Hurry!
She thought, sending them an anxious, kinetic message.
Get here quick!
The trees thinned abruptly and the sun grew brighter. With a start, Lucy realized they had descended to the valley. Branches
gave way to a clearing of wild grass, about the size of a football field, illumined by a hot sun.
“We’re here,” Fournier announced, looking straight through Lucy as he glanced back at the others.
He led them into the field and stopped, peering around. A cinderblock building with a red-tiled roof stood baking under the
naked sun, a clear landmark to pilots. Grooves worn into the tall grass indicated that the field was used as a runway.
“There’s no helicopter,” S¸ukruye remarked with worry.
“Perhaps they came and left already,” added Bellini anxiously.
“No, no,” Fournier reassured them. Shading his eyes, he peered upward at the cloudless sky. “They haven’t come yet.”
Jumpy with suspicion, Lucy peered behind her and watched Buitre give orders to David, Manuel, Julian, and Estéban. She strained
her ears to overhear what he was telling them. David’s stunned expression corroborated her fear that Buitre was sending them
back to hunt for Gus, to kill him if they found him. In the next instant, the four youths turned and melted into the forest.
Buitre sauntered over to the Europeans. “You will wait here,” he commanded, pointing down at the sunny grass. “Comandante
Marquez awaits in there,” he added, gesturing toward the cinderblock structure. “When the helicopter arrives, our
compañeros
must be presented to us first. Then you will bring us the money. If we are satisfied you have not cheated us, we will release
the living hostage and the dead one.”
He glanced briefly at Lucy, his dark eyes cruelly mocking.
Fournier eyed the cracked and filthy windows of the cinderblock building. “Perhaps,” he suggested diplomatically, “you could
assure us that the hostages are here?” The building appeared deserted.
Turning a deaf ear on his request, Buitre shouldered his rifle and marched through the knee-high grass to join Marquez inside
the building.
Relieved that she hadn’t been overtly threatened yet, Lucy gave in to her shaky knees and sank gingerly down on the soft grass,
bearing her weight on her good hip. The others followed suit, their gazes fixed on the sky for the arriving helicopter.
Where are you, Gus?
He’d warned her that if anything should happen to him, she should find water and follow it down the mountain to await rescue
by the Navy SEALs. But she was already down the mountain, so now what? All she could do was to continue as a participant in
the hostage exchange and hope she would be allowed to leave without incident.
But how was she supposed to leave without Gus? Partners weren’t supposed to abandon each other.
Just keep your head in the game, Luce. Keep vigilant.
She knew to expect the worst. At the same time, she had a job to finish. She had sworn to herself she would get the hostages
home, one dead, one alive. Whatever happened, she was obligated to fulfill that promise.
I
N THE TIME THAT IT TOOK
to retrieve his jacket from the river, where it had snagged on the branch of a fallen tree, the voices calling for Gus had
faded.
Throwing himself down on the muddy riverbank, he used the knife still in his pocket to shred the jacket into strips, his movements
precise and calm, a result of his training.
Inwardly, his heart was screaming at him to hurry.
In seconds, he had fashioned booties to protect his feet, already bruised and bleeding from the short distance he’d walked.
The sturdy canvas would offer moderate protection, at least. To keep himself camouflaged, he draped his head with the remaining
material and resumed his chase, moving stealthily upriver.
They couldn’t have gotten too far ahead of him, he assured himself.
Nor did he blame Fournier for abandoning their search. The UN team’s priority today was to make certain the exchange took
place the way it was supposed to. Come what may, they had to meet the helicopter at the airfield. That was the agenda.
It was Buitre’s agenda that worried Gus now. No doubt he hoped to prevent the map, or knowledge of the map, from escaping.
In order to do that, he would try to kill Lucy next. Too bad the information had already been disseminated and decoded. The
FARC didn’t stand a chance.
But that didn’t increase Lucy’s odds any.
With a fierce grip on the knife, Gus cut diagonally through the jungle, hacking at branches and vines to save time. Sweat
trickled between his shoulder blades. Thorns and spines scratched his bare arms, drawing blood. Mosquitoes swarmed him.
When he stumbled across a path lined with fresh prints, he nearly wept with relief. Now he could cover ground faster.
