Running from the Devil

1

EMMA CALDRIDGE WENT TO SLEEP IN FIRST CLASS ON A BRITISH Airlines flight from Miami to Bogotá, and woke sixty seconds before the plane was downed in the Colombian jungle.

It was the middle of the week in early August, and the half-empty plane contained business travelers, a few tourists, and Emma. A chemist and endurance racer, Emma was on a mission to reclaim her life. Dying in a plane crash would be a cruel twist of fate, but only one of the many cruel twists she’d endured this year.

She listened as the pilot’s voice came over the intercom, warning them that the airstrip he’d been ordered to use was too small for the jet and asking the passengers to assume crash position. Emma pulled her backpack out from under the seat in front of her and curled over it.

The plane pointed downward at an angle so extreme that Emma slid forward in her seat. The walls vibrated as the jet picked up speed. The engines whined while the plane tilted from side to side, as if the pilot and the copilot were in a battle for the controls. The other passengers started screaming.

The cabin depressurized and the temperature dropped so fast that ice formed on the windows right before Emma’s eyes. She tried to breathe, but her lungs felt like they were collapsing from the inside. The screaming passengers went silent, as if they no longer had enough breath to shriek. The ceiling opened up and the air masks dropped down, swaying on their rubber tubes. Emma snatched at her mask, yanking it once before sucking greedily into the yellow cup.

They hit the ground with a huge bang, still catapulting forward. The lights went out, plunging them into darkness. Only the tiny row of exit lights running along the floor remained on, illuminating their path to nowhere. Emma’s seat pulled away from the floor and she flew into the black.

2

EDWARD BANNER STOOD IN THE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER OF the United States Southern Command in Miami and watched as a breathless CNN correspondent broke the news about Flight 689 to the world. Carol Stromeyer, his company’s vice president, stood next to him.

“Did you brief CNN?” Banner said.

“I left that to the State Department. They’re trying to control the information flow.”

“Do we have a manifest?”

“British Airlines is faxing it now.”

“Was a marshal on board?”

“We don’t think so.”

Banner pulled a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. His blue suit fit to perfection, and his tie formed a faultless knot at the neck of his custom-made shirt. Former military and current CEO of Darkview, a company that provided special forces personnel under contract to the Department of Defense, Banner brooked no wrinkles, slackers, or untidy Windsor knots. Despite his current age of forty-five, he could still shoot a rifle with deadly aim, dispatch an assailant with a well-placed kick, and outdrive the best of them behind the wheel of an armored Mercedes. Only he knew that his contact lenses were bifocals, his right hand sometimes shook from a bullet-wound injury he’d sustained fifteen years ago, and his left rotator cuff throbbed every time it rained.

“Any idea how this happened?”

Stromeyer sighed. “None. The pilot’s last communication was a routine check with the control tower. After that, silence.”

“Then why do we think it was hijacked?”

“It was a flight to Bogotá, but it turned long before and headed to the mountains.”

“Any chance that the instruments failed and sent the pilot off course?”

“Not likely.”

“Did it veer toward Venezuela?”

Stromeyer shook her head. “Don’t know. The hijacker turned off the tracking transponder. It could be anywhere.”

“Has anyone contacted the Colombian government?”

“Everyone has contacted the Colombian government. They claim to know nothing more than we do.”

“They’re lying. A jet that size doesn’t change its flight plan unannounced without someone noticing something. At the very least, land-based radar would paint the jet as it flew by.”

“They think it was downed in the northwestern mountains, near the Venezuelan border.”

“That’s the Freedom Fighters of Colombia territory.”

“And the drug cartels.”

“And way too close to Venezuela,” Banner said.

Stromeyer nodded. “Intelligence is trying to determine if anyone from that country had a hand in the incident. If they did, the press will go into a frenzy. It’ll take their focus off the Middle East.”

“What time do we brief the president?”

“In ten minutes,” Stromeyer said. “I’ll check for the fax and meet you there.”

Banner watched her leave. At forty, Carol Stromeyer was one of the best officers he’d ever met. She was as well trained as he in the fighting arts, but had never employed her skills in the field. She’d spent her early years in the administrative and noncombat roles routinely relegated to women in the army. She’d risen through the ranks by virtue of her almost uncanny ability to find any piece of information within five minutes, and her detailed knowledge of all things, and forms, bureaucratic. If a new unit needed commissioning, money needed assigning, or a whole army brigade needed moving, Stromeyer knew who to contact to get it done and what forms to file in triplicate to grease the wheels. When Banner left the special forces to start Darkview, she was the first person he’d recruited.

Banner figured she’d have the manifest in three minutes and detailed information on every passenger listed in under twenty-four hours.

He grabbed a notepad from his desk and headed to the meeting.

3

EMMA LANDED ON HER BACK IN SOME BUSHES, STILL STRAPPED into the seat. Her arms flung outward, and the backpack flew off her lap. An explosion ripped through the air, sending a wave of heat washing over her. She struggled to remove her seat belt, rolled off the seat, and staggered to her feet.

What she saw was Dante’s Inferno.

Emma stood to the right of the wreckage. The plane’s nose and what was left of the first-and business-class cabins lay in front of her about one hundred yards. The remaining debris sat farther back and at a forty-five-degree angle to the makeshift runway, with a gaping hole where the plane had ripped in half.

People swarmed at the hole in the fore section. The lucky ones jumped to the ground. The unlucky ones fell when they were pushed from behind by the stampeding passengers.

The people from the aft section of the plane were not as fortunate, because the rear of the plane was on fire. Heavy black smoke poured from the twisted metal. The passengers jumped from this section of the plane as well, but some were already burning. They dropped and rolled, but as they did the flames increased. The ruptured fuel tanks sprayed fuel everywhere, and the people were rolling in it and reigniting themselves Several trees caught fire. Emma watched as the spewing fuel leaped out to meet them. When the fuel reached the burning trees, they exploded, sending a huge fireball into the air. The force kicked Emma’s feet from under her and threw her several feet. Her back hit a tree and she slid down it. Her legs didn’t seem to work. She slumped at the base of the tree and watched the carnage. Huge tongues of fire shot straight upward, turning the sky an orange-red color.

A large group of men, all armed and dressed in fatigues, stood at the beginning of the runway next to the plane’s tail. Their faces glowed red and black in the eerie blaze of the fires. The men watched in fascination as the passengers jumped from the airplane. They roared with laughter each time a passenger rolled and caught on fire. Light flickered off the bottles of liquor they passed from man to man.

Hell comes complete with its own army, Emma thought.

The lead soldier barked an order, and the soldiers fanned out. They walked toward the plane, collecting any surviving passengers as they did.

Emma tried to stand, but the world spun around her. She dropped to the ground and crawled away from the landing strip. When she reached her backpack, she grabbed the strap and dragged it with her. Her fingers clutched at the earth as she pulled herself forward. She gasped for breath and shivered in what she supposed was some sort of shock reaction. She couldn’t control the shaking. The blood from a cut on her head had congealed into a sticky mass from her temple to her jaw. When she moved, the mess cracked, like dried mud. Her head pounded with an unholy sharp, stabbing pain. She stole a quick glance behind her. The men in fatigues were busy collecting the survivors. They didn’t look Emma’s way.

She focused on reaching the safety of the tree line. Once there, she scrambled into the forest and collapsed behind a fat bush. She rifled through her backpack, looking for her cell phone. She found it, flipped it open, and waited while it searched for service. After a minute, the screen displayed NO SERVICE. She felt blind panic rise in her, swamping her. She willed herself to calm.

“Screw it,” Emma whispered.

She typed a text message anyway. She knew that the text system often worked even when the phone service did not. Her fingers shook as she dialed her boss’s number and typed:

Am alive, plane downed, in jungle, army men taking hostages. Help.

Emma hit send and waited while the phone displayed a little hourglass that spun as it searched for service. After a minute the display read UNABLE TO SEND.

“You worthless piece of shit!” Emma hissed out loud at the phone. She turned it off and snapped it shut. She slumped back down and stared at the burning treetops. Her eyes grew heavy, her head ached. She felt a strange languor wash over her. She worried that a concussion was causing her drowsiness, but she no sooner had that thought than she slipped into unconsciousness. The orange flames blurred as her mind shut down.

4

BANNER SAT IN SOUTHERN COMMAND’S CONFERENCE ROOM AND gazed at a large screen that contained a PowerPoint satellite photo of a black mushroom cloud. He wasn’t sure of the significance of the picture, but he figured it didn’t bode well.

Department of Defense, State Department, NORAD, and Department of Transportation personnel filled the room, as well as a soldier named Miguel Gonzalez, who’d been appointed to run a possible special operations first response force. About thirty, he was a slender five foot ten, and Banner guessed he was of Cuban descent. The others referred to him as “Major.” Banner didn’t know Miguel’s background, and no one offered the information. Presumably Stromeyer knew the details, but she hadn’t volunteered them, either.

The group in the room consisted of some of the best military and political minds in the country. The highest-ranking members of the army, navy, air force, and marines fiddled with legal pads, flipped pencils in the air, and sipped coffee from china cups that they held like mugs, ignoring the elegant, curved handles.

Jordan Whitter represented the political branch. Whitter’s reputation for maneuverability within the State Department was legendary. As a result, his career had already outlasted two presidents. Whitter had shrewd eyes and a lifelong bureaucrat’s aversion to sticking his neck out. He wore a dark suit and a striped tie that he kept adjusting.

Banner watched Whitter fidget with his tie and wondered why he’d chosen that particular combination. He’d bet a week’s salary that the stripes on the tie matched Whitter’s college colors.

Banner’s own participation in the meeting wasn’t clear, even to him. He attended at the request of an old friend, Brigadier General Robert Corvan. Corvan asked Banner to moderate the meeting, but made no mention of hiring Darkview for a mission.

When Darkview provided the military with highly qualified special operations personnel, Banner flew the men into extremely volatile situations—wars, guerrilla insurgencies, and genocidal civil conflicts. Although they often fought alongside the regular army, they were technically not a part of the United States military machine, and so their deployment could not be considered by the “host” country as a formal act of war.

The men’s unique status conferred some equally unique benefits. They were not required to follow military protocol, they had state-of-the-art equipment, and their pay was much better than their regular army counterparts. Their status conferred some negative consequences as well. Although they died in battle, their deaths were not included in official war tallies, no one hailed them as war heroes, nor did anyone present their widows with posthumous medals acknowledging their sacrifice. The unkind called them mercenaries.

Recovering a hijacked plane, even by force, could be handled by regular military search-and-rescue teams sent openly into the target area. Banner’s crew generally implemented covert missions, and so Banner wondered what the collected men in the room knew about this situation that he did not.

Miguel fiddled with a laptop computer, replaced the mushroom-cloud photo with a large satellite map of Colombia, and began his presentation.

“The first thing we did was look for any distress signals emitting from where we believe the plane landed. A satellite passing over Colombia returned a report of a cell-phone-based GPS transmission in this part of the country.” Miguel pointed to the northwestern mountains near the Colombia-Venezuela border.

“Unfortunately, the satellite passed again approximately one hundred minutes later, and the ping was gone.”

“Could it have been from a passenger’s phone?” the undersecretary of the navy said.

Miguel nodded. “The GPS transmission code was registered to a phone owned by a passenger named Emma Caldridge. And Ms. Caldridge was kind enough to send us a note.” The photo behind Miguel shifted to a copy of Emma’s text message. The words army men taking hostages were highlighted.

Whitter groaned. “This is awful.”

Banner couldn’t agree more, but he was surprised at Whitter’s empathetic response. Perhaps the man had a heart after all.

“I agree, sir. But at least we know that some people survived the crash. Better to be a hostage than dead,” Miguel said.

Whitter slapped his hand on the table. “Hostages are a political nightmare! How many? There were two hundred and sixteen people on that jet. This administration cannot have such a breach of security under its watch.”

What an asshole, Banner thought.

Miguel shook his head. “Tough to know how many survived. Once the cell-phone ping disappeared, we looked for any other anomalies that could indicate a downed jet, and we found this.”

The mushroom-cloud photo reappeared. Miguel pointed at it with a laser pointer.

“We believe it was a large explosion that caused this actual cloud. If this is the plane, either it exploded on landing, or it was deliberately exploded.”

“How long will it take to get a small troop to the location pinpointed by the cell phone transmission?” Banner said.

“It’s done already,” Miguel said.

“Excellent.” Whitter smiled for the first time that day.

Miguel grimaced. “We requested that the Colombian military send a helicopter to verify that it was the crash site and assist in a search-and-rescue mission. They did, and they say that no crash exists at those coordinates.”

Whitter’s face fell. “Could she have sent the message while the plane was still flying? Perhaps the plane continued on for a while?”

Miguel shook his head. “I doubt it.”

Whitter pointed at the screen. “What about your satellite? You got a picture of the mushroom cloud. How about a picture of the crash?”

Miguel shook his head again. “This area is mountainous and covered by dense foliage. Once the mushroom cloud dispersed, all we saw was green.”

“That’s FFOC territory, isn’t it?” Banner said.

“Not just FFOC. Every guerrilla and paramilitary group in Colombia keeps a satellite force here. It’s one of the most dangerous areas in Colombia, if not the world.”

“Why there?” Stromeyer said.

“The Oriental gas pipeline is there. The pipeline pumps fifty thousand tons of oil a day. The groups bomb it regularly and then extort protection money from Oriental and the nearby municipal authorities.”

Banner snorted. “I hope Oriental’s executives aren’t stupid enough to pay. They’ll never make a penny.”

“They did pay, until six months ago, when the United States sent a special operations force of five hundred men to protect the pipeline.”

Banner sat up straighter. “Why is the United States Army protecting a private corporation’s pipeline? Shouldn’t the corporation hire its own force to guard its property?”

“You mean like your guys?” Whitter’s disdain for Banner’s men rang in the room.

Banner stared Whitter down. He allowed no one to disrespect his men, especially a career politico in his college colors who had never fired a gun in his life.

“I mean exactly that,” Banner said. “Deploying regular army to protect a corporation, even an oil corporation, is a waste of the taxpayers’ dollars.”

“Mr. Banner, since 9/11 our new mission is to eradicate terrorism wherever it may exist in the world. If that means we send the military to protect an American corporation, then that’s what we’ll do,” Whitter said. Banner and Whitter glared at each other. Several people shifted uncomfortably in their seats as they watched the two men square off. The undersecretary of the army broke the stalemate.

“We’re there for training purposes only,” he said. He raised an eyebrow at Banner.

Miguel cleared his throat. “That mission, however, actually increased terrorism.”

Whitter shot a look at Miguel. “Explain that statement.”

“The special forces have been in a pitched battle with the FFOC and the cartels since they landed. We’ve been dropping tons of herbicide on their coca fields and intercepting their saboteurs on the pipeline almost nightly.”

“Who’s winning?” Whitter said.

“It was a stalemate. While the attacks on the pipeline diminished and some coca fields decreased, the cartels adjusted quickly. They’ve ordered the farmers to begin moving their crop to the base of the mountains, where the planes can’t spray, and this hijacking could be payback.” Miguel turned to Stromeyer. “Major Stromeyer, do you have any information on Emma Caldridge? Is she on your manifest?”

