Captive Heart (23 page)

Suddenly, the ground came up fast. JoNell pulled back on the stick, trying to keep the plane from nosing over. She had to put down in a small clearing surrounded by trees on three sides with a sheer drop into a canyon on the fourth side. The plane rolled briskly toward the edge of the cliff, threatening to shoot off into empty space. JoNell mashed the foot pedals to the right to avoid rolling over the cliff. The plane did a ground loop. There was a rending, shuddering crash as they struck a boulder.

JoNell sat stunned in the pilot's seat. Somewhere a bird squawked. She became conscious of pain inching up her left leg. She looked at Miguel, whose head was slumped forward, his chin touching his chest.

"Miguel?" she asked painfully.

He did not answer.

JoNell reached quickly for his wrist. Her fingers searched for a pulse, couldn't find one, then at last did. The pulse was weak, but steady. She drew a shuddering gasp of relief.

The pain in her leg was growing more intense. She pulled her jump suit pant leg up and saw a long, ragged gash in the calf of her leg. It was bleeding profusely.

She looked around the wreckage of the cabin. Then she remembered the radio and tried it. She heard nothing but static. The receiver was not working. Could she transmit? She tried, sending out "Mayday" calls in Spanish, giving her location as well as she could reckon it. But she had no way of knowing if the transmitter was working. She had the dismal feeling that she was wasting her breath.

JoNell unbuckled her seat belt and tried lifting her body from the confines of the airplane's interior which had been smashed in around them. When she was able to free herself, she unbuckled Miguel's seat belt, but his considerable weight proved impossible for her to move.

His breathing was shallow. He remained unconscious. His color was not good. JoNell was frightened for him.

She thought that she must try to find help. Miguel needed medical attention. They couldn't wait for hours, maybe days, for searching parties to find them.

JoNell climbed down from the plane. The right wing was flattened back over the cockpit. The front of the plane was crumpled like a ball of wastepaper. She winced at the sight of the wreckage.

When her right foot touched the ground, searing pain shot up her leg, making her cry out. She crumpled to the ground. The leg was hurt worse than she'd first thought. There must be some torn ligaments in addition to the deep cut. The leg couldn't support her weight.

She lay on the ground, gathering her strength. Then she dragged herself back into the plane. By now the sun had disappeared behind the mountain peaks. The long shadows had turned into twilight. Soon they would be swallowed by inky darkness.

She rummaged around in the wreckage that littered the cabin until she found a flashlight. She was going to need that light in the dark hours ahead. Next, she painfully shoved and pushed the boxes around until she located one containing medical supplies. With a pair of scissors she found in the box, she cut away the leg of her jump suit. Then she made a bandage out of a roll of gauze and tied it tightly around the gash that was bleeding steadily. In no time, the bandage was soaked red. She replaced it with a fresh wrapping. She was near the ragged edge of panic. What if she couldn't stop the bleeding? There was no telling how much blood she had already lost. Red stains were splattered all over the cabin. Waves of dizziness assaulted her, either from the loss of blood or shock and pain.

She rummaged through the box of supplies. It contained numerous bottles of drugs. She tried to read the labels by the light of her flash, but they were all generic names in Spanish. She had no idea what they were. But she did find a box of American brand aspirin, and she quickly swallowed two tablets.

Her leg did not stop bleeding until she had applied the third tight bandage. With that under control, she worked her way back around to where Miguel still sat slumped over, unconscious. Again she felt for his pulse. It was the same as before, a weak thread. JoNell now became aware of an ugly bruise on the side of his head that was becoming swollen. He'd evidently suffered a severe head injury. He might have a concussion or worse, a fractured skull with internal, cerebral bleeding.

A wave of desperation seized her, and with it an overpowering sense of guilt. She should never have tried to take off with the plane so heavily overloaded this close to nightfall. If Miguel lost his life, she'd have her poor judgment to blame.

She tried the radio again, giving her location and sending an urgent call for help. "Please…" she begged, tears streaming down her cheeks. "We need help. Please hurry and find us…"

But she still did not know if the transmitter was working. She could hear nothing on the receiver part of the radio.

Then she became aware of a new threat that turned her blood to ice—the unmistakable smell of gasoline. The crash must have ruptured a fuel line or a tank. If there were the slightest spark, they would die a fiery death in the plane.

Again, she tried her best to move Miguel. She tugged and lifted with what strength she had left. But after a bit she fell back in her seat, panting and damp with perspiration. There was no way she could move him. The door on his side was jammed solidly shut. And she did not have the strength to lift the heavy man across her seat and out of the door on her side of the cabin.

She began to shiver. With darkness came the bone penetrating chill of the night air at high altitude. On this trip, their cargo was only boxes of medical supplies. No blankets. Nothing to wrap up with against the cold.

She shone her flashlight over the boxes of supplies in the vain hope that she could find something that could help them. The light touched several pairs of crutches. When she saw them, a plan born of desperation began forming in her mind.

She located her map and studied it carefully in the glow of her flashlight. They were closer to the mining village than she had first thought. Actually, they had gotten to within about fifteen kilometers of their destination when they went down. Translated into miles, they were roughly ten miles from the village.

