As soon as Jarred and Wayne had descended, they unobtrusively made their way to stand by Leslie and Scott as all of the passengers huddled in an apprehensive bunch.
Wayne asked her lowly out of the side of his mouth, “Where the hell are we—Cuba?”
She whispered back, “I’ve no idea, but from the sounds of things, with this group Cuba’s the last place we would be.”
They both fell silent as several men from the cluster of buildings approached the group, two slightly ahead of the others and the older man definitely a person of authority. They walked up to the three hijackers, the last two men coming down after the captain and his crew had disembarked. The flight attendants were huddled together, except for the one that Leslie had noted earlier. She was with the hijackers. The group looked to the hostages and talked in low voices.
Wayne looked into the sun, squinting at the evening’s ray. The heat was already at work on Leslie’s back, drenching her in wetness. “Can you make out what they’re saying?” he asked her conversationally.
She turned her head so that the men couldn’t see her lips. “Too far, but I think they’re speaking Spanish.”
Wayne nodded while Scott asked her, “You speak Spanish too?” She caught one of the men looking their way, so she contented herself with a slight nod.
Then the group of armed men marched their way, motioning for the group to walk to the cluster of buildings. On the way, Scott said lowly, “Try not to get separated.” Then they were herded into one of the buildings and ordered to surrender their belongings for a search. Several of the men came forward and without further conversation began to take bags and rifle through them. Everything was brought out and examined, even personal items, which caused much embarrassment for some of the women passengers. Leslie’s bag was taken from her nerveless fingers and dumped on to the table. Her recorder was brought out and promptly smashed on to the floor, destroyed beyond repair. At that she cried out in protest, but the man searching her things had found her press pass and was looking her over with piercing eyes. He walked over to the man who appeared to be in charge, and he in turn came over to look her over and her belongings with an expressionless face. He motioned, and her searcher came up behind her to take hold of her arm, none too gently. Again she cried out, this time in fear, and she twisted around to look for Scott and the others, who were right beside her.
Scott came forward with a murderous expression on his face, only to jerk to a halt as a muzzle of a rifle was pointed into his midsection. “Cut it out, she hasn’t done—” he began angrily. The man holding Leslie’s arm started to drag her away, and at that, Scott started convulsively forward, gun or no gun, this time to be held by both Jarred and Wayne, to keep him from being shot. The last thing that Leslie saw before she was yanked out of the room and into a hall was of him fighting Wayne and Jarred, his face a mask of fury.
She was marched along the corridor until they came to a door which the man opened and thrust her through. There was little in the room beyond—a table, a few chairs, a window with a crude curtain hanging in front of it, and an ashtray. Then the man shut the door behind him, leaned against the wall and waited. Leslie, after looking around her for a few moments, gingerly eased herself into a chair and waited too, wondering miserably what she was waiting for.
She hadn’t long to wonder. Soon the man in charge came in. He was dressed just like all the others, in regulation khaki pants, plain cotton shirt, and of course the weapons. He seemed in his late thirties, she mused, maybe early forties. His eyes were cold. He sat down across from her and began to fire questions at her. Was she travelling alone? With whom was she travelling? What was her destination? Was she on assignment, and if so, what was her assignment? Suspecting that the other three would be subjected to the same kind of questioning, and having no reason to lie, Leslie told him the truth as much as she was able to, sometimes stumbling because she didn’t understand the reasoning behind the questions. And all through it all, she was subjected to the man’s roaming, speculative gaze which made her more nervous than anything else. Why was she, an unmarried woman, travelling with three men and going to foreign countries? The implication was obvious, and it angered her.
After asking her every conceivable question that he could think of, he then started over again, and the minutes slowly ticked into an hour, then two, then three. She realised that she was given more harassment just because she was a woman and a member of the press, but it didn’t make her patience wear any better.
“It appears that there is a possibility that you have been sent to spy on the People’s Revolutionary Republic of Cuba,” he told her expressionlessly, his eyes flicking over her once again. Tired and irritable, she leaned her head on one hand, wondering fleetingly if she was ever going to get through this.
“That is utter nonsense and you know it,” she retorted flatly, too angry and exhausted to care. “How could we have been sent for that reason when our flights weren’t scheduled anywhere near Cuba or Florida, and there’s no way we could have known about the hijacking?”
“Insolence will make things harder for you.”
“You are going to do what you wish anyway; my attitude is not about to change that. This is sheer harassment.”
“What was your intended destination?”
“Why the hell are you asking me that again? Check my damned ticket! You’ve asked me that two times already. I’m not about to change my answer now, even if I were lying!”
“With whom are you travelling?”
“I’ve told you!”
“Which newspaper do you work for?”
Her voice now completely flat, and yet somehow filled with suppressed fury, she said tightly, “I want to speak to your commanding officer.”
