Safe Without You (22 page)

              Amber squeezed her eyes shut for an instant to keep from crying out.  She opened them again, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant.  I wasn’t thinking.  I’ll never do it again.”  Amber could see Mariana gloating from the sidelines.

              Amber’s stoicism impressed the revolutionary, though, and Mariana’s look of triumph quickly soured as Victor put his arm around Amber’s shoulders and kissed the cheek that he had slapped.  “That’s my girl.”  He stroked her head, “With liberty comes responsibility.  You must be wise to prove that you are trustworthy.  I’m sure you won’t disappoint me again.”  He handed the scissors back to Amber, and snapped his fingers at Wilson.  “Come, Tania will make you look respectable.”

              Bill placed himself directly in front of Wilson; Amber could see from the corner of her eye that Bill was silently mouthing something to him.  Grumbling, Wilson stood up, “Tania can kiss my sweet ass, but I won’t say no to a haircut—I don’t want Ruston to be prettier than me.”

              Wilson took Bill’s place in front of Amber and she started snipping.  Victor reconvened his planning session, and the card game continued.  Wilson spoke softly, “So you’re not really going over to FARC?”

              “No way.”  Amber tried not to flinch as some kind of bug ran out of Wilson’s hair.  “I want to puke every time he touches me.  It’s a strategy, please trust me, I’m close to Bill’s son, Cal.”

              “Are you some kind of plant?”  Wilson asked.

              “No, believe me…meeting Bill…this is all one weird ass coincidence.  But I do have a gun.”

              “Gun?” 

              “Don’t jump—I’ll cut you…yeah, in a bra holster.  They never thought to search me.”

              “Well, we need more than a gun to get out of here alive.”

              “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure that the cavalry is about to arrive.  We just can’t let them take us any deeper into the jungle.”  Amber kept cutting.  “Don’t say anything to Tomás, I knew him pre-capture—he’s essentially an okay guy, but he’s likely to fall apart under pressure.”

              “And you won’t?”  Wilson asked, a little snobbishly, as if he had some kind of monopoly on nerve.

              “No, I won’t.”  Amber said, matter-of-factly.

              “Damn,” Wilson said, running his hand over his short ruff of hair, “I can’t tell you how much better that feels.” 

              “You’re welcome, but keep acting like you don’t like me, it will help keep things on track with Victor.”

              “Who said I liked you?” but the smile that danced on his lips said otherwise. 

              Wilson rejoined the card game, and Amber examined her knee.  The swelling was going down, and soon, it wouldn’t look like much of an excuse for not hiking into the jungle.  She would only be able to milk Victor’s infatuation so long.  She needed her knee to be much, much worse, but she didn’t want to look like a klutz by falling on her own.  Victor needed to keep thinking it was Mariana’s fault. 

              “Lieutenant,” Amber called, “I’m finished.  I need to go relieve myself, por favor.”

              “Mariana!  Go with Tania.”

              Reluctantly, Mariana left the circle and pulled Amber to her feet.  A short distance from the campsite, Amber spotted a tree root and launched onto it.  Tears came to her eyes as her bruised knee whacked the knotty root. 

              “Stupid
puta.” 
Impatiently, the sergeant reached for Amber, dragging her upright.  “He’ll grow tired of you in a few days, and then he’ll come back to me,” Mariana said.  “You think you the only
gringa
he fuck?”

              Amber said nothing.  She pulled down her pants and peed, but by the time they got back to camp, her knee was already tight and hot, and Victor’s meeting was apparently over.

              “Your limp is worse?” Victor inquired.  “Let me see.”  He walked over to Amber and raised her pant leg, exposing not only the bruised and swollen knee, but a fresh scrape across the skin of her knee.

              “You’re bleeding!  This is fresh, did you fall?”

              Amber was quiet, pretending to avoid Victor’s eyes.

              “Tania…what happened?  I order you to tell me.”

              Amber acted as if she was hesitant to say anything, “Mariana said…you would grow tired of me in a few days…and she’d get you back…and then she pushed me.” 

              “Sergeant!”  Victor the Vicious was starting to reemerge. 

