The rain had started toward dawn and forgot to stop. Although they kept close to the river, there was no point trying to get a fish for lunch—lighting a fire was out of the question. They ate grubs and whatever fruit they could find as they walked, boots sticking in the mud.
Starting midafternoon they started to check the water’s edge more and more often, fighting the dense vegetation to get to it. Then they came across the spot they were looking for—a narrow area where the bushes had been cleared. Brian looked over the two motorboats pulled up on shore.
He watched the trail from the cover of the bushes, and when he was certain it was deserted, turned back to Audrey, who squatted behind him.
“I have to go check out the camp while there’s still daylight to see.”
She rose, ready to follow him wherever he would lead her. Her blind trust in him was gratifying and frightening at the same time. What the hell was he supposed to do with her? She’d be in danger if she came with him and she’d be in danger if he left her here alone. There was no safe spot for an untrained civilian in the jungle.
“What’s wrong?” She blinked away the raindrops that clung to her eyelashes, squinting, puzzled at his hesitation.
She looked like a drowned mouse. She looked gorgeous. He’d had beautiful women at one time in his life, although his relationships had tended to be as brief as they were few and far between. One girl had accused him of missing the bonding gene. She had been right. He barely remembered her, other than that she’d been fun-loving and easy.
“I can’t believe we’re finally here. We’re going to get Nicky back today.”
He nodded. There was nothing easy about Audrey Benedict.
He motioned to her to stick to him as he followed the trail at a distance from the forest.
Unlike Omar’s camp, Hamid’s was much bigger than just a clearing in the jungle. Shacks spread up the hillside, with a large steel-frame building dominating the landscape, a gray satellite dish on top outlined against the green background. He could see all manner of industrial equipment, rusting, overrun by vines, in the process of being reclaimed by the jungle.
“An abandoned mine,” he whispered to Audrey, keeping behind the bushes as he eyed the structures. There was nobody outside, and he couldn’t blame them, the rain was coming down pretty hard. He could see shadows moving in several windows. They were watching.
He tensed when the door of one of the sheds opened, but the man who came out sprinted to another building without looking their way.
“Come on.” He kept low as he moved ahead, circling the camp. They had to get the layout before night fell.
“How many of them do you think there are?” Audrey kept close behind.
With everyone inside, it was hard to tell. The rain complicated things. From the size of the dozen or so huts, he figured about fifty men. Of course, half the huts might be empty or, on the other hand, there might be many more guerillas, hiding from the weather in some mine shaft. There could be an army underground, the mine could probably hold hundreds. But he didn’t think so.
Hamid’s men had visited Jamil from time to time. His impression was that their group was larger than the one that held him captive, but not by much.
“Four, maybe five dozen.” He gave her his best bet, seeing no sense in sugarcoating things. Better for her to know what they were facing, better to be prepared for it.
“Do you think the hostages…” She looked at him, her voice rough with worry.
“I’m sure they’re still alive. Hamid is a professional at this kind of thing. They’re probably in little danger until the deadline is up tomorrow.”
Even after that, the man wouldn’t kill all of them. Just one or two to show everyone he was serious, then he would probably set another deadline for the rest. Brian judged the distance between the buildings, tried to see if there was a way to get into the big one without having to use the front door that was most likely guarded.
He had a feeling that’s where the hostages were. Somewhere down the mine, not the most ideal location for a rescue operation—like going to fight a bear in his cave. Getting trapped would be all too easy, and Hamid’s men would have the home advantage. They knew every tunnel, while he would be fighting blind.
And alone. No way was he going to take Audrey in there with him.
He moved on, memorizing the terrain, careful to note distances, the position of the huts. There was very little activity. If the men moved around more he could have gotten a better handle on their number, but everyone seemed content to stick out the miserable weather inside.
Dusk came on them fast.
“Let’s go while we can still see.” He backed away, not wanting to waste time with fumbling around in the dark.
Hamid and his men were in for the night. Time to start putting his plans in action. They went back to the river, using the trail this time, listening for anything suspicious.
“Help me with this,” he said when they got to the spot they’d found earlier. He heaved against one of the motorboats, pushing it into the water.
“Where are we going?” Audrey gave it her best effort as always, and the boat slipped into the river with ease.
