A glance up at the jigsaw puzzle pieces of charcoal-colored sky now visible between the tree canopy told him dawn was on its way. Once the sun rose, the animals would be in search of food and water, making them even more alert to predators. Which was precisely why Sam had set up the extraction point at the most likely spot they used to drink.
The original plan had been to arrive hours before the beasts of the jungle came down to the river. Letting the activity of the animals mask their departure. So much for that plan.
Changing strategy as he walked, Sam decided that he’d park Beth somewhere upriver, and go down and get the boat on his own. He’d move faster and could, if necessary, misdirect anyone on their tail.
They would come after her. Thadiwe had worked too damn hard to get a physician here. He wasn’t going to let Beth go without a fight.
Well, Sam wasn’t going to give her up without a goddamned fight either.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“I know people in low places.” He didn’t bother mentioning that he’d almost puked with fear when those people had informed him who had snatched Beth.
He’d come to Africa to bring her body home.
FIVE
SAM HAD SAID IT would take three hours to get to the river. Surely they’d walked for longer than that? While Sam moved through the stygian darkness with a lithe, powerful sure-footedness, Elizabeth’s calves and lungs burned, and her skin itched despite the temperature-regulated suit. She was damn sure Kess wouldn’t be huffing and puffing, mentally begging to stop so she could sit down and rest. No, her sister would be leading the way. She might not know where she was going or how to get there, Elizabeth thought with a small smile, but no one following Kess would know it.
The only reality in Elizabeth’s world was her grip on Sam’s belt as she stumbled blindly in his wake, stubbing her booted toes on roots and vines. And while she could easily picture him in her mind’s eye, that image didn’t in any way gel with the man who’d come to rescue her. With the man who’d kissed her so passionately it had made her blood race through her veins and her heart hammer.
She hated not being in control. And she hadn’t been in control of her own fate from the moment she’d been snatched from Lynne’s hotel room.
“How’s the hand?”
It throbbed, but that was to be expected. “Okay.” “Tell me if it isn’t. Don’t try and be brave. An infection here can kill you.”
“I’m a doctor, Sam. I know. Thanks to you, it’s f—”
Suddenly his palm covered her mouth. Elizabeth gulped down the reactive scream, but felt it vibrate in her chest as he whispered against her ear. “Shh. Company.”
She froze. Oh, God. She hadn’t heard anything out of the ordinary. If walking in the pitch dark through a rain forest filled with snakes and monkeys and more birds than anyone could imagine could be considered ordinary.
“Down.” He tugged at her arm, bending low with her. His voice was so muted it was almost more a feeling than a sound. His arm brushed hers and she realized he was removing the pack from his back. She heard a soft thud as it landed on the damp ground next to her. “Know how to fire a gun?” he whispered, his lips against her ear.
Elizabeth shook her head. “I sew up holes in people, not make them.”
“I’ll give you a crash course.”
She shook her head again. A tiny thrill of adrenaline swirled in her belly. A big believer in self-defense, she’d spent too much time in the ER to actually pull a trigger. Or so she thought. Life or death.
Despite her refusal, Sam wrapped her non-sliced hand around what was clearly a big gun. A very big, very heavy gun. Her fingers closed around the ribbed stock. It felt weird, foreign. “I’d rather you take it,” she whispered back urgently. It was only as she flexed her stiff fingers that she realized just how tightly she’d been gripping his belt.
Sam positioned her fingers, his touch playing havoc with her good judgment. “Won’t need it. Safety’s off. Point and shoot. Fires eight hundred rounds a minute. You won’t miss. When I come back I’ll whistle like this.” He whistled a sweet, sharp, incredibly realistic bird call. Elizabeth hoped to hell no birds came to see who was calling them.
“Wait—you’re leaving me?”
Screaming sounded more humane than aiming a gun and taking a life. The scream was again building in her chest. She tamped down the fear. She needed to think rationally and be alert. Being scared right now wasn’t an option. She eased into a slightly more comfortable crouch by millimeters.
