Then again, there was still a good chance that someone would see her.
Leslie gritted her teeth and didn’t give herself time to think about it anymore. She turned and ran for the forest. She was partially blocked from the guards at the barracks with the building that was still between herself and them. She reached the darkness of the forest’s edge, breathing hard, waiting. As she listened and strove to get her breathing under control, she found her senses heightened, her hearing almost painfully acute, and her eyes dilating, for she could now see better in the dark. She was getting her night sight. Though the forest was cool, she drew her hand across her forehead and found herself drenched in nervous sweat. Then she started to edge along the undergrowth. It was a distance of about fifty metres. Then she looked from her position to the building across the open, naked ground. It looked like a mile of exposure, instead of only another fifty metres or so. Staring at it, she realised as she took in the position of the other buildings that she needed mostly silence now, instead of speed. The risk of exposure would come from the guards themselves. So instead of breaking and running for it in that quiet night, she dropped down to her stomach. Under her hands were a few rocks. She shifted off them as they dug into the fleshy part of her hands painfully and then fingered them thoughtfully. A few made it to her shirt pocket.
Then she wriggled forward. Of all of the bad experiences in that day, this, she found, had to be the worst. The need for silence hampered her movements to a certain extent, and so she had to inch over that open ground, feeling horribly exposed. She could just guess how her light summer clothes showed up against the dark green grass. She flinched away violently from every imagined sound. It was terrible. Any moment she expected to have her flesh searingly torn apart by the staccato from machine gun fire.
Leslie stood up at the back of the building, leaned against it, and panted, though she’d done no more running as yet. Her composure was slipping, she felt, and deliberately made herself take deep, even breaths. It didn’t calm the wild pounding of her heart, but it did make her hands steadier. She had a horrible suspicion that anyone standing within five paces of her would be able to hear her erratic pulse beat. She pressed her hands against the building and then slowly drew the gun out of her waist band. Never had this whole idea seemed so wild and impossible; in that moment, she knew she was most likely going to die within the next several minutes. There were no windows at the back where she was, since in the inside there were the bathrooms, but if she could have, she would have peeked into the dark barrack to satisfy a craving to see her friends again.
Hopelessly she hefted the gun in her hand and edged around the building, on the far side, away from the other buildings and facing the forest. She had absolutely no idea of what she was going to do.
It was there that Leslie fell into a marvellous, once in a lifetime piece of luck. She slowly, slowly inched her way to the front of the building and stopped just around the corner from the two guards. There she stood, quaking and shaking, simply unable to force herself around the corner to that almost certain death. And as she hesitated just that one moment, she heard the guards murmuring together good naturedly. And at their words, she sagged against the building in profound relief before slipping back to the other end.
The two men had been quarrelling half heartedly in the lazy way workers will when they have to do something they personally consider unnecessary. Neither one wanted to take the half hour routine stroll around the building as there was nothing on the other side, anyway, and both were feeling relaxed. But one of them had to do it.
As Leslie tensed on the other side of the building, she realised with a jolt just how dangerous this really was, for she had no inkling of which side of the building the guard would come around. She very nearly panicked, until she saw from her side the lazy walking figure of the guard coming round—the second piece of fabulous luck. She waited until she heard the swish of his feet against the grass, tensed until she felt her senses tingle with the awareness of him just around the corner.
Only one chance—her foot, with all of the force of her swinging body behind it, connected with the man’s midsection and he went down with only a wheeze of air exhalation. Then she was dropping down hard on his chest and pressing the gun against his mouth as it opened. The man’s eyes bulged; he understood the silent message. She edged the machine gun out of his nerveless fingers and shoved it far enough away so that he couldn’t reach for it. Then she made him roll over to his stomach, with his hands and arms high above him, and she whispered in Spanish, “Tell your friend you have to make a trip to the forest.” Even in the relative darkness she could see his eyes glitter as he stared at her. She prodded with her gun and the man promptly called out the message. She then hit him over the head with the butt.
And realised her second colossal mistake of the night. Her gun, filched from the commander’s room, had been on safety the entire time. If the man had but known it, her threats had been totally useless.
She shivered violently, as if with a sudden severe chill as she realised that she probably couldn’t have shot the man anyway. She couldn’t do murder in cold blood.
She had no time to waste. She slipped from around the building and tiptoed to the front, and got one of the hugest, though harmless, shocks of her life. She happened to casually glance to the darkened windows of the barrack and nearly fell over as she saw the chest and shoulders of someone silently staring out, not two feet from her.
Scott. She glided to the window and her hand went involuntarily to the glass. His hand silently touched there, and though she felt only cold, hard smoothness, it was as though he had touched her with his warm hands. He urgently shook his head and motioned for her to run away. She shook her head in return. He was so very close, and large and vitally real, and yet so far away. There was nothing he could safely do to help her. She caressed the glass between them, saw his hand clench into a huge, impotent fist, and then slipped silently to the front.
