Running from the Devil

“Don’t worry, not to the DOD. I’m taking you to Darkview’s temporary offices. I need you to tell this story again to my partner.”

Mr. Caldridge put the gun in his pocket. “I’m sorry about the gun. I wouldn’t have shot you.”

Stromeyer nodded. “I knew that.”

Mr. Caldridge looked surprised. “How?”

Stromeyer opened the door for him. “The safety was on.”

29

ALVARADO CAME TO AND SAT UP IN A GROGGY HAZE. IT WAS black as pitch. His head throbbed something awful, and his vision was blurred. Walking anywhere was out of the question. He lay back down and fell asleep.

The next morning he walked into a tense camp. The passengers huddled next to one another on one side, the guerrillas on the other. Both groups eyed Luis with dread. He was busy beating a male passenger with his bare fists. The passenger lay on the ground, his body curled into a tight ball and his arms over his head to protect himself from the blows. Luis grew tired of punching and graduated to kicking the passenger with his steel-toed boots. It sounded like he was kicking a side of beef.

Alvarado sighed at this display of Luis’s usual inability to control himself. Luis looked up and spotted him. He stopped kicking.

“Where the hell have you been? And where are Jorge and Gordo?”

“They deserted,” Alvarado said.

“What? That’s not possible.” Luis was shocked. His best men.

“Leave off the passenger and let’s go in your tent. We need to talk.”

Luis delivered one more blow to the groaning man and stormed into his tent. Alvarado followed at a slower pace. Once in the tent, he delivered the news as quickly as he could.

“The diabetic man is dead, but the tall man escaped with the help of an English-speaking woman. I believe she was the one tracking us, not El Chupacabra. Jorge and Gordo were afraid to tell you this, so they attacked me and ran off.”

Luis stood, unmoving. The only sign that showed he’d heard Alvarado was the twitching in his left cheekbone.

“I will track that man down myself and kill him. Only after he is dead will my luck change.”

Alvarado wanted to pull his hair out at Luis’s ridiculous statement. The only thing that stopped him from doing so was the fact that Luis was partially correct. His luck on this venture had been bad, and it was getting worse by the day. Nevertheless, Alvarado reached for a way to placate Luis. In point of fact, things were not at a total loss, and they were so deep in the shit now, going deeper was the only alternative.

“He is one gringo and they were three men who cannot call themselves soldiers. Surely things are not that bad, Luis. We have the hostages still, and we have lost only two to the mines instead of the ten or fifteen that we expected.”

Luis looked at Alvarado, and for the first time Alvarado saw what might have been fear in his eyes.

“The Americans have dispatched a troop of special forces to find the passengers.”

Alvarado felt a cold chill run down his spine. He shook it off. “So? You said yourself that they will never find us. We know these mountains well. Not the gringos.”

“And I can’t raise Mathilde. I’ve tried several times, but she doesn’t respond.”

“What happened to them?”

Luis exploded. “How the hell do I know? I am pounding on the radio all night while you slept in the forest!”

“I was attacked, Luis. Perhaps you call our contact at the cartel. Maybe they have heard something.”

“I did.”

“Ah, good. And what did they say?”

“They say the Cartone cartel becomes nervous. The Americans are furious at the hijacking. They say that unless the passengers are released in twenty-four hours, aid to Colombia will stop and the American government will demand extradition of all cartel and paramilitary leaders.”

“Cartone is in jail, is he not? Didn’t he agree to lay down his arms under a nonextradition deal?”

Luis paced the length of the tent. “He did. His second in command says that he will never allow Cartone to be extradited. Now the other cartels are worried that the hijacking will force the president to offer up the rest of the leaders to the Americans as a peace offering. They have teamed up with the paramilitary groups to the west against us.”

“What are they planning?”

“To kill us! What the hell do you think?” Luis screamed.

Alvarado stood up. “If this is so, Luis, then we are on our own. We cannot fight them all.”

“We will fight them all, Alvarado. We have no choice. Don’t forget, we have the FFOC on our side. Or do you question their, and my, ability?” Luis’s mood had shifted in an instant.

Alvarado took a deep breath and tried to step lightly. “Of course not, Luis.”

“Then it does not matter that the other groups are angry. They are fools for believing the president and his offers of light sentences and no extradition.”

“But Maria, Mathilde. We must go there and see if they survived.”

Alvarado dated Maria but wanted Mathilde, who was Luis’s woman. He could live without Maria but would mourn the loss of Mathilde.

“Mathilde cannot be killed. That woman is a cat with nine lives.”

“So what do we do?”

“We go back and take the secondary trail to Mathilde’s watch post. After we check on them, we continue to the ransom point. But forget the trucks. We cut a path through the mountains. If we stay on the trail, Cartone’s helicopters will find us.”

“And the American special forces?”

“They are the least of our problems.” Luis dismissed them without further thought.

Alvarado left the tent, his mind whirring with plans. He would follow Luis until the checkpoint, where he would see how much money would be collected on the first ransoms. He wouldn’t leave the checkpoint with the group. After he got his money, he would find Mathilde and get the hell out of Colombia.

30

LUIS, HIS MEN, AND THE PASSENGERS STRAGGLED INTO Mathilde’s base camp at three o’clock in the afternoon. The stench was unbearable. Bodies, most of them bloated from the gases released inside their skin, littered the clearing. On seeing this, one passenger screamed over and over until a guerrilla slapped her.

The base camp contained six huts arranged in a circle and one watchtower made of wood that rose two stories into the air. To reach the second floor, one needed to walk up a ladder built into its sides. The first level stood eight feet off the ground and had a narrow walkway built around the perimeter. From this landing, a sentry could view the immediate vicinity, but not see over the treetops.

The ladder continued up to a second level, a crow’s nest at the top. It was open air, with a three-foot-high railing running around the edge. From this location a sentry could see over the trees and down the road about two hundred fifty meters before the jungle swallowed the view. A gun on a tripod filled the top floor, and ammunition belts were kept in a small wooden chest in the corner.

Two huts were reduced to cinders. Luis poked around in the burned wood and found some bodies. They were burned beyond recognition, but neither looked tall enough to be Mathilde. He continued searching the clearing.

Three-quarters of the way around, he came upon the severed head. It stank like overripened fruit, and crawled with flies and maggots. Luis waved away the flies and looked at it.

“Alvarado, get over here!” He roared his anger.

Alvarado jogged to the grisly find. He bent down to take a look.

“Jesus, it’s Jorge.” Alvarado breathed the name. He looked a little closer and saw a piece of paper stuffed in the head’s mouth. He found a stick and used it to poke at the head, dislodging the note, which fluttered to the ground. Alvarado spread it out.

We’re coming for you.

“What does it say?” Luis asked. He’d grown up on a remote farm in the Putumayo district of Colombia. He’d learned rudimentary English from listening to the Christian missionaries his father traded with, but he had never learned to read or write in any language.

Alvarado read the note out loud.

Luis sucked in his breath. “It’s from the Cartone cartel.”

Alvarado nodded. The Cartone cartel controlled the drug trade in Cali and was known for its grisly calling cards. Jorge had family in Cali, so it made sense for him to have gone there. The fact that he’d been captured and killed told Alvarado just how bad their situation was, because normally a man with friendly connections among the cartels would not have been killed in such a fashion.

“We’re in deep shit, Luis.”

Luis shrugged. “Jorge has killed how many people? Thirty? Forty? He must have pissed off someone in the cartel. It has nothing to do with us. Besides, we have the FFOC behind us.”

Alvarado stared at Luis. That he would be so blasé about an open threat from such a powerful cartel was insane. Alvarado didn’t know what to say. He stood up and took a deep breath.

“Let’s keep looking for Maria and Mathilde.”

Alvarado edged around the tree line. He found Maria’s body lying facedown. He recognized a small bracelet that he’d given her on her twenty-fifth birthday. She’d been thrilled beyond belief. Her life had been spent in the slums of Bogotá. No one had ever given her a gift of that value. Alvarado had not loved her, but he couldn’t help but feel sadness for her now.

Mathilde’s body was not among the dead. Luis reported this fact with satisfaction.

“That woman makes the snake in the Garden of Eden look like a saint,” he said.

They put the passengers to work collecting the dead. By now, most walked through the day with a sense of resignation. Luis liked it like that. Each day they presented less and less of a problem to him. He kept to his daily beatings, nonetheless. No sense letting them get any ideas.

That evening, during dinner, Mathilde strolled into camp. Alvarado jumped up from his position at the fire and watched as the light played over her sweat-soaked T-shirt. She looked tired but none the worse for her near miss with the Cartone cartel.

Luis watched her amble up to him. “So you live, Mathilde. I knew you would.”

Mathilde shrugged. Her beautiful brown hair rippled over her shoulders, and Alvarado felt an almost physical reaction at the sight of her.

“I was talking to the two escaped passengers when the helicopter came.”

Luis’s head snapped up. “What two passengers?”

“A man with brown hair and a woman. They wanted to use the radio to call the American embassy.”

“You let them go?” Luis’s voice took on a quiet, menacing sound. If his show of menace bothered Mathilde, she didn’t show it.

“I had no choice, now, did I, Rodrigo? The copter, he came and killed them all. There was no time for capturing.”

Luis grabbed Mathilde’s arm. “Did the tall man get away?”

Mathilde snatched her arm back. “Don’t touch me like that, Rodrigo, if you know what’s good for you. I will tell my father, and he’ll have your liver for lunch.”

Mathilde’s father ran the Putumayo division of the FFOC. He had several children by various women in different districts. He’d paid for Mathilde to attend school and even paid for her to learn English. Nevertheless, his parenting skills left something to be desired, because he’d seen her only a few times during her life.

Mathilde’s threat set Luis back on his heels, because her father was perfectly capable of killing him and his entire crew before breakfast. Tales of the man’s vicious exploits ran rampant in Colombia, and Luis wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t fry a human liver and eat it. He let go of Mathilde and made a show of his nonchalance.

“It is just that the tall man is a thorn in my side, and I would like to have him and the woman returned to me.”

“Then you shouldn’t have let them go, eh, Luis?” Mathilde’s voice was taunting.

Luis reddened. “Jorge let them go. But he has paid for his stupidity.” Luis waved an arm at the head still sitting on the edge of the camp.

Mathilde’s eyes widened at the sight. “Who did that?”

“The Cartone cartel. It is a warning about the hostages. But tell me, which way did the tall man go?”

Mathilde waved at a small path. “To the stream. You will find them there, Rodrigo.”

Rodrigo nodded. “Tomorrow I will call to the FFOC and have them send a helicopter. I need to find the tall man, or my luck will not change.”

