by Linda Turner
She wrapped her arms around her stomach and managed to look miserable. "How's this?"
"I can truthfully say I've never seen you look worse." He chuckled. "Here goes nothing."
In the end, it was as easy as child's play. Grant banged on the door as if he were going to knock it down, bellowing for the guard. When a baby-faced youth clutching his machine gun cautiously unlocked the door, he was met with a moaning Katie and a furious Grant, who announced that she was sick and it was little wonder after spending most of the afternoon in a sweatbox. It was an Oscar-winning performance. Seconds later, Katie was escorted to the only rest room at camp headquarters.
She would have lingered as long as possible as she crossed the compound, but her guard hurried her along as if he were afraid she would faint at his feet any moment. She pretended to stumble while her constantly moving eyes took a quick inventory of the camp.
It was late afternoon, and little sunlight was able to penetrate the dense foliage of the trees. Parked near one of the barnlike structures were two trucks similar to the ones operated by Glade Sugar, but without the logo. Around the vehicles were gathered most of the men she'd seen earlier. They were listening intently as Cantu talked to them in a voice too low for her to catch. They were all dressed in black, and their faces were distorted with a black substance that looked like muck out of the swamp.
"The bathroom's in here," the guard mumbled, dragging her into the headquarters before she could see more. He pointed to a door just outside Gallegos's office. "Over there. And don't try anything," he warned her. "This is the only exit and I'm staying right here till you come out." Whether intentionally or instinctively, his fingers tightened on the Uzi.
Katie tried to stall as long as possible, but he gave her only ten minutes. It was long enough for Katie to splash her face and neck with water and remove some of the grime that clung to her skin. By the time she opened the door again, she was refreshed and determined not to let her guard hurry her across the compound on the return trip to the shed. Maybe she'd be able to eavesdrop on Cantu.
But she never got the chance. Just as she stepped outside, the two trucks rumbled to life. Seconds later, Cantu and another gang member drove them out of the camp and headed toward the highway. The other men must have been in the back of the trucks because only a few remained behind. The tense excitement in the air was almost tangible.
Katie glanced quickly at her guard and caught a look of frustration on his face as he watched the trucks disappear out of sight. He couldn't have been as old as Ryan. "Where are they going?" she asked casually.
He opened his mouth to reply before he realized what he was doing. Instead, he glared at her mutely.
Katie shrugged, unperturbed by his silence. "Wherever it is, it looks like you're going to miss out on all the excitement. Why'd you have to stay behind?"
She thought he wasn't going to answer when he finally retorted stiffly, "Someone's got to guard the camp. Nothing can interfere with tonight."
She frowned at his choice of words. Gallegos had said the same thing. "What's so important about tonight?"
He might have answered if they hadn't reached the shed just then, but the sight of the locked steel door seemed to remind him of his responsibilities. His mouth clamped tight, he unlocked the door and motioned her inside without another word.
Katie stepped inside and swore as the door was locked behind her. "Damn! If I'd have had just a few more minutes!"
"What happened?" Grant demanded, crossing the short space to her. "Did you find out anything?"
"No. Yes. I don't know," she muttered, sweeping her fingers through her hair. "Cantu and most of the men just left in two trucks, and they looked like they were headed for trouble. But I don't know what Gallegos has planned for tonight."
"So they're shorthanded right now," he replied, then glanced at his watch. "It won't be dark enough to leave for another couple of hours, but if we're lucky, Cantu and the others won't be back until after we're long gone."
"I hate to bring up a small technicality," she said dryly, "but there's a guard outside that door, and he's carrying an Uzi. How are we supposed to get past him?"
He grinned. "I've got it all planned. We'll call him in here just like we did before. While you're distracting him, I'll knock him out from behind."
"And how am I supposed to do that? He's already antsy. The minute you make a move on him, he'll probably shoot you."
"He won't if he can't see me," he said smugly. He squatted down to scoop up a handful of dirt from the floor. "All you've got to do is throw this in his face and we're out of here."
