Chapter 16
Dav woke to the sound of chirping
birds. He smiled. He hadn’t heard that sound outside his bedroom
window since he was little. Before she’d become ill, before she’d
lost his little sister, Dav’s mother had loved to open the windows
at night, let the soft air of evening in to cool the house. In
Athens, the nights would cool down enough to open the house in the
spring and fall. She would come in sometimes, he remembered now,
and tell him which of the birds were singing. Their Latin names
would roll musically off her tongue, along with their names in
Greek and English. He still remembered some of them, but even as he
tried to remember, he felt Carrie stir.
Carrie.
Birds.
Freedom.
He abruptly sat up, and Carrie jumped.
“What?” she said, peering at him.
His eyes open, with the morning upon
them, he realized he could see without the flashlight. “Carrie, the
light. The birds.”
She looked startled, listening, and
turned toward the light. Together they peered into the gap. Old
bones lay beyond them, but they looked like animal bones, well
gnawed. A musky odor wafted their way in the warming air. Cat,
maybe. A big one.
Carrie scrambled to her feet and,
turning sideways, tried to get through the gap. It took her three
tries, and on the last attempt, sucking in her breath, she managed
to squeeze through. He heard the tearing sound of cloth and as she
stumbled into the other cave, he could see that even though she
wore his T-shirt, wrinkly and crumpled from wear and sleep, it now
had a huge rent in the back of it.
She went to her knees and he reached
out. “Carrie? Darling? Are you okay?”
He saw her nod.
“I’m just catching my breath. That was
a tight squeeze and the ground here is uneven.” She turned back and
he saw anguish in her eyes. “Dav, there’s a way out.”
“Yes!” he exulted as she moved forward,
toward the vines and the light. “Excellent.” He said with fierce
delight. “Can you see anything? Can you see a
village?”
She shook her head. “I can’t see
anything but jungle. Dav,” she said, moving back to him. “I barely
got through. There’s no way you’ll be able to squeeze
out.”
He had already realized this, when he
saw the tear on the T-shirt. But she would escape. That was the
important thing.
“I know this, Carrie-mou,” he reassured
her, reaching through the gap to touch her face. “I will wait here
for you. You will find help, come back for me.”
She shook her head, her cheek soft
against his rough palm. “It’s too risky, trying to find this place,
this opening. I think ...” She hesitated, then plowed on with what
she obviously found hard to say. “I think you should go back to the
cell.”
“Back?” The thought of traversing the
tunnels, returning to the cell, was not only unpalatable, he wasn’t
sure he could make it with a fever-clouded mind, and alone in the
dark.
Before he could protest aloud, she
barreled on. “I think I can find the clearing, following the way we
came down the tunnels and ... and ...” She could tell he wasn’t
happy, but she continued, his brave Carrie. “If you can get to the
cell and I can get to the clearing, then I can shoot off the lock,
put down the ladder and get you out that way.”
When he started to protest, she
overrode the words. “Dav, if this is Mexico or Guatemala or any of
the Central American countries, no one will listen to a woman,
especially an American woman, and it won’t be safe for me to go try
and find help. You can say that’s all changed and it’s the
twenty-first century, but not out in the countryside or boonies or
wherever the hell we are.”
He realized that her point was well
taken. It was very possible that harm would come to her as she
attempted to get help.
“You may be right,” he conceded, and he
saw her shoulders slump in relief at his agreement. “You believe
you can find the clearing?”
“I think so. If I can get out of the
cave going straight up, then I think I can just return to where the
center cave was, then turn a little left, then go straight to the
clearing.”
“I hate to be grim, but you will
probably be able to follow the buzzards as well.”
“Nasty, but true,” she said, her
features wreathed in distaste.
“Let us think this through,” he
cautioned. “Too many things can go wrong. First, you should go to
the cave mouth again, see if you can actually get out. Go and see
what you see. I will wait until you come back to tell me,
yes?”
“That sounds good. It sounds smart,”
she said, giving him a small smile. “I can’t believe I’m out. I
want you out too.” She stood up, brushing at her clothes. “Sit
tight, okay?”
“I will do this,” he said, watching her
go. She pushed through the vines and he saw her stumble, then right
herself and begin to climb up out of the narrow opening. When he
saw the sun glinting on her dark hair, he knew she was going to be
free, she would make it. A huge weight lifted off his heart,
knowing that she would survive, even if he did not. She was so
strong, so determined.
