by Jeanne Adams
“I’ll go in. Wait for me.” It was an order, not a request, but Sam nodded.
“Ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Niko hopped out, crouching by the cover of the Jeep’s front fender. He moved down the road, right at the edge, lest there be additional mines. In the clearing, he saw more damage than what he and Sam had first surveyed.
Pressed against the wall of the hut, he scanned everything, cataloging it. Two more men lay in the shadowy area. He could tell from where he crouched that they weren’t his men, and he didn’t know them, or he didn’t think he did. They were shorter, stockier than his mentor’s minions. The man hired tall people, taller than he was, Niko had noticed.
“Tall poppy loses its head.” He muttered the old saying, thinking that his mentor made sure everyone around him was a higher target than he was.
These two weren’t of that ilk. They were neat, though, and had been clean shaven and well kitted out. He saw the packaging for another mine lying by the second man’s side. It had fallen out of his satchel when he’d been dragged.
These were the mine-layers, then.
Niko scuttled to the hole, where the open grate gave mute testimony to the fact that Dav and his woman were gone.
He frowned at the signs below him. The fat angle of stone was ancient, a sharp contrast to the metal facing of the grate.
Without time to explore it, he couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as if even the past had conspired with Davros to aid his escape.
When he got back to the road, the car was there, but Sam was gone.
“Carrie.” Dav said the word through gritted teeth as they made their way down the steep, rutted road.
“Yes?” She stuttered out the word. The trip back down was better than it had been when they had ridden up the road, bound and blindfolded in the backseat, but it was still unpleasant.
“I think you must drive now,” he managed, slowing to a stop. The adrenaline rush of exploding the mines and the sheer tension of making their way out to the road had carried him thus far, but his scant reserves of energy were eroded by the pain and the fever. It was getting dark and his vision was blurring from fatigue and constant pain.
“Okay,” she said, unfastening her seat belt. “Just put it in park, we’ll switch.”
He did, unfolding himself from the seat, using his good hand to unclench the injured one from the steering wheel. The fingers were stiff and unyielding, cramped by the tightness of his grip.
He stumbled round the front as Carrie rounded the back, efficiently switching seats as if they’d rehearsed it innumerable times.
He sank into the passenger side, feeling every scrape, every bruise, every cut on his body. With as much aspirin as he had in his system, he was sure his blood had thinned and he would bleed to death if he were cut now.
The thought was just another in a long line of rambling, unpleasant images rattling his brain. Exhaustion pulled at his consciousness, begging for sleep, for surcease from thought and decision and constant threat.
Carrie belted herself in, primly checked the rearview mirror and the side-view mirrors, and then gingerly put the Jeep in gear. In the middle of everything, despite the pain, he had enough humanity left that it amused him.
“You do not drive?” he asked, wondering at this first show of timidity. She’d been brave as a lion up until now; this checking and rechecking spoke of fear.
“I’m a city girl. I haven’t driven for... years.”
“You can make few mistakes out here, my love,” he said, closing his eyes, trusting her to get them going again. The darkness called to him, beckoning his consciousness.
“Dav,” she said, and he heard real fear in her voice again. “Please, you have to stay awake if you can. I don’t think I can do this alone.”
Her soft plea had him adjusting the seat back upward once more, struggling to return to full alertness. It was challenging. Everything in him wanted the healing that unconsiousness would bring. Snatched hours in the cave, waiting for morning, had not been enough. The endless day, traversing the dark caves, had taken every erg of energy he possessed, and more. Pushing past that boundary, they had faced down the unknown sniper and escaped.
Everything within him cried out for rest.
“Eh-la, what shall we talk about, on our Sunday drive?” he managed, sitting forward so his back didn’t connect with the leather at every jolt, and spacing the words between jouncing shifts. It was hard to focus, but he thought the rough road had widened a bit in the beam of the headlights.
A nervous laugh was her first answer. “How long have we been here?”
