Safe Without You (24 page)

              “Hmmm, let me think a moment about how short we should go,” Amber said.  She grasped the closed shears like a dagger in one hand, and caressed Victor’s neck and throat with the other.  She reached one arm around in front of him, as if to embrace him, pulling him to her.

              “Take your time,” Victor murmured, “I’m in no hurry.”

              “But I am,” Amber whispered into his ear, as she pressed the point of the shears against the slight bulge of his carotid artery.  “One sound, one move…and you’ll bleed out right here.”

              She reached down and pulled his pistol, passing it quietly to Bill.  Wilson already had the compact revolver from her bra holster.  They trained the guns on the two soldiers left in camp.  Paco called to them in Spanish, and suddenly they realized what was going on.  They raised their hands in the air, and Paco and Tomás gagged them before securing them with some of the ropes that the hostages were tied up with at night.

              “You surprise me, Tania.  I thought we were getting on so well,” Victor sighed.

              “I don’t usually allow my lovers to tie me up at night, well…not unless it’s with silk scarves.”  Amber pricked him with the point of the shears to remind him of their sharpness and proximity to a major blood vessel.  “And stop calling me Tania.”

              “There are still four more soldiers out there,” Victor said casually, as Paco and Tomás tied his hands and feet.

              “Do you really think Mariana is still playing on team Victor after the way you treated her?  What about the man you pistol whipped across the face?”  Amber shook her head.

              “Don’t underestimate their loyalty.  Mariana loves me, and the other knows my captain will put a bullet through his head if something happens to me.  I’m highly regarded by our leadership.” 

              Victor smirked, and Amber poked him again.  “Don’t make me gag you, Lieutenant ‘Victor the Vicious’ Marquéz.”  She turned to look at Bill and Wilson,  “Now what?”  Amber asked.

              “Now,” Bill said, “We have to wait.”
 

###

              The bowman next to him made a sound that mimicked a birdcall perfectly.  The soldier glanced around, and then looked at the pile of laundry, clearly puzzled.  His rifle was slung haphazardly over his shoulder, since he had no intention of using it, as he called Mariana’s name.

The bowman made a different birdcall, and the Embera bowmen all emerged from the foliage with their weapons drawn.  The soldier tried to get his rifle off his shoulder, as the interpreter stood poised and ready with his blowgun.  Cal and Ramiro stepped out, the marshals following.

              “I wouldn’t do that,” Cal said in Spanish, “My friend over there has a blowgun aimed at your neck, and the dart has been poisoned with some very toxic frog juice.”

              The soldier raised his hands, and he was quickly zip-tied as well.

              “How many of you are there?” Ramiro asked.

              The soldier glared at them sullenly, but said nothing.

              Cal sighed, “Don’t be all brave, we can end this right here…one poisoned dart will put you in convulsions, and then you die.  We wouldn’t want to announce ourselves with a gunshot.”

              Ramiro repeated his question, “How many of you are there?  Help us, and we will make sure you are treated favorably.”

              Beaten, the man mumbled, “Five others, plus the woman who was here doing laundry.”

              Ramiro looked at him, “Well, our Embera colleagues have her…tied up.”

              “How many hostages?”  Cal asked.

              “Five.”

              “Five?  You have an American woman, and a Hungarian man and his guide?”  They didn’t know of anyone else that had been missing from the area.

              “Si.”

              “Who else?” Cal demanded, “These are people you took recently?”

              He shook his head, “No, two Americans, they’ve been with us for two years.”

              Cal jerked.  Americans?  The only Americans that he knew of FARC still holding were his father and the two others taken with him.  “Americans?  You’re sure?  Two, not three?”

              The man sneered at him, “Si, Americans.  There were three, but one was very weak, and he died.”

              Cal lunged at the man, ready to rip his head off, but Ramiro caught him. 

              “Cal, stop…there’s no time for this.  We have them outnumbered, and we have the element of surprise.”  He grabbed the man’s jaw, “How far away is the camp?”