But ten miles could as well be a thousand if nobody knew they were here. They could easily sit here a week or longer as searching parties combed this wild, mountainous terrain, looking for them. That would be all right if neither of them had been injured. They had food and water to sustain them. But Miguel urgently needed medical attention.

As she was pondering the situation, she heard the distant rumble of thunder. She looked anxiously out of the open door on her side and saw lightning flashes along the eastern horizon. A worried frown crossed her brow. An electrical storm in the mountains could be an ominous threat to them. If a bolt of lightning struck around this gasoline soaked wreckage…

She shuddered.

The approaching storm removed any remaining indecision she had. Now she knew she had to find help to get Miguel out of the plane and to a doctor. And she had to do it soon.

Moving quickly before she lost her nerve, she tossed the crutches out, and then scrambled down after them. The aspirin had eased the pain of her leg a bit. With a pair of crutches to help, she found she was able to navigate. It was slow and painful going over the rough terrain, but she thought with luck she might be able to reach the village by morning. That is, if she didn't get lost, or didn't get bitten by a snake in the underbrush, or if she didn't freeze to death.

The cold air searched relentlessly through her flimsy jump suit and chilled her to the bone. How careless of her not to have brought a jacket! All she'd had on her mind today was the desperate plight of the village people.

She knew she must travel due west. She remembered the spot where the sun had gone down between two mountain peaks, and set her course in that direction. With some experimentation, she found she was able to discard one of the crutches and get along with just the left crutch to help take the weight off her injured leg. That left her right hand free to hold the flashlight. Its flashing beam was a slender shaft of light that enabled her to find the best path over the rough ground.

Once she left the clearing where the plane had crashed she found herself in inky blackness under a mass of trees. She was surrounded by a tangled growth of vines and underbrush. As she struggled along, she heard the strange night sounds of the jungle around her. Invisible wings would suddenly flutter above her. Something rustled in the underbrush near her ankle. She tried not to think about the kinds of wild beasts that lurked in this primitive area—pythons that could crush a human to death in minutes, panthers that could spring from a tree on their prey, poisonous reptiles slithering through the underbrush…

She had been making her painful, limping progress for about an hour when the storm struck. The thunder had been growing louder, the lightning steadily more brilliant. And suddenly, great torrents of rain slashed down.

She was soaked to the skin within minutes. Her teeth were chattering. She began whimpering with fright.

Great searing flashes of lightning were exploding all around. There were crackling reports like cannons going off as bolts of lightning ripped into giant trees, splitting them apart and sending branches crashing down.

She thought about poor Miguel, trapped in the gasoline soaked airplane with lightning striking all around, and she sobbed with despair and terror.

The ground was becoming a soggy, slippery quagmire. Wet leaves and branches slapped at her. She fell down, struggled to her feet, slipped and fell down again. Somehow she got up, but a few feet further on, she fell hard. The flashlight was knocked from her hand and went tumbling down a ravine. She heard a tinkle of glass as it smashed against a rock far below. Now there was only inky blackness split apart by the blue-white flashes of lightning.

JoNell huddled on the ground, sobbing frantically. As long as she'd had the flashlight, she had clung to a slender thread of hope. The flashlight had been like a friend, a companion. It had been her one weapon against the terrifying blackness of the jungle night. And she'd tried to believe that its flashing light frightened off predatory animals.

But now she was totally at the mercy of the savage night, half frozen, and helplessly lost. She knew she was going to die here, terrified and utterly alone.

Somehow she struggled to her feet. Now she was driven by sheer panic, the instinct to flee from danger. She pushed her way through the underbrush, ignoring the throbbing pain in her leg. She no longer had any sense of direction. There was only the primitive need to run.

Then the ground gave way. She pitched headlong into empty space. A scream was on her lips, but was never uttered. She was swallowed by blackness, a void into which she sank endlessly down, down, down into oblivion…

Consciousness was at first only fragmentary. There was white all around her. Faces peering down at her. A woman with a nurse's cap. A white ceiling. Darkness again.

Another fragment. A man's quiet voice. White again. He wore a white jacket. She saw a hypodermic needle in his hand poised over her arm. She looked away. Another face. Jorge Del Toro. Very pale, very worried. She licked her dry lips. She wanted to say something to him. But the needle pricked her arm. And then she felt very comfortable and sleepy.

She awoke and it was hard to breathe. Her chest hurt. She tried to complain. She looked around and saw only a plastic tent. She was trapped under the clear plastic tent. With a cry, she tried to sit up. But firm hands pushed her back. The reassuring voices again. The prick of the needle. Again the curtain of drowsiness closing around her.

The next time, her surroundings were in sharper focus. The plastic tent was gone. She could breathe more easily. The woman with the nurse's cap looked down at her and smiled. "Well, we're much better today, aren't we?"

She was talking Spanish. Why was she talking Spanish? Cuban, perhaps. So many in south Florida, now.

JoNell swallowed and tried her voice. "Is my mother here?" she asked in English.

The pretty nurse smiled, her eyes uncomprehending. "Would you be so kind as to speak in Spanish, seňora? I regret that my English is very poor. Your husband told us you are quite fluent in our language."