, but because she waited after each step to make sure she wasn’t discovered.
