by Penny Jordan
‘Very well then,’ the guerrilla leader pronounced. ‘Your companions may go free.’ He shouted a command to one of his men, who came forward, machine gun at the ready, and indicated that they were to follow him.
Tamara went last, unable to resist one backward glance at Zach. He was standing with his back to them. What was he thinking? she wondered. Was he afraid? Surely he must be.
‘Wait!’
The curt command halted her, as the guerrilla leader stepped forward and grasped her arm. She had been walking alone at the rear of the small column and she shivered under the cold assessment of eyes that seemed to strip her clothes from her body.
‘You will stay.’ Turning to Zach, he added grimly, ‘Alone you might just be foolish enough to try to escape—you have the look of that sort of man about you, my friend, but now that we have your woman you will stay. And if you try to leave we will kill her.’
From a distance Tamara heard Dot’s brief protest, before George silenced her, unaware of the look of helpless appeal in her eyes as they clung to Zach’s rigid back.
It seemed an aeon before he turned, pivoting round slowly, no expression at all in his eyes.
‘Do not argue with me,’ the guerrilla leader told him, ‘otherwise they shall all stay.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Tamara wanted to protest. ‘I’m not his woman,’ but the words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t bear to look at the others as they stumbled out of the clearing, her last hope that the guerrillas might relent and allow her to leave fading as she heard their footsteps die away.
‘Come,’ the guerrilla leader ordered. ‘It is time we left. You were right,’ he told Zach, ‘the others would have held us up. If you try to delay us by falling deliberately behind I shall give your woman to my men. It is many weeks since they have had a woman. Our camp is remote, and our life there too spartan to attract women like yours.’
Tamara, who had gone ice-cold when she heard his threat, refused to look at Zach, too mortified by the guerrilla’s assumption to meet his eyes. Why didn’t he tell the other man the truth? That they were little more than strangers.
She knew the answer several seconds later, when, under the pretext of helping her up a steep incline, Zach muttered softly to her, ‘I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t the time for petty conventions. If I told them the truth I’d be condemning you to gang-rape. As long as they think you’re my woman they won’t touch you. Even among mercenaries there’s a certain code of ethics, and besides, they probably think that if any of them tried to touch you I’d react in the same way that they would in similar circumstances—kill with my bare hands,’ he elucidated grimly, ‘and none of them would want to be the one I took with me before they cut me in half with those neat little Russian toys they’re carrying!’
CHAPTER THREE
DARKNESS fell with the swiftness of a cloak, enveloping the forest in a heavy blackness that threatened to stifle Tamara. Its only mercy was that it obliterated the sight of the men guarding them, their guns never moving a fraction from their threatening positions.
With the fall of night came the rain; not rain such as she was used to at home, but an actual curtain of water which started without warning, and ceased fifteen minutes later, leaving them with their clothes plastered to their backs, and the track beneath their feet slimy with thick mud.
Tamara lost count of the number of times she stumbled; she had long ago lost track of time. At first she had tried to keep her spirits up by telling herself that soon the others would be back at the hotel; the alarm would be raised and they would be rescued, but she knew she was living in a fantasy world. It would take the others at least four hours to get back to the hotel, by which time they could be anywhere. The jungle seemed to press down upon her, tautening her nerves until she was ready to scream and run, heedless of what might happen.
As though he sensed how close she was to losing control, Zach grasped her arm. An hour or so before she would have bitterly resented the familiarity, but now she was helplessly grateful for it and its reminder that she was not completely alone.
‘Faster!’
The gun was cold against her flesh and she shuddered, almost losing her footing as she tried to hurry. At her side Zach increased his pace, the grip of his fingers biting into her arm, and she remembered that he was recovering from an accident and that George had told her that he limped slightly. The pace the guerrillas were setting was gruelling; Tamara ached in every muscle, even a simple activity like breathing was excruciatingly painful, but at her side Zach seemed to be completely unaffected—he wasn’t even breathing faster—unlike her.
