Captive of Fate (4 page)

Alanna couldn’t find her voice as he rose and spun around, heading for the door. She sat there, too shocked to move. What was happening to her? Why had she allowed him to kiss her? My God, what was wrong? Another, more frightening thought entered her spinning mind as she heard the helicopter blades whirring at a higher pitch somewhere outside in the blackness. What if something happened to Matt? Unsteadily, she got to her feet, walking out into the communications room, where the radioman stood at the window, watching.

He turned, glanced briefly at her, and then returned his attention to the unseen helicopter. Alanna stood beside him, listening to the rising crescendo of noise. The hut seemed to tremble as the helicopter lifted off into the impenetrable fog and darkness. She touched her lips, recalling his soulbranding kiss. My God, she had
never
been kissed like that before.

“Will they make it?” she asked after long, agonizing moments, her voice sounding strained.

“I don’t know, ma’am.” He scratched his head, turning away and going back to his assigned work. “Man, they’ve gotta be crazy, if you ask me. Choppers only fly by sight. Major Cauley had better have radar eyes, and the colonel better hope he still has the luck he had in Nam.”

Alanna turned, stunned. “They really could crash?” she asked, her voice painfully hoarse.

“Sure. They’re flying completely blind. I’ve ridden in enough choppers to know that it takes a crazy Marine pilot to go up in weather like this. They fly on gut instinct when all else fails.”

Alanna felt dizzy, and she leaned against the wall. No, this couldn’t be happening. Matt Breckenridge was too vital, too alive to die on some unknown jungle mountainside. Oh, God, she prayed, be with them. Guide them in. Don’t let him die. Please, don’t…

“Ma’am?” the radioman asked, coming back over to her. He touched her arm. “You look like you might faint. Come here, sit down for a moment.” With concern in his voice, he continued, “I’m sorry, I spouted off about things I shouldn’t have. They’ll be all right. You wait and see. Can I get you some water?”

Alanna shut her eyes tightly for a moment. “No—no, I’m okay.” She mustered a broken smile, looking up at his youthful features. “I’m—I’m not used to all this kind of excitement. A civilian,” she explained lamely.

He shrugged and smiled. “Yeah, I guess you kinda have to get used to military operations. I’m not saying that what the major is doing is commonplace, but we’re trained for emergency situations. And if anyone can pull it off, those two can. You know they did a lot of flying together in Nam?”

Alanna shook her head, only half-listening to the Marine corporal’s conversation. Her thoughts revolved around the fact that military personnel were trained to accept sudden, unexpected situations as easily as breathing air. It was so different from her peaceful, neatly organized life. Until now. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling suddenly chilled. Conflicting emotions raged within her. Matt’s kiss…her body thrilled to that memory even now, and she felt giddy. Paul’s kisses had never inflamed her as Matt’s did. And to make it worse, Matt was the man who had caused Tim’s death. She hung her head, utterly bewildered.

As the radio crackled to life, she jumped. It was Major Cauley’s voice coming in loud and clear, reporting the spotting of the green flare. Alanna rose, giving the chair back to the Marine. She stood close, her hand covering her mouth in anticipation as she heard Matt’s voice come over the airwaves. Her heart accelerated a beat, and she felt frozen to the spot. He was calling out the air speed and miles. He made a terse remark about how close the tall mahogany trees were to the helicopter as they slowly began their careful descent. She clutched her hands together as they moved below tree level. What if they had miscalculated the distance to the village? One rotor blade smashing into a tree would surely cause them to nose suddenly into the ground.

“I see it!” Cauley announced excitedly. “The red flares!”

Alanna took in a deep breath, grateful for Cauley’s triumphant discovery. The radioman looked up, grinning happily.

“See, I told you so.”

“Yes, you did, Corporal. I’m glad you were right. What about them getting back down here?”

“We’ll follow the same procedure at this end.”

The radio chatter ended, and Alanna hung around the radio, occasionally looking out in the darkness that was now turning gray with the promise of dawn. Finally, she heard Matt calling the radioman. In approximately twenty minutes, they would be landing. She closed her eyes, her heart and body responding to his husky voice. How could one man so completely disrupt her complacent life-style?

She became aware of Marines and Costa Rican police gathering outside.

Several stretchers were stacked nearby, and the men waited in the thick fog like dark apparitions. Finally, the flares were lit, and then she heard the puncturing beat of rotor blades overhead. Cauley’s happy voice exploded over the intercom.

“We’ve made it! We did it! Look out, here we come.”

She felt a surge of joy rising in her breast as she returned to the window, watching the unwieldy helicopter slowly lower itself into the muddy area outside the hut. Tears crowded into her eyes as she saw the men running forward with the stretchers to be swallowed up by the wall of fog. Brushing the tears away, Alanna turned and walked back to the bedroom.

