Forced Disappearance (14 page)

The guard smiled at her.

The little girl pulled a cracker out of her pocket and stepped closer to hold the treat out for the man. He laughed out loud at that, nodded to the parents, then back to the girl, “Muchas gracias, señorita.”

He was friendly, maybe had a kid that age at home, Miranda thought. The girl ran another couple of circles, but then dashed back to talk to the guard. She seemed to be very taken with him. They didn’t speak the same language, but that didn’t seem to bother them any.

The kid ran out into the open area again, arms stretched to the side, making airplane sounds. And then she tripped.

She went down hard, head first into the tile floor, blood squirting from her nose the next second. Her parents ran toward her, and so did the guard.

While all attention was on them, Miranda and Glenn darted for the door. A few steps and they were through, in a long hallway.

She hurried forward. “Let’s find the locker room where the ground crew gets dressed. We need uniforms.”

Glenn caught up, grinned at her. “Hey, we’re almost there. We did it.”

They were about three quarters of the way when the door at the other end opened and Roberto stepped through, four guards coming in behind him.

Shit.
Miranda didn’t have time to so much as blink before the men aimed their weapons at Glenn and her.

They had nowhere to run, and certainly no place to hide in the hallway. For a split second, Glenn considered charging the men. Even certain death would be better than being dragged back to the torture chamber.

But reason won over his animal instinct of flee or fight.
Game theory
. When one opponent was overwhelmingly superior in strength, the weaker player’s best option was to complicate the game. You added some twists and turns, some variables. The more complicated the game, the more luck came into play. Luck could even the odds, favor the weaker player.

So playing for time was their best option here. Drag it out. Give luck a chance to come into play. Glenn stepped in front of Miranda and raised his hands into the air. “We surrender.”

“Take them out back,” Roberto snapped. All civility gone from his face, his eyes were hard, his body language aggressive, head forward, shoulders up. His prisoners’ escape from the transport truck had obviously pissed him off.

His jaw stiff, he gave a sharp nod, and two guardsmen rushed forward to grab Glenn to drag him toward the back door that led to the tarmac. Glenn didn’t fight them. Better save his energy for a time when it would make a difference. He glanced back to Miranda just as the other two guardsmen grabbed her by the arms.

He hated that part the most, assholes putting their hands on her, being rough. She didn’t let them intimidate her, though: chin up, she ignored them as if they were nothing.

In a few steps, they were all outside, squinting against the bright sun. The plane sat at the end of the runway. Right there. Within reach, dammit. Frustration punched into Glenn as he scanned the half-dozen mechanics servicing the plane, other workers loading luggage. Given the right uniforms, Miranda and he could have made it on board.

To be caught this close to the goal line was beyond maddening.

But disappointment and frustration were unproductive emotions that weren’t going to win the day here, so he let go of their failed plan. No going back. He had to move forward, come up with something else.
Complicate the game.

“We’re United States citizens,” he called back to Roberto. “I demand that the United States embassy is notified of our arrest. I have rights.”

Roberto sneered as he passed the prisoners. “You will find, Mr. Danning, that capitalist spies have very few rights in my country.”

“The US government will be looking for us,” Miranda warned, sounding calm and reasonable. “You don’t want to create an international incident.”

Roberto shrugged. “If someone else comes, I’ll happily assist with the investigation. Of course, such investigations are rarely fruitful. Do you have any idea how many people disappear in Latin America without a trace every year? My report will show that Mr. Danning mixed himself up in drug trafficking. I’ll document that I advised you of that fact and warned you not to travel into dangerous areas and approach the criminal element. Unfortunately, you ignored that advice. Americans are very stubborn. They think they know everything better. They think they’re invincible.”

Glenn kept the rising fury inside him bottled, to be used at a more opportune moment.

They were marched to a loading bay where a canvas-backed army truck waited for them, the kind they were already familiar with. Once again, they were loaded into the back, but this time, the guardsmen cuffed the prisoners to the bench and kept their guns in hand, ready and aimed.

