by Gayle Wilson
“Is that what happened to you?”
Her immediate instinct was to lie. To cover up the heartbreak she’d never forgotten. The one she’d tried to bury in hard work and furthering her career.
Mike Mitchell deserved better than that from her. Besides, what in the world could it matter what she told him? They were never going to get out of here.
At least…he wasn’t.
“Yeah,” she said, turning her wrist gently to break his fragile hold. “That’s what happened to me.”
She laid the cloth on his forehead and then leaned back to meet his eyes. Despite the situation, his were filled with compassion.
“How long ago?”
“Too long. Way too long.”
“And there hasn’t been anyone else?”
“He was a pretty tough act to follow,” she said, smiling at him with lips that felt numb.
What the hell was she doing sitting in a cave in Afghanistan discussing Landon James with a dying man? Was this what her life had come down to?
“You ever try to contact him? Reconnect? I mean… People change. Maybe…”
Mike’s shoulders moved in an approximation of a shrug, which was followed by a pained twisting of his face. This time a small expression of discomfort emerged from between the cracked lips.
“I don’t think he would have, but no, I never contacted him.”
“Maybe when you get out of here, I mean…maybe you ought to try to get in touch with him.”
“Yeah. I think I’ll do that. When pigs fly,” she added, laughing a little at her stupid joke.
“What could it hurt?”
My pride. My self-image. My hard-earned sense of the completeness of my life as it is now.
Or my life as it was, she amended. Before we ended up here.
Yeah, things were damn good before you ended up here. That’s why you came home every night with a stack of research material. Highly entertaining. Better than a lover any day of the week.
Better than a lover who had wanted to be nothing more.
And you always had to have it all. The brass ring. The whole nine yards. All those other clichés. You couldn’t be satisfied with what Landon had to offer. All he had to offer.
“…just wish I’d said everything I felt.”
She came out of her reverie to catch the last part of what Mike was saying. It was enough, however, to let her know exactly what he was thinking.
“You will.” This time she acknowledged, to herself at least, the terrible lie that was. “Besides, even without the words, I think the people we love know how we feel about them.”
But that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? You had to have the words.
“God, I hope so,” the pilot whispered.
She nodded, unwilling to trust her voice. For a long time neither of them said anything. The light faded from the entrance to the cave and with it the daytime warmth.
Night would fall quickly now. A cold, black eternity during which she would lie on the clammy rock floor, listening to the breathing of the man who, in these short weeks, had become a friend.
Listening also to the measured pace of the guard outside. To the noises of the encampment. The restless movement of the horses. The occasional unrestrained laughter of their captors.
Listening until it all faded like a familiar soundtrack behind the images that would parade through her mind for hours as she slept. Landon’s hands on her body. His mouth lowering to claim hers. His laughter, rare and far more precious for its rarity.
What would it hurt to try? Mike Mitchell had asked her.
Maybe it wouldn’t, but she knew she couldn’t take the chance. All she had to measure that risk by was how very much it had hurt before.
“They’re planning to move us again,” Stern announced from the doorway where he’d been watching the activity outside.
She glanced down at Mike to gauge his reaction and found his eyes closed, his breathing shallow but regular. It was just as well he hadn’t heard, she decided as she got carefully to her feet, leaving the damp cloth lying across his brow. She didn’t want to think what it would cost him to make another relocation. He had been measurably worse after the last.
“How do you know?” she whispered to Stern as she crossed to the entrance.
“They’re packing. They aren’t hurrying with it, and the cooking utensils are still out, so it won’t be tonight. Probably tomorrow before dawn.”
That had been the timing of the first two moves. The third had occurred shortly after midnight, a hurried scramble that had obviously been the result of some last-minute decision or threat.
“Do you think that means someone’s located us?”
Without lifting his eyes from their contemplation of the camp, Stern said, “If we’re lucky. Except that every time they do…”
She knew what he meant. Every time the people searching for them got close, they were moved. It was like a game of chess. Or like the children’s game of hide-and-seek, with their captors knowing all the best hiding places.
Neither she nor Stern could figure out why they were still dragging the three of them around. The best-case scenario was that the men holding them were in the process of negotiating an exchange. The fact that they didn’t appear to care if Mitchell died, however, seemed to counter that hopeful theory.
The worst case was probably that she and Stern were being offered for sale to someone, maybe Al-Qaeda, for whom they would have value as sources of information. In that situation, Mike would clearly be expendable.
“Maybe this time they’ll find us.”
And maybe pigs really will fly, she thought, negating her own comment.
After all, she was here because she had conveyed this exact reality to Congress: Human intelligence gathering in this region had been virtually nonexistent for years, and it was impossible to identify from satellite images what the people hiding in these caves were doing.
“I don’t understand why they haven’t mounted a larger-scale campaign to get us back,” Stern said.
Maybe because you had the misfortune to get captured with me.