“And I want the woman dead, Rodrigo. She insulted me.” Mathilde put on a pout.

“We can’t have that, now can we?” Rodrigo said.

No, we can’t, Alvarado thought.

31

BANNER AND WHITTER SAT AT A SMALL CAFÉ IN THE LITTLE Havana area of Miami drinking after-dinner café cubanos. The ever-present sound of electronic dance music filtered to them through the traffic noise. It seemed that wherever Banner went in Miami, salsa, Latin, or electronic music blared nearby. Banner’s rolled sleeves and missing tie were his only concessions to being “off duty.” Whitter wore a green neon-colored polo shirt and khakis. Banner thought the combination unfortunate, but by no means the worst the man had worn.

It was Whitter who suggested they have dinner away from Southcom’s headquarters, and Banner had agreed wholeheartedly. He needed a break. They’d been eating for an hour and during that time Whitter kept the conversation light, but Banner suspected he had some private information he wanted to pass on. As did Banner.

“We have information that the first transaction for a passenger occurred sometime today,” Banner said.

Whitter looked pained. “What? Who?”

Banner shook his head. “We can’t confirm it, but a family of one of the victims told Stromeyer that their insurance company paid out on a kidnap policy. The passenger was an oil-company executive. The transfer took place using a private recovery company.”

Whitter turned to Banner. “Perhaps your company arranged the deal?”

Banner refused to take the bait. “Darkview doesn’t currently provide that type of service. Although we may in the near future.”

“You’d be creating a whole industry based upon kidnap and ransom,” Whitter said.

Banner snorted. “The insurance companies have already capitalized on that industry. Why else would they write kidnap insurance?”

“Still,” Whitter said, “most of the passengers are regular citizens. They don’t have kidnap coverage on their home owners’ policies.”

“Which is why we will get them out of there. And why you need to authorize movement of those five hundred special forces soldiers currently on the pipeline.”

Whitter shook his head. “We keep going around and around on this one. But something’s happened that will make that impossible. The Colombian president responded to Margate’s ultimatum with one of his own. He insisted that all American forces leave Colombia immediately.”

“I didn’t see any press conference to that effect,” Banner said.

“It was a private call between the Colombian president and Margate.”

Banner felt his anger growing. What had Margate expected? “Does the withdrawal include the five hundred on the pipeline?”

Whitter nodded. “He mentioned them specifically.”

Banner sipped the hot coffee laced with so much cream that it tasted thick.

“Does the Colombian president realize that he’s biting off his nose to spite his face? The paramilitary guys won’t back down just because he makes a show of annoyance. They’ll go on a rampage over the extradition demand alone.”

Whitter sighed. “I know, it’s just his ego talking, but it’s important to him not to appear weak. If he allows the U.S. to interfere in local matters, then it will seem as though he’s our lapdog.”

“What did Margate say in response?”

“Nothing. But the word got out somehow and Oriental’s oil executives descended on him in a fury. Seems they think they’ll be slaughtered if the special forces leave. Margate’s arranging emergency evacuation for them and their families prior to troop withdrawal.”

“And Miguel and his little band?” Banner said.

“They have to leave as well.”

Banner put his cup down so fast that it smacked into the saucer with a clanging sound. “So Margate just leaves the passengers high and dry?”

“He’s demanding their release in return for no extradition.”

Banner snorted. “But what’s he going to do if the paramilitary guys don’t play ball? How does he intend to hunt them down and extradite them?”

Whitter gave Banner a sly look. “I imagine a covert operation will be one likely scenario.”

Banner shook his head. “He hasn’t contacted me. Besides, I don’t know that I’d take the project. The Colombian president will expect some sort of covert action, and he’ll put the border forces on notice. Plus, there are an estimated twenty thousand paramilitary and cartel guys running around Colombia. I’d need a small army to run a decent operation. Sending in less would mean certain death for them.”

“It appears as though we’ll end up with sixty-eight more American hostages held in Colombia,” Whitter said. Banner reached for the check that lay between them and started counting out his money.

“Has Margate issued withdrawal orders yet?”

Whitter shook his head. “Not formally, no, but plans have already been set in motion.”

“Keep the change,” Banner said to the waitress. He downed the coffee and pushed from the table.

“Banner, where are you going?” Whitter said.

“Whitter, just keep in contact with Stromeyer. She can handle anything I can.”

“You’re not going to confront Margate, are you? Banner, that’s a bad idea.” Whitter sounded strained.

“Calm down. I know better than to butt heads with the secretary of defense, for God’s sake.”

“You do not. I was there when you did exactly that not twenty-four hours ago. Then you said his suit was bad.” Whitter sounded panicked.

“His suit was bad, but what can you expect from a man who has the body of a dumpling and the brains to match?” Banner strode out of the café with Whitter at his heels.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“About what? I’m just headed back to my hotel room.” Banner patted Whitter on the arm. “You should head back, too. This whole affair has got to be taking its toll on you.”

“I may not have known you long, Banner, but I’ve known you long enough to realize when you’re headed for trouble. Remember what Montoya from the embassy said. The Colombian special forces are good at recovering hostages.”

“Like they recovered those bank executives?” Banner said.

“But this situation is completely different.” Banner stopped walking so fast that Whitter bumped into him.

“Listen to me. The only thing different about this situation is that there are more hostages at risk. The best chance those passengers have to survive is right now, when there are special forces in the area searching for them. Once those forces evacuate, you can kiss those hostages good-bye.”

Whitter rubbed a weary hand across his forehead. “I agree, but what do you expect us to do? Defy the Colombian president?”

“Tell Margate to withdraw his ultimatum. The Colombian president will withdraw his, and we can proceed to find and free those passengers.”

“The secretary of defense is not a man who likes to lose face or reverse position,” Whitter said.

“And what about you, Whitter? Do you believe that the ultimatum is a good idea?”

Whitter paused. “I do not.”

“Then tell Margate.”

Banner left Whitter standing alone on the sidewalk, with the pulsing music of Miami in the background.

32

THAT EVENING EMMA AND SUMNER ATE THE LAST OF THE PIG and stared at each other. Emma didn’t want to state the obvious, but she couldn’t help it.

“We’re out of food.”

“So it would seem,” Sumner said.

“Do you think you could shoot an animal if we came across one?”

Sumner nodded. “I could certainly try.”

Emma sighed. “My concern is that we’d alert the guerrillas to our location.”

“We’re on borrowed time as it is. If we stay along the stream, they will surely catch us on one of their pass-bys. If we go to the interior, we risk the land mines. If we stay where we are, we risk growing old in these mountains.”

“Better than dying. How many land mines?”

“Colombia is one of the top five countries in the world with regard to land mines. We estimated that at least a thousand people are injured or die each year.”

Emma was aghast. “Who is planting them?”

“The paramilitary groups. They control their perimeters with the mines.”

“Is there no rule of law in Colombia?” She didn’t bother to hide her disgust.

“In Bogotá, yes. When dealing with the cartels? Only the rule of survival of the fittest.”

Emma grabbed the tent and popped it open. “Mr. Sumner, if that’s true, then I expect to survive. Because I am the fittest, not those goddamned criminals.”

Sumner raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment.

Two hours later, they woke to the sound of a helicopter overhead. The blades chopped and whirred, sounding as though the machine would land right on top of them. Sumner and Emma stuck their heads outside the tent.

The night sky glowed in the north.

“They have a landing strip there.” Sumner stared at the sky.

“That’s close. Maybe two miles away, no more.” Emma watched the glow as well, straining to see if she could make out the shape of the copter. She popped her head back in the tent and grabbed her shoes and socks. “Let’s go.”

“Go where, there?” Sumner pointed toward the night sky.

“Yep. There.”

“And what do you intend to do once we get there? Introduce yourself to the guerrillas?”

Emma handed him his shoes. “You can fly a copter, can’t you?”

“Of course, but what’s your point?”

“Then let’s go steal one, shall we?” She grinned at him. After a few seconds, he shook his head.

“And I thought scientists weren’t risk takers.”

“You thought wrong.” Emma crawled out of the tent.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Emma and Sumner were flat on their stomachs, staring at a helicopter squatting on a dark landing strip, looking like a dragonfly that was resting. Fifty yards away, a group of men crouched by a fire, talking in low tones.

“How long would it take to get that thing off the ground?” Emma said.

“Too long. They’ll reach us while the damn thing is still winding up.”

“We need a distraction,” she said. “How about if I pop up at the perimeter and taunt them? Then when they chase me, you can jump in the copter and rev it up.”

Sumner shook his head. “And what will that prove? I’ll be in the copter and they’ll have you hostage.”

“I’ll run in far enough to get them away,” Emma said. “After a few minutes, I’ll double back to the runway. They’ll never catch me. At least not on foot.”

Sumner shook his head. “And if I have to leave quickly? It’s too risky, Caldridge.”

Emma snorted. “Riskier than what? Staying in these mountains and getting killed? Dying of starvation? Sumner, we don’t even know which direction to head to save ourselves. I run like the wind. They won’t catch me.”

Emma and Sumner glared at each other. The sound of the men’s laughter floated across to them. Sumner gazed at the men again, assessing them.

“They’re playing craps,” he said.

“And drinking. If we let them go a little longer, they’ll be too impaired to catch me.”

“These guys are like cockroaches. They don’t die, they just mutate.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

After a long moment, Sumner shook his head. “Actually, I don’t.”

“I’ll work around to their right. When you hear them yell, run to the copter. Give me enough time to lure them into the trees, then get that piece of machinery moving.”

“And if I have to leave quickly?”

“Fly along the stream. I’ll be there.”

Emma put the backpack on her back. She’d left the tent behind. If they got out of there they wouldn’t need it, and if they didn’t, they could go back and retrieve it. She prepared to move. Sumner grabbed her arm.

“Be careful,” he said.

Emma nodded once, and then she was gone.

Three minutes later, one of the men in the craps game sent up a yell.

“You bastard! Why you throwing rocks?” He pushed at his neighbor.

“I didn’t!”

The two men squared off.

A rock flew into the circle and hit one on the back of the head.

The men exploded into action, grabbing their guns off the ground.

“In there. See it moving?” One man swung his rifle up and shot.

“Get it! Come on!”

The three ran into the tree line.

Sumner jogged, bent over, to the copter. He swung under the nose and crawled into the pilot’s seat.

The copter was an ancient Blackhawk. The backseats were ripped out. A couple of battered coolers were strapped to the floor on the right, held in place with bungee cords. A magazine picture of a buxom blonde in a tiny bathing suit was taped on the wall over the coolers. Someone had drawn a mustache on her.

Sumner turned his attention back to the control panel. He kicked the thing to life. The engine turned over and the blades started a slow rotation.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered. The blades whirred faster, but not fast enough to take off.