“Shoot them if they so much as sneeze,” Roberto ordered dispassionately before closing the flap himself.

Glenn scanned the interior of the truck. The trick they’d used last time wouldn’t work. One step forward, two steps back.

Complicate the game.
Sounded good in theory. What in hell could they complicate in the back of a moving truck, handcuffed in place?

He examined every inch of the interior, looking for an idea. If the truck held anything that could help them escape, he’d missed it. He returned his gaze to Miranda. “I’m sorry. You’re only here because of me.”

“If I wasn’t here for you, I’d be somewhere else for someone else. I signed up for this mission knowing full well what it entailed.” She turned to the soldier next to her and spoke in broken Spanish, “Could you please tell me where we are going?”

The young man didn’t respond, just kept his rifle aimed and steady.

What if the soldiers were taking them back to Guri?

Glenn turned toward the canvas flap that closed them in, but couldn’t see out through the narrow gap. He had no idea what direction they were going.

Cold dread spread in his chest.
All right. Don’t think about the commander. Think about the opportunity.
Guri would be several hours away. A lot could happen on a long ride. He or Miranda could come up with a brilliant plan between now and then.

But they spent less than twenty minutes on the main highway. The truck turned onto a dirt road and kept going, rattling over the uneven ground. Soon the narrow crack in the canvas flap showed green outside. They were heading into the forest.

To be summarily executed?

Glenn’s gaze cut to Miranda, but she didn’t look worried.

“Where are you taking us?” she demanded of the guardsmen. “We are innocent. We are US citizens.”

None of the men blinked an eye. Maybe they didn’t speak English.

Glenn tested the cuffs. Tight. No slipping out of those. But maybe Miranda’s slim wrists . . . He checked her hands. Maybe not. Her cuffs looked equally snug.

The idea of her coming to harm was unbearable.

He wanted to grab one of the bastards in the back of the truck and . . . All right. They couldn’t grab. But they could kick. He tried to catch Miranda’s eye, but she sat deep in thought. “Why are you so calm?”

“Panicking isn’t going to help.” She glanced up. “They’re not going to kill us yet.”

“How do you know?”

“From what you told me, the commander is a sadistic tyrant. He’ll want his pound of flesh. He’ll want revenge. You made him lose face in front of his men when you escaped. He’s going to want retribution for that.”

“There’s a thought to make a man feel all warm and fuzzy inside.”
More torture.
Every muscle in Glenn’s back tensed. “So this is the good news?”

“The good news is that we’ll get a little time after we’re uncuffed from these benches. Better than instant execution. Although, I’d prefer a weekend in Vienna.” She smiled at him.

She was trying to cheer him up, a valiant, selfless effort. This was his Miranda. His heart turned over in his chest. No, he wasn’t going to let her go again. Now that he had her back in his life, he’d be damned if they were going to die in the middle of some godforsaken rainforest.

“I’m going to take you to Vienna,” he promised. Then refocused on what they had to do before that could happen. “Do you think the commander is around here somewhere?”

She thought about that for a few seconds. “He sent his guardsmen to assist Roberto. He’s definitely in the loop. So once he hears that you’ve been recaptured, will he shrug and go on with his business?”

Images from the Guri torture chamber flashed into Glenn’s mind. The way hate had boiled in the commander’s eyes, his immense enjoyment from dominating and torturing another human being . . . No way the commander would give up a chance to personally punish him for the escape. “If he’s not here already, he’s on his way.”

Miranda scanned the truck, the soldiers and their weapons, tested her handcuffs. When she looked at Glenn, the determined angle of her chin said she wasn’t giving up. She fully believed that another escape was possible.

Hopefully, before they reached wherever they were going. Currently they were on the road with just a handful of guardsmen in a truck that had canvas for sides. Chances were, at their final destination there’d be a larger force and a prison with cement walls and steel bars.

