Chapter 18
The final part of the tunnel seemed to
last an eternity. He had managed to walk in the dark for several
hours, switching on the light every once in awhile to be sure he
could find the last drop shaft.
The beam of light was even weaker and
wavered in the darkness. He shone it forward, just as he took a
step.
“Ahhh, shit!” he
exclaimed, and turned the step into a leap as he found empty space
beneath his feet. Off balance, he landed on his left leg, with the
right slipping on the edge of the abyss.
He threw himself forward, landing hard
on elbows and hands.
The pain was excruciating. Every bone
in his body rattled, every bruise and slice reawakened to vibrant,
throbbing pain. His ankle was twisted and he could only pray he
hadn’t broken that, too.
Cursing and groaning, he groped for the
flashlight. Its fading beam showed his trousers torn at the knees,
but the other effects were mere pain rather than the bloody mess
he’d expected.
“More bruises. Soon I will be able to
connect the dots of my bruises,” he said aloud, needing to hear
something besides the endless silence and his own thoughts. “I
should talk to myself more often,” he decided. “At least when I’m
not complaining.”
He’d often wondered about people who
talked to themselves. Now he understood. At least in this
situation, it kept fear at bay.
“Get up, Davros,” he ordered. “Keep
moving. Pain or no pain, you don’t keep the lady
waiting.”
He struggled to his feet, remembering
to watch his head in this part of the tunnel. It narrowed again
here, briefly.
“It is good that you have a memory for
places, otherwise you would be explaining to God why you were
stupid enough to get dead and leave Carrie up there all alone.” He
grunted as he wavered into the wall, bouncing his shoulder off it
again. “I do not think God would approve.”
He stopped and uncapped the canteen.
“Carrie said to keep drinking water.” He thought of her as he
drank. “I need some of her aspirin. I really do.” He winced as he
raised the container up, draining it. The motion had pulled loose
the tatters of his shirt and reopened the cuts. He felt the warmth
of blood on his back, slipping down to soak his belt and
pants.
“At this rate, I’ll leave a blood trail
everywhere I go.” He opened the second canteen, drained most of it
as well. “Not much farther though.”
As he stumbled on in the darkness, he
prayed she had made it to the campsite, prayed she would be
there.
Be there, be there,
betherebetherebetherebethere. The words became a mantra in
his mind and he put one foot in front of the other to the rhythm
they created. He was so intent on putting his head down and staying
upright, that he didn’t notice the light.
When he realized he could see his
dusty, ruined loafers, he stopped. For a moment he simply stared at
them. They were disgraceful, dirty, with warped edges and twisted,
shrunken tassels.
Then it occurred to him. He could see
them.
His slowed thought processes took a
second longer to compute the sight, correlate it with the fact that
there was light enough by which to see.
Dav looked up. Ahead, perhaps a hundred
yards, lay the entrance to the cell.
“I made it,” he whispered. But would she be there? Had Carrie made
it?
He had to know. Now.
Breaking into a stumbling run, he
wheezed down the corridor. The wheezing worried him in an abstract
sort of way. Had he broken a rib? Perhaps the dust.
It didn’t matter. There was
light.
At the last minute, he stopped himself
before he burst into the open cell. The movement, the adrenaline of
his short run, had cleared his thinking somewhat. Enemies could lie
above, anything could have happened while he traversed the
interminable dark.
He stopped cold as he got to the end of
the tunnel, squinting as the intense light made his eyes
water.
The pivoting door was cool against his
heated skin. He peered around the back edge of it and saw that the
grate was clear. Squinting through the dust and sweat in his eyes,
he realized that the lock was gone.
Someone had moved the body off the
grate and removed the lock. His heart leaped up.
He had to take a chance.
“Carrie-mou?” he called softly.
“Carrie? Are you out there?” He tried again, louder. Then a third
time, at a near shout.
Despair hit him like a sledgehammer
when she didn’t answer. He moved into the cell, noting the
blackened, curdled dirt where the kidnapper’s blood and other
things had dropped and pooled. The grate was heavily encrusted with
gore as well, and though it had dried and blackened, the smell was
enormous. Evidently, the body, what was left of it, had been pulled
off the grate and into the dirt.
“Carrie?” he said it again, yelling
this time. What did he have to lose? “Carrie!”
From above, rustling, the pounding
sound of running feet.
“Dav? Dav, is that you?” her frantic
voice called, and her shadow fell over him as she knelt by the
grate. Squinting against the light, he raised a hand to block the
glare.
