Sweat dripped from his eyebrows. Brian wiped his forehead with his shirtsleeve without missing a beat.
Cutting the vines took serious effort, their woodsy fibers hard to sever with a simple knife. A good axe or a hatchet could have done the job in a third of the time. And the more he cut, the duller the blade got from the rough work. He sized up the pile Audrey had carefully uncoiled and stretched on the ground. Should be enough. He climbed down, careful where he stepped.
“Hang on to this.” He picked up a good length of vine and handed one end to her, pulled hard on the other to test it.
Now was the time to make sure there were no rotted sections, or areas where insects and rodents might have weakened the plant. They did the same to the next and the next until they were done, having to throw aside only two.
He sat by the pile and got to work. Audrey settled next to him, her thigh brushing against his when she leaned forward.
Being around her was like swimming in a tank full of electric eels. She zapped his senses, shorted his concentration with every move.
“Can I help?” Her luminous green eyes sparkled in the dappled light.
Go someplace where I can’t see you, and take temptation with you.
No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t her fault that he had a hard time keeping his mind and hands off her. He focused on the work in front of them, pushed back the tide of primal urges rising in his blood.
“Like this.” He held the ends of two vines together, made a loop and tied them in a secure knot.
She tried with another one and managed pretty well. He tested her knot. It held.
When all the vines were connected, he rechecked every single knot one more time. Then he tied one end of the line around a tree, the other around his waist, grabbed his pole and waded into the water. The river was about a hundred feet wide; he had more than enough “rope” the get him to the other side.
“Feed the line to me little by little. Hold tight if I slip.” He walked farther into the murky water, using the pole to probe for holes in the river bottom in front of him.
The silt was soft and slippery. It sucked his boots in, making the crossing difficult.
“When I’m across, untie the line from the tree and tie it around your waist. Use the pole for support,” he called back, then turned his attention to crossing.
He moved forward as fast as he could, not only because it was never a good idea to linger in water—too many nasty parasites that could make your life miserable for a long time—but because he hated to leave Audrey unprotected. The sooner they were both on the same side again, the better.
The water was all right, a few degrees colder than the air. In a few steps he was in to his waist, then his chest and his shoulders. Then the pole no longer reached bottom in front of him. He pushed away from the mud that was sucking his boots in, and began to swim, feeling the line pull tight, then loosen as Audrey gave him some slack.
The closer he got to the middle, the stronger the current grew. He let go of the pole and put everything he had into swimming, careful with the debris the river carried. In what seemed an eternity later, his feet touched semisolid ground again, and he was able to walk, losing his footing a couple of times, but making his way forward steadily.
Without the pole, the going was slower. He had to feel out where he was stepping before putting his weight on his foot. He couldn’t afford to slip into a hole and break a leg.
But he reached shore soon enough, his clothes a soggy, muddy mess. He fought the plants that reached into the water and found a spot where he could climb the bank, and untied the line while he was catching his breath. Once he secured it to a tree, he waved to Audrey to follow.
The tight set of her mouth betrayed her nerves. Nothing but determination in her movements, though. She pushed herself to complete the task at hand, as always.
He pulled the line with each step she took forward, more nervous watching her than when he was in the water himself. She was doing well, keeping her head up, using the pole. Then she was swimming. He pulled the line, helping her. She drifted downriver, but the line held and kept her safe.
He only took his eyes off her to look for signs of danger every once in a while, keeping his ears on guard for the sound of approaching boats. They were lucky, it looked like she would make it. She was almost at the point where he figured her feet would start touching bottom again soon.
Then a log in the water upriver caught his attention, and he swore, pulling harder on the vine.
“Swim to shore,” he yelled, not caring now who might hear him. She was in more immediate danger from the log than from anyone. If her line got tangled, she’d be trapped. “Go with the current! On your back. Forty-five degrees to shore. Swim backwards.” It was the safest position for someone carried away by floodwaters.
He gave her back the whole length of the vine rope, and she understood, stopped fighting to reach shore where he was and let the current take her downriver, just trying to get across enough so the log would float by behind her. She almost cleared it. The log hit the line ten feet or so in front of her. He could see the patched length of vine tangle in the roots as the dead tree bobbed in the water, rolling in the current.
He pulled on the line, desperate. Maybe he could drag her in log and all. Come on, baby. But the vine rope didn’t budge. He let it go. If it snapped, he would lose her.