Stromeyer riffled through her many sheets of paper. She pulled one out with a passport picture at the top. A pretty young woman with brown hair and vivid green eyes gazed at the camera with a hint of a smile.

“Here she is!” Stromeyer waved the page at the others. “Emma Caldridge. Thirty years old. She’s a chemist working for Pure Chemistry, a laboratory specializing in formulating products for some of the top cosmetic companies in the world. Her supervisors say she’s one of the best chemists they’ve ever hired. She has an expertise in plants and herbs. She studies them for any special properties they may have in a cosmetic application.”

“You’ve spoken to her supervisors?” Whitter looked impressed.

Banner could have told Whitter that speaking to a key target’s supervisor would be the minimum Stromeyer would do. She had been working so long at her manifest lists that he suspected she had each person’s shoe size and preference in wine cataloged as well.

“A good dossier requires contact with someone with personal knowledge of the target,” Stromeyer said, sounding every bit the bureaucrat.

“All right,” Banner said. “What about boyfriends, husbands, lovers? Anyone she could have teamed up with to assist in this hijacking?”

Stromeyer looked startled. “You think she’s a player?”

Banner shrugged. “She survived and sent a text message, didn’t she? I wouldn’t rule anything out.”

Stromeyer nodded. “I see your point. She’s single, lives in Miami Beach, and travels for business. She was going to Bogotá to meet with a local scientist, and then was headed to Patagonia for an endurance race. No current boyfriend, although a secretary at the lab had heard a rumor that she’d previously been engaged to marry a man who died suddenly. I’m still working on that, as well as her family connections.”

“What does she do with her time? Does she belong to any questionable activist groups or have political affiliations?”

“Not at all. She works. And when she isn’t working, she runs ultramarathons.”

“What the hell is an ultramarathon?” Banner said.

“A marathon of thirty-five miles up to over one hundred.”

Banner couldn’t quite believe his ears. “Are we talking one hundred miles or one hundred kilometers?”

“Miles. I know it sounds crazy, but she literally runs one hundred miles at a time.”

Banner ran five miles every other day at five in the morning. He used a treadmill and watched the Early, Early show. It took him an hour and he was always happy to be finished.

“Hell of a way to spend your time,” Banner said.

“It is. And Ms. Caldridge ran the Badwater 135, one of the most grueling runs in the world.”

Miguel looked intrigued. “Why so?”

“It’s also known as the Death Valley run. The competitors run one hundred thirty-five miles through Death Valley. When Ms. Caldridge ran it last year, it was so hot that the rubber on the bottom of the competitors’ shoes melted to the pavement.”

Banner whistled. “Tough lady.”

“She had better be,” Miguel said, “because she’s going to have to outrun this man.” The photo behind him shifted again and a picture of a ferret-faced man in faded army fatigues filled the screen.

Miguel placed a laser dot on the man’s forehead. “This is Luis Rodrigo, head of a small band of paramilitary losers whose home base is in the mountains near where the mushroom cloud occurred.”

“What’s their role in all of this?” Banner could see from the picture that Rodrigo looked like a rodent and had the brains of a single-celled creature.

“We’re not sure, but his group camps in the vicinity of the mushroom cloud, and the location alone suggests he’s a player in the hijacking. If he is, we are dealing with a very bad guy.”

“Worse than your average guerrilla leader?”

Miguel nodded. “Much worse. Rodrigo is insane. He makes the leaders of the drug cartels look respectable by comparison. He governs a band of outcasts that have all been ousted from the more established organizations. Rodrigo, though, is able to control them. When one messes up he simply maims or kills the offender. He cuts off ears, tongues, and plucks out eyes. The really incompetent assholes he shoots. Lately he’s been said to have taken a page from the Afghan playbook and beheaded two particularly stupid soldiers.”

“If they’re so stupid, how did they plan and execute this hijacking?”

Miguel shook his head. “There is no way he did it alone. He must have had help. Either from the cartels or the FFOC, or both.”

“Do you think this man has control of the passengers?” Whitter said. He looked appalled.

“Anybody wandering around that location will have to deal with him eventually, so we need to extract any survivors quickly. This man is volatile and could kill them all in a fit of rage.”

“Suggestions?” Banner said.

Miguel nodded. “Wait until they make contact and then send them whatever ransom they demand. It’s the best plan for getting those people out alive, and the price demanded will pale in comparison to the cost of a rescue mission.”

Whitter shook his head. “Absolutely not. The United States does not negotiate with terrorists.”

“Actually, we already have negotiated. There’s a tacit agreement between the United States and Colombia to allow the far-right guerrilla leaders immunity from extradition to the U.S. if they agree to lay down their arms. If that’s not negotiating with them, I don’t know what is.”

Whitter bristled like a porcupine under attack. “That deal was not cut by the United States. It was cut by the president of Colombia with the guerrilla leaders.”

“And the United States didn’t argue with it.”

“It’s still not the same as negotiating with kidnappers.”

Banner put a hand in the air to silence the men. “Miguel, help me out here. Did these paramilitary groups take the Colombian president up on his offer and lay down their arms?”

“Thousands did,” Miguel said.

“Then why do you think we’re dealing with a paramilitary group in this hijacking?”

“Because the president has been negotiating only with the far-right paramilitary groups. The far-left guerrillas, the FFOC, have not been approached by the Colombian government.”

“So you think this kidnapping is a bid to force the president of Colombia to begin negotiations with the far left,” Banner said.

Miguel paused. “Perhaps. It could also be an attempt to derail the peace process entirely. The process requires that the paramilitary groups return control of the country to the government. These guys may not be too keen on giving up that kind of power.”

“Or it could be unrelated and we are drawing the wrong conclusions.” Whitter stabbed a finger at Miguel as he said this.

“That is also correct,” Miguel said.

Banner liked that Miguel conceded the point to Whitter. It showed him that the man would not proceed on assumptions blindly.

“Alternative suggestions to negotiating?” Banner said.

“Pull twenty special forces personnel off the pipeline detail and gather them for a reconnaissance mission to find the crash site. From there try to determine the location of the passengers. Track them through the jungle, if that’s what’s required.” Miguel sounded determined.

Whitter shook his head. “No. It’s a waste of resources. Why go to an area that the Colombian military has already canvassed?”

“Because I don’t believe them,” Miguel said.

The undersecretary of the air force snorted. “You think these guys are lying?”

“There are those who say that the Colombian army has been hand in glove with the paramilitary groups for years. Even Colombia’s own special forces unit in charge of rescue operations has been implicated in a massacre of the Colombian police. I don’t think we can take anything for granted in an area as rife with corruption as this one.”

“I won’t go along with this,” Whitter said. He turned to Banner. “If we go there anyway, it looks as though we don’t trust the Colombian government. This country is an ally.”

For the first time, Miguel looked aggravated. “Mr. Whitter, that’s why I suggest that we use the men already posted in the area. We save valuable time and we avoid the questions that would arise from sending a wave of new military manpower.”

So that’s why I’m here, Banner thought, to provide unofficial muscle if Miguel’s plan fails. He glanced at Miguel and kept his voice mild. “Did General Corvan approve the mission?”

“He did, pending your input. He said that no one knew better than you how to run a search-and-rescue mission in hostile territory.”

“I’m flattered.” Banner and General Corvan went back to the early days, when they had taken turns saving each other’s hide.

“Who would be in charge of the mission?” Banner asked the question, but he figured he could guess the answer.

“I am. I leave tonight,” Miguel said.

5

LUIS RODRIGO STOOD IN THE BAKING SUN ON THE SCORCHED AIRSTRIP and watched his soldiers shove the airline passengers into a small circle. One man moved too slowly, and a guerrilla hammered him with the butt of his gun. The man dropped like a stone. Rodrigo’s first lieutenant, Alvarado, came to stand next to him.

“They are stupid and slow,” Alvarado said.

“Each is worth more money than you’ll see in ten years. You tell Jorge I see him hit another without my permission and I’ll cut off the hand he used at the wrist.”

Alvarado stepped back. “They are arrogant Americans. They need to know who is in charge.”

“I am in charge. I will decide who lives and who dies.”

“We made more money with the coca. This”—Alvarado swept his arm to take in the passengers—“this does not pay the same, and the risks are large.”

“Coca is dying every day. I don’t need to remind you of this, Alvarado. You see the herbicide-dusting planes flown by the Americans. The fields are withering. In two years coca won’t pay enough to cover the plane fuel to transport it.”

“Coca will always be profitable,” Alvarado said.

“For the cartels, yes, but not for us. We need to show the cartels that we can be profitable partners for them.”

Alvarado stared at the passengers. He pulled a cigarette out of a pack rolled in his sleeve and lit it.

Luis analyzed the hostages as he watched the plane get stripped. Most had the soft, obese, and overcivilized look of Americans. One drew Luis’s eye. He stood six feet three inches and weighed about one hundred eighty pounds. Seven inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than Luis, he had dark hair and an athlete’s body. He moved easily, sweating in the heat, his mouth set in a grim line. This man smelled like danger to Luis. He made a mental note to watch him.

Luis swept his gaze over his men. Alvarado looked hung over, Juan’s pupils were the size of quarters, and Manzillo gulped from a bottle of aguardiente and stumbled over something that only he could see. The mental state of the rest was always suspect. If they weren’t armed, they couldn’t have subdued a fly. Armed, they were ticking time bombs waiting to explode.

“How many do we have?” Luis said to Alvarado.

Alvarado shrugged. “Fifty. Maybe sixty. Is this enough for the FFOC?”

Luis counted sixty-eight. “They expected more. Especially given the risk.”

“Then they should have let us land on a longer strip. I don’t like it, Luis. The gringos won’t take this lying down.”

Luis felt his irritation rise. Alvarado was right, but lately he’d been sounding like a broken record, always negative, always warning. This job was a joint effort of the FFOC and the northern drug cartels, and the first time they’d given Luis any role in one of their operations. The FFOC provided the expertise and detailed planning needed to hijack the jet, and the drug cartel provided the planes within the country that would transport the passengers to the exchange location once they were ransomed.

Luis’s role was to deliver the hostages and any valuables to a secure location in the mountains to await ransom. The FFOC and the drug cartels considered Luis’s small group of paramilitary losers to be expendable, and so gave them the most grueling and dangerous job.

Luis knew the majority of his men were morons, long past stupid and incapable of any thought beyond their daily hit. Still, he was proud that he had been able to turn them into some semblance of a military group. The FFOC had finally responded to his repeated requests to be given a job that would prove his value as a leader. He intended to make the most of it.

“By the time the Americans find the crash site, we’ll be deep in the mountains. No gringo knows these hills like we do. It will take them months to search for them. By then, the ransoms will have been paid.”

Alvarado sucked on his cigarette, his eyes never moving from the passengers. “It would be easier if we could load them on the trucks and use the road.”

Luis let his irritation show. “That would also be easier for the Americans to find us. No trucks, Alvarado. We make a trail through the jungle to the first checkpoint. We’ll get them on trucks at that point.”

“We’ll lose at least ten more from the land mines as we march,” Alvarado said.

“We march them in front of us. Better one of them step on a paw-breaker than one of us, eh?” Luis grinned at Alvarado. “And put the fat ones in the front. I want to keep the fit ones for working.”

“And the women?”

“The women we reserve for other things.”

Alvarado laughed.

6

EMMA CAME TO SOME TIME LATER. THE TREES STILL BURNED. Heat reflected off the landing strip, creating waves that looked like transparent streamers undulating upward. She disentangled herself from the bush and moved farther up the mountain to get a better view of the landing strip.

The surviving passengers sat huddled in a circle at the beginning of the runway. Some leaned against their neighbors, while others curled forward with their heads on their knees. Emma recognized several from the plane. An older gentleman, with a full head of white hair, sat tall, despite his age. All but four had their hands tied behind their backs.

Thirty guerrillas, armed with assault rifles, guarded them. They all wore the same dirty green fatigues with lace-up boots. Some drank from canteens that they kept in holders attached to their belts, some smoked cigarettes, and others sucked on hand-rolled brown sticks that looked like joints. All were armed.

One guerrilla stood out from the others. Lean, wiry, with an unshaven, rat-thin face and crazy pinball eyes, he shouted orders and marched back and forth in front of the circle of survivors. The others jumped to obey him.

They’d landed on a dirt airstrip the size of a football field backed on one side by a mountain, on the other by dense foliage. Several trees and jet parts still smoldered, sending thin ribbons of gray smoke into the air. The jungle threatened to encroach on all sides. Stately trees fought with smaller palms for every inch of available space and light. Tropical vines coiled around everything upright and ran along the ground, searching for their next host. The foliage formed a living wall.

Huge potholes dotted the dirt strip, creating a hazard for the landing gear of any plane forced to use it. A deep gash ran the length of it. The end of the gash disappeared under the aft section of the jet. Sun beat down on the strip. Charred bodies, still smoking, littered the dirt around the aft section. Emma gritted her teeth to stop the nausea that rose at the sight of the dead.

The guerrillas barked orders at several male passengers as they worked to pull blackened suitcases from the remains of the cargo hold. Emma recognized one of the passengers who’d sat in the third row. About thirty, tall and slender, with thick dark hair and dressed in a polo shirt and khakis, he had spent the entire flight typing furiously on a laptop computer, stopping only to stare around the first-class cabin with a hyperalert demeanor. On the plane Emma had pegged him either as an overworked oil executive or a paranoid coke addict. She had dubbed him “Wary Man” and hadn’t thought about him again. Now soot covered his face and his polo shirt was in tatters, but he still exuded an air of silent intensity.

A surprising amount of cargo survived the plane’s ill-fated landing. Four guerrillas went to work emptying the suitcases, removing anything valuable. They took laptop computers, jewelry cases, and cameras, but left most of the contents scattered on the ground. Clothing, toiletries, shoes, and hair dryers littered the runway.

One passenger fell to his knees from heat and exhaustion. Rat Face pushed off the Jeep he leaned against and sauntered over. He barked an order in Spanish to a nearby comrade. The soldier grabbed the passenger by the arm and dragged him back to the circle, dumping him facedown in the dirt. The other passengers stayed frozen, staring at the prone man, fear on their faces.

The guerrillas pointed to another passenger sitting in the circle. They untied his hands and pushed him toward the discarded cargo. He joined the others, which Emma now dubbed the “work crew.” At one point, she watched Wary Man push a suitcase and a silver metal briefcase behind some wreckage when the guerrillas weren’t looking.

The noise of engines accompanied by a cloud of dust came from a road that ran up a hill next to the airstrip. Two flatbed pickup trucks appeared only twenty-five feet below Emma’s perch. They ground to a halt at the edge of the airstrip, the doors flew open, and three men stepped out.

The first man out of the trucks wore green twill pants and a collared shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His hair was dark and full, but his face was etched with wrinkles. Emma held her breath as he scanned the foliage in her direction. His eyes held a dead look that frightened Emma with its intensity. She shivered in the heat.

He pulled on a cigarette as he scrutinized the smoldering airplane. Two men surrounded him. These wore fatigues like the rest of the guerrillas on the airstrip, but theirs looked cleaner, and their shirts were sleeved. They dogged the smoking man’s steps while holding machine guns at the ready.

