The DMZ

  They had been paddling downstream for almost an hour when it appeared just around a bend—a narrow tributary flowing into the river on the same side as the village, the mouth shielded by overhanging branches and lianas. A casual glance would have missed it.

  As if they could read each other’s minds, they dipped their paddles simultaneously to turn the canoe in that direction even before Rick glanced back to make a gesture toward the shore. Branches closed overhead as the canoe slid through the hanging vines and boughs into the other stream. The grim satisfaction of Rick’s mouth echoed Julie’s sudden certainty. The narrow channel was deep and smooth, and with the leaf cover overhead, it was a perfect turn-off for anyone sophisticated enough to be concerned about aerial surveillance.

  The channel lasted about a kilometer before widening out into a vast, reed-choked swamp like the one through which the guerrillas had cut off Julie and Carlos’s escape. Julie looked around instinctively. She saw no one, but the open stretch of bog and sky left her feeling exposed and unprotected.

  Even without that feeling of exposure, the swamp was an eerie, inhospitable place, the water thick with algae that clung like green slime to the paddle when Julie lifted it. Clouds of mosquitoes rose off the stagnant water. Rick reached for his shirt and pulled it back on.

  Huge lianas and dangling strands of moss cloaked the branches that reached down from occasional knolls of solid ground. The canoe was gliding between patches of reeds when a vine wrapped around a branch overhead begin to move. Julie caught a glimpse of a diamond-shaped head sliding into the water, followed by meter after meter of sinuous length. An anaconda, more than big enough to tip the canoe if it was in the mood.

  Julie shuddered. There would also be water moccasins and deadly fer-delance, the Amazon’s most poisonous snake, in that stagnant water, plus other creatures that would emerge with the falling of night.

  She was relieved when Rick glanced over his shoulder and said, “We’re too visible out here. There could be sentries. We’re going to have to find land and abandon this canoe.”

  He directed their paddling toward the shoreline, where a long stretch of freshwater mangroves promised solid ground somewhere beyond. Docking the canoe under a curtain of hanging moss, Rick snatched up the AK-47 and stood in the prow of the canoe, his body taut as he studied the tangle of moss and vines above them. Julie, obeying his sharp gesture to stay put, felt it too—the sensation of being under surveillance.

  She lifted her head to search the bank above them but saw only an explosion of growing things—poisonous green mosses, fungal growths budding from tree trunks, bladderlike pods sprouting like floating balloons from the algae. Were they being watched by that Indian they’d seen? If so, his skills of stealth and tracking were even greater than Rick’s.

  She saw the tension ease from Rick’s shoulders. But the tightness of his expression didn’t relax as he glanced down at Julie. “From here on, we don’t know what’s out there—or who!” he said harshly. “That means we follow full field discipline. No talking. No breaking cover. No sounds—if possible.” Julie flinched at that last. “You have a problem keeping up, you let me know immediately. If you need a break, tell me!”

  He paused to search the shoreline again. “My bet is that they beached somewhere in here. If they’ve unloaded cargo, they’re bound to have left some sign. So we’ll follow the perimeter of this swamp until we see some sign that they came ashore.”

  Julie nodded silently. This wasn’t the man who had debated leisurely with her around a campfire or who had held her hands and prayed, but the professional soldier, and she offered neither argument nor opinion as she sloshed after him through the muck that filled every available space between the mangrove roots. Within minutes, her slacks were muddy to the knees, her sneakers soaked through. Julie felt a rip as a submerged branch grabbed at one foot, the weakened material giving way so that muck oozed in around her sock. They would have to get to dry land if these shoes were to last much longer.

  But they didn’t reach dry ground. Though Rick and Julie clambered for hours over the exposed roots and back down into the filthy water, they never came to the end of the mangroves. The swamp itself seemed to stretch forever. If the terrorists had docked somewhere in this mire, it wasn’t here.