Audrey was swimming for the log, probably hoping to hang on to it until they figured out what to do next.
“Keep away from it!”
It would be too easy to get tangled in the line and the roots. The log could roll and push her under. She heard him and stopped, paddling in place, waiting for him to save her.
He wasn’t sure he could.
He rushed forward, blood drumming in his ears. Not many things scared him anymore, but watching her struggle at the end of the rope left him petrified.
He had to come up with something. Now.
She had a knife, but if she cut herself loose, without the line the water would carry her downriver. The current was too strong for her to make it to shore without help. If she stayed where she was, her strength would run out sooner or later and she would drown.
He scaled the nearest tree, slashed at the vines, made another line and ran through the forest. He had to reach her before her line snapped.
He was tying knots as he went, having a line less than half the size of the original ready by the time he reached the spot on the bank that was close enough, yet a little above her. That way he could let the current carry him instead of fighting it. He tied himself out and dived in, not bothering with a pole, swimming for her with everything he had. She swam toward him, both of them careful to avoid the log.
His lungs choked with the water he swallowed, but he reached her. “Hang on tight.” He cut the vine that held her trapped.
The current grabbed on to the extra weight and pushed them both under for a second. They came up spluttering. He kicked with his feet to stay afloat, grabbed onto the rope, one hand over the other again and again, struggling to pull them in.
The progress was slow, swimming in the strong current with her hanging on to his neck damn near impossible. They spent as much time underwater as above it. But then his feet touched the muddy bottom, and soon hers did, too.
For a moment they clung to each other, standing together against the rage of the river that swirled around them. He barely caught his breath when he heard the spluttering sound of a motor then the next second spotted the boat that came from upriver.
Damn.
He pointed it out to Audrey, took a deep breath, and when he saw her do the same, pulled her under with him. He headed for an overhang of bushes by the bank, going by feel, the water so murky there was no point in opening his eyes. He held her hand tight, came up when he felt the branches with his other hand, pulled her farther in.
“Omar’s men?” Audrey whispered against his ear.
Overhanging leaves hid them from view, but they could see the river through the small gaps between branches.
“Poachers.”
The boat stopped and the six men inside looked over the tied-out log. One of them killed the motor, scanned both banks. Brian strained to hear what they were saying, but couldn’t. Then they tensed, reached for their weapons.
He grabbed his knife under the water, knowing there was little he could do if they spotted his hiding spot. They had guns. Even if he threw the knife well and took one out, the other five would shoot Audrey and him into sieves.
But the men weren’t looking at him. Soon they all turned their attention upriver. And then he could hear it, too, the sounds of a motor once again.
The boat that came around the bend was smaller than the poachers’, but the four guerillas were better armed, holding semiautomatics instead of hunting rifles. The two groups watched each other warily, neither of them saying a word to the other.
For a moment, the tension was palpable in the air, every man gripping his gun. Then the guerillas floated by. Their small boat carried some kind of a crate, covered with tarp. The men were positioned two in the front, two in the back. He watched them carefully, but didn’t recognize any.
The poachers waited a good ten minutes before they followed.
When they were out of sight, Brian waded from under the bushes and, once he made sure it was safe, he signaled to Audrey to follow. They made their way to shore—not an easy task. There was no game trail on this side, the vegetation thick to the point of impenetrable, as the plants fought for light.
He was careful to select the thinnest spot, to bend the branches instead of breaking them, to trample as little as possible. Even when he got past that first barrier, he made a point to walk on moss that would spring back up fast, or on stones, instead of in mud that would leave tracks—in case the guerillas came back later to investigate. Audrey followed his example without having to be told.
Once he was sure they couldn’t be seen from the river, he stopped. “Check yourself over.” He turned from her. “Let me know if you need help.” He ran the odd scene on the river through his mind again. It didn’t add up. His instincts bristled.
“I’m glad they didn’t get into a fight,” Audrey said behind him.
He peeled off his clothes and squeezed the water out, draped them over branches, careful not to put anything on the ground.
“That’s just it. The poachers had a better boat and it was loaded. But the guerillas had better weapons. I thought they would attack.” His legs and torso were all right, but he had a couple of leeches on each arm, five fatties on his shoulders where they had sneaked under his collar.
Judging by the squeak that came from behind him, they had gotten Audrey, too.
“Help,” she said.
He turned and found her staring at two big ones just below the spot where her collarbones met. She still had her underwear on, and the soggy cotton tanktop that hid nothing.