“Just down a little. Get in.” He helped her, then pushed out the boat even farther before pulling himself over the side. He grabbed the pole lying in the bottom and used it to give the vessel direction.
“I want the boats somewhere where we can get to them quickly, somewhere they wouldn’t be looking for them when they come after us.” He didn’t turn the motor on, but let the river carry them. “What does your sister look like?”
“She’s my height, short blond hair, skinny. She works out like a banshee. You’re not going to have to worry about her keeping up unless she’s injured.”
The last couple of words came out shaky.
“She’s fine. Hamid treats his hostages well. To him they’re merchandise. He’d want to keep them in sellable condition.”
She didn’t respond to that, and her silence got to him more than if she had thrown a crying fit. There were words, he was sure of it, that someone who knew them could have spoken to comfort her. But it wasn’t him. It filled him with an impotent anger he recognized as useless, so he forced his mind back to the hillside, to the camp, planning his route and course of action.
When they got a good two hundred feet from the trail, he jumped out and pulled the boat to shore, pushing it up on the slick mud into the cover of the overhanging vines and bushes. They scratched the hell out of his hands, but he ignored the pain, a minor irritation compared to his leg that was torturing him at full throttle.
Darkness fell by the time they were done. Getting back into the water without being able to see what debris was coming at him would be a reckless move, but he didn’t have a choice. He had to get the second boat. Even if, God forbid, not all of the hostages were able to make it this far, he couldn’t leave that one for the guerillas to follow in.
“Stay here. I’ll bring over the other boat.” He handed Audrey the rifle. “You keep this.”
He hated to leave her alone, remembering well what had happened the last time she’d been left with the gun to fend for herself. And she was probably remembering, too.
“Nobody goes outside in weather like this, especially not at night,” he tried to reassure her.
He couldn’t see her face, but could see enough of her silhouette to know she was straightening her spine. He smiled into the darkness. That’s my girl.
“Be careful,” she said.
He reached out, but stopped short of caressing her face, waved a lame farewell instead and turned into the woods. Rain pelted him from above, his progress slower than he would have liked on the muddy, slippery ground.
He thought of Audrey behind him and the hostages ahead, the lives that depended on him. How the hell did that happen? He wasn’t sure if he was up for the task. He was a broken man, and not just his bad leg. He was way out of practice. It was too much responsibility, more than he was prepared for. Still, quitting wasn’t in his nature. He had to try.
He reached the boat, pushed it into the water and floated down the swollen river with a fair speed. The darkness was complete, he was going by feel. Then he heard the most fake birdcall he’d ever heard in his life. And a minute later he heard it again. He grabbed the pole and pushed the boat toward the sound, letting Audrey guide him to a safe landing.
“You’re a regular nightingale. Any other hidden talents?” He jumped out, and she was right there, helping.
“I can wiggle my ears.” She pulled on the boat.
The woman wasn’t afraid of work, that was for sure. Come to think of it, she wasn’t afraid of much.
“Did you run into any trouble?” she asked.
“Not yet. But I have a feeling I’ll be coming across some soon.” He tied the second boat to a nearby palm tree, next to the first. He wasted no time, but climbed the palm and hacked off a good pile of leaves.
“I want you to stay here,” he said after he skidded down. “Cover the boats so they don’t fill up with rain.” He could have turned them over, but he wanted them to be ready to jump in, had a feeling they would be leaving in a hurry. “Keep the gun. Don’t be afraid to use it.”
This time when he reached out, he did touch her, drew his crooked index finger over her wet cheek. “If I’m not back by daybreak, get into one of the boats and go downriver. Let the current float you, don’t turn on the motor unless someone notices you and they give chase. Keep down. Make every bullet count.”
“You need it more.” She pushed the rifle toward him.
“It’s not up for discussion,” he said, and heard her long draw of breath.
“Okay.”
She was smart enough to know that fighting over this would waste precious time.
“Do you want the bank statement?”
A second passed before he remembered what she was talking about. “Audrey, I’m not going there to negotiate.”
He was bringing back all the hostages, or as many as he could, and he meant to push Hamid for an explanation of Omar’s message. Although he had a date, Kuala Lumpur was a major metropolis. To prevent an attack, the government would need an exact location. Damn, it was a tall order—a tough operation he wasn’t sure he was fit to attempt. But he was going to do it anyway.
