The Accused (2 page)

Then the drivers saw it. A taxicab with its hood open—and jumper cables leading from its engine to under the open hood of an old bus. The bus and the cab were blocking the entire width of the road—so close to the thick, vine-covered trees on both sides that no car could pass.

A Mexican man of medium height was standing in front of the taxi. A taller man, with his back to the approaching vehicles, was bending over the engine of the bus. He was wearing a straw hat and a multicolored poncho.

The leader, in the Mercedes, stuck his head out and motioned frantically back toward the Colombians as the vehicles stopped about fifty feet from the taxi and the bus.

The Colombian driver jumped out with his weapon in this hand, yelling and cursing. “Move it now or you die!” he screamed. Soon the other man dashed out of the truck, joining in the yelling.

The man in front of the taxi nodded solemnly, looked at his companion, and raised his hands slowly over his head—moving around to the other side of the car.

But the bigger man did not move—his back was still to the Colombians.

The Colombian driver fired a round—sending two bullets through the multicolored cape and missing the man's torso by inches.

But the man in the hat and the cape did not move, except to turn slightly to view the bullet holes in the fabric—much like a bull would glance at a fly on his flank.

Neither the Colombians nor the terrorists in the Mercedes were looking toward the rear—where an American special operations agent
in black assault coveralls had scurried out of the abandoned café, straight to the back of the truck. The windows of the camper shell were covered with dirty curtains, so he reached his position without detection.

He took a metal canister filled with pressurized, reconstituted halothane gas and clamped its rubber feet to the truck's gate, holding it in place.

Then he fed a rubber hose into an opening at the corner of the rear window where it met the gate and turned the control knob on. The odorless, tasteless gas poured into the compartment that housed Secretary Kilmer and his two captors.

But up at the front—by the bus—the four men in the Mercedes were getting nervous. Then the driver of that car slammed it into gear and, throwing dirt and stones, spun it in a half circle and sped off in the opposite direction. The American special ops agent scuttled underneath the truck as the car flew past.

The two Colombians were still staring at the man in the hat and cape, who was not moving. They began laughing and taunting him as they walked closer—“Loco, loco!”

Then he stood up straight. And turned around fully and faced them.

That was when the Colombians stopped laughing. The man in the hat had an iron-hard expression on his face. And he was not a Mexican—he looked like an American.

Caleb Marlowe, Colonel, United States Marine Corps, pulled his Beretta pistol from under his cape and sent two deadly rounds into the chest of one of the Colombians, then turned the fury of his weapon on the other terrorist. The injured man managed to get off one shot after he was wounded by Marlowe, but was finished off as he tried to escape by the gunfire from two more members of the unit, who were shooting from their hidden positions in the café.

The gas in the back of the truck had partially overcome the two men guarding Kilmer—but they still managed to swing open the gate, though dazed and drugged, and started shooting randomly.

A third special ops sniper put both of them down with one bullet apiece.

The operative at the rear of the truck pulled Frederick Kilmer out. He yanked off the black hood and allowed him to breathe in fresh air for a few minutes. Then his rescuer started talking.

“Secretary Kilmer,” the man said slowly and calmly, “I am Master Sergeant Mike Rockwell—with a special unit from the United States. Can you understand me?”

Kilmer nodded.

“Sir,” the sergeant said, “you are safe now.”

In a few hours the secretary would be talking to his wife on the telephone while she sobbed in utter relief. His daughters—still at college—would learn later of his kidnapping and successful rescue.

Colonel Caleb Marlowe shucked off his hat and poncho and shouted to his special operations unit—who were all assembling around the pickup truck and surveying the dead terrorists.

“Okay, you bunch of heroes—game's not over yet. We've got to get those last four bad guys who just got away.”

Marlowe thought he knew the risks of that second phase of the operation. Their mission was to locate and kill four terrorists somewhere in the jungles of southern Mexico. It would not be easy. And it was guaranteed to be dangerous. For Marlowe and his unit, that much just came with the territory.

But there was also something, even for Marlowe, that was yet unknown: evil in its brutal design—and waiting.

What he did not know and could not have anticipated was the unexpected toll that was about to be exacted—as during some horrible, blood-cult ceremony before a stone god.

In the sweltering green overgrowth of the Yucatán jungle, Caleb Marlowe, brave American warrior, was about to face the darkest sacrifice of all.

2

O
N THE SEVENTH FLOOR OF THE LUXURY HOTEL
, Fiona stood before the sliding glass door in her bathing suit, combing out her wet tangle of dark hair. She padded barefoot over to the door, slid it open, and stepped out onto the balcony. As she did, her senses were greeted by the roaring crash of the ocean surf far below.

The trim, thirty-six-year-old woman leaned against the railing, and inhaled the mixed scent of sea air and the grilled shrimp that were being prepared somewhere down at the poolside café. The sun was hot, and the clear sky faded into the edges of an ocean brilliant with different blues—light crystal blue by the white beaches and stretching to the sandbar fifty yards out—then intensifying into aquamarine, and finally, from that point all the way out to the horizon, a glistening dark blue, like the surface of sparkling sapphire.

She glanced down at the gold band that adorned her left hand and the diamond that accompanied it. She had been on her honeymoon for only ten days. But so much had changed. So many lessons learned, in such a short time—heart knowledge in the ways of friendship, passion, intimacy, and love. As she felt the ocean breeze and contemplated the paradox of having fallen in love with the man she had, she found herself laughing out loud.