More gunshots cracked through the night.

The helicopter blades began to create their characteristic chopping sound. Sumner couldn’t hear anything over the copter’s din. He glanced back just in time to see two of the men plunge out of the trees. They fired rounds at the copter. Sumner didn’t hear the shots, but he saw the muzzle flashes. He turned on the helo light and yanked the collective. The helicopter rose into the air, rocking back and forth like a lazy fly. Bullets flew past him, flashing in the helicopter’s light like silver sparkles.

“Come on, you fat beast, move faster!” Sumner yelled at the dashboard, wishing that his will alone would make the copter respond. He couldn’t stay and wait for Emma. Bullets hammered at the helicopter’s skin. He rose even higher, trying to rock the copter back and forth to make it a more difficult target for the men to hit.

“Goddammit, Caldridge, where are you?” Sumner said. He rose three stories up before taking another quick look back.

He saw Emma burst from the trees to the left of the runway. Her arms and legs were pumping in a smooth, coordinated rhythm. She ran fast and efficiently, whipping down the side of the airstrip, chewing up the pavement. A man was chasing her, but it was clear he couldn’t hold on. Sumner watched the man stagger sideways, bend over, and put his hand on his knees, his chest heaving.

The helicopter’s radio crackled, and a voice barked at him in Spanish.

“This is Officer Lopez of Air Tunnel Denial, Colombia. Your aircraft is unregistered and has been deemed to be of suspicious origin. Please identify yourself.”

Sumner grabbed at the radio. “Officer Lopez? It’s me, Cameron Sumner. I’ve hijacked a para’s copter and I’m under fire.”

“Señor Sumner? You live!”

Bullets hammered into the copters skids. Sumner yanked the copter to the other side.

“Not for long if I don’t get out of here. Where the hell am I?”

“You are east of Cartagena along the Venezuelan border.”

“Report my coordinates to the guys in Key West.”

Sumner swung the chopper around and flew back the other way. He circled the runway and lined up. He flew the copter straight down the runway, nose down and tail up, remaining fifteen feet off the ground. He headed right for the men, who screamed and leaped sideways as the copter flew into them. Sumner slowed a bit, but as he came even with Emma, he watched her grab the copter’s landing skids. She wrapped her arms around them.

The copter tilted sharply left with the added weight, but Sumner corrected and continued forward. They were twenty feet from the tree line, heading for it, when the rocket-propelled grenade took out the tail.

33

LUIS WATCHED AS TWO MEMBERS OF THE FFOC DRAGGED THE tall man and a woman into camp. They were tied at the wrists and lashed together with ropes. Scratches covered the left side of the tall man’s face, and the pinkie finger on his left hand jutted out at an unnatural angle. His left arm bore a gruesome road rash, as if he’d been dragged across gravel. All of the scratches and gouges bled freely. Despite it all, he still walked with his characteristic efficiency of motion. The man scanned the camp, his eyes coming to rest on Jorge’s head, which had been placed on a stick at the edge of the forest, near the passengers. Luis had put it there as a warning to them. He liked the way it focused their fear.

The woman with the tall man looked like a wild creature. Mud covered her skin and her hair hung in thick oily clumps that resembled long snakes. Even filthy and covered with mud, Luis could tell that she was beautiful. Her eyes were cat-shaped and a vibrant green, and they sparked with anger while she scanned the camp. Luis knew that if she smiled she would show the straight white teeth that he thought of as the hallmark of an American. She wore cargo pants and running shoes of an indeterminate color, and on her back was a grimy backpack.

She stood as straight and unbending as the tall man, and moved just as easily. Her gaze came to rest on Jorge’s head and skittered away. Luis noted that she didn’t appear surprised to see the head, and also appeared not as afraid of it as he would have liked.

He walked up to them. As he did he kept an eye on the woman, waiting to see if she would shrink in fear at his commanding presence. She looked at him in a straightforward way, showing no particular fear of him, and no respect. It was then that Luis decided to break her.

“So, we finally find the woman responsible for stabbing two of my men and causing many more to desert,” Luis said.

The woman locked eyes with him, as if she were his equal.

He slapped her with an open hand. The sound of his palm hitting her cheekbone cracked through the camp. She staggered sideways. She regained her balance and looked at him again. This time anger shone in her eyes, but still no fear.

He hit her again.

She staggered sideways again, this time leaning into the tall man, who braced himself and managed to keep her standing. She raised her eyes again to Luis. She still showed no fear, just anger. It was as if the anger was a waterfall, flowing out of her. Something about it bothered Luis. The anger seemed unrelated to him. As if it came from a deep place inside of her and had nothing to do with the present.

Luis was a superstitious man. While he never believed in the El Chupacabra nonsense that his men babbled about, he did believe in demons, ghosts, bad luck, and evil portents. Something about this woman, and her proximity to the tall man, made a feeling of inevitability wash over him. It was an emotion that he did not like. He refused to label it. If he were a lesser man, he would have ended this operation two days ago, when he’d learned that the Cartone cartel was after him. But Luis was not weak. He refused to bend. He would see this operation to a successful conclusion in spite of these two worthless gringos. He would kill them both, after breaking them. He would triumph over it all.

Alvarado touched his arm. Luis snapped out of his reverie.

“What do you want?”

“The FFOC soldiers have news. They want to meet with you.”

“Tie him to that tree.” Luis indicated a tree in the middle of the camp. “We’ll have some fun with her later, eh?”

The men laughed as they dragged the prisoners away.

When they reached the main tent, Alvarado delivered the bad news. “The FFOC want you to bring the hostages south, Luis, especially the woman.”

Luis felt his blood pressure rise. The lying, cheating bastards wanted to take his prisoners away.

“I won’t do it.” Luis’s voice was flat.

“You must do it. They have sent thirty of their best men here to find and kill you if you don’t.”

“They will try to kill me either way, Alvarado, you know that. And why the woman, eh? What’s so special about her? I refuse to give them my only bargaining chip. Never! The deal was I march them north, guard them, and get twenty percent of the ransom money. If they are so afraid of the gringos, then they should never have pinched their tail in the first place.”

“It’s not just the gringos that come, Luis. The Cartone cartel and the other paramilitary groups have taken back their weapons and are coming for us also. None of them wants to be extradited to the United States. The army comes, too. They want the aid from the United States restored. Without it, they do not get paid. We need to get the passengers out of here. It’s safer in the south.”

“And how do they intend to move them? Seventy people? It’s taken us days to get this far.”

“They are sending the planes. Interrupting their own business. This tells you how serious they are.”

“Planes! Are they crazy? They’ll be shot down in a matter of minutes.”

“Time is short. They say the others are arming and already have three helos in the air.”

Luis paced back and forth. He pointed a finger at Alvarado. “We stay here tonight. I’ll kill the tall man, and tomorrow morning we march to Panama, to the sea. We are not far now. We will sell the hostages there.”

Luis stalked out of the tent.

34

MIGUEL KNEW HE’D HIT THE FIRST CHECKPOINT WHEN THE TRAIL ended at a dirt road covered with tire tracks. They had been hiking for almost three days. He gave the men a rest and picked up his field phone. To his surprise, he had a message from Banner as well as Señor Lopez at the Air Tunnel Denial station. He called the Air Tunnel man first.

“Major Miguel? We had a suspicious aircraft sighting in your area. We believed it was a helicopter, flying low. When we attempted to establish contact, Mr. Sumner spoke back to us.”

“Cameron Sumner, in a helicopter? What did he say?” Miguel felt an adrenaline surge. It was about time they had a break.

“He had stolen the helicopter and was under fire. Within seconds, all contact was broken.”

Miguel’s mood crashed. “Was he able to give you any idea of where he was?”

“I have the actual coordinates. May I give them to you?”

Miguel’s mood rose again. “Have I said what an excellent program the Air Tunnel people run?”

A chuckle came over the line. “We do our best, Major Miguel. We do our best.”

Miguel called Banner at Darkview and waited while the receptionist routed the call elsewhere. When Banner finally came on the line, his news was not as uplifting as Lopez’s.

“Margate pulled the plug on aid to Colombia until the passengers are returned safely. He’s demanding extradition.”

“There goes the deal,” Miguel said.

“Right.”

“Any news on the paras’ response?”

“The Cartone cartel is hunting Rodrigo to kill him, the other paramilitary guys are hunting the Cartone cartel, Rodrigo, and the FFOC to kill them, and the Colombian military has orders to shoot on sight. They’re all converging on your area.”

“And the passengers?”

“Caught in the middle. These guys kill. None of them has any experience in actually saving people. I wouldn’t count on any passengers surviving the shit storm that’s coming your way. So get the hell out of there. It’s going to be raining fire in your area in the next twenty-four hours.”

“You want me to pack up and go? Just like that?” Miguel was astonished.

“I don’t want it, the Colombian government does. When Margate pulled the plug on aid, the Colombian president demanded an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel in Colombia. He said that any further search and rescue will be conducted by the Colombian army.”

“You said I have twenty-four hours. If that’s all I get, then I need more backup. I need a guy, a leader, who can do what it takes without me being there to hold his hand. The guys I have here are good, but too young to be of help.”

“Margate refused any additional assistance. I can’t overrule him, and even if I could, I’m not sure I want to. I’d be putting whatever poor slob I picked into a death trap.”

“Banner?”

“Yes?”

“Where are you? How do you feel about coming back into the field?”

The silence on the end of the line was almost palpable.

“I’ll get back to you,” Banner said. Then he hung up.

Miguel mapped out the coordinates. “He’s ten miles away, due north.”

“Did Sumner say if Ms. Caldridge was with him?” Kohl hated the idea of leaving the path and heading up the road. He was sure Ms. Caldridge had continued through the jungle.

“He did not.” Miguel sat back on his heels. “I know this landing strip. It’s on the Air Tunnel map.” He hauled out the ATD’s map showing the known landing strips. “There’s a second near an abandoned training center for Colombian military.”

“Maybe it’s not abandoned now. Maybe it’s filled with passengers,” Kohl said.

“Maybe. The good news is that I think I know how to get there. The bad news is that it’s back down the path. It’s a switchback that cuts in about five miles from here.”

Kohl groaned. “Five miles on that path will take us another day.”

Miguel hit him on the shoulder. “We have a direction, Kohl.”

“What about Ms. Caldridge?”

“The human race car? Don’t worry about her. She’s probably run all the way to Cartagena by now.”