The booties lent him both stealth and speed. He raced down the path, confident of his ability to catch up. Already the sun
was edging toward the mountain’s peak. Shadows crept like mercury up the trunks of trees. Gus ran faster, nearly plowing into
the squad of rebels meandering up the trail ahead of him.
With a jolt of adrenaline, he darted off the path, hiding behind a bush, slowing his heavy breathing. Goddamn it! What were
David and his squad doing coming back this way?
“But why would we kill him?” Estéban was asking. “I like Gustavo. He helped to repair our shelter.”
“He is a spy,” insisted David in a torn and emotional voice. “And so is Luna. They are both spies.”
Oh, shit,
thought Gus. If the four kids caught sight of him, they apparently had orders to mow him down.
At that very instant he heard in the distance the
whop, whop, whop
of an approaching helicopter. The exchange was about to go down in a location not too far from his hiding place.
But until these kids moved past him, he was pinned down, forced to hold perfectly still, ignoring the mosquitoes swarming
him.
Goddamn it!
“T
HERE
!” F
OURNIER CRIED
, pointing as a Red Cross helicopter burst into view from behind the mountain with a reverberating crescendo. The UN team
members, who’d come to their feet at the first hint of its approach, waved a frantic greeting.
Lucy’s eyes stung at the heartening vision of a red cross emblazoned onto the sides of the reconditioned Huey UH-1 Iroquois.
If Gus were safely with her, she would get satisfaction out of watching its tail flare, watching the grass ripple like rings
on the surface of a disturbed pond as powerful winds whipped her hair in her eyes.
For ten days she’d craved her return to civilization, only Gus’s disappearance had stripped her of her anticipation. She didn’t
know if she could leave him here.
As the bird nestled onto the airfield and the thunder of the rotors diminished, Fournier held them back. “Wait,” he advised.
With a clank and a rumble, the helicopter door slid open. A man wearing a dark uniform leapt to the ground, assault rifle
cradled in the crook of one arm. Scoping the area uneasily, he waved them over.
“Who is he?” Lucy asked Fournier as they struck out across the field. Glimpsing movement behind the window in the little building,
she ducked behind Carlos, who kept a firm grip on her arm.
Here they were, out in the open, while the FARC were barricaded in a concrete building, possibly heavily armed. The Huey’s
mounted gun and torpedo launchers had been removed, leaving it utterly defenseless.
The situation didn’t feel right. Then again, nothing had felt right since Gus had plummeted into the river.
“Prison guard…” Fournier informed her. The wind snatched away the remainder of his words.
They approached the helicopter in an uneasy knot, and Fournier shook hands with the guard, instructing him to release the
officers and send them into the red-roofed building. Peering into the chopper, Lucy eyed the ten former rebels, sitting back
to back under the armed watch of a second guard.
One by one, they struggled up. Wearing orange prison suits with their wrists still cuffed, they jumped from the helicopter
and trotted toward the cinderblock building. The door swung open and they swarmed inside, but Lucy could see nothing in the
shadowy interior to indicate that Jay was inside, chafing for freedom.
With her mind still numb with shock, it was hard to get a clear read on the situation. Aside from what had happened to Gus,
everything was happening according to plan, yet she had a terrible suspicion they were all being duped.
“Now what?” the prison guard shouted down to Fournier, looking worried.
The enemy now outnumbered them ten to one.
“Where is the money?” Fournier asked.
The second guard swung a briefcase down to him. Hefting it, Fournier eyed his teammates. “Ready?” he inquired, indicating
they should follow him.
Uneasiness congealed in Lucy’s gut. In addition to outnumbering them, the FARC now occupied a strongly defensive position.
Their precaution seemed a bit overdone, considering the Red Cross helicopter was stripped of all fighting capabilities.
Unless the FARC knew something Lucy didn’t…
C
ROUCHED BEHIND THE BROAD-LEAVED BUSH
, Gus kept his eyes trained on the rebels as they ambled past him, close enough that he could have whispered, “Boo!” and they’d
have spun around with muzzles blazing.
He weighed his chances of taking them all at once. What he wouldn’t give for an assault rifle of his own. There was just one
problem. Despite their orders to kill
him,
he didn’t want to kill
them.
