Hot Intent (Hqn) (15 page)

He laid down under the water, his own eyes screwed tightly shut. Something touched his elbow and he jumped before realizing it was Katie’s fingers. Her hand slid down his arm until she could grasp his hand.

Even fully submerged, the noise of the chopper was loud. He didn’t know if such shallow water would eliminate their heat signatures or not. But it was all they had. The chopper moved past with aching slowness, which made him think the Cubans were using heat-seeking gear, after all.

Katie’s hand squeezed his more tightly, and he realized they’d been under for nearly three minutes. Well beyond her stated ability to hold her breath. He sat up cautiously, letting just his mouth and nose break the surface. Katie did the same beside him. The sound of the chopper was fading now.

He sat all the way up, and Katie followed suit with alacrity.

“Well, that was fun,” she muttered.

“The fun has just begun. Now we get to flee through the jungle at night in wet clothes.”

They waded out of the pool and Katie frowned. “Should we check each other for leeches or something?”

“We should. But we need to get moving. The leeches can dine on our blood in the meantime.”

She made a face and shuddered as he shouldered the big pack, retracing his steps up the hill to put them back on course. And that was when he heard a different kind of engine. Crap. ATVs.

Alone, he’d have had no trouble avoiding the Cubans. But with Katie in tow, the two of them didn’t stand a chance when the Cuban special forces, riding all-terrain vehicles, came after them.

CHAPTER EIGHT

K
ATIE
CROUCHED
IN
TERROR
. Now she knew exactly what a mouse felt like when the fox came after it, or a rabbit when a hawk circled overhead.

Shadows and tangled brush pressed in on her, threatening to entangle and trap her. But she still felt naked and terribly exposed. Her instincts screamed at her to run, but her head yelled even louder not to move a muscle. The result was frozen panic and a deep desire to vomit.

“We have to split up,” Alex breathed to her.

She looked around at the wild trees and looming darkness in terror.

“No!” she cried back in a bare whisper. She clutched at his arm frantically. He couldn’t abandon her out here! She didn’t know the first thing about jungles. She
needed
him. And she bloody well couldn’t do this running around evading bad guys stuff by herself!

“It’s our only chance,” he explained. “I’ll draw them off while you make a run for the moped. Take it and get to Guantánamo. I’ll make my own way there. It may take a few days, but wait there. I’ll join you.”

“No—”

He grabbed her shoulders and kissed her hard, cutting off her protest. “I believe in you. I know you can do this.”

“I barely speak Spanish, and I don’t look remotely Cuban.”

“There are blond, fair people in Cuba.”

“I can’t do it!”

“You must.”

“It’s suicide for you to engage those soldiers. They’ve got numbers, equipment, technology. They have every advantage. I’ve heard my brothers talk. You’d never survive.”

“Trust me. I’m very good at what I do. But I can’t do it with you here. I need you to go.”

Not a chance. “But—”

He gave her a hard push that sent her stumbling, sliding and ultimately half falling down a steep slope. Muddy and covered in leaves, it was so slippery she stood no chance of stopping her descent. Some hundred feet down the slope, she turned and frantically tried to run back up it to Alex.

To no avail. She might as well be trying to climb an ice mountain. She was not getting back up that hill any time soon. Appalled, she listened as someone shouted above her. For all she knew, that was Alex
trying
to get spotted by the Cubans. Damn him!

He’d
pushed
her. The man she loved had actually shoved her down that hill. Why? Confusion rolled through her. Was he that eager to get rid of her, or was it some misguided attempt at altruism from a mind too convoluted for her to follow? She didn’t know whether to be grateful or furious. Opting for the latter, she took off running through the trees. If he was going to be a giant idiot and get himself killed being a hero, far be it from her to waste the escape window he’d given her. He was insane. And stupid. And heroic. And did she already add being a giant idiot to that list?

At some point in her frantic flight, it dawned on her that tears were streaming down her face. Was she ever going to see him again? Or had he just consigned himself to a terrible death to save her?

Whether her horror or her panic spurred her harder, she couldn’t say. But she ran until her legs felt like burning rubber and her lungs felt consumed by fire. And then she ran some more. It was awful beyond description.

Only the sound of the ocean on her left and the moon sliding gradually to her right kept her from running around in circles out here. The terrain was difficult during the day, but at night it was brutal. She twisted her ankles and wrenched her knees more times than she could count. She fell on her butt, and fell on her face, and ran into trees, skinned her knees and got poked in the eye. But she didn’t stop. Somehow, she forced her feet to keep moving no matter what.

She tried to distract herself by thinking about Dawn and what they’d do together when she got home. But that just made her cry too hard to see where she was going.

She tried cursing out her personal trainer, which carried her for a good ten minutes. But then she had no more anger left to summon. Exhaustion set in. Her only motivation now was what she would do to Alex the next time she saw him. That, and a fierce determination to survive long enough to do it to him.

The spine of ridges she’d been crawling up and down forever finally gave way to a rolling plateau. But with the level ground came open fields. Farms. She wasn’t worried about locals spotting her. There were practically none here. The soldiers looking for her and Alex—they were a different matter.