She shrank against the side of the building and then dropped to her knees, rationalising that someone would not automatically look for eyes peering around a corner at knee level instead of shoulder level. It was an unnecessary precaution, for the guard was intent on something in front of him. It took her a second or two to realise that he was, in fact, merely rolling a cigarette and swearing at his clumsiness in thick Spanish. She took one of the rocks in her pocket and threw it over his head to the other side of him.
And made the third of her biggest mistakes in that night. Because of the darkness and the optical illusion from moonlit shadows, and her own inability to expose her arm around the corner, she merely managed to hit him in the head. She saw his head jerk up and he swore as he upended all of his loose tobacco all over his shirt. Stupid! she raged silently, and then he was coming around the corner of the building.
But Leslie’s luck had not yet worn out. The guard came easily, machine gun casually slung over his shoulder, expecting to find nobody but his fellow guard, indulging in a little horseplay. There was no logical danger. All of the hostages were safely contained and accounted for. And Pedro was going to get it for making him spill the tobacco down his clean shirt.
Leslie, in the split second she had in which to think, came to an instant decision that was nothing short of brilliant. She stuck her gun in the back of her waist band, and when the guard came around, she half whispered, half called to him in a throaty Spanish, “Sh, and come, amigo.” She lifted her arms high. Her accent was excellent, and she fervently hoped that he would think she was the young Spanish flight attendant, out for a bit of fun. “Pedro already got his fun.”
The man came close as Leslie frantically wondered if the woman was even on the island, or if there were any women at all. But he had not yet had time to get suspicious, since all of the guards knew that none of the hostages spoke any Spanish. She sighed in relief, as there were apparently women on the island, and brought her knee up viciously to the man’s groin. She hit dead on target and he doubled ove
r in agony.
But her luck had run out. This man was made of sterner stuff than the first guard, and he brought his arm out in a chopping blow that caught her on the collarbone and nearly broke it. Her body slammed against the side of the building, and she knew a horrible sinking feeling. This was it; the advantage of surprise had been stretched too far this time; she’d lost the edge that she’d had over the men. She watched for him to bring up his gun and blow her away.
But she had forgotten the man’s perspective of the scene. He had been at first pleasantly surprised and then painfully, and he was about to teach this mischievous, vicious little Spanish woman that the male was still the boss. His hand cracked across her cheekbone and she couldn’t still the cry of pain at the blow, her head snapping sharply. Then she dropped to the ground and kicked as hard as she could at his knee cap.
She missed, and her foot grazed his knee, painful, but not crippling. Then his foot jerked out and he kicked her in the stomach, which made her double up on herself, wheezing as white sparks exploded in her abdomen. For all of her self defence lessons, this was the first time Leslie had ever been actually fighting for her life, and she was profoundly shocked at the pain in her own body. Even as her mind screamed for her to overcome the pain and strike back before it was too late, the man hit her again, and as this was aimed at her throat, she immediately started to choke and fight for air. Could he have broken her neck? she thought dazedly.
He was on top of her and his hands ripping her blouse off and there was a splintering sound. Leslie couldn’t believe her ears, because cloth should rip, not splinter, but she couldn’t dwell on that for the gun was really digging into her back now, and that hurt more than anything, though the man was biting at her neck where he’d hit her, and that was hurting quite a bit now, too. Then suddenly his weight was off her.
Scott had moved soundlessly to the front of the barrack, and when he heard a feminine cry of pain, he had bolted for the window. He and both Jarred and Wayne had kept a silent, wakeful vigil, hopelessly watching, and the incredible surge of pride and fear for her safety had overwhelmed Scott when he realised that she was creeping right by his window. But at the strange sounds now ensuing, he knew that something was terribly wrong, and he snapped out lowly, “Keep everyone quiet and the lights off,” as people started to stir from sleep, aroused at the upheaval. What he saw when he looked outside made something inside of him snap. Leslie was on the ground, fighting desperately while the guard ripped her clothes off her. The build-up of his rage and feeling of impotence boiled up, and with a feeling of savage primitive joy he simply hurled himself right through the window. It was positioned at nearly shoulder level, so he had quite a drop, but he went head first into a body roll and came to his feet, a murderous two hundred pounds of raging male body hurtled right at the off balance guard.
As the man was lifted off her, Leslie felt a moment of simultaneous panic and relief. For better or worse, at least that animal was off her, and she could move, albeit painfully. Then the two men were grunting and plunging as they struggled, and Leslie felt an upsurge of hope. One of them stepped excruciatingly on her shin and she cowered away, feeling terribly bruised and helpless. She tried to distinguish between the two men and couldn’t. One of them was taking a horrible beating, and she knew she should try to get up to help, but she couldn’t get strength to her quivering limbs.
Then one man smashed his fist right into the other’s face, and the other man went down as peacefully as a baby. All Leslie could do was gasp and shake, and the victorious one straightened and turned her way. He was a big, solid, bulky shadow and she shrank back from him. Then moonlight glinted on silver blond hair and she was jerked into Scott’s arms.