Smoking Man strolled to the back of one flatbed, lowered the hatch, and flipped open a laptop computer. Next to the computer sat two large field phones, each in its own individual bag. Both the phones and the computer had some sort of satellite uplink. The man dialed a number and chatted on the phone, stopping every few minutes to consult the computer screen.

The second phone sat in the corner of the flatbed, next to a mesh bag of apples and a liter bottle of seltzer water. Emma focused on the apples. Her mouth watered at the thought of them. Her stomach growled and her throat burned. She was so thirsty that each swallow felt painful. If she could reach the flatbed undetected, she could take both the field phone and an apple. There were so many in the bag, she doubted the man would notice one less. She would wait until dark to make her move.

Smoking Man finished with his phone call and waved Rat Face over. Smoking Man pointed to something on the computer screen before indicating the passengers huddled on the airstrip. Smoking Man, Rat Face, and the bodyguards spread out, walking through the people, looking at faces. If a passenger stared downward, the men snapped out an order. The passenger looked up.

When they reached the end of the huddled group, Smoking Man shook his head at Rat Face. He tossed his cigarette on the ground and strolled over to him. Another conference. This time there was a lot of yelling on both sides. Rat Face indicated the bodies gathered around the plane’s aft section. He walked over and kicked one of the burned corpses. He put his hands in the air and shrugged.

Emma gasped. That a human being could treat another in such a fashion, even after death, was a matter beyond her comprehension

Smoking Man barked an order. The guerrillas jumped up and started unloading metal disks from the back of the truck. They carried each disk gingerly, as if it were fine china, not a hunk of steel. Emma watched as they hid these disks on the side of the dirt road, alternating sides in a zigzag pattern. Her heart dropped once she realized that the only road to the wreckage would be booby-trapped with land mines. The entire hijacking now appeared to have been planned with an almost military efficiency. Her hopes of a quick search-and-rescue mission were fast disappearing. The enormity of her situation was sinking in, and along with the realization came anger. She settled back in to watch the proceedings with an eye toward disrupting their plans.

While the guerrillas unloaded the disks from the first truck, Smoking Man’s bodyguard climbed into the second truck. Emma scrambled to her feet. Her fear of losing the phone and food was so great that, for a brief moment, she almost ran straight to the truck. She caught herself and slid behind the trunk of a large palm. She watched while the truck drove away. Emma closed her eyes and put her cheek against the tree. After a minute she slumped back down to the ground.

Ten minutes later, the flatbed truck reappeared and resumed its spot at the edge of the strip. The bodyguard jumped out. There sat the second field phone, the mesh bag of apples, and the bottle of water.

The passengers worked in the heat, the discarded cargo grew to a mountain, and Smoking Man inhaled his cigarettes. Sweat soaked through Emma’s clothes, causing her to itch, and her arms and legs started to ache as her body emerged from the shock of the crash. Her hunger grew, becoming a living thing that she found harder and harder to ignore. Her stomach growled and her head pounded. A fly buzzed in her ear and she batted it away.

The guerrillas stopped to eat. They fed the passengers, handing them reddish brown strips of some sort of smoked meat and flattened bread made out of corn or maize. Emma closed her eyes while the group on the airstrip ate. She was so hungry that watching them made her weak. The entire crew was massed on the far side of the strip, concentrating on eating. Emma decided to make her move.

She shoved her pack under the bush. She crouched over and worked her way through the trees, keeping low. She focused on her feet in order to avoid stepping on twigs. The thick bed of rotted leaves and soft earth served to muffle her footsteps. While she was grateful for the soundproofing, the sheer density of the jungle made it difficult to move without slapping through branches or rustling through plants, and the leaves were slick underfoot.

She crab-walked for almost a hundred yards, taking pains to move up the side of the mountain. She twisted her body sideways to slide between branches of a palm, and placed each foot down toe-first to minimize sound. She stopped thirty feet above and to the right of the vehicles. The truck with the apples sat on the other side of the truck that contained the tarp. They were lined up next to each other, five feet from the edge of the tree line. To reach them, Emma would need to step out into the open, climb over the first truck’s flatbed into the second’s, grab the apples and phone, and retreat back the way she came.

Rivulets of sweat poured off her. It ran down her face and soaked under her arms. Her heart raced. She took several deep breaths to try to regain some composure. She cast a glance at the guerrilla group. Rat Face, his men, Smoking Man, and the bodyguards, all stood in a semicircle with their backs to Emma. She could hear the sounds of their voices rising and falling. Emma needed to get to the truck before they finished with their conference.

She plunged down toward the flatbeds. While she tried to move as quietly as she could, she didn’t want to spend the time it would take to move through the brush in silence. Her world coalesced into one goal: reach the truck.

She slipped on the wet leaves, but was able to catch her balance at the last minute. She was twenty feet from the flatbed, then ten feet. Now she didn’t bother watching for sticks. Her need for speed trumped any concern about noise. She closed the gap to the tree line. She reached the edge. Now she was five feet from the truck. No time to waste. She lowered to the ground. Took a deep breath and crawled into the open.

The sun hit her back full blast. Within seconds she began overheating. Her heart raced, the pounding blood sounding loud in her ears. She worked her way to the first truck’s rear. She crouched behind the wheel well. She cast a glance at the airstrip. The passengers remained huddled in a large group, between her and the now-conferencing guerrillas. They stayed in the same position they were in two minutes ago. Only one looked at her.

Wary Man stared, a look of astonishment on his face. They locked eyes. He turned his head to look at the guerrillas, still in a circle. He turned back to Emma, shook his head slightly, then cocked it to the side, as if to tell her to get back into the trees. But Emma wasn’t about to quit now. She frowned at him, shook her head, and mouthed the word no. Wary Man frowned back at her with a look full of frustration.

She rose until she could see over the side of the first flatbed’s walls. It contained only the tarp, and the sides matched that of the flatbed containing the prize. She needed only to scurry across the first flatbed to the second. The unused field phone sat in the corner farthest from her along with the apples. She’d have to crawl into the bed to reach them.

She stepped onto the wheel well and swung a leg over the side. She stepped onto the truck’s bed and lowered herself back into a crouch. She crawled to the opposite side on all fours. Her foot hit the large rolled tarp. It moved.

Emma nearly screamed her surprise. The tarp wriggled again and the edge fell away to reveal the frightened face of a boy. He had a bandanna gag in his mouth, and his dark eyes were wild with fear. The tarp fell farther away to reveal that he wore the same faded T-shirt and camouflage pants as the other guerrillas. He appeared to be no more than sixteen years old. Emma took a quick look over her shoulder. Smoking Man yelled at Rat Face, jabbing a finger at him for emphasis. All of the guerrillas watched the argument raging between the two men.

The boy pulled his hands out of the tarp. They were tied with a rope. He made frantic noises while he shoved his hands at her.

“Shh!” Emma hissed at him. The noises stopped. Emma reached around his head to yank at the bandanna’s knot. The old, dried cloth resisted. Emma’s blood pressure shot up even higher. She could feel her panic rising. She took another look back at the guerrillas. Now they were nodding, as if they’d reached an agreement. The conference wouldn’t last much longer. She took a quick look at Wary Man. He craned his neck to see over the truck’s hatch. This time he shot her an urgent, questioning look. He swung his head around to check on the guerrillas.

Emma switched her attention from the bandanna to the rope tying the boy’s hands. He didn’t need to speak, he just needed to be able to get away. The rope knot came free quickly.

The second his hands were free, the boy swung his legs out of the tarp and began working on yet another rope wrapped around his ankles. Emma helped him. She glanced sideways at the guerrillas. She wanted to see what they were doing but was unwilling to take her eyes off the task at hand. The guerrillas stepped back, and two turned. Their conference was over.

“Faster!” Emma said.

The boy nodded, never removing his gaze from the rope. Tears ran out of his eyes and fell on the rope as he and Emma scrabbled at the knot. Emma cast one long look at the field phone and apples sitting in the second truck. They were only a few feet away, but they might as well have been a mile. She would never reach them and get back into the trees undetected. She returned her attention to the knot binding the boy’s feet. It came free. In an instant the boy was up. He leaped over the truck’s side. Emma leaped after him. She thudded onto the dirt and pitched forward onto her hands. The boy ran into the tree line. Once in the shadows, his camouflage pants made it appear as if he’d disappeared, like smoke.

Emma ran forward to follow him just as a capybara burst from the foliage three feet in front of her. It ran straight at her. She pivoted to avoid it, and her feet flew out from under her. She landed on the ground, hard. She watched in horror as the small animal shot toward the circle of passengers.

The capybara barreled past Wary Man. A woman shrieked at the sight of the flat-faced rodent about the size of a small dog. The bodyguards spun around at her screams. They raised their assault weapons into firing position. Wary Man shot to his feet and stepped between the men and Emma on the ground, using his body to block their view. He pointed at the animal shooting toward the tree line. The bodyguards trained their rifles on the little beast, tracking it across the strip. Emma scrambled backward on her seat, fighting her way back into the safety of the trees, all the while keeping her eyes on the guerrillas.

The capybara veered sideways, making a play for the forest and safety. One bodyguard took aim and fired. The capybara flew into the air before landing on its side. It twitched once and then stilled.

The guerrillas applauded the shot. The second bodyguard slapped the first on the shoulder. Emma inched backward until she was once again far enough in the trees to work her way around to her backpack. She sat down next to it and buried her face in her hands.

Smoking Man barked an order and his entourage climbed into the pickups. The engines kicked to life, and Emma watched the trucks as they drove up the road, zigzagging to avoid the scattered metal disks. Emma wanted to cry as she watched her only possible link to the outside world inch slowly away.

The rat-faced guerrilla blew a whistle. His soldiers lined the passengers up, front to back. They marched into the forest, led by two passengers who hacked at the dense foliage with machetes. Wary Man glanced once at the place where Emma had fallen before he turned to follow the others.

They left the clothing, airplane, corpses, and Emma behind.

7

EMMA LAY FACEDOWN IN THE DIRT AND LET THE TEARS FLOW. She cried for Patrick, for her, and for the dead people that lay all around her. The familiar feeling of despair washed over her. For the last year, since Patrick’s death, raging anger and debilitating despair had been her constant companions, sucking her will to live.

She lay on the ground and thought about Patrick. The way he read the Financial Times on the train to work, his brow furrowed in thought, and dropped a dollar in the guitar case of the blind musician playing on the subway platform. How he kept his apartment stocked with the tea she liked even though it cost a fortune and he thought it tasted like grass. How he’d keep an eye out for unusual plants when he traveled on business and once even carried them home to her, pressed between the pages of a book, only to be stopped at O’Hare Airport by the Department of Agriculture when their sniffing beagles sat next to his briefcase.

His death had sent her into a tailspin with an intensity that shocked her. Her anger knew no bounds. As far as she was concerned, God had let Patrick down, and her rage threatened to consume her. Some days were so gray that she wondered if the fog would ever lift. Even her move to sunny Miami Beach, with its sparkling sea and bright Art Deco colors, had failed to revive her love of life.

The only way she found to quiet her mind was running. In this, she excelled. While Emma’s daily life was marred with a depression so deep that the antidepressants prescribed by her doctor were rendered useless, she found she could channel the despair into her running. When Emma ran, she focused on her muscles, the path, her heart rate, her hydration, her caloric intake, and her distance. With these concerns foremost in her mind, the despair stayed at bay. Emma channeled her rage and used it to fuel her legs to greater speeds. Her single-minded focus allowed her to breeze past others who had collapsed in the dark hours of the night on the eightieth mile of a hundred-mile race. Emma threw away the pills and trained more and more each week.

But now she was having periodic bouts of uncontrolled crying. It was just like the first days after Patrick’s death, when she cried for two days without stopping. She felt as though all the small gains she had managed these past months had been wiped away in one horrifying minute.

An hour ticked by before Emma felt the darkness lift. It took another half hour after that for her to feel brave enough to leave the safety of her hiding place. She hauled herself upright, wiped her face on her sleeve, and started to move. She skirted around the nose of the plane, cowering in the shadows it provided. A glance showed her that nothing remained of the first-class cabin but wreckage and twisted metal. She avoided looking in the cockpit. She didn’t want to know what happened to the pilot with the smooth voice that never shook, professional to the end.

She rooted around the tree line by the nose and found useless debris and charred bodies, many still strapped into their seats. The stench of the dead permeated the air. It was a good thing that she hadn’t eaten in a day, because she would have thrown up at the sight of the dead. As it was, acid saliva was all she tasted.

A food cart, blackened and bent, lay on its side about thirty feet from the edge of the landing strip. Dead bodies surrounded it. The bodies created a macabre maze that Emma would have to navigate to reach the prize. Once there, she would have to work on the cart while the bodies kept her company. She forced herself to think about survival.

Emma took careful steps over the bodies of three passengers. She turned her eyes from their faces and did her best to focus on the goal of reaching the cart. Two more bodies lay on either side of the metal box. She stepped over one’s leg, and this step brought her flush up against the box. She had no room to maneuver, however, without moving the other body out of the way.

It looked to be a man, badly burned. She nudged it with her toe. It rocked but didn’t move far enough to give her any room. She tried to push it again, but it again rocked and fell back into position against the cart. In a fit of exasperation and gnawing hunger, Emma bent her knees, leaned the small of her back on the cart, bracing herself against it, and put one foot on the corpse. She shoved it as hard as she could. It rolled over one complete rotation before stopping a foot away.

Emma grabbed the door of the cart and yanked it open. Food packets tumbled out. She pounced on them. Her hands shook as she sorted through the scorched packets. She fought with one, trying to pry the aluminum lid off the shallow plastic container that acted as a plate. She ripped it open and looked inside.

The plastic plate had melted onto the food and then hardened into one congealed mess once it cooled. Emma couldn’t tell where the plastic ended and the food began.

Oh no. I need this food, Emma thought.

She tossed the ruined plate and grabbed the next one. Same congealed mess. She grabbed a third, also inedible. She clawed at a fourth. This time when she removed the foil she found an intact filet mignon, side salad, and baby carrots, all nestled in their own little sections.

Emma grabbed the filet and shoved it in her mouth, ripping off a section with her teeth. It tasted like heaven. She couldn’t chew it fast enough. She swallowed a large portion whole and ripped at the filet again. She chewed twice before raising her eyes.

She glanced at a nearby corpse. It was a woman. Her eyes gazed at Emma in an unblinking stare. Emma stopped chewing and felt her stomach start to rebel. She closed her eyes and took slow, deep breaths. Keeping the food down was imperative. After her stomach settled, she opened her eyes and looked at the dead woman.

“I’m so sorry.” Emma whispered the words.

An overwhelming sadness settled over her. She got up, still clutching the food plate, and stumbled away from the body and the woman’s lifeless eyes. She sank down near her pack and finished the filet, all the while doing her best to keep her gaze off the destruction all around her.

When she was finished she made her way back to the cart and fished through the plates. Out of fifty or sixty packets, she found ten still intact. She grabbed them and carried them to her backpack.

She sat at the end of the runway and stacked the few precious food plates next to her pack along with a small parcel of airline napkins. She’d brought the pack, a compass, compact tent, bedroll, and a portable Coleman stove. Only the pack went with her as a carry-on. The other items she had checked into cargo.