If any other man had made such a simple suggestion, she would have laughed in his face. But Grant Elliot had a talent for landing on his feet. "That's insane. You know that, don't you?"
He shrugged. "Some people might call it brilliant."
"I believe the same thing was once said about the Edsel," she said dryly.
He let the rest of the dirt slide through his fingers, then rose lithely to his feet. "Oh, but there's a difference," he said softly, settling his hands on her hips to eliminate the distance between them. "The Edsel died an early death, but we're both going to live until we're old and gray. You can quote me on that, Katie MacDonald," he murmured, and lowered his head for a long hard kiss that, for a moment, banished everything from her mind but him. "We're getting out of this alive."
Locked in the windowless shed, they had only Grant's watch to tell them what time it was and the sight of the slow darkening of the small band of light at the bottom of the door to tell them when it was nightfall. Unconsciously ticking off the minutes in her head, Katie watched with growing anxiety as the slim bar of brightness grew dimmer and dimmer and finally disappeared altogether. Sweat broke out on her palms. It was time.
Grant, his face set in grim lines, glanced at his watch. "If we're going to make a break for it before Cantu gets back, we'd better do it now. It should be pitch black out there by now."
He moved to the door, but before he could even lift his fist to pound on it, a cry went up from the guards outside as the trucks rumbled back into the compound. "Damn!" he swore. "That tears it!"
Katie pressed her ear against the wall, straining to catch every sound. "Wait, Grant! Listen. They're not stopping."
They both held their breath. Above the shouts of the guards, the deep grinding of truck gears carried easily on the night air. The sound grew fainter as the trucks swept past the compound. The silence had hardly settled over the swamp again before the drone of a low-flying airplane echoed overhead. A car right next to the shed roared to life. Seconds later, it seemed to take off after the trucks. Then they heard the pounding of running feet.
Katie looked at Grant speculatively. "What do you think's going on out there?"
"I'd say Gallegos's plans for tonight are just about to slip into high gear." Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. "I don't know where those trucks went, but it sounds like most of the camp followed them. This is our chance."
Katie took a bracing breath, then scooped up a handful of dirt from the floor. As she moved to station herself in front of the door, Grant flattened himself against the wall right next to it so that he would be temporarily out of sight of the guard. Katie's heart hammered against her ribs when she nodded for Grant to pound on the door.
For a long, desperate moment, they were afraid their guard had gone with the others after the trucks. Then he grumbled outside the door, "What do you want?"
"To see my uncle," Katie shouted back. "He promised me I wouldn't be mistreated, but I haven't had a bite to eat all day. If you don't let me see him immediately, I'm going to scream this place down!"
"All right, all right," he snapped. "Quit your crying, for God's sake! I've got something for you to eat right here."
The key scraped in the lock. Katie stiffened and was suddenly terrified that the dirt in her hand would stick to her damp palm. But it was too late to turn back now.
The light from the single bulb overhead streamed down
on the guard's scowling baby face as the door was pulled open all the way. "It's only fruit, but—"
Her heart in her throat, Katie threw the dirt right in his face.
"What the—"
The guard never saw the punch that had all of Grant's weight behind it. Five seconds later, he was lying facedown on the compound floor, out cold.
Grant ran out the door but not before he'd snatched up the Uzi. He glanced wildly around the compound, but there was no one in sight. Without a word, he took Katie's hand and they ran into the darkness.
* * *
Chapter 10
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The camp was shrouded in blackness, and as the shed door opened light spilled out into the inky darkness. Grant tugged Katie after him across the compound and plunged into the swamp that hovered threateningly behind the headquarters.
The night was black as pitch, robbed of even starlight by the thick trees that huddled together like old women in the dark. Danger lurked in odd, sinister, unmoving shapes. Unseen branches slapped at them, pulled at their clothes, tangled in their hair. From out of the night, feathery tendrils of Spanish moss reached out to caress their cheeks with ghostly fingers.
