Danger Close (The Echo Platoon Series, Book 1) (21 page)

Sam signaled for Carl Wolfe to approach the vehicle first, just in case it was booby-trapped. Carl peered inside with a penlight. Then he went down on all fours, twisted onto his back and disappeared beneath it. Coming out a minute later, he declared it clean, and Sam reached for the door handle, sliding it open.

Bullfrog joined him, crawling into the cargo area while Bronco searched the seats up front and the remaining platoon formed a perimeter around them, just in case the terrorists had lured them there. They all searched high and low for Maddy's satphone.

"Found it." Bullfrog held up a rectangle. "Still has some battery left," he observed passing it to Sam.

Resisting the urge to put the phone to his nose, perhaps to catch a trace of Maddy's essence, Sam powered it down, preserving whatever battery power it had left and sliding it into his thigh pocket. "Bronco, you see any registration papers?" he called up front. "Anything with an address on it?"

Bronco had just torn through the glove box. "Negative, sir."

Sam swallowed down his disappointment. The van had been their only lead. "Any chance you can follow the tracks we saw on the photos?"

They climbed out of the van to look for them.

"What do you see?" Sam asked as Bronco bent to study the sandy ground through his NVGs. He flipped them up and looked again. In his youth, he'd been trained by a Crow Indian to track game. His blue eyes seemed to burn through the preternatural darkness. He stood up slowly and shook his head. "I'm sorry, sir, but the wind's blown them away."

Mother Nature had conspired against them. With a bitter taste in his mouth, Sam admitted defeat. "Haiku," he called to his communications specialist, "tell the head shed to come and pick us up."

Their search for Maddy had hit another wall.

* * *

"Why do you work for GEF when your father owns Scott Oil Corporation?" Salim's question, coming at the heels of their luncheon the following day, made Maddy set aside her pita and hummus as she deliberated what to say.

In the day and a half that she had remained in his room, guarded either by him or by Nasrallah, she had lost any lingering fear of ravishment or torture—at least at their hands. Only the others, whose restlessness she sensed and could sometimes hear, remained a threat. But for the time being, the warm upstairs chamber felt as secure a place as any. If only she were free to leave it.

"Well, I've always fretted about the impact of fracking on the environment," she answered honestly. "I studied environmental policy in college, so the work is a good fit."

"But what if you discover that the wells have corrupted El Chaco irrevocably and that the region will never be the same again?"

Maddy shrugged one shoulder. "Actually, I was expecting to find that to be the case, but our tests have shown no significant levels of toxins anywhere."

Salim's expression grew disdainful. "Really. None whatsoever?" It was obvious he didn't believe her.

"What are you implying?" she challenged him. He seemed to be suggesting, as Ricardo had once implied, that Scott Oil had planted her at GEF so she could manipulate the testing to make the oil industry look good.

He startled her by whipping out his cellphone, the same Motorola with which he'd filmed her ransom video. "I have pictures to show you," he announced, thumbing his keypad. He scooted closer, holding his phone before her eyes and scrolling through a number of pictures that made Maddy's eyes widen and her heart grow heavy.

"Where did you take these?" she asked, dismayed by visions of dead cattle, rotting under a hot sun and a swarm of flies.

"Twenty kilometers south of the Guaraní village, not far from the Pilcomayo River. The toxins have built up there. They've seeped into the surrounding soil, poisoning the flora which these cows have eaten. Now they are dying. The people eat the cows and drink their milk. What will happen to them?"

Maddy thought of the elders' complaints about gastro-intestinal trouble and dizziness—were those early symptoms of encroaching cancers? If so, then it was just as her mother feared. She shook her head in dismay. "I've only seen something like this once," she admitted, recalling the hapless cow belonging to the native ranchers.

Salim sat back, putting his phone away. "Perhaps you've been directed to run your tests in the wrong areas. The effect of the oil wells is obvious if you ask the residents where to look."

Was it possible that GEF had directed them to collect soil and water samples in the wrong places? She didn't speak Guaraní. Perhaps, if she had, she would have known where to look. But why would GEF not want the truth about the toxic waste to be known? Unless they'd been bought off by Scott Oil, she considered. Or even the U.S. government. Salim's accusing gaze seemed to suggest that was the case, and that he believed Maddy to be in on it.

She seized his forearm, gripping it hard. "I am not working for my father," she insisted. "My mother was an environmentalist like me. She opposed drilling in El Chaco ten years ago, and I have issues with it myself. If I find out that Scott Oil has bribed GEF in any way to keep them from finding the kind of destruction that you've seen, I swear to you, I will expose the corporation and force Scott Oil to make restitution."

The tight accusative expression on his face softened toward conviction and then gratitude. "I believe you," he replied.

The intimate and emotional energy arcing between them propelled Maddy to her feet. Confused, feeling that in some strange way she was betraying Sam, she crossed the room to one of the two barred windows. She had peered out of this one many times before, praying each time for Sam and his SEALs to materialize out of thin air and rescue her.

Her captors' home stood in a grassy area, with no adjacent neighbors, but with several houses behind their own walls, not too far away. If she ever managed to escape this room, this house, she would run to them for help.

"Madison."

Salim's voice sounded practically in her ear, making her jump. She hadn't heard him get up. His hands settled gently on either of her shoulders. She could feel the heat of his palms burning through the cloying fabric of the
chapan
he made her wear. If she hadn't ever met Sam, hadn't known the roaring power of their physical attraction, she might have thought herself drawn to Salim's gentle touch. It didn't frighten her the way it ought to. If anything, she felt comforted by the physical contact but, to her, it wasn't sexual. She let him turn her around so that she faced him.

"I think we have more in common than you realize," he said. His striking eyes roamed her face centering on her lips.

