Camouflage Heart (3 page)

 

C
OME ON
. C
OME BACK
.

Audrey sat by the cave's entrance, the AK-47 laid across her legs as she stared into the jungle. She had no idea what time it was. Her watch, along with her jewelry, was the first thing the guerillas had taken after they had captured her.

Brian hadn't been gone more than a half hour, an hour at tops, but it felt like ten. She had plenty of time to worry about a whole list of worst-case scenarios.
Like what would she do if a tiger decided to pay her a visit, or the guerillas found her, or something happened to Brian and he didn't come back.

She rubbed her eyes. God, she was driving herself nuts. Brian would be back soon. Everything was going to be fine.

He had gone off to see if he could scare up some meat. They needed protein for strength, couldn't survive on fruit, he'd said. He'd promised to build a fire when he came back. She decided to focus on that. Her clothes were no longer soaking wet, but still damp enough to be uncomfortable.

He would be back for her. She had to believe that. She listened to the birdcalls above, watched for the burst of color that flashed between the branches now and then.

Was Nicky out there somewhere looking up at the trees, same as her? Dear God, let her be unharmed.

Something rustled in the undergrowth to the left. Her muscles tensed, her heart in her throat in an instant. She tried to see beyond the profusion of green fronds, but couldn't make out anything. She gripped the gun and drew farther back into the cave.

More noise, then a branch snapping. She held her breath. Brian? She didn't dare call out. Then she saw the fronds move. Something was definitely there, coming toward her.

A young fighter stepped into the clearing, scanning the area, rifle at the ready.

Her blood raced so fast it made her dizzy. She held her breath, hoping he couldn't see her in the darkness of the cave.

But he did, and smiled when their eyes met.

He called back, a single word, but no response came from behind him, which gave her hope. Maybe he had wandered out of hearing distance from the others.

She scampered back toward the deeper reaches of the cave, gripping her own gun in her sweaty palms, although she didn't dare shoot. She had never shot anything. Her chances of hitting him were one in a million.

If she started shooting he would shoot back, with considerably more skill than she had. And a gunshot, too, could alert the rest of his group to their whereabouts. She would only use the rifle if she had no other choice, and only if she was sure she would hit him.

As young as he was, she was no match for him. Escape and evade, the term she'd heard Brian use popped into her head. Panic propelled her forward as she turned to run, seeing less and less the farther in she got. Her boots slammed against stone, the sound echoing in the cave, mixing with the slap of her pursuer's steps.

Brian had said there were lime caves in these mountains that went on for miles underground. If this one had a fraction of that space— If she could evade this man until Brian came back— She rushed into a dark corridor, gasped the musty air, fear sending her lungs into overdrive.

Blindly she ran forward, her hands stretched in front of her in the darkness, hoping the path was straight. It wasn't. She smacked into the stone wall and dropped the gun, bent to search for it but felt nothing other than small rocks, cold and sharp under her fingertips. It had to be here. She swept the ground, frantic.

The man was close enough for her to hear his breathing, smell his sweat. Forget the gun. Her hand on the wall, she moved ahead, hoping for a fork in the road, or a crevice she could flatten herself into while he went by.

She hadn't walked a few steps when she was brought hard to the ground. The pain in the side of her skull was blinding. Her head spun for a moment as she struggled against the weight that pinned her down. She clawed at him, felt his fingers close around one wrist first, then the other as he swore in the darkness.

“No. Please.” She tried to catch her breath.

He pulled her to her feet and dragged her toward
the light. She kicked and missed. He shook her and dragged her on, threw her to the ground once they were back in the larger cavern that received enough sunlight to see.

He asked something she couldn't understand. She shook her head as she sat up, then noticed the knife in his belt and lunged for it.

He outmaneuvered her with ease, but ended up falling on her, pressing her back into the sharp rocks.

Shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't have gone for his weapon. She had really pissed him off. The sight of his anger-reddened face paralyzed her limbs. Then his features changed as he brought up a hand to cup her breast.

“Stop.” She struggled against him with new desperation.

He reached between them and ripped her pants. A scream pushed its way up her throat but she swallowed it back. His people were probably closer than Brian. She didn't want them to find her. There was a slim chance she might be able to fight off this one, but if the rest came, she was finished.

She felt around with shaking hands for a suitable rock on the ground. Nothing but dirt and gravel. Figured. At least a half-dozen rocks dug against her ribs. She tried to twist aside, but the man on top of her wouldn't allow her the movement.