35

EMMA SAT NEXT TO SUMNER, WHO WAS TIED AGAINST THE TREE, and watched the sentry walk around the wooden watchtower. Every so often the man took a hit off a flask he kept in his boot. He’d swallow the liquid, smack his lips, and spit down to the ground. Once it got dark, he put his rifle on the parapet and jumped down. He put the liquor bottle next to four others that sat open in a row on the ground. He waved at Emma, giving a guttural order in Spanish.

“He wants you to help build a fire,” Sumner translated.

Emma rose wearily and assisted three male passengers to start a fire. The passengers’ clothes were soaking wet. One coughed while he shoved dried sticks under a collection of wood, some of it still wet. While the passengers worked stacking the wood in a large pyramid, Emma walked to the edge of the camp collecting dried weeds. She’d pull a few, then push them under the sticks for kindling. She concentrated her weed-searching efforts close to the open bottles of aguardiente. Each time she returned to the bottles, she pulled a seed pod from her cargo pants’ pockets, hit it with a stone to break it open, and dropped it in the liquor. By the time the bonfire was burning, Emma had managed to fill the bottles undetected. The flames lit the night sky. She would have enjoyed her first dry heat in days if it wasn’t for her fear of being thrown on it in some awful sacrificial manner. She didn’t trust Rodrigo.

“He’s insane, isn’t he?” Emma whispered to Sumner when she returned to sit next to him.

“I think so, yes.” Sumner’s voice was bleak.

“He isn’t the leader, you know. Smoking Man in the shirtsleeves at the airstrip was.”

“Rodrigo couldn’t lead his way out of a paper bag.”

Mathilde sauntered over. She stopped in front of Sumner, tossed her hair, and struck a pose.

Sumner ignored her.

She sneered at Emma. “So, you and your lover meet mine, eh? He is one of the best leaders in the north. When this mission is done, all of Colombia will know his name.”

Mathilde eyed her fingernails as she spoke. Emma had the distinct impression that she didn’t give a damn about Rodrigo. All she cared about was his upward mobility.

“I feel sorry for you, Mathilde. A woman with your intelligence and looks stuck in this hellhole of a jungle. You deserve better.” Emma accompanied these words with a sigh, as if Mathilde’s situation was truly tragic to her.

Mathilde bristled. “I don’t need your”—she appeared to search for the right word in English—“sorry.”

“You have the opportunity to change your situation right now. But”—Emma shrugged—“if you like the jungle so much…”

“What opportunity do I have?”

Emma narrowed her eyes. “Perhaps you would like to trade, eh?”

Mathilde looked at Emma in surprise. “What do you mean? You have nothing to trade.”

Emma leaned forward in what she hoped appeared to be a friendly, conspiratorial way, like two girlfriends, chatting.

“I’ll trade my lover for yours. It is not an even trade, because mine is much more valuable to you, but yours has me prisoner, so right now he has some value to me.”

Mathilde looked at Emma as though she’d gone mad. Sumner raised an eyebrow at Emma as if to say, What the hell? Emma acted as though the conversation was routine.

“My lover works with the Air Tunnel Denial program. If you free him, it will be a sign of your good faith. He could pull strings to get you a deal under the disarmament, with no extradition. You could get out of here for good.”

Sumner shot an appalled glance at Emma. Emma kept her eyes on Mathilde.

Mathilde gave a toss of her head. “The disarmament deal is not offered to Rodrigo, only to the far right.”

“Sumner could speak to his superiors here and in the United States. Get them to make an exception for you. After all, you weren’t really involved in the hijacking with Rodrigo. Why should you suffer for his mistakes?”

Mathilde turned to Sumner. “What do you say to this?”

Sumner said nothing, but it appeared that this time staying silent was taking a huge toll on him. He looked as though he was gritting his teeth.

“Ah, yes, I remember. He is mute, this man of yours.”

“Isn’t that the best type of man?” Emma shot back.

Mathilde laughed out loud. Then she caught herself. “It won’t work. He would whine to the authorities that he’d been forced to make the deal, and they would extradite me.”

“Not if I’m part of the deal,” Emma said.

“What do you mean?” Mathilde seemed curious, in spite of herself.

“He agrees to get you a no-extradition deal and make it stick; and you free him and lead him out of the jungle.”

“Do you think I’m a fool? He would kill me and leave.”

“Not if I stay here. He knows Rodrigo would kill me in retaliation.”

Mathilde leaned forward. “Rodrigo will kill you either way.”

“Then I will only agree to get you a no-extradition deal if you agree to free Emma during the night,” Sumner said. “Once she is free, I will leave with you and speak to the authorities.” He spoke soft and low, but both women jerked in surprise.

Mathilde straightened and stared at Sumner. Emma could almost see the gears turning in the woman’s head. Before Mathilde could reply, Rodrigo stormed out of a nearby tent. Alvarado and the other guerrillas followed at a slower pace.

Rodrigo’s face shone with sweat, and his eyes were crazier than normal. Emma didn’t think it possible for the man to look even more psychopathic than he already had, but there he stood, breaking new ground.

Rodrigo waved at his men and spoke in Spanish. Emma felt Sumner’s body jerk next to her.

“What did he say?” Emma watched as the guerrillas untied Sumner.

“He said to move me from the tree. He needs a clear shot.”

Before Emma could react, Rodrigo marched up to her and kicked her in the leg.

“Why do the gringos want you so much?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Emma tried to keep her voice from cracking.

“Liar.” Luis smiled, his lips stretching so far as to show his gums, the edges blackened from rot. The light from the fire flickered, turning his eye sockets into black holes. Emma didn’t have a lot of experience dealing with Rodrigo, but she knew that what made him smile was not good.

Sumner sat next to her, watching the proceedings with a grim look. Emma watched his eyes flick over the crowd as if he, too, was reaching for options, trying to plan a way out of the camp.

“Tell me, or I’ll shoot your friend and leave him to bleed to death in front of you.” Rodrigo raised a gun in Sumner’s direction. He pointed the gun at Sumner’s temple. Sumner stilled.

The guerrillas passed around the bottles of aguardiente and started murmuring, chanting something in Spanish over and over again. It wasn’t hard for Emma to figure out that they were saying “kill him.”

“Why do the gringos want you!” Rodrigo shrieked.

“Shoot him and I’ll never tell you.” Emma was surprised to hear that her voice didn’t shake, belying the actual fear roiling in her stomach. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, watch Sumner die. She had never felt such fear, never dreamed such a bottomless pit of terror could exist inside a human being. She struggled to keep focused, keep thinking of options, but even her logical, trained mind could not shove the primal fear that gurgled up from her stomach, rendering her mind blank.

Rodrigo screamed in rage, flipped the gun around, and slammed the butt of his rifle into Sumner’s neck. He hit Sumner low, at the point where his neck met his shoulder. The force of the hit knocked Sumner sideways. He landed on his bad shoulder. He winced and Emma saw blood start to seep through his shirt at the location of the still-healing machete wound.

Sumner planted both palms on the ground and rose back into a kneeling position. Then he uncurled and began to rise. Rodrigo followed his movement with his rifle, pointing it at him, tracing an arc in the air as Sumner straightened. At six foot three, Sumner towered over Rodrigo. He glared down at the little man. The assembled guerrillas stopped their howling and seemed to suck in their breath, all at once. The entire camp fell silent. Alvarado took a swig of the aguardiente and stepped closer to Rodrigo, as if he wanted a better view of the action.

“Watch him die,” Rodrigo said.

Emma did the only thing she could. She lurched to her feet, catapulting herself between Sumner and Rodrigo. She faced Rodrigo but started walking backward, pushing Sumner with her, using her body as a block between hers and Sumner’s, and she started talking.

“He works for the United States government. A branch of the Drug Enforcement Agency. You kill him and the U.S. will hunt you down. And if you kill me, the Smoking Man at the airstrip won’t stop until he kills you.”

Emma watched Rodrigo freeze at her words. And then the entire camp went mad, guerrilla by guerrilla.

“El Chupacabra! He’s here.” A guerrilla started screaming. He clawed at his face, backing up in terror.

Luis spun around.

Another guerrilla started twitching. He fell to the ground, writhing. A third went to help him, then staggered and fell. A fourth screamed in terror and jumped in the air, keeping his feet moving in a dance, as if he was trying to avoid something on the ground. He kept howling the same sentence.

“What’s he saying?” Emma spoke to Sumner in German.

“He’s saying that the turtles are coming to kill him.”

“Turtles?” Then, feeling the need to be sure, she said, “Turtles?” again in English. She glanced up and back at Sumner.

“Yes.” A look of admiration came over his face. “You put something in their aguardiente, didn’t you?”

“Scopolamine. From jimsonweed.”

“Devil’s breath,” Sumner said.

“That would be the Colombian street term for it. Keep going back, slowly. We need to get to that machine gun, the one the sentry left on the watchtower parapet.”

“How long will it last?” Sumner took a cautious step back, moving in unison with Emma. She kept her eyes on Luis, who held his rifle and watched in stunned silence as his men started seizing.

“Depends on the concentration each one drank. Hard to tell with these guys. But I used the seeds, the strongest part.”

Another guerrilla jumped up, foaming at the mouth and yelling.

“He’s seeing snakes,” Sumner said.

They took another step closer to the tower.

Alvarado stood still. His eyes were glazed, and he appeared stuck to the spot.

Luis said something sharp to him in Spanish. Alvarado didn’t react.

“Look at Alvarado.” Sumner spoke in low tones. “That’s why the street dealers call it the ‘zombie’ drug. It makes people lose their will and become completely suggestible.”

They were three feet from the watchtower and still moving. Emma kept her focus on Luis, who remained with his back to them.

“I’ve always considered the zombie stories to be a myth. I think some people just get a paralytic reaction to it,” she said.

“Paralysis is good. We’re under the strap.”

Emma glanced out of the corners of her eyes, trying to move as little as possible to avoid drawing any attention their way.

“Can you reach it?”

“No. Too high.”

“Let’s go to the ladder.” The ladder was at least twelve feet away.

“No time. When I say ‘now,’ I’m going to come around the front of you, pick you up, and hold you against the wall. It’ll be a stretch, but I think you’ll be able to reach the gun.”

“And then?”

“Aim it at them while I lower you back down. Be ready to use it if you have to.”

Another guerrilla started walking in jerky movements, like a robot. The majority of the guerrillas were affected now, but Emma counted at least ten who were not. Mathilde had worked her way around the group to stand next to Luis. She held a rifle as well. She prodded Alvarado with the tip while she yelled at him. Alvarado turned his attention to her, but there was no recognition on his face as he stared.

The passengers huddled in the circle drew closer together. One of the affected guerrillas fell into the center. He writhed and screamed on the ground.

“Get ready,” Sumner said. “Now.”

Sumner stepped in front of her. He grabbed under her arms, lifted her in the air, and held her against the watchtower wall. His muscles bunched as he held her up.