The job was in his blood, trained into him—complete the rescue, save the weak. He had no fear for himself, no hesitation on that score, and he was glad to discover that here was at last some deep part of him that the guerillas didn’t manage to take away, couldn’t beat out. It was a fragment he recognized, something he could maybe build on to regain the rest.
She reached out a hand in the darkness and put it over his that somehow had come to cradle her face. “Be careful,” she said again, with tremors in her voice this time.
That got to him. She was scared, and there was little he could do to protect her. He couldn’t be in two places at the same time. He should have been able to offer some reassurance and comfort, but saying “you’ll be fine” just didn’t seem enough.
He stepped forward and enfolded her in his arms awkwardly, the gun between them. “I’ll be back for you,” he said, surprised at his own reluctance to move away.
She leaned her forehead against his chin. “I know.”
It would have been the most natural thing to press his lips against the crown of her hair, but he couldn’t do it. Instead, he walked away.
His mind was full of her, every cell of his brain, all his senses. His nose was full of her wet scent, her last words still ringing in his ears. God, he was pitiful. Thinking about her instead of what he was about to do was a surefire way of getting them both killed.
The mission. He refocused his mind, alert once again as he moved forward in the jungle. He could barely see a foot or two in front of him, any noise an enemy might have made was drowned out by the rain. He was deaf and blind, in enemy territory, without as much as a gun. But he wasn’t unarmed. He’d been a soldier an awful long time. He had his instincts.
He kept close enough to the river to let the sound of the water guide him, then once he reached the trail that led to camp, he followed that. He moved off it just before he reached the hillside camp, creeping forward slowly. Not that he was too concerned about running into anybody, but he was concerned about taking a wrong step and rolling down into a ravine, sinking into a rabbit hole and breaking a leg.
He reached camp after a couple of minutes. Lights shone in the windows, except for one shack. He kept in the shadows and stole closer to that one. He peeked in through the cracks in the wall, not wanting to put himself in line with the window. Just because the light wasn’t on, it didn’t mean nobody was in there.
But he lucked out. He could see the outlines of two people inside, both lying down. They were silent and unmoving. Good. He crept to the door, tried it. Unlocked. Which meant the two weren’t hostages. He opened the door a fraction of an inch at a time then ducked inside, waited until his eyes further adjusted to the darkness.
He put his hand over the mouth of the first guerilla, his knife to his throat. The man woke with a start and grabbed for his wrist. Definitely not a hostage then, his hands hadn’t been tied. Brian slit the man’s throat and moved on to the other one.
When he was done, he tucked the man’s handgun into his waistband, threw the two rifles over his shoulder. He pocketed the box of matches from the table on the way out.
He moved on to the next shack, looked inside. Four men there, playing cards, their guns within easy reach. He could have picked them off with a rifle, but didn’t yet want to alert the whole camp to his presence. He waited, ducked deeper into the shadows when the door of another hut opened, then moved forward, keeping an eye on the fighter outlined by the hut’s light. The man fumbled with his pants.
Damn. The guy was just taking a piss. He had hoped the fighter was on his way to another hut. But with the door open behind him, Brian couldn’t take him out. He would have been in plain sight of everyone inside. Then someone in the hut swore, complaining about the rain blowing in, and the door slammed shut.
He was there in seconds. He held the man so he wouldn’t make a noise when he fell, dragged the body into the bushes in the back.
He risked a peek through the window that was partially obscured by vines. Two people remained inside. He could handle that. He left the rifles outside, put on the dead man’s hat and shirt, stepped into the hut with his head down, one hand clutching the front of the blood-soaked shirtfront. The men came to their feet at once and stepped toward him, talking over each other. Both hands moving simultaneously, he cut the one on the right, and had his fingers wound around the throat of the one on the left. A minute passed before the guy stopped kicking.
Brian blew out the light, not wanting anyone to see the three dead bodies on the floor should they walk by outside. He discarded the bloody shirt, grabbed whatever weapons he could find, then moved on to the next hut.
