To the Brink (16 page)

"Amy," she whispered, bending down close to her ear.

"Nonononono .. . please," Amy whimpered, and if possible curled into a tighter ball, "please.. . please ... don't... don't... don't—"

"Amy. Sweetie. It's Darcy. It's okay; it's okay," she assured her when the younger woman stilled abruptly.

Amy lifted her head and focused on Darcy's face. And in that moment Darcy saw the depth of Amy's torment at the hands of these animals.

Somehow, she managed to pull back from it. Breathing hard, she nodded at Darcy to let her know she was back in control.

"So," Amy whispered, still trembling from residual fear. "You weren't a dream."

Darcy shook her head. Smiled. "No, but there's a lot of that going around. How are you feeling?"

"I'm okay," Amy said, but her eyes had a vacant and glassy look. And she'd started shivering again.

"Amy, I have something to tell you. Don't make a sound. Don't react. Just listen, okay?"

And while their young guard dozed, leaning against a tree, Darcy told Amy about Ethan contacting her.

Darcy could see the disbelief in Amy's eyes, the hesitance to hope, the fear that it was all a wild story.

"When will he come?" she whispered in a tiny voice that pushed through her constricted throat.

"I don't know," Darcy confessed. "But it'll be soon now. And you need to be ready. Do you think you can run?"

"I was born to run," Amy whispered with a tremulous smile as the truth of Darcy's words began to sink in.

Darcy gave her a grin.

And together they waited. As seconds ticked to interminable minutes, minutes to an excruciating hour.

Chapter 12

LIMA, PERU

EIGHT YEARS AGO

"It was a side of him I'd never seen
before," Darcy admitted to Sandy during their lunch hour.

It was a week after Ethan's first return trip to Lima. And things had been eating at her.

"And this surprises you? That you don't really know the man you married?" Sandy dug into her ceviche. Both women had developed a taste for the raw fish during their tour in Lima.

"For God's sake, you knew him all of what? Eight days before you married him? When I pushed you toward him that night at the ambassador's party, I was thinking more in terms of a flashy affair. I never dreamed you'd end up marrying the guy."

Darcy felt like she was betraying Ethan even mentioning his behavior to Sandy, but ever since he'd left last week to return to his team she'd been having trouble dealing with things between them.

"Don't misunderstand," she said carefully. "It's not like I'm having second thoughts. I'm not. I love him. He loves me. It's just..."

When she trailed off, Sandy concluded gently, "It's just that it took this long to sink in that you have no idea what he's endured, what he's done, what he has to live with."

Yeah,
Darcy thought with a deep sigh. It was just that. Soldiers bore two kinds of scars. The physical ones. And the ones no one would ever see.

"I guess I thought he would share things with me. Unload, you know? Instead, he seems to be transferring the real danger that he's in to an imagined danger for me. He wants me to quit the State Department—or at the very least opt for a stateside station."

Sandy tipped up her wineglass, drank, then said frankly, "Sweetie, it's true what they say, you know. These SF guys, they're wired a little different than the rest of us. They have to be to handle what they do. He wants you safe. Figures he's the one to ensure that. And he can't. Because he can't be with you all the time."

"But, having said that," Sandy continued, "I've seen the way he looks at you. He loves you. So give it some time, okay? Give him some time. This is all new to him, too."

Darcy hoped Sandy was right. Hoped time could fix things that Darcy'd never thought might be broken between her and Ethan. In the meantime, Ethan was under enough pressure; he didn't need her to add more.

In the following months, whenever he managed a return trip to Lima she concentrated on making him happy. She cooked. She teased; she shared photos from her childhood and absorbed every word when he told stories about his. They even managed to squeeze out a five-day trip back to the states where both families had gotten together in West Palm to get acquainted. She'd loved the entire Garrett clan—and they'd loved her. Same for Ethan and her family.

Everything started to seem normal—as normal as it could be considering they saw each other only once every other month or so and each time he came out of the jungle he seemed a little wilder, a little more distant, than the last.

Each time, it took more days to get that smile out of him and to get past the "be careful lecture" and a disturbing pattern of accusing her of lying to him—not about other men but about taking unnecessary risks in her job.

She'd settle and soothe and eventually, he'd finally let it go—though he never gave up on suggesting she return to the states for good.

Sometimes it turned into an argument—she didn't have that red hair for nothing. And then they'd make up and make love with a desperation that left her decimated and confused.

The hardest part came when she left for Tel Aviv. They had no idea when they would see each other next. And when he walked away to go back to the jungle and she boarded her plane she felt like he was taking a huge part of her soul with him.

JOLO ISLAND

PRESENT

"Jesus. Are those what I think they are?" Ethan whispered, adjusting his NVGs to get a clearer look as Dallas dug two mines out of his ALICE pack.

"Call 'em an early birthday present," Dallas said, and went about his deadly work.