The man stood. “You are speaking to him.” He got out of his chair and went to the door, opened it, and nodded to the man who had remained as a guard. The man came in, took Leslie’s arm, and marched her back down the hall. She walked along, having to hurry to keep up with the man’s longer strides, wondering miserably where she was being taken this time. But instead of taking her somewhere unknown, which had been her fear, he took her back the way they’d come, opened the door to the large room and thrust her inside.
She was left to walk the rest of the way into the room, where everyone was still kept, she saw, and she eagerly searched the group for the men. They were standing a little off to the side, clustered close together, talking in low tones and looking worried. At the sound of the door opening and the sight of her entrance, they looked immeasurably relieved, and Scott came forward to take her shoulders in a bruising grip.
Looking down into her face, he rasped, “Are you all right, for God’s sake?”
She vaguely noticed the others coming up around her, all three looking as tired and as drawn as she felt. She nodded, smiling as best as she could to reassure. “I’m fine, honestly.”
His grim expression didn’t ease. “They didn’t hurt you in any way, did they?”
“No. No, really, they didn’t. A man took me to a small room, and another man came in and asked me a lot of questions over and over. It was really nothing but harassment, and a sexual one at that.” Unable to stop herself, she put her hands up and covered Scott’s, squeezing lightly. His hands then fell away.
Wayne told her, “As soon as they found our press passes, we all were taken into separate rooms and interrogated. No doubt they will check answers to see if any of us has lied. But we were brought back some time ago, and as you were the first to be taken out and weren’t back yet, we started to get really worried.” His puckish face still looked strained, and Leslie patted him affectionately on the cheek. For some reason she then glanced briefly over to Scott and stiffened in surprise and puzzlement when she saw his face tighten, then become expressionless.
Jarred remarked, “Do you think it was because you were a woman?”
She thought and then nodded slowly. “That, and I also had the tape recorder, remember. Maybe they were af
raid they’d been taped.” Wayne dropped his hand to her shoulder and she smiled at him in thanks for his support.
She then went over to where her bag had been left, clucking in dismay over the broken remains of her recorder and the ripped out decks of blank tape. She gathered everything that was undamaged together and stuffed it back into her bag, looking over the group as she did so. Everyone was looking haggard and drawn, and quite definitely the worse for wear, and when she counted heads, she found a few people missing. Presumably for one reason or another, some of the others were being questioned also.
Feeling limp and bedraggled, she looked around the large, ugly room. There were only a few long tables and no chairs, so she went over to one side with her back against the wall and slid down to sit, leaning her head dejectedly back. Wayne was standing with his back to her, running his hands through his hair and scratching. Jarred had started to pace back and forth, his actions like a caged, impatient animal, and Scott was aloof from all the rest, hands in his pockets, head thrown back as he stared up at the ceiling in an attitude of thought. Leslie marvelled that of the three men, all of whom were attractive males in their own right, Scott should be the one to stand out. It wasn’t his looks necessarily, though his nearly white hair against such dark skin was different enough, but there was a certain air about him. It was something in the set to his solid, bulky shoulders, the cocked angle of his head, the commanding expression in his eyes. She ran her eyes down his entire length, down the curve of his back to the angle of his hips and long line of his legs, surprising in herself another flush of sexual awareness. At this, she jerked her head away and studied the rest of the group, angry with her apparent fixation with a man she no longer wanted to be involved with. It wasn’t enough that she had to make a fool of herself after four fairly placid years, but instead of being assuaged by that one night of indiscretion, she’d found her body’s memories awakened. Whatever else had gone wrong in her relationship with Dennis, the sex had always been good. She ground her teeth, and looked the people over for signs of stress.
They were there in abundance. Although none of the women happened to be crying, several looked as if they’d like to or already had, and everyone was worn down, exhausted. The captain and the flight crew were together. That made Leslie think of the small attendant who was the apparent link with the hijackers, and thought that if she ever came face to face with the girl, she could quite cheerfully give her a slapping.
After a long period of more boredom and anxiety, the rest of the group was let back into the room, and then things started to happen. Several armed men came into the room and motioned for the group to head on outside, which everyone did, gathering their bags and stumbling tiredly out into the evening. As Leslie left the building, she found that Wayne, Jarred and Scott had come together around her, instinctively protective, attempting to stay with each other if possible. It gave her a warm glow of comfort inside, and she couldn’t help smiling a little, in spite of the situation. They were led past several buildings, to one that stood somewhat apart from the others. It was rather small and as ugly as the others. They were herded in to find that it was a barracks of sorts, with cots lined up against the walls and at the other end small bathrooms with the bare minimum of facilities. There were no windows in the bathrooms, and the ones in the larger room could not be opened in any way. There were no explanations, no reassurances of their safety, no estimations as to their stay. The guards simply left after marching everyone in, and the double doors were slammed and locked.
After the most brief of inspections, everyone found that there were not even enough cots to go around. And so, tired, hungry, dispirited and irritable, the group was left to fend for themselves for the night. Leslie didn’t even attempt to get herself a cot, but instead threw down her bag and then threw herself down too, much too exhausted, anxious only to end a day that had the distinction of being, aside from the day when she’d found out that her family was dead, the worst day of her life.