She assessed the backpack’s contents. It contained a paperback book, her passport, wallet, a reflective sheet that collected heat, a pillow that could be blown up to act as a neck rest on the long flight, her telephone, notepad with attached pen, and tester tubes of the new Engine Red lipstick that she’d created for a cosmetic customer’s elite makeup line. Their development was shrouded in secrecy. She tossed the book, the pillow, and stared at the lipstick testers. There were two. Their cases were different, but the color was the same. She shoved them into a side pocket with the useless cell phone.

She continued rooting through the discarded remnants of the passengers’ things. She found a traveler’s first-aid kit, several airline bottles of scotch, and one small bottle of wine. She also found a beautiful silver lighter with the initials AEG engraved on the side.

She reached the area where Wary Man had hidden his luggage and the briefcase. A brass bag tag on the luggage held a business card that read Cameron Sumner, Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency and listed an address in Key West, Florida.

Emma sat back on her heels. So Wary Man has a name and a job fighting drugs, she thought. She opened the suitcase. It contained nothing of interest. Just all the normal items packed by any business traveler.

She turned her attention to the metal briefcase. The words UNITED STATES ARMY were stenciled on the top in black script. Emma pried it open. It contained two handguns and some spare ammunition. She nearly wept when she saw them, partly from joy and partly because she didn’t know how to fire them.

Emma’s bags weren’t among the looted luggage that lay all around. She didn’t care much about the clothes she’d brought, what she really wanted was the bag that held all her hiking material and the separate duffel that contained her compass and the special hiking tent. The compass was crucial to her survival. Without it she could wander in circles until the food ran out or the guerrillas captured her.

The tent was far less important. Designed to be worn on a hiker’s back, it weighed only four pounds but opened to accommodate two people. The manufacturer claimed that it was rugged enough for an expedition to Everest. When collapsed, it didn’t look like much, and she hoped the guerrillas hadn’t recognized it for what it was.

Half an hour later she found the duffel. It was ripped in half, and empty. Emma rifled through it before tossing it down. She searched in a circular pattern but didn’t find any pieces. Her precious compass was gone. She tried to ignore the sudden rush of panic that accompanied this realization.

“Get a grip, Emma. It’s not like it was food or anything.” She spoke out loud. Her voice sounded strained, but surprisingly normal. Just hearing herself helped. It confirmed that she was alive, and not a wraith wandering among the dead.

She found her luggage twenty-five yards into the trees, blackened, but otherwise in perfect condition.

“Louis Vuitton, god of luggage design,” Emma said. “Why the hell didn’t I put the compass in here?” She started laughing like a hyena. She sank to her knees. The laughter morphed into tears and then panic.

Emma forced herself to take deep breaths to halt the riot of emotion that overwhelmed her. She dragged herself upright, took an extra pair of socks from her luggage, and halfheartedly resumed her search. She found the tent under a heap of discarded clothing. The black outer nylon carry bag had melted at the corners, but the tent itself was undamaged. Her joy at finding it far outstripped its value to her, she knew, but she felt as though fate had thrown her a bone. She attached the tent to the flat side of the backpack. It acted as a frame, and made the load a bit more bearable. She finished rummaging through the luggage but found nothing useful.

She went back to her pack and filled it with the food and alcohol. She shoved one pistol into the pack and put the other on top. She took out the notepad, dated the first sheet, and hesitated. While Emma itched to leave the airstrip, she knew she should stay with the wreckage. The authorities would search for the plane first. Staying near it would give her the best chance for rescue. Her only other options would be to run down the dirt road Smoking Man used, or follow the passengers into the forest. Emma wanted to avoid Smoking Man and his soldiers at any cost, and the guerrillas holding the passengers were no less frightening.

She wrote, I’m still alive. The guerrillas took passengers into the jungle. About seventy. Cameron Sumner is one of them. The others I don’t know by name. I will stay near this crash site unless forced to leave.

She signed the note, ripped it out of the pad, and placed it in her bags on top of the clothes. She stashed Sumner’s luggage under a palm and shoved her own next to it.

The sky clouded over and an afternoon rainstorm began. Emma moved into the tree line. She sat with her back against a tree and watched the fat raindrops hit the dirt, making little puffs of smoke with each hit. The airplane sides sizzled. The charred bodies simply smoked.

Emma sank into a torpor. She watched the rain pummel the earth in a hypnotic trance. She gazed at nothing, letting her mind wander. Once she was in the trees, the air felt thick with humidity and smelled like warm earth and green leaves. After the stench on the runway, Emma thought it was one of the sweetest smells she could imagine. She didn’t want to go back near the jet’s wreckage. She shrugged off her pack and lay down, using it as a pillow.

8

BANNER’S MEETING ENTERED ITS FIFTH HOUR. MIGUEL AND THE members of the military were gone, and Whitter was slumped in his chair and had untied his tie completely. On the wall a flat-screen television, set to CNN and muted, flashed a map of Colombia and some photos of people that Banner assumed were Colombian. It was the tenth time they’d seen the stock footage.

Dispatching Miguel solved the immediate problem of search and rescue, and the meeting turned to intelligence gathering. The remaining attendees aired the information they knew about the flight, and now it was Stromeyer’s turn.

“I’ve analyzed the data from the manifest. There are two or three interesting characters among the passengers.” Stromeyer handed around a copy of the plane’s manifest. Four names were highlighted.

“First. Manuel Cordova Sanchez is listed as the copilot. He is a Colombian-trained pilot, his license is up-to-date, and his credentials more than adequate.”

“So what’s the problem?” Banner said.

“He is not, and never has been, an employee of British Airlines. He boarded the plane in Miami, using false identification and claiming that the real copilot was ill. He was ill all right. The police found him in his hotel room, dead.”

“So he gets into the cockpit, threatens the pilot, and flies the plane into the mountains.”

Stromeyer nodded. “That’s the current theory.”

“Wouldn’t the pilot resist? He’s got a whole plane to assist him,” Whitter said.

Stromeyer shrugged. “Depends on what was used to threaten him. He’s in charge of the plane, and perhaps he felt that the passengers stood a better chance to live if he didn’t resist.”

“Isn’t there some action he could take?” Whitter said.

“Yes, but nothing that would help if the hijacker has already made it to the cockpit. One protocol suggests he put on his mask and send the plane into a deep dive, which causes rapid depressurization and renders the passengers and any hijackers in the main cabin unconscious. But the copilot has his own mask and could use it to stay alert. Honestly, if there are any survivors, then whatever the pilot did was correct.”

Whitter sighed. “I see what you mean.”

“And the others?” Banner pointed to another highlighted name. “What about these two, Carlos and Consuelo Rivera?”

“Let’s talk about them last. The next, very interesting, name is Cameron Sumner.”

“Why does that ring a bell?” Banner said.

Stromeyer nodded. “I’d heard it before, too. He’s a licensed jet pilot. He flew private jets—Gulfstreams, Lears, like that—for various corporations located in Florida. One of the corporations paid for him to train in bodyguard techniques and weapons with us at Darkview.”

“Do you have a picture of him?” Banner said.

Stromeyer slid a passport photo at Banner.

Sumner’s face was only vaguely familiar. “Did we send him to Iraq?”

Stromeyer shook her head. “No. His Darkview evaluation sheet says that he was focused, intelligent, extremely proficient in firearms, and damn near unflappable. We made an offer to him, but he chose to continue flying for the suits. That is, until last year. Last year he became a trainer and monitor at the Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency. He was stationed in Key West, where he oversaw training of personnel for the Air Tunnel Denial program.”

“The what?”

“The Air Tunnel Denial program, or ATD. It’s a joint program administered by the United States and Colombia designed to identify and intercept drug running aircraft that enter into U.S. or Colombian airspace.”

Banner stared at Stromeyer. “Are you telling me that the United States has an entire program set up to review suspicious aircraft entering Colombian airspace, and they are still unable to locate a commercial airliner downed in Colombia?”

Stromeyer shrugged. “It’s not as crazy as it sounds. The ATD program is administered from various air bases in both the United States and Colombia, and concentrates its attention on smaller aircraft that fly at low levels. Its mission is to identify the suspicious plane, establish visual and radio contact with it, and order it to land if it appears to be a drug transport. The planes used for drug transport are small private planes that can land in the remote areas using short runways. There was no reason for ATD personnel to be suspicious of a large commercial jet.”

Whitter groaned. “Reason won’t come into it. The press will eat us alive for funding a program that is supposed to spot suspicious aircraft activity and yet doesn’t even notice a huge jet lumbering off its course.”

Much as he hated to, Banner agreed with Whitter. The mistakes were piling up in this disaster.

The gentleman from the Department of Transportation spoke up. He looked to Banner like either an accountant or an engineer. He wrote on a pad lined with tiny grids that he’d brought himself, and he carried a sheaf of papers with him.

“Mr. Whitter, I think you need to be prepared for the eventuality that we may never find this jet. Especially since it landed in a mountainous region with significant jungle coverage. In the last ten years in the United States alone, fifty-three plane crashes have never been recovered.”

“In what type of terrain?” Banner said.

The man shrugged. “All types. One involved a Learjet that crashed only a few miles from a regional airport. Hundreds of searchers on foot and multiple helicopters were deployed for three weeks. That plane, all eight tons of it, has never been found.”

“Where did it crash? Alaska?” Whitter said.

“New Hampshire.”

“You have a missing plane in New Hampshire?” Whitter’s voice registered shock.

The DOT official looked pained. “We do. Of course some UFO enthusiasts have added it to their roster of unexplained events. But their claims are grounded in ignorance. They don’t know, or don’t believe, the statistics.”

Banner rubbed his forehead, where a headache began forming.

Stromeyer reached below the table into a briefcase and pulled out a small tin. She slid it across the desk to Banner while she turned to Whitter.

“Mr. Whitter, wait until you hear the rest of my report. The ATD program isn’t the only one the press is going to excoriate us for,” she said.

The tin contained aspirin. Banner opened it and chugged two down.

Whitter held his hand up to stop Stromeyer. “Great, Ms. Stromeyer—”

Both Banner and Stromeyer interrupted him. “Major Stromeyer,” they said in unison.

Whitter took a breath. “Major Stromeyer, let’s talk about the other problem areas last. Right now, tell me why was this guy flying to Bogotá?”

“He was scheduled to give a quarterly report to Colombian authorities about the Air Tunnel Denial program. What’s interesting is that he requested and received clearance for two pistols to be transported in the cargo hold.”

“Did he now?” Banner said. He circled Sumner’s name over and over again.

“That does seem like an odd request,” Whitter said. “Why would he need guns for a speech about monitoring radar? Do you think he was involved with the hijacking?”

Stromeyer shook her head. “Doubtful, but the request is odd and we can’t overlook the possibility.”

“What about these other two?” Whitter pointed at the manifest list.

“Ah, yes, the Riveras. Both Colombian nationals flying home after a two-week stay in Miami. The Colombian government reports that Carlos used to be a midlevel operative in the terrorist Colombian National Self-Defense paramilitary group, or the CSD, before he was captured by the Colombian army. Now that the CSD has agreed to peace talks, he is one of the first of the former terrorists to claim benefits under the funds set aside by the U.S. and Colombia to aid in repatriating former CSD. Problem is, he was seen outside the real copilot’s door the morning before the flight. He appears to have aided the terrorists by killing the real copilot. So the first beneficiary of our new program to end terrorism ends up using the funds we paid him to expand it.”

“Shit,” Whitter said. He pointed to the tin still on the desk. “Is that aspirin?”

“Be my guest,” Stromeyer said. She slid the tin toward Whitter.

9

THREE HOURS AFTER LEAVING THE AIRSTRIP, RODRIGO AND THE passengers detonated their first land mine. The lead passenger never knew what hit him. One moment he had stopped to hack at the foliage, and the next he blew up, his body thrown several feet into the air with the blast. Shrapnel hit the two passengers next to him, cutting their faces.

The passengers screamed and charged backward. The panicked people ran right into the guerrillas, pushing them aside in the chaos. They poured back down the path like rats fleeing a fire.

Alvarado heard Luis roar from the middle of the pack. “Stop, you stupid fools!” He shot his machine gun into the air.

The people kept running. Several other guerrillas followed Luis’s lead and peppered the sky with bullets in an attempt to slow the stampede. Alvarado used his gun as a club and clubbed the people who pushed past him. Alvarado saw Luis, now standing in the middle of the path, hammering the trees with shot. Low-lying branches cracked and tree branches and bits of bark and leaves flew onto the people, frightening them even more.

Luis roared threats. “Stop running or the next round will kill you all!”

The passengers kept moving. They clawed at one another, each trying to get ahead of his neighbor. They flowed off the path and into the tree line.

“Stop moving! Stay on the path! The mines are laid in patterns. You keep running and you will hit another!” Alvarado screamed.

Tall Man yanked one of the passengers back onto the path just as another plunged off it and triggered a second land mine. The resulting explosion blew off the passenger’s arm from the elbow down.

The passengers froze. A woman sank to her knees and put her hands over her eyes.

Luis stormed up to the injured man, who lay groaning in the leaves next to the path. Luis shot him in the head.

The shot echoed through the mountains. The people left remained still. Only the sound of Luis’s heavy breathing, and a woman gasping, could be heard. Everyone else stood like statues, unmoving.

Rodrigo marched over to the gasping woman. About sixty, with graying hair, she sat on the path, her body heaving in its attempt to get air.

Luis yelled at her. “What is wrong with you?”

The woman spoke between gasps. “Heart condition. I lost my medication in the crash. I need a hospital. I can’t continue.” Luis pointed his gun at her. She sat up as straight as she could and looked him in the eye.

“May God have mercy on your soul,” she said. She pulled a rosary out of her pocket. She clutched it in her hand while she stared Rodrigo down. He looked at the cross, then at her.

“If you can’t continue, you stay here.” Rodrigo turned to the passengers. “Now get back in line. All of you!” The passengers formed back into a line along the path, stepping carefully. All evidence of the last minute’s panic was gone. They huddled next to one another as if afraid to move.

“You.” Luis pointed to a male passenger. “My English is not so good. You understand Spanish?”

The man nodded.

“Good.” Luis switched to Spanish. “Retrieve the machete. You will be the new leader. Only this time, if you see a piece of nylon line strung across the path, you do not disturb it. You understand me?”

The man nodded again.

“And watch for a cone-shaped object. These mines are called Chinese hats and they are more powerful than the ones that were just detonated. Translate this for the passengers.”

The passengers listened to the man and nodded as a group. They waited while the new leader retrieved the machete. Tall Man braced a passenger, holding him up by his arm. They proceeded forward, leaving the dead to the mountain.

THE SOUND OF AN ENGINE crashing through the brush made Emma lift her head. The noise grew closer. She grabbed the pack with one hand and retreated deeper into the jungle. She fought through the trees, moving up the side of the mountain. She stopped one hundred yards above the airstrip, lowered herself to the ground, and peered through a break in the trees. From her new location she could see the strip but was hidden enough to be safe. Below her, the motor’s noise grew louder and louder. She watched a jeep as it burst from the tree line onto the strip.

