Show No Fear (29 page)
“We’ll have to come back,” the OIC replied. “We don’t know if she was here or not.”
Gus’s frustrations bubbled over. “She’s somewhere on this fucking mountain!” he raged. “We can’t just leave her here!”
“We’ll be back,” the lieutenant repeated, his volume increasing just enough to get Gus’s attention. “Now, let’s move, in case
the enemy recovers.”
Gus nodded. He had no right to argue with the OIC when Haiku was fighting for his life.
Moving to a safer location, the SEALs waited for the rescue helicopter, a Longbow Apache, to lower a SPIE rig and extract
them.
Twenty minutes later, the helicopter descended over their location. A thick rope dropped though the trees, and Harley ran
to catch it.
Feeling nothing whatsoever, wishing he’d wake up from what had to be a nightmare, Gus clipped himself to the SPIE rig, as
did the others. Luther checked their D-rings before hooking himself up. Within seconds, the rope whipped taut.
It lifted them one by one off their feet.
Gus clawed his way through layers of wet leaves, sticky spiderwebs, going up, up…
All at once he surfaced, rising over a carpet of green that undulated in all directions—east, west, north, south. Dangling
in the air with wind whipping at his clothing, he searched for the camouflaged lookout tower that pinpointed the front commander’s
hideout.
But it remained elusive, swallowed up in the enormity of vegetation below him. Thanks to Gus and Lucy’s endeavors, the JIC
knew exactly where it was. But Lucy, without a microchip, could be anywhere on this mammoth-sized mountain.
They could search for a hundred years and never find her.
Showered and shaved and wearing a fresh battle dress uniform, Gus felt marginally more human, except that he hadn’t slept
since his and Lucy’s last night strung up in hammocks in the
casita,
more than forty-eight hours ago.
His red-rimmed and watering eyes burned with the effort that it took to follow the debate raging in the JIC between the CIA
staff and the Navy SEALs.
“I just spoke with the Colombian ambassador,” John Whiteside informed them, pacing from one side of the room to the other.
“He’s outraged that we dropped a missile on the FARC.”
“It wasn’t the FARC, sir,” Lieutenant Lindstrom calmly pointed out.
“He doesn’t care who the hell it was,” Whiteside interrupted. “The United States dropped a hellfire missile on Colombian soil,
and if it happens again, he’ll declare it an act of war. The Predator has been called away from that area. There will be no
more attacks on the FARC—period—until the Colombian government resolves this issue with the UN.”
Oh, Jesus.
Gus raked his hand through his damp hair. Despite his testimony that the Elite Guard, dressed as Colombian soldiers, had
only
pretended
to attack the FARC and jeopardize the UN team, there was still an inquiry underway. Colombia had frozen its military to keep
from looking any more aggressive. Nor did they want their ally, the USA, taking any military action.
But they couldn’t just leave Lucy on La Montaña and not go back. He sent Lieutenant Lindstrom a pleading look.
“Sir,” said the OIC, putting his career on the line to argue with the station chief, “we’re not asking for permission to fight
the FARC. All we want is to return to rebel territory. We’ll recon the target quietly. No one will even know we’re on the
mountain.”
Gus’s heart thudded painfully as he awaited Whiteside’s reply.
“Son,” the older man countered condescendingly, “that mountain covers more square miles than New York City. We had surveillance
on it for ten months and never found Howitz and Barnes. How the hell do you think you’re going to find Miss Donovan?”
“It could take a while,” Luther conceded, “but we’ll find her.”
“We don’t even know if she’s alive,” Whiteside shot back, snatching the air from Gus’s lungs. “Her microchip stopped working
when we hit the mountain. For all we know, she’s dead already.”
Gus found himself on his feet with his face on fire and his heart in his throat. “Lucy is not dead!” he insisted hoarsely.
“She’s up on that goddamn mountain with her hip cut open, subject to infection and God-knows-what-else. Do you want her to
die like Mike Howitz, or are you going to let us do our fucking jobs?” he railed, his temple throbbing.
