Return to Tomorrow (3 page)

 

T
HEY LEFT THE CROWDED
business district of Chiang Mai with its busy shops and noisy street vendors behind, early on the second day of their journey. Bartley's Land Rover climbed out of the valley at the foot of Mount Doi Sutep, heading north into the hills. Below them the gilded spires of the city's two hundred temples reflected the fire of the morning sun.

Tucked away in a cardboard cylinder in the back seat with Rachel's other things was one of the brightly colored, beautifully painted paper parasols for which Chiang Mai was famous. It was a small token of welcome to northern Thailand, Bart had said with his charming smile. Rachel had accepted it readily in the spirit of goodwill in which it was given. But that had been five hours ago and her store of goodwill was very nearly used up.

After stopping for lunch at a roadside park, they left the highway somewhere south of Chiang Rai, the last town of any size they were to pass through on their way to the border camp. The paved road ended an hour
later, soon after they'd started climbing steeply into the mountainous jungle, heading toward an ancient
wat
, a Buddhist temple, that Bart insisted probably dated from the thirteenth century and was well worth the extra time it would take to find it. The sun had long since passed its zenith, the short January day was drawing to a close, and they were lost. At least in Rachel's opinion. Harrison Bartley, so far, hadn't admitted he no longer had any idea where they were.

Above them the jungle canopy met across the narrow road, a green, mysterious archway, shutting out the sun, confusing the senses. Closer to the ground, pressing almost to the sides of the Land Rover, the understory of the forest made a living barrier, a claustrophobic tunnel-like path, the stuff of nightmares. Rachel's nightmares. For years she'd wandered such a dream path, looking for a way home, trying to find her brothers and her parents, searching for the baby she'd lost….

“How much farther is it to the temple?” she asked in what she hoped was a perfectly ordinary voice. She looked down at her hands clenched into fists on her thighs and made herself relax, stretching her fingers. She'd been planning this trip for nearly a year. A few more hours, one way or another, would make no difference. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she tried not to look at the living wall of bamboo and vines, orchids and nettles that made up much of the nearby growth.

“We should be there within the next few minutes.” Bart wasn't very good at hiding his emotions. His voice was edgy with uncertainty. Rachel picked up on it immediately.

“Do you have any idea at all where we are?” She half
turned on the seat to face him, realizing all at once just how young and very inexperienced he probably was. He didn't look directly at her but kept his eyes on the trail—it could hardly be termed a road any longer.

“Not since we made that last turn after crossing the river,” he admitted. “I haven't recognized anything from the map for the last half hour.”

“You have a map?”

“Of sorts.” He shrugged. “A friend from the embassy gave it to me, but there is no telling how accurate it is.”

Rachel felt her hands curl back into fists. Her nails bit into her flesh and the small pain made her angry. Anger, she'd learned long ago, was much easier to deal with than fear. Fear made you weak and prey to defeat. Anger made you strong, gave you the strength to keep on fighting. It was much better to be angry than afraid. And she was afraid, afraid of being lost once again in the uncharted jungles of Southeast Asia, the alien, hostile land where she'd spent nearly a third of her life against her will.

“Turn around,” she said, and heard the harsh rasp of panic in her voice.

Bart took his eyes off the road long enough to shoot her a questioning look. “Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” she said, but more quietly, with more control. “Just turn around.”

“I'm sure we're going in the right direction.” To Rachel's way of thinking, he didn't sound certain at all.

“I still think we should turn back. If we don't waste any time we can make Chiang Rai by dark.”

“Chiang Rai?” Bart sounded annoyed. “We don't
want to backtrack all the way to Chiang Rai. We should be twelve, fifteen kilometers east of there by now. According to the map, this road eventually leads back to the main route.”

“But you can't be sure of that. I don't want to spend the night in this truck. Please turn around.”

“I can't,” Bart pointed out. “The road's too narrow. Look, the next clearing we come to we'll check our direction with the sun.”

“You mean you don't have a compass?” Rachel didn't try to keep the disbelief out of her voice.