Glenn tested his own cuffs again, looked from man to man, trying to figure out if any of them had the key. With his hands immobilized, he couldn’t reach even the nearest guy. If he could get one to move closer . . . A headbutt? But then what? Assuming he could knock one out and Miranda could knock one out, that still left two more, and with rifles.

Chapter 13

GLENN CLOSED HIS
eyes. In his mind, he moved the components of their situation like chess pieces on a board. If he did this, then Miranda did that, and the guards responded a certain way . . . He discarded one idea after the other, hoping to hit on something viable in short order.

But he still had nothing workable when the truck stopped two hours later. They were at some kind of a jungle camp. The guards wasted no time dragging their prisoners to one of a hundred or so square huts that sat on stilts off the ground.

The men tied Glenn and Miranda to opposite corner poles inside, then left. A bar slid in place to lock the door from the outside.

Glenn scanned their ten-by-ten-foot prison. Bamboo floor, bamboo walls, a palm thatch roof, one small window in the back without glass, maybe a foot wide and a foot tall, definitely too narrow for his shoulders.

“What do you think this is?” He looked at Miranda who was conducting her own assessment, examining the small space.

“A training facility for the army for jungle warfare.”

He tested his ropes, pulling against them. The bamboo beam moved. “We could probably shake this place apart.”

Who knew how long the construction had been sitting out here, exposed to the elements, the ends of the supporting beams dug into soft jungle soil instead of resting in a solid cement foundation.

But Miranda shook her head. “Don’t count on it. Bamboo is flexible. It’s stronger than you think. And even if we could move a pole enough to create a gap, we couldn’t do it without anyone noticing. We’re surrounded by armed men.”

Okay, there was that. What else? He turned his attention to the walls.

Since the bamboo logs didn’t all fit flush against each other, he could see through the cracks.

At least three-dozen guardsmen were going about their business outside, some collecting wood, others preparing food over an open fire, several men standing on guard duty. The camp didn’t appear to be at full capacity, but enough men were stationed here at the moment to make an escape difficult if not impossible.

The scent from the stew cooking over the fire made Glenn’s stomach growl. Miranda’s responded. They exchanged a glance. A little nourishment, for energy, would have been nice. They hadn’t eaten since breakfast. But when the food was ready, the soldiers didn’t bring the prisoners any.

Glenn rolled his shoulders, trying not to feel disappointed. “How are you holding up?”

“Fine.” She lowered herself to sit on the floor. Their ropes allowed for some movement, although not enough for them to reach each other or the door. “Remember the shish kabobs in the engineer lab?” A half smile twitched at the corner of her lips.

How could he forget? “My favorite.” He sat too. He watched her for a minute as she rested her head against the wall, eyes closed. “Do you ever regret leaving MIT?”

He definitely regretted not going after her when she’d left.
If it was meant to be, she’ll come back
, Gloria had advised.
A Danning doesn’t beg
. And Glenn’s pride had been injured enough so that he’d agreed. Miranda had walked out on him. She was the one who had to realize her mistake and come back.

She opened her eyes to look at him. “If I hadn’t left, I would have never met Matthew, and then I would have never had Abby.”

“Sorry. Stupid question.” Of course, a mother would never regret her child. He tried to imagine her life, what she’d had and lost. “What was Abby like?”

She waited a long time before she responded, blowing the air from her lungs, then refilling them again. “She was the best little six-year-old who ever lived. Sunshine in a bottle.”

A sad smile crossed her face. “She didn’t have one bad day, that kid. And she wasn’t scared of anything. She put the worms on the hook to fish with Matthew. She’d make friends with strange dogs in the park. Climb every tree she came across. She had endless energy and an endless need to discover the world.”

Sounded like the Miranda Glenn had known back in college. “A special kid.”