Luther put a hand on his shoulder, pushing him down into his chair.
Whiteside just looked at him. Hitching his trousers, he regarded the expectant SEALs with a thoughtful frown. “All right,”
he agreed irritably. “All right. I’ll permit you to do a high-altitude low open, under the cover of night-fall. But no one,
and I mean
no one
needs to know where you are. If you need to question a rebel, you kill ’em. And stay the hell away from the Venezuelans this
time. I don’t want this coming back to me in any way, shape, or form. You will be
invisible.
Is that understood?”
“Hooyah, sir!” chorused several Navy SEALs.
Gus sank weakly back into his seat.
Hang in there, Luce,
he thought.
I’m coming back to get you.
* * *
T
HE HINGES AT THE GATE SQUEAKED
, signaling another hour had passed. Roused from a fitful slumber, Lucy cracked an eye as Goliath, one of the two
jefes
who guarded Arriba, lumbered across the enclosure. The frosty vapor of his breath bespoke the chill that held Lucy in its
cruel grip.
She had been warming herself with visions of a tropical beach, Gus’s legs dusted with sand and tangled with hers as they lay
on their towels soaking up the sun.
As Goliath’s silhouette loomed over her, she braced herself for the glare of his flashlight. This was a nightly occurrence.
Every hour on the hour, one of the
jefes
shone light into their captives’ eyes. The action was purely psychological, a reminder that even in sleep, they were not
free.
“You.” He startled her by nudging her with his toe.
With a spiking of adrenaline, Lucy scrambled to a wary crouch. The wound on her hip protested. Steel links bit into her neck
as she cringed against the plywood wall.
“Come,” he commanded, unlocking her from the center beam. Fisting her chain, he gave it a jerk. “Hurry,” he added.
“Where are we going?” she demanded. The other hostages, soldiers of the Colombian army who’d been held for many years, had
awakened to watch with apathy.
This was an aberration. For the past three nights she’d been left in a feverish stupor. What if Goliath meant to drag her
into the woods and rape her? If that happened, she might lose her will to live.
“No questions. Walk or I’ll drag you,” he said gruffly.
In a stiff-jointed walk, she trailed him to the gate.
Arriba was little more than a three-sided shed in a muddy pen encircled by barbed wire. A second guard, whom she’d dubbed
Igor, opened the gate and locked it behind them.
Fear of the unknown kept her frigid. The scent of freedom tormented her. If she could just pull her chain from Goliath’s grasp,
perhaps she could make a run for it. But Igor would think nothing of shooting her in the back as she fled.
They tugged her, resisting, down a dark and twisting path. Her mind spawned visions of defilement.
This is it,
she thought. All at once, Goliath stopped and swung her before him. “Stand here,” he instructed, his flashlight illumining
the lip of a trench. “Don’t move.”
As the tip of his weapon gouged her ribs, her heart slammed against her breastbone. “What—what are you doing?” she breathed,
glancing back. Suddenly, it was all too clear the trench was meant to be a shallow grave. Oh, no. Oh, God.
When is it going to end, Luce?
Not here, not now!
“I’ve told you,” Goliath answered on a strangely gleeful note, “you have no value to us. Your country refuses negotiations.
You are worthless.” He released the safety on his pistol, and the sound of a round slipping into a well-oiled breech made
her legs quake. “Any last words?” he sneeringly inquired.
Lucy’s entire life flashed through her mind, freeze-framing on moments spent with Gus—the only moments that really seemed
to matter.
With a vulgar crack, the pistol discharged, flinging her headlong into the wet pit, her senses smacked out of her, her thoughts
scattered to oblivion.
Waiting for death to claim her, she overheard the mirthless chuckles of her keepers. Second by second, she realized her heart
was still pumping. Painful little gasps inflated her collapsed lungs.
It was just a prank. She was still alive.
Alive! Oh, thank you! Thank you, God!
A sob of relief burst from her chest. She knew in that instant that
nothing
—neither starvation nor frigid temperatures nor unending incarceration, not even the cruelest violations—could prevent her
from surviving.