  Under the constant submerging, Julie’s feet grew soft and wrinkled, then swollen and sore. She had to bite her lip to keep from begging Rick to slow down. The pestilence of insects didn’t improve matters. The stagnant waters of the swamp were a breeding ground for stinging, biting things—and not just mosquitoes. There were gnats and candelillas, an almost microscopic flea that stung like fire where it bit. Julie couldn’t find any of the pungent leaves she’d used for repellant, and when she tried an acrid-smelling plant she came across, it left her with a rash that itched worse than the bites.

  Rick showed a scattering of mosquito bites, but the insects seemed to find his weather-toughened flesh less tasty than Julie’s softer skin, and the heavy material of his fatigues offered greater protection than Julie’s short sleeves.

  Julie, lacking his thick boots, was deathly afraid of snakes in the mire. She kept those fears to herself, pulling off the occasional leech with tight lips as she clambered after Rick.

  She was hungry, too, and she knew Rick had to be as well. But if there was anything edible in all this wild fungal growth, Julie didn’t recognize it. They found no fresh water either, and by late afternoon, Rick was strictly rationing the small amount left in his canteen.

  Julie voiced no discomfort nor desire for a rest stop. There was no place to rest that was out of the mire, and besides, Rick’s expression had grown steadily more stern and remote as the hours wore on. There were times in his glances back that Julie felt a glimmer of anger from him. Was he again resenting that her presence held him back?

  Toward dusk, Rick steered them back toward the open water of the swamp. If the going was no easier, at least there was the pale green of the evening sky to let them see their way. As dusk fell, Julie caught a glimpse of the moon through a scattering of clouds, only the faintest sliver of a crescent now.

  Rather than camping, they perched for the night on one of the tree-covered knolls that rose out of the swamp to offer a patch of solid ground. The vegetation was too wet for a campfire, even if Rick had chosen to risk one, and both the penlight and Carlos’s flashlight were now out of batteries. There was no light except from the sliver of moon peaking through a spreading cloud cover and an odd green phosphorescence that rippled here and there through the swamp waters.

  For once, Julie didn’t sleep at all, not only because of hunger and thirst and an almost unbearable itching, but out of sheer terror of what could be crawling up onto their bit of land or dropping out of the branches overhead under that cloak of darkness. She didn’t even try to find a piece of dry ground to stretch out on but sat braced against a tree trunk, her knapsack clutched on her lap and her eyes straining wide open in the dark to follow every ripple of green out in the water.

  Rick didn’t sleep either, and if he didn’t speak, his prowling around the knoll gave an illusion of protection. At some point during the night he slid his long body down beside her and, without a word, slipped an arm around her shoulder. After a long moment, Julie relaxed her stiff posture and, with the softest of sighs, let her head rest against the knobby surface of his ammo vest. She must have dozed a bit; the next thing she knew, it was growing lighter, and Julie saw at least two snakes slide from the knoll into the water when she shifted position.

  As soon as she moved, Rick slid his arm from Julie’s shoulder. His jaw tightened as he glanced down at her exhausted face, and he stood up abruptly and walked over to look out across the swamp, saying curtly over his shoulder, “Unless you have breakfast tucked away somewhere, we might as well get moving.”

  The morning went no better than the day before. Julie’s sneakers were in shreds, the soles hanging to the leather uppers only in spots. Her feet inside were so swollen and raw it felt
as though they were literally rotting away inside her socks. Rick had to slow his pace repeatedly for Julie to keep up, even with all her determination.

  By midmorning the canteen was empty, and they hadn’t come across any food, either. Julie, whose biggest concern had been that her slow pace would keep them from meeting Rick’s two-day deadline, began to be afraid they wouldn’t leave this swamp at all. What killed people in the jungle far more surely than wild animal attacks or snake bite was the slow debilitation from harsh conditions that left them too weak or disabled to go on. They eventually died of thirst or starvation or fell prey to one of the predators that wouldn’t attack a healthy individual but hung around to prey on the weak.

  It was past noon, going by her watch rather than the sun, which they had lost sight of as they detoured away from the open swamp, when Julie clambered after Rick over another root and onto dry land—real dry land, hard and firm underfoot. The tangled root system of the mangroves had ended abruptly in smooth, open ground that didn’t have the swamp waters to support the mangrove’s unbridled proliferation.