Chapter Four
After one of the most miserable days in her life, Leslie proceeded to spend one of the most miserable nights in her life on the hard floor of the barrack. There was simply no way to get comfortable: after tentatively tossing and turning for a few hours, she was forced to lie flat on her back, or otherwise bruise her hips by laying on her side. She did manage to doze towards morning, though only fitfully.
As a consequence, she was one of the first up the next morning, already washed and dressed in fresh clothes by the time most of the others were beginning to stir. There were no cheerful good morning greetings. Everyone more or less groaned in resignation as they opened their eyes and found the whole nightmare a reality and not a dream. Sitting on a now vacant cot, Leslie combed out her hair and then tied it back with a blue ribbon. She was curled up at one end of the bed, using her canvas bag as a back rest when Scott came up and eased himself down beside her. She spared a flick of her eyes for him, briefly noting his own change of attire, and then she looked back to the rest of the group, making a mental note of the people already to the point of bickering. She would take care to steer clear of them, having no desire to waste her energy in such useless scenes.
“Nice people,” Scott murmured, his own head tilted back, eyes hard and amused.
“But I wouldn’t want to live with them,” she finished, grinning wryly. “It’s amazing just how many of them remind me of people from my home town, some of them my relatives.”
“And where is your home town?” He turned his head as he leaned back on both hands, but she wasn’t paying attention, her eyes already focused on something he couldn’t see.
“It’s a small town in southern Illinois. The name isn’t important. Most people in the world haven’t been there, and most will never be going there. I expect it’s a bit like any other small town in the Midwest. Funny how a small place can have such a representative of personality types that you can find anywhere.”
“Visit there much?” The question was nonchalant. She was therefore unprepared for the keen, assessing gaze that was trained on her, when she happened to casually glance his way. He was quite seriously paying attention to her.
“As seldom as possible,” she said shortly. “Funerals and weddings, and only then until I can manage to slip away quietly. They all stifle me to death.”
“The whole town?” he murmured laughingly, and she had to smile.
“Of course not. I guess I’m only talking about my family right now.” She grinned mirthlessly. “They will have a fit when they find out about all this. It will, naturally, have been all my fault for stubbornly pursuing my choice of career. Sooner or later, something like this was bound to happen. After this, maybe I’ll have enough sense to settle down, like any other normal young woman, and stop traipsing off into God-only-knows-what-kind-of-country. End of lecture.”
He was laughing by the end of her dry little speech, and her own grin widened to contain amusement as she cocked a rueful brow his way. “You are being serious?”
“But, of course.”
Just at that moment, the door opened to reveal two men carrying in large trays laden with fruit and bread, and what was hopefully coffee steaming from two heavy pots. They set down the food and turned to depart, but were forestalled by the captain, who asked them if it were possible to get the passengers’ luggage from the plane. He soon found his enquiry to be in vain, however, as it became apparent that neither of the two men could speak English. Leslie watched in silence and sensed the presence of someone just behind her. She turned and found both Wayne and Jarred squatting on the other side of Scott, listening to the frustrating exchange like everyone else.
Wayne asked her in a low voice, “Are you going to offer to help?”
She frowned and would have replied, but Scott spoke for her. “It might be to our advantage if they thought no one here could speak Spanish. Then we might be able to overhear something of value.” He’d spoken in a low whisper to avoid being overheard himself, and Leslie looked
around him to Wayne for confirmation. He was nodding in agreement, so she kept silent.
Finally the captain managed to convey to one of the men that he wanted to talk to someone in charge. The man curtly nodded, and then they both left, locking the door securely behind them. Some time later the door opened again, and the man who had questioned Leslie was standing there impassively, looking over the group with an expressionless face. Everyone had abruptly stood at his entrance, and the captain came forward again with his request. Leslie, who happened to be on the other side of the room, felt no desire to get any closer to the exchange and thus draw attention to herself, and so she missed much of what was said. It did her no good to try to remain unobtrusive, though, for the man’s eyes wandered over the group until he came to her. He then looked her over with a gaze that made her extremely nervous. She forced herself to look cool and even faintly insolent as she stared back. Scott moved restlessly beside her. The man then looked away and nodded curtly to the captain and said something else. Then he walked out. There was a general bustle and the men seemed to be preparing to go somewhere. Leslie asked Jarred, who walked back to her and Scott, “What is going on?”
“The men are going to get the luggage off the plane while a few soldiers stand guard,” was his reply. “The commander said basically that if we want the luggage so badly, we can get it ourselves. He said he couldn’t spare the men for something so unproductive.”
She shrugged. “Well, I guess that’s fair enough. At least it will give you fellows something to do, which is more than I can say for myself. If we’re cooped up like this for very long, I promise, I shall go quite mad at the first opportunity.” He grinned at her sympathetically, and then the door was opened again. The men were ushered out.
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