without any intelligence on the camp beyond what he’d seen earlier, he’d have to improvise as he went. On the plus side, he had a career’s worth of experience to draw on. On the minus side, he hadn’t been out in the field since the ambush. He was bound to be rusty.
His boss, General Wittenauer, was prone to say he’d rather work with an American Special Forces team on a bad day than any other soldier in the world on a good day. Apparently, that theory got to be put to the test, and he was the guinea pig.
He glanced at his watch-7:00 a.m. He could probably catch a few hours’ sleep, but then he’d have to get moving and start his approach to the camp. He’d need to be in place close to the compound before nightfall. He’d need all of the coming night’s hours of darkness to rescue Mel’s family.
He set his wristwatch alarm to vibrate him awake at noon. He was cutting it close, but he was in lousy physical shape after the past few days’ hiking and emotional upheaval, and he needed to be at the top of his game for what he had planned. Melina seemed content to doze beside him as the day heated up and their tiny shelter grew sultry with humidity and body heat. He mumbled instructions to her to wake him if she heard or saw anything at all out of the ordinary, and then he crashed.
When his watch jangled against his wrist, he jolted awake from a surprisingly deep and restful sleep.
“Hey, handsome,” she murmured against his neck.
“Hey back atchya, beautiful.”
She stretched with feline abandon against his side. “I needed that.”
He laughed under his breath. “So did I.”
Her hand meandered across his chest, idly at first, then dipping suspiciously lower. He captured her fingertips and carried them to his lips. “It’s time to get going, sweetheart.”
“No good-luck farewells or lingering kisses?” she murmured in disappointment.
“I wish. But I’ve got a lot to do before sunset.”
“What about me? What do I have to do?”
“We have to find you a hiding spot, and get you tucked out of sight.”
“I have to
“Sorry. But I’ve got to do this alone.” He explained regretfully, “I’m going to draw upon all kinds of tricky Special Forces skills, and an amateur would only get in my way.”
She nodded her understanding, and thankfully, didn’t protest.
“You will need to be ready to boogie the second I hand your family over to you. I’m going to give you some maps to study with several alternate routes drawn on them. I need you to study those maps like crazy and memorize every nuance of them, every topographic line, every hill and valley, every ridgeline. Your life and your family’s lives may depend on you knowing those maps like the back of your hand.”
She nodded seriously.
Of course, if all went well, he’d be there to lead them all out, and the exercise in map memorization would be fruitless. But it would keep her busy for a good long time and make her feel useful. And keeping her happily occupied was vital. Civilians with too much time on their hands to think had a tendency to talk themselves into all sorts of trouble, and he really needed her to just sit tight and be patient.
They grabbed a quick bite to eat, refilled their canteens, and packed up their makeshift camp. He carefully erased the signs of their presence, laying down and tamping into place the rolled sod of moss he’d removed before he’d pitched their shelter.
They moved carefully, easing around the south side of the camp to its western margin. The compound’s north end butted up against the cliff, and the east side was bounded by a small, but fast-flowing stream. He planned to use the noise of that flowing water to mask his approach to the camp, in fact.
He found a thicket a little way up a steep western slope, and settled her deep in the middle of the jumbled vines and brambles. She was well clear of the camp, out of sight and mostly out of earshot. Her position was readily accessible from the hillside above, too, which was likely to be the direction from which he and her family approached her.
He’d give anything to have radios for the two of them to stay in touch, but he hadn’t come out here expecting to run a rescue mission. As it was, maybe it was a good thing she couldn’t call him at an awkward moment and blow his cover as he approached Huayar’s hideout. Another thing he’d learned about civilians over the years: they tended to babble when they got nervous, and they sucked at radio discipline. The combination had potential to be deadly if they wouldn’t shut up and stay off the airwaves at critical moments.
He stepped back to survey Melina in her makeshift hide. He adjusted a few branches, and then nodded his satisfaction. “You’re all set, sweetie. Give me until sunrise tomorrow. If I or your family don’t meet you here by then, go west as fast as you can until you know you’re alone. Call that number I had you memorize and tell the guys what’s gone down. They’ll come get you.”
“But what if-”
“If we don’t walk out by tomorrow morning, we’re all dead or about to be dead. Nothing you can do will save us at that point.”
Her eyes went big and dark with apprehension. “You have to make this work, John. For us.”
She smiled up at him, and he leaned down to kiss her. He paused, inches from her mouth. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”
She laughed up at him and reached up behind his neck to drag him down for a kiss. “I love you, John Hollister.”
He lifted away from her far enough to gaze down into her warm…loving…eyes. “I love you, too.”
Still fresh on their lips, the words flavored their kiss of farewell with unbearable sweetness. They broke the contact with the greatest of reluctance, and it took all the strength of will he had to straighten up and take a step back from her.
“Go get ’em, tiger,” she murmured.
He grinned jauntily. “A walk in the park, darlin’.”
But when he turned to walk away, a suspicious wetness on his cheeks threatened to smear his greasepaint.
Chapter 14
Melina stared at the maps John had left with her until she could see every last detail of them perfectly in her mind’s eye. Much of the terrain she recognized from their trek into this valley, and it helped her to visualize what the various routes John had marked on the map would look like on the way out. She snacked on one of the power bars he’d left her and sipped at one of the bottles of water in her pack.
And she waited.
It was nerve-racking in the extreme to just sit here like this, with no idea what John was doing at this exact moment, not knowing whether her family was all right, or whether Huayar had lost patience with her and decided to kill them all. She told herself a hundred times that Huayar wanted the drug formula bad enough to wait for her to show up, especially since John had made a big deal of the fact that they were going to take their sweet time getting here. It would be all right. It would be all right. It would be…
Although she didn’t think it would ever get there, the sun finally began to dip into the west, sliding down toward the line of mountains behind her. She couldn’t see the mountains because of the thick canopy of forest overhead, but she felt their massive presence looming, solid and immovable, measuring time in eons her puny human mind couldn’t begin to comprehend.
John should be in position near the camp by now. He’d told her his goal was to get close to the camp today, so that as soon as it got dark he could start his move into the compound. She couldn’t imagine how he planned to work his way right into the middle of a heavily populated place like that, but he seemed confident he could pull it off. And since their future rested on it, she had faith he was plenty motivated to succeed.
She was so proud of his progress. He really seemed to have turned the corner last night when he finally gave