Katie violently brushed the moss away from her face, fear rising like bile in her throat before she realized what it was. Idiot! she told herself furiously. It was only the swamp. Gallegos and his men were what she had to fear.
Overhead, the plane they'd heard earlier suddenly buzzed the top of the trees directly above them, its landing lights slicing a sharp path through the darkness. With every passing second, it glided lower and lower into the trees.
Grant stopped abruptly, his fingers tightening on the Uzi as he pulled Katie closer. "Look," he whispered, nodding toward their right.
Two hundred yards away through the trees, truck headlights sprang on. The brightness illuminated the scene, which looked like a photographic negative, etched as it was in the harsh, unrelenting shades of black and white. The Glade Sugar trucks she had seen earlier were lined up so that their headlights shone across a short, bumpy clearing. Katie wasn't surprised to realize that it was a runway.
On the edges of darkness, Cantu and his gang members hovered, watching, waiting, ready to slip back into the night if the need arose. At the end of the runway, Gallegos stood beside a black Ford, his face carved in shadows as he watched the pilot set the plane down on the rough ground with a sureness that no doubt came from having made many such landings before.
How clever of Gallegos to pick the swamp to do his dirty work in, Katie thought in disgust. There were no prying eyes to witness his drug smuggling here among the snakes. If Sam hadn't discovered his hideaway, he could have carried on such an operation for years without anyone being the wiser.
Thoughts of Sam and his awful fate brought her up short. She and Grant had to get out of here! Glancing wildly around to get her bearings, she pulled at Grant's hand. "The highway's back the other way," she said under the drowning roar of the plane's motor. "We've got to get out of here while they're too busy to notice we've escaped!"
He stood stubbornly where he was. "No, we can't go that way."
"Grant! The car—"
"The car's gone, sweetheart," he cut in softly. "The minute they captured us, you can bet Cantu and his boys scoured the swamp until they found it. They wouldn't take any chances that someone would find it and start looking for its owner."
Oh, God, she hadn't thought of that! "Then we'll walk back," she retorted desperately. "We can hitchhike. Someone's bound to come along and give us a ride back to the city."
"Yeah, someone like Gallegos," he tossed back. "Don't you see that's the first place he'll look for us once he realizes we've gotten free? It's the logical escape route and he knows it." His fingers tightened on hers. "We've got to cut through the swamp and come out on the other side. It'll take longer, but we can make several miles before the old man realizes his mistake."
Katie paled. The swamp. Making their way through it during the day, when they could see and had the path to the camp to guide them, had been difficult enough. Traveling through it at night, with no light to illuminate all its unseen dangers, would be courting disaster. The ground was deceptive, the thick trees all impossibly alike. If they lost their bearings, they could be lost for days, or worse, unwittingly circle around and find themselves right back in Gallegos's clutches. Even someone who knew the swamp well would hesitate at such foolhardiness.
Her gaze moved past Grant to the runway. The plane was taxiing toward Gallegos, while Cantu and his men gathered closer. Behind them lay the deepest part of the swamp.
Reading her thoughts, Grant said huskily, "We'll have to circle the runway."
The plane suddenly cut its engine, leaving behind a throbbing silence. Katie stiffened, her heart hammering wildly as she stared at the runway, measuring the distance around it. It wasn't that far, but it held all the dangers of a mine field. One misstep could snap a twig, one wrong move could leave them splashing in a hidden puddle of water, and the sound would rip through the night like an alarm.
She looked into Grant's eyes. He was waiting for her, soundlessly asking her if she was ready. Her throat was as dry as desert sand, yet she nodded anyway.
Deliberately pushing the drama being acted out on the runway to the back of her mind, she followed close behind him through the thicket of trees and brush. Her eyes stayed on her feet and the world shrank to the dark, treacherous ground in front of her. With painstaking slowness, she tested each step until her muscles began to tremble with the strain. With every step, she fought the need to go crashing through the underbrush to the perilous safety of the darkness beyond the runway.