She tried desperately to sort out the turmoil of her feelings. All too soon, she heard Cauley’s jubilant words as he entered the hut and several other men’s voices raised in laughter. She drew her knees up, resting her chin on them, and stared at the lone blanket in the opposite corner where Matt had slept briefly. The raucous joking and laughter continued for another ten minutes, and she managed a sliver of a smile as she heard Cauley telling his story.

The major’s voice bubbled with excitement and relief. “As we dropped down the first time, I told Matt to be ready to kiss his rear good-bye if we hit anything.”

“That ring of flares,” Matt interrupted drily, “looked like a dull glow even ten feet up.”

“Yeah,” another voice interjected, “we noticed the left side of the chopper is smashed in. What’dja do, Major Cauley, try to land it on its nose?”

“Hell, no,” Cauley chortled. “Things were so bad I set the girl to the left of the landing circle the first time. We found ourselves in the supply crates. If you think the nose looks bad, you should see the crates! Some new paint and it’ll look like new, right Matt?” Cauley asked.

“It will, but I won’t,” he returned.

Alanna listened as the entire group exploded into laughter. She realized it was one way to relax after the harrowing event. From the sound of it, they were lucky they hadn’t crashed. But her own tension was not so easily relieved. She was upset and unsure of herself due to his unexpected kiss. Humiliation flooded her at the thought of the way she’d allowed herself to be swept uncompromisingly into his arms. She had been frightened for him, and he had taken advantage of the situation!

Closing her eyes and rubbing her temples to ease the nagging headache, Alanna tried to find some acceptable excuse for her erratic behavior. She could hear Paul’s droning voice buzzing in her head: “Really, Alanna, logic should have told you the answer. Push aside your emotions and look at the black and white of the situation. If you do that, then answers become clear, and you don’t knock yourself out with worry and anxiety….”

Sighing, she opened her troubled eyes. Logic and emotion. Did they
ever
go together? Or were they like Matt Breckenridge and herself—too different to be combined? Alanna knew one thing: she would never allow the Marine colonel to touch her again. His kiss had evoked too many explosive emotions she thought finally controlled.

S
he forced herself to go back to sleep, shutting out the noises from the other room. Her anger simmered just beneath the surface until utter exhaustion drew her back down into the folds of blackness.

It was daylight when she awoke the second time. Stretching stiffly, she sat up, feeling the chill of the room. Fog hovered around the small, paned windows, and she rubbed her hands briskly to get the circulation going. The door opened, and Matt smiled benignly, hesitating. “Just wake up?”

Ignoring his genial tone, Alanna frowned darkly and turned her back toward him. She heard him walking over to her and tensed as he halted at her side.

“I thought you might like to know we got the kids down off the mountain. They’re probably in San Jose by now,” he said, checking his watch. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

“I’m surprised you’re concerned about them at all,” she stated icily, standing and folding the blankets. Fervently, she hoped her ruse would throw him off the track. She didn’t want to discuss the kiss or invite further advances on his part. If she pretended not to understand their uneasy truce of the night before, it might keep him stymied so she could complete her investigation. He was much safer to deal with as an enemy. This morning, logic would dictate her decisions.

“What do you mean?”

Alanna stole a glance at him. He looked and sounded puzzled by her accusation. “That radioman was right, you’re all crazy!” And she gave the last blanket a tight fold, throwing it on top of the sleeping bag. “You men remind me of boys who never grew up, Colonel. Little boys in uniform. Well, the uniform might fool some people, but not me.”

He frowned, his gray eyes darkening with an indecipherable emotion. “Of course we cared about the kids,” he snapped back. “What the hell do you think we made that trip up there for?”

She stuffed her feet into her shoes, pointedly remaining silent. Today she intended to count the rest of the supplies and then go up to San Dolega and find out if they were all arriving from the base camp. She heard him walking toward her, and Alanna spun around, cringing away from him, her back against the wall. “Don’t touch me,” she warned.

He halted, glowering down at her. “What’s gotten into you, Alanna? One minute you’re warm, responsible. The next—”

“A bitch,” she finished, grabbing her coat and shrugging it on. “And you’re going to find out the hard way, Colonel. I’m through with all your tricks. I’m only going to say this once—I want to go up to that village later today. You had better provide me with transportation.”

“It’s out of the question and you know it. You’re stuck here whether you like it or not.”

She felt her fury slipping as she watched the puzzlement grow in his eyes. Good, let him get into a quandary. It was his turn. “You’re going to find out just how much political clout I’ve got behind me,” she gritted coldly and walked quickly out of the room, wanting to be as far away from him as possible.

*

The rain began again at two o’clock, just as she finished counting the crates in the final building. Resting momentarily, she felt the weariness but ignored it. It was time to confront Colonel Breckenridge. In the makeshift building that housed Costa Rican police personnel, she was provided with dispatches she had been expecting from Washington. Armed with them, she went directly to the Colonel’s quarters, feeling the tiredness slip from her shoulders to be replaced by a sense of power.