The jeep circled the wreckage once and then stopped. Three guerrillas stepped out, each carrying cone-shaped devices. They placed the first device at one end of the wreckage. One guerrilla attached a nylon string to it. He ran the string along the ground, at a height of about six inches. Fifty feet later, the man attached another cone-shaped device to the string, and then moved fifty feet again. Soon the cone-shaped devices formed a rough triangular pattern around the main part of the wreckage.

Two of the guerrillas drove the jeep up the dirt road until it was out of Emma’s sight. She heard it stop, but couldn’t see it. The guerrillas reappeared on foot. They stopped at each metal disk and attached string to it. They unwound the string as they walked across the road, stopping only to attach the string to a bush or tree on the other side. When they were finished, several strings spanned the road at various heights. They stepped over each line and waited at the top of the hill for the last guerrilla to finish.

The last guerrilla left on the strip bent over the final cone. He reached into the bag that sat next to him and removed an old-fashioned oven timer. Emma could see the familiar white shape and the large dial on the front. The guerrilla bent forward again over the last cone, blocking Emma’s view, while he worked with the timer. After thirty seconds the man gave a yell and started running. He slowed at each line of string, taking care to step over. When he reached his two buddies they all fled up the road. Emma heard the sound of the jeep’s engine fade as it drove away.

The timer sat on the dusty earth, ticking downward.

“Oh, God, they’re going to blow it up,” Emma said.

She grabbed her pack, which felt like it was filled with lead, and tried to fling it over her shoulders as she ran straight up, into the trees.

She didn’t get very far. The heavy foliage slapped at her face, and the ground-cover vines grabbed at her ankles. The pack caught on a nearby tree branch, and no sooner had she wrenched it free than it caught on another two steps later. She’d wasted twenty seconds fighting the jungle. She’d never get far enough away unless she chose an existing trail.

Emma spun around and ran down toward the strip. She skidded and slid down the side of the mountain until she reached the bottom. She took a quick glance around before she stepped out into the sun and the heat. The glare from the light reflecting off the plane’s metal body made her squint. The wreckage lay in front of her. It looked like a disjointed piece of metal sculpture. The smell of decay, burned hair, and the still-smoldering rubber was so strong that she was forced to put a hand over her nose and breathe through her mouth.

The path the passengers had forged lay on the other side of the piled wreckage. To cross the airstrip required a run of one hundred yards over dead bodies, discarded clothing, and jagged metal pieces sheared off the jet’s body. Emma could skirt the deadly triangle, or she could cut straight across. Straight across saved time.

She took a deep breath, stepped over the nylon line and ran. She dodged the metal jet pieces and bloated bodies, disturbing the flies that fed off them. The insects rose up in a cloud, buzzing in protest.

Emma focused on the far side of the strip and the narrow path cut by the passengers. She could hear the ticking noise of the oven timer as it counted down. A bumblebee flew in front of her, diving at her face and then swooping away. Sweat poured down her face and into her eyes, making them sting. She wiped her face as she jogged, not missing a beat. She reached the second line marking the far end and stepped over it. She lunged onto the trail, running for all she was worth. The pack banged against her back in a rhythmic cadence.

At one hundred yards in, the strip behind her blew.

The blast knocked Emma flat. The ground shook. She stayed down, flinging her hands over her head. After ten seconds she struggled back to her feet to run again. She took two steps, and the second bomb blew. This blast felt even stronger than the first. Black smoke boiled into the sky. Emma ran a few more yards and the third detonated. This one sent metal shrapnel catapulting upward. The pieces rained down on the trees, each one sharp and deadly. Emma threw herself back down and once again covered her head. A huge burning chunk of metal fell onto the path behind her. A woman’s hairbrush hit her back and rolled off.

Emma heard the fire before she could see it. Panic engulfed her. She imagined the fire was shooting toward her, burning everything in its path. She pulled herself upright, took a final deep breath, and plunged down the path to follow the passengers.

10

MIGUEL STOOD IN APIAY, COLOMBIA, IN THE SMALL OFFICES THAT housed the Air Tunnel Denial program. He listened as Señor Lopez, a skinny man with a face like a hound and a personality to match, nattered on about the myriad small runways that littered the countryside.

“We cannot possibly monitor them all, can we?” he said.

Miguel decided Lopez was a whiner. “It’s your job to monitor them all.”

“With inadequate equipment and no help from the police!”

“These are your problems, sir, not mine. My problem is finding a large jet downed on one of those runways. My commander in the U.S. suggested that you could help pinpoint the location of the airstrip the hijackers may have used. Now, with all this radar equipment at your disposal, are you telling me you didn’t see this jet when it entered your airspace?”

Señor Lopez chattered on some more, and Miguel tuned out. All he caught was something about “procedure,” “trajectories,” and “mushroom clouds.” The last comment caught his attention.

“What do you mean, ‘mushroom clouds’?” he said.

Señor Lopez shrugged. “We heard that a mushroom cloud was seen somewhere around here.” He pointed to a map of Colombia that hung on a wall next to the radar equipment.

“That’s where we noted it, as well as a cell-phone transmission. However, when we sent the Colombian military there, they said no flight had landed. Should I believe them?”

Señor Lopez pursed his lips. “What town did the military embark from for this mission?”

Miguel named a small town. “It was closest to the cell-phone transmission.”

“That town is controlled by the paramilitary.”

“Controlled? How?”

“Some say they are blackmailing the mayor.”

Miguel felt his irritation rise. “I do not care about money, and neither should the mayor. Is it possible that he lied to us?”

“That is entirely possible.”

“Perhaps he should care more about innocent lives being taken,” Miguel said.

Señor Lopez nodded. “He does. The paramilitary group threatens that if he does not cooperate, they will kill his wife and children. He is a father of four. So he cooperates.”

Miguel didn’t know what to say for a moment.

“What about the airstrips? Do you map those?”

Señor Lopez nodded. “There are hundreds. The drug runners’ airstrips will be no easier to find than your jet—perhaps harder.” The man waved at the map on the wall. “Here are the ones that we have been able to locate. Each red line is a strip.”

Miguel counted forty such lines. The map also had a large circle, drawn in red, with Apiay marked as a dot on the circle’s edge. The mushroom cloud occurred outside the circle.

“What is that circle?”

“That is the distance that our surveillance airplanes can fly before they must turn around and come back to refuel. Our planes are small. They can fly to the edge of the circle, but they have only ten minutes to find the airstrip used by the drug transport. After that time, they must turn back or they will run out of fuel before they’re able to land. If we fly to your mushroom cloud, then the plane doesn’t have enough fuel to return.”

Miguel studied the map. There were tiny pins stuck on what appeared to be random points. The majority of the pins were scattered in an area along the Colombian-Venezuelan border. All fell outside of the red circle.

“What do the pins mean?” Miguel said.

“All are suspicious flights and landings,” Señor Lopez said.

“As in drug flights?”

“Yes. But you see, most of these so-called suspicious flights landed outside our interference capabilities.”

“So the drug runners know how far you are able to fly,” Miguel said.

“And they have adjusted their operations accordingly, yes.”

“Do you know Cameron Sumner? He works as a trainer with the American organization charged to help you find and intercept these drug flights.”

Señor Lopez nodded. “I do know him. He is a quiet, efficient man.”

“Is he a survivor?” Miguel said.

“I will answer that by telling you a story about an incident that occurred here eight months ago. Mr. Sumner was here to review our policies and determine whether we were acting in accordance with the terms of the joint cooperation between his agency and mine. While he was here, we spotted a suspicious flight. Mr. Sumner insisted on flying the intercept plane himself.”

“I understand that he is a good pilot,” Miguel said.

“He is an excellent pilot. He chased the plane and determined it was a drug transport. When the pilot refused to land, Mr. Sumner followed it outside of the red circle.”

“And?” Miguel said.

“He shot the plane down.”

Miguel was shocked. “Is that protocol?”

“Absolutely, and Mr. Sumner followed it to the letter. With the exception that his flight tracked beyond the area where the plane could safely return, however.”

“How did he get back?”

“He turned around, flew as far as he could, and landed on a drug runners’ airstrip ten miles from his origination point. He hiked back to us through the night.”

“Determined man.”

“Very much so,” Lopez said.

Miguel poked a finger at the map where the mushroom cloud was seen. “He was on the plane that created the cloud.”

Señor Lopez looked even sadder than his usual sad expression. “Then I am truly sorry for him, because a man that goes into that area without additional security does not come out alive.”

“He came out alive before.” Miguel felt compelled to voice an optimism that he didn’t feel.

“But that time he flew back very far and was armed. This time I presume he is unarmed and on foot.”

Miguel nodded. “If you were Sumner, what would you do?”

“I would tell the guerrillas that my relatives are wealthy Americans and will pay any amount to ransom me.”

“Would you tell them you were with the Southern Hemisphere Drug Defense Agency?” Miguel asked.

Señor Lopez looked horrified. “Absolutely not! If they discover this, they will kill him on the spot.”

Miguel stared at the map.

Señor Lopez sighed. “I will miss Mr. Sumner.”

11

THE HOWLER MONKEYS BEGAN THEIR EERIE HOWLING AT DAWN. The noise started low, then rose to a bass-toned roar before ending in a full-throated howl. The sound echoed through the forest. It sounded like a thousand lions roaring in a cave. As others took up the call, the jungle came alive with sound. The mournful howl set Emma’s teeth on edge, and chills ran up her spine.

No sooner had the howler monkeys completed their morning chorus than the parrots started screeching. By the time they finished, the sun was up. Emma dragged herself out of the tent, broke it down, and began to run.

Stinging insects plagued her and the oppressive heat dehydrated her. The passengers moved so slowly that she doubted they had completed fifteen miles. She’d caught up with them without any trouble and adjusted her pace to match theirs. She trudged behind them, close enough to be able to hear their progress but not so close as to be discovered.

She was losing weight at an alarming rate, because she sweated profusely, but she rationed the drinking water. Every day, when the rains came, she set out the small plate from the airline food to catch what she could. Finding water was the second item on her mental list. The first was staying hidden from the guerrillas.

THE TORRENTIAL RAINS DRENCHED her clothes and turned the path to mud. At times the water pounded so hard on the leaves above her that it sounded like drumbeats. The only positive thing about the rain was that it kept the bugs from biting.

At dusk, Emma heard a whistle blow. She took it as a signal that the day’s march was over. She set up her tent and crawled into it. She removed her shoes and peeled off the soaking-wet, sweat-drenched running socks. She flicked on the lighter to look at her feet. They were bone white, with red patches on the edges of her toes where blisters were forming. The shriveled skin had a cheesy texture. She’d switch to her second pair of socks, but if she didn’t find a way to dry them soon, the blisters would never heal. Then each step would be agony, and she would start bargaining with the devil: If I take off the shoes, will you promise not to have my feet swell to balloons? She propped her feet up on the backpack and hung her socks out to dry. Without the benefit of sunlight, the humidity ensured they never would.

She sat in the tent and thought about her situation. She’d already eaten one whole packet of food last night, her first night after running away from the airstrip. She had nine packets left. If she ate one half a day, she had, at most, eighteen days to eat. She reached out and fingered a packet. The meat was cooked, so it wouldn’t spoil immediately, but she doubted the packets would stay fresh enough to eat for as long as eighteen days. The heat would rot it in three, maybe four. She revised her food intake downward. She’d eat one full packet a day. She’d continue to eat it once it rotted. Nine days. She needed to reach safety in that time.

She turned her thoughts to her third agenda, which was summoning help. She still clung to the hope that the authorities would find the jet. If they knew better than to take the booby-trapped road, they might see the crudely hacked path. Emma decided to leave clues along the path.

The next morning, she began her march with a clearer purpose. She located a stone and etched an X into the trunk of a nearby tree. She had a difficult time adjusting to the passengers’ slow pace. One minute she would think she was far behind them, the next she would hear them only a few feet away around a bend in the trail. While the slow pace wasn’t taxing, the feeling they were getting nowhere was.

Emma stepped around a group of trees and found herself looking at the back of a lagging guerrilla. She froze. She held her breath and willed the man not to turn around. He stood ten feet in front of her. Close enough that she could see the grime on his gray T-shirt. He stopped, exhaled a cloud of smoke, and rubbed the back of his neck. A minute later the man sighed and started forward once again.

After her close encounter, Emma took one of the pistols out of her bag and put it in her pocket. She didn’t bother to load it; the guerrillas would empty an entire clip into her before she’d squeezed off one shot, plus she was afraid that it would discharge accidentally and shoot her in the thigh. She reasoned that if confronted, she could wave it around to buy a little time. No one need know it was empty.

She also kept her eyes peeled for any sticks stout enough to be used as both a walking stick and a weapon. In the afternoon, during the obligatory downpour, she huddled in the tent and used a stone to hack at one end of the stick, fashioning a crude spear. When it was finished, she gazed at it with pride. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such a sense of accomplishment in her work.

THE AIR PULSED WITH the scratching sounds of thousands of insects. Emma hated the bugs. They tormented her before she entered the tent, and swarmed at the tent’s mesh opening when she was inside. She plunged her hands into the soft earth at the base of a tree, pulling up fistfuls of the soft loam. She smeared the mud on her arms and face. It smelled fresh and the coating provided some relief from the biting bugs.

As the next night deepened, she fell into a fitful sleep. She started awake, momentarily disoriented by the dark. She fumbled for the illumination button on her watch. The numbers glowed three in the morning. Emma huddled in the dark, her heart thumping. She couldn’t pinpoint why she’d awoken, but her whole body tingled with some primitive instinct. An eerie quiet settled over the forest. She heard a soft footfall a few feet away from the tent’s walls.

Something stepped out onto the makeshift path hacked by the passengers. Emma saw its shape through the mesh door. The animal turned its head to her, and its eyes glowed like the face of her watch. It slunk away, as quietly as it came. After a minute the scratching sounds of the forest resumed, as if the lesser animals were celebrating their near miss from the predator.

At four in the morning, Emma woke again. She hovered in the twilight between waking and sleeping. She’d been dreaming she was on a life raft and she’d just spotted land.

A twig snapped. Fear surged through her, but she managed to stay motionless, hoping it was another animal that would slink away. Another twig broke, closer. Emma slid her hand along the tent’s nylon floor until her fingers reached her spear. She closed her fist around it.

Now whatever, or whoever, was coming toward her was moving fast. Sticks cracked under its feet, and she heard stones crunching. The footfalls came faster and faster, closer and closer. She heaved herself to her knees, holding the spear at her side, ready to attack whatever came through the tent’s mesh door.

The moonlight broke through the clouds, sending shafts of light through the foliage. The light revealed a man’s shape, standing five feet from the tent’s entrance. He swung a rifle off his back by the strap and in a few seconds closed the distance. He shoved the rifle into the tent’s entrance.

The man’s head followed his rifle into the tent and he locked eyes with Emma. He smelled like rancid meat and old smoke. His face registered shock and fear. His gaze swept across the spear. He got a crazy, wide-eyed look, like he was seeing a monster.

Emma lunged forward, burying the spear tip deep into the man’s shoulder. He shrieked and fell backward, out of the tent. Emma pulled the spear out of him, feeling the drag as it yanked at the man’s flesh. The man rolled to his knees and grabbed at his rifle. Emma heard his fingernails scratch across the metal. She tumbled out of the tent after him. He flipped the rifle up to aim.