Emma grabbed the parapet edge with her hands. Now she hung from the parapet, but if she let go to grab at the strap, she’d fall to the ground. She needed to brace herself and to stay high enough to reach the strap. She wrapped her legs around Sumner’s waist.

She gripped him tighter with her legs while she pushed herself higher against the wall. Her head struck the underside of the wooden parapet. She crooked her neck to allow her arm to reach up and over. She moved one hand farther onto the parapet. The angle forced her to bend her arm, elbow forward. She swept her hand along the shelf, feeling for the gun.

One of the drugged guerrillas started screaming “Rat, rat, rat,” and let loose a volley of gunfire at a beast only he could see. His bullets bounced off the ground. Emma glanced forward. She saw Luis turn to look behind him. He locked eyes with her.

Emma’s fingers closed over the machine gun’s strap.

36

EMMA BROUGHT THE MACHINE GUN DOWN AND AIMED IT OVER Sumner’s left shoulder just as Luis yelled an order to the remaining sober guerrillas and swung his rifle into position. She squeezed the trigger. The gun vibrated in her hand and gunfire exploded in her ears. She swept the gun to the left, spraying bullets in a semicircle. The gun bucked like a wild animal, hitching upward with each recoil. She watched the men rear up and plunge into the trees. Some made it to safety, but most went down, blood catapulting out of their bodies.

She swung the gun back, showering them with shot, trying to control the weapon long enough to aim for Luis. The bloodlust rose in her. She wanted Luis dead. She saw the back of him disappear behind a tree and she aimed that way. Bullets hammered into the tree, sending bits of bark flying. She concentrated on the tree and the area around it before swinging the gun back the other way. She heard high-pitched screams from the circle of passengers. They scattered and ran straight into the woods.

Emma continued to empty the gun. She couldn’t stop. It was as if she were possessed. She heard her name, repeated over and over, but the voice was far in the distance. The shooting stopped only when the gun was empty. She heard a long series of hollow, clicking sounds.

“Caldridge, stop!” Sumner said.

He still braced her against the wall with his body. Emma tore her eyes away from Luis’s tree and looked down at Sumner. She tried to open her mouth, but she couldn’t speak. He put a hand on the side of her face. She felt the warmth of his palm, and it helped to calm her.

“The gun is empty. I’m going to lower you down. We need to run. Can you run?”

Emma didn’t move. She wanted to nod but couldn’t. Sumner let go of her. For some reason, she stayed where she was. Her legs remained locked around Sumner’s waist in a vise grip.

“You need to release your legs.” The urgent sound in Sumner’s voice got through to her. It took all her willpower to relax her leg muscles and release her grip on him. The minute she did, Sumner crouched low and jogged to the fallen men. He rooted around the corpses until he found one with a machete in a sheath attached to his belt. He took it off, belt and all, and wrapped it around his waist while he reached for a machine gun. He collected the gun with the grenade launcher and pulled rounds of ammunition out of a pile. He slung the rounds over his shoulder, grabbed several more, and returned to Emma.

Emma stood there, shivering in the heat. Sumner laid the rounds down and jogged back to the main tent. He disappeared inside for a few seconds. When he emerged he was wearing a new, clean T-shirt. He carried a second shirt in his hand as well as her backpack.

“Yours,” he said.

Emma still held the gun. Now she was having a hard time getting her fingers to release their grip on the gun so she could take the shirt. She took a deep breath and reached out. She slid the shirt into the backpack, and then accepted the ammunition rounds Sumner held for her. She put the rounds across her body, over her shoulders. She put the backpack on last.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Sumner said.

Emma looked around the encampment before she turned to Sumner. “Not until after we burn this place to the ground.”

“We don’t have the time.”

“I don’t care.”

“Let it go.” Sumner sounded aggravated.

“No.”

Sumner made an irritated motion with his hand.

“God knows you’re stubborn. Let’s not stand here in the open longer than we have to. You get the fire and I’ll move toward the tree line and give you cover.” He jogged away.

Emma went to the bonfire and pulled at the end of a stick protruding out of it. As she headed back to the watchtower she snagged a bottle of liquor lying abandoned on the ground. She sloshed the alcohol over the watchtower’s supports before applying the fire. The old wood lit up with a satisfying whoosh.

The sound of gunfire erupted from the trees, somewhere near Sumner’s hiding spot.

She heard Sumner yell, “Caldridge, run!”

Emma flung the stick away and ran. Her arms and legs pumped as her feet flew. She ignored the sounds of gunfire behind her. She ran out of the clearing onto the path, paying no attention to the rocky, narrow, and at times slick surface. She scanned the ground only long enough to avoid the obvious obstacles. She avoided the rest by using her peripheral vision. Her feet flew and her heart pumped. The path curved upward and she powered into the rise, the exact opposite of what she would do on an endurance run. She wasn’t aiming for endurance, she was aiming for speed. A branch lay across the path ahead, creating a natural fence. Emma hurdled it like a pro, leaping into the air, front foot extended out in front of her. She landed on the other side and kept moving, not missing a stride. She lowered her head and forced her muscles to bring on another burst of speed. Her arms and legs pistoned in a precise rhythm.

She ran even faster. She careened through the jungle and shortened her stride, trying to add even more speed to her already blazing pace. She heard Sumner’s grenade launcher fire, the distinctive thud overpowering the lesser sounds. The noise faded into the distance as she chewed up the miles.

37

MIGUEL, KOHL, AND THE REST OF THE TEAM STARED INTO THE night sky. It glowed dark red in the north.

“Little early for sunrise,” Kohl said.

“It’s them. They’ve burned the old army base,” Miguel said.

“Ms. Caldridge? Sumner? Who? Why do you say that?” Kohl looked astonished.

Miguel barked an order to the team to prepare to march to the fire.

“You asked me what I’d do if I were in their shoes? Well, I’d burn something to indicate my position.”

“They’re indicating their position to the guerrillas, too,” Kohl pointed out.

“Something tells me they’ve got them on the run. We’re deep in their territory. Even guerrillas don’t burn their own homes. That fire is a sign that something disastrous happened.”

Miguel whistled to Boris. “Hope that nose works just as well in the dark as it does in the day, boy.”

Within fifteen minutes, Miguel and his troops were on the move. Boris trotted in front, his head swinging from side to side. Miguel estimated the fire to be five miles ahead. The path currently ran in a straight line, with only a slight rise. If the path stayed straight, and there were no switchbacks, Miguel hoped to reach the burn site in an hour and a half.

The exhausted men fanned out behind. They were used to pushing through exhaustion, and none complained, but Miguel would have to allow them to rest soon.

Forty minutes into their march, a man stumbled out of the bushes and onto the path.

Boris barked once, and the soldiers dropped to the path and took aim.

Miguel saw the man’s tattered civilian clothes. “Hold your fire!” he shouted. He walked up to the man, who swayed in place, and then fell to his knees.

“Do you speak English?” the man said.

“Major Miguel Gonzalez, United States Special Forces. Who are you?”

The man burst into tears.

They helped him to a nearby tree stump and gave him some water. He gulped it down and wiped his eyes.

“Sorry. I never thought I’d hear English again. I’m James Barkett, from Flight 689.”

“Where are the rest?” Miguel said.

“Scattered in the jungle. When the woman started shooting, we all ran for our lives.”

“What woman, and how did she get a gun?”

Barkett shook his head. “I don’t know her name. She was captured later, with Mr. Sumner.” He described Emma and told Miguel about Rodrigo threatening to kill Sumner unless she told him what he wanted to know.

“Jesus.” Kohl breathed the word.

Miguel’s face hardened. “Do you know which way Rodrigo went?”

“No. I don’t think he’s far, though. It’s even possible that she grazed him.”

“What about Sumner and the woman? Do you know which way they ran?”

Again, Barkett shook his head. “I don’t, I’m sorry. When she started shooting, I dove for cover and then ran like hell. I assume they started the fire, though. That’s the watchtower burning.”

“Any idea where the other passengers are?”

Barkett waved at the jungle. “Behind me. We should see them in a few minutes. It takes time to get down the path because of the land mines. There are lines strung all over that path.”

“Any idea how many lines and at what levels?” Miguel said.

“They seemed to run in patterns. Mostly low, but some higher up.”

“Five to one, I’ll bet.”

“I beg your pardon?” Barkett looked confused.

“Five low lines, then one higher. It’s a good rule of thumb when stringing land mines.”

Barkett stared at Miguel. “I’m a manager of a small office-supply store, so I’ll have to take your word on that.”

Miguel smiled. “You’re making jokes. Guess you’re feeling better.”

“Oh, yeah. Now that I’m with you guys, I’m feeling a whole lot better.”

Miguel used the field phone to call for helicopter backup.

“I expect to have most of the passengers here with me soon, but at least two are still out there. Cameron Sumner and Emma Caldridge.”

“Mission’s over. We’ve already dispatched two copters to extract you. We’ll load up and that’s it,” a soldier with the Southern Command, and Miguel’s liaison, said.

“Banner said I had twenty-four hours. These two managed to free the passengers, and they’re close. They deserve to be rescued.”

“I don’t think you understand what’s happening. The cartels and the guerrillas are blanketing your area. Our helos have been fired on twice already. Frankly, they’re going to set down fast, load up, and get the hell out of there. I suggest that you do the same.”

“And the two?”

“The Colombian special forces are on their way.”

“Are these the good ones, or the bad ones?” Miguel didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“I hear your frustration, Major, but there isn’t much we can do. The army has been ordered out of Colombia. We’re not wanted here.”

“I want to talk to Banner. He’s in charge of this operation.”

“His jurisdiction extends only as long as the Department of Defense wants it to.”

“Has the DOD pulled the plug?” Miguel said.

There was a short silence. Then the phone crackled. “Not yet, but we expect it to very soon. They’ve been negotiating with the pipeline executives. Apparently the executives believe that they will be summarily executed by the guerrillas once the special ops guys are pulled off the detail. The DOD agreed to evacuate them first out of the pipeline area.”

“I need to speak to Banner.”

“He’s not available.”

“Then get Carol Stromeyer from Darkview on the phone and call me back when you have her.”

Miguel snapped the phone shut.

He turned to look at the passengers huddled together on the path. Kohl stood next to Boris, patting him on the head. Miguel waved him over.

“We leaving without her, sir?” Kohl said.

“Washington pulled the plug on Colombian aid, and Colombia pulled the plug on our mission. Helos are on the way to pick us up. I want you to load everyone on and stay with them until they are out of this godforsaken country.”

“What about you?” Kohl said.

“I’m waiting for a call from a very important woman.”