“She was. I’m not just saying that as her mother. She would give her toys away to the neighbor kids. The first egg hunt I took her to at the VFW hall at Easter, one family came late, and there weren’t any eggs left. When Abby saw those kids cry, she ran over with her bucket. She didn’t keep a single egg for herself. She said she already had her fun finding them.” Miranda looked away.

He pictured a child with Miranda’s eyes. For a man who’d always been ruled by reason instead of emotion, the storm of feelings swirling inside him took him by surprise. He felt the sharp grief, the scalding fury that someone would hurt that little girl. He wanted to ask about the kidnapping, but didn’t want to cause Miranda pain.

She folded her arms around her knees. He’d never seen her look fragile until now. Her body seemed to shrink as she said, “About a month after the egg hunt, she was invited to a birthday party at one of those indoor playgrounds where they have a million bouncing castles, and a warren of tubes to crawl through, games and prizes. There are two or three hundred kids in there at a time, and you hear nothing but screaming, everybody all sugared up and going wild, everything padded so the kids could bounce around.”

The pain in her voice was so sharp he could feel himself bleed.

She drew a long breath. “Abby went into the tube maze. She’d been in it before. She loved it. It’s like a rabbit warren. You can come out up high and go down on a slide, or into a bouncy castle, or into a pen of balls, other stuff.” She shook her head. “I didn’t think anything when she didn’t come out right where I waited. She had a bunch of her friends at the place. All the parents were standing around, everybody watching everybody’s kids to make sure nobody got hurt.”

His jumble of emotions coagulated into a sick feeling in his stomach as she talked, a cold tightness a hundred times worse than the hunger.

“I went over to the ball pen.” Swallowed. “Abby wasn’t there either. The place was huge. I figured she’d run off to play another game. I walked around for about ten minutes, looking for her. Then I started asking other parents if they’d seen her. Nobody had, so I asked the staff. They helped me look for another ten or fifteen minutes, quietly first, since they didn’t want to upset everybody over nothing. We were all so sure she was either playing inside one of the tubes or moving around from game to game and we just kept missing her.”

She swallowed hard.

When she continued at last, her eyes haunted, she said, “Then they shut the place down and every child was accounted for, separated into the party rooms in the back where they normally serve cake for the various birthday groups. Abby wasn’t there.”

His hands fisted. He was a pretty cool person, the need for violence that coursed through him foreign. He’d never felt murderous rage like this before, not even toward the commander. But he’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted to kill the bastard who’d put his hands on that little girl. “I’m sorry.”

She nodded, her face wooden, her voice brittle as she said, “Her body was found three weeks later, twenty miles from where she disappeared, a few hundred feet off a hiking trail. She’d been strangled.” She drew a shuddering breath.

A hell of a thing, watching as someone’s heart broke in half. Watching it happen to the woman he was falling in love with was nearly unbearable. Frustration pushed Glenn to his feet, and he stepped as close as he could to her, ropes straining. He wished he could reach her and put his arms around her. “Did they catch the bastard?”

If they hadn’t, he was going to personally make sure that the full resources of Danning Enterprises would be put behind hiring private investigators, pressuring the police, FBI, whatever it took. He
was
going to see to it.

She closed her eyes. “They caught him with the help of DNA evidence. He’s in federal prison.”

Not enough.
Glenn paced back to his corner and kicked the post as hard as he could, rattling the walls and the roof.

“
Alto
!” One of the soldiers outside shouted at him to stop.

Fuck them.
His chest heaved with fury. He wanted to kick the stupid hut to shit. But pissing off the soldiers and getting beaten up wasn’t going to help Miranda.

His anger wasn’t what she needed.

He drew a deep, long breath as he turned back to her. “I’m sorry that you had to go through that.” He moved as close to her as he could and sat down, every cell of his body aching for contact, even if just the tip of their fingers, anything. “I’m so sorry.”

Her face was a study in controlled pain as she nodded, her skin drawn tight over her cheekbones, her eyes lined with misery. “I try to be grateful and celebrate the years we had. We had some really good times. Those are the memories I go back to. She was so much more than just the police reports at the end.”

