Under the Wire (25 page)

Near the Wahala-purha temple ruins

"How much longer do we wait?"

Lily was impatient. Manny understood that. She was probably also hungry and stiff. They'd been fixed on their bellies on the stone, watching the camp, for the past hour.

"As long as it takes," he said, although he'd pretty much come to the conclusion they were barking up the wrong banana tree.

He'd seen nothing to indicate there were hostages in the camp. No tents were under guard. There were no regularly scheduled spot checks to any particular location in the camp that would indicate concern over a hostage rescue.

The only thing that seemed to be of any consequence in the camp—aside from the fact that it was set up for a lot more personnel than were currently there—was the heavily guarded tarp.

He rubbed his palm over his jaw where a two-day stubble had started to itch. Guns, he was guessing. They probably had a shitload of guns—possibly some RPGs— stowed under the tarp. Which continued to make him nervous as hell. There was room under the canvas for enough weaponry to stage a major coup.

Which led to the logical question: Why would they need that much firepower unless they were preparing to launch an attack? And why would the Tigers risk it in the middle of Sinhalese territory? It wasn't their style— and with good reason. Their military—regardless of this cache of weapons—was outnumbered ten to one.

If they were stupid enough to launch an attack, though, just where did that land Adam and the Muhandiramalas? Were they insurance? Or were they a catalyst for some brewing martyrdom plot? And if Manny was right about his suspicions that Adam and the rest were being held at another location, why did it appear that this particular camp may be planning a major battle so far away from the northern territory?

Christ.
None of it made sense. Manny thought about Dallas. Wondered if he'd successfully breached the Tiger headquarters in the north and found any information of use. Dallas could handle himself; still, Manny couldn't help but wonder if Dallas was all right. And hope to hell he was able to make some connections that would both clarify and help in Adam's rescue.

Manny couldn't worry about Dallas now. He had enough to deal with right here. He scanned the area again with the field glasses, and, not for the first time, it struck him how much Sri Lanka reminded him of Nicaragua. And not just that the people lived under the constant threat of war. Everything from the lush jungles, to the climate, to the coastal ports made him think of home.

The last time he'd been home as a citizen of Nicaragua, Lily had filled not only his nights and his bed but also his every waking thought. He was a U.S. citizen now. Glad for it. Proud of it.

But other things, he realized with weary acceptance, never changed. Lily still filled his head—though she no longer shared his bed. Right, wrong, somewhere in between, when this mission was behind them, that was going to change.

A lot of things were going to change. He was a father. He would know his son.

And his son's mother—well. Other than fear for her child, frustration with Manny, and the occasional look that made him think she may be as aware of him as he was of her, he didn't know what their future held. And other than having her in his bed, he wasn't certain what he wanted from her.

"Why do you think Ethan hasn't checked in yet?"

Lily's question broke into his thoughts, jarring him back to the ridge.

"Wish I had a good answer for that. The simple one is that something's interfering with our satellite link."

"And a not so simple answer?"

Manny didn't think she'd want to hear the not so simple answer. And he didn't want to think about the possibility that whoever had been tailing them might have made a move and Ethan was not in a position to make contact. Manny didn't want to think about that any more than he wanted to think about what was happening with Dallas.

Manny rolled a shoulder, then his neck, working the burn out of muscles grown stiff from holding the same position for so long.

"Whoa—" He stilled when sudden activity, lots of it, had soldiers scurrying every which way in the camp. "Something's happening."

He adjusted the focus on the field glasses, watched as the camp commander—Manny had spotted the rank of captain on the Tamil officer's uniform—talked into a two-way and barked orders.

"Shit," Manny swore when one of the fighters joined the officer and both of them trained field glasses on the rim where he and Lily were hunkered down. "Looks like we've been made."

"They've spotted us?"

Before he could answer, a dozen rebel fighters ran toward the tarp. They quickly undid the bungee cords that held down the canvas and rolled it back.

"Moth-er-fuck-er," Manny muttered when he got a bead on the piece of artillery perched on the ground like a great beached whale. It was a goddamn cannon! An M-102 howitzer, for chrissake. Talk about overkill. No wonder they had a two-and-a-half-ton truck. They needed something that big to tow it.

What the hell were they doing with that gun? More to the point, where did they get it? The M-102s had seen a lot of action during the Vietnam conflict, but the U.S. Army, for one, had pretty much deep-sixed those bad boys from their arsenal twenty-plus years ago. How one had ended up in the Tigers' hands was anybody's guess.

He refocused the field glasses and damn near swallowed his tongue when they shoved a 105mm round into the breech and prepared to strike the primer. Then they set a trajectory that aimed dead center at the rock where he and Lily were lying.

The bad news: If the sucker was functional, Manny and Lily were charred toast. The good news: The gun was a relic. The chances were good that the rebels could smoke themselves if the weapon misfired.

He wasn't going to wait around to find out who came out ahead in this deadly game.