              Amber winced, wishing she didn’t have to throw Mariana under the bus.  If only her plan to befriend her, rather than exploit her jealousy, had worked.

              “Did you say that?  Do not lie to me.”  Victor was seething.

              Mariana looked shocked, unbelieving that her words were being thrown back into her face, and that Amber had the nerve to lie about being pushed.  “She—she fell down, I didn’t push her.”

              “That’s not what I asked, did you or did you not say what Tania is reporting?”  Victor’s eyes were like two burning embers.

              “I—I—she’s twisting my words!” Mariana looked back and forth between Amber and Victor. 

              It was going to work, Amber thought with grim satisfaction, Victor would be good to her now simply to punish Mariana for her arrogance.

              “Consider yourself demoted, Private.  Gather up whatever clothes the men need washed and go down to the river and don’t come back until they are spotless.”  He turned his back on Mariana, and took Amber’s hand.  “I’m sorry Tania, it’s good that you didn’t want to snitch on a comrade, but we do not tolerate this kind of pettiness.  Mariana should know that revolutionaries don’t have time for romantic jealousies.” 

              Wilson piped up, in keeping with their plan, “Yeah, but American sluts do.”

              Tomás looked at Amber leaning on Victor, and his face twisted with the memory of Amber’s hand on his dick as they walked in on Cal—Cal the drug courier.  He looked at Wilson, who had managed to survive in the jungles for more than two years with these crazy people, and decided to throw in with him as his best hope of getting home to Hungary, alive.  “Clearly, she’ll fuck anything,” Tomás mumbled under his breath, so that only the other hostages could hear.

              “What did you say?”  Victor stormed over to Wilson and Tomás, but they both clammed up.  “Do not be disrespectful.”  A sadistic thought came to Victor’s mind, making him smile.  “Oh, I see…you are jealous because I’ve been fucking Mariana.”  He tapped at Tomás’ foot with the toe of his boot.  “Well, in socialism, we treat everyone equally.  You can have Mariana too.”

              Amber watched as Mariana froze in her round of gathering up laundry.  Victor continued as he stared at Tomás, “You’re a pretty boy, I think she will like that.  Later, tonight, you can have her—it seems fitting since she apparently needs to be reminded of the socialist way.  You just can’t mind having a few guns pointed at you while you enjoy her.”

              Tomás looked terrified at the prospect, and Amber knew he wished that he had kept his mouth shut.  For her part, Mariana looked devastated.  Victor was treating her like a common female recruit who was, in many cases, little better than a sex slave—at least until she proved herself in battle.  Amber felt sick to her stomach; Victor’s perversity exceeded her expectations, and she truly didn’t want either Mariana or Tomás to be traumatized in this way.  They had most of the day yet ahead of them, though, so surely she could think of something in the interim to stop it.

              For the rest of the morning, Victor lectured the hostages about Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara.  It hadn’t been so long since Amber read Marx peddling up the Pyrenees, so she did her best to dazzle Victor with her knowledge of socialist economic principles.  He was delighted in her analysis of capitalism, and Amber could tell he was envisioning Tania at his side as they led the proletariat forward to victory.  There was a streak of idealism in Victor that was genuine, she decided, but there was also more than a normal ration of cruelty.  Was he brutal and embittered because of a painful and impoverished childhood?  Or was he just a garden-variety sociopath: one of those smart and charming and domineering men who were quite incapable of feeling much of anything? 

              After a couple of hours of lecturing, Victor had one of the men prepare the usual meal of beans and rice.  Amber got the notion that the FARC revolutionaries lived on beans and rice, except when they lived on rice alone.  Mariana was still down at the river washing, and probably either crying or seething, Amber thought.  And what was she going to do about the sexual spectacle Victor had planned?  She had no appetite, and surreptitiously split her portion between Bill and Wilson, who both tried to refuse despite the fact they desperately needed calories.  She whispered that she was too nervous to eat, and would probably just throw it up if she did, so they finally accepted. 

              “Lieutenant,” Amber said to Victor, “I can’t walk very well, but is there some other kind of work that I can do?”

              Victor nodded in approval at her suggestion, coming to sit on the ground next to her.  “That’s good that you offered, but not today—today you just need to rest and get your knee better.  Tomorrow, you will have to hike, no excuses.”

