At the Edge (2 page)

It was go time. Time to focus. Time to put Emma Wright's pretty brown eyes and her luscious mouth out of his mind so he could think about his mission, which was to find four missing Americans and get them home.

The helo's rotors thundered as Ryan stared out at the rain forest, a place he knew from personal experience was teeming with deadly reptiles and plants and insects—not to mention people, the most lethal threat of all. The ambassador's plane had gone down over an island that was rumored to be controlled by a ragtag group of heavily armed militants who may or may not have had anything to do with the crash. This was no run-of-the-mill search-and-rescue mission—not by a long shot. Depending on what the SEALs found, the mission could have widespread repercussions.

Hewitt made the signal:
two minutes.

Ryan snugged his gloves on his hands. His fingers tingled with anticipation as he grabbed the rope. They were going in light and quiet, only a four-man element, with Ryan leading the way. It was a balls-out operation over unknown terrain put together on too-short notice, and Ryan felt lucky to be a part of it. Every man on Alpha Crew lived and breathed for moments like these, and whatever fear Ryan felt at all the unknowns awaiting him he kept locked away, deep inside him.

Another signal from Hewitt:
one minute.

A cool calm settled over him. Time to get it done. One more glance at his teammates before the CO gave him the nod.

Ryan gripped the rope. His palms burned and smoked as he jumped into the void.

THREE

N
ight came swiftly in the jungle.

One moment she'd been looking at scraps of daylight peeking through the treetops, and then everything had taken on a purplish hue. Minutes later, the world around her had gone ink-black, and every phobia in her deepest, darkest subconscious had come to life.

Emma had gone to her knees and crawled to a tree, where she'd huddled against the massive trunk and stared into the night, wide-eyed and terrified, sure her heart would pound right out of her chest. In the ensuing hours, every bloodcurdling possibility invaded her mind. She could be stung by a deadly insect or bitten by a rat. Or she might fall asleep and a tree boa would wind its way around her neck and slowly squeeze the life out of her.

After what seemed like an eternity, she'd managed to quell her imagination. Maybe it was exhaustion or the adrenaline of the crash wearing off, but gradually her thoughts and her heart had calmed, and the shrieking panic in her mind had become a soft whimper.

She'd started playing games in her head, a sort of mental Scrabble in which she'd create intricate crossword puzzles and give herself points. It was probably an odd way to pass the time, but she'd never been in the wilderness at night. She hadn't grown up camping. By age twelve, it had been just her and her dad, and he spent half the year in Washington, D.C. Emma had been on a few adventure trips with her boarding school, but those had been day trips—hiking or rafting or rock climbing. She'd never even built a campfire.

Gradually, her mind had tired, and she'd settled into less strenuous pursuits. She'd turned inward, focusing on her gnawing hunger and imagining herself in the produce section of her Seattle grocery store, surrounded by apples and bananas and juicy oranges.

But then the howler monkeys had started up, piercing the night with their shrill screams, leaping and swinging in the trees above her, and the strangling anxiety returned, stealing her breath until she felt light-headed with fear.

Nothing in her life had prepared her for being on her own in the rain forest. And she'd realized for the first time that darkness was a tangible
thing.
It was thick and pungent and inky. And it pulsed with the lifeblood of a million watchful animals, creatures that surely viewed her as prey—she had the insect bites on her arms and legs to prove it. Sometime deep in the night she'd dug her fingers into the loamy soil and covered every inch of skin she could reach with a protective layer of mud.

When the forest lightened at last, Emma hadn't slept a moment. She hadn't even dozed.

Now the sunlight beamed down through holes in the canopy, and Emma's limbs felt heavy with fatigue. Even heavier was the burden on her heart.

She'd failed to get the satellite phone working on the ridge. Now she was hobbling back down the hillside to the wreckage, and she feared she'd discover that Mick hadn't awakened during the night.

She also feared she was lost.

She'd tried to take a straight route up and down the slope, but the trees and plants around her seemed different today. She was headed down, yes, but nothing at all looked familiar. Maybe she'd gotten turned around.

Stay positive.

She plowed through the leafy branches, determinedly pulling her shoes out of the sucking mud. She had to keep going, both mentally and physically.

She focused her attention on Mick. If he showed any sign of consciousness, she'd try to get some water into him, then some food. It was a modest goal, and she felt sure she could accomplish it. She had to. There was no choice. Dr. Delgado had given her some rudimentary medical training, and she'd just been accepted into nursing school, for heaven's sake. She should be able to feed and hydrate an injured man.