              The man evidently felt like he had said enough, and tried to wrestle his head away from Ramiro’s grip.  Ramiro simple squeezed harder and repeated the question.

              “Two hundred meters,” the man spluttered.  Ramiro released him.

              Cal had composed himself, “I don’t think the Embera should go any further, they can guard him, and have the boats ready to go in case we have to make a fast get-away.  They need   to search for FARC’s boat, and we’re going to need the dugout back up here to hold everyone if there are five hostages.”

              The translator explained the plan and the two bowmen dragged their prisoner to the riverbank.  He turned back to Cal and Ramiro, “I am coming with you—the blowgun can be very useful.”

              “Okay,” Cal relented, “But stay behind us.”

              While they were interrogating their prisoner, one of the marshals had climbed up some rocks to get as high a vantage point as possible.  He was scanning the jungle with the binoculars, looking for any movement or anything else that might give them more information.

              “Shit,” he breathed out, and the group raised their eyes to look at him.  “We’ve got trouble.”

              “What do you see?” Cal asked; itching to go now that he knew Amber—and possibly his father—was merely the length of two football fields away.

              “It’s a column of soldiers, maybe twenty of them, descending from a ridge top.”  He scrutinized the tiny figures in the distance.  “And…they are headed this way…in another few              minutes, they’ll all be down on the jungle floor…and I won’t be able to follow their movement any more.”

              Ramiro shut his eyes for a moment, and Cal didn’t know if his partner was thinking or praying.  “Then we have to move fast…or things are going to get really hairy.  Let’s move out single file—and quietly.  No more talking unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

              Duke nodded, “Yes sir, we are locked and loaded.”

              The expression on Cal’s face was grim as he considered the possibility of being so close to Amber, and perhaps even his father, and not being able to save them.

###

             
What if I have to kill Victor?  What if Cal doesn’t get here, and I have to kill Victor, and we have to make a run through the jungle?  What was that movie the Colonel used to love…Logan’s Run?  It was about people running to Sanctuary so they wouldn’t be terminated.  I wish the two soldiers gathering wood would get their asses back here so we can get on with the plan, but we don’t dare run with them wandering around out there along with Mariana and the other one.  And where the hell are they?  I can understand Mariana dragging her heels about coming back to camp, but why hasn’t the other guy brought her back yet? 

              Holding a pair of scissors at someone’s neck is harder than it sounds.  It takes a lot of attention and I’m getting tired.  Maybe Paco could do it for a while, but Victor might try something if we switch places, although he is tied up, so I don’t know what he could do.  God, my mind is spinning.  I can’t even think straight anymore. 

              Are you out there, Cal?  I need you to come; I don’t think I can kill a man, no matter how terrible he is. 

             
“Tania,” Victor said softly.

              “I told you to stop calling me that, my name is Amber.”

              “Alright, Amber…you might consider making a get away.”

              “Get away?”

              “When we radioed this morning, well…we learned that one column of my forces are much closer than I thought.  They crossed into Panama two weeks ago.  They are joining us for the march back, to give us some relief handling…our guests.”

              “They can’t be moving very fast out there in the swamps.”

              “Oh, actually they are very adept, and now, they are very, very close.”  Victor smiled maliciously. 

              “So how will it look when they find you tied up like a pig ready to roast?”  Amber pricked him a little with the tip of the scissors.

              Victor shut up, but Bill and Wilson had heard, and the news disconcerted them.

              “We’ve got to figure out where the other four are, so we can get out of here.  They have a boat, right?”  Bill asked.

              “I arrived in a boat, I would think it’s around somewhere, but they’ve probably hidden it so it can’t be seen from the river,” Amber sighed as she pushed the shears into Victor’s neck, drawing a drop of blood from his skin, “Where’s the boat?”