"Move it," he ordered, scrambling backward. He grabbed both his pack and hers along with his rifle.
She'd make a good soldier,
he thought as they crab-crawled at warp speed down the back of the slope. She didn't question. She just moved—although she was falling behind him.

And then all he could think about was keeping her alive when he heard the unmistakable report of the big gun being fired.

He grabbed her ankle, jerked her down the slope toward him, and lunged on top of her all in one motion. Then he covered her head and prayed there'd be enough left of him to get her out of the line of fire when the smoke cleared.

The mortar round whooshed overhead, then detonated with a ground-shaking concussion that exploded through his eardrums like a pack of cherry bombs in a bucket of water.

He made a cave of his arms and hunkered deeper over Lily's head, waited for the pain, for the rain of rock and dirt and blood that would follow.

Nothing.

The only thing moving in the aftermath of the explosion was the woman beneath him; the only sounds were the ringing in his ears, Lily's muffled, "I can't breathe!" and the unmistakable crackle of a roaring gas fire.

Stunned to be in one piece, he rolled off of her, made a quick recon of the immediate area, and saw not a blade of grass out of place. "What the—" and then he saw it. Smoke. Thick, black, and boiling out of the ravine behind them.

The ravine where they'd left the jeep under the copse of Palu trees.

"What
was
that?" Lily half-whispered, half-croaked, as she struggled to get her breath back.

It registered peripherally that he must have knocked the wind out of her when he'd thrown himself on top of her.

"That," he said, grabbing her hand and dragging her to her feet, "was one big mother of a gun. And that fire you see," he continued as he led her at a run down the hill, away from the burned-out jeep and toward the jungle, "was our ride."

"Oh God," she gasped after a quick glance in the direction of the fire.

"Guess we know where the rest of those soldiers were." He jumped a piece of deadfall, racing for the nearest copse of trees. The additional troops must have been out scouting, running a training exercise—whatever—and had stumbled across the jeep. They'd evidently radioed back coordinates for the mortar round.

Manny hoped to hell he and Lily made it to the cover of the jungle before they became the next target of the big gun.

"Where are we go—"

"Just run!" he barked, eating up ground as fast as he could with his pack and hers and his rifle slung over one shoulder and her hand latched in a death grip in his other. "With a little luck, they won't spot us."

The static, tattoo report of automatic weapon fire broke out not more than a hundred yards behind them. The rounds whistled past his left ear just as he ducked and rolled and dragged Lily with him.

Ho-kay. So luck wasn't on the table.

And Mother Nature picked that exact moment to unload with a late-morning downpour. The clouds that had been milling overhead like swarming bees opened up, burst like popped water balloons, and drenched him and Lily to the skin just as they ducked under the thick, green canopy of the rain forest—a squad of Tiger rebels hot on their trail.

Tiger headquarters, Jaffna Peninsula

"You're a popular fellow," Ramanathan said dryly as Dallas's SAT phone rang.

It was the second time in as many minutes. Dallas had no doubt it was Ethan or Manny. He also had no illusions about the wisdom of answering. He had an audience with the head of the LTTE. In Sri Lanka, that was on the scale of an audience with the Pope, only Ramanathan would never be confused as a holy man in a civilized world.

"My brother," Dallas said, referring to his ringing phone. "Most likely he's worried about me."

"As well he should be," Ramanathan said with a sardonic smile. "Now tell me what it is you braved death to ask of me."

"We have lost something. Something precious. The speculation is that you may ... be in a position to help us locate it."

"Something so precious that you risk your life. Interesting. Tell me more."

Dallas would like nothing better than to lean across the desk and wrap his hands around the slimy little bastard's neck. Instead, Dallas leaned back in the chair that had been provided for him and crossed his ankle over his knee. He flicked at the dust on his pant leg and played the game.

"A boy. An American. Adam Campora. He's in Sri Lanka on a humanitarian mission."

"How noble. And this concerns me how?"

Dallas met Ponnambalam Ramanathan's cold eyes. "He's disappeared. Amithnal Muhandiramala, his wife, Sathi, and their daughter, Minrada, Adam's host family, have also disappeared."

Ramanathan toyed with his knife, turning it over and over in his hand. "And you assume I have something to do with this—"

"Disappearance? No." Dallas shook his head, understanding that an outright accusation of abduction would only meet with more resistance. "I have high hopes, however, that you might have some information that would assist in recovering both the Muhandiramalas and Adam."

"Muhandiramala," Ramanathan mused. "Why is that name familiar? Oh wait. It comes to me. He's a member of the Sinhalese parliament, correct?"

Dallas simply met Ramanathan's hard stare. The general knew exactly who Muhandiramala was and his importance in the Sinhalese government.

"You are a fool on a fool's mission," Ramanathan said at last. "I know nothing of this."

Dallas didn't bat an eye and played his trump card. "Word is that you've suffered some setbacks . . . financially," he said without missing a beat.

Ramanathan's sharp gaze latched on to Dallas like an infrared beam. "And you wish to make a contribution to the cause? How generous."