Part of him nearly wept. He had thought
he might never hear her voice again, see her again.
As that thought hit, so did the words
in the darkness come back to him. She could be part
of it, in on it.
It really didn’t matter. He would trust
his gut, and trust her. And if he died for it, so be
it.
“Oh, Dav,” she sighed his name. “You
made it. I knew you could do it.”
A grin split his face, causing him to
wince as hitherto unknown injuries made themselves known.
Evidently, at some point, he’d split his lip because the scabbed
wound reopened now, and he felt the sting of salt and
blood.
“It’s me,” he replied, belatedly
realizing she would want an answer. “I made it.”
“Oh, thank God!” Her heartfelt words
were accompanied by a dragging, grating sound. “I have the ladder.
I’m going to try to lift the grate again, but even if I can’t, I
can get the ladder down to you. Then you can push and I can pull to
get the grate open.”
“Good. Thank you,” he added. “Are you
all right? Not hurt?” He grimaced at the question. Of course she
was hurt. “I should say, no further injuries, I hope.”
Her laughter held an edge of tears to
it, but it was laughter. “No. I’m eaten up with bug bites and
scratched, and if I never see whatever this country is again, I’ll
be happy. Otherwise, I’m okay. There’s food in the building here.
Even some cold drinks, because there’s power in the damn place,
believe it or not. I’ve been saving you some.”
The thought of cold water, a cold drink
of any kind, and something to eat made him unaccountably want to
weep again. When her beautiful face appeared above him, over the
grate, he conversely wanted to whoop with joy.
“You look beautiful,” he said without
thinking. “You are beautiful, Carrie-mou. Thank God you’re
alive.”
She smiled down at him, her hair
falling around her face. Her tears fell through the bars, though
her face was wreathed in happiness. One dripped down onto his cheek
and he touched it with a finger, capturing it on the tip and
looking at the perfection of that tear on his torn and bloody
hand.
His heart, his gut, which had burned so
desperately when she turned him down, felt like it was flipping
over. Could he be ... in love with her? Was
this what it felt like?
He had no answers and no one to ask but
the woman who had declared him to be unacceptable. He would have to
wait to find out.
“Hang on. I’ll have this down to you in
a minute,” she said, and with an oomph of effort, she positioned
the ladder by the grate. It took four tries to get it through and
resting securely on the ground. She tried to heft the grate again,
but it rose only a few inches, before she dropped it. “Damn it!”
she exclaimed, frustration making her voice raspy and
taut.
“You will need something to brace it,
Carrie-mou. Then raise it, and brace again. I will climb up and
help you.”
“Okay, okay,” she panted, letting the
grate slip back into position. “A brace. I can do that. Be right
back.”
She disappeared, and he began to climb.
It was slow going, even though he wanted to race up the ladder. His
hand couldn’t grip the side; it was stiff, swollen and he could
smell the infection brewing under the bandages. They would have to
deal with that as soon as possible.
He got to the top of the ladder and,
with his good hand, pushed at the grate. His hand slipped in the
dried blood, and he gagged at the stench that arose.
He retreated several rungs to regain
control of his empty, but rebellious stomach. It was an agony to
wait for her to come back, but the relief when she did was
palpable. He felt even more light-headed to see her glorious blue
eyes and smudged and dirty face.
To his surprise, she carried a length
of pipe.
“Okay, Dav, you push and I’ll pull, and
I’ll shove this under as we go, okay?”
“Good,” he grunted, and climbed up the
remaining rungs to set his good hand on the filthy bars.
“Ready?”
“On three.” She counted and as she
hefted the grate, he pushed and she shoved the pipe in with her
foot. The grate was opening, even if it was slow. Thank
God.
“This is heavy,” she groaned, shoving
again on the count of three. It took them one more try, and finally
the iron bars fell away into the grass. Luckily, he had leaned
forward against the ladder as he shoved, so he wasn’t directly
under the hole. With a terrific clatter and clang, the bracing pipe
fell in. The reverberant sound sent the nearby buzzards skyward
with a squawking chorus that could have woken the very dead they
feasted on.
“Oh, my God, Dav, are you okay?” she
demanded, her face white, her voice breathless and scared, as she
dropped to the dusty ground, reaching for him. “I’m so
sorry.”
“Not to worry, Carrie-mou,” he panted,
both with exertion and pain. “The ladder is remarkably steady. I’m
glad you found it, since I do not think I could have climbed a
rope.” Before she could answer, he forced his feet to move,
stepping up one more rung. “On second thought,” he grunted,
managing another even though his hand, ankle and back were
screaming. “To get out of here, I would have climbed barbed wire if
necessary.”