Empty. He filled his pockets from the crate of hand grenades he found. He moved from hut to hut and did his job methodically. Search and destroy. The fighters that came at him ceased to be people. They were enemy combatants.
He pushed on until everything that he could do in silence had been done, then dumped his loot of weapons into the bushes, keeping one rifle and one handgun. Only four of the huts had guerillas in them now, each having more men inside than he could have handled without breaking the silence—nineteen altogether. He would worry about them on the way out.
Time to find the hostages.
He moved toward the main building that at one point must have been the entrance to the mine. There were a number of abandoned mines on Borneo; the island used to be rich in both tin and gold. He’d been in three of them within the first days his team had been dropped into the jungle—before he’d gotten blown up and captured.
Brian reached the corner of the tattered building and crawled under the raised floor, on his back in the mud, ignoring the insects that crawled over him, hoping none of them was fatally poisonous, praying he wasn’t crawling into a nest of snakes. He pushed forward slowly, inch by inch, giving whatever lived under there time to get out of his way.
He could see the space above through the cracks in the bamboo floor. Six men—two sleeping, the rest talking. They were complaining about the weather. There were plenty of weapons in sight, each man’s rifle within easy reach. He scanned the room, his attention settling on the table, on the pot of rice and pile of bones. His stomach growled, and he tensed, but nobody seemed to have heard him. He turned his head, spotted an opening that looked like it led to a tunnel at the back of the building. There we go. The way to get into the mine.
He crawled from under the building with the same careful deliberation as when he’d gotten in, brushed the bugs off and crept to the hut with the most guerillas in it. The five men were still up, arguing, cleaning weapons. Brian pulled the ring from one of the grenades and shoved it under the raised floor, dashed toward the bushes by the main building.
The explosion shook the hillside and brought plenty of men running, those who were still alive in the other huts and the six from the main building. He ducked inside, noted the large case of explosives by the door, hid behind a bed as he heard boots on stone—more men running up from the mine. He counted eight of them. When they were gone, he grabbed a flashlight and entered the shaft.
The floor was steep. He ran, putting his weight on the front of his feet to make as little noise as possible. Then he heard sounds ahead, nearing, and he ducked into a side passage and let another group of men pass. He didn’t want to get into a gunfight yet, didn’t want to alert those who guarded the hostages that he was coming. How many guerillas were still down there? Where were the tourists?
Finding them quickly was key. He had to get them up to the surface before the men in the camp above realized he was down here. He didn’t like the explosives they had. It would be too easy to collapse the main tunnel and trap everyone below, buried alive.
He rushed forward and came to a door, solid metal. For a moment he considered a grenade to throw off the men on the other side, give him a chance to take a couple out before they got their bearings. But he still didn’t know where the hostages were. He couldn’t risk harming them. They could be hidden somewhere deep in the myriad tunnels, or they could be just on the other side of this door. The latter would be nice. He didn’t have much time to look for them.
He kicked the door open, rifle raised in front of him.
And found himself face-to-face with Hamid and twenty of his men, armed to the teeth.
THE RAIN WAS COMING DOWN pretty hard, the river was rising. Audrey couldn’t see it, but she’d had to move back three times now when the water reached her feet.
Had Brian made it to the camp yet? She strained her ears for the sound of gunfire, but couldn’t hear anything. It seemed impossible that he would succeed. She’d seen the camp. The force he would meet would be overwhelming. She shouldn’t have dragged him into this. She had sent him into sure death.
He had insisted on helping her. What pushed him forward? What made him override the instinct of self-preservation in the interest of others? She wondered if he regretted ever having met her. If it wasn’t for her, he would have been halfway out of the jungle by now.
And then it occurred to her that they hadn’t simply “met.” He had saved her, choosing to risk his own freedom, his own life. He had made the decision selflessly, expecting nothing in return.
Despite his battered appearance, there was a strength in the man as she had never seen before. Tremendous courage, and yet vulnerability, too. And as little as they knew each other, she felt herself respond to him.
She kept her hands on the ropes that held the boats. One of the lines moved, grew taut. The water was high enough to lift that boat. The rope held, but she worried.