Hurry! Hurry! The words beat at her in time with her heartbeat, taunting her, pushing her. She knew she and Grant were virtually invisible to the men in the clearing, but she couldn't shake the feeling that somehow Gallegos had sensed they had escaped and was even now watching them, toying with them like a cat waiting to pounce. It was all she could do not to let the panic overtake her.
Lost in the nightmare, she didn't realize Grant had stopped until she ran into his back. Swallowing a gasp, she would have fallen into the underbrush if he hadn't pivoted sharply and snatched her against him. Her heart pounding against his, she clung to him as she glanced quickly at the runway. Had she made a noise?
With a shock, Katie realized they were less than a hundred yards away from the plane. The men who were gathered around it had eyes only for the passenger who descended to greet Gallegos with a thin-lipped smile and a firm handshake. He was a lean man, slightly under six foot, with hair as black as midnight and close-set eyes that were so cold and ruthless they sent a shiver skating down Katie's back. Was this a representative of the Colombian drug cartel Gallegos did business with? she wondered. He certainly had the hard looks of someone who recognized no rules but his own.
All business, he returned to the plane, as soon as greetings were exchanged, to throw open the rear door. Katie didn't need a closer look to know that the sacks piled high there were tilled with cocaine. But instead of unloading them, Gallegos gave a nod to Cantu, who immediately moved to the nearest truck. With the help of one of the other gang members, he pulled a narrow wooden crate from the back of the sugar truck and half dragged it over to Gallegos and the Colombian. Using a crowbar supplied by one of the other boys, he jimmied open the lid and spilled the contents of the box at their feet.
In the stark light of the trucks' headlights, black metal gleamed coldly, wickedly. Katie sucked in a startled breath, her fingers curling into Grant's arms. Machine guns! The crates, the sugar trucks, were full of machine guns!
Even in the darkness, she could tell that Grant's mind was working as quickly as hers. Gallegos was involved in a hell of a lot more even than they had suspected. Not only did he have a drug pipeline set up from Colombia, he was running guns the other way. Guns in all likelihood stolen earlier this evening when Cantu and the others left in the trucks, she realized. No wonder Galleg
os hadn't let anything interfere with his plans for the night. He wanted those guns out of the country before anyone even knew they'd been stolen!
Suddenly, from the direction of the camp, a hoarse cry shattered the silence. "Help! They have escaped! The prisoners have escaped!"
Katie knew that this moment would be forever carved in her memory. For what seemed like an eternity, nobody moved. Then, amid shouts of alarm, Uzis were suddenly jerked into readiness. The Colombian spit out angry accusations in Spanish at Gallegos at the same time the older man barked out orders. "Half of you get that plane unloaded and then reload it with the guns. Cantu, I want those prisoners found. Now! Get on it! They couldn't have gotten very far."
Snapping his head around, Grant saw instantly that they were caught halfway between the camp and the runway. Trapped. Any minute Cantu and his men would be heading straight for them.
He jerked Katie down to the damp ground and half covered her with his body just as Cantu ordered the other half of the gang members to fan out and start searching. Too late, he realized that they had only a thin covering of ferns and the darkness to protect them. At their backs was the trunk of a huge cypress tree, cutting off escape.
What followed was a deadly game of hide and seek. Lights suddenly flared out of nowhere, like search-lights at a prison, as flashlights were dragged out of back pockets and switched on. With deadly intent, the white beams arced through the undergrowth and bounced off trees, obscenely cutting through the darkness. The brightness stripped away the night, tracking them. Heavy, booted feet stomped through the vegetation, only to stop, to wait, to listen. Silence, as dark as the night, hung in the air.
Lying under Grant, Katie curled her fingers into the muck as the thundering echo of her own heartbeat ate at her nerves. She hardly dared to move as she watched the narrow beams of light swing overhead, then jerk back, only to retrace their original path. Seconds passed, then minutes. Water seeped into her clothes until she was soaked from her breasts to her ankles. Her lungs were screaming for more than the pitiful little gulps of air she allowed herself. And still the lights, the searchers, lingered. Would they never move on!