“Sorry, they're hardly standard issue at the embassy.”

“I have one in my duffel.” It was beginning to look like a good thing she'd also packed some bottled water and dried fruit. They'd probably need it before they found their way out of the jungle. “Stop and I'll get it out.”

“No need.” Bart pointed ahead of them a few dozen yards. “We're coming to a clearing.” The “clearing” was merely an elongated opening in the seemingly endless stretch of jungle. A narrow stream ran through it. The trail crossed it on a bridge of half-sunken, flattopped teak logs. The sun was disappearing behind the topmost branches of the trees. When Rachel saw it, the fear inside her grew stronger than ever. The sun was almost directly in front of them, not behind them and to their left, as it should have been if they were still traveling in a northeasterly direction.

“We're going the wrong way.” Panic beat inside her with dark, strong wings. How often had she heard herself say that to Father Pieter during the long weeks they'd
struggled through just such undergrowth in their flight from their Vietnamese captors?

Harrison Bartley stuck his head out of the window of the Land Rover and squinted up at the fast-dropping winter sun. “Damn, I think you're right.”

“Turn around,” Rachel said. “Now.”

To his credit, Bart didn't argue. He drove a short way onto the primitive bridge and began to back around onto the low bank of flat stones and red mud bordering the stream. The roadway was so narrow he simply couldn't make the turn any other way. Rachel sat stiffly on the leather seat. She could smell the living jungle in the moist, hot breeze stirring the leaves along the stream edge. It was an earthy, damp smell, composed as much of the dead and dying as of the new and emerging. It was at once familiar and strange, exciting and terrifying.

They had almost completed the turn when the back wheel of the Land Rover slipped off a stone and sank into the mud. Bart gunned the motor. It stalled and they sank deeper. With an oath Bart ground the starter. The engine caught, held, then sputtered into silence.

“Flooded,” he said, making the word a curse.

All the sounds of the jungle the motor had drowned out rushed in to fill the silence. Birds chattered and squawked. Somewhere not too far away something small and frightened squealed in terror. Tigers still roamed these mountain jungles, as did panthers and wild boars. Rachel had not forgotten that fact. Death—and ruthless men who could make life worse than death—stalked the pathways beyond the trail.

She was going to be stranded here for the night with a man she hardly knew. Alone with him in the cramped
confines of the Land Rover. That scared her almost as badly as the lengthening shadows creeping closer and closer, even as she willed them away. She had been alone with no man except her father and brothers since Father Pieter had passed away.

Bart got out of the truck and walked around to the back, the thick mud of the stream bank sucking at his shoes. Rachel heard him muttering under his breath. He slammed his fist against the back window. Any last hope she had of getting out of their predicament in a hurry died away.

“Is there any way we can drive it out?” she asked, defying her own personal demons in leaving the cocooning safety of the Rover's cab. “Is there a come-along in the toolbox, an ordinary rope, anything like that?”

“Nothing heavy enough to get us free. She's in up to the axle,” Bart reported in a clipped tone. He scrambled up the bank, trying to shake the red clinging mud from his shoes, scowling down at the streaks of dirt on the leg of his fashionable khaki slacks. “There's no way in the world we're going to get it out of here without help. I'd be grateful for any suggestions you have on the best way to accomplish that.”

Rachel wanted to cry. Instead, she racked her brain for some means of getting them rescued, even if it meant walking out of the jungle on her own. One fact she did face with characteristic forthrightness: she was going to be spending the night in the jungle with Harrison Bartley whether she wanted to or not.

“Listen,” Bart said, tilting his head. Rachel heard it, too. The sound of an engine, moving closer from the direction in which they'd just come. “Someone's coming.
We couldn't ask for better timing. With any luck we'll get a tow out of this swamp.”

“With any luck,” Rachel said grimly, then added, “Do you have a gun?”

 

“T
IGER'S GOING TO HAVE US
strung up by the thumbs if we don't catch up with Rachel Phillips and her Ivy League embassy flunky pretty quick.”