She stumbled again as the path started to rise, sprawling almost full length, despite Zach’s attempts to save her. Above her she heard the unkind laughter of their captors, and weak tears flooded her eyes.
‘Get up!’
It was Zach speaking, his voice iron-hard and inflexible, cutting through her self-pity.
‘I can’t go any further,’ she protested wearily.
‘Oh yes, you can,’ he replied grimly, ‘and will—unless you want to be left here to die. These guys aren’t playing games, and they don’t make allowances. Now get up. I value my life even if you don’t value yours.’
He had spoken so quietly that Tamara had had difficulty in hearing him, his voice deliberately flattened to prevent the words from carrying, and once again she remembered his profession.
‘It’s all right for you,’ she protested bitterly. ‘I suppose you’re used to this. You …’ Her breath was cut off savagely as she was hauled to her feet and held against him, while his mouth came down on hers, almost depriving her of breath. Again she heard the men laughing, but this time in a different way.
It was only seconds before Zach released her from what hadn’t been a kiss at all really, more a harsh punishment, her lips bruised from the abrasive pressure of his, her nostrils full of the musky male scent of him. Just before he stepped away from her, he gritted furiously, ‘You little fool! Any more cracks like that and we’ll both be dead, understand?’
Too late, she did, all too well, and as she walked on on shaky legs, couldn’t stop herself from visualising what might have happened had any of the guerrillas guessed what she was going to say. The information that Zach was connected with the British Army, in no matter how nebulous a fashion, was bound to provoke an unpleasant reaction.
Half blinded by tears, sick and shaking, Tamara forced herself to go on, not knowing who she hated the most, Zachary Fletcher or the guerrillas.
How long they walked along that narrow winding track which she felt sure must be circling the mountains instead of climbing them Tamara didn’t know; she only knew that the physical effort of simply putting one foot in front of the other was a greater ordeal than anything she had experienced in her life; there was no room for thought, or even fear, only the sheer physical necessity of keeping going.
The sporadic downpours of rain were something she had become accustomed to, like the soaking clothes plastered to her skin and the discomfort of walking in wet shoes. As they brushed past trees and through dense undergrowth, so thick in places that it almost obscured the trail, Tamara felt as though she had strayed into a horrendous nightmare of the sort where, during her childhood, she had been forced into headlong flight, pursued through the gnarled and tangled blackness of a forest by some nameless but terrifying oppressor.
A damp tangle of leaves brushed her skin and she felt a momentary sharp pain, but her brain was too weary, too involved in the process of simply walking, to register more than faint surprise. It was only later when yet another of the huge moths which seemed to infest the forest flew in front of her face and Tamara raised her arm that she realised what had happened, her whole body stiffening in primeval fear and horror so that Zach, who had been walking behind her, cannoned straight into her.
His ‘What’s the matter?’ turned into a small sound of understanding as his fingers circled her wrist with hard warmth and found the alien body
of the huge leech which had attached itself to Tamara’s soft flesh.
Her scream was suppressed instinctively, her eyes closing in childish reaction to blot out the sight of the pulsing body of the leech as it clung to her arm.
‘Move!’
This time Zach ignored the harsh command, forcing the guerrilla leader to drop back to see why they had stopped.
‘Your flesh is tender and more to their liking than ours,’ he commented when he saw what had happened. ‘Here.’ He tossed Zach a box of matches and asked laconically, ‘Do you know what to do?’
‘I think so.’ Calmly Zach struck one of the matches and applied the flame to the body of the leech. Tamara watched in dazed horror as the bloodsucker shrivelled and dropped to the ground. Her body was trembling so much she could barely stand, shock waves of reaction flooding over her, drowning out everything but her revulsion for what had just happened.
‘Walk!’
The gun thrust into her side reminded her of her surroundings, and obediently she started to move slowly along the trail. They must have come miles. What time was it? She wasn’t wearing a watch and found it impossible to calculate the length of time that had passed since their capture.