Grace had never expressed that feeling aloud, but her conviction—that the people in charge of “special activities” here had just as soon she never be found—had grown with each passing day. It would be a shame if Stern and Mike were to be sacrificed because of her supposed sins, but there was very little she could do about it if that were the case. Not here. And not now.
“How is he?” Stern finally looked up, pulling his attention briefly from the flurry of activity outside.
“I think he’s dying,” Grace said softly.
“Then I hope to God he does it before morning.”
GRACE HAD NO IDEA how long it had been since she’d lain down. Long enough that she was deeply asleep when the hand on her shoulder roughly shook her awake and short enough that it felt as if she’d had no rest at all.
She opened her eyes to find a man she’d never seen before stooping beside her. Although his mustache was coal black, it wasn’t very full, almost as if he might recently have been clean shaven.
A patch covered his right eye. Glittering in the light from the dying fire, the remaining one seemed as cold and as black as the night.
He had said nothing, simply crouching beside her. Of course, he didn’t need to issue instructions. By this time she knew the drill.
She shrugged her shoulder away, freeing it from the touch of his hand, and began to rise. He grabbed her arm, turning her toward him again.
She looked up in shock and found that he had one finger across his lips, the universal sign for silence. She nodded her understanding and immediately he released her.
As she began to roll up her blanket, he stood, the move accomplished in one smoothly athletic motion, and walked over to where Stern was wrapped in his own blanket, his back to the fire. Grace was surprised that the colonel, usually a light sleeper, hadn’t already awakened, but then, the man moved virtually without sound across
the floor of the cave.
He bent, touching Stern on the shoulder, just as he had her. The colonel rolled over, looking up at him in the dim firelight. Again the man put his finger over his lips.
He said something, his tone so low that Grace was unable to distinguish the words, although she had managed to pick up a little of their captors’ dialect since the crash. In response to the man’s comment, Stern pointed toward the heavily shadowed interior portion of the cave where Mitchell slept.
They had moved him there themselves that afternoon in an attempt to get him into a cooler area during the fierce heat of midday. Tonight they hadn’t had the heart to try to move him back nearer the fire. They had simply piled the remaining blankets around him, despite the heat that emanated from his ravaged body.
Before the man who had awakened them went back to the pilot’s pallet, he said something else to the colonel, who nodded. Grace watched as he walked by her, headed, she assumed, to arouse Mitchell.
“Come on. We have to get ready to go.”
She turned to find Stern standing beside her, close enough that she had understood his whisper. She nodded, reaching down for the blanket she’d already rolled up.
“Leave it,” the colonel said, taking her arm.
“But—”
“Shh…” he cautioned, drawing her across the cave to the entrance where he crouched, pulling her down beside him.
It took Grace a second or two to realize why it seemed so eerily silent outside. The tread of the guard stationed at the entrance to the cave, so familiar it had become like the noise of her own heartbeat, was missing.
“Where’s the—”
“Shh…” Stern whispered again.
She closed her mouth, considering the possible implications of his repeated warnings and the absence of the guard. The only logical conclusion for both—
“Let’s go.”
The man with the eye patch was back, standing behind them. That was her first realization. The second was that he had just whispered instructions to them in English.
English that had been spoken with an American accent.
“What about Mike?” she asked, looking up into a lean face that, partially lit by the dying fire, seemed as sinister as that of any of their captors.
“He’s dead.” The intonation of those two words had been flat. And final.
And they had not provided nearly enough information. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“It won’t take but a minute—”
As she rose and attempted to move past him, the stranger grasped her arm, pulling her around so that he could grip shoulders. Although he never raised his voice above a whisper, each word he spoke was clear and distinct.
“You never did know to shut up and do what you’re told, did you, Gracie? That’s why I had to come halfway around the world to find you. Mitchell’s dead. Believe me, I’ve seen enough dead men to know. And if you don’t stop asking questions, we’re all going to be joining him. I don’t know about you, of course, but personally, that’s something I’d prefer to avoid.”
Chapter Three
Landon supposed it must have been satisfying in some way to see the shock explode in those wide blue eyes as Grace finally realized who he was. He couldn’t think of any other reason for the brutal way he’d handled the revelation.
He knew he’d changed. And some of the differences were more obvious than others. That didn’t excuse what he’d done, but it might help explain it.
She so obviously hadn’t known who he was, despite the fact that he could have picked her out of any size crowd and at any distance simply by the way she carried herself. That hadn’t changed, in spite of the primitive conditions she’d been living in and his suspicion that she hadn’t had a real bath or a mirror since her capture.
Or maybe, he acknowledged, his response had been prompted by what he’d read in her face when he’d told her the pilot was dead. It was clear she’d been devastated, although, judging by the condition of the man in the back of the cave, she couldn’t have been surprised.
He had allowed himself a few seconds to wonder about her relationship with Mitchell before he’d forced his full attention back to the mission. Whatever—if anything—had been going on between the pilot and Grace, it was certainly over now.