“No!” Emma screamed at the man. She took the spear and swung it like a bat, catching him across the side of his head. The spear connected to bone and then splintered with an explosive, cracking sound. The man swayed, then toppled over, blood spurting from his temple. He fell over like a stone.

Emma stood over the prone man, breathing hard. She struggled for control, but she felt the tears gathering in her eyes.

Shit, Emma, this is no time for a crying jag, she thought, but the utter hopelessness of her situation was once again upon her, blocking out all logical thought. She took three cautious steps backward.

Emma jumped behind a tree and listened for signs that the other guerrillas had heard her yell or the spear break. The injured man didn’t move. After a few minutes, Emma went back to the man, grabbed his arm, and checked for a pulse. His heart beat in a strong rhythm. She searched his pockets and found a folding knife and a large rag that smelled of gunpowder and grease. She took both.

She knew she should kill him. If she let him live he’d return to camp and set the other guerrillas on her trail. She’d have to do it quietly. She looked at his knife in her hand. She could slit his throat. She opened the wicked-looking five-inch-long blade and lowered herself to one knee next to him.

The sounds of the night intruded on her. The wind rustled the leaves in a soothing sound and a tree frog croaked nearby. The man breathed softly in and out as he lay in front of her, defenseless. He looked like he was sleeping.

Emma felt as though some wide chasm had opened before her. The years of her Catholic-school upbringing crowded into her head and she thought of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shall not kill” being the foremost among them. She could have killed him in the heat of the moment in self-defense, but now, with the immediate danger over, what she contemplated felt like murder.

Emma closed the knife with a sigh. She lifted him under the arms and dragged him down the trail. He weighed too much for her to drag very far. She put him on the side of the path and covered him with branches.

When she was finished, she checked the trail. A long smear ran in a straight line from the path to the brush where she’d hidden the guerrilla. Emma used a tree branch to sweep away the telltale signs of dragging. She broke down her tent and put it and the pack on her back. She swung the man’s rifle onto a shoulder. More firepower that she didn’t know how to use. She’d analyze it later. When she was done she took one last look around, turned, and ran back the way she came.

12

BANNER GAVE HIS FIRST NEWS CONFERENCE THIRTY-SIX HOURS after Flight 689 went down. He wore a bespoke suit made in Hong Kong and a silk tie, also from Hong Kong, and his French cuffs hit his wrist with precision. He stood in a borrowed conference room in a Miami hotel and tried to tell himself that he’d faced much worse in his career. It was true, but the thought didn’t help calm his nerves.

Stromeyer raised an eyebrow when she saw him in all his sartorial splendor. “Feeling a little vulnerable, are we?”

Banner grimaced. “Wouldn’t you? I have to report to the most rapacious wolves in the industrial world that not only did we allow a plane to get hijacked, but this time we can’t even locate it or the people on board.”

“Why isn’t a State Department spokesperson giving this conference?”

“No one wants to face the tough questions about how airport security was compromised. As the Department of Defense’s leading search-and-rescue consultant, they figure I can take the heat when they can’t.”

“They’re right. I’ve never seen you sweat before.”

“Stromeyer, those were field operations. I’d much rather be in the jungle tracking a hostile force. This media stuff always gets to me.”

“Don’t you think your reaction’s a little extreme? At least the media can’t kill you.” Stromeyer peeked at the computer monitor that showed an interior view of the rapidly filling conference room. “That jerk TV reporter O’Connor is here.”

“Least of my problems. The guys from MSNBC are the really worrisome ones. They know their stuff.”

The last hours had been hell. Banner had dealt with the various agencies assigned to handle the crisis, while Stromeyer drew the unenviable job of “Victim Relative Liaison.” She fielded hundreds of frantic calls from distraught relatives of the plane’s passengers. All received the same news: That it was too early to tell if there were any survivors, but that the United States Army had boots on the ground searching for the plane.

The only relative that would have heard different news was someone related to Emma Caldridge. However, no one called about the woman. When Stromeyer contacted Caldridge’s employer to ask for next-of-kin information, the receptionist transferred the call to the vice president of research and development for the company.

“Gerald White.” The man’s hearty voice boomed through the phone.

Stromeyer introduced herself. “I understand that you were the one Ms. Caldridge sent her text message to after the plane went down.”

Mr. White cleared his throat. “Yes, I head up her department. I gave the message to someone from the Department of Transportation.”

“Yes, thank you, but I’m not calling about that. I’ve been trying to track down her next of kin. No one has asked for her. Do you have any information?”

“It’s not my area. I think you’ll need to speak to human resources for that.”

Stromeyer bit her tongue to quell a retort. “Mr. White, if our suspicions are correct, Ms. Caldridge survived the jet’s landing. If there are any next of kin worried about her, I need to know that. Surely she left instructions with the firm about who to call if there is an emergency.”

“Perhaps she did. I’ll be happy to look into it and get back to you.”

“I’m in a press conference that should last about an hour. Is that enough time? I can drive over to your offices after.”

Mr. White cleared his throat. “Yes, that would be fine.”

Now Stromeyer drew circles around Mr. White’s name while she waited for the press conference to begin. She heard Banner cough.

“You look preoccupied. What’s up?” he asked.

Stromeyer frowned. “Something about Emma Caldridge is bothering me. I think she has family in Florida, or at least a man named Caldridge lives near her in Miami Beach, but when the plane went down she sent a text message to her boss asking for help.”

Banner took his eyes off the computer screen. “Maybe she isn’t close to her family.”

Stromeyer nodded. “Maybe. But in such an extreme circumstance wouldn’t you text your family first?”

Banner shook his head. “I’d text you first. You’re the one I know could manage the situation to my best advantage.”

Stromeyer smiled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but she’s not a covert operator, she’s a civilian. I would think they’d text the person they love the most.”

Before Banner could reply, the door swung open and Whitter strode into the room. From the look on his face it was clear that he did not have good news.

“Banner, I just spoke to the secretary of defense. There’s been a strategy reversal. You are to tell the press that we already have five hundred special forces personnel in place in Colombia whose sole mission it is to find and free these people.”

Banner snorted. “Sole mission? Five hundred? Miguel said he’s working with twenty.” Banner pointed at Stromeyer’s computer. “Is Rubenstein there? The smart one from that cable channel?”

She checked the computer monitor. “You betcha.”

“And,” Whitter continued, “you are to tell them that we flew these men down within twelve hours of learning of the trouble. You are to let them know that we had fighter planes scrambling in one hour and ready to go within three.”

“What a crock of shit,” Banner said.

Whitter bristled, pulling himself up like a private on roll call. “It’s not shit. We do have five hundred men in Colombia.”

“There to protect some private corporation’s precious pipeline.”

“There to fight terrorism whenever and wherever it may be found!”

Banner grabbed a clipboard that contained his notes and headed to the door.

“Do you hear me, Banner?”

Banner was gone. Stromeyer made herself busy with her ever-present manifest lists. Whitter slammed out of the room.

The news conference went fine for twenty minutes and slid south at twenty-two, when O’Connor threw the first mud ball.

“Major Banner, isn’t it true that this breach of security would never have happened if the liberals in Congress had approved additional spending for Homeland Security?”

Banner gave O’Connor his patented military stare, a look that had quelled greater men than the soft reporter. In his relentlessly perfect suit, with his erect military carriage, and with his reputation as a former military man who’d seen battle, even the jaded media guys in the room felt a certain respect.

“Mr. O’Connor, save the spin for your television show. We don’t have the time for it here.”

The other reporters snickered.

“Isn’t it true that this administration had fighter pilots in the air within two hours of learning of the event and over five hundred special forces personnel on their way in three?” O’Connor said.

Banner glanced at Whitter, who leaned against a wall in the back of the room. The smirk on his face was enough to tell Banner that he intended to get the ridiculous story out one way or another.

Banner knew if he confirmed the lie, then he would be the one in the hot seat when Congress convened a committee to review the events. Whitter leaned against the back wall and looked very pleased with himself while he waited for Banner to take the fall.

Over my dead body, Banner thought.

“There are five hundred special forces personnel in the area and available to assist should we need to call on them,” Banner said. At least that much was true. Banner figured a guy with O’Connor’s simplistic thought processes would never see the difference in the two assertions. He was right. O’Connor gave a supercilious nod, as if Banner had confirmed what he already knew.

Banner wasn’t out of the woods, though. While O’Connor wasn’t bright enough to see the fine distinction Banner had drawn, Rubenstein was.

“What were they there for, if not to assist in this operation?” Rubenstein said.

Banner watched an alarmed look wash over Whitter’s face.

Serves you right, asshole, Banner thought.

“There are several projects proceeding in Colombia that require a U.S. military presence,” Banner said. He eyed Whitter, who seemed to hold his breath.

“Like the joint effort between Colombia and the U.S. to spray herbicide on the coca plants to reduce cocaine production?” Rubenstein said.

“Like that,” Banner said. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, that’s all I can tell you right now. I’m needed back at headquarters to continue managing the situation. We will attempt to keep the press, and the public, informed as much as is reasonably possible as this unfolds.” He strode out of the room while the press corps screeched questions at him like a flock of magpies.

“Good job,” Stromeyer said. “But a little short. You didn’t give them much to report.”

Whitter slammed into the conference room before Banner could respond. Today’s tie was a hideous gray with yellow vines running up and down in a trellis pattern. Banner would rather have taken a bullet than wear such a tie.

“That was damn close,” Whitter said. “You didn’t tell them what I told you to.”

Banner handed Stromeyer his clipboard. “If you want to tell them something, tell them yourself.”

Whitter pursed his lips. Banner glanced at Stromeyer, who flicked a glance at Whitter and then winked at Banner. Her lighthearted response to Whitter’s aggression made the muscles in Banner’s neck relax. She had a way of making the worst situations bearable.

“Meet me at Southern Command offices. We’re having a conference call with the American embassy in Bogotá in twenty minutes.” Whitter snapped out the information and stalked out of the room.

The Miami sun felt like a blowtorch. Banner and Stromeyer strolled along the downtown streets, taking a short break before heading to Southern Command’s offices. It was their first quiet moment since the hijacking, and the constant meetings and conferences were taking their toll on both of them. The sunlight and fresh air revived them. A limousine prowled behind, waiting to whisk them away when necessary. Banner began overheating within seconds. He searched for shade, while Stromeyer turned her face up and let the sun wash over her.

“You like the heat?” Banner said.

She nodded. “I love it. I grew up in Iowa, and this kind of weather came only in August. I lived for August.”

The sun warmed Banner’s shoulder, and he realized it hadn’t pained him once since his arrival in Miami. Darkview’s offices were in Arlington, Virginia, close to the powers that be in the military. Arlington was home, but Miami had a certain flair.

“We could open a satellite office here,” Banner said.

Stromeyer laughed. “I’d love the weather, but I don’t know if I could stand the vibe. It feels like a banana republic, all glitter and too laid-back for type As like me.”

Banner grinned. “Maybe they’ve got it right and the poor working stiffs like us have it wrong.”

Stromeyer smiled at him. “I love my work.”

The Southern Command building was new and, to Banner’s mind, much more inviting than most army headquarters. Waving palm trees and ample parking surrounded the two-story building. Built less than ten years ago, the facility boasted state-of-the-art technology, and its location near Miami International Airport made commuting convenient. One thousand people worked there. Banner thought the pink exterior color a little strange and whimsical for a building with such a serious purpose, but it tended to blend with the other construction in the area.

They passed through security in silence. Stromeyer’s mood darkened the minute she stepped out of the sunlight.

She said, apropos of nothing, “I hate talking to the relatives. I hope Miguel rescues the hostages soon. This situation is breaking my heart.”

They stepped into the main conference room. Whitter, two aides, and another man sat there. Whitter introduced the others as embassy personnel. He waved at the flat-screen television that showed a man in a suit sitting at a table. The man sipped from a coffee cup and looked at them as if he could see them.

“We’re on closed-circuit television,” Whitter said. He clicked on the speaker phone.

“Mr. Montoya, can you see us?”

Montoya nodded. “I can, Mr. Whitter.”

“Good. Then perhaps you tell us how the Colombian government views this situation.”

Mr. Montoya shook his head sadly. “I am afraid they are as puzzled as the rest of us. They believe that the disarmament program with the guerrillas is progressing well. They do not view this situation as a result of a hostile act against Americans. In twenty minutes the Colombian president is going to give a press conference in which he will tell the world that the plane was not hijacked.” Banner and Stromeyer looked at each other, stunned. Whitter closed his eyes.

Banner recovered first. “If the plane wasn’t hijacked, then what accounts for the text message we received from one of the passengers that said army men were taking hostages?”

Montoya gave a small sigh. “Major Banner, the last plane that was downed in the Colombian jungle landed there due to an equipment malfunction. Five American bank executives survived. They were taken hostage by some guerrillas in the area shortly after the crash. It was not a planned kidnapping, merely a crime of opportunity. The men landed in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“When was this?” Banner said.

“Three years ago.”

“Where are they now?” Banner prepared to note their names.

“They are still hostages.”

Banner sat forward. “No one’s gotten them out? Have you gone there?”

Montoya shook his head. “Absolutely not! Major Banner, I don’t think you understand the extent of the problem here. Embassy personnel are forbidden to travel to these areas. For our own safety we are not allowed to use the roads or public transportation. We fly over these areas, if we go there at all.”

“But these men are American citizens. Surely the embassy could assist in negotiations, or search and rescue,” Stromeyer said. Banner knew her well enough to hear the underlying layer of anger in her voice.

“Ms. Stromeyer—”

“It’s Major Stromeyer,” Whitter said. Banner did his best to hide his surprise at Whitter’s correction. Stromeyer raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“I apologize,” Mr. Montoya continued. “Major Stromeyer, the embassy has a strict policy of noninterference. We have no jurisdiction. We tell all Americans that they assume the risk when they come here, and if something happens they must appeal to the Colombian government and to the Colombian forces in charge of kidnap rescue.”

“How is their success rate?” Stromeyer said.

“Good, but this is a big job and the hostages are deep in the jungle.”

Whitter and Banner exchanged glances. For a brief moment, Banner saw a flicker of pain in Whitter’s eyes.

“Did you know the bank executives?” Banner said.

Whitter gave a curt nod. “One. He was an acquaintance. His family lives in D.C. My wife sees them occasionally.” He turned to the image of Mr. Montoya. “Mr. Montoya, what do you think is behind this extraordinary decision? Is the Colombian president aware that the American government believes the plane was hijacked in a manner consistent with terrorist action?”

Mr. Montoya sighed. “Mr. Whitter, I think the Colombian president is concerned that if he acknowledges the plane was hijacked by forces that could be defined as terrorists, then America will overreact. He is frightened that the aid will stop and the United States military will be sent in to wreak havoc on his country.”

“Good thing I didn’t tell the press that we’d flown five hundred soldiers into the country.” Banner spoke to Whitter under his breath.

Whitter shot him a dirty look before turning back to Mr. Montoya.

“Mr. Montoya, has the Colombian government told the embassy what it intends to do to find these passengers?”

“I understand they have sent a search team,” Mr. Montoya said.