Kohl stared at him for a moment. “If you stay, I stay.”

Miguel shook his head. “You can’t stay. It would be in defiance of a direct order from Southcom.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?” Kohl said.

“I’m falling back on a technicality. I’m operating under different orders issued by Edward Banner under a joint operation between the DOD and his private security company.”

“I don’t see how that changes anything,” Kohl said.

“I haven’t been ordered out by Banner yet.” At least that’s what Miguel would argue if and when he would be dragged in front of the powers that be. He was pretty sure Banner would cover his ass.

“I’m not leaving,” Kohl said.

Miguel sighed. “Don’t get stubborn on me. I’m old enough to get out without much flak. You’re too young to mess up your career.”

“I’m not leaving until we find Ms. Caldridge, sir!” Kohl snapped to attention and stared forward.

The phone rang, sparing Miguel from having to respond.

“Let me guess, you want to stay until the party’s over.” Carol Stromeyer’s voice poured out from the field phone.

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” Miguel said.

“Don’t you ma’am me.”

Miguel grinned at the phone. “Banner led me to believe that I have some more time. Do I?”

“Hold on a sec.” There was a clicking noise in the background as Stromeyer typed on her keyboard.

“Technically, the order to suspend your rescue operation has not come down.”

“Excellent,” Miguel said.

“But I can’t assure you of any further support from Southcom once those extraction helos leave. That’s the bad news.”

“What’s the good news?”

Miguel heard some more clicking noises from Stromeyer’s keyboard. “Under a general order issued to Darkview as an authorized contractor, Banner has the authority to man and run a covert operation and two helicopters into any listed hot area in cases of an emergency.”

“Is Colombia listed as a hot area?”

“It is.”

“Great! Can you send them in to get me in, say, twenty hours?”

“The bad news—”

“Wait, you already gave me the bad news.”

“The other bad news is that the helicopters can be manned only by Darkview personnel. No regular army.”

“Just a private company running a private operation, huh?”

“You got it. No chance of the host nation getting their panties in a bunch over what might be viewed as unauthorized U.S. military involvement.”

“Any Darkview personnel available to run the operation?” Miguel heard the whap whap sound of a helicopter’s propellers in the distance.

“Plenty, but Banner gave me strict orders not to let any of them go. He said he wouldn’t be responsible for their deaths.”

Miguel sighed. “Can I speak to Banner? Do you think he’ll change his mind if I tell him I’m not leaving?”

“I’ll ask him. When I do, I’ll get back to you.” Stromeyer rang off.

Over the next hour the passengers straggled into the clearing. Each one cried when they saw the soldiers. A short reconnaissance revealed ten more wandering in the jungle, all still with their arms tied in front of them. It was as if they had no energy to free themselves. Twenty minutes later, eight others appeared on the path. All of them greeted Miguel and his men with a tired elation. Two women started crying in relief. The entire group acted as though the ordeal was as good as over.

Miguel didn’t have the heart to tell them that the firepower of a small army was headed their way.

38

LUIS STOOD IN THE JUNGLE AND WATCHED THE WATCHTOWER burn, pinpointing their location like a huge torch. Mathilde and a somewhat recovered Alvarado stood next to him.

“Now the Cartone cartel comes, eh?” Mathilde said.

“Time for us to go get our ace in the hole,” Luis said.

Alvarado hid his dismay at Luis’s comment. His “ace in the hole” was an asset that he’d sworn he wouldn’t use until things were dire indeed.

“That is a drastic measure, Luis. Do you think it is necessary?” Alvarado said.

“You tell me, Alvarado,” Luis said. He pointed to the sky. In the distance, just emerging from the dawn mist, flew a Blackhawk helicopter.

“The Americans,” Mathilde said.

“So soon they found us?” Alvarado was shocked. “Luis, you said they would never track us.”

Luis gave Alvarado a measured look. “Are you afraid, Alvarado?”

Mathilde eyed Alvarado.

Alvarado watched Luis finger the hilt of the knife he kept attached to his belt.

“Let’s go get your ace in the hole, Luis.”

“And when we are done, Luis, we find that gringo woman,” Mathilde said. “She must be killed, Luis. I hate her.”

“Yes, Mathilde, we will kill her and the man.”

Alvarado sucked in his breath. “Luis, think. We can’t kill her. She’s worth too much.”

“I want her dead, Luis,” Mathilde said.

Alvarado started to protest.

Luis put up a hand to quiet him. “We find the woman, get the Americans that want her to come with the money, and when they do, we ambush them and kill them all, including the woman. Is this sufficient for you, Alvarado?”

“Yes. But we kill the man, too.”

Mathilde’s eyes shifted to the side, and she said nothing. Rodrigo didn’t notice her reaction, but Alvarado did. His stomach twisted with jealousy.

“We should kill the man, too. Shouldn’t we, Mathilde?” Alvarado prodded her.

Mathilde shrugged. “It is no concern of mine.”

Alvarado lit a cigarette and watched the sky.

39

BANNER LISTENED TO MR. CALDRIDGE’S STORY FROM BEGINNING to end without interruption. Stromeyer had produced a cup of the strongest coffee he’d ever had outside of Europe and sat in a nearby chair while the story unfolded. Banner said nothing for a few minutes after Mr. Caldridge was finished. Stromeyer let him think, not speaking. It was just one of the things that made her invaluable to him—her ability to gauge what he needed at just the right time.

“Where have you been staying?” Banner said to Mr. Caldridge.

“Here and there. I took a drive up the East Coast. I was headed to Jacksonville when I heard about the plane going down.”

Banner nodded. “Why don’t you continue that way. Stay out of sight.”

“What about my daughter? What do you intend to do?”

Banner stood up to escort the man to the door. “I intend to get her out of there.”

Mr. Caldridge gave Banner a frank, assessing look. “Then I guess I can’t ask for more. You strike me as the kind of man who does what he says he will. But just remember, she’s as smart as they come and stubborn as hell. She won’t quit until she’s completed whatever she went down there to do. And she won’t let anyone control her. Those DOD men made a mistake when they messed with her.”

Banner smiled. “Spoken like a father who knows his daughter.”

Mr. Caldridge nodded. “She’s special. Bring her home.”

When Mr. Caldridge was gone, Banner turned to Stromeyer.

“I have to wonder about Margate’s order to pull everyone out of Colombia, including Miguel and his troops. He knows that Caldridge and Sumner are still stuck down there, but he doesn’t seem to care.”

“It’s one way to isolate her. Gets us out of the way so he can track her down,” Stromeyer said. “And now a comment made by Caldridge’s boss keeps circling through my head. He said that the Mondrian Chemical Company was looking to license her new plant-altering technology.”

Banner finished the coffee and reached for the carafe sitting on the table. At least he thought it was a carafe. It looked like a piece of modern art.

“Wasn’t Margate a member of the Mondrian board of directors before he took his political post?” Banner said. He tried to pour the carafe, but nothing came out. “Damn, is the coffee gone? That was the best pot I’ve had in days.”

Stromeyer reached over and unscrewed the cap two turns. “You have to open it first. How is it you can pilot anything that flies, shoot every weapon invented, and kick the shit out of most men, but you can’t operate a coffee carafe?” She picked up the pot and refilled Banner’s cup. “And yes, Margate was a member of Mondrian’s board.”

“I can’t open the carafe because it’s a ridiculous design.” He took a sip of the coffee. “I don’t like the connection between Margate and Mondrian. It stinks, doesn’t it?”

Stromeyer nodded. “Yes, it does. But the real question is, what are we going to do about it?”

Banner downed the cup. “Can you keep our contract alive for a few more days? Slow the withdrawal order somehow?”

He watched Stromeyer ponder his question. “I used to date a man who’s now the undersecretary to the Office of Diplomatic Security. Its jurisdiction runs to contracted security forces in foreign nations. If the DOD pulls our contract, he could issue one of his own. I’ll call him.”

Banner frowned. “I don’t want to put you in an awkward position.”

Stromeyer grinned. “Not at all. He’s a nice man.”

Banner felt annoyed. “Fine. Just don’t let him blackmail you into anything.” He put the coffee cup down with just a little more force than was necessary. Stromeyer raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing. Amusement danced in her eyes. Which annoyed him more. He tamped down the emotion.

“I’ll get ready to head out.” He’d made it to the door, when Stromeyer called to him.

“Banner.”

He turned.

She looked grim. “Be careful down there.”

All his annoyance melted away. “I will. Thanks.”

40

EMMA RAN UNTIL SHE SAW A HUT. ITS TIN ROOF SHONE IN THE sun. The house sat at the end of a field of coca.

“Great. Another coca farmer,” she muttered. She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her until it was too late.

It was a woman, one of the indigenous peoples. She wore roughhewn clothes that appeared homemade, and she carried a cloth bag slung over her shoulder. Her brown hair flowed down her back, like a young woman’s, but her eyes held the sad, somber look of a much older person. She stared at Emma, a wary look on her face. She glanced at the gun slung over Emma’s back.

“I’m from the U.S. I need to talk to the police,” Emma said.

The woman said nothing.

Emma’s Spanish was nonexistent. When she’d moved to Miami, she had intended to take a language course, but somehow life had gotten in the way and she never found the time for it. Now she wished she had.

“Do you have any food?” She mimed eating.

The woman nodded and waved Emma toward her. She turned and headed into the jungle, following a small footpath no wider than her shoulders.

Emma followed the woman for half an hour, before she came upon a small village. Several children, also in homespun clothes, ran around in circles, barefoot in the dirt. Six huts, all in a semicircle, formed a small encampment. A fire burned merrily in the center. It was all Emma could do not to run to it and drop before it. Despite the heat of the jungle, she felt chilled to the bone. The woman watched her, a curious look on her face. Two children ran up to her, one about six and the other four. The woman seemed too young to have children that age or that many. She might have been twenty years old. The camp was devoid of men or any other women.

“Are the men out planting?” Emma said. She pretended to rake the soil.

The woman nodded.

The children stopped playing and surrounded Emma.

“Candee! Candee!” they said. They held out their hands.

Emma laughed. “The universal child’s word, eh?”

She plunged a hand in the pockets of her cargo pants. Luis and his men had taken her wallet, passport, and cell phone. They’d left the lipstick testers, two packets of gum, and a roll of mints.

She gave the mints to the kids.

They shrieked in happiness and ran off.

The woman didn’t smile.

Such sadness, Emma thought.

“Do you have any food I can eat?” She crossed her fingers. She was once again starving.

The woman nodded. She disappeared into a hut, then reappeared with what looked like some type of meat and rice. Emma sat cross-legged before the fire and tasted the meat.

“Pollo?” she said to the woman.

