He had been right the first time. Something was wrong.
Aussie pulled the old jeep off to the side of the road at a wide spot created by a driveway entrance that parted the heavy foliage. When he turned off the lights the road was plunged into black. Along the road were more massive vutu trees that held the darkness and made the air heavy with scent. Sweat poured from Anna and the adrenaline in her made the heat a dull ache. She knew she could get killed for real on this gig. For just a second she wondered if she should have stayed a little farther from the action.
“It’s just up ahead,” he said. “The lady who owns this driveway runs a campground and has groups of kids from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, and the U.S.A.”
“Jason’s just around that bend?”
“You got it. Are you ready to look like a drunken tourist?”
“All ready.” She slipped off her shirt so that she wore only tight jeans and a bikini top. Aussie grabbed his hat. A big Stetson.
“I thought you didn’t wear hats around here.”
“Right. It offends the chief. But I’m supposed to be a dumb tourist.”
Aussie took the mag light from between the bucket seats.
“All go, jungle man,” Sam’s voice crackled in their earpieces.
They walked up the road toward the bend where they would step off into the thick foliage. “Ten minutes,” he said as they walked.
A vehicle came around the corner. It sounded like a truck. They kept walking, moving over very close to a large ditch that ran down the road edge. The truck slowed as it approached. It frightened Anna, but she didn’t know why. She told herself that there was nothing so unusual about a truck in the middle of the night. As it drew close she could see that it had a roofed-over cargo area in the back. On the sides were canvas curtains.
The truck pulled up, making an unmuffled rumble. It was white under a film of mud. A bright and blinding light pierced the night from the driver’s-side door. She saw men jumping from the back.
“Run,” Aussie said. He plunged into the bushes and she followed the white of his T-shirt. They galloped over and past bushes clawing at their clothes, her tennis shoes sliding. Lights flashed through the foliage and pockets of darkness leaped out at her. Then a man was right behind her, grabbing for her. He tackled her and she fell hard.
Aussie appeared above her, fighting; then came others. A big man held her to the ground. She couldn’t move.
Two of them attacked Aussie, knocking him down. A third man started clubbing him with a rifle butt.
“Stop,” someone said.
A blond, mustached man with a scar under his chin appeared. He had a coldness about him that felt like snakes on a carcass.
“Hold him,” the man said. Now she saw that there were four of them plus the leader. Aussie was unconscious and bleeding badly from the nose. One of them held Aussie’s head by the hair. The leader pulled up Aussie’s eyelid and shone a light in the pupil.
“Cuff them both.”
Roughly they put handcuffs on her and on Aussie.
“Go back to the truck.”
The men looked at each other, confused.
When they were gone, he turned to Anna.
“Shut up and stay there or I’ll beat your face in.” The accent was heavy French. He stared at her as if to let his words sink in. “You get to watch. This is the easy way to die. You don’t want the hard way. Those animals would love to torture and rape you.”
Then he pulled out a syringe and stuck it up Aussie’s nose. In seconds his body shook and spasmed.
“No,” Anna screamed.
A fog enveloped her face and she was choking, dying, hot mush filling her lungs, taking her air.
“I thought I said shut up.”
“Wait,” Sam whispered. “Hold fire.”
As the group strolled forward the leader stopped. “There’s nobody here,” he called out.
Sam wasn’t sure whom he was talking to.
“I’m going to bed. Hey, Chief. You can come out now. This is stupid. We’ve done this for three nights and there’s nobody here.”
“Make sure you’re under cover,” Sam whispered into the mike, and moved farther back in the bushes. Obviously it was a trap, and the leader was now breaking discipline.
“Aussie?” Sam said.
He heard a grunted response.
“Get Anna back.”
“It’s too late.”
It was another voice.
“Switch to Robin,” Sam said. Reaching down to his radio, Sam keyed in a code.
“Listen up. There’s no time. If lights come on, shoot them out. Take off your night vision.”
Just as Sam said it the place lit up like a stadium. His men responded with rapid fire and within seconds, no lights.
“Night vision back on,” Sam said. Take ’em out.”
There were muted pops from all around, and in two seconds the men that had been fleeing across the lawn lay flopping on the ground like so many boated fish.
Return fire came from the trees. A muzzle blast lit the night. Sam’s men shot back without an order. Stun grenades began going off in the trees, people falling to the ground. It was a war. Sam knew better than to listen on the old radio channel. He didn’t want to hear the ultimatum. He knew the guys in the trees were only part of the enemy force, maybe not even the main force. There would be many others on the trail back to the boat.
“Holt, Gomez, Ruby, stay here, mop up. Everybody else, follow me,” Sam said, running.
Somebody had completely outthought them, and he had nearly gotten them all killed. Now Anna was probably as good as dead.
They ran down the road, around the bend, and saw the truck.
“If it moves, shoot it,” Sam said. Men jumped from the truck and took a volley of silenced shots. Anna and Aussie weren’t in the truck. Sam noticed the break in the foliage. No Anna. Down the road there would be a car. Sam suspected they had been taken by the occupants of the truck while on foot.
Spying another break in the foliage he tapped T.J. and jumped into the brush, running, then stopping. He heard struggles and a woman’s groans.
“Let’s die trying,” he whispered to T.J.
They charged at the bushes, firing rubber bullets everywhere, not worrying if they hit Anna.
Gaudet worked fast, wanting to know what Anna knew before killing her. The big man’s heart was fluttering but hadn’t quite quit; Gaudet knew better than to leave him prematurely. He sprayed more potassium chloride and felt for a pulse again.
With Anna it had to be done much more carefully, had to look like a real accident, and that was becoming impossible fast. The Chellis and Aziz men at the beach had radioed no sightings of men retreating to the boat. Anna’s friends had all been killed or wounded. It would take Aziz’s men a while to figure out that she was missing, and by then he would have her in the helicopter.
The pepper spray had turned her into a choking mess. To shut her up completely he’d need to kill her, and he wasn’t ready to do that. “Screw it,” he muttered to himself, tired of waiting for the man to die. He picked Anna up and threw her over his shoulder. It was at that moment he suspected that he might have made a major miscalculation.
“If it moves, shoot it,” he heard.
He began to run, but it was hard without a light and a light would bring them. There were shots, lots of them. Some very muted. A few unmuted.