The question set off a cascade of queries in his mind, none of which he had the answers to. “I don’t know. I think—” He hesitated, counting what he could remember of the days. “Seven days, perhaps?”
“They didn’t find us.” She didn’t turn his way, but he saw the white knuckles, the tighter grip on the wheel as she spoke. It took him a moment to unravel the non sequitur. “What if we’d waited, hoping for rescue?” She glanced at him, then resolutely stared back at the road.
He nodded, using his good hand cross-body to hold on to the handle above the door, doing everything he could not to jostle his back, his finger or his aching head. With his hand pressed into his chest—the most stable place for it—he could smell the faint sickly sweet smell of decay. Either the bloody bandages were beginning to stink, or his hand was. He didn’t want to contemplate which.
“We would still be there, then, waiting,” he said, barely suppressing a groan as the car hit a particularly difficult stretch of the road. “Or dead from one of the killers who came for us.”
In the cool light of the dash, he saw her shudder.
They rode in silence for a while and he tried to make conversation. They managed it in stilted sections, between hanging on and trying to see the margins of the road.
The road straightened out for a bit and they could breathe more freely.
“Dav, I don’t think I can go on. I’m exhausted and I’m falling asleep at the wheel. I ... I ... don’t think I can do it.”
As she said it, the beams of the headlights showed another road turning off to the right.
“Wait,” he said, startling her into hitting the brakes hard. They were both thrown forward into their seat belts, but he waved away her apologies. “Turn in here.”
She backed up a few feet and managed to crank the wheel around enough to make the turn. As they rolled down the smoother, planed, but overgrown road, he told her to slow down, switch to the parking lights.
“Take it easy,” he urged her. The lights showed mining equipment neatly parked in a fenced-in area. The gate had a padlock, held by a rusted chain. A paved, covered area outside the gate was currently empty of vehicles, but appeared to be a place to park. “There,” he pointed. “Back in.”
Her skills were obviously rusty, but she turned the Jeep and backed it under the canopy. When she cut the engine and the lights, silence enveloped them. Nothing moved in the darkness but the wind.
There were creaks and pings from the cooling engine, and he felt as much as heard her deep sigh.
“Water?” Carrie croaked the word. “Can you reach it?”
“Not with my good hand,” he said, wishing it were otherwise. She grunted and turned in the seat, nearly falling into the back in her attempt to reach the refilled canteens.
“Here.” She pressed a canteen into his working hand. “Drink as much of this as you can. We have to get that fever down. Since we don’t have antibiotics, you need fluids and aspirin.”
“Antibiotics would be good, I’m sure,” he quipped, between long draughts of the stale-tasting water. He didn’t care though. The wet, cool liquid felt like heaven as it slid down his parched throat.
“They would. We have to get you to medical help as soon as we can,” she fretted, twisting the other canteen round and round in her hands. “Maybe we should keep driving.”
“No.” He reinforced the word with his v
oice, firm and final. “We are in no shape to go on. Either of us. We are stumbling blindly on a dark road in a country we do not know. We are exhausted, and I am weak and feverish. With this—” He lifted his hand but realized she couldn’t see it. “With my hand going bad, you are carrying us both for the moment.” He turned toward her, reaching awkwardly to grip the hand now lying limp in her lap. “You must be able to drive, and keep your wits about you. This you cannot do if you are falling into sleep.”
“I feel so useless,” she admitted. “I feel like I should be able to go on.”
“As do I, but I cannot.” He thought for a minute before giving her an admission of his own. “It was not easy to ask you to drive. I want to carry you away from this, win your freedom.” He squeezed her hand, and felt her turn her palm to his, interlace their fingers. It gave him a ray of hope. “I too have this sense of failure, that I cannot push my body further, get you, tonight, to a place of safety.”
She was silent for a moment, then squeezed his hand again. “I get that. I really do.” He couldn’t see her, but heard the rueful amusement in her voice. “We’re both white knights, I guess, trying to do the right thing.”