"And me without a cake."

Dallas grunted. "I'll be damn happy that I won't be lugging 'em around anymore. Suckers weigh a ton."

It was 0330 hours. They'd geared up an hour ago. Then they'd headed back toward the enemy camp to lay a line of "attitude adjusters" for any tango who might think he wanted to follow them once he realized they were minus two hostages.

"I didn't even know these bad boys—or should I say bad girls—were still in production."

The M-16A1 antipersonnel mine—affectionately referred to as "Bouncing Betty"—was a mean piece of work. It was also effective—provided the bad guys were obliging enough to set off the trip wire. Once that happened, somewhere between the primary and secondary explosion anyone in close proximity would find their head and their ass in different zip codes—no sleight of hand involved.

"Just because the U.S. military doesn't carry 'em in its arsenal anymore doesn't mean they don't flood the black market." Concentrating on his work, Dallas placed a mine, set the trip wire, secured it with some duct tape, then carefully camouflaged it with ground cover.

Ethan made a mental note to avoid this route on the way back through the forest, while Dallas set the other mine.

Twenty or so meters behind them, Manny was systematically laying down a line of claymores. Unlike the trip mines, the claymores fired via a remote detonation device. Loaded with a couple of pounds of C-4 and enough projectiles in the form of pellets or nuts or bolts to scatter in a fifty-meter kill zone, the claymores gave a helluva bang for the buck.

Ethan crept back to check on him. "How's it going?"

"Got to love it," Manny said with a grin, and read out loud the instructions stamped on the claymore. "'Front toward enemy.' Christ. Only in the U.S. military.

"Here." Manny handed one to Ethan. While making light of the overobvious instructions, Manny was dead serious about what he was doing. "Place it over there."

Ethan took the claymore and positioned it where Manny told him. In addition to being an expert sniper, Manny was also a pro with explosives. Before joining Ethan's A-team in Peru, Manny had worked for Uncle Sam training Contras to fight the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He'd blown a lot of bridges the few years he'd been deployed in Central America. Ironically, some of them were bridges Manny's own father had engineered.

Dallas joined them. "All set?"

"Locked and loaded," Manny said with a grim nod.

They'd already decided. Manny would guard their flank, pick off tangos with the Barrett, and detonate the claymores if the need arose. Hopefully, it wouldn't. Hopefully, they'd get in, get out, and get gone before anyone was the wiser and they'd never have to fire a shot.

Armies, however, didn't win wars on hope alone. Neither did a three-man extraction team facing thirty-to-three odds.

Ethan looked from Dallas to Manny. "Okay. Let's do this ... and so help me God," he clenched his jaw, pinned them with a hard look, "if either one of you gets yourself shot, I'll whip your ass from here to West Palm, you got it?"

To a man, they knew the odds of getting out of this in one piece were slim and none. And to a man, they were up for it.

"You worry about your own ass, brother mine."

Manny grinned. "And I'll cover both of your asses, so let's skip all this touchy-feely shit and get it done, eh?"

At 0400 hours, Dallas was in position at Ethan's side. Condition 1: magazines locked, chambers loaded and ready to fire. They were bellied down behind a long line of protruding rock covered with creeping purple vines, reconning the tango camp.

"Quiet as a cemetery," Dallas whispered after a long, thorough look through his binocs.

Ethan grunted. "Not the metaphor I would have chosen."

To the right, on their rear guard, Manny and his sniper rifle were positioned about four meters up in a rubber tree.

Ethan gave Manny a hand signal.
We're moving in.

The butt of the Barrett hit Manny's shoulder as he sighted down the scope he'd mounted on the rail of the barrel.

Ethan nodded to Dallas and without another word they readied their garrotes.

"Wait," Dallas said, adjusting his binocs. "Fuck. We've got trouble."

Ethan lifted his glasses. And felt his blood run cold.

Darcy had nodded off again. Sitting up. Her back against a boulder, Amy curled up by her side.

But now she was awake. Wide awake. Startled awake.

It was an occurrence she was getting used to.

But something was different this time. Something other than Amy had awakened her. Something other than the hunger gnawing at her belly.

She gave her pupils time to adjust, squinted into the dark and the quiet searching for what had taken her from unconscious to hyperalert.

And then it occurred to her. Her guard. He was standing at attention directly beside her. Which was odd. He'd never come this close before.

A prickly unease sent shivers along her bare arms when he snapped to attention. She followed his gaze across the dark expanse of the camp—and by the light of the campfire stared directly into the eyes of evil.

The new leader—she'd heard some of her captors refer to him as Omar—was walking toward her. And there was no mistaking the look in his eyes. This time of night, with the rest of the camp asleep, he could only have one thing in mind.

Darcy swallowed hard when he stopped in front of her.

"Get up."

Except for her heart—it was beating so hard it was about to pop out of her chest—she didn't move.