When he nodded, his eyes burning as he watched her, she went on. “After Matthew died, I didn’t reenlist with the army. I’m so grateful for those years Abby and I spent together.”

He watched her, his heart breaking for her. “How did you end up an investigator?” Maybe a change of subject would help.

She breathed in and out slowly a couple of times, visibly struggling to put away the worst parts of her past. Eyes downcast, she rubbed her hands on her lap.

“After Abby was gone, I couldn’t stand being in the house, so I reenlisted. I went back to the Army Corps of Engineers. But everybody there knew about Matthew and Abby. I didn’t want the pity on people’s faces when they looked at me. I asked for a transfer, and I was offered a chance at Personnel Recovery.”

She hesitated. “Eventually, I left the army. A couple of weeks ago, I was recruited by a new government agency that’s trying to find US citizens who disappear overseas. You’re my first case.”

“I’m the practice run?” He tried to look appalled and scandalized, hoping to lighten the mood. He ached to comfort her. “Two brilliant minds collaborating—who can stand against us? We’ll get out of here. Don’t worry about it.”

Her face softened. “I think I’m the one who’s supposed to be telling you that.”

Before he could respond, the door opened and two men strode in. They untied her and dragged her to her feet. She shot Glenn an encouraging smile, showing no fear—chin up, shoulders squared.

“Hey.” He scrambled to his feet. “Where are you taking her?” He lunged forward, but his ropes held him back. “Hey!”

The men paid no attention to him as they escorted Miranda away, while Glenn could do nothing but watch and curse them out in his limited Spanish.

If they hurt her, so help him God . . .

He stepped to the wall and pressed his face against the largest gap in the bamboo. The soldiers were shoving Miranda down the path to another hut at the far end of the training camp. Up the steps. Inside. The door closed behind them. Not a minute passed before the soldiers came back out and took up their position at the top of the steps.

Glenn strained his ears, every muscle tense, trying to listen for her if she cried out, but she was too far. And even if she hadn’t been, the soldiers in camp, the popping fire, and the sounds of the jungle around them drowned out everything else. He hadn’t known what fear was until this moment.

Fury filled him all over again.
If anybody lays a hand on her
. . .

But he fought back the blind anger. He needed to do better than that, something more productive. He checked over his ropes, tried to untie them, fought against them until his fingertips bled. The damn rope wouldn’t give.

By the time half an hour passed, he was half out of his mind with rage again, then with worry. He couldn’t find his way back to his cool, rational mindset.

What if they don’t bring her back?

He couldn’t stay still. He paced. At least, he hadn’t heard gunshots. He tried to tell himself that was good. Encouraging. He refused to think of the dozen ways someone could be hurt or killed in silence.

The hut, larger than where Miranda and Glenn were kept, held three beds plus a desk and chair in the corner, probably the officers’ quarters for the camp.

Roberto sat behind the desk while Miranda stood in the middle of the open space. A loaded handgun lay on the table in front of Roberto, out of her reach, even if her hands weren’t tied.

He watched her with a thoughtful look on his face, his eyes cold and calculating. “As one investigator to the other, I have to admit, I do admire your intellect, Miranda. The plan was to let you lead me to your countryman. We were sure you’ve been in communication. Once I realized you weren’t in contact with him and didn’t know where he was”—he shook his head—”I didn’t think you’d be of much use. But you surprised me at every turn. Well done.”

She said nothing. She certainly wasn’t going to thank the murderous bastard for the compliment.

Roberto leaned back in his chair. “Give me Danning.”

“You already have him.”

“Give me the truth about Danning. Why is he really in Venezuela? Who are his contacts? What kind of information is he looking for? How much has he gotten and transmitted back to the US? What are his plans? What plot is the US government hatching against my country?” He smiled, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “You can’t blame me for wanting to know. I am a patriot, as I’m sure you are.”