His infamous luck had apparently held. It would have been hell trying to get the injured man out of the encampment and through the pass to where their transport was waiting. Thank God, Grace and Stern appeared to be in good physical condition, considering the circumstances.
“I hope you both ride,” he said, his gaze still focused beyond the entrance of the cave on the sleeping camp.
Deliberately he didn’t look at them. Nor had his comment been phrased as a question. He knew that Grace was an excellent horsewoman. If Stern couldn’t ride, he would have to manage the best he could.
It had been impossible to get any kind of vehicle to the plateau where their captors had set up their camp. That was the intent in choosing this location, of course. If Landon couldn’t figure out a way to get a truck or a Hummer up here, then neither could the Special Forces units who were searching the border for the missing Americans.
“I have ridden,” Stern whispered, “but…I’m afraid it’s been a long time.”
“Like riding a bicycle.” Landon had no idea if that was true, but there was no point in discouraging Stern. Not now.
He watched the silhouette of the guard assigned to the perimeter of the camp cross in front of the central fire. He was patiently waiting for him to reach the most distant point of his patrol before they made their move.
“We go to the right when we leave,” he instructed in a whisper. “Keep close to the rocks and watch your footing. Make any noise, and we’re all dead. The horses are in a rope enclosure about a hundred yards away.”
“Won’t they follow us?”
Obviously, the colonel hadn’t seen enough John Wayne movies. Their captors might try, but once he freed the horses, taking them along as they rode away, any tribesmen who followed would be doing so on foot.
“We take the horses with us,” Landon said, watching the steady advance of the perimeter guard.
He had already dispatched the one stationed at the entrance of the cave by the simple expedient of breaking his neck. Despite the obvious preparations the group had made for leaving the encampment, all of which he’d watched at sunset, the sentinels had been surprisingly lax.
Or maybe they were overconfident. After all, they had managed to avoid everyone who’d been sent to find them. Why should they believe that tonight would be any different?
“Now.”
As he whispered the command, Landon slipped out of the entrance. In a crouching run he headed toward the corral where the movements of the grazing horses had hidden his approach tonight.
The clothing he’d bought in a village more than a hundred miles away carried in its fabric the same smells as the robes worn by the men with whom those animals were intimately familiar: sweat, smoke and dust.
He hadn’t worried about Grace and the colonel betraying their presence among the horses. After three weeks of living in a cave, they, too, would undoubtedly smell the same to those sensitive noses.
Landon glanced back to track their progress. The flickering firelight, enhanced by shadows cast from the peaks surrounding the encampment, made it difficult to follow their movements. Which was exactly what he’d been counting on.
He took time to check the remaining guard, who, having reached the point most distant from camp, had taken the opportunity to smoke. Landon watched him raise the cigarette to his mouth, the tip growing brighter as he drew on it and then brought it down again.
He felt Grace ease to a stop beside him. He could hear her breathing, soft but irregular from the run she’d just made. He waited until Stern joined them, knowing it would be better if they made their raid on the horses together. Hopefully, by the time the sleeping tribesmen were aware anyt
hing was amiss, they would be mounted and away.
Hopefully.
“What about saddles?” Stern leaned across Grace to whisper.
He sounded worried, as he probably should be. Landon had anticipated from the first that the colonel could be the weak link in the escape, but after all, Stern wasn’t his chief concern.
He had known Grace could easily pull this part off. She had almost made one of the Olympic equestrian teams when she’d been a teen. He had remembered that when this rescue had still been in the planning stages.
Actually, he remembered everything she’d ever told him. That particular piece of information had been revealed in a conversation about their childhood memories. One they’d shared during a long rainy afternoon they had spent mostly in bed.
And of course conversation hadn’t been all they’d shared that day. Which was something it would be better not to think about right now.
“They leave them saddled,” he assured the colonel.
Most of the time that precaution made sense. It provided a means for a fast getaway, in a region that was rife with conflict. Although the soft saddles were probably like nothing either of them had ever ridden before, the fact that the horses were kept saddled was one of the things Landon had believed would make success possible when he’d come up with the idea to steal them.
He watched as the sentry’s cigarette was carried upward again. Then suddenly its red tip disappeared from sight. There had been no arching glow that would indicate he’d thrown it down. Apparently the guard had turned to look out over the sheer rock face that guarded the mountainside approach to the camp.
“Now,” Landon whispered, making his move toward the horses.
He didn’t look back, not even when he found the rope that had been stretched across the mouth of the narrow fissure where the animals were penned. Entrapped by that and the rock walls at their backs, the animals were effectively corralled for the night and yet ready at a moment’s notice.
The three of them were about to do exactly what Grace’s captors would have done if the camp had been raided. Once mounted, they would jump the low rope barrier and ride across the plateau and start down the steep, winding trail these same animals had been brought up only days ago.