She found the Colonel back at his desk poring over several bills of lading and attempting to handle an argument between two Costa Ricans who were squabbling noisily. Alanna leaned back against the door momentarily, a grim smile on her face. He looked absolutely frustrated. Finally, he looked up, his eyes lighting with pleasure at the sight of her.

“I need your linguistic ability,” he coaxed. “Come over here and interpret for me, will you? Either that, or I’m going to throw both of them out the front door.”

She hesitated, thinking of the fiery kiss he had placed on her lips the day before. She hadn’t forgotten it for one hour or one minute since then. “It will cost you, Colonel,” she warned as she sauntered over.

“If you can get these two off my back,” he answered grimly, “you can have the moon if you want.”

“What I want will be close to that,” she promised sweetly. Within a few minutes, the entire matter was set straight, and she had to smile to herself, watching Matt’s face take on a look of relief. He looked harried, running his fingers through his hair more than once. After the pacified drivers left, he leaned back in the straight-backed wooden chair, sizing her up. He pointed at the yellow papers in front of him.

“You wonder why we have missing supplies? Here’s part of the answer.” He waved three sheets of official but tattered papers at her. “The truck driver receives a set of these when he picks up his load at the ship or airport. Then the warehouse provides another set which are invariably modified by the time the driver leaves the front gate.” His voice tightened with frustration. “I guess it’s too difficult to call a crate a crate instead of a carton, box, or container. When our men inventory the contents, we have four sets of numbers attempting to identify the same shipment.” He shook his head, slowly getting to his feet and stretching.

“I have my own set of numbers, Colonel,” she assured him briskly. “And I believe you owe me one.”

He nodded, moving around the desk and pouring a cup of coffee into a tin mug. “You want some?” he asked. “It’s instant, but it tastes a hell of a lot better than halizoned water.”

“No, thank you.”

“Oh, you like stronger stuff? Wine? Maybe Scotch. I understand that’s the ‘in’ drink up on the Hill: Scotch on the rocks.”

She put a chain on her temper. “I prefer a light claret, Colonel. As I’m sure you don’t have any here, it’s pointless to discuss the subject. Anyway, I want you to look at these orders.” She stressed the word “orders,” because that was exactly what they were. Orders from Marine Corps General Frederick to Colonel Breckenridge. She watched with satisfaction as he languidly unfolded the crisp white papers and sat back down at the desk. Taking a sip of his coffee, he frowned as he read through them. The skin across his cheekbones tightened, and his mouth thinned into a single line. He looked up slowly.

“So, Senator Thornton got the brass over at the Pentagon to issue these orders. Your ability to manipulate impresses me,” he said in a dangerously low whisper. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

“I’m keenly aware of what I’ve done.” Her heart skipped erratically, and it wasn’t from anticipation. Her feelings bordered on fear as she saw the violent glint in his gray eyes.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he murmured. “Not this way and not now. I would have got one of the jeep drivers to take you up just as soon as the fog lifted. It wasn’t necessary, Alanna.”

She heard a note of hurt in his voice. Or was it disappointment? “The only thing you seem to understand and respect is power, Colonel. And that’s exactly the game we’re going to play here from now on. Politicians versus military. Dove versus hawk. Call it what you like. I want results. And I’m working for a senator who wants them now. You’re ordered to personally take me up to San Dolega.
Right now.
I’m sure you have an aide who can take over here while you drop me off. It should only take an hour or two of your time.”

Matt deliberately set the orders down, staring up at her. “I don’t believe this is the real Alanna talking to me. What’s happened? What’s gone wrong? Did Senator Thornton call you and start screaming at you to get some results? What?”

She felt the blush sweeping over her cheeks and silently cursed the telltale sign. “If I told you, you wouldn’t understand. You didn’t this morning, and I don’t think you ever will,” she said defensively. “We’re two different breeds of people. And all I want to do right now is finish this job and get as far away from you and this place as possible.”

He studied her for a long time. Finally, he stared back down at the orders. “Are you sure this is what you want? If you can’t wait twelve hours more until this fog lifts, I’m not going to be responsible for you or my actions.”

Alanna’s eyes widened at the softly spoken threat. He looked absolutely emotionless. His voice was as hard as tempered steel. A ribbon of fear jolted through her. What did he mean? Her throat ached with tension, but she forced the words out. “You’re not making sense. You have your orders, now carry them out.”

He stood, a hawk ready to make the kill, and she sensed the anger which up until now had been hidden. She took two steps back, stunned by his implacable determination. His hand shot out quickly, and she gasped as his fingers closed in a viselike grip around her upper arm. He guided her to the door, throwing it open and placing her outside it.