Expect the worse. Expect that you're going to get hurt.
The words of some self-defense expert from a TV show a couple of years ago floated back to her. She had to keep a clear head, resist the panic, look for an opportunity.

The man on top of her was stronger than she, and it wasn't even so much his extra bulk of muscles, but that he knew how to fight. She could do nothing to stop him.

Accepting the inevitable brought a strange sense of control. When he violated her body, there would be a moment of advantage. She would wait for that moment and try again for his knife. She would not allow him to take her back to camp. That was the most important thing. No matter what else he did, he must not keep her from her mission. Not when her sister's life depended on her.

She steeled herself, but instead of the pain she expected, the man's head snapped back and he fell from her. Brian slit the attacker's throat with one smooth move from ear to ear and shoved the lifeless body to the side.

“Are you all right?” He turned to her.

She stared at the gushing blood and threw up the bananas.

When Brian stepped forward, she backed away in horror. He towered over her, his hands bloody.
It was
okay. He was okay.
He was the guy who had saved her, she told herself, but her brain had trouble catching up.

He stood for a moment, looking at her, then went to squat next to the man and search the body. She looked away, gagging anew at the sight of the blood that was now pooling on the ground.

“We have to get moving,” he said a minute later.

She nodded and stood, held her pants together with one hand as she walked toward the opening of the cave.

“Where is the other gun?” Brian left the man and was coming toward her with the new rifle and the extra knife.

She flinched away. “Back in the corridor. I dropped it.” Her voice trembled. “It's too dark to see in there.”

He looked her over, then went back to the fallen man, took his belt and held it out for her. She couldn't bring herself to touch it. Brian nodded and gave her the rope that held up his own pants. When she didn't move, he helped her tie her khakis in place, touching her as little as possible. She was shaking by the time he was done.

“There are a half-dozen guerillas a quarter mile downhill. Stay behind me and stay quiet,” he said as he stepped out of the cave.

His knee was killing him. Brian looked up, but could not see the sun from the thick canopy above. Still, it had to be close to the end of the day. The animals were beginning to make their evening sounds, and light had dimmed a little in the last half hour or so. Night fell fast in the jungle, and they hadn't found shelter yet. The hillside was supposed to be riddled with caves. Just not when you were looking for one.

“We'll stop here,” he said.

At least the rain had quit for now. He leaned his gun against a tree trunk and scanned the ground for some dry leaves and twigs. But, of course, everything was wet and so were they. The air was cooling off fast. Their soaked-through clothing would be cold and uncomfortable during the night, if he didn't manage to make a fire.

He was used to this state of miserable affairs, but she wasn't. If she got sick and weak it would slow them down, and that was something they couldn't afford. And there was the matter of food, too. While he would have been fine with eating the meat raw, he doubted she felt the same. “Look for anything you think might burn.”

“Won't a fire give us away?”

“Nobody walks in the jungle at night unless they absolutely have to. The chance of injury is too high, too easy to fall into something, getting bitten by things you can't see.” He didn't mention the night predators, didn't want to make her too nervous to sleep. “My guess is Omar and his band will hole up somewhere for the night and start out fresh in the morning, hoping they'll come across our trail.”

He reached for the paper in his shirt pocket. Soaking wet. Figured. A few minutes passed before he found a handful of dry leaves under a bush. He crumbled the leaves into a small pile, set a chunk of dry bark on top of them. From his shirt, he got some of the rope Audrey had been tied up with. That was wet, too, but it didn't matter for his purposes. He peeled off a quarter-inch strand and made a small bow with a green stick. Then he found a dry one, sharpened one end and placed it in the middle
of the bark next to the tinder and began moving it with the bow, as fast as he could, putting on the pressure.

He saw Audrey shiver from the corner of his eye. It would have been good if he could have brought the shirt from the man he'd taken out at the cave, but he had to leave it behind. The last thing you wanted in the jungle was to smell like blood. She probably wouldn't have put it on anyway.

“Can I do anything?”

“No,” he said at first, then changed his mind and instructed her on how to make a sleeping platform. Better for both of them if she pulled her own weight. If anything happened to him, her life would be easier if she'd learned a few skills. He worked on making the fire while he explained what needed to be done.

An hour went by, maybe two, before he caught the faint scent of smoke—he had lost his once keen sense of time while in the cage. He blew gently on the leaves until he saw the first ember glow in the night that had fallen around them. He gave it more air then fed the small fire. There. They would be fine.