She managed a laugh. “I get that, but
you’re almost out.” She braced her feet on the side of the hole and
reached for his good hand.
His other hand screamed in pain as he
wrapped it around the rungs, but he didn’t care. He was climbing to
freedom, to Carrie and sunlight. The all-but-forgotten clothing
pack and the rattling canteens hindered him, but he reached the top
and as his head and shoulders cleared the cell, he drew a deep
breath.
At the moment, freedom smelled of dirt
and blood, carnage and the sweat of their exertion, but it didn’t
matter. It was sweeter than roses. Carrie helped him out, pulling
him over the edge. He rolled clear and lay in the clearing’s sparse
grass for a moment, savoring the feel of sunlight on his skin, and
the release from the imprisoning stone.
The smell of death was still pungent,
however, so he didn’t lie there for long.
“We need to get moving,” Dav said,
levering himself up with his good hand. Carrie sat next to him,
looking at him. There was something in the way she was looking at
him, but he couldn’t decipher it.
“There’s another Jeep. The keys are
still in it.” She hesitated and then said, “I think the driver died
right by the car door, when he got out. There’s blood all over the
inside of the door.”
Dav prayed that the door had shut,
otherwise the battery would be dead and the car would be useless
unless they could roll-start it on the road. With his hand the way
it was, he wasn’t sure he could push the vehicle that
far.
“Carrie, I believe I could use some
more of that aspirin if you still have it,” he said, realizing that
he now had access to help. The momentary relief of release and
being free were overwhelmed by the headache and heat, which were
making his thinking slower than normal.
“Of course. Hang on, I’ll get it for
you.” She jumped up and then froze where she stood.
Dav pivoted on the ground, sensing her
fear and coming to his feet in a rush. He moved to stand in front
of her, putting himself between her and the apparition that stood
before him.
Standing between them and the road was
a man. At least he thought it was a man.
“Dav?” Carrie whispered.
“Stay put,” he urged. The man hadn’t
said anything yet.
They stood, staring at one another for
a few moments. Dav was unwilling to break the silence. In
negotiating, he never spoke first.
This was a negotiation.
The man watched them with hooded eyes.
His face was smudged with camouflage paint, his clothes were akin
to tatters, but strategically placed to help him blend in with the
terrain. The cap he wore was also shaggy and hid his hair. The bill
shaded his eyes, as did dark sunglasses.
Dav moved more fully in front of
Carrie, his only concession to the silent negotiation. When he
shifted to cover her, he saw the man smile. For a moment longer,
the man seemed inclined to wait him out, but then shrugged his
shoulders.
“There is little time,” he said,
shifting his weapon in front of him. “You cannot use the
road.”
Dav frowned at the weapon, recognizing
it from Gates’s lessons as a sniper rifle.
“Who are you and why are you telling us
this?” he demanded.
“I’m ... a friend,” the man said, and
let the smile show fully on his beard-roughened face. Between the
stubble and the paint, Dav couldn’t tell what color his hair was.
“You have a number of enemies and all of them are converging on
you. You should be gone when they get here.”
“What do you know about it?” Dav felt
his defensive instincts rise up and snarl.
“This”—the shooter shifted the barrel
to indicate the clearing—“is your brother’s doing.” He seemed
amused when Dav tensed, then nodded briskly.
Carrie’s hands braced at his belt. As
the man gestured with the weapon, Dav realized that a round from it
would go through both of them. The shooter seemed to know the
direction of his thoughts and smiled.
“What about you?” Dav said, nodding
toward the weapon. “What’s your part in all this?”
“As I said, I’m a friend.” Although the
man kept his voice carefully neutral, Dav caught a trace of an
accent. Scandinavian, perhaps. German? He couldn’t
tell.
“Why can we not use the
road?”
“It’s mined. The second set of
enemies.” The shooter pointed toward the bodies lying where the
woman had dragged them. “They did that. I believe they were
targeting your brother.”
“And you shot them.” Dav made it a
statement, not a question. His gorge rose at the thought. He felt
faint and sweaty at the same time, but he forced his face to remain
blank, knowing that this man was a cold-blooded killer. A sniper,
casually mentioning the deaths of others with no emotion
whatsoever, would be unimpressed by his fever.
The rest of the sentence penetrated his
fever-clouded brain. “Wait. I know Niko is after me, but someone is
after him?”
“Yes.”