Now she heard them. Footsteps. Leaves rustling. Breathing. She wanted to plead with Sam to hunch down with her, to wait until whoever it was passed. But she knew he’d be proactive.
He brushed a quick kiss across her nose, light as a butterfly’s wing. “Stay low.” One second he was right there, the next he was gone. She knew he’d left, not because he made any noise, but because she could no longer feel his presence beside her.
“Be careful,” she mouthed.
The raucous sounds of the jungle closed in on her, as did the oppressive darkness. She’d outgrown her fear of the bogyman in her closet long before her tenth birthday, but this darkness scared the bejesus out of her. The dangers here were very real. And imminent.
Crouched uncomfortably in the thick, inky darkness, Elizabeth waited, her heartbeat sounding like thunder in her ears, her jaw clenched to prevent crying out every time something crawled over her bare hands, or some creepy critter brushed her face. She tried not to imagine what that was sitting lightly on her cheek, or what the weight was on the instep of her right boot. She bit off the scream that surged up her throat as a bird shot out of a nearby shrub as if catapulted. Dragging in a shuddering breath, she held it until her heart settled down. She was dammed if she’d have a freaking heart attack because a bird flew past her.
Better than thinking about men tracking her with guns, mile-long centipedes, poisonous ants, poisonous frogs and, of course, a multitude of poisonous snakes.
The only thing she had between herself and all those dangers was Sam Pelton. The thought was so wrongly comforting.
FIVE MEN. CAMO. NVGS. AK-47s. Well trained. Cautious. And definitely tracking their missing doctor. There was no other reason for their presence. No nearby villages to pillage, and Sam doubted they were hunting for bushmeat. Thadiwe was too sophisticated to eat the local flora and fauna, and the compound was miles from anywhere. No. It was Beth that Thadiwe’s soldiers hunted.
Damn it to hell. He’d miscalculated, and they’d discovered her absence, and the hidden Jeep, hours before Sam thought they would. Removing the KA-BAR from his tac belt with his left hand, Sam circled around, slipped in behind them. Matching his steps to the man bringing up the rear, he maneuvered up close. With no warning he brought his forearm around and beneath the guy’s chin. Pulling him back and off balance, Sam struck directly up, into the man’s kidneys. It was a quick, silent death, the pain so intense the man couldn’t scream before he died. Sam caught the soldier as he soundlessly collapsed against him, and lowered the body quietly into the bushes.
Sam wiped the bloodied knife on the man’s shirt. One down, four to go.
Killing the soldier had taken all of three seconds. Didn’t bother Sam right then, but later he’d remember why he’d gotten out of combat and into the training side. But for now he had absolutely no compunction killing as many people as it took to keep Beth safe.
He took the second and third guys out the same coldly efficient way as he’d done the first. The fourth and fifth might have been slow on the uptake, but the second they realized that they were under attack they got with the program and both rushed Sam at once.
Good. No weapons fired to draw the attention of any other hunters. The first guy came at him in a flurry of well-trained arms and legs. Sam blocked the first blow with his forearm, then swiveled to kick out at number two, who had come in from the side, his AK-47 raised to fire. Kicking out, Sam got rid of both man and weapon. The second guy
went flying, striking a tree trunk with a hollow thud that set off a flock of birds in a screeching flutter of wings, ghostly through the NVGs. A group of chimps shot out of the lower branches, screaming annoyance as they swung from branch to branch.
Bending his arm, Sam used a chopping motion from the elbow, his entire body weight behind the edge-of-the-hand blow to the first guy’s throat as he came at him full tilt. His hand made a satisfying connection just below the enemy’s Adam’s apple. The guy gagged and dropped.
The other soldier was already up on his feet and charging back for more. With a feral smile Sam sidestepped the punch to the jaw, grabbing his opponent’s wrist with one hand, and pulled him off balance. With the other hand he yanked off the guy’s NVGs, then melted into the high bushes to his right. The man came blindly after him. Sam stayed dead still.