Audrey brought him a handful of dry twigs.

He took the wood with a nod. “Are you all right?”

She hadn't said a word since they had left the cave. He had let her be, not wanting to push.

“Fine.”

The fire had grown enough so he could see her face now. Her expression was somber, but the shock and revulsion he'd seen at the cave were gone. She had been scared out of her wits. The man he had been four years ago could have comforted her. Now he had no idea what to say, what to do.

He was no good for her. Hell, he was probably no good for anyone. For anything.

The question he had tried to avoid wouldn't go away. How was he supposed to go back to normal civilian life?

Because he definitely couldn't go back to his job at the SDDU. Not with his bad leg. That position was history. Trouble was, he didn't know how to do anything else.

For a moment back in the cave, she had looked at him as if he was as much of a monster as the man he had pulled off her. She was probably right. But by God, he wanted it to be different.

“I had to do that,” he said quietly. “You're safe with me.”

“I know.” She lifted her gaze to him. “I should have handled it better. You did it for my sake.”

Her acceptance loosened some of the tight darkness inside him. The light of the flames bathed her face in a warm glow as she looked straight into his eyes without a trace of fear or loathing.

“I was trying to reach his knife. I think if I did, I might have done the same.”

“Sometimes you don't have a choice.”

She nodded. “You saved my life twice. Thank you.”

She reached out and put a hand on his, briefly, warm and soft. He jerked away on reflex, not used to human touch that didn't hurt, then swore as he burned the back of his wrist in the fire.

Startled, she pulled away.

Damn. “Which one of you was going to adopt?” he asked—the first question that came to his mind.

“Me.”

He took a slow breath as he untied the small bundle that hung from his shoulder. “How come your husband didn't come with you?”

“I don't have a husband.”

He opened the sack he'd woven from strips of palm leaves to carry the squirrel-like animal he had killed earlier.

“One of those independent women?”

“One of those women whose husband couldn't take the stress of infertility treatments and left her for a simpler relationship,” she said quietly.

“Sounds like a real jerk.” She was still young, though. He figured her for thirty, if that, with all kinds of possibilities still ahead of her.

She didn't respond.

“Sorry. It's none of my business.”

“It's okay. And Josh is okay, too. I mean—I guess, some things just aren't meant to be.” Sadness laced her voice.

Why the hell had he brought up this topic? Damn, he sucked at the pep-talk thing. Better focus on something he knew how to do.

He skewered their dinner—had already skinned and gutted the squirrel when he caught it—and held their meal above the flames. There was pitifully little meat on the bones, hardly enough for one person, let alone two, but it was better than nothing. They would manage.

She combed her fingers through her damp hair and moved closer to the fire. “How long have you been here?”

“Four years.” The words burned his throat.

She looked up at him wide-eyed. “Have you ever tried to escape before?”

Hell, yes. That's how he had known about the caves. But they had caught him each time. He had been too impatient, trying to make a break for it before he had his strength back.

He shrugged. “For the first year, I couldn't walk. Then I got malaria and was too weak to get away. I did try, mind you. Then they stuck me in a damn cage.”

“Why didn't they ransom you?”

“They didn't know who to ask for money. I wouldn't tell them who I was. And they thought I might have some useful information.”

Then by the time they figured out he wouldn't talk, the disagreement over his fate had been too public of a quarrel. Jamil couldn't shoot him at that point without making it seem like he was bending to his younger brother's will. And they couldn't let him go, either. He had seen too much. Sometimes he wondered if Jamil was simply waiting for him to give up the fight and die.

Audrey was looking at him in bewilderment. “Why would they think you had any information that concerned them?”

“It's a long story.”

“Are you some kind of a spy or something?” she asked after a while, staring at him with suspicion.

“Military.”

“Why didn't they come to rescue you?”

“They don't know I'm alive.”

His team had been spread out in the jungle, looking for a group of Muslim extremists who had crossed the border from Indonesia to purchase explosives. He had found a cache of TNT in an underground bunker, called in the location. Unfortunately, the Malaysian military had chosen that day to crack down on some bothersome guerillas and had dropped
a couple of bombs over the forest where they'd thought the guerillas had been hiding. One of the bombs had hit the bunker.

The force of the explosion had thrown him clear, which was the only reason he had survived—with his skin torn off his side, his leg broken in several places and a severe concussion. Jamil and his men had found him, taken him with them. He remembered little of those first weeks. They'd recognized him as a soldier and had questioned him when he'd recovered. When he wouldn't speak, Omar had rebroken his leg.