“You stay right there, Miss McIntire. I will be back in exactly five minutes, and then we’ll leave for San Dolega,” he snarled under his breath. “You want to play tough? We’ll play it your way.”

She stood there trembling, huddled against the hut, trying to keep out of the rain. She wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen next, but she tried to convince herself that she could handle it. She closed her eyes, trying to take a steadying breath. She would
never
understand the military or the minds that ran it! Damn them all!

In exactly five minutes, Matt Breckenridge drove up in a military jeep. It had no protective covering over the top of it to keep the rain out. He was dressed in his poncho, his cap drawn down over his eyes so that she could not see his expression. Perhaps that was a blessing. In the rear was a huge pack with a small shovel attached to the back of it.

“Get in,” he ordered tersely.

She slid onto the wet, slippery seat, gripping the metal siding as he yanked the jeep into gear. The vehicle slewed through the mud as he ground through a series of loud, noisy gears. The base camp disappeared behind them and was replaced with a rutted excuse for a single-lane road which wound beneath the tall tops of the mahogany forest that dominated the landscape. Rain slashed unrelentingly against her face, and she held up her hands to protect her eyes, compressing her lips in anger over his inconsiderate behavior.

It was a nightmarish ride. She had no idea how long they had driven; she was only aware of the continual bumping and jolting of the jeep as it roared through three inches of mud and the hardened ruts that had been created during the dry season. Her hips and thighs were bruised black and blue, and her back ached from the terrific strain placed upon it as the jeep leaped out of one rut and landed heavily in another. Fog swirled chokingly around them, and Alanna was grimly determined not to cry out. Not even once. She knew it would give him a measure of satisfaction. But he was going to get not one ounce of it from her.

Finally, they halted at the end of the road. Alanna’s eyes widened as she saw at least two hundred crates of supplies stacked up before them and military and civilian men carrying them on their backs up a narrow mountain trail that seemed to disappear into the fog. Matt turned the key off, jammed it in his trouser pocket, and got out.

“All right, Miss McIntire, I suggest you roust yourself out of the jeep and hit the deck. We’ve got some walking to do.”

Alanna starred stupidly at the line of porters slowly struggling up the steep grade and then swung her gaze to Matt, who was shrugging into the pack. “But,” she stammered lamely, “you didn’t say we had to walk.”

“You didn’t bother to ask before setting your plan into motion. I believe it was you who stressed the orders meant ‘right now,’” he growled. “If you are really interested in reaching San Dolega, you have to walk, because the orders did not specify that I had to carry you. At your pleasure, Miss McIntire, the road to San Dolega,” he added with a tight smile of triumph. “Come on, we’ve only got five miles and three thousand feet to go.” He studied the thinning fog. “And maybe, if we’re lucky, this fog will keep clearing as we get closer to the village.”

She felt tears gathering in her eyes, a wave of humiliation sweeping across her. Why did she back herself into a corner with him every time? Five miles in her leather shoes? Alanna sighed, taking a grip on her briefcase, and walked carefully around the jeep. Without even a backward glance, he started off toward the mountain trail, and she silently followed, pushing to keep up with his long, fluid strides.

The jungle was forbidding, closing in on all sides as they walked beneath its canopy. Alanna heard him calling out to the porters, giving them words of encouragement as first he and then she passed them at a faster pace. She couldn’t imagine carrying a thirty-pound crate on her shoulders for five miles in any circumstances. At one point, she caught up with him. Or did he slow down for her? She was gasping for air and vaguely remembered that the village was seventy-five hundred feet above sea level. Oxygen became sparse at that altitude. Her throat felt on fire, and she gulped down more air.

“Why are you carrying that pack?” she asked.

“Because it’s a mobile home. It has everything I need to survive out here for seven days.”

She eyed the canteen on the web belt around his waist. “Please,” she whispered, “I need a drink of water.”

“Did you bring any?” he asked coolly, catching her startled look.

“Why—of course not. I thought…I thought you would share.”

“Did you bother to inform me of your actions before you initiated them?” he demanded, slowing.

“I didn’t have to!” she defended hotly, her voice becoming hoarse.

“It’s called chain of command, lady. Something political people seem to ignore constantly. You reduce everything to trading so-called favors when, in essence, you’re blackmailing.”

“Damn jarhead,” she hissed, jerking to a stop.

He turned, grinning. “Now where did you pick up that kind of language? I didn’t think civilians knew any of the technical terms for a Marine.”

“Technical term?” Alanna gasped. “That’s an outright insult.”

“If you had called me an Army dogface, then I might have gotten angry,” he returned blandly. He reached down in his web belt, loosening the canteen and slowly unscrewing the cap before handing it to her. “Only drink a little,” he warned. “At this altitude and with another four miles to go, you don’t want it sloshing around in your stomach.”