She would make it. He must tell her, he
thought, trying to organize his tired thoughts, that he wanted to
marry her.
He couldn’t judge the time, but it
didn’t seem long before she was back, scrambling into the cave on
her hands and knees. Her smile was excited and
positive.
“Ah, there you are, my flame,” he said
with a smile, standing up to greet her. “Returned from your jaunt,
have you?” he joked.
“I can see the buzzards circling, and I
think I saw the roof of the building. There isn’t a lot of tall
vegetation up there.” She used one foot to scratch the opposite
ankle. “There’s some kind of biting bug though. Really
itchy.”
“I’m glad you could see the way. If I
am to go through these dratted tunnels without you, it will help me
to know that you will be there, when I find my way.” He said it as
if he were sure he could make it, although he wasn’t entirely
confident.
“Here—” She held out her hand for her
purse. “Take some more aspirin before you start out, and drink the
rest of the water. I didn’t see a stream or anything up there,” she
pointed upward. “But you can refill in the water cave as you go by.
Drink lots of water as you go. That fever is
dangerous.”
“I feel better,” he lied, but took the
proffered pills and unscrewed the canteen. “But still not well,” he
admitted when she gave him a look that patently said she didn’t
believe him. As he raised his injured hand, holding the canteen, he
felt the broken finger throb. At rest, it hadn’t hurt, but now it
throbbed like he’d hit it over and over with a hammer.
When he had drunk his fill, he handed
the second, full canteen through the gap. When she’d set the cord
that held it over her shoulder, he handed through her purse, and
the all-purpose tool. Then he handed her the weapon. He’d been able
to clean it a bit more, but he was still unsure whether it would
fire properly.
“Come close, Carrie, and let me show
you the safety and the things you need to know about this weapon,”
he said, holding it up, testing the strap with both hands to be
sure it would hold as she climbed.
He pointed out the small safety lever
and the gap where the magazine connected. It was loose, so he told
her to make sure it was snugly seated before she
fired.
“I hope the only time I have to fire it
is to shoot off the lock and get you out.”
“I do too,” he reassured her. “I do
too.”
He knew he still needed to say his
piece to Carrie. So many things could happen between this point and
getting back to the cell. He could fall again, or miss a step and
meet Hades as he’d joked earlier.
“Carrie, I must tell you some things,”
he said, slipping her hand through the gap to press a kiss on her
bruised and skinned knuckles. “I had planned to ask you to be my
wife,” he blurted out, knowing he needed to do it before she could
say anything else.
Shock suffused her face. “Your wife?”
Her voice rose on the second word. “Me?”
He didn’t know whether to be amused or
hurt by the shock. “Yes. We have known one another for a long time
now, and I think we have proven that we are attracted to one
another.” He sighed. “Carrie, I had not thought to mention it for
some time. I have, however, thought it for quite a while now. Of
course, I had not thought to end up in the jungle, in a series of
tunnels with traps, with dead mercenaries above us, and impassable
entrances and exits before us at every step.”
“But, Dav, you’re... you’re...” she
stopped, at a loss for words. He had no idea what she had decided
he was, but she was obviously not interested. His gut burned with
pain. Perhaps he should have continued to date the models and
seekers of safe harbors. Apparently, he should not have attempted
to find a wife who understood him.
“I am a man, Carrie-mou. Nothing more.
Especially now.” He let go of her hand, eased back. “I will work my
way through the tunnels and meet you at the cell.”
“Dav, I just meant—” she said, then
stopped. She didn’t reach out, try to regain his touch, and that
spoke volumes to him. “I just meant that I’m not marriage material.
And I don’t think I would ever want to be second place in anyone’s
life again.” Her voice was pleading, quiet.
“I would not put you second,” he
stated, knowing it was true.
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t be
able to help yourself. You haven’t said you love me,” she said
softly. “Work would be your wife and mistress and what would I
be?”
“I would be faithful, I would treat you
with care and respect,” he defended, feeling the burn in his gut
spread.
He could see the tears in her eyes.
They made his stomach burn harder, deeper.
“I know you would, Dav.” She shifted
the weapon, looked at the ground. Evidently she didn’t have
anything else to say.
“Then it is settled,” he said heavily,
striving for some semblance of decorum. He would not beg any woman,
or man, for anything. “I will go back through the tunnels.” The
smile was difficult to muster, but he managed it. “I will race you
there.”
