Under the Wire (31 page)

"Or not," Ethan said with a thoughtful pause. "It's a long shot, but who's to say there isn't a connection here somewhere?"

Yeah, who's to say there wasn't a connection? Manny agreed, and glanced at Lily, who sat silently on a tree stump, waiting with an expectant urgency for him to fill her in.

"Okay, look," Ethan said. "I'm going to call Dallas back, run it all past him to present to Ramanathan. See what he has to say. In the meantime, where are you?"

"Hold on." Manny dragged their map out of his pack and with Lily's help got a fix on their location. "Best as I can figure, we're about three hours from Elkaduwa. We're on foot and we need to find transportation."

"What happened to the jeep?"

Manny grunted. "Starts with an
h
and ends with a boom." He tucked the map into his nip pocket.

"Jesus," Ethan swore when understanding dawned.

"Yeah. He was there, too, or we wouldn't be here to tell the tale. Look, we're in some pretty rough terrain and we need to make tracks. I'm not so certain we don't still have some bad guys on our tail... which makes me think we stumbled into the thick of something big or they'd have given up searching for us long ago."

"Roger that. Keep your heads down. I'll be back in touch after I talk with Dallas."

"What?" Lily asked when Manny disconnected.

He didn't have a chance to tell her.

A soldier appeared out of nowhere. Rifle butt locked against his shoulder, finger tight on the trigger.

"Easy," Manny warned Lily as he stood and raised his hands above his head. "Just take it easy and follow my lead."

"Faint," Manny whispered as, hands above their heads, he and Lily marched at gunpoint back the way they'd come.

Lily didn't need a second cue. She folded like an accordion and dropped to the ground.

The young soldier was so shocked, he stumbled. Before he could recover, Manny was on him like spice on curry. The rifle discharged into the air as Manny wrestled him to his back and clamped a hand over his mouth.

Beside him, as he drew his knife out of its sheath, Manny could see Lily scramble for the soldier's weapon.

"Get Adam's photograph," Manny said, and set the side of his blade against the boy's throat. "Show it to him."

Eyes wild, the young soldier shook his head.

"Why do I not buy that?" Manny said, then accused in Hindi, "You are not Tamil."

The boy shook his head again.

"Indian?"

He hesitated, then gave a jerky nod.

"Where did you get the big gun?"

The boy swallowed, Manny's blade pressing against his Adam's apple.

"Where?" Manny demanded. "Talk or I'll slice off your left ear. Then your right. And then I'll start on your fingers. You'll die slowly and in pain—and for what?"

He pressed the blade deeper against the boy's neck, drawing blood.

"Lily ... show him the picture again," Manny ordered when he was certain the boy was convinced he meant business. "Have you seen him?"

This time the boy gave a reluctant nod.

Manny heard Lily's indrawn breath.

"Where? Where?" Manny repeated when the boy shook his head again.

"Bulutota Rakwana," he finally confessed.

"Lily, get the map," Manny said, never taking his blade from the boy's throat.

"It's northwest of here ... near Embilipitiya."

Manny heard paper rustle as she studied the map.

"Found it. It's maybe ... oh God, maybe five or six hours on foot."

"If you lied you just died," Manny promised the boy.

"Truth. I speak truth."

"How many troops guard them?"

The young boy closed his eyes, heaved a shaky breath.

Manny pressed the knife deeper. Blood trickled down the soldier's neck. "How many!"

"Twenty. No more."

"Who is your leader?"

Something in the young soldier's eyes told Manny he'd been pushed as far as he would go. The boy was finished talking.

Manny pinched the boy's neck right at the juncture of his shoulder. His body went limp.

"Is he—"

"Dead?" Manny stood, sheathed his knife. "No. Just unconscious."

There were tears in Lily's eyes when Manny looked at her. He understood. They were tears of hope in a situation that had grown more and more hopeless. This was their first solid lead on Adam. "Don't fall apart on me now, Liliana. We're almost there."

She drew back her shoulders, managed a tight smile. "Let's go get him. I want my baby back."

"We'll get him back. That's a promise." He reached for his SAT phone. "I need to raise Ethan and let him know we've got a location on Adam."

Before he could dial, the staccato rap of automatic weapon fire ripped through the air around them and he dropped the phone in a puddle of water at his feet. A squad of soldiers cleared the rise and started running their way.

"Shit," Manny swore, picked up the phone, grabbed Lily's hand, and took off at a dead run.

CHAPTER 20

Fifteen minutes later, they were winded and soaking wet with sweat. They'd run for their lives . .. and they'd just run out of real estate.

"Whoa!" Manny skidded to a stop. He grabbed Lily, catching her before she ran straight off the edge of a cliff and into nowhere.

The jungle just stopped, right at the edge of a deeply gouged riverbank. And to really make it fun, the bank fell at a 180-degree angle to a wide, swollen river, running wild with white water as it careened over rocks and rills a good fifty feet below.