“We are, indeed. Now, come, rest your head on my shoulder, and let us sleep.”
She scooted over, and leaned carefully on him, relaxing finally with a deep sigh. They sat like that for long moments and Dav felt the lassitude that preceded sleep beginning to overtake him.
“Dav,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
“You are welcome, my flame. But do not thank me so soon. We are not, how you say, out of the woods yet.”
“No, but thank you anyway.” She hesitated and he felt the tension in her shoulders.
“What is it, Carrie-mou?”
“I need you to understand why I can’t marry you,” she said, surprising him. With succinct phrases, she laid it out. Her dissection was calm, and clinical, and he heard the finality of her decision in her words and tone. For a man long used to reading those things in business, he knew she meant everything she said. There would be no negotiation, he thought, his tired, feverish mind running answers and arguments to every one of her statements. For her infertility, her refusal to settle for less than love, her sure knowledge that he didn’t love her and her desire that they remain friends, he could see an argument, but each time he tried to grasp it in his mind, put it forth to break down the walls she had built, it slipped away in a haze of pain.
“I don’t want to lose that, Dav,” she finished earnestly. “Please tell me that we will still be friends.”
“After all we have been through, my flame? You would doubt this?” Somehow he managed to say that, although the words seemed thick and foreign as he struggled to get them out.
“I... I... yes,” she admitted. “I saw your face when I said—”
“Shhhh.” He hushed her, grimacing in the dark at the memory. She had said no. Her answer remained no. He would not embarrass either one of them by pressing an unwanted suit upon her.
But his heart ached, still. That long-dormant and elusive sense of love would have to find its way without her.
“We will be friends still, as we have always been. And lovers if you so choose.” He added the second bit, but felt her shift in his arms. “Carrie-mou, I will not take it amiss if you do not want that.”
“It’s not that I don’t want it,” she began, then stopped. She was about to speak again when he saw the lights.
“Shhh.” He silenced her. “Look.”
Passing on the road, a set of headlights flashed, then disappeared going downhill from their position.
“Dav?”
“Yes, I know. But we don’t know who it is. We must sleep, and find help tomorrow.”
“But,” she started to protest, then stopped. “You’re right.”
“Yes. So—” He softened that adamant rejoinder with a laugh. “Will you sing me a lullaby, my friend?”
He felt her snicker, as much as he heard it and smiled.
“No. It would attract wolves or coyotes. It’s that much like howling.”
“Ah, well then, we will just have to do without.”
“Hmmmm,” she murmured, relaxing.
Within minutes they were both asleep.
In the early dawn hours, Ana, Gates and the team bounced up the rock-strewn road, heading for the coordinates they’d been given. Ana leaned forward in the passenger seat, as if to urge the car to move faster.
“I can’t go any faster,” Gates murmured, wishing he could.
“I know.”
In the rearview, he saw Callahan and Holden, having taken their now-accustomed spots in the backseats, exchange glances. Evidently they felt the same way.
Hurryhurryhurry! Even knowing it was unsafe, Gates increased his speed. They’d sent the two front men on the noisier motorcycles back toward civilization. With luck, they would get to the yacht in Punta Gorda and report in. When they found Dav, everything would be ready for their departure the minute Ana and Gates got there with Dav and Carrie.
Provided they found them alive.
“Coming up on coordinates,” Holden said, managing to read his GPS. “Ahead one mile and on the right.”
Ana cued in her mic. “Look sharp, everybody.”
They slowed to let two of the men drop off at the half-mile point, taking the “scenic route” as Franklin described it, through the brush. The dogs were with him, in the hopes that they would alert the team to sentries or outposts before they got to the clearing.
“Holy shit!” Ana gasped as she saw the road before them. The deep potholes were raw and new, and evidence of explosives lay in the sprays of dirt that browned the ridges on either side of the road.