She smiled as well, and her
tear-streaked face would live in his memory forever, along with all
the other snapshots of her that he carried there. “Ready, set, go,”
she said, turning away, the weapon still cradled in her
arms.
Dav waited until she had crawled out of
the cave once more before he gathered the few other things they’d
been carrying and turned to his own journey. Nothing would test him
more than this.
“God,” he said, addressing the deity he
believed in, but had not spoken with very often. “See that she gets
home alive.”
It was all he would say. For
now.
Niko stirred when the phone rang. It
was barely dawn, but he had slept only fitfully, so it didn’t
matter.
“Yes?”
“You will wait until a new team
arrives.” The order was clear, and it was his mentor; he recognized
the voice. If anyone could make sense of this, make sure he got his
revenge and got out of Belize to enjoy it, it would be this
man.
“Done. Where?”
“Where you are. Longitude and
latitude?”
He checked his map, estimated, and gave
the coordinates.
Sam watched him, a wary look in his
eyes. When he hung up he addressed it. “What? We got no
backup.”
Niko nodded and said, “Yeah, there’s
backup coming. A new team.” He hesitated, but Sam was the only
member of his own team still alive. If he didn’t trust Sam ...
“Here’s the deal, though. We don’t work for this guy, not payroll.
We’re hired guns.”
“Exactly,” Sam said, jabbing a finger
toward the phone. “How do we know we’re not sitting ducks for
whoever did that?” He jerked his head in the direction of the
now-distant campsite, the massacre. “Som’thin’ ain’t right here,
compadre. And it isn’t our team comin’. They had our backs, right
down the line. We don’t know these people.”
Niko stopped the hot denial that sprang
to his lips. Sam might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but
he wasn’t stupid either. His common sense had saved them, time and
time again.
“You may be right,” Niko said. “The
more I think about it, the more I don’t like it.” He scanned the
dark jungle, wondering who was watching, who might be
listening.
If it was a double cross, why? If it
was a rescue mission, why have them stay put?
“We’ll move out, get somewhere with a
little distance.”
Sam started the car, but didn’t turn on
the lights. “Up or down?”
“Up, toward Guatemala. We’ve got some
contacts there if this goes to hell.”
Sam nodded at the directions, but
muttered, “Don’t know how much farther toward hell it’s gotta get,
’fore we bail,” as he whipped the Jeep around in the road. Only
when he’d eased a few feet down the tarmac did he turn on the
running lights, not turning on the full headlights until he’d crept
on for at least a mile.
It made sense. If someone was watching
them, the Jeep starting might not be deemed unusual; it was still
cool at night. The lights going on was a dead giveaway that they
were moving out.
From atop his hillside, Jurgens watched
the Jeep creep off into the night. The fact that Niko was moving
didn’t bode well. Jurgens would lay odds that he’d received
instructions to stay put. That made him a target. It meant Niko was
smart enough to realize that and might be turning on whoever held
his leash.
Either way, it didn’t bode well for Dav
and his lady. With practiced care, Jurgens packed up his meager
watching post and shifted back to the position above camp. As the
sun crept over the horizon, Jurgens could see that nothing but
nearly stripped bones and fragments of clothes were left of the
ambushed men. His nightscope had showed animal activity, but
nothing moving on two legs, and now the dawn light revealed that
even the bodies were being consumed by the jungle. Within a few
days, most of the evidence of the mercenaries’ bodies would be gone
as well, devoured or carried off with the bones.
The sun rose in hot glory and he chewed
a bland ration bar, welcoming the energy that flooded through him
as the food hit his system. The bugs were unpleasant, but losing
sleep was worse. Each night away from his Caroline was an
agony.
As if his thought had summoned her, his
phone vibrated. The Guatemalan phone, traceable only to the capital
city, was being called with a phone card from a disposable phone in
Los Angeles. Caroline had gone there on business, his business, and
now hers. The legitimate sidelines were growing enough that he
would be fully able to replace his excellent income from his
freelance work. When that finally occurred, they could be married.
That was the benchmark he had set, and to which she had
agreed.
“Liebchen,” he
answered with that one word.
“My love,” she replied, infusing the
words with such desire that he felt himself harden at the mere
sound of her voice.
“The data?”
“Delivered. And some for you. There are
two dealers, both old grudges. Both related to your main product.”
Two hit men, hired to settle old grudges, and both
of the hits were hired by relatives.
“Strange,” he replied, obliquely asking
for more information. “That product,” he said, meaning Dav. “Is one
of a kind, I believe. It stands alone.”