The woman nodded, with just a hint of a smile at Emma’s attempt at Spanish.

Emma wolfed the food. The woman watched her with consternation. When Emma was done, the woman took the plate and scrubbed it clean with some sand from a wooden tub.

She returned to stand before Emma. The children came back, too, jostling one another as they gathered around the woman.

“Gracias,” Emma said. “I know food must be scarce and you shared yours with me.”

The woman nodded, but it was clear she understood only the one word Emma said in Spanish.

Emma wished there was a way she could properly thank the young woman.

“Wait. I have something I know you’ll like.” She reached into her cargo pants pocket and pulled out one of the lipstick tubes.

The woman’s gaze locked on the tube.

Emma held it before her. “Lipstick. From one of the best cosmetic companies in the world.” She swiveled the tube and the red color emerged.

The woman sucked in her breath. Her eyes widened.

“I developed the red. Do you like it?”

The woman just stared at the lipstick.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Emma said.

Emma handed it to the woman. “It’s yours. Try it. You will be one of the first women in the whole world to wear the color. I designed it to last all day, and it won’t dry out your lips.”

The woman looked at Emma in awe. She seemed almost afraid to touch the tube.

“Here.” Emma moved the tube closer to the woman. “It’s yours. Gracias por pollo.” She knew she’d murdered the sentence in Spanish, but the words did the trick. The woman reached and took the tube from her.

She ran over to a bucket that held some water. She stared into it, using the water as a mirror. She applied the lipstick and turned to Emma.

“Oooh,” the children said in unison.

Emma sucked in her breath. The color looked perfect. It complemented the woman’s coloring and made her appear more youthful, even happier somehow.

“You make my color look beautiful. Gracias.” Emma whispered the words.

The woman broke into a shy smile. “Gracias,” she said.

Emma nodded. “I must go now. I don’t want to be here when the men return.”

The woman looked somber again. She waved Emma to the door of a nearby hut. Emma had noticed the hut when she first entered the camp, mostly due to its difference from the others. It was set off from the main circle of buildings. There were no windows, and instead of a cloth covering an opening, this hut had a real wooden door, bolted into the frame, with a bar that hung across it.

As Emma walked over to the hut, she noticed that the children all had fallen silent. Their eyes were huge in their heads, and for the first time Emma felt they were looking at her in fear. Emma didn’t want to open the door. Yet she felt compelled to see what was inside. She lifted the wooden bar. The door swung outward. It creaked on rusty hinges. The noise was loud and grating in the quiet clearing.

The inside was so dark that it took Emma a minute to adjust to what she was seeing. Only tiny shafts of light glowed through the occasional crack in the boards. The floor was dirt. Larger stones ringed the sides. The center of the floor contained a deep hole, so deep that she couldn’t see into it.

Emma glanced back at the young woman. The woman wasn’t looking at her, she was staring at the hole. Emma didn’t think it was possible for the woman to look any sadder than when she had first met her, but she did. Her eyes were dark pools of despair.

Emma took two steps into the hut and stared into the hole.

It was nearly ten feet deep and three feet wide. At the very bottom was a person. It looked to be a woman. Long hair tangled around her body. Her arms were like sticks. Her bones were clearly visible under skin so thin it seemed translucent. Heavy leg irons were wrapped around her ankles. She was lying on her side with her knees drawn to her chest in a fetal position. Her eyes were closed.

“Oh God, no,” Emma said.

The prisoner opened her eyes and looked at Emma.

Emma felt her head swim. Tears came so quickly that it left her feeling light-headed. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm.

“Can you speak English?” she said.

“I can.” The woman’s voice was reed thin and soft. She spoke English with only a slight French accent.

“How long have you been here?” Emma said.

“I think two years.”

Emma knelt at the side of the hole. “Can you walk?”

The woman nodded. “They lower a ladder every day and I walk to the jungle to go to the bathroom.”

Emma looked around. She saw the ladder lying on the far side of the hut.

“I’ll get it,” she said.

Emma shouldered the ladder, swaying with the ungainly size of it. She felt it steady. She looked up to see the young woman holding the far end. Now she looked more determined than sad.

They lowered the ladder into the hole. The woman below crawled up it with surprising agility. The leg irons clanked against the wooden slats. Emma grabbed her hand and helped her climb the last four steps. They stepped out into the sunlight.

The woman was tall, taller than Emma’s five foot eight. Her clothes hung on her frame and her face was hollowed out. Her hair was matted and her fingernails caked with dirt. She stared around her, blinking in the sunlight.

“What is your name?” Emma said.

The prisoner turned her head slowly at Emma’s question. She stared at Emma, but it appeared as though she was trying to remember her name. She took a deep breath that she exhaled on a sigh.

“The sun is beautiful,” she said.

Emma nodded.

“And the air is warm. So nice. There were times that I thought I would never be dry again.”

“Your name?” Emma prodded gently.

“Vivian Callenoute. I’m the daughter of a Colombian, raised in France. I was visiting relatives in Colombia to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. They kidnapped me at an espresso bar in Bogotá. I insisted that I would only be a minute, and urged my driver to wait in the car. For the past two years I have regretted that cup of coffee.” She covered her face with her hands.

The sun shone, the trees swayed in a soft breeze, and the birds sang. Emma looked at the woman crying in front of her and wondered at the contrasting beauty and devastation that was Colombia. She reached out and touched Vivian’s arm.

“I’m Emma Caldridge. I don’t want to sound paranoid, but we need to get out of here. Now. I’m being chased by a paramilitary group. I need to find my friend and get the hell out of Colombia.”

Emma turned to the young village woman. “Can you unlock the leg irons?”

The young woman turned to Vivian, who spoke to her in rapid Spanish.

The young woman snapped an order to a young boy, about eleven. He took off running.

Vivian turned back. “She sent Oliver to get the key to the leg irons.”

“What is her name?” Emma said.

“Maria.” Vivian said.

“Where are the other women and the men?”

Vivian spoke to Maria again. Maria gave a short explanation.

“The village is small. The men are on a three-day trip to the fields to gather the coca. The women are with them. They help with the camp and collect seeds and herbs. Maria was left behind to watch the children.”

Emma turned to Maria. “Do you and the children want to come with us? Will you be in trouble when the men return and find their captive gone?”

Once again, Vivian translated. The two talked back and forth. Emma waited, but grew increasingly nervous. Finally they finished, and Vivian turned to Emma.

“She says she will be fine. She believes that the man who kidnapped me was killed yesterday by the Cartone cartel. She said she saw the watchtower at his camp burning. He terrorized the village, but if he is truly dead, then she will be free.”

“What was his name?” Emma said.

“Luis Rodrigo.”

Emma went cold. “Does he come here often?”

Vivian translated. Maria shook her head and chattered in Spanish.

“She says he comes every month, on a Friday, for one night. He checks on me, then he leaves,” Vivian said.

“What day is it?” Emma said.

“I apologize, I don’t know.”

Vivian asked Maria the question before turning back to Emma.

“I am sorry to say, today is Friday.”

41

IT WAS DAWN WHEN MIGUEL LED THE PASSENGERS DOWN THE path to the location where the extraction helicopters would land. Boris went first, Miguel second, and Kohl and the rest fanned out behind.

They didn’t see the ambush until it was too late.

One minute Boris was loping down the path, the next he was on the ground, growling.

“Down!” Miguel dropped and rolled. His quick thinking was the only thing that saved him. Bullets hammered into the ground in front of him.

Boris took off into the jungle. The soldiers scattered, throwing themselves into the foliage, some dragging passengers with them. The passengers flowed into the trees in all directions, making it impossible for the soldiers to return fire for fear of hitting one.

Twenty men appeared out of the jungle, guns drawn. Each was dressed in military fatigues, and each held a passenger in front of him, using them as human shields.

“Come out of your hiding place!” A guerrilla in filthy pants and a black shirt put a gun to the head of the passenger held by the man next to him. “If you don’t, I kill the first hostage!”

The passenger was about eighty, with white hair and watery blue eyes. His back curved in a hunch, but anger blazed from him. His clothes were stained and dirty.

“Ignore them, whoever you are! They are scum and will kill us anyway.” The man spoke in Spanish. He turned to the guerrilla and looked into the muzzle of the gun, now pointed four inches from his face. “I am Colombian! You are an abomination!”

The guerrilla started to squeeze the trigger. Miguel watched, helpless. He couldn’t risk firing and revealing his location as long as there was a chance, however small, of saving the rest of the passengers.

A gunshot rang out, somewhere to the front and right of Miguel. Blood spurted out of the guerrilla’s neck. The shot was a real feat. Whoever did it had found a three-inch space between the old man’s head and the guerrilla’s neck. The guerrilla fell in place, taking the old man down with him. The other guerrillas scrambled off the path, dragging their human shields with them.

Silence again reigned in the jungle.

“Was that you, sir?” Miguel heard Kohl whisper somewhere behind him.

“Not me. One of ours?”

“I think they’re all dead.” Kohl’s voice broke on the word dead.

“Then stay hidden. Whoever did that is one hell of a shot.”

“I’m sure am glad he’s on our side, whoever he is.”

“Don’t be too sure. Just because he’s against them doesn’t mean he’s for us.”

Miguel stared into the jungle. He couldn’t see a thing. He strained his ears to listen for the telltale rustling of leaves. He heard the wind moving through, making a continuous, soothing noise, but nothing that sounded like a footfall.

“Let’s move to the right. I want to outflank them,” Miguel said.

He pulled himself backward, one tiny inch at a time. His elbows sank in the soft earth below him. His real concern was that he would be outflanked before he could achieve a location of relative safety. The guerrillas knew this jungle as only a native could. Miguel and his men were at a huge disadvantage, and this problem was compounded by the existence of the unknown sniper. Miguel figured that the sniper was moving through the jungle as well. The question was: which way? Miguel had no desire to meet the man who could shoot like that on any other terms than his own.

Miguel kept his eyes glued on the far side of the path while he crawled. After ten feet, his view was blocked, so he moved sideways. He heard Kohl behind him. Kohl was doing a good job moving in stealth, but there was a certain amount of rustling that couldn’t be avoided.

The noise of a helicopter drowned out any sound Kohl could have made. Miguel looked up to see it hovering over the path. He got a mental picture of the flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. As a child they had scared the hell out of him, and this helicopter was doing the same. He watched while a man perched in the open door and fired round after round into the forest below.

Miguel heard men screaming. The helicopter flew low. Guns mounted on the side rained fire down on the hapless soldiers and anyone else in their path.

Another helicopter joined in the fray, this one filled with guerrillas. Miguel watched as one pulled the pin on a grenade. Miguel took aim and shot him. The man died instantly, but the grenade fell out of his hand anyway, dropping to the path below and exploding. Miguel heard more screams and watched as a gun flew ten feet into the air.

