Operation Summer Storm (11 page)

She was taken into a small building made of bamboo and pushed into the middle of the room to stand before a middle-aged man dressed in a worn military uniform. Summer thought the Khmer Rouge had been eradicated from the jungles of Cambodia so she was surprised to see the man before her standing in front of large portrait of Pol Pot and the red flag of the Khmer Rouge behind his desk.

At school, she remembered watching a documentary on Pol Pot and his reign of terror over this part of the world. A memory of images in a high school which had been used as a prison during the Khamar rouge’s regime, now a Museum in Phnom Penh. A tribute to the millions of Cambodians who were tortured and murdered both there and in the place they call the killing fields not far from the capital. The image of thousands of skulls in display cabinets had remained with her from the documentary. A shiver of repulsion ran through her as she gazed upon the picture of the horrible little man on the wall before shifting back to the man in the room. His once proud uniform had become shabby and faded over what looked like many years. He seemed to be a man accustomed to power. His army may have been defeated and sent packing into these highland outskirts but it was obvious to Summer, around here this man was still a general—clearly in charge of his troops.

It seemed a universal phenomenon that military men had very limited choices in job prospects once their use by date was up— beyond their regimental armies. This man apparently had refused to give up his role as dictator and was happy to strut his stuff inside this small, yet deadly looking, prison camp. He spoke sharply to her two captors, firing questions; a suspicious frown creasing his round face.

She dropped her eyes demurely to the floor, reminding herself that any minute Tate would come blazing down the mountainside and rescue her. The minutes ticked by and the man before her slapped his thigh softly with a small whip keeping in time with the clock inside her head…yep…any moment now…

Chapter Seven

The two men who’d delivered her stood to one side and Summer heard, rather than saw, the interrogation of scar face and his sidekick. She dared not lift her gaze trying to remain as invisible as possible before her captor but it was safe to say from the roasting they were receiving, they had not supplied the man with the answers he wanted.

She wondered how she was going to explain her presence here once they thought to question her. Maybe it
won’
t be necessary, she thought clutching at a sudden straw—maybe none of them spoke English.

“What is your name?”

Hope crumbled before her eyes.

Realizing she had to face this man whether she liked it or not, she raised her eyes to meet his with as much courage as she could summon and held his cold, black eyes while trying not to show her mounting fear.

“What is your name?” he repeated, this time with more than a touch of impatience.

“Summer Sheldon,” she answered, in a voice that shook.

Why did I say that?
she thought, wondering if that slap to the face earlier had done some serious damage after all.

Should she have given her real name? Damn it, she really sucked at this espionage stuff. “It’s okay; just breathe,” she told herself firmly, Willow wouldn’t have given her maiden name to these men, so she couldn’t be linked to her…hopefully.

She saw his squinty black eyes narrow even further before he tilted his head slightly, as though considering her. “Your accent? It is Australian?”

Could she deny it? Would this little weasel of a man be able to tell the difference between and Australian and a New Zealand accent? To most foreigners they were almost identical.

“No I’m from New Zealund,” she answered, pronouncing the ‘and’ in the typically New Zealand ‘und’ accent.

“How did you find this place?” he demanded.

“I didn’t; your men found me,” she told him and held his hard, black stare.

“What are you doing here?”

Summer thought with frantic desperation. What did she tell him? Would he believe she’d tracked him down all by herself to find her sister? She didn’t think so. How did she protect the men, still out there somewhere?

“Research,” she blurted. “I’m researching…the rainforest,” she answered, and bit the inside of her lip. Lying was not her forte. Willow was forever teasing her about it.
Oh, to be a compulsive liar,
she thought with desperate longing.

“Where are your papers?” he demanded as Scar face and his short friend commenced pulling out the contents of her pack behind her.

“I don’t have them with me.”

“Where did you get these things?” he nodded toward the ration packs.

Summer eyed the things on his small table, “I bought them.” That much was true.

“They are military—where did you get them?” he demanded, his eyes narrowing in suspicion as he came from behind his desk, to stand before her.

“You can buy anything on the Internet, even military items.”

For goodness sake, the man probably brought half his damn ammunition over the Internet, why was he so suspicious about a stupid backpack?

He eyed her with a calculating expression; his cold gaze swept her from head to toe without bothering to hide his contempt, causing her heart to skip a beat.

A soldier called from outside, came in to take her away, nudging her impatiently outside.

With a careful expression, she braced herself, as a thought occurred to her. If Willow greeted her as her sister, then her poorly constructed lie would be blown out of the water. She’d be forced to come up with another reason as to why she was alone in the middle of a Cambodian jungle.

They stopped outside a small hut and Summer felt the sweat run down her back in nervous anticipation. Inside it was dark. There were no windows; only a few slits in the walls to allow a minimum of light and air through. Summer almost gagged against the strong stench of sweat, and the unemptied toilet bowl in the far corner.

Two women sat on the floor, huddled together fearfully. Her heart skipped a beat as she tried to get a look at their faces but it was impossible to make them out in the dim light, inside the hut as they cowered in the corner. Summer received a hard prod from the guard and unable to break her fall with her hands still tied, she landed on her hip, unable to smother a cry of pain.

As the door closed, plunging the room into further darkness, Summer awkwardly pushed herself into a sitting position and heard the shallow breathing of the two women across from her.

“Willow?” she whispered.

Slowly one of the women moved away from the wall and crawled cautiously toward her. Summer held her breath as the woman drew closer and her heart plummeted to her feet.