She realized he was poised to kiss her when he started to incline his head. "Please don't," she whispered, her spine stiffening.

His gaze reflected puzzlement. "I won't hurt you," he swore. "You and I were meant for each other. Don't you see? With your help, my protests have credibility. Together, we can keep El Chaco untainted. We can expose the corporation exploiting her purity."

His words mesmerized her, for she would like nothing better than to leave the children of Paraguay such a legacy, but his offer came with an unspoken implication. She would have to become his woman to accomplish such a feat. "I can't." She shook her head, picturing Sam's brooding gaze.

"Why not?" Salim pressed, still patient. "I'm well educated. I come from a good family. Is it my religion?"

She could have cared less about his religion. "Of course not." She shrugged his hands, catching them in hers to show her willingness to be friends. "You're a good man, Salim. But I've given my heart to someone else."

Until that moment, she hadn't fully realized that was true. She'd wanted so badly to remain a free spirit, a woman on a mission. But the truth was, she'd belonged to Sam since the night he'd kissed her on the bridge behind her father's house. Whatever mysterious claim he had on her, it had begun there if not sooner. No wonder she hadn't been able to get him out of her head!

But seeing the disillusionment harden Salim's handsome face, she both regretted the truth and resented it. Why Sam? Why couldn't she just banish him and all the complications that a relationship with him entailed and accept the offer of something more with Salim? Well, for one thing, Salim associated with some questionable characters. His radical efforts to eject North American enterprise frightened her.

"If you help me escape, I will help you," she promised him steadily.

Getting no immediate objection, she pursued her proposal. "My father is a reasonable man. If he saw your pictures and received lab reports to corroborate them, he would address the situation immediately."

"You said your uncle now runs the company," Salim countered on a flat note. The idealistic flame burning in his eyes earlier had fled, making him look suddenly older than his twenty-something years.

"Yes, but he'll do whatever my father asks him." At least she hoped that to be the case. "Please," she added, dismayed by the distant way in which he held her hands. "Let me go, and I swear I will rectify these issues with the environment. Nothing would please me more."

A thin smile curled up the edges of Salim's mouth. "It's too late for that," he said. Dropping her hands, he turned his back on her, and Maddy's hopes crumbled to dust. She watched him cross the room where he gathered her plate of half-eaten food, carried it to the door, and let himself out. She heard him mutter orders to Nasrallah, no doubt to alert him if he heard anything suspicious.

By kidnapping the daughter of Scott Oil Corporation, he had set the ball rolling toward some unknown catastrophe. Maddy held little hope of her situation ending on a positive note—not for her, not for Salim, not even for the country he loved.

* * *

Sam let himself into Maddy's condo using a credit card. The scent of lemon cleaner blended pleasantly with her one-of-a-kind fragrance, just the scent of which made his stomach churn with desperate wanting. The sun reflected brightly off her kitchen countertops and table. Everything looked so neat and orderly.

Drawn to her bedroom, he stood at the door to regard the bed where they'd lost themselves to passion. While neatly made, the coverlet bore the impression of Maddy's body. She'd lain there, perhaps reading the leather bound book, lying face-down on her nightstand.

Curious, Sam crossed the room to pick it up. The realization that it was a journal had him sinking down on the bed, instantly intrigued and thinking he'd stumbled upon Maddy's diary. Except the dates at the top of each entry were ten years old. He skimmed several passages, absorbing the words of an intelligent woman on a passionate mission to improve the environment. It sounded just like Maddy talking, except Maddy had been a teenager at the time, which meant this journal was probably her mother's.

Sam looked up, thinking back to what he'd read in Maddy's file about her mother. An avid environmentalist, Melinda Scott's plane had crashed into the Pantanal region of Brazil on her way home from Paraguay a decade earlier. Understanding dawned like a sunrise in his mind. Maddy had made it her life's mission to fill her mother's shoes.

Suddenly he understood her—so clearly that it took his breath away.

No wonder she cared so little about her personal safety, her own comforts. She was chasing after a spirit, perhaps hoping to be reunited with her eventually.

A shiver coursed Sam's spine.

A knock at the door had him setting down the journal with a guilty start. Certain it was one of his leading petty officers, whom he'd instructed to fetch him the moment the SEALs got news, he hurried to answer.

Bullfrog's half smile beat back Sam's foreboding. "We've got a lead," he said. Dimples flashed on his lean cheeks.

"What lead?" Sam joined him on the stoop, locking the door from the inside and shutting it behind him.

"GEF received an email with a video link to YouTube. The terrorists posted a ransom video online, probably figuring it couldn't be traced."

Hope vied with dread at the prospect of seeing Maddy in her captor's clutches. On YouTube, a video like that wouldn't stay secret for long.

"The CO's waiting so we can all watch it together."

Sam leaped off the stoop with Bullfrog right behind him.

In the TOC, he found every SEAL in the task unit already seated, eyes glued to the Internet browser projected on the large monitor.

"There you are," the CO boomed as Sam joined them, muttering an apology. "Have a seat."

Sam dropped into the only empty seat left in the room. Someone cut the lights. Mad Max clicked the link, and Sam found himself staring at Maddy wearing Middle-Eastern garb, even a scarf over her bright head. A lump of helplessness swelled in his throat as the camera focused on her luminous eyes, wet with tears she refused to shed.

The window behind her was barred. He could hear a rooster crow. Then a male voice declared in a cultured, British accent, that Madison Scott, an employee of the Global Environmental Fund, would remain a hostage of the National Liberation Army of Paraguay unless Scott Oil Corporation met their demands.

Sam catalogued clues as he listened to the terrorist's demands. The speaker had obviously been educated in England, and sounded polished. Given the view through the window, Maddy was being held on a second floor. A crowing rooster suggested the location was set in a rural area, not in the heart of town.