The man turned in a circle, scared now, babbling God only knew what. Sam came up on him from behind, wrapping his left arm around the guy’s neck, bearing down on his throat in a Japanese stranglehold. One arm across his throat, the other on his shoulders, his palm on the back of the man’s head. Pulling him backwards, Sam pressed the guy’s head forward.
The guy tried to grab his balls with his free hand. The LockOut suit gave him no handhold.
Sam straightened and gripped the front and back of the guy’s head, then gave a quick twist. It had been a while since he’d last heard a neck breaking at such close quarters. He hadn’t missed the sound. Sam tossed him aside as he heard a loud scream of fear. The scream was cut off mid-note.
Beth.
ELIZABETH FLUNG HERSELF INTO Sam’s arms the moment he came through the trees. It was barely light, but she could see him well enough, and God, was she happy to do so. “Oh, Jesus, Jesus,” she said hoarsely into his throat, her heart pounding so hard she was sure he must hear it. “I’m sorry, Sam. This giant pig-like something came at me, and scared the living crap out of me. I promised myself I wouldn’t scream like a girl and distract you no matter what, but it ran right into me before I even knew it was there … Sorry, I’m babbling.”
She looked up at his face. He’d removed the night-vision goggles, and they’d left a red mark across the bridge of his blade of a nose. He was several days past a shave, and the dark shadow on his jaw made him look wicked and disreputable. The sheen on the front of his black bodysuit Elizabeth easily identified as blood. She stepped back, her gaze tracking across his body for signs of injury.
“Are you—?” The matte black bodysuit hugged his muscular torso so that she could see the sharp definition of his taut pecs and cut abs, and the long length of his muscular legs, and the bulge, somehow flattened, large, and protected by something. She pictured his penis tucked neatly inside. Her body tightened and her nipples ached.
“Am I?”
Her gaze shot up to his face, and her cheeks felt warm. “Hurt. Are you hurt?”
“I teach advanced survival skills to highly trained counterterrorist operatives for a living. I’m excellent. Thanks for asking.” He grinned, a flash of white teeth in his tanned face. “Did your run-in with the pig give you any nicks or cuts?”
“I scared him as much as he scared me,” she muttered, searching his face. She didn’t need to ask him if he’d taken care of whomever had been following them. Seeing Sam in his warrior gear, knife belted to his thigh, the big gun, his dark hair damp with sweat, his eyes glittering as if he had a fever… .
Good grief, if he’d looked like this back home, she would have jumped his bones at the first opportunity. She gave him a more assessing look. “How did they catch up with us so fast?”
“Obviously someone went to your room to check on you after I cut the generator. They’ll send more soldiers when those guys don’t check in.” He picked up the big gun and his pack. “We need to make tracks,” he said, threading his arms through the straps. “Easier now that it’s getting light. Drink some water as we walk.” He handed her the canteen, and Elizabeth sipped enough water to moisturize her dry mouth.
“How many men were there?”
“Only five.”
Only five. Sam didn’t seem to be concerned that those men might still be following them, so Elizabeth presumed they were incapacitated. In this part of the world that could only mean dead.
“I counted seventeen soldiers at the compound. If they realized that I didn’t take the Jeep, do you think they’ll send all of them after us? Maybe we should double back and really steal a Jeep. What do you think?”
“First of all there were twenty soldiers. And no. We’re not doubling back. By now Thadiwe has probably called in some of his pal Nkemidilm’s people. Right now we have the advantage. Until they find those five guys back there, they won’t know you aren’t alone. They think they’re hunting a lone woman, unprepared for this environment. That’s a good thing, and to our advantage. Those guys didn’t have radios or any communication devices on them. Stupid. But hey, I didn’t train them. So to communicate they’d have to have gone back to base. We have a little breathing room.”
He tilted her face with a finger under her chin. His hard mouth curved into a smile. “You look like hell.”