  Were they still circling the perimeter of the swamp? If not, they were back where they had started—hopelessly lost.

  Right now, Julie didn’t care. From somewhere not far ahead she caught the gentle gurgle of running water. Her thirst had long since driven away any hunger pangs, and the prospects of quenching it gave her the adrenaline to scramble after Rick up a slight incline that carried them farther out of the swamp. The humid fungal growth they had been pushing through for the last twenty-four hours gave way to the cathedral-like marching columns and dim, open aisles of the tall hardwoods with their massive branches spreading out 150 feet or more overhead. The sound of trickling water came from a brook spilling over an outcropping at the top of the incline to form a clear, still pool at its base. Julie hurried eagerly toward it.

  The haste of her scramble ripped the final threads holding her left shoe to her foot, and as the sole twisted away under her, and her raw flesh touched the ground, Julie could no longer keep back a gasp of pain. It was a small gasp and quickly bitten back, but Rick whirled around immediately.

  “What is it?” he demanded. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing!” Julie choked out. “I just—stubbed my foot.”

  “Don’t give me that!” Rick said harshly. “Did you think I haven’t noticed the way you’ve been limping these last few hours? Here, let me see.”

  Julie was in too much pain to resist his hard hand on her shoulder. The rush of water over the outcropping and down the incline during the rainy seasons had over the years eaten away the earth around the rock face. A large overhang had been exposed, creating what was almost a shallow cave beside the pool of water. An immense cedar grew up against the rock face, and the rainwater had washed away at the roots on the pool side so that they too were exposed, one of them thrusting up out of the rocky soil right under the overhang. Swinging Julie up into his arms, Rick strode swiftly to the overhang and lowered her to a sitting position on the rock.

  Yanking off the remainders of tattered shoes and socks, he dipped clean water from the pool in his canteen and sluiced it over her feet. They looked even worse without the cover of leather and muck—puffy and misshapen like bread dough, the skin cracked and bleeding on the soles as well as where the leather uppers had cut into the top and sides.

  Rick muttered something, then said aloud, “You won’t be going anywhere on those. Not unless someone carries you!”

  Placing his AK-47 on the ground beside him, he reached to slide Julie’s knapsack from her shoulder and rifled around inside. But there was little left—either of clothing or the small first-aid kit Julie had packed. The remaining antibiotic cream wouldn’t cover even one of those oozing gashes. The tiny bandages were hopelessly inadequate, the hydrogen peroxide bottle empty. The sweat shirt was gone, too ripped and filthy with fish guts to keep. Rick pulled out one of Julie’s khaki shirts.

  As he unsheathed his knife, Julie ventured, “I … I’m sorry. I know I should have said something earlier, but it really wasn’t so bad. I didn’t want to slow you down.”

  Her apology withered under his glare. He was furious, Julie saw with a sinking heart, his brown eyes blazing copper with anger, his mouth in a thin straight line, his jaw clenched so tight, Julie could see the muscles bunch at the base of his ear.

  “I should never have brought you!” he ground out between his teeth as he sluiced more water over her feet. “I should have stuck to my guns and put you in that canoe straight downriver and got you out of here to where you’d be safe. What was I thinking? No, I know what I was thinking. I was thinking of my mission, and who gives a rip about anything—or anyone—else!”

  Julie stared at him, recognizing with astonishment that he was furious not with her, but with himself.

  “You didn’t bring me,” she told him quietly. “It was my decision, remember?”

  Rick ripped at the material of her khaki shirt with a force that didn’t need the knife.

  “Don’t kid yourself—or me! I was in command. I made the call—a wrong one, clearly. We’ve found nothing. We’ve lost two days. Even if you were in any condition to walk, the odds of making it back to the canoe and downriver …”

  As he broke off, Julie silently finished his thought: In time to reach medical care if it turns out I’ve been exposed.

  “We haven’t even managed to get a warning out!” he groaned. “If we’d headed downstream, we might have accomplished at least that much.”