              She wondered if this was the way torture started, as one became more desperate, one crossed further and further over the lines of conventional morality.
              “Having no further use for it, we destroyed it.”  Victor smiled gleefully, and Amber wanted to ram the shears all the way through his neck. 

              “Anyone ever tell you that you are a total prick?” she said, instead.

              “You want me to gag him?” Paco offered, “I’m kind of tired of listening to his shit.”

              “Except he keeps giving us bits of information,” Wilson said. 

              “Arrogance can rarely keep its mouth shut,” Bill added.

              “What are we going to do…so we don’t go south?” Tomás asked.

              His literally interpretation of a figure of speech for once made sense, Amber thought.  “Colombia is actually a little more to the southeast, but all the same, good question.” 
              “We need to deal with the other four before we dare take off.  We can’t chance meeting them in the forest,” Wilson said. 

              “And then what?  We leave these guys trussed up to die of dehydration?” Amber wondered aloud.

              “If his men are as close as he says, then they’ll be found long before they die,” Bill blinked, remembering something.  “I’ve been three days without water, and I didn’t die.”  He turned his gaze to Victor, “This one thought it would be amusing to see how we did if they refused us water.”

              One again, the homicidal urge to spear Victor on the scissors ran through Amber.  Maybe, she thought coolly, maybe she could be capable of killing Victor, after all. 

              Suddenly, there was a cracking sound and everyone twitched: shots had been fired in the jungle.

Chapter 18

The two soldiers gathering wood had dropped their bundles and pulled out their guns upon seeing human movement through the trees.  A flash of red signaled to them that it was neither Mariana nor their other comrade.  Taking cover, they waited, allowing the people moving toward them to get closer.  The younger one, a boy maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, fingered the trigger on his rifle nervously.  Behind him, a howler monkey suddenly screeched, and startled, the boy pulled the trigger.

              Duke dropped to the ground with a grunt, clutching at his leg as blood spurted from the wound.  The bullet had gone all the way through, but it looked to Cal as if it might have nicked Duke’s femoral artery.  Duke was trying to put pressure on his own wound, but it was clear from the pallor of his face that the marshal was going to pass out soon.  Everyone had taken cover, and then, the two FARC soldiers retreated.  Cal and the translator both ran to Duke’s side.  Cal pulled off his t-shirt, balling it up and pressing it to the wound. 

              “We need a tourniquet,” Cal said.

              Quickly, the translator ripped a wide piece from his loincloth, and then looking around, stripped some leaves from a plant.  “Put this on the wound first, it will make the blood clot.”

              Cal didn’t argue, he knew that the Embera were skilled with natural remedies.  They ripped and tied the t-shirt around the wound, then made a tourniquet with the cloth and a stick above the bullet hole.

              Ramiro and the other two marshals had made their way over.  “We’ve got to get him out of here, to the hospital in La Palma as quickly as possible.  He could lose that leg if the tourniquet is on too long,” Ramiro said with concern.

              “But we need all the boats to get everyone out of here if there are five hostages.”  Cal looked at the injured man in front of him who had put himself at risk for people he didn’t know. But he couldn’t shake the thought of Amber—and his father—so close, yet still so far away. 

              “I can hear ya’ll,” Duke muttered.  “Our Embera friend here can help me back to the river—you guys have to go get those hostages.  I’m a tough ol’ bastard, I’ll be okay.”

              One of the other marshals started to argue with Duke, but he interrupted him.  “We always get our man.  We agreed to the mission, now go finish it.”

              Ramiro slipped off a necklace he was wearing, kissed it, and put it around Duke’s neck.

              “I hope that’s not a St. Jude’s medal,” Duke wisecracked, referring to the patron saint of lost causes.

              “Uh uh, that’s a St. Michael—patron of lawmen.”

              “Well, alright then.  Get me up—then get out of here.”  Duke grimaced as the translator and one of the marshals helped him get upright.  He leaned on the translator, “I’ll be fine, shoo.”

              The pair limped back toward the river, as the others cautiously made their way through the jungle.