Somehow, some way, she would reclaim her life to wring from it every drop of pleasure still left to her.
T
he squeak of Buitre’s screen door roused Gus from a light slumber. Snatching his head off his arm, he gazed uphill at the
first sight of Buitre wandering from the camp to the tree line to relieve himself, unwitting of the fact that Navy SEALs lay
waiting for him.
Following a high-altitude, low-open insertion three nights ago, they had questioned and killed half a dozen trail scouts,
only to discover that Arriba’s whereabouts was a closely guarded secret—hence the X on the map Gus had stolen. Only the highest-ranking
FARC knew where it was.
Buitre was one of them, Gus was certain. He’d convinced Luther to snatch the deputy from Cecaot-Jicobo, which was crawling
with Elite Guards. Once caught, they would bear him away for questioning. Gus had a suspicion the hardened rebel was a coward
at the core.
Dark anticipation pooled in his gut. At last, at the break of dawn, after eighteen hours of endless waiting, Buitre descended
through a thin mist into the jungle alone.
With a whistle that resembled a birdcall, Harley alerted the others that action was imminent. He and Gus crept to their appointed
positions near the area where the men relieved themselves.
Buitre had no idea he was being watched. He sauntered toward a tree, unzipping his trousers as he went. He was still wetting
down the bark when Gus leapt up behind him, clapped a hand over his mouth, and injected him with a tranquilizer prepared in
advance by Vinny.
Buitre struggled briefly, disturbing the loam under his feet. But then he collapsed, and Sean rounded the tree from the other
side to help Gus shoulder his limp body. Together, they carried the rebel into the jungle, his fly still gaping.
Buitre’s bleary and confused gaze rose from Gus’s boots, to the knife clasped lightly in his hands, to his hard and merciless
stare, illumined by a beam of morning sunlight. With dark satisfaction, Gus watched the blood drain from the deputy’s swarthy
face as he assessed his helplessness. Dangling from a tree by his wrists, he struggled in panic. His eyes widened further
as four more SEALs, bristling with weapons, their faces savagely painted, stepped from the shadows.
“There’s no escape,” Gus informed him coldly. “Today is the day you die.” A monkey screamed high overhead, echoing the fear
etched on Buitre’s now-pallid face.
“No!” he gasped, sweat beading on his forehead.
“Your Venezuelan comrades will never find you.” They had carried him ten kilometers from Cecaot-Jicobo, covering their tracks
as best they could.
“Your only concern,” Gus added, twirling the blade in his hands, “is whether your soul will burn in hell for all of eternity.”
Most guerrillas had been raised Catholic and were deeply superstitious. Buitre was clearly no exception, but he clung tenaciously
to bravado. “I will tell you nothing!” he asserted, hacking a wad of spit at Gus’s feet.
Gus stood up and reached for one of Buitre’s fingers, intending to cut it off, when the deputy cried, “Wait! Wait!” He immediately
began to blubber. “Have pity,” he begged.
Gus ran the sharp edge of the blade he’d stolen over Buitre’s good cheek. “Do you recognize this?” he asked, holding it up
for him to see.
“My knife!”
“I sharpened it for you,” he whispered, grappling with the urge to plunge it into Buitre’s belly as images of Lucy, tortured
and battered, clawed at his heart.
Tears began to gush from Buitre’s eyes. “Please don’t kill me,” he whimpered.
“Were you the one who cut the microchip from Luna de Aguiler?” Gus asked, feeding on cold fury to keep rage from overcoming
him.
“No, no. That was Captain Vargas. I didn’t touch her. I swear it!”
“Is she alive?” Gus continued, not knowing what he’d do if Buitre said no.
“Yes, yes! Alive and well.”
Relief left him faintly nauseated. “Where?” he asked, depressing the soft skin at Buitre’s jugular with the point of the blade.
“Arriba. I will take you there, only let me live.”
Gus stepped back, pretending to consider the offer. With a glance at Luther, who gave a subtle nod, he cut the captive free.