Emma had a granola bar in her backpack—the one she'd stupidly left on the plane yesterday when she hadn't been thinking clearly. She'd craved it all through the night, but now she was glad she hadn't taken it with her, because she surely would have eaten it. If she could get Mick to take just a few bites and wake up a little, if he could just get a few words out and tell her how to operate the radio . . .

Assuming it wasn't fried. She'd been thinking about the singed smell from yesterday. Maybe the plane's electrical system had shorted out after the crash. Even if it had, she still had the satellite phone.

She adjusted it on her shoulder now, trying to keep it from digging into her skin. She'd pulled the leather belt from her pants and used it as a strap for the phone, which made it easier to carry, but now her pants kept slipping down her hips, and she kept having to tug them up.

Emma picked her way down the slope, favoring her bad foot and taking care to avoid vines and tree roots. It was slow going. Besides being hungry and tired and having a throbbing ankle, she now felt frustrated, too. She hadn't found a way to get the satellite phone working, and it was possible the fall from the upper cabinet had broken it.

Positive thoughts.

Mick wasn't dead. He would show her how to call for help.

He wasn't dead.

Wasn't wasn't wasn't.

But what if he was?

Tears burned her eyes.

“Stop it!” she hissed.

She had to stay positive. If she let negativity seep into her thoughts, she was done for. She'd be swallowed by the jungle, and no one would even find her remains. She hadn't stayed with the plane, despite her inner warning to herself. And now she was lost and hungry and—

Something glinted in the sunlight. Was that—?

She plowed forward, swiping the branches away. A wing!

The big silver wing that had been shorn off the airplane was lodged at an angle between two trees. It wasn't the fuselage, but that had to be close. She plunged through the branches, heart racing as she studied the thick trees for any sign of metal.

She spotted the wreck, and relief washed over her. She moved faster, as fast as she could on her sprained ankle.

A noise from the trees. Emma halted and listened. She turned to look but didn't see anything moving in the dense forest. She waited a few moments, but nothing made a sound. A butterfly flitted through a sunbeam and alighted on a purple orchid.

Emma trudged toward the fuselage. It looked smaller than she remembered, and the door was still open, but now she had to climb up, which would require arm strength.

Arm strength wasn't her thing. Neither was exercise, as her too-curvy body clearly showed. She did yoga occasionally, but her upper-body strength was a joke. Her calf muscles were good, but given her ankle injury, jumping up to hoist herself into the plane probably wasn't a smart idea. She neared the door and reached up to shove the satellite phone into the plane, then grabbed hold of the strut and managed to kick her good leg up. She grabbed the doorframe and used her foot for leverage as she pushed herself up and into the plane.

She ended up on the littered floor of the cabin, panting and sweating and holding her nose against the stench. She averted her gaze from the grisly scene in back and pushed to her knees.

“Mick?”

He wasn't moving, but he seemed to be in a different position from before.

“Mick? Sorry I was gone so long, but I'm going to get you some water.” She peered into the cockpit.

Emma's heart stuttered. Her mouth dropped open, and out came a primal scream.

———

A thorough recon of the area yielded plenty of intel, none of it good.

Ryan and his teammates found the plane—no surprise there. They'd had a fairly good idea of the location based on radio transmissions. And Jake had brought a metal detector, which had enabled them to quickly locate the debris field, which in turn led them straight to the aircraft.

Straight, as in the debris was scattered along a fairly straight line. But the trek had been far from easy—four solid hours of humping gear up and down hills, through gorges and canyons, until the plane came into view. It was pretty intact, too, with the one wing bent but attached and the tail unscathed.

The aircraft's interior wasn't at all what they'd expected. A quick check of it had left them alarmed and then rushing to form a new plan. The logistical details were still coming together as Ryan stared at the wreckage with a thousand grim thoughts whirring through his head.

Jake emerged from the trees, followed by Lucas Ortiz.

“Anything?” Jake asked Ryan.

“No.”

For the past three hours, they'd been searching for Emma Wright. She wasn't in the plane or the surrounding woods. But woman-sized shoeprints in the dirt around the aircraft—in particular, the door—indicated she'd left on her own two feet.

“Any sign of anyone else?” Lucas asked.

“No.”