“That found nothing,” Banner said. “Do you believe them?”

Mr. Montoya sighed. “I don’t believe anything until I can confirm it through trusted sources. The corruption here is staggering. But understand that these people may have been long gone before the search team flew over. However, the Colombian president is also aware of the statistics regarding missing planes. He intends to mention these statistics in his defense of the Colombian special forces, and to defer any claims of corruption.”

Banner leaned toward the television. “Mr. Montoya, I need to hear from someone in the administration. I want to know the steps they are taking to locate these people. If they are not adequate, then I will form an alternate plan.”

Mr. Montoya held out his hands. “I understand and I’ll arrange a liaison with the proper authorities. There are over sixty political prisoners held in Colombia. The Colombian president is right now negotiating their release as part of the disarmament. Perhaps he should add this latest group to that list and then all the hostages will be released once the deal is finalized.”

“And if the deal falls through? Then what?” Banner said.

“Then I think we need to have faith that the Colombian government will put all its resources behind the search. That’s all we can do right now.”

“I’ll assume that the Colombian government will do its job, but if it does not, then I intend to do mine,” Banner said.

13

EMMA TRUDGED ALONG, NOT LOOKING RIGHT OR LEFT, WHEN she nearly stumbled over the hand of a woman lying on the side of the path. The woman lay sprawled on her back. Her brown flowered polyester dress was covered with bits of nettles from various plants that she must have brushed against and her heavy legs were covered in bug bites. Emma squatted down next to her. The woman’s gray hair flowed over her face, obscuring her features. Emma moved it away. The woman looked to be about sixty-five, with the heavily lined face of a smoker. Her skin had a pasty white color. She gasped in short breaths, like a fish gulping air. Emma slid her arm under the woman’s shoulders to lift her up. The woman’s eyes fluttered and then opened.

“Please help me,” she said.

“Are you from Flight 689?”

The woman nodded. “I’m Gladys Sullivan. I lost my heart medication in the crash. I can feel my heart is failing. I need my medication.”

The woman struggled to sit up. Emma moved behind her to support her back.

“What were you taking?” she asked. The woman mentioned a pill that Emma knew worked to regulate heart rate.

“My heart’s been getting worse every day. I kept telling them I needed a doctor, but they didn’t care. They left me here to die.” The woman’s eyes shone with tears. Emma took the woman’s pulse. The beat was erratic, and it was clear she wouldn’t last much longer without her medication.

“I’m a chemist. I can’t replicate your medication, but I did see some foxglove back on the path about an hour ago.” The woman seized in Emma’s arms, her whole body shaking. The convulsion passed and she grabbed at Emma’s hand.

“Foxglove? Will it help?”

Emma hesitated. She hated to give the woman too much hope. When properly distilled, foxglove became digitalis, one of the most effective heart medications for the past two hundred years. Problem was, it was also highly toxic.

“It’s the plant that makes digitalis, but—”

“Oh, yes! Please. You must get some for me.” The woman choked out the words between gasps.

Emma shook her head. “It’s highly poisonous. I wouldn’t know the right amount to give you, and it could veer into toxicity too quickly for you to survive.”

“What’s your name?” Ms. Sullivan said.

“Emma Caldridge.”

“Well, Ms. Caldridge, does it look as though I’ll survive much longer without it? I think it’s worth the chance.” Emma couldn’t argue with the woman. She looked dreadful. Emma shrugged off her pack and set up her tent. The woman’s eyes widened.

“Will you look at that,” she said.

“Let me help you inside. You can rest in there while I run back for the foxglove.”

The woman clutched Emma’s arm. “Promise me you’ll return.”

“Of course I will. Let me help you into the tent.” Emma wanted nothing more than to get moving. The light was fading. Soon the path would be too dark to navigate and they’d have to wait for dawn. Emma didn’t think Ms. Sullivan would last that long. She helped the woman shift into the tent and then patted her hand.

“Just rest here. I’ll go get it.” Ms. Sullivan closed her eyes and let her head fall.

Emma bolted out of the tent and ran down the path. She moved more freely without the pack. It was almost a joy to have the weight off her. She sped back, her head swinging from side to side. Perhaps she’d missed some more foxglove that was closer? Forty-five minutes later she spotted the tall plant with its white flowers surrounded by what looked like dried grass. She carefully removed the leaves and placed them in the leg pocket of her cargo pants. She spun around to return to Ms. Sullivan.

By the time she reached the tent, the sky had deepened to a red glow. A minute later, the jungle plunged into full dark. Ms. Sullivan lay on her side in the tent, still gasping. Emma flicked on her lighter. The woman’s face held a white sheen and her breath was even more labored. She opened her eyes but seemed to look right through Emma. Emma pulled out leaves, ripped one in half, and gave the other half to the woman.

“Here, chew on this. I don’t know if it’s enough or if it’s too much.” Ms. Sullivan nodded. She took the leaf in her shaking hand and put it in her mouth.

No hesitation there, Emma thought. She watched as the woman grimaced.

“Tastes bad?” Emma said.

“Awful,” Ms. Sullivan managed to whisper. “Do you have any water?”

“I’m sorry, no. I collect it in a small plate when it rains, but there is no way to transport it, so I have to drink it all and wait until I can collect more.”

Ms. Sullivan waved a hand in the air. “Don’t worry,” she said. “When will we know if I swallowed too much?”

Emma felt helpless. “I have no idea. It should take at least twenty minutes to start entering your system.”

Ms. Sullivan lay back down and closed her eyes. Her chest still heaved with each breath, and her face stayed pale. Emma switched off the lighter.

After ten minutes, she switched it back on. Ms. Sullivan’s face looked pinker, and her breaths came in the longer, slower rhythm of sleep. Emma lay next to the tent’s wall and fell asleep.

The next morning, Ms. Sullivan’s breathing was once again labored, but not as much as it had been. She opened her eyes, looking around the tent before spying Emma.

“So you weren’t a hallucination,” she said.

“Not at all. How do you feel?” Emma checked the woman’s pulse at her wrist.

“How is it?”

“Erratic. But better than before, I think,” Emma said.

“Help me out of this tent, will you? It’s as hot as Hades in here.”

Emma helped her slide out of the tent, where she sat on the ground to catch her breath.

“Do you have any food?” Ms. Sullivan said.

Emma handed her a food package. Ms. Sullivan opened it and wrinkled her nose.

“This is turning.”

“I know. But it’s all I have.”

Ms. Sullivan handed it back. “Is it your last? Here, you take it.”

“Not at all. I have six more. You might as well eat it. They’ll all turn soon.”

Ms. Sullivan nodded. “I guess you’re right.” She tore into the filet and closed her eyes.

“Tastes like heaven, though. Much better than that dried beef jerky they’re feeding us.” She waved a finger at Emma. “I know. You’re thinking I should lose some weight.”

Emma patted her on the shoulder. “I am thinking no such thing, Ms. Sullivan.” She looked thoughtful. “Come to think of it, how are they carrying all that food? I only see a small backpack like mine on each.”

“They handed it out to us the first day. From the trucks that were parked on the side of the road. We carry our own.”

Emma looked at Ms. Sullivan’s empty pockets. “If that’s true, where’s yours?”

“They took it from me when they left me there to die. Call me Gladys, dear.” She stuck out a hand for Emma to shake. “I’m from Chicago. South Side Irish. I was heading to Bogotá to meet my sister, who moved there fifteen years ago.”

Emma shook her hand. “Call me Emma. Why Bogotá?”

“A man. Why else would an Irish woman from Chicago go to Bogotá?”

“What does he do?”

“Did. He died two months ago. I was heading down to help my sister pack to leave. He was a Christian missionary. He worked for a nonprofit that was dedicated to eradicating child soldiers and to bringing Jesus to the indigenous peoples.”

“They use child soldiers here.” Emma thought about the boy tied up on the back of the truck.

Gladys nodded. “Usually teenagers. They recruit them much like the gangs recruit in the States.”

“Do they force them?” Emma said.

Gladys shook her head. “They don’t have to. In parts of Colombia joining a paramilitary group is like joining the army in the States. The kids often have little schooling and fewer job opportunities, so the guerrilla groups offer a place to go.” She finished the entire plate of food and put it down. Emma felt a pang of panic. If Gladys continued to eat at that pace, they’d be out of food by tomorrow.

“I saw you on the plane. ’Course then you looked different. Right now you look like a heathen. What in the world have you rubbed all over your body?”

“Mud. It stops the mosquitoes.”

“Ah,” Gladys said. “They are horrible, aren’t they? They sure do torment a soul. Have you been following us? Wouldn’t it have been safer to stay with the wreckage?” Emma was having a little trouble keeping up with Gladys’s stream-of-consciousness conversation, so she answered the last question she heard.

“After you marched out they came back and blew it sky-high. I ran before it exploded. I followed you because I didn’t know what else to do, and I was afraid of that man in the truck.”

“The one in the shirtsleeves? He was a bad one, for sure. But the skinny one is crazy. He beats someone every day. Oh! That reminds me.” Gladys reached into a pocket of her dress and pulled out a rosary. “I’ve said a prayer every day since we’ve been captured.”

Emma eyed the rosary. It was made of heavy beads that looked like onyx. A large silver engraved cross hung from the bottom. “Your rosary is beautiful.”

Gladys held it up for Emma to see. “It was a gift from Charlie, my sister’s husband. One of the guerrillas tried to take it, but I told him God would curse him if he did.”

“And he stopped? Didn’t he realize what he’s doing to all the hostages is far worse than stealing a rosary?”

“You’re in Latin America now. Christianity is strong here, and it coexists with shamanism, santería voodoo, you name it. Guerrillas can be very superstitious. He didn’t want to mess with such a powerful symbol.” Gladys fingered the rosary and sighed. “Charlie was a good man. I pray for him, too.”

“Then I’ll leave you to it. I want to head down the path a little. Perhaps there’s a stream nearby and we can get some water.” Gladys nodded and closed her eyes. Her fingers ran over the beads, one by one, and Emma watched as her lips moved in the silent ritual prayers assigned to each.

Emma ran for half an hour. No water anywhere. No food, either, at least nothing that she could identify as edible. She eyed a few caterpillars hanging out on a tree. If worse came to worst, she supposed she could eat them. She would have preferred some plants first.

She spun around and ran back to Gladys. She found her lying in the same spot next to the tent, sweating profusely and gasping again. Emma grabbed some more foxglove out of her pocket. Tore the leaf in half and handed it over. Gladys chewed, this time without grimacing. After fifteen minutes, her breathing took on a more regular rhythm.

“That was a close one,” Gladys said.

Emma didn’t know what to say. Gladys needed a hospital, and soon. The foxglove wouldn’t work for long. Eventually Emma would overdose her by mistake, or the combination of a lack of food and water coupled with her heart condition would stress her body to the breaking point. These problems weren’t immediate, however.

Their immediate problem was one of logistics. Gladys couldn’t walk far, Emma needed to leave her if she was to forage for food, and each hour that passed meant that Gladys’s condition would worsen. Emma warred with the idea of pushing Gladys to rise and walk with her, or to leave her there with the tent and her remaining packets of food while she herself continued to trail the passengers in the hopes of coming upon a village.

“What are you thinking about?” Gladys’s shrewd eyes were on her again.

“What to do next. We need food and water, and we’ll get neither by sitting here.”

Gladys shifted. She waved Emma over. “Help me up.”

“Are you sure you should move? Perhaps we should rest.”

Gladys waved Emma off. “I’m feeling better now. We should move while I can. Sitting here gets us nowhere.”

Emma collapsed the tent. She took Gladys’s elbow to steer her down the path. They slogged forward. Emma found the slow pace excruciating. Gladys leaned heavily on her arm. She’d put the rosary in her pocket, but every so often she removed the beads and worried them about with her fingers. They stopped every half an hour to allow Gladys to rest.

The rains came in the afternoon. Emma hurried to place her tray out before scurrying underneath the leaves of a palm tree. She sat next to Gladys. They both stared at the plate as it filled.

“Is the tall man with the dark hair still alive?” Emma said.

Gladys frowned in thought. “You mean the handsome one? Shredded navy polo shirt?”

“That’s the one. I think his name is Cameron Sumner.”

Gladys nodded. “He’s an interesting man. He helps the weaker ones when he can, but he doesn’t say much. Seems he’s always thinking. You can almost see the gears turning in his head. And the skinny one hates him.”

“How do you know?”

“The skinny one spends a lot of time staring hate at him. Hate flows from the skinny one like a waterfall.” Gladys shook her head. “He’s the devil, that’s for sure.”

When the rain ended, the plate was half full. Emma let Gladys drink first.

“That was wonderful.” Gladys said. “I’d kill for a cigarette just now.”

Emma laughed. “I’d kill for a helicopter to come and take us away.”

“That, too,” Gladys said. She grew serious. “Emma, you need to leave me behind.” Emma started to protest, but Gladys put up a hand. “I’m slowing you down. It doesn’t do either of us any good if you continue to drag me along. Eventually you will run across a village. Those kidnappers are headed somewhere safe for them, but there’s a good chance they will pass through a village on their way.”

Emma sighed. “I know. They must be marching the passengers to a ransom point with some sort of modern communication and food. They need to eat just like the rest of us, and their packs are getting emptier each day, right along with mine.”

Gladys nodded. “That’s right. You’re not afraid?” Her warm eyes filled a little.

Emma patted her on the arm. “I won’t lie to you, I’ve been a mess this past year, but I’m not about to give up. I’m going to dog their tracks, leave markings all over the trail, and with any luck get both of us out of this situation.”

Gladys clapped her hands. “Good girl! I like a woman who knows what she wants.”

Emma smiled. “Come on. Back on your feet. A village could be right around the corner. You should walk as far as you can. It’ll be good for you.”

Gladys heaved to her feet. “You sound just like my doctor. ‘Gladys, quit smoking, Gladys, quit eating.’”

“Gladys, start walking,” Emma said.

Gladys rolled her eyes and started to move.

The path opened up into a green expanse at the base of the mountain. Emma gasped at the beauty of the little field, surrounded on three edges by jungle, with the mountain rising from the far end. Neat rows of bushes that looked like vines in a vineyard stretched almost a quarter mile on the small, flat expanse. The cultivated rows of crop ran in perfect parallel lines. The plants rippled in a slight breeze, and flashes of sunlight sparkled off the green leaves.

“Emma, look at this crop. There must be a farmer somewhere nearby. We’ve been saved!” Gladys clutched Emma’s arm in a death grip. Her breathing hitched.

“Calm down. You’re going to make yourself sick. Sit a moment.” Emma lowered her down onto a nearby boulder next to a tree. She bent down and checked the crop.

Coca. The narrow leaves looked like any other wild weed. Emma found it hard to believe that such a harmless and unassuming-looking plant could cause such misery and heartache the world over.

She straightened up and shaded her eyes against the sun. No farmer worked the fields, for which she was thankful. Whoever owned this field would not be the sort that Emma would want to meet up close and personal.

“Gladys, this is coca,” Emma said.

Gladys’s face turned grim. “So not a nice farmer.”

“No,” Emma said. She saw a glint of light off to her right. A tin roof flashed in the sun. She pulled the remaining foxglove out of her pocket.