“On foot,” Gates ordered, and the team piled out, armed and ready. “Stay off the road. Watch for any sign of disturbed soil. Look before you step, people.”
Using the throat mic, Ana informed the others about the mined road, then asked, “Team two, any sign of sentries?”
“Negative. I’ve got signs of a sniper nest though. Tree spikes on some kind of hardwood. Only thing around here you could use.”
“Dogs, Franklin?”
“On alert, but not flagging.”
No signs of life yet.
Creeping on the upper verge of the road, several feet above where the mines had been laid, they came to the end of the lead-in road and the trees and scrub opened onto a scene of carnage.
Bodies lay strewn about, obviously days old from the bloating and animal activity. Two newer bodies lay where they’d been dragged, mere feet from an open, iron grate.
“Franklin, send the dogs out, locate on Dav.”
“Roger that.”
With Callahan and Holden covering them from the cement block hut, which they’d cleared, Gates and Ana made their cautious way between the bodies to the hole.
“Niko is a bastard,” Gates snarled. “He knew Dav hated being underground.”
Surprised, Ana looked at him, before scanning the woods and trees. “Why?”
“His dad used to lock him in this kind of dungeon. A cell-like room in the lower basement. He hates dark, underground places.”
“I’m guessing we’re in the right place again, then,” Ana said. “He’s not here, and there’s no second vehicle, though I saw tracks in the displaced dirt. That means someone left alive and driving. Either someone moved them, or there was a survivor and they blew the road, then drove out over it.”
“I saw that too. Let’s drop back to cover, wait for the dogs.”
They’d barely reached the hut when the dogs burst through the covering scrub. The Plott hound, a scent tracker, bayed once, then dropped his nose down, ignoring the blood, flies and other noxiousness to follow a trail to the hole.
Next to him, he felt Ana tense, only to feel a second sigh of relief as the hound woofed and began tracking toward them, weaving through the corpses, and stopping for a long moment in the middle of the clearing. He kept coming their way, and stopped
in front of them.
Looking down, Gates saw tire tracks marking the silty soil. “They reversed here, drove to the road.”
“Dav and Carrie, or Dav and a captor?”
“No way to tell.”
“Boss?” Callahan said, pointing. “Those two are newer kills.” Her voice was even and steady, but her skin had a slightly greenish cast to it. He looked at the two body armor–clad dead guys, immediately noticing the difference in equipment, and the difference in how much of the flesh the predators had stripped off the bones.
“Second team, report in.” They waited as Ferguson and the others relayed positions relative to center of camp.
“Personnel mine wrappings next to one of the newer guys,” Holden added, pointing. “These guys came in secondary.”
“Shooters?”
“Not snipers.” Franklin came huffing up. He hardly glanced at the bodies. “No rifles. And they’re not nearly as dead as the other guys. Probably, what?” He turned to Parker. “Dead about two days, maybe? The others have been dead longer. Maybe four days.”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, well. Better them than Dav, or us,” Gates said. “Franklin, can you have one of the dogs track for Carrie? We need to know if she’s with him.”
“Will do.” He whipped out a sealed bag containing a piece of clothing they’d been given for Carrie’s scent, and set the dog to work. Meanwhile, he set the first dog crossing, checking for other places where Dav’s scent might be.
The dog tracking Carrie followed the same paths as the first dog, but went into the building and out again several times, before sitting down in the road. When Franklin set that hound coursing for another scent, the dog bayed and set off downhill, away from them.
Franklin called him back. His face looked pained. “At some point, Ms. McCray was off in those woods, but came back here.”
“How do you know?” Ana demanded.
“He picked up the freshest scent first, here at the building, over there by that hole. The trail down the hill’s older, but it’s there, so when I sent him out again, he went for that, thinking I wanted a track-back.”
“Does that mean...” She trailed off, obviously thinking of the dire possibilities of Carrie being separated from Dav, even for a while.