The higher they climbed the less dense the vegetation became; although it was still thick enough to provide a thick scree to cover the steep slope they were ascending. Tamara could remember reading in her holiday brochure that because of the climate even the tops of the mountains were covered in heavy foliage, and the more time went on the more she came to realise the implausibility of them being rescued quickly.
At last the guerrilla leader called a halt, although Tamara could see nothing in their surroundings to distinguish it from anywhere else on their trek.
‘That way,’ he instructed, motioning them towards a sheer-sided mass of shiny black rock. ‘Hurry!’
It was only when they drew nearer that Tamara realised that what she had mistaken for a narrow cleft in the volcanic rock face was, in actual fact, the entrance to a much deeper fissure.
‘I discovered this place when I was a boy,’ the guerrilla leader told them, adding boastfully, ‘I doubt there are half a dozen people on St Stephen’s who know of its existence, and certainly no one who would be able to lead anyone here.’
Tamara could well believe him. She shrank back instinctively from the almost Stygian darkness that seemed to reach out greedily for her as they approached the fissure, and this time it was Zachary Fletcher who urged her on, his face unreadable and remote, as though his thoughts were elsewhere.
The fissure was so narrow that they could only walk through it in single file, and Tamara, who had always had a horror of being underground, felt her skin crawling with a terror remembered from a childhood visit to the caves at Inglewhite, many years before. But this time there were no understanding parents to hurry her out to the welcome fresh air, and she bit down so hard on her lower lip to prevent herself from protesting that she could taste the blood.
At last, when she felt she could not stand another second trapped in that narrow passage, it opened out into what was obviously a series of caves. The first one was empty, and despite the number of openings leading off from it, the guerrillas seemed to have no difficulty in selecting one of them, and herding their prisoners into it.
This time the tunnel was mercifully short and it opened into a large cavern, well lit by Calor gas lamps which threw eerily reflected shadows over the shiny rock face. Furniture of the type used on camping holidays—folding canvas chairs, a table, a cooker next to a container of gaz with a fridge on the other side of it was scattered incongruously inside the cavern, and as though he sensed her surprise, the guerrilla leader laughed at Tamara.
‘Even men such as we need our “home comforts”, but do not be deceived, we are quite capable of living off the jungle if need be.
‘Kennedy,’ he addressed one of the men over his shoulder, ‘make us some food, while I show our guests to their quarters. You will be very comfortable,’ he threw over his shoulder to Tamara. ‘I shall give you the honeymoon suite.’
The raucous laughter which followed the gibe made Tamara shudder with nausea.
This time the passage they were taken down was wide and comparatively short. It ended in a cave furnished in a way that made it obvious that careful planning had gone into their capture. For one thing there was a heavy wooden door set into a frame built into the rock face; a heavy bolt on the outside of the door.
‘Even if by some miracle you should manage to escape and get as far as the main cavern, it will avail you nothing. I have given my men orders that you are to be shot if you try to leave—not killed, you understand, but wounded in such a way as to make you …’
‘Crippled for life,’ Zach supplied curtly.
The vulpine grin which acknowledged his words brought a fresh wave of sickness to Tamara. Her eyes slid feverishly over the cave, noting first the sleeping bags on the floor and then the primitive sanitary arrangements, and she willed herself not to betray her feelings to either of the two men watching her.
‘Everything for your comfort,’ their gaoler mocked. ‘Until we have word that our comrades are to be released you will be locked in this room at all times.’
‘But what will we do, what …’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll find some way of passing the time.’ The leer which accompanied the words made Tamara feel almost faint with fresh revulsion.
She stood with her back to the door until she heard it close and Zach move softly behind her, tension tightening her shoulders.
‘What’s going to happen to us?’
She hated herself for asking the question; for sounding like a helpless emotional woman, and her fingers curled protestingly into her palms as though to deny the impression created by her words.
‘For the moment—nothing. I’m sorry you had to be involved in this.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. At least you managed to persuade them to free the others.’