“So we—and he—thought.” He heard the
rustle of papers, the click of keys. “Genealogical Web sites are
amazing things. You find out a great deal about who is related to
whom.”
“Really?” She was amazing, his
Caroline, he thought again, as he had many times, even long before
he discovered she felt the same way about him.
“Yes, but enough about my hobby,” she
said, letting him know that she was sure about her data, had
sourced, tracked and confirmed it.
“I like hearing about your hobby,
love.” He couldn’t help adding the endearment. “Are these relatives
in the mix as well?”
“Why, yes,” She feigned surprise. “They
are.” So, two relatives after Davros, and two hired
killers as well.
“Perhaps...” He let the word draw out
as he considered the two men he had killed the day before. “I may
have met one of the...” Ah, what was the word for it?
“Collateral relatives?”
“Exactly. I met two people yesterday
who fit the description.”
“Yes, they work as a team, I
understand.” The two he had killed in the act of
planting mines were a hired team then. Good. That left only three
in play.
“Gut.” He felt
the satisfaction warm him, as she warmed him. “That leaves only
three cousins to meet.”
“Any sign of the product you were
searching for?”
“There is good hope of finding that
product, today,” he said, hearing the concern in her voice, knowing
that it was about more than the situation. She cared. About him,
about their lives together. And about Davros and his
woman.
It was more than enough to cement his
decision to see if he could free Davros and his lady. Caroline
wanted it, which meant he, too, wanted it.
Off in the distance, a movement in the
clearing he’d been watching caught his eye. He made a minute
adjustment to the scope and saw a woman creep into the open. She
wore dress clothes, a dusty skirt and a tattered, wrinkled and
dusty T-shirt and sweater. That attire, along with her limping gate
told him this was most likely Carrie McCray. To his surprise, he
could see she carried a weapon.
“Do you know, my love,” he asked
Caroline softly as he adjusted the scope, set up the shot should he
need it, “what color the top is on the secondary product?” He hoped
she would understand his reference.
“I do know, yes. It has a black top,
like a raven. The other accessory is blue, and it is a five-six
model.”
Black hair, blue eyes
and five-feet-six-inches tall. The disheveled woman he could
see in his scope fit that description.
“You should give your friends the
coordinates. I think that product is about to come loose from its
packaging.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Well, then I will
get right on that. Will you be all right?”
The last was as straightforward a
question as either of them would dare.
“Ja, all is
well. I will deal with this.”
“Okay. See you soon?” She made it a
question, and he heard the longing in her voice that matched the
need in his heart.
“Ja.
Soon.”
They disconnected and he checked the
time of the call. One minute and thirty seconds. Too short to
trace, but possibly long enough to pinpoint location. He needed to
move, and quickly.
The scope showed the woman edging
around to the grate, weapon at the ready. From the way she held it,
she did not seem to know much about it. Her finger was not on the
trigger. He squinted into the lens, adjusted, shifted. The safety
was on—he would put money on it.
This then, was Carrie McCray. How had
she escaped, and where was Davros?
He kept his eye to the scope as he
gathered himself to relocate, keeping his movements small and
random. A pinpoint from a satellite tracker could give his location
too closely, but there wasn’t anything quite close enough yet to
get to him, or he would have heard it. It was imperative he see
what Ms. McCray was doing, so he would have to risk staying put
just a bit longer.
Like a frightened animal, she scanned
the clearing, hesitating at every step. The buzzards were swooping
back in and every time one called out in its harsh screech, or
another one landed, she winced and averted her gaze. From the
trees, more buzzards croaked, evidently wanting to land where she
was, but not bold enough to do so with her there. The remains of
one of the mercs lay not too far from the grate and she edged
around it, giving it and the other bodies a wide berth. Several
vultures left their prizes as she approached, but they too waited
in nearby trees, continually calling their harsh disapproval of
this intruder.
She disappeared into the small block
building, but stayed only a short time. When she reemerged, she was
eating something, and drinking from a bottle. She had several more
bottles with her and set them down a goodly distance from the
bodies.
To his disgust, and surprise, she laid
the weapon down as well.
“Stupid,” he muttered, thinking she was
crazy. This woman was going to get herself killed. Did she not know
how hunted she was?
“Evidently not,” he answered his own
question in a soft whisper.
He quickly scanned the area. Nothing
else moved, but that didn’t mean someone else wasn’t watching, or
that they wouldn’t arrive before she completed whatever task she
was about.