  “We don’t know that,” Julie denied. “We don’t know what we might have found downstream. Maybe something even worse! It’s like you told me once. You have to make the best decision you can with the information you’ve got. And that was what we—you—did.”

  Rick’s mouth twisted wryly as he glanced up from the smaller strips he was tearing. “If you’re trying to make me feel better, okay, it’s working—a little! But that doesn’t do anything to improve our present situation.”

  He sluiced her feet one last time with the canteen before opening the remainder of the antibiotic cream. The action reminded Julie of how thirsty she was, and she ran her tongue out to moisten her dry lips. Reading her action, Rick handed her the canteen. The water was wonderfully cool on her throat, but the hard metal of the canteen made Julie’s mouth throb. Julie touched the back of her hand to her lips. It came away red. Had she cut herself without realizing it?

  Setting down the canteen, Julie reached for the knapsack and pulled out the makeup case she hadn’t bothered with since she’d begun her captivity. The lid held a mirror about the size of a postcard. Flipping it open, Julie touched a finger to her sore mouth as she glanced at the reflection.

  She stared in disbelief. That couldn’t be her in the mirror! It was the face of a hideous stranger. The skin that had been a smooth, clear olive was mottled and bumpy as though attacked by some horrible disease, marred further by a bright red rash that ran across the forehead and down both cheeks. The eyes were sunk deep into circles so dark they looked bruised, and they were mottled with insect bites even across the eyelids. The cheekbones thrust sharply up under the skin, giving the cheeks a gaunt, concave look. And the mouth was dry and pale and cracked. Even as Julie bit her lip in dismay, another thin red line began to bleed.

  Rick glanced up sharply from the length of material he’d begun to wrap over the antibiotic cream. “What is it?”

  “I’m so ugly!” Julie choked out. With a click she snapped shut the mirror and shoved it back into her knapsack. For a person who’d always prided herself on not putting undue emphasis on her appearance—certainly not the kind of obsession she observed in women like Sondra Kharrazi—she was behaving badly. Unexpectedly, tears stung her eyes. She forced a rueful smile that stung her cracked lips. “I’m sorry. It’s pretty silly to care, when … when we might die out here. It was just such a shock. I guess I have a lot more vanity than I like to admit.”

  Rick’s grip tightened suddenly on
the bandage. “You’re not ugly,” he said abruptly. “You’re beautiful.”

  The forcefulness of his statement brought another rueful smile. “If you’re trying to make me feel better …” Julie mimicked. Then the smile faded, and she looked away. “It isn’t necessary. I’m adult enough to face reality. And it doesn’t really matter—not now!”

  “I don’t try to make people feel better,” Rick answered roughly. “And I never say anything I don’t mean.”

  Giving up on the bandage, he sank back on his haunches and held Julie’s eyes with a direct look. “Do you want to know what I really think of you?”

  If she didn’t, she was going to find out anyway. When Captain Rick Martini of the 7th Special Operations Group got that determined set to his jaw, there was little point in arguing. Rick stood and walked out from the pool for a swift look around before returning to Julie.

  “The first time I saw you in that press mob in Bogotá …” Rick’s mouth twisted at the surprise in Julie’s eyes. “Oh, sure, I noticed you long before you ran in front of a plane’s wing on the San José runway. And I thought you were a pretty girl, all right—a very pretty one. So what? The world’s full of pretty girls, and in my line of work, we like to stay a long ways away from your profession. I had no reason to think you were any different from any of the other reporters I’ve run into, shoving their way onto military installations, more interested in getting their name on a byline—and that Pulitzer Prize you always talk about—than the lives of the people they affect by what they choose to write. Then Victor and his goons picked you up.”

  Fire smoldered again in the brown eyes, but Julie knew it wasn’t she who had drawn his anger. “When Aguilera went after you that day, I could have killed him! I would have, too, if it wouldn’t have made matters worse for you. I knew you were scared to death—and with reason. But you didn’t whine or scream or demand your American rights like most gringos would have done. You stood there with your back straight and your chin high and answered Aguilera like a pro. Which is why I wondered awhile if maybe you weren’t.”