A mariachi band began playing below. She gazed out at the ocean again, catching a glimpse of a red, yellow, and blue sail gliding over the ocean.

She walked back in and picked up her watch from the desk. Her husband, Will Chambers, had been gone only forty minutes now.

She smiled at that and at how she was already longing for his presence. How could she have ever doubted that the two of them should be married and spend the rest of their lives together?

Of course there had been the usual communication problems…and the near impossibility of scheduling time together. The latter was particularly challenging, given the fact that Fiona already had an established music career as a gospel singer and recording artist, and that Will was a forty-three-year-old globe-trotting trial lawyer. But her greatest fear had always been the unseen, usually unmentioned, but ever-present ghost of Will's first wife, Audra.

Fiona didn't know whether it was Will's love for Audra or her tragic murder that had made his forgetting and moving beyond her death so difficult.

But in those last ten days all doubts had vanished. Fiona was convinced her relationship with Will was no product of coincidence. It was the result of divine matchmaking.

She had waited thirty-six years for the right man. She had had to be certain. But now she was. Not just because Will had come full circle—from an agnostic, former ACLU lawyer to a Bible-toting Christian. Beyond even that. God's hand in their first meeting and in their courtship had been so clearly evident.

She glanced over at the television, which had been left on with the volume turned down.

Only one cloud darkened the incandescence of their honeymoon. The violence and chaos of the outside world had still managed to invade their lives.

Fiona studied the INN news report and the ticker tape of information passing across the bottom of the screen. She was searching, now, for some recent news about the kidnapping of Secretary of Commerce Kilmer. She reached down and turned the volume up. But there was nothing new. It was the same news that had been flooding the television for the last twelve hours—that the Secretary of Commerce had been captured by a cell group of terrorists who were using Mexico as their base. They had spirited him out of a hotel in Cancún, Mexico, during an economic conference. Two Secret Service agents had been killed, and one injured.

At the hotel where Will and Fiona were staying in Cozumel, an island only some forty miles from Cancún, the kidnapping had resulted in a security alert. All of the guests had been ordered to stay on the grounds.

It was no inconvenience to Fiona and Will because this was the last forty-eight hours of their honeymoon. Besides that, Fiona felt secure. Looking back on her husband's extraordinary brushes with terrorism and violence in the past, she felt safe with him.

Then a news reporter, live from Cancún, appeared on the screen. She shared the breaking news:

Just minutes ago it was announced there has been a break in the hostage crisis here in Cancún, Mexico. Secretary of Commerce Frederick Kilmer, who was kidnapped by a terrorist cell group operating in Mexico, has now been released, and he is safely in the custody of U.S. officials. We are now being told that his release was secured yesterday by an American military strike force that attacked the kidnappers as they were heading through the Yucatán jungles around dawn. Several of the terrorists were killed, but four escaped.

There is no information yet about the identity of the terrorist group. However, unconfirmed sources tell us that it may have ties to the al-Aqsa Jihad—the terrorist organization linked with the late Abdul el Alibahd. Government sources withheld information about the rescue for nearly twelve hours because American special operation forces were still pursuing the remaining terrorists.

Fiona heard the door unlocking, and it swung open. Will was standing in the doorway with his island shirt unbuttoned in the front, wearing a pair of shorts and sandals. On his face was a broad smile.

“Great news,” he said. “The guy at the desk says the security hold is lifted. Apparently Kilmer has been released. The American military came in and got it done.”

Fiona explained she had just heard the same news on the television.

“We can now make outgoing phone calls,” Will said. “I thought I would call my office and let them know we're okay. Then maybe you can call your dad and tell him the same thing.”

He was going to grab the phone, but he noticed the smile on Fiona's face and the look in her eye. He strode over to her, gathered her up in his arms, and gave her a long kiss. Their bodies melded together.

“Isn't married life great?” Will asked with a smile.

“I was just thinking the same thing—out there on the balcony—looking at the ocean and thinking how wonderful it was that the Lord brought us together,” Fiona responded.

And then she added, “But I was just wondering something…”

“What?”

“Well—I was just wondering, during these first few days of our marriage—whether there is anything about me that has surprised you.”

“Yeah,” Will said, laughing. “You don't like seafood. Now I think that is probably going to be the
only
thing the two of us will ever seriously disagree on!”

Then he turned quiet. “So—what did you find about me that surprised you?”

Fiona thought for a moment. “That you were on the boxing team in college. That surprised me.”

“Why?”

“Oh—just the picture of you as a campus liberal. Pacifist. Antiwar. The whole picture doesn't match with the fellow who gets into a sport so he can break somebody else's nose!”

“Well, I didn't really tell you the whole story. My dad was a welterweight boxing champ in college. And he was the world's biggest political liberal. So—like father, like son.”

“You know, something else struck me while I was waiting for you.”

“Like what?”

“How are the two of us going to work out our impossible schedules so we can live happily ever after?”

Her husband smiled.

“I know we can do that—we are going to
have
to do that.”

“And I know we will. Actually, I was just thinking that the forty minutes you were downstairs just now was the longest we had been separated in the last ten days. And it was killing me!”

Will laughed and looked into her eyes and at her dimpled cheeks. He pulled her to himself again and gave her another long, lingering kiss.

“Go ahead—make your phone call to your office,” Fiona said, “and I will call Da after you're through.”

She walked over to her suitcase, which was already open on the bed, and started throwing some clothes into it.