“Take these. There’s a hut off to the right. I’m going to check it out.”

Gladys shoved the leaves into her pocket. “Be careful. Don’t let them see you. Oh, dear.” She pulled her rosary out of her other pocket and started rubbing the beads like mad.

“Saying a prayer for me, are you?” Emma said.

Gladys nodded. “Always, dear girl.”

Emma gave her a swift kiss on the cheek. “Just stay put,” she said. She patted Gladys on the arm and moved away. She skirted the tree line, doing her best to stay in cover.

The field showed signs of being newly plowed. A cash crop, lovingly tended. The sound of a truck engine shattered the peace. Emma jogged back to the tree line and made her way over to Gladys. The sound of the approaching engine grew louder. She ran faster, stumbling over roots jutting out of the earth near the tree line. She’d left Gladys all alone, and the engine sounds were coming from that direction.

She was too late. At thirty feet from the little area where Gladys sat, two men, both dressed in gray T-shirts and both carrying assault weapons, stood next to a battered truck with wooden slats for sidewalls on the bed. Gladys stood facing them. She stood at an angle from where Emma hid, which gave Emma a good view of her profile. She talked to the men, punctuating her words with elaborate hand gestures. She mimed smoking a cigarette.

One of the men snorted, grinned at the other, and pulled a crushed pack of Marlboros from his front pocket. He shook out a cigarette and offered the box to Gladys. She snagged it and wasted no time placing it between her lips. The other man stepped forward with a cheap plastic lighter and lit the cigarette. Gladys inhaled, deep. Emma moved closer.

“Thank you, boys, you have no idea how much better that makes me feel,” Gladys said.

The man with the cigarettes chattered at Gladys in Spanish. Gladys gave an elaborate shrug.

“Bogotá? I’ll pay mucho dinero,” Gladys said.

The cigarette man shook his head. “No Bogotá.” He barked out a name. Gladys cocked her head. “I know about that town. It’s one dangerous place, señor. Mucho dangeroso!” Gladys’s Spanish was a disaster, but the man seemed to understand her. He pointed his weapon at her.

“Whoa!” Gladys said. She bent forward in a fit of coughing.

Gladys, stay calm. Emma almost said the words out loud. She could tell that Gladys’s heart was racing. Nevertheless, the woman finished with her coughing fit and took another huge drag off the cigarette.

“Hospital?” Gladys said.

The man shook his head. He pointed to the truck’s bed. It was clear he wanted Gladys to get in. He grabbed her arm. Gladys yanked out of his grasp.

“Okay!” She held up her hands in surrender. The cigarette jutted out from her index and middle fingers. Emma watched the smoke rise into the air. Gladys never relinquished her grasp on the cigarette. She turned her head in the direction of the field and dropped to her knees. She clasped her hands together, as if to pray. Instead, she threw her head back and yelled to the sky.

“Emma, if you can hear me, I’m going with them, but you stay put. The second man here was at the airstrip with the killer in shirtsleeves. He’s taking me to a town controlled by the paramilitary. But I need to ride, I just can’t walk anymore.”

The man yelled at Gladys and grabbed her by the arm. This time he didn’t let go until she was directly in front of the flatbed. He shoved her toward it.

“Okay, keep your shirt on,” Gladys said. She waved at the back and mimed opening the hatch. “Can you lower it?”

The man made an irritated sound and lowered the back door. Gladys heaved her bulk onto the flatbed, never relinquishing her hold on the cigarette. The man slammed the hatch closed, waved at his buddy, and crawled into the truck’s cab.

Emma heard the gears grind as the engine turned over. She felt tears gather in her eyes. Gladys leaned out of the back of the flatbed. In her hand was her beloved rosary. The truck wheels spun on the soft earth. The rosary swung in the sudden movement. Gladys dropped it on the ground.

“For you, Emma!” she yelled into the air. “It will give you the strength to continue. Don’t give up, dear girl. I’ll pray for you every day.” Gladys waved, and Emma waved back, even though she knew Gladys couldn’t see her. Emma watched the truck disappear in a swirl of dust and smoke. Gladys continued to wave as it drove out of sight.

Emma wiped her eyes, walked over, and retrieved the rosary. The cross sparkled in the sun as it swung from side to side. Despite her anger at the omnipotent being the rosary represented, she felt like it was a talisman. She shoved it in the cargo pocket of her pants and started across the field.

Emma plodded down the rows, keeping her eyes lowered, taking care not to smash the plants with her feet. The ever-present sun beat on her head, and little puffs of dirt rose around her feet with each step. She heard the distant roar of a small airplane. She craned her neck to look into the sky. The roar got louder. The plane was flying low.

Drug plane or rescue team? she thought. The plane came into view. In one second she heard the roar but saw nothing. In the next the plane was upon her. It flew so low that it seemed to touch the treetops. As soon as it cleared the jungle it descended even lower, while a mass of black dust poured from a tank in back.

Emma’s heart did a flip. “Hey! Over here!”

She screamed and waved her arms. The plane flew right at her. She threw herself down as it roared over her head. The chemicals landed on her in a huge, choking cloud. Her throat closed in protest and water streamed from her eyes. She heaved a breath and then started to cough. The chemical scorched her mucous membranes, and the inside of her mouth was on fire. It sprinkled into her hair and layered over the cut that she’d gotten on her head during the plane crash. The cut burned as the chemical chewed into her skin.

The plane turned around and flew back at her. The dust poured again, covering the entire coca field in black sediment. It passed over Emma, once again enveloping her in a cloud of chemicals. Her lungs burned. She opened her mouth to breathe. She sucked in the harsh chemical, and her stomach rebelled. She retched, but nothing came up, thanks to the meager rations she’d eaten. She dry-heaved over and over.

The plane flew away.

The dust cloud cleared. The field of coca, previously so green, now looked black. Emma sat up and shook the black granules off her skin. She plucked a leaf off a nearby coca plant. She shook some of the herbicide off the leaves onto her palm, and took a closer look at it.

The granules looked like glyphosate, a typical herbicide used in agricultural applications, but it was mixed with a surfactant of some sort. Emma couldn’t identify it. The surfactant would assist the herbicide to penetrate the waxy surface of the leaves. It would also turn the EPA-approved herbicide into a concoction deadly to humans, plants, and animals. The coca would die, but so would everything else in the jungle.

“Asshole!” Emma yelled into the air. “Kill everything, why don’t you?”

Emma staggered into the jungle. She needed to get the herbicide off her skin before it entered her system through her pores. The mud she’d spread all over would act as a temporary barrier, but the surfactant would eat its way through it soon enough. She watched the sky. It had rained daily since her ordeal began, so she hoped that it would again, and soon. She felt her panic rising as she used a stick to scrape the mud off her. She felt terrible dropping the herbicide on the ground where it would poison the dirt, but she had no choice.

An hour later, the rain came. Emma stood naked in the pounding water, and washed the mud and chemical off her skin and hair. Her clothes were draped on a nearby boulder. The rain pummeled everything, including the coca field. The herbicide sluiced off the plants and mingled into the muddy dirt below, turning the ground into a chemical wasteland. When everything was soaked, she collected her things and hiked back to the trail.

Emma felt clean for the first time in days. She hated to replace the mud. She decided to get away from the herbicide area before reapplying it. She hiked for half an hour but couldn’t take much more. The mosquitoes feasted on her fresh skin as if it were a gourmet meal. She sat on a boulder and counted her bites. One hundred twenty. Sixty on each arm. She sighed. She found some wet earth at the base of a tree and smeared the mud on.

14

LUIS GNAWED ON A PIECE OF BONE-DRY BEEF AND BARKED orders at the guerrillas. He washed the beef down with a swig of burned coffee. He’d woken up in a very bad mood. One of his sentries was missing. Desertions were common, but each time it happened it set Luis on edge. He viewed each as a failure of his ability to frighten the men into total obedience.

Alvarado snapped out orders as well. Luis heard his voice grow hoarse with the yelling. Only the passengers were quiet. Most had entered the depressed, somnolent state that Luis knew was a sign of despair. He kept them hungry and tired, and made sure that one was beaten every day while the others watched. Nothing commanded more obedience than the fear of pain.

Luis sipped his coffee and eyed the tall man. He’d hollowed out some in the last days due to dehydration, but he still maintained a watchful stillness that bothered Luis. He’d proven invaluable, however, helping to lift fallen logs or other obstacles that needed to be moved as the group progressed, and he still walked with a fluid stride. Luis decided that the man would be the one beaten today. Perhaps then he would see the fear in the man’s eyes that signaled respect.

A small group of soldiers stood next to the tied passengers. They waved their arms excitedly and gathered in a semicircle at the edge of the clearing.

“Shit,” Luis said. He spit the coffee onto the ground.

Alvarado stepped out of the circle of guerrillas and waved him over.

“We found Juan.” Alvarado’s eyes held a grim look.

Luis grabbed a machete and strolled over to the circle of men. They moved aside as he approached. Luis enjoyed the anticipation of the moments before he would come eye to eye with the man he intended to kill.

In the center sat Juan. His head bled from a huge gash above his ear and his clothes were soaked with blood. Luis noted that his eyes, always red from the crack he smoked, looked like two neon lights.

“Where have you been?” Luis spoke in a conversational tone of voice that belied the ticking time bomb of rage that was building in him.

“I was attacked in the forest! By El Chupacabra!”

The circle of men fell silent. Two made a rapid sign of the cross.

Luis did his best to hide his surprise. He’d expected a long tale of woe from Juan, but not this. The men peered around them with uneasy expressions on their faces. Luis stared hard at Juan, trying to buy time while he decided how to deal with the wild claim. The last thing he needed was a bunch of drug-addicted, drunken men believing they were seeing bloodsucking creatures with red eyes, green skin, and spines running up and down their backs.

Luis snorted. “El Chupacabra is a myth. There is no such thing.” He waved a hand in the air, as if such myths were not worth mentioning.

One of the guerrillas, a farmer named Manzillo, stepped forward. “No, Rodrigo, it is not a myth. I have seen one with my own eyes. It killed three of my goats and six chickens. It sucked the blood right out of their bodies.” The men all muttered to one another and several eyed the trees worriedly. Manzillo’s insistence surprised Luis. He was a farmer forced into service by the FFOC. He’d never shown a spine as long as Luis had known him.

“We have been in these hills for years, Manzillo. Why would the animal be attacking us now?” Luis spoke in what he hoped was a calm, reasonable voice. It was not a voice he usually employed, so he was not sure if he sounded convincing. Especially when what he really wanted to do was grab both Juan and Manzillo and shake the shit out of them.

“Because of the herbicide. The gringos are killing the coca fields and the farmers are taking their goats and chickens to other places. Without the chickens to eat, it is forced to be bold to get food.”

The other guerrillas were struck silent. Luis knew it was because none of them was smart enough to come up with such a logical reason for a mythical animal to attack them. Manzillo’s reasoning sounded like rocket science to them.

“This is ridiculous, Manzillo.” Luis’s anger had always been enough to control the men. But this time, it didn’t work.

“It is not, Luis. We must have a plan for tomorrow night, or someone else will be next.” Manzillo drew himself up to his full height, which was not tall, but such a move from a mouse like Manzillo made him appear heroic.

Luis felt the blood rush to his face as his anger rose. He glanced at the tall man, who stood three feet from Luis at the edge of the group of passengers. Luis saw a flicker of amusement in the man’s eyes, which stoked his rage. He focused again on Juan.

“How much rock did you smoke before you saw this Chupacabra, eh?”

A couple of the guerrillas snickered. Luis chalked their reaction up as a hit.

Juan shook his head. “No more than usual, huh? And look at me. How do you think I got these wounds? I tell you, I was attacked by El Chupacabra!”

“You. Were. Not!” Luis grabbed the machete tighter and spun around. The steel glinted in the early morning light as he slashed the blade down, aiming at the tall man’s neck. A woman passenger screamed; a scream cut short by a male passenger clapping his hand over her mouth.

Luis timed the attack to match the moment the tall man looked away, but the man spun around at the sound of the scream and dodged the blade. The machete sank into his upper shoulder, slicing the skin, but missed his neck, which was Luis’s real target. The tall man staggered but didn’t go down.

The tall man faced Luis, his eyes clouded with anger and pain. He said nothing as his blood soaked through his shredded shirt. After a minute, he took several slow steps backward, still standing upright, stopping when he reached the circle of passengers.

Luis threw the machete on the ground. “That is what will happen to you, Juan, if you talk about green monsters again. And, Manzillo, you will stand sentry tonight.”

Luis stalked back to his coffeepot and dry-meat breakfast. Alvarado resumed yelling, and the camp prepared once again to march.

15

MIGUEL STOOD IN A DOUBLE-WIDE TRAILER THAT SERVED AS A command post and looked at the twenty special forces men assigned to assist in the airplane reconnaissance. Most had been stationed in Colombia for the past six months. All had seen some sort of action. Three had minor injuries, and one was newly recovered from a nasty bout of dengue fever, the scourge of hot-weather locales the world over.

Miguel had arrived by helicopter, flying over the area he would traverse on foot. Nothing but trees and mountains for miles. The beauty stunned him; the complete isolation worried him. The Colombian police force refused to join him in the search.

“That is for the Colombian special forces. We do not have the additional men to spare for such an endeavor,” one official had said.

“This is how the Colombian government treats its allies?” Miguel said.

The official nodded. “Your government has not sufficiently provisioned you for the mission you are about to undertake. You have no dogs to sniff for the mines, and no army backup. You will be dead in a few days unless you take additional precautions. I will not send my men on a suicide mission.”

“Any suggestions?” Miguel hadn’t bothered to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

“Fly over the area. Do not attempt to go there on foot. The forest is heavily mined and bandits are everywhere. You can find the wreckage just as easily from the air, perhaps more so, and your odds of dying while looking will be drastically reduced.”

“We will begin with air review, of course, but once we spot the crash site, we will drop men into it. They will canvass the vicinity for survivors.”

“A very bad idea, sir. They are bound to step on a land mine.” The government official looked sad.

“Perhaps I’ll arrange for a bomb-sniffing dog,” Miguel said.

“I’d suggest you get one for every soldier. If you do not, the paw-breakers will get them.”

“Paw-breakers?” Miguel said.

The man nodded. “Small mines designed to blow off limbs. They are homemade and activated by hypodermic syringes or mousetraps.”

“Wonderful,” Miguel said.

“Welcome to Colombia.” The man had shrugged as he said this.

Miguel was heartened when he saw the soldiers assigned to the mission. He had been forced to accept fewer men than he’d wanted, but the ones he did have seemed solid and ready for the jungle trek. Most looked fit enough for the hiking that would be required, but none looked very eager to begin. Worse, they all wore light, sand-colored camouflage pants. They might as well have been wearing white, for all the good the light camos would do for them.

Miguel introduced himself. “I’m your commander for this search-and-rescue operation. We’re planning on heading deep into the jungle, so can anyone explain to me why you’re all wearing camouflage used for desert missions?”

“We were scheduled to go to Iraq, but they pulled us off at the last minute and sent us here instead.” One of the soldiers in the back row offered the clarification.

Miguel sighed. The Colombian officer’s comment about the lack of preparation for the mission appeared to be right on target.