“I’m perfectly aware of what I must look like,” she said ruefully. While Sam’s rugged face was bugfree, she must look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. She’d never been vain, but right now she was grateful she didn’t have a mirror. God only knew what critters had glued themselves to the repellent on her skin.
He removed a cloth from his pack, and applied it—dry—to her cheeks. “This must itch like crazy. Close your eyes. Let me get rid of the bugs at least. Grab the DEET—it’s in the left side of the belt. Yeah, open it while I get rid of your passengers.”
Elizabeth stood still while Sam cleaned her face, then reapplied the chemical to deter the bugs. She wanted to kiss him, but knew they had to keep going if they wanted to get away free and clear.
The blackness of the night had lightened to a deep olive green. Now murky lime-green shafts of light seeped through the dense tree canopy. It felt as though they were walking through algae-filled water. The bodysuit did an incredible job keeping her body temp normal, but her head was exposed to the thick steamy heat and perspiration tickled her skin and attracted insects.
The jungle was a living entity surrounding them; the smell of dead vegetation and wet earth seemed to seep into Elizabeth’s pores. The noise level was higher now than it had been earlier, and she’d long since given up trying to identify everything making such a racket. Monkeys, insects, large and small animals. And her own breathing. Every time a bird called, she flinched. Not only did she hate birds, she discovered she wasn’t that crazy about snakes, bugs, or mosquitoes either. Being in a rain forest wasn’t exactly the best pick for a first time Grand Adventure.
An adventurer she wasn’t. Just because she wanted to be fearless and daring didn’t mean she was hardwired to be so. She’d leave the adventures to Kess and concentrate on her fledgling practice instead.
If she made it back to Montana alive.
SIX
ELIZABETH BUMPED INTO SAM’S back as he came to a stop midstride. She came around to stand beside him. They’d reached the river. Thank God. The water was the color of bad pea soup. Brownish green with unidentifiable lumps of vegetation floating on the surface. The air smelled, not unpleasantly … green, and a little like overripe fruit. Small trees and thick brush crowded the sloping banks. House plants Beth grew in little pots in her condo would thrive and flourish to gigantic proportions here.
A thin, bright yellow snake S’ed on the surface of the water, while dragonflies, their iridescent wings shimmering in the sunlight, swooped and dived over their reflections, and tiny emerald-green butterflies swarmed en masse over the bank. A pair of inquisitive otters sat on a nearby felled tree trunk watching them.
That was the pretty part of the river.
On the bank a crocodile—at least seven feet long, lazed in the sun, and four submerged hippos, small ears twitching, lay like eno
rmous boulders several hundred yards upstream in the center of the river where the water was deep. Both species moved like greased lightning in the water.
And there were birds. Everywhere. Big and small. They swooped, they dove, they fluttered and they perched. They squawked and chirped and tweeted and generally freaked Beth out.
Here the sunlight wasn’t being filtered through the trees, and buttery early morning light sparkled on the murky green surface, while the diaphanous dragonflies danced between the long reeds and grasses lining the muddy bank. If one didn’t know that the jungle pressing against its serpentine shoreline was filled with birds and creepy crawlies, it would be an idyllic picture.
She stared at the pod of almost submerged hippos. One lifted its head, its ridiculous small ears pivoting as it called a guttural ba-ho-ho-ho in a low bass. Hippos were said to be the deadliest animal in Africa, but it was hard to imagine, watching them clustered together like giant rocks in the slow-moving water, that they could actually run faster than a human on land. It was unlikely they’d attack without provocation, but Elizabeth moved closer to Sam and his nice big gun.
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, dry-mouthed, waving away a dragonfly as it dive-bombed her hair.
“Desi isn’t here with the Zodiac.”
Elizabeth looked out across the murky surface. The whole expanse of the river looked emptier and more dangerous without rescue close at hand. “Maybe he went up or downriver.”
“This is the extraction point. We’re about fifteen minutes late—but he should be here waiting.”
“Are you sure he’s coming? I told you we should have gone back and stolen a Jeep.”
“He must’ve gotten delayed. He’ll be here.”
“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?”