The bodies of Renee Conner and Juan Delgado were still inside the plane, along with that of Walter McInerny, who was strapped into the cockpit with a bullet hole between his eyes. From the looks of it, he'd been shot with his own gun.

They had yet to find that gun, though—only an empty holster. Just like they had yet to find the crash's only possible survivor.

Jake took out his canteen and swilled water. “What kind of sick fuck would shoot an injured man with his own pistol?”

“Same sick fuck who'd drag a woman off into the jungle to rape and torture her,” Lucas said.

Ryan clenched his teeth and looked into the forest as Ethan Dunn stepped from the shadows. With his greasepaint and jungle cammies, he blended right in with the trees.

“What's the word?” Ryan asked him. Ethan had been up on the ridge for a radio transmission.

“Extract is at 0200, with or without survivors. And that comes from the top.”

“I'm not leaving without her,” Ryan said.

“A weather system's in the works.” Ethan wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. “They want us out beforehand so we can regroup, maybe come back with a larger team.”

Jake sneered. “What kind of shitty-ass plan is that?”

Not Hewitt's, Ryan could be sure of that. No way his CO would support a plan to end the mission before they'd accomplished their primary object, which was to locate and rescue the fucking passengers.

This plan had probably come from the head shed—the central planners, who sat off in some air-conditioned conference room in Washington or Langley, dreaming up battle plans with more regard for politics than for tactical considerations. They had been concerned about an international incident from the get-go, and they'd probably already whipped up some story to feed the media to explain how a plane carrying an American ambassador's wife had gone missing without any foul play involved whatsoever.

Ryan checked his watch. “Okay, we're burning daylight. I want this girl found before nightfall. We've got footprints around the aircraft and a trail that disappears into the forest due east of here.”

Ethan pulled out his GPS unit. “If we've got any hostiles on the island, they're most likely camped out on the west side, near the natural harbor. From up on the ridge I spotted a couple of boats moored there.”

Ryan leaned over Ethan's shoulder to look. He'd definitely describe the island's inhabitants as “hostile,” since they'd apparently shot the pilot. From the footprints, it looked like Emma Wright had headed toward the opposite side of the island. It was the best scrap of news they'd had in hours.

Ryan looked at his men.

“We'll cover more ground if we search separately. Everyone goes in a different direction.”

“I'll head west toward that harbor,” Ethan said. “I got a bird's-eye view already, so I have a feel for it.”

“Jake, head north,” Ryan said. “Lucas, south. I'll move east toward the shoreline there.”

“We should stay off the radio,” Jake put in. “If we're dealing with any kind of paramilitaries, they've probably got comms.”

Ryan nodded. “We'll reconnect at 1700 hours, regardless of what we find.”

Jake frowned. “Here by the plane?”

“No.”

The plane was a beacon for looters and other troublemakers. Ryan nodded at a ridge over his shoulder just a few hundred feet below a hilltop that was the planned extraction point. “Top of that first ridge there. That gives us three hours of daylight. We clear?” He looked at the faces.

“Check.”

“Check.”

“Roger that.”

They slipped into the forest, instantly becoming invisible among the leaves and tree trunks. Ryan moved quietly but swiftly. This was no time for slow, deliberate steps. He had to work fast.

Ryan pointed his footsteps downward and paralleled a rushing creek. Even dazed and confused, Emma Wright probably would have turned toward the sound of water. It was a survival instinct. And when people were tired or injured, they tended to move down, not up, letting gravity help them.

So was this girl tired and injured? Ryan didn't know. He only knew that she wasn't on that plane, and the footprints in the dirt indicated that she'd survived the crash and jumped down from the fuselage. Maybe she was off somewhere hiding. He hoped to hell she hadn't been grabbed.

Ryan followed the stream, scanning the ground for any trace of human passage. The brush grew weedy and thick, and several times he had to backtrack to find a route. It wasn't like he could whip out a machete and chop his way through, not if he wanted to keep his tracks covered.

Within half an hour, he was soaked to the skin. Within ninety minutes, his socks were like sponges. Ryan glanced up at the canopy of leaves. He was losing daylight, and night came quickly in the rain forest. He should have turned around by now, but he had a better chance than anyone of finding Emma, and he couldn't shake the certainty that she was out here somewhere.

He stopped to drink. In this environment, his body was burning through at least two liters an hour.

Ryan tipped his head back and guzzled water. He scanned the muddy banks of the stream, checking for footprints or handprints among the giant tree roots. A thick green pit viper slithered under a tree and disappeared.