Now he watched as, with shaky, jerky
movements, she heaved and dragged one of the assassin team’s bodies
from the grate. He smiled to remember the perfect shot he’d made,
which took that one out without a whisper. There were times when he
loved his job very much.
This body, of course, was not as picked
over as the original team’s corpses. Through the scope he could see
that the underlying corpse, mostly dismembered by the birds, still
covered the opening.
With rough sympathy he noted that she
had to stop and retch before she got that body moved. Whatever she
had eaten in haste had come up in the same fashion. He softly tsked
to himself. It was a rookie-recruit thing to do, reminding him that
Carrie McCray was a stranger to these operations. A pawn in
someone’s game, which brought him back around to all that Caroline
had revealed. Multiple players. Multiple family members, several of
whom Dav was unaware of.
The woman had not yet recovered from
handling the bodies, was still bent over at the edge of the brushy
clearing, heaving.
He must move. With his target still
incapacitated, he took his eye from the scope to survey the
surrounding terrain. They were odd, spiky things, these mountains.
Not like his mountains in Germany, all strong, sturdy peaks. This
terrain was disjointed and covered in scrubby, unpleasant low
growth. It offered little cover and even that was a haven for
biting insects.
Nothing about it was conducive to his
mission, but this was no reason to fail.
He pivoted the scope slightly, getting
a fix on a new location from which to keep an eye on the clearing.
It would take him at least half an hour to get there, moving
steadily, covering his tracks. He would prefer a longer time frame,
but moving and seeing were both equally important.
Marking the spot in his mind, he
sighted in on Carrie again.
She had moved. Now she was kneeling by
the grate, the lock in her hands, trying key after key from a
gore-covered ring she held as if it were a live snake. None seemed
to fit the lock. As he watched, she stopped and went into the
building again. Even from this great distance he could see the
gleam of the newly washed keys, the drip of water from her hands as
she returned to her work.
Within minutes, she had found the key
and opened the lock. When he looked last, she was busily struggling
to heave the grate out of the way.
He took this to mean that Davros was
still in the cell, or somewhere underground. She had escaped by
another way, obviously. Perhaps Davros was injured, or, as a
smaller person, she had been able to use an escape route
unavailable to the larger man.
With an economy of motion, he secured
his weapon and set out. Carrie hadn’t been speaking to Davros
through the grate. Despite her flurry of activity, she wasn’t going
down into the cell, nor was she leaving. At his last look, she’d
been sitting, weapon in hand, waiting.
Jurgens decided she was waiting for
Davros to appear. This would give him the best opportunity to
move.
He must also now consider what to do
about those land mines.
Everyone was waiting for the go sign
from Gates and Ana. Most had slept a little, but everyone was on
edge and Ana knew it. But before they did anything, Ana was going
to follow her gut again and make the call she’d been instructed to
make in the fax.
She dialed the number and the phone
rang twice in her ear before the same woman picked it
up.
“You have information?” Ana
demanded.
“A latitude and longitude,” the woman
said, rattling off the numbers. Ana repeated them and they were
confirmed.
“Why are you involved?” Ana asked with
blunt directness.
“Love.”
The single word rang with
sincerity.
“Dav?” That could pose a further
complication, knowing what she now knew about Dav and
Carrie.
A musical laugh rang through the
line.
“No.” That denial was equally sincere,
and sincerely amused. “But he was helpful in getting my love and me
our chance at happiness. That’s all I’ll say as I know your husband
is busily attempting to trace this call.”
“Of course,” Ana admitted, glancing at
her husband, who was indeed pounding the keyboard, honing in on the
signal. From his expression, he wasn’t having any more luck tracing
the actual call than he had tracing just the number.
“You have three enemies,” the woman
said, snapping Ana back to the moment. “Two of them are related to
your Davros.”
“What? Who?”
The woman ignored her interruption and
continued, her words coming more quickly. “They are hunting him
right now, from opposite directions. One is supposed to be
dead.”
“Niko.” Ana made it a
statement.
“Yes.” Approval rang through the line
along with the confirmation.
“The other?” Ana was frantically
writing on her pad. Other relatives? Who?
Where?
“Is unknown to Dav or Niko. Look him up
on Athens GenePool.com. You can find the information there. I
did.”
“And the third?” Ana scribbled that
down, then waited tensely, praying that this mysterious contact
would be willing to share a last bit of vital
information.
A breath of silence greeted her, then,
“The third is someone looking for you.”
The line went dead.