He rocked and held her so tightly, it hurt her already abused body and she grunted in pain. But then his arms were loosening and his mouth dove down for a quick, intensive, soul shaking kiss, mouth open, teeth pushing, tongue penetrating. He reared his head up suddenly and whispered urgently, “The other guard?”
She mumbled back, shakily, “He’s knocked out around the corner.” She was still hurting badly and finding breathing painful.
He snorted shortly. “You’re incredible. Can you get the doors open while I tie these two up?”
“Sure,” she said, straightening wearily and fumbling at her top to tie the ends together in some semblance of decency. The utter exhaustion in her voice made his head snap up.
“Are you all right?” he asked her quietly, cupping her cheek. “You didn’t—the commander didn’t do anything to you, did he?”
Even in the midst of her aching, trembling reaction, she could feel his tension and whispered back reassuringly, “Nothing happened, other than he’s going to have a sore head for quite some time. I got lucky.”
His head was turned away as he stared out to the forest, and then angled back at her sharply. “You must have heard something very frightening, to take the chance that you did,” he commented quietly. His hand went to her back to help her to her feet. “We’ll talk in a few minutes—what the hell?” This was as his hand encountered the bulge of the gun in her waist band.
She drew it out and gave him the extra clips for good measure. “From the commander’s room. You keep it—it scares me half to death.” As he stood stock still with the implements in his hands, she glided to the front of the building, fumbled at the bolts, and slipped in.
The darkness of the interior was quite black in comparison to the moonlight illuminating the clearing. It also rustled, with people stirring and whispering furiously to one another, asking bewildered questions. The low voices stilled as she opened the doors, and then there was a concerted rush in her direction. Two large bulks nearly collided into her and someone grabbed her arms.
Wayne said, sliding his hand up to her hair, “Leslie? Good God, are you all right?” In his low voiced question, as he hugged her convulsively, was a sharp relief.
Jarred said, with feeling, “Dear Lord, it’s the wonder lady.”
A nervous, middle aged feminine voice said sharply, “If it’s that slut back in here, I won’t have her near me!” Several voices asked something that was all jumbled together as people talked at once, and Wayne hissed frantically for everyone to keep their voices down.
Of all the intensity of her frightening experiences, what Leslie found that she couldn’t handle was the dark confusion, with too many voices babbling and low, fierce arguments being snapped out. She turned to Jarred, who had put his arm around her shoulders, and said quietly, “I need my luggage. My blouse got torn.” He led her over to the wall where it had been stored. In the enveloping darkness she felt no compunction about slipping out of the one blouse and shrugging on another, sure that no one could effectively see her.
Something black blocked out the moonlight that was spilling in the open doorway, and Scott strode silently in to a chorus of guilty gasps and fearful exclamations. He said in a normal, though low voice, “Calm down, everyone. It’s just me, Scott Bennett.” He closed the door behind him and something metallic clanged to the floor. “Don’t turn any lights on, please. Leslie, where are you?”
“Here,” she replied briefly, tucking in her blouse. Someone banged against the end of a cot and swore vulgarly. Most, however, had quieted into a waiting curiosity.
Scott asked her concernedly, “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I think so. A bit bruised, but otherwise intact.”
“What happened?” a man, sounding like the captain, asked sharply. There were murmurs at this, and one of the men muttered something that sounded rude.
Leslie replied lowly, her voice urgent, “There are a few of us who know Spanish, but thought it best to hide the fact, on the chance that we might be able to overhear something. Today, I was standing near the commander while he was talking with one of the guards, and the gist of the conversation was that some of us were in great danger of being killed.” She listened to the stunned silence as everyone digested this information, and then several
people spoke out sharply.
Someone moved, and a hand groped out of the dark to draw Leslie close to a long, powerful body as Scott hissed out, “Keep your voices down!” The commotion ceased abruptly at the tone of authority. He tightened his arm on her shoulders as he then said, “Go on, Les.”
So, as briefly as possible, she described the conversation, her own reaction and sudden decision, and the outcome of it. She admitted that she didn’t understand much of what had been said, but that it was clear that six of them were in great peril, though she didn’t know who aside from the four journalists.
As this was being absorbed, one woman said hysterically, “So by coming back here and telling us, you’ve endangered us all!”
Leslie felt stunned. “That is one perspective, I suppose,” she admitted, shaken. Could it have been her third colossal mistake of the day? She felt suddenly, absurdly close to tears and so utterly discouraged she could have lain down and died from it. Her whole body sagged against Scott’s upright support, and his fingers tightened convulsively on her upper arm to keep her from falling, his other arm coming around to hold her close.
And she wasn’t by herself anymore, facing terrible odds, as the woman received a blistering cut down from Wayne while Jarred said sharply, “Madam, you are a fool if you think to believe from the casual conversation of hijackers and killers that you are in any way safer than the most imperiled of us!”
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