‘We have to talk,’ said Zach.
‘About what?’
‘About how we’re going to get out of here,’ he said calmly. ‘There’s no point in placing any reliance on them freeing us. The days are gone when governments gave in to the threats of groups like the Red Brigade.’
Tamara felt faint. ‘You mean …’
‘I mean God helps those who help themselves,’ he told her curtly. ‘Our only chance is to escape.’
As though he was aware of the effect of his brutal disclosure he came towards her, placing his hands on her shoulders and swinging her round to face him.
‘I’m not saying this just for the sheer hell of it. We have to face facts. We’ve been taken hostage by a small-time group of terrorists who probably know as well as we do that their Government won’t free their comrades, but that the death of two innocent holidaymakers will get them worldwide newspaper coverage.’
‘But you’ve already promised them that,’ Tamara protested, not wanting to believe him.
‘They want to make an impact; surely you’re familiar with the scenario by now? They aren’t the first group to try something like this, and they won’t be the last.’
‘No. There was that African coup last month. I read about it in the papers. The S.A.S. went in, didn’t they?’
‘Two dozen of them,’ Zach agreed harshly, ‘to rescue two men; twenty-six in all, but only eighteen got out alive …’
‘I didn’t read that.’ She frowned. Zach’s face was almost grey in the harsh lamplight, etched with bitterness and a weary cynicism she had come to recognise.
‘You wouldn’t,’ he told her grimly. ‘We don’t publicise our failures—it’s bad for morale.’
We! Her heart thudded to a standstill, her eyes mirroring her disbelief.
‘Oh yes, it’s quite true. I’m not hallucinating. I was there. I was the one responsible for losing eight lives.’ He swore viciously under his breath, and then added contemptuously, ‘Oh, on paper it wasn’t my fault. There
was no way we could have known about the bomb. But they were my men. They followed me, and I led them to their death.’
‘And your accident?’ Tamara’s throat ached with pity, her mouth dry as she was caught up in his tension.
‘You want to see what the debris from a bomb does to the human body, do you?’ he demanded savagely, ripping open the buttons of his shirt and removing it in a violent motion. ‘Then take a good look!’
Somehow she managed not to betray her shock at the sight of the scars still livid and raw against the taut tanned surface of his skin.
‘So that’s why you always wear a shirt.’ She swallowed, unable to stop her eyes moving downwards, and as though he read her mind he said softly, ‘You want more?’
‘Stop it! Stop tormenting yourself!’
‘Myself? I thought you were the one I was tormenting, or aren’t you going to admit that the sight of my body made you feel sick? Of course it doesn’t affect all women that way. There are some—those who are sick themselves, who actually enjoy looking at this sort of thing.’ He grimaced bitterly. ‘When I left Africa I told myself there was no way I was ever going back to the jungle. The gods must be laughing at me right now.’
Tamara remembered how tense he had been earlier on and her heart was touched with pity.
Sounds outside the door made her stiffen and glance uncertainly towards him. The next instant she was in his arms, the fierce heat of his body pressed against hers, his hands sliding beneath the wet fabric of her tee-shirt, one holding her helplessly against him, while the other covered the soft swell of her breast.
Her protest was silenced by the pressure of his mouth, his eyes hard and warning as the door swung open behind her. The angle of his body forced her off balance so that she had to grasp his shoulders to prevent herself from falling backwards.
To an onlooker they must look passionately oblivious to anything but themselves, she thought hazily, her senses reeling under the impact of so much alien masculinity. When Malcolm kissed her it was with suitable restraint, and he certainly never held her against him in a way that made her intensely aware of every bone and muscle beneath the taut covering of his skin. Time was suspended as wave after wave of emotion crashed down over her, swamping her with the knowledge that here at last was a man who could stir her senses and bring her body to tingling, aching life. It was like a revelation, but so brief that by the time Zach released her, Tamara had almost persuaded herself that she had imagined it.