She planted her boots firmly in the muddy ground and pulled, managed to make some progress, felt as the bottom of the boat scraped into the mud, but no matter how much she struggled, she couldn’t get it out of the water. The second she relaxed her arms, the water took the boat again, and when it did, the side banged against a rock a few feet ahead of her. Bang. She yanked at the rope, but the river had the boat now. Bang. Bang. Bang.
She waded into the water, wanting to put herself between the boat and the rock, to at least keep it quiet, keep from being discovered. She grabbed the side of the other boat for support, and felt it wobble. The water was taking this one, too.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She couldn’t let both boats slip into the water. She wasn’t sure how long the ropes would hold, how long the palm tree would make it once the river was high enough and the current and debris started to push against the trunk. She took off her rifle and threw it inside, grabbed the hull and pulled with everything she had, made some progress, infuriatingly slow, but the boat did slide forward, inch by miserable inch.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She pulled until her shoulders ached, until she was breathing hard, sweat mixing with rain on her face. But she got the boat to higher ground, untied its rope from the palm tree and tied it up again to a tree a couple of yards farther into the woods.
She waded into the water for the other boat, got in up to her chest before she reached it and realized she could do little. She had to untie it, let it move past the rock and tie it up again. Pulling it out of the water at this stage was beyond her strength.
Using the rope to guide her, she made her way back to the palm tree, fighting against the might of the river that tried to take her with it. Nothing else mattered now but the next step, the next few inches to grab onto the rope. She lost track of time, concentrating on her footing, making her aching arms work harder than she’d ever thought they could.
She reached the palm and found it standing in water now, the rope just below the surface. She tore at the swollen fibers but couldn’t untie it.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
She had to do something. They were too close to camp. The rain dampened sound, but the clanging of the aluminum boat against the rock was just loud enough so she couldn’t be sure how far it would be heard.
She wrapped her left arm around the rope, grabbed on, then with her right arm pulled her knife and sawed through the knot. The next instant the current caught the boat and it lurched forward, pulling her into the water. She fell face first, went under.
Freed finally, the boat was dragging her out into the deep water. It would drag her on, drown her, if she weren’t careful. She came up sputtering but refused to let go. She had lost her knife and hung on to the rope with both hands now. But her strength was no match for the raging river.
She went under again, came up, coughing up water, struggling for air. She had only one choice, one thing to do if she wanted to live. She had to let go of the boat.
Tears stung her eyes as she relaxed her fingers and felt the rope slip from her. She struggled to reach shore, got knocked under by a jumble of branches rushing downriver, but she got back up again. Nicky was out there somewhere, and Brian. And they needed her, counted on her. She had to make it.
She’d lost her hat. Rain pelted her hard from above. She could see little to begin with, the water running into her eyes making things worse. She could make out land, just barely, only because the sky was a miniscule fraction darker above it then above the river.
Swim.
One hand in front of the other.
Her boots were pulling her down, but she kicked wildly, refusing to give up. She had to make it. It wasn’t just her life at stake. Others counted on her.
She went under, fought her way up again, coughed up the nasty tasting water. Kick. Left arm. Right arm. Breathe.
She wasn’t making any progress, nothing but exhaustion to show for her efforts. Then she remembered Brian’s words when they’d crossed the river before, and she flipped on her back, swam for shore at an angle.
She was shaking with fatigue by the time she reached shore and collapsed onto the muddy bank, letting the rain wash over her face.
She had lost the boat. Their way to safety.
It was one thing for Brian and her to try to walk out of the jungle. Taking a dozen hostages with them on foot, some of whom might be sick or injured, was another matter. How on earth would they find food for so many people? They had barely found enough by scavenging as they went, to feed the two of them.
An explosion shook the air, coming from the direction of the hillside camp. Brian was out there, fighting guerillas, and she had his gun. Even if by some miracle he succeeded and brought the hostages with him here to their meeting point, one boat would not carry them all. Half of them would be trapped between the river and the pursuing guerillas.
She had to go and warn him.
Her teeth were chattering, her wet clothes pasted to her body, chilling her in the night air. Or was she getting some kind of fever? Didn’t matter, couldn’t worry about that now. The shakes probably came from the shock of having nearly drowned.
Audrey pulled herself up and dragged her exhausted body forward, feeling around in the dark. She had to find the remaining boat and the gun, and then she had to find Brian.