“Don’t pull,” he said. “Their jaws can get ripped. Anything that stays under your skin ups your chances for an infection.” A lighter or some salt would have helped, but they didn’t have either. “If you can stand them for another minute or two, they’ll get full and fall off on their own. It’s the safest.”
“Oh, gross.”
“So tell me about your sister,” he said as one of his friends dropped to the ground. He kicked it away with his boot, then looked around for food. A profusion of palm trees grew around the river, but it looked like the wildlife had already gotten to them.
“She’s great. She’s younger than me, very pretty, very wild. And she is brilliant, working on her Ph.D. in mathematics. If she wasn’t my sister, I could really learn to hate her,” she joked. “We missed spending time together and she decided to come with me for moral support. She’s a teacher so she has the summer off anyway. Trev is always up to his neck in work. They got married last year. Actually, she met Trev at my wedding.” The last words were said on a tone slightly different from the rest.
He shook the water out of his boots, scraped off the river mud. “Do you miss your ex?”
She gave him a small, wry smile. “No. I still see him from time to time. Trev and he are close friends.” She thought for a moment. “I miss the idea of true love, that it’s supposed to last forever through thick and thin. I mean, I know now that the whole thing is just a fantasy. A couple is just two people, and people change, and sometimes they change in different directions. I guess I miss the innocence of believing that happily-ever-after is possible. My parents are divorced. I always swore that would never happen to me. I hate failing.”
He could understand that sentiment. Brian shook out his pants and put them back on. “My father used to say romance was invented by greeting card companies and Hollywood to sell merchandise.”
Pain was real, as was violence, the old man had said, and the struggle for survival. There were hormones and pheromones, and good old-fashioned primal sexual instinct, but that was all. Everything else was just stuff people deluded themselves into believing.
His parents had cared for each other and that made for a decent marriage and a fine home for him. But whatever their marriage had been before his father had gone off to war, it was certainly no passionate love affair after. The war had changed him, he used to say. It had changed both of them.
“Here we go.”
Her leeches fell off almost at the same time as most of his, and she skipped to step away from them. She reached for the spot on her skin, but he stopped her. “Let it bleed for a while. The blood will cleanse the wound. It’ll stop on its own.”
He nudged the last leech on his shoulder, and when it let go, he put on his shirt, just as Audrey finished buttoning hers.
“Aren’t you worried about blood loss?” She looked at him.
“A handful of leeches don’t take enough to be concerned over.”
“They’re still nasty.” Her voice was thick with revulsion.
“We better get going. We have to find a place to camp before nightfall. Tomorrow’s gonna be a rough day. But if we keep a good pace, we’ll be at Hamid’s camp by tomorrow night.”
She nodded and followed him without complaints. They walked upriver, at enough distance from the muddy bank to avoid leaving tracks and keep out of the dense undergrowth that grew there. He cut back to the water only twice, to remove the two vine ropes from the palms and toss them into the river.
Something about those guerillas didn’t sit right with him. They might yet come back to look for the poachers. He didn’t want them to find his and Audrey’s tracks instead.
FIRE MADE all the difference. The smoke repelled the bugs, the heat kept the chill of the night at bay. Audrey picked the last of the meat off the fish bones. Compared to the bitter roots they had existed on all day, the meal seemed like an extravagant treat. Thanks to Brian.
He sat across from her, engrossed in making more hooks from bone. His clothes were drying on the bushes, side by side with hers. Since it wasn’t raining for once, they were aiming for a dry night with dry clothes and some sleep in comfort. Their boots hung upside down, speared on three-foot-tall sticks to keep them off the ground and away from bugs. Brian had sprinkled the perimeter of their small camp with ashes to keep crawling insects away. Ants hated ashes, apparently, as did a number of their other bugsy friends.
If you had to be stuck in the jungle, this was the man to do it with. Audrey stood to stretch her legs, her eyes straying to his shoulders, the way the firelight played on the muscles that flexed when he put pressure on his knife. His hands were steady. She only remembered seeing them shake a couple of times today. Amazing what two days of freedom did to the man.
He was transforming slowly, in front of her eyes. He was moving better, his legs getting accustomed to walking. Even his gestures and the way he carried himself were changing. She could have sworn he had grown taller, although it was probably an illusion. He was walking straighter, his body growing used to being free from the confines of the cage.
“How old are you?” she asked, then regretted it. The question would probably make him think of the years he’d lost. “You don’t have to answer. Never mind.”