The moon wasn’t quite set, either. She ended up crouching by the edge of a huge pasture for nearly a half hour while she waited for the moonlight to finally disappear. At first she was grateful for the rest. Then the vigil became a terrible fight to stay awake. She was only barely cold, damp, sore and terrified enough to keep her eyes open.

At least she was too exhausted to dwell much on the terrible truth that Alex had abandoned her. Damn him. She was not strong or smart or sneaky enough to make her way across Cuba by herself.

Wearily she pushed to a crouch and started across the open field. No one swooped down on her to arrest her, and the sky was finally quiet, the helicopters that had crisscrossed the jungle overhead for much of the night gone.

On the one hand, she was relieved as she reached a tree line and followed it around another pasture. On the other hand, she fretted that the absence of the helicopters might mean they’d found Alex. Captured him. Hauled him away for torture and interrogation until they broke him and then killed him.

She was desperate to call André or Uncle Charlie and beg for help. For someone to come save her and Alex from this waking nightmare. But Alex had the satellite phone in his backpack. All she had was the bag of samples...which she could only pray hadn’t broken in her mad flight and weren’t slowly killing her already.

Where was Alex? Was he okay? How was he going to get all the way across Cuba on foot by himself? Yes, her brain knew he was a trained spy who could handle those sorts of things. But it had looked like half the Cuban army was after him back there. And she was allowed to worry about him, dammit.

The familiar iron gates leading to nothing came into view ahead as the first gray light of dawn tinged the eastern horizon. A sob escaped her throat. As tempted as she was to run for the shed, caution prompted her to kneel in the last tree line prior to the homestead. To wait and watch for signs of movement. For a trap. Alex’s paranoia had obviously rubbed off on her.

As the sky turned pink and wan light washed over the farm, she finally grew too sleepy to wait anymore. She had to move or pass out.

She went to the shed cautiously, recalling that Alex had left a few surprises in place to discourage would-be looters. A glance at the garden plot behind the house, the final resting place of the last looters to pass this way, made her faintly ill.

She approached the shed door. Thank God. The trip wire was still in place. She stepped gingerly over it and opened the door an inch or so. Just enough to wiggle her fingers inside and detach the second trip wire from the latch on the inside. She eased the door the rest of the way open. The bulky tarp was still in place over the moped.

Before she wheeled the motor bike outside, she searched the shed for anything that might be of help to her. She stuffed a hand spade, an empty plastic water bottle and an old flashlight into her bag with the samples. The batteries were dead, but maybe she could find some along the way.

And then she hit the mother lode. A rusty gas can. Perhaps a gallon of gasoline was sloshing around in the bottom of it. She poured it into the moped’s gas tank and prayed it would be enough to get her all the way to Gitmo.

Speaking of which, time was a’wasting. If she timed this right, she should hit Baracoa at midmorning when people were most likely to be out and around and less likely to notice her. No way could she make this trip cross-country. She was going to have to take the coastal highway around the eastern tip of the island to the south shore and the U.S. facility at Guantánamo.

People had been at work clearing and repairing the roads since they’d passed this way before with Oscar. As she neared Baracoa, she was actually able to motor along at a decent speed. She did, indeed, pass through the now-familiar city without incident. She debated trying to buy gas while she was there and decided it would call too much attention to herself. That, and she spotted a truckload of soldiers headed toward her as an operating gas station came into sight. That decided her. She kept moving.

Not far past Baracoa, the highway cut inland, due south. The condition of the road was terrible and she was forced to pick her way painstakingly around huge ruts and washouts as she headed up into the hills. Coconut plantations gave way to mango orchards and then to jungle. If Alex thought this wasn’t rough jungle, she’d hate to see a bad one.

Eventually, the road came down out of the Sierra Maestra mountain range to hug the coast. Debris and the occasional sandbar slowed her progress, but the sky was blue, the ocean breezes cool and the day generally beautiful.

A hodgepodge of vehicles drove along the road—mostly military and police trucks. But a few farmers were returning to their homes in flatbed trucks piled high with kids and belongings. If the roads held up and she didn’t run out of gas, she would reach Guantánamo in the late afternoon.

Of course, the roads didn’t hold up, and she did run out of gas. She debated whether to push the moped along or just walk, and ended up opting for walking. Once she got to Gitmo, she wasn’t planning on ever coming back to this place.

The highway, which had run due west along the south shore of the island, started to cut inland across the last peninsula prior to Guantánamo Bay. The sun was setting as she stopped in front of what looked like it had once been a major intersection. A blown-over road sign lay in the ditch with the words Naval Station Guantánamo Bay on it.

Great. Which direction would the sign have indicated she should go if it wasn’t torn off its posts and lying by the side of the road? Was this even the right intersection? Or had the sign flown for miles before landing here?

This was
exactly
why she needed Alex. Or at least the GPS on his phone. Frustrated and scared, she noticed a cluster of lights in the distance. Was that the naval base? Or was that a Cuban city at the north end of the bay?

Cursing Alex, she took a deep breath and turned to the left. If she wasn’t completely lost, she was heading south, toward the mouth of Guantánamo Bay. She hoped.

She’d walked no more than ten minutes when a camouflage green