Was nothing ever easy?

"It always fucking comes down to heights and water," Manny grumbled as he glanced across the divide to the other side some thirty feet away.

He found a thick, woody vine and grabbed it. He tested it for strength and length and draped the tail of it over the side of the bank.

He looked at Lily. She glanced from him, to the vine, to the thirty-foot chasm in front of them. "You're not serious."

He pulled a compartment from his ALICE pack and stuffed it with everything from rations, to water, to a pair of NVGs, to several magazines full of ammo.

"Trust me. If there was any other way," he said as the not so distant shouts from the forest caught up with them. "Grab what you can carry. We'll have to leave the rest. Hurry."

While she scrounged for portable medical supplies, he reached inside his shirt. He pulled his St. Christopher's medal over his head and kissed it. Then he draped it over Lily's neck, hauled her up against him, and kissed her until he felt her knees buckle.

"This is the part where you get to say, 'Geronimo.'" He shot her a game smile to shore her up. "You can do this, Liliana."

He physically took her hands in his and wrapped her stiff fingers around the vine. "Just hang on. That's all you have to do. It's going to be a helluva ride. When you see ground beneath you, let go, tuck, and roll. Got it?"

She closed her eyes, nodded, and tightened her grip on the vine. Then he pulled her back, like he would pull a child back in a swing, gave her a hard push, and she was airborne.

Heart in his throat, he watched her sail across the ravine like Jane of the Jungle.

"Go, Lily." More prayer than plea, he held his breath.

It seemed like forever before she reached the far bank. When she finally did, he started shouting, "Let go! Let go!"

Then he breathed a sigh of relief when her feet touched the ground and she rolled like a pro. He didn't have time to whoop and holler over her amazing feat. He waited for the vine and snagged it when it sailed back past him. Then he tucked the SAT phone in his pocket and slung his rifle and small pack over his shoulder.

Rounds from an AK-47 whizzed by his head as he pushed off.

"Christ," he muttered, swung out over the wide expanse of bottomless air, and prayed the vine would hold. Add his body weight to his rifle, ammo, and gear, and he figured he had more than a hundred pounds on Lily.

The vine snapped just as he reached the other side. He hit the embankment waist high. Felt himself slipping backward into the abyss—and then felt Lily's hand clasp his.

He looked up and into her eyes. Sunlight slanted down through the trees and haloed her hair as she lay on her belly on the bank, his very own angel, pulling for all she was worth. He dug and clawed and finally, with her help, managed to haul his hips up and over onto solid ground.

Panting, he rolled to his back, heaved a deep breath, and looked at her. She was still on all fours, panting just as heavily as he, the medal hanging around her neck like a talisman.

Her hair was wild around her face, her cheeks red from exertion. She had mud on her chin, grass in her hair.

He thought she was the single most beautiful sight he'd ever seen. Because they were alive, because by all rights they shouldn't be, he grinned at her. Then he laughed, because it was just too wild not to. "Do I know how to give a good date or what?"

He thought he saw a smile just before a hail of gunfire broke into his relief at having survived yet another brush with heights and water.

"Head down. Let's move it," he barked, and together they belly-crawled into the thicket and out of the line of fire.

Out of breath and feeling the monkey off their back for the first time since the jeep had been destroyed, Manny dropped and leaned back against a Palu tree. Lily slumped against a tree opposite him.

"Just a quick breather," he said on a panting breath, and reached into his pack for a bottle of water. "I'll get ahold of Ethan."

He cranked off the lid of the bottle and handed it to Lily.

She gulped greedily as he rifled around in his pocket for the SAT phone and dialed.

"Not working," he said when she shot him a questioning look. Frowning, he tapped the phone on his knee. "Wet," he muttered when a drop of water shook out. He laid the phone on his lap and took the bottle of water when she held it out to him. "Maybe when it dries out... I'll try it again after a while."

"We have company," Lily whispered.

He tensed and reached for his rifle.

"No. It's okay. Look."

Since she was grinning as she looked behind his left shoulder, Manny relaxed. He turned slowly to see a toque macaque monkey sitting on his haunches not four feet away, stroking his long tail and watching them with huge, humanlike eyes.

The brightly colored macaque was about the size of a big house cat. He screeched and, pushing off with the knuckles of his front legs, scooted over to Manny's side.

"Trusting little dude," Manny said. "We'd love to sit and chat, but—hey!"

The macaque snatched the SAT phone off Manny's lap and took off like a bat out of hell, screaming and scrambling high up into the trees.

"God damn it! Come back here with that!" Manny pushed to his feet, but all he could do was watch as the monkey and his SAT phone disappeared in the treetops. "Fuck." Hands on hips, he turned to Lily. She was all round eyed and worried. "Now what?" God, he'd seen that look on her face too often to count in the past few days. And there wasn't a damn thing he could do to make it go away. "Now we look for a phone in addition to transportation when we get to Elkaduwa.