Return fire erupted from a location ten feet forward of the sniper’s previous location. The sniper didn’t waste bullets by laying down sweeping fire. Instead, he shot repeatedly into the area revealed by the fire bursts.

The helicopters hovered over them. The rotor’s downwash bent the trees and forced the leaves aside, leaving the guerrillas in the open as they knelt on the passengers’ backs. The nearest guerrilla tried to rise, but before he could, the sniper shot him right in the center of his forehead. He dropped like a stone.

Damn, that man can shoot, Miguel thought. He used the opportunity afforded by the helicopters’ downwash to take out another guerrilla who’d had the bad luck to be exposed by the swaying vegetation. He heard Kohl’s gun discharge to his right and watched yet another guerrilla fall backward.

The sniper shot twice more. Miguel wanted to see the result in order to assess the remaining force, but assistance came from an unexpected place when the men in the helicopter leveled the playing field and started firing on the guerrillas.

I’m in a gang war in the middle of the jungle, Miguel thought. He watched the helicopter fire into the vegetation below.

Now the tables had turned and the kneeling guerrillas were acting as human shields for the passengers below them. They took the brunt of the helicopter fire that rained down from above. Screams joined the cacophony. Some guerrillas were quick enough to jump up and run into the bush, leaving their hostages behind in their desire to save themselves.

The sniper fired a grenade at one of the helicopters. It flew into the open door and exploded. Bits of metal and chunks of fire fell into the jungle while the copter pitched sideways. It flew horizontally for a few seconds before landing in the jungle below. The second veered off, following the retreating guerrillas, peppering them with shot as it did.

42

“FORWARD,” MIGUEL SAID TO KOHL, WHO APPEARED AT HIS SIDE. They laid fire as they walked toward the path. A passenger, still dazed from the horrific scene and disoriented, staggered in front of them.

“Get back down! Now!” Miguel yelled at him. The man dropped and froze. Miguel snorted in exasperation. The fool was lying directly in the center of the path. If a stray guerrilla didn’t shoot him, the sniper might. Miguel continued sweeping the area with shot. He aimed high, hoping to spare any other passengers who thought to get up and walk around. When he reached the man on the path, he knelt down, still firing, and tapped on his shoulder.

“Crawl past me into the bushes behind and stay there until I tell you to move,” he said. The man nodded and scrambled across the path and into the bushes. When the sniper didn’t fire on him, Miguel decided to take the risk and send more passengers that way.

The next two were young, in their twenties, and moved with lightning speed. Miguel reached the far end of the path and knelt next to the old man who had shouted his defiance. He was still, his eyes closed, the dead guerrilla on top of him. When Miguel touched his back, he opened his eyes.

“I’m faking death. Is it safe to move?” the man said.

“Only if you can move as fast as those two just did,” Miguel whispered to him in Spanish.

“They are youngsters with flexible bones. I will wait until you tell me to move.” The man closed his eyes again.

By the time Miguel reached the far side of the path, silence once again greeted him. Silence was not a friendly sound in the jungle. It occurred only when a predator, either four-legged or two-legged, roamed.

He rooted around, looking for his soldiers. He found two, dead. Two others lay in the bush, wounded, but not critically. He pantomimed to them to stay put. Four were missing. Miguel suspected they were hiding, and he hoped they continued to stay concealed. The guerrillas had retreated toward them. Now was not the time to move.

Miguel continued to collect the passengers and sent them crawling. The sniper stayed hidden and allowed them to pass. Kohl sat in a depression next to a verdant palm and waved the passengers into a group behind him as they crossed to him. After they were settled, Miguel went back and got the old man.

“Time to move, sir,” he said.

“And here I was just planning a catnap.”

Miguel admired the old man’s attempt at humor. “Plenty of time to nap on the other side of the path.”

“And the shooter in the trees? The one who is silent now?”

“He’s had plenty of opportunity to hit us, but hasn’t. I don’t think he’s a risk to us.”

The old man rose and straightened his back with a wince.

After the passengers, Miguel turned his attention to the wounded men. One had a bullet in his thigh, the other in his right arm. He pointed to the one with the injured leg.

“Did you get a look at the sniper? He must be in those trees on the far side.” Miguel couldn’t remember the soldier’s name. He was a black man, about twenty-one, from the hills of Tennessee. This was his first special forces assignment. Miguel liked him, and was glad to see he’d survived the gunfight.

The man shook his head. “I could see his muzzle fire, but not him. He’s in the trees, about even with that twisted palm.” The man pointed to a palm at the side of the path and about twenty yards away. Vines covered every branch, pulling the palm sideways. “He has a perfect view of the path, not that he needs it. Jesus! That dude could shoot, couldn’t he? Did you see that grenade go right over those guys’ heads into the copter?”

Miguel nodded. “Not a man to mess with.”

“Who is he?”

“I have no idea. Problem is, he could be a cartel junkie not happy with the guerrillas infiltrating his neighborhood, a northern paramilitary guy, also unhappy, or a member of the secret police.”

“If he’s police, why don’t he come out and introduce himself?”

Miguel shook his head. “There’s a rumor that some have contacts with the paramilitary groups. He could be moonlighting for them and may not want us to know who he is in case we meet him during his ‘day’ job.”

“Ain’t nothing easy here, is there?” the man said.

“Not a thing,” Miguel replied.

43

EMMA LOOKED AT THE SKY. “I’D SAY IT’S ABOUT FOUR O’CLOCK. Ask Maria if Rodrigo comes in the night, and does he come alone.”

Vivian nodded. “He comes only at night, and usually with his lieutenant, a man called Alvarado. They check on me, and sleep in that hut.” She pointed to a hut located dead center in the semicircle.

“Tell Maria that Rodrigo is injured, but I don’t think he is dead.”

Vivian translated.

Maria sucked in her breath. She spoke to Vivian in rapid Spanish, punctuating her words with arm gestures. Her agitation was clear.

“Maria says that if the man is not dead, then the village is in danger. The man threatened to kill all the children unless we cooperated. She asks that you find the man who injured Rodrigo and ask that he kill him.”

“I am the one who injured Rodrigo. Believe me, I was trying to kill him, but I had thirty other guerrillas to deal with, and Rodrigo managed to slip through my fingers.”

Vivian stared at Emma. “You fought thirty guerrillas?”

“Vivian, I had a gun. It wasn’t like we were in hand-to-hand combat.”

“Forgive me for saying this, but I always heard that Americans were a violent lot.”

This from a Colombian? Emma thought. She shook her head. “We can debate the relative merits of our two societies later. Tell Maria that I won’t leave the children to be injured. She should take them into the jungle while I wait for Rodrigo.”

“And when he comes?” Vivian said.

“I injured him. I’ll kill him.”

Vivian blinked.

Emma looked at Maria. “When do the village men return?”

Vivian translated and Maria spoke in rapid Spanish. She kept shaking her head.

“She says we cannot depend on them to save us. They are so afraid of Rodrigo that she doubts they would help us attack him.”

“So we’re on our own. Fine. Let’s get moving. We need to set a trap.”

“What do you have in mind?’

Emma reached the fringes of the jungle and started picking through the foliage. She found several sticks sturdy enough to do the trick. She handed four to Vivian.

“Please ask Maria for two knives. She needs to help us turn the end of these sticks into points.”

Two hours later, Vivian, Maria, and Emma stood around the pit in the center of the hut. They’d placed the sticks in the ground at the bottom, points up.

“I tell you, before now I never gave a thought to a sharp stick. Now I seem to be the queen of them,” Emma said.

“It is a classic trap, is it not?” Vivian said.

“Yes, it is. But”—Emma turned to look at the entrance to the hut—“we need to make this door open inward.” She analyzed the door frame.

Vivian looked at the deepening shadows all around them.

“Emma, I don’t think it’s possible to do this in the time we have remaining. We would need to rehang the entire door.”

Emma looked at it with a critical eye. She had to concede Vivian’s point.

“What are you trying to do?” Vivian said. “Is the trap not enough?”

Emma shook her head. “There is no way he will just step into that hole. Someone has to wait until he gets close and then push him into it. That means that someone must be hidden inside. If the door swung inward, you could hide behind it.”

Vivian gave a worried look around the clearing. “Emma, I think you worry too much. You have the rifle. You will shoot him as he steps into camp.” She snapped her fingers. “Poof! End of problem.”

Emma gnawed on a hangnail. “I only have four rounds and I’m an awful shot. You say you are worse, and Maria refuses to touch a gun. This is a backup plan if the shooting goes south.”

Vivian patted Emma on the back. “Then it will not go south, eh? Because I tell you, if you do not get him, I will. Even if I have to rip him apart with my bare hands.”

Emma rolled her shoulders, where an ache was forming. “Maria told the children to hide? Did she tell them what to do if we all end up dead?”

“We will not end up dead, Emma.” Vivian sounded determined.

Maria said something to Vivian, who laughed grimly.

“Maria says that if I do not kill him, and you do not kill him, she will ask God to kill him.”

Vivian and Emma looked at each other.

“She’s going to end up in heaven, and we’re going…” Emma didn’t want to finish the sentence.

“To hell,” Vivian said.

“Bad place to be. He’ll be there,” Emma said.

“But I’ll be with you, and together we will be his worst nightmare.”

Emma laughed for the first time in days. After a few seconds, Vivian joined her.

Their laughter ended when Alvarado stepped into the camp. He stopped cold when he saw Vivian, Maria, and Emma. His paralysis didn’t last for long. He pulled his gun off his shoulder. Emma’s gun sat in the center of the village, next to the fire pit. There was no way she could reach it in time to save them.

“Run!” Vivian shrieked the word. Emma spun backward to head to the woods. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Vivian and Maria dodge into the prison hut. Alvarado sprinted straight for the hut. He charged into it at full speed. Emma heard a howl, cut short.

44

MIGUEL RAN, LEADING THE SMALL GROUP IN THE SPRINT OF their lives. He heard the report of the still-firing helicopters and the occasional explosion of a grenade.

Miguel held the soldier with the injured leg over his shoulder. The man groaned.

“Shit, Major, that hurts like a bitch,” he said.

Miguel ignored him. His goal was to save the man’s life, not necessarily his leg. The man moaned as his injured leg bobbed against Miguel with each step. The soldier felt like a lead weight on Miguel’s back. The group spread out according to their ability to continue the pace on the slick path.

When Miguel had first ordered the passengers to run, the old man had said, “Is running required?” When told that it was, he had sighed.

Now Miguel was surprised to see that the old man was not the slowest by far. He outpaced one much younger man and two women.