“I don't know how the hell they got off the main road without us seeing them,” Lonnie said. He'd been dozing off and on for the past hour and didn't even know it.

“We must be slippin', buddy.”

“Yeah.”

“They can't be too far ahead now. I just wonder how they found the road leading to the
wat
in the first place.” He didn't know if it was by luck or design, but he was damned sure going to find out.

“Maybe they have a map.”

Billy downshifted the jeep and shot Lonnie a questioning glance. “What makes you say that?”

“No reason.”

“You might have somethin' there, buddy. If they do have a map that shows the temple's location, it's gotta disappear. Damn fast.”

“Got you, Sarge.”

From then on they drove in silence. Lonnie Smalley sat grim-faced and white-lipped. Billy had told him to stay in Chiang Mai but Lonnie didn't listen to him. He didn't listen to anybody anymore, except Tiger. The voices in his head, the dream people he encountered in drug-induced sleep appealed to him far more than anything in the real world.

Billy hoped that once he got word back to Tiger that Micah McKendrick's sister was safe and sound they could get on with the job they were supposed to be doing. If they could carry off the deal with Khen Sa, the Opium King, they could write their own ticket, shape the world to their own mold. If, that is, he caught up with Rachel Phillips and her companion soon enough to keep them from falling into the Thai warlord's hands and ruining everything they'd worked so hard to bring about.

 

R
ACHEL TRIED TO FIGURE
her chances of making it across the stream and through the tangle of dusty scrub along the side of the road to the dubious safety of a hiding place in the jungle beyond. Her heart beat high and fast in her throat. Her palms were sweaty and she wiped them along the sides of her dark green cotton skirt. She should have worn slacks, and heavier shoes. She glanced ruefully down at her thin canvas loafers. She wasn't any better equipped for being out in the bush than Bart was. It would be suicide to run. Instead, Rachel squared her shoulders and lifted her chin to face the tall black man advancing from the battered American army jeep that blocked the narrow road. His face was impassive, his eyes unreadable behind the mirrored sunglasses he wore. He looked very strong and very dangerous.

The red-haired man beside him, shorter, thin to the point of emaciation, was almost as frightening, except for his eyes. Green as new leaves on a maple tree, they held so much sadness in their depths that Rachel was almost shaken out of her fear. Until she looked again and saw his pupils were narrowed to pinpoints. That was enough. She didn't need to see the needle tracks on his arms or
his throat to know, with another sickening lurch of fear, that the man was a heroin addict. They stopped a few feet short of the mired Land Rover.

“We're stuck,” Harrison Bartley explained unnecessarily. “Could you give us a tow?” He spoke in English, not Thai.

“We can probably manage it.” The accent was American, southern, the words oddly soft-spoken, coming from such a large, aggressive-looking man. “In the morning.”

Harrison Bartley thrust out his hand with a grin to introduce himself. The black man's last words caused him to falter and drop his arm. “In the morning?”

“Be dark in fifteen minutes at this altitude. You're stuck real good. Take what you need and come with me.”

“Now see here,” Bart said with all the authority he could muster, “we're expected at Border Camp Six by seven o'clock.”

“You ain't gonna make it.”

“My name is Harrison Bartley. I'm an aide to assistant U.S. ambassador Alfred Singleton. You sound like an American. I insist you help this lady and myself to get back on the main road immediately.”

“Buddy, you can insist all you want,” the black man said, not even trying to hide his contempt. “That Land Rover ain't goin' nowhere. Now you and the lady can hitch a ride with my friend and me, or you can sit tight and hope the only thing you have to worry about prowlin' around here tonight is a tiger or two.”

“Where are we going?” Rachel was surprised and pleased to hear her voice was steady. She was shaking so
hard she was afraid the trembling would communicate itself to her words.

“There's a Buddhist temple about three klicks that way,” the red-haired man spoke for the first time. “The monks don't much cotton to women but they'll let you spend the night.” He smiled and it transformed his ruined face. Rachel managed a tiny smile in return.