The DMZ

  “It’s something we all go through when a companion gets killed in battle and we survive. You blame yourself—figure if you’d only done something different, they’d still be alive. ‘Survivor’s guilt,’ they call it. You can’t let it get to you. It’ll paralyze your actions, your decision-making capabilities, if you do. Which we can’t afford right now. We’re not out of the danger zone yet. In fact, if you’re up to it, there are several things we need to discuss.”

  Rick paused for a response from his companion. But the only sound in the darkness beside him was a slow, rhythmic breathing. Then he heard the girl stir and a small unhappy sigh.

  “Julie?” he asked quietly.

  When there was no answer, he took out his penlight and switched it on, shielding its thin beam with his hand as he turned it on his companion. The girl was still sitting up, her arms wrapped around her knees, her head turned sideways where it was resting against them. Rick could see her face where her damp curls had fallen away. But she wasn’t listening to his careful advice. She was sound asleep, her breath coming softly through her parted lips and her long eyelashes lying against the one cheek he could see.

  There were tears on that cheek and a scratch he hadn’t noticed before that extended in a vicious red line from the edge of her eyebrow down almost to the corner of her mouth. Even as he examined the injury, that very vulnerable-looking mouth quivered, and the girl let out another small, unhappy sigh in her sleep before turning her face away from the light.

  Rick switched off the flashlight. Feeling around for her knapsack, he eased the sleeping girl over so she was lying on her side, her head on the canvas bag as a pillow. She didn’t even stir. Rick listened to her soft breathing for a long moment. Then he picked up the AK-47 and rose to his feet.

  Walking over to the edge of the stump, he lifted his head, straining every sense of sight and smell and hearing into the night. He wasn’t searching for his former companions. He knew their patterns too well. They would be bedded down now around a fire and wouldn’t move out again until dawn. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that watching eyes had been pursuing him all day. Not hostile nor benign. Just eyes.

  But there was none of that ominous quiet that came with intruders into alien territory. Even their own intrusion had been inspected and dismissed as harmless by the denizens of this part of the jungle, and the night around him was alive with the normal small sounds of frogs and monkeys and sloths and birds settling down to sleep. A pair of eyes that gleamed green against the darkness before vanishing was too close together and near to the ground to be a serious predator.

  Satisfied, the Special Forces officer hunkered down on his boot heels and settled himself to keep watch over the night and the sleeping girl.

  TWENTY

  “JULIE!”

  The hushed call roused Julie from a dreamless sleep. Raising reluctant eyelids, she saw only darkness and closed them again. She was sinking back into slumber when a hand shook her shoulder, insistently. “Julie, would you wake up, please?”

  Brightness penetrated her eyelids. Grudgingly Julie opened her eyes. The soft beam of the pencil flashlight outlined the stark planes of Rick’s face above it. “Julie, I’m going to have to get some sleep,” he said quietly. “But we need to keep someone on watch. Are you up to staying awake for a couple hours?”

  “Mmmm!” Julie sat up, stiff muscles protesting the move. Sleepily, she hauled her wrist into view. Four A.M.! Straightening hastily, she took in the Special Forces officer squatted down beside her, the butt of the AK-47 resting against the wood of the stump, his eyes dark and alert above the narrow beam of light but lines of weariness etched deeply around his mouth.

  “Yes, of course I can stay awake. You should have woken me hours ago!”

  “You needed your rest.” As Julie scrambled to her feet, Rick laid his weapon down beside him and stretched out with a tired sigh.

  “Mind if I borrow this?” Reaching for her knapsack, he paused long enough for her to nod before shoving it under his head. “If you see or hear anything, call me. Anything—even if it turns out to be a false alarm. Okay?”

  He held her gaze until she nodded again, feeling a sudden impulse to salute and say, “Yes, sir!” Then he turned off the flashlight and handed it to her. The night went immediately black, and he said out of the darkness, “Don’t use that unless you have to. Those are the only batteries.” His voice slowed, slurring with tiredness. “It’ll be light in a couple hours. Wake me then.”

  His breathing slowed further to the deep, even rhythm of sleep. Julie switched the flashlight on briefly to find her way to the edge of the stump. Darkness restored, she thrust the light into a pocket and sat down, her legs dangling at first over the edge. With a sudden feeling of unease, she pulled her legs up and crossed them beneath her.

  The action brought back wry memories of the monster that had resided for years under her brass bedstead in San Ignacio. But if there was anything lurking over the edge of the stump, it was as silent as that product of childhood imagination.

  Julie relaxed. She was wide awake and would have given much for a cup of coffee. But the last weeks had taught her a capacity she’d never had before for stillness and patient waiting, and she settled herself to both. This was the quietest hour of the jungle night, when the frogs and chirping insects had ceased their serenade and all but a few nocturnal hunters lay deep in slumber. The only sound Julie heard was the quiet breathing behind her.

  Dawn stole gray into the jungle, the massive columns of the trees and the feathery outline of ferns and other underbrush coming so gradually into focus that it was like watching a negative being developed. Julie waited until the grayness brightened to green before responding to an increasingly urgent call of nature. She washed up at the edge of the stream, running wet fingers through her hair to coax out all the snarls. Stepping over a shallow mound in the mud of the stream bank, she walked back to the stump and hoisted herself up onto the surface.