“Do you have a family back in Montana?”

He turned the meat over the fire. “My parents have passed away. They adopted me when they were older.” And marriage had never been in the cards for him. It didn't mesh with his job. “Do you have any other siblings?”

“Just Nicky.”

“It must have been hard losing her.”

A look of determination crossed her face. “I'm going to find her and get her back.”

“She's alive? Why didn't Omar's men bring her back to camp?”

“A little over a week ago, we were supposed to go on a four-day tour to Gunung Mulu National Park. I had to stay behind at the last minute. The judge was asking for more documentation for the adoption and
I was meeting with the lawyer I hired here, so Nicky went alone. Not alone, I mean. A whole group went with a guide.” She looked down at her hands. “They were attacked by guerillas and twelve tourists were taken hostage. The demand is a million dollars per person.”

She had to be kidding. “You came to the jungle to rescue her?”

“I came to pay the ransom.” She reached under her shirt and pulled out a crumpled, wet piece of paper. “It's a bank account I opened a couple of days ago.”

He glanced at the smudged printout that showed a cool million as account total.

“The Malaysian government is negotiating with the guerillas and told the family members to stay put, but I couldn't do it. These things never end well. The military will attack, half the hostages won't make it. I've seen it on TV before…. No government will ever admit that they don't have everything under control.”

“So you grabbed a million from your savings and ran off into the jungle? How were you planning on finding them? Does the government know where they are?”

She shook her head. “They're still gathering intelligence. My brother-in-law wired the money.”

“Why isn't he here?”

“He's coming. I just— I didn't want to wait. I
hired a local guide who said he could take me to a village frequented by the guerillas.”

“There are dozens of guerilla groups scattered over the island.”

“I figured they could point me in the right direction.”

“And what were you going to do when you got to the ones who have your sister?”

“Show them the account to prove that the money is here in the country, have one of the men come with me and Nicky to the nearest bank. I would have had the money wired there and given him the cash. He walks out with the money, I walk out with Nicky.”

All right, there was a slim chance it could have worked, if she made it as far as the right guerilla camp, but trusting her fate to the first group of bandits she had come across had been a mistake. “There's no honor among thieves.”

She gave him a don't-I-know-it look. “The guide led me to a village high up the hills and disappeared by morning. Then the fighters came and took me with them. They had me bound and gagged, I couldn't even talk to them.”

“I used to have some connections,” he said, surprising himself. “When we get to the nearest town, Miri, I'll see what I can do about your sister.” He had a pretty good idea where the hostages were.

“How far is Miri?”

“A good week of walking if we don't run into any trouble.”

He saw her pale in the firelight.

“I don't have a week. The ransom deadline is in four days.”

Damn. He clamped his jaw together, fighting the inevitable.

She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, her eyes wide with desperation. “What if I allowed myself to be recaptured? I could show the fighters the bank statement and tell them they would get a reward if they took me to the group who has the hostages. Maybe you could follow us to make sure nothing bad happened,” she added, barely disguised hope all over her heart-shaped face.

“That's not how it works, Audrey. These people don't engage in dialogue.” He wanted to make her understand. “It would be like it was back at the cave.”

She went still and after a moment, nodded.

“They might shoot you on sight because you made them chase you around. Or they might do worse. And if you told them about the money, they would take you to the bank to get it without going anywhere near your sister.”

She stayed silent for a while. “You're right,” she said, her eyes glistening. “I failed.”

He hated the misery on her face. She'd come here
to adopt a child, and her sister had come to help. It wasn't fair.

Then again, what in life was?

He watched her struggle with her tears and something twisted inside him, an emotion he barely recognized shook loose—compassion. He opened his mouth. This was a bad idea. He drew in a lungful of jungle air, a mixture of the musty smell of decomposing leaves and the light scent of orchids. “We'll get your sister back.”

In an instant, her eyes filled with so much hope and trust, he had to look away. Sure as hell, he didn't deserve anyone looking at him that way.

He had to be insane. The captivity had done it to him, and the beatings. Somewhere along the line he had lost his mind. Because if he wasn't one hundred percent stir-crazy, he wouldn't have committed himself to overtaking a guerilla camp alone.

No, not alone. Alone would have been a step up from what he was planning to do. He was going to try to pull off a major operation with a civilian in tow.