              Amber sighed a little; she was running out of time and ideas for getting them free before they ended up far away from the river, and before Victor abused Mariana and Tomás.  Soon, they would have no choice but to do something bold.  Cal needed to find them, and find them soon, she thought with a swallow.  Then an idea came to her.

              Smiling at Victor, Amber tentatively touched one of the wild curls escaping from his beret.  “Perhaps you would like a haircut too?  Nothing so severe as what I did earlier…just a little trim, and I could shape up your beard?”  She batted her eyelashes flirtatiously.

              “Ha!  Our resident barber, are you?”  He took Amber’s hand and kissed her fingers.  “Not right now, we need to radio our comrades and do some triangulation to plan our route, but perhaps later?  Yes?”

              “Okay later.  It’ll be relaxing…I give a good shoulder and neck rub, too.” 

              “Now that sounds enticing.  Go play cards with the others, and teach them something about Marxist dialectics.”  Victor helped Amber over to the group and settled her in the circle.  “You could all do better by following Tania’s example,” Victor threw a harsh look in the direction of Wilson and Tomás. 

              One of the men was setting up a field radio that looked like it might have been of Vietnam War vintage, and the second in command was spreading out topographical maps.  They kept a discreet distance so the hostages couldn’t get a good look at the maps or hear what they were saying.  Victor glanced in their direction, and then turned back to the hostage group, “By the way, Tania, while it was a worthy suggestion, I don’t think we will try to sell the Hungarian to Hector.  We’ll wait until we get back to Colombia to decide what to do with him.” 

              Amber pounded her fist on the ground on the side that Victor couldn’t see, trying to channel her frustration.  If Cal didn’t find them, things were going to spiral downward, quickly.

              “Now, please, quietly enjoy yourselves in a way that won’t require me shooting any of you.”  Victor flashed a toothy smile at them and snickered as he rejoined his comrades.

              Paco sighed audibly when Victor strode away, “That guy gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

              “Hee…bie…is that some kind of contagion?” Tomás asked in confusion.

              Amber didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.  “It’s just an expression Tomás, just an expression.”

              “An expression of what?”  He quite literally looked down his nose at Amber, and she knew he was blaming her for what Victor had planned for the evening.

              Bill jumped in, seeing that, as Amber had predicted, Tomás was starting to buckle under the pressure.  “Paco is saying that Victor makes him uncomfortable, that’s all.”  He put a steady hand on Tomás’ shoulder, “Hang in there. Nobody is dying.”

              “You can be calm because you don’t have to screw some hateful bitch with people watching and a gun at your head.”  He looked at Amber with a furious glare, “Although I’ve come close to doing it before…just without the guns.”

                “Let’s think about how to get you out of your predicament,” Wilson said, deflecting.

              Amber thought about everything that Bill and Wilson must have been through for the past two years, and she was ready to rip Tomás a new one for falling apart on day two of captivity. 

              “For god’s sake, Tomás, get your head out of your ass long enough to think about what these guys have been through.  Stop your whining so we can make a plan.”

              “So you can get back to your drug-dealing boyfriend?” Tomás spat.

              “Exactly.”  She decided to nip his train of thought in the bud, “And get over the fact that you never got to fuck me.  We’re all grown-ups here, we have bigger problems to worry about.”

              Tomás’ face turned beet red, and Amber didn’t know if it was in embarrassment or rage.  “Why don’t you just go fuck Victor and finish with it?  You know you want to,” he spat at her.  “In fact, you try to fuck everything.”

              “I’m sucking up to Victor to try to get you out of having to fuck that she-devil!” Amber hissed.             

              Paco’s eyes flicked back and forth like he was watching a tennis match, “Is it just me, or does anyone else thing that fucking should be the last thing on anyone’s mind right at this moment?”

              Bill intervened to defuse the situation, “Nobody is fucking anyone.  Everybody needs to calm the hell down.  Believe me, we didn’t get through the last two years by getting carried away by our emotions.  You want emotions?  Try watching one of your best friends slowly die of jungle rot and not be able to do a damn thing about it.”