The woman was not Willow.

Her despair was slightly appeased though, as she caught a glimpse of the woman’s face. She recognized her from the photos that had accompanied Willow’s on the news reports just after the initial kidnapping.

“You must be Michelle,” Summer whispered.

The woman gave a slight incline of her head—her eyes wide with an expression of both surprise and optimism. “Who are you? How do you know my name?” the heavy French accent sounded rusty with lack of use.

“I’ve seen your picture in the papers. The journalist who was with you when you were captured—so you know what happened to her?”

A flash of fear raced through the woman’s eyes and Summer felt her heart lurch sickenly.

“They took her away.”

No. She hadn’t come all this way, to discover Willow had been taken somewhere else…“Where did they take her?”

Michelle just shook her head sadly.

“Here,” she moved forward to untie the rope but the slightest movement, seemed to burn Summer’s raw wrists and she had to bite her lip so she didn’t cry out. Finally, the rope came loose and she held her injured wrists against her chest, waiting for the initial pain to subside.

She studied Michelle as she’d worked on her ropes; she was small, blonde, and beneath the lacerations and bruising on her fair skin would normally be quite pretty. “Are you all right?”

She gave a delicate shrug, “We are alive. No?” she said, with a soft French accent. Summer judged her to be in her mid-twenties, but there was a somber look in her eyes giving her a much older appearance.

The other woman had to be Anna. She looked to be around the same age as the other woman but her eyes had a haunted look that caused Summer to shiver. Both women were terribly malnourished. She itched to get her hands on her medical kit but it had been confiscated back in the commander’s office…the fat little toad.

“Michelle—please tell me what you know about Willow. How long ago was she taken?”

“Maybe two days? It’s becoming harder to remember the days. She was alive,” the woman frowned slightly. “She was still calling them names.”

Summer felt a tiny flutter of relief; at least her spirit hadn’t been broken by the sounds of it…at least not then. A shiver of alarm raced through her—what if they were too late?

“Does anyone know where we are? Are they going to pay to release us?” Anna asked hesitantly.

“They know,” Summer assured her quietly. “They’re working on it,” she hoped…

* * * *

The day grew hotter and the stale, heavy air inside the small hut became even more oppressive. Summer felt nauseous. It was too hot to move so the women lay still, conserving what little strength they had left.

This was all going wrong. Where the hell, was Willow?

She couldn’t imagine how these women managed to survive in this place for the last few weeks. She closed her eyes and whispered a frantic prayer for Tate to come and get them soon. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to survive this place the way these women had.

Later that afternoon, she heard the sound of an engine approaching and Summer moved to the small slit in the wall to see what was happening. A car drove into the compound and a man climbed from its rear seat dressed in clean, freshly laundered, and ironed trousers and a crisp white shirt. It was obvious the air-conditioning he’d just exited had worked wonders as there was not a single sweat stain on the man. Summer knew right then and there the epitome of envy in its purest form.

Bastard.

He strolled towards the little General and they exchanged a few words before heading into the Generals hut. There had been something vaguely familiar about the man but Summer couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

After a while the door to the Generals hut opened and the two men walked back toward the car. The stranger paused as he was about to climb into the back seat of his car and looked up. Realistically, Summer knew he couldn’t possibly see her from where he was but she jumped away from the peep hole as though he could. Her skin began to crawl with an instinctive warning that this man was someone to be afraid of.

* * * *

A commotion outside raised the curiosity of the women and they moved to the narrow slats in the wall once more to look outside. Soldiers milled around. A few were busy setting up a camera on a tripod while others leaned casually on their weapons, chatting calmly as though they were meeting in the middle of town not standing there guarding a bunch of hostages in a mad man’s camp. There was little time to wonder about it as the door of their hut was thrown open and two guards came in waving their guns at them—indicating they were to go outside.

A few minutes later, a man staggered from a hut on the opposite end of the compound. He wore only a pair of filthy, torn trousers and Summer saw the wounds on his shirtless torso—were open and sore. A heavy helplessness invaded her body as the soldiers led him to a spot about fifteen feet across the courtyard and left him there.

Summer realized he must be the fourth hostage—the French doctor. A silence hushed the crowd as the commander strode confidently across the clearing and came to a stop before the cameras. With a nod of his head, the camera operator began filming.

She couldn’t hear all of what he said but she did catch the last part. “Now you will see the consequences of this non-compliance.” Then two soldiers stepped forward, aiming their rifles at the doctor.

Summer felt her heart literally stop. She realized what was about to happen but before her scream reached her lips. The men fired and all she could do was watch in horror as the doctor fell to a crumpled pile on the ground.

The reverberation of the gun shots hit her like a shockwave and the sound rang in her ears long after the soldiers lowered their weapons.

Beside her the nurses screamed hysterically, but Summer could only stare at the Doctor laying face down in a pool of blood that soaked the earth around his lifeless body. She was in shock—it had all happened so fast, and yet it replayed before her eyes as though in slow motion. Every detail vivid and brutal. The Doctors body jerking before he fell. The lingering scent of something metallic in the air—although barely noticeable—still registered. The camera stopped and the General walked slowly down the line, stopping before Summer, noticing the contemptuous look she could not hide. “Our hospitality is not to your liking?” he asked.

“You had no right to kill that man,” she told him barely able to speak through the mounting horror of what she had just witnessed.