  Rick was still sleeping. Julie walked over to look down at him. He was lying stretched out on his side, his back against the rotting wood of the eaten-out shell as though to ensure nothing could creep up on him, one arm wrapped around her knapsack that he was using as a pillow, the other stretched out to touch the AK-47. Even in sleep he looked ready to jump to his feet at the slightest intimation of danger.

  He must have been very tired. The long lines of his body were relaxed as Julie had never seen them, and the grim concentration that had tightened jaw and mouth during their march the day before had eased as well. He looked younger and less forbidding than she would have thought possible.

  Sitting down, Julie drew her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around them, and studied the sleeping man. Since she’d first seen him striding through TV cameras back in the airport in Bogotá, her view of this man had forcibly undergone so many changes that she had to ask herself again—just who was this Rick Martini?

  Julie knew of the Green Berets and other such elite military units. She’d seen the movies, read the books. But she’d never thought to consider what kind of people they might be. They were taught to fight and kill with an efficiency no one else on the face of the planet possessed, that much she knew, and as a journalist in a field that traditionally held her country’s massive and pollution-wracked military machine in poor esteem, this had certainly colored Julie’s initial opinion of him, an impression she held even after she’d discovered Rick was not the guerrilla she’d thought him to be.

  That a soldier might view the skills he’d learned in the same way a surgeon did—unpleasant and painful and to be used only when there were no other options—had never occurred to Julie before. Yet Rick had not killed yesterday even when it might have made their escape easier. Nor by his own account did he enjoy or condone violence any more than Julie herself. The discipline and commitment it had taken to exist months on end in enemy territory was—well, impressive, to say the least.

  There was, in fact, an air of competence
about this man, even in his sleep, that was a world away from the easy self-confidence that had so impressed her in Tim McAdams. The journalist’s jovial self-assurance seemed based on the spurious assumption that everything was sure to turn out all right, that nothing really bad could possibly touch him. Rick’s quiet authority was born of having faced up to only too many deadly obstacles and won through to the other side.

  And if Rick Martini had been impatient and cold and angry with her, he had also on occasion been kind. And Julie recognized now that he had watched out for her well-being from that first moment when he’d snatched her out of death’s way back in San José.

  “You know, I think I like you, Rick Martini,” Julie said softly.

  Too bad the Special Forces officer didn’t share that sentiment. To Rick, Julie was a meddlesome reporter who had stumbled into his life and mission with disastrous consequences, who now hung around his neck as an unwelcome appendage for whom he was responsible, and who was holding him back from more urgent duties. He would no doubt be more than happy to shake her out of his life once they got out of this mess, and would certainly feel nothing but relief if he never saw one Julie Baker again.

  “So—do I have mud on my face, or are you just checking out the local wildlife?”

  Julie flushed as she realized that Rick’s eyes were open and fastened on her. She jumped to her feet. “No, I was just debating if I should wake you up. You looked so tired. You’ve only slept for maybe three hours.”

  Getting to his feet, Rick reached for his shirt and shrugged it on. “I’ve done with less.” He yawned hugely as he ran a hand over his face and hair. “Oh, boy,” he groaned. He glanced quizzically down at Julie. “Did I see toothpaste somewhere in that bag of yours?”

  “Sure—here.” Digging the tube out of her knapsack, Julie handed it to him. “But you’re going to have to use your finger. I’m afraid I draw the line at my toothbrush.”

  His mouth curved briefly at that, but his expression was distant and preoccupied, and to Julie it seemed he hardly saw her as he picked up the AK-47 and walked over to the edge of the stump. His gaze narrowed to study the jungle around him, his head high in that listening attitude of his. Walking over to his side, Julie listened too, but she could hear only the morning cawing of parrots and a troupe of spider monkeys awakening overhead.

  “What is it?” she asked anxiously. “Do you think they’re still out there?”

  Rick shook his head without relaxing the intensity of his survey. “No, I think we’ve lost the guerrillas. Without a tracker, they’ll still be combing the banks of that river. But …”

  His gaze dropped finally to Julie, but not as though he were seeing a person, she thought. More as though he were studying a problem. “When I get back, we need to talk.”

  “Yes, I know,” Julie said quickly. Her stomach rumbled as she said it, a reminder that breakfast was long overdue, and Rick threw Julie a wry glance as the color rose to her face. “About that, among other things.”

  He was back in less than ten minutes, his hair damp like hers, so that despite its length he looked as neat and groomed as a soldier on parade, his fatigues holding no wrinkles from their unorthodox laundering and even his boots polished clean of mud.

  A few weeks ago, the contrast with Julie’s slept-in appearance and unruly curls would have been cause for a corresponding self-consciousness, and sent her hurrying to dig out mirror and makeup case. Her public image had long since ceased to be of importance, and if Julie had first encountered this man carefully made-up for the lens of any roving camera, he had since seen her cowering and hysterical, bruised and battered, soaking wet, and in every other possible situation. There was little point now in trying to maintain impressions.