“What’s today?”
She left the hotel a week ago. “The seventh. August,” she added.
He raised his gaze to her, his expression inscrutable. “I turned thirty-one last month.”
She stared at him. “I’ll be thirty-one this fall.”
They were the same age. It drove home the horror he must have been living in the past couple of years. When she had first seen him, she had thought him old enough to be her father. Even now— She would have definitely not guessed him to be thirty-one.
It wasn’t his body—that looked powerful, ageless. She let her gaze slide over the wide shoulders again and the well-muscled arms, the flat stomach, then glanced away when she got to his underwear—if it could be called that—the handmade piece was little more than a loincloth.
The illusion of age came from the ever-present shadow on his face, and in his brilliant blue eyes. Eyes that said they’d seen too much.
She’d glimpsed eyes like that before at the clinic, seen the men and women who had tried to escape their memories by hiding behind drugs or alcohol. Half the people she’d admitted had had some history of severe trauma, physical or sexual abuse, rape, war. A handful of veterans were in residence at any given time.
Brian fed the fire.
Where would his past take him? He had such a strength, not just of his body, but a steel core inside.
He met her gaze, and she looked away.
She shook their clothes out, turned them on the branches to bring the wet sides closer to the fire. A wad of crumpled papers fell out of his pocket. “What’s this?”
“Probably Omar’s shopping list. It got wet before I had a chance to read it. I can read words here and there. None of it makes any sense. I kept them to use as tinder, but they never had a chance to dry out.”
“Do you speak Malay?”
He nodded. “I picked up some over the years.”
She flipped through the pages, her gaze settling on what looked like numbers. She pulled closer to the fire. If she looked at it from just the right angle… “There’s a date here.”
“Yeah?” Brian went back to carving, not looking too excited.
“August ten.”
“Maybe he was asking Hamid to a meeting, although—” He set the hook aside and reached for the papers.
“What?”
“The guerillas don’t exactly schedule like businessmen. It’s always in a few days, or after the monsoon. They have a different sense of time here in the jungle. Giving or taking a day doesn’t matter much. Hell, most of the time they probably don’t even know what day it is.”
“What’s KL?” She scrutinized the paper over his shoulder.
“Where?”
She pointed.
“Damn.”
“What?”
“I thought it was a blotch. KL is what the locals call Kuala Lumpur, the capital. Nobody but tourists say the full name.”
He riffled through the pages. Silence stretched to a minute, then two.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
He turned to look at her. “The crate in the boat.”
She nodded.
“Maybe the guerillas didn’t shoot at the poachers because they couldn’t risk return fire.”
“Makes sense if the crate was full of explosives.”
“Or maybe they were just in a hurry to get somewhere.”
She tilted her head. “Kuala Lumpur, August tenth?”
He came to his feet and put on his pants. “When we get to Hamid’s camp, we’ll radio it in.”
“Do you think they’re planning an attack?”
“A couple of days ago, I would have said no. Going after civilians wasn’t Jamil’s M.O. and Hamid wouldn’t have done something this major without his support. But now…” He shrugged. “Omar is just hotheaded and bloodthirsty enough. He wants to make a name for himself. He wants to bring the fight to the next level. He probably has some kind of an agreement with Hamid. It makes sense.” He stared into the fire, his expression pensive.
“This is major, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “There’ve been changes. Talk. I don’t know—a feeling around camp. Too much coming and going. I knew something was up, but I thought it was just Omar, trying to figure out a way to get himself to the top. If we are right and there’s an attack planned in KL, it could be just the opening act. Omar and Hamid are both in on it. What if the others are, too? What if this is the beginning of a major offensive?”
“We have to let someone know.”
“We can’t be still in the jungle when it happens, that’s for sure. I have a feeling the Royal Malaysian Air Force will retaliate by bombing the hell out of this patch of the island.”
She checked her clothes, found them dry and put them on, except for the socks. Brian had warned her to let her feet breathe at night.
It said something about the man that he took care to explain the smallest things to help her avoid discomfort. He had been giving her a crash course on jungle survival as they’d walked, giving her his vote of confidence that she would remember and could handle things. Instead of treating her like a clueless burden, he related to her as an equal—a teammate. She appreciated that.
“So what do we do now?” she asked.
“Get as much sleep as we can, then start out at first light. Hamid probably has a satellite phone or radio. We’ll call in what we know.”