His best bet was to let them go.
Only by the time they ambled past, Buitre might have found the opportunity to kill or capture Lucy.
The possibility of the latter had him suffering through hot and cold sweats. God knew what the FARC did to their captives.
A mosquito flew into his ear, another up his right nostril, forcing him to squeeze his nose before it made him sneeze.
The longest minutes of his life ensued as he waited for the quartet to disappear, arguing his fate as they continued back
to the river to search for him, never realizing they had gone right by him.
D
UCKING THROUGH THE LOW DOOR
, Lucy’s eyes adjusted swiftly to the darkness. The little building was crowded with men, none of whom had bathed recently,
gauging by the odor of unwashed bodies. They lounged around Marquez, who sat behind a little table. At their entrance, a lone
man crouching on the cement floor scrambled up, a steel chain swinging from his neck.
Jay!
Lucy swallowed her cry of dismayed recognition. As their gazes met, she touched her ear in the standard signal for
You don’t know me.
Immediately, he dragged his attention to the others.
“Thank God!” he croaked, staggering toward them, a mere shadow of his former self.
“Jay Barnes?” said Fournier, extending him a formal handshake. “Pierre Fournier, United Nations. I presume you’re ready to
go home.”
“Yes,” Jay agreed, casting a fearful glance behind him. Lucy took the opportunity to study him. Ten months in captivity had
come close to killing him. Once tall and robust, he was bent and thin, his skin a sickly shade of yellow.
“Bring us the money,” Buitre prompted, impatiently waving Fournier forward.
Drawing Jay into their midst, Fournier extended the briefcase to Buitre, who laid it on the table in front of Marquez. “Go
ahead and count it if you must,” Fournier said. “Only where is the body of Mike Howitz?” he inquired.
Buitre shoved a wooden box across the cement floor. “Don’t open it in here,” he warned.
Eyeing the crude coffin, Lucy’s stomach roiled as she envisioned Howitz’s rotting corpse inside. Her hands curled into fists
as blind fury exploded through her. The sons of bitches had killed him. And they were getting paid for that?
“Thank you,” Jay was saying, shaking each team member’s hand, one at a time. He reached for Lucy, gripping her extra hard
to convey both his grief and gratitude. She dared not meet his gaze. Buitre was watching them closely.
Marquez snapped open the briefcase, lifted the lid, and sifted through the contents. Rebels leaned in on every side, eyeing
the money greedily.
Outside the building, the helicopter’s rotors began to spool. With a thud, Marquez closed the case abruptly. He met Fournier’s
gaze and stood up. “Take the Americans and go,” he shouted over the noise. His dark, flat gaze betrayed no emotion whatsoever.
Glancing at the other rebels, Lucy read the same secretive look in their eyes. Splinters of suspicion sank deep beneath her
skin. Something was happening. If only she could predict what.
But why would the rebels jeopardize the exchange when they’d gotten what they wanted? Was it just to punish her? Wasn’t trying
to kill Gus enough of a punishment?
“Remove Mr. Barnes’s chain,” Fournier replied, frustrating Lucy’s instinct to retreat as fast as possible.
A soldier stepped forward with a key, and the deadbolt that kept Jay chained like a dog fell open. It dropped to the dirt
floor with a heavy
chink.
Fournier nodded. “Bellini, Carlos,” he said, waving them toward the box. “Help me with this.”
As the three men struggled to lift Mike’s coffin, S¸ ukruye held the door. Lucy grabbed Jay’s sleeve to escort him as quickly
as possible into the gale force of the helicopter’s rotors.
W
ITH THE YOUTHS FINALLY OUT OF SIGHT
, Gus bolted from his hiding place, crashing downhill toward the rising thunder of the nearby helicopter.
Leaves brushed at his face. The ground felt as slick as mud beneath his flying feet. God forbid he was too late!
If Buitre had already harmed Lucy, what then? Gus would rather snatch his own heart out of his chest than discover that he’d
failed her.
He nearly burst through the tree line, exposing himself to view. At the last second, he skidded to a stop, then scrambled
up and out of sight. From behind a kapok tree, he peered out at the field, searching for Lucy, unable to see her.