  Julie sat down at the edge of the stump as Rick vaulted up onto its surface, this time letting her legs dangle over the edge now that she could see the innocuous tangle of ferns and fungal growths sprouting there. Rick walked over to retrieve the casing of his hand radio before joining her. Julie could see the hole where the bullet had gone clean through and the shattered pieces of the interior, and even with her limited technical ability, it was clear to her that the radio would never transmit again. Rick poked at the contents of the casing, moving around broken pieces of circuit board and wires, before he set it beside him with a sigh.

  “Julie, I’m not going to lie to you,” he said harshly. “If there is any danger of Victor and his unit catching up to us now, it’s small and decreasing with every hour we put between them and us. It’s hard enough to find someone who wants to be found in this jungle without going after someone in hiding. But that doesn’t mean we’re out of trouble. This radio was our only communication, and it’s done for. I’d hoped I might at least salvage the GPS transmitter so HQ could home in on our location and send someone to get us out. But if there’s a hope of piecing it back together, it would take a better tech than I am. Which means that we have no way of knowing where we are, or letting anyone else know where we are. And without either sun or stars as guide …”

  He glanced up at the swaying canopy of leaves and vines that blocked any glimpse of what had to be blue sky beyond. “The odds of getting out of here and back to base are not good. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Julie nodded. “Yes, I understand, and I’m … I’m really sorry. Your whole mission is in jeopardy, and it’s all my fault. I feel terrible.”

  “My mission!” Rick looked down at her with exasperation. “Are you not getting the seriousness of what I just said? I’m not worried about my mission right now. I’m concerned about our lives. We are lost in a jungle that’s thousands—maybe tens of thousands—of square miles. We have no food at all. What we ate last night was the last I had on me. And frankly, I haven’t seen a whole lot out here that’s on any survival food list I ever studied. Even if we don’t starve to death, there are jaguars and anacondas and who knows what else out there, besides your crocodiles. And that’s if we don’t stumble over some hostile Indian tribe. People who get lost out here usually don’t come walking out. We might have more chance of getting out of here with our lives if we could reactivate one of those bugs and let Victor catch us.”

  As Julie’s face whitened, he added roughly, “I’m not trying to frighten you. But you’re a responsible adult, and you deserve to know the truth. We will, of course, make every effort to walk out of here. Hopefully, we will come across some game. But we need to face the reality of our situation. The odds of making it even if I was on my own—”

  “And not held back by a female city-slicker reporter?” Julie finished evenly.

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant!” Julie cut in bitingly. “Okay, I don’t blame you. You haven’t exactly seen my best side these last weeks, have you? And yesterday, well, I … I just don’t like crocodiles. But if you think I’m going to hold you back—where did you learn to move around in the jungle?”

  Rick gave her a hard glance, then shrugged. “Fort Benning, Georgia. Special Forces training. Though the emphasis there was on sneaking through the brush without being seen, not on finding your way around. Sure, we all practiced basic survival techniques, but never where it would take more than a day or two to walk out to civilization. I’ve been in the jungle here plenty—both in San José and with the FARC. But never without native guides, I’m afraid.”

  “Yes, well, I grew up in these jungles, remember? And I can assure you that people have been finding their way around in here without a GPS for thousands of years. No one ever starved to death, either—or needed to anyway.”

  “You mean, the Indians,” Rick said slowly.

  “That’s right, the Indians. And if they can do it, so can we. Maybe it’ll take us a while, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t get out of here in one piece.” Julie stopped to find Rick’s eyes intent on her face.

  “Go on,” he said quietly. “I’m listening.”

  Julie looked at him uncertainly. He was wearing tha
t inscrutable look that had served him so well among the guerrillas, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. But he sat there waiting as though he were genuinely interested in what she had to say, so she went on. “Well, when I was a kid, my father always told me that if I ever got lost in the jungle, there was one surefire way to find my way out. Just find water and head downstream.”

  Rick’s eyebrow shot up. “Find water?”

  “That’s right. You see, if you follow water downstream long enough, it will eventually empty into a larger stream. And then into a larger one. It might not be the most direct route, but if you keep following it, sooner or later you’re going to make it to a good-sized river. And rivers are where people live. Maybe just an Indian village, but Indians have canoes and access to other rivers and villages, and sooner or later you’re going to find someone who can get you back to civilization. At least … well, I’ve never actually had to put it to the test. But that’s what my father always said, and he should know.”

  Julie trailed off into his silence. Was that scorn or approbation behind those immobile features? Rick shook his head slowly. “Your father was a wise man. It just—yes, it just might work. Except—there’s one major problem. Have you ever seen a map of this zone? Well, I have, and I’m afraid it isn’t as easy as you make it sound.”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy,” Julie started, but Rick cut her off with a sharp gesture. “The rivers in these parts don’t flow toward civilization. The entire river system of southern Colombia drains away from settled areas and down into the Amazon basin. Some of them into the Amazon River itself. Maybe if we reversed the process and followed them upstream—no, that wouldn’t work, would it? They’d just peter out. But following rivers downstream is going to take us deeper and deeper into the jungle. It could take us months to walk out, even if nothing else went wrong.