Dav waited for him to say something
more, but he remained silent. Thinking was like slogging through
mud. His usually speedy grasp of situations was agonizingly
slow.
“So. Eh-la, how can we get past the
mines?”
The shooter shrugged. “You set them
off, take your chances that you have gotten them all.” He paused a
moment, then said, “When you do, go south. North will take you into
Guatemala—you do not want that.”
“What country are we in?” Carrie spoke
for the first time.
“Belize.”
With that, he turned and left, fading
into the trees and grasses along the entry road with barely a
whisper of movement to betray his passing.
It took them a long time to move. “Was
he really here, or is the fever affecting my mind?” Dav seriously
wanted to know the answer to this question.
Carrie gave a shaky half laugh. “Are we
back to the gibbering again? Because I think I might be ready to
join you.” Her voice trembled with anxiety and he slipped his good
arm around her shoulders, squeezing her tightly. It was the first
time he’d touched her since he came out of the hole.
Sheer pleasure and relief flooded
through him at the contact. The warmth of her, the delicate balance
of muscle and fragility brought a flood of images into his
mind.
Carrie rising above him. Her wild
abandon in the waterfall. Hundreds of memories, images and thoughts
shot through his mind on fast-forward.
His certainty that he might be in love
with her strengthened.
“Yes, gibbering can be arranged,” he
replied, his face pressed into her hair, knowing she was waiting
for his reply.
“It’s getting dark,” she said, looking
around. He heard the rustling of the leaves and wind, noted the
darkening skies. Somehow he must move from the heaven of her arms,
the solid reality of freedom.
That concept jarred him enough to let
go. Much as he hated to move apart, make decisions and focus, he
had to. They weren’t free yet.
“You go and get whatever food might be
in the building. I will begin clearing the road.”
Her nod, pressed into his chest, was
quick and decisive. “I’ll get you aspirin first.”
He smiled. “That would be good,
Carrie-mou.”
She kissed him then, her hands pressed
to his face, her body leaning into him. It was a moment that stood
in stark contrast to the danger and death surrounding them. For a
moment, nothing mattered, no one else mattered but
her.
Then she broke the kiss and hurried
away.
His newly discovered heart wrenched in
his chest and he staggered. He could read nothing into her action,
good or bad. Was it a farewell-I’m-sorry kind of kiss? Or a
ohmy-GodIreallyloveyou kiss?
He had no basis on which to
judge.
Carrie rummaged in the scant cupboards.
Her motions were more of a cover for her tears than a real effort
toward finding anything. How could he make her feel this way? How
could he be so incredibly alive, make her feel so alive, when he
didn’t love her?
She wanted to cry. She wanted to go
home. She wanted...
“Stop it,” she remonstrated with
herself. “You have to get out of here first, and unless you want to
die today, you need to go help Dav. Now.”
The words, ringing in the small
confines of the hut, were almost a shock. The quiet clearing,
devoid of all but watching, inimical animal life, was the last
place she wanted to stay, much less die.
She pulled two drinks from the tiny
icebox, which had been hooked to a battery. They were lukewarm by
American standards, but their intact caps and Spanish labels made
them seem the ultimate in civilized beverages. She heard the car
start and hurried to the door.
Dav pulled the car near to the building
and got out. Pain etched his features and Carrie remembered the
aspirin. Hurrying to her purse, she found the bottle and got the
pills for him. With a quick twist she opened the cap and held it
out, dropping four aspirin into his waiting hand.
“I know you’re not supposed to take
more than three, but I think you should have them,” she said, and
put her hand to his forehead. “You’re really hot.”
Dav laughed as he tossed the little
pills into his mouth, draining the soda before he spoke. He was
still grinning as he said, “Why thank you. It is good to know I
have not lost my suave presence, even under these
conditions.”
“Suave... ?” It took her tired brain a
moment to catch up. “You—” She grinned, then laughed. Within
moments, they were both laughing so hard they could barely
stop.
“I don’t think it was that funny,” she
snickered, “but thanks, I needed that.”
“Good. So did I.” His expression fell
into somber lines. “We must act quickly, Carrie, if our strange
protector is to be believed.” He glanced at her from under hooded
eyes. “He really was real, yes?”
He waited for her nod before he
continued. He must be more worried about the fever than she
guessed.
“Once we believe we have cleared the
road, it will be difficult to drive out with the holes the mines
will make. Despite that, we must go, and again, if our friend is to
be believed, we must do it fast. The explosions will alert everyone
from here to... to wherever—” He waved his good hand in a sweeping
gesture. “We must be gone when anyone comes to search for the cause
of the explosions.”
“All right. What do I do?”
“Take this.” He offered a weapon and
extra clips, which he’d obviously taken from one of the bodies.
“Get in the building. I will use the Jeep as cover. I have gathered
enough things to throw that hopefully I can set off the mines. If
they are personnel mines, they blow upward, which will not leave a
huge crater.” He stared toward the road, as if willing this to be
the case. “The man said there were six.”
“He did?”
Dav smiled. Perhaps he was delirious,
but when the man mentioned the mines, Dav had seen his hands
release the weapon, flash three fingers with a gloved hand once,
and then again, before he regripped the weapon.
“I think so. Quickly now.” Dav urged
her toward the concrete building, always thinking of her
safety.
With obvious pain, he climbed back into
the driver’s seat. Before he could put the car in gear, she made
her decision. She ran to the Jeep and jerked open the passenger
door.
“Wait,” she said, climbing in, dumping
the gun and extra clips on the seat. “We’ll do it together and then
leave. I’m not waiting for you again. It nearly killed me when I
thought you weren’t coming.” She sucked in a breath. “Together,”
she declared stubbornly, when she saw the protest forming on his
lips. “Or not at all, deal?”
She held out a hand and for a moment he
just stared at it, and at her. A brilliant smile blossomed through
the growth of the beard he sported, startling in its white contrast
to the dark hair.
He took her hand and kissed it, then
shifted his one-handed grip to her shoulder and pulled her close to
kiss her hard on the mouth.
“It is a deal, yes.”
“Wait here, then.” She ran into the hut
and grabbed everything she’d found, snatched up her purse from the
tiny, rickety table and got back in. “Let’s do it.”
“My action hero,” he said, smiling, as
she dumped the odd collection of gleanings over the seat to be
sorted later.
“Wonder Woman, that’s me,” she said
with gritted teeth as the Jeep bounced over the rough ground of the
clearing. She studiously avoided looking at the bodies strewn
about. There was nothing she could do about them, and any one of
those men would have killed them both.
“It is, indeed,” was all he said as he
fought the steering wheel. She saw the lines of pain return and saw
him wince with each jouncing, jarring bump.
He whipped the car across the mouth of
the road and got out.
“Now comes the interesting part,” he
said, flexing the fingers of his good hand. He looked at her now, a
keen assessment. “How well do you throw?”
“Pretty well, why?”
“Time to clear the road,” he said
simply, offering her a softball-sized rock.
From behind the wall of the car, Dav
cocked his arm back and lobbed a fragment of stone toward the road.
The chunk rolled in the dust and stilled. No
explosion.
“Farther up, then,” Dav muttered.
“Come, get back in.”
They crept forward on the road, and he
stopped again. They got out.
Another toss, another blank
response.
He handed her a fat chunk of charred
wood. “You try.”
She hefted it, then rose up from behind
the car to throw it, overhand as she’d seen in countless war
movies.
The explosion was louder than anything
she’d imagined. Dav grabbed her, yanking her down below to relative
safety behind the bulk of the car. Dirt pinged on the metal, but
other than the squawking of the birds behind them, there was no
other sound.
“Again.”
He threw, then she threw—odd pieces of
equipment, pieces of wood, the chunks of stone he’d originally
thrown. He counted six explosions.
“Now we must see if we have succeeded.
Stand back a ways, Carrie-mou. I will drive through.”
The road was a Swiss-cheese-shred of
massive potholes now. Some were only inches deep. Another looked as
if someone were ready to plant a good-sized tree in a readied hole
in the dusty soil.
“No. Together,” she insisted. She
wasn’t going to stand on the road and watch him either blow up or
disappear again.
They argued, briefly, but she won. He
was either too tired, or in too much pain, but he gave
in.
“I do not like it,” he muttered. “If we
missed any—” he started.
“Six explosions. Six holes. If you’re
right, we’re home free.”
He whipped toward her in the seat. “And
if I’m wrong?”
A sense of fatalism seemed to have
settled into her bones. “We’ll die together,” she said, with a
shrug.
For long moments, he just stared.
Something of her determination must have shown on her face,
however, because he finally nodded and restarted the
car.
“Fast or slow?” he wondered, scanning
the ugly mess before them.
“Go for it,” she urged. “As fast as you
can. Get us out of here.” She recognized the hysterical edge to her
own voice, but the tantalizing view of freedom, symbolized by the
road, beckoned. “God, Dav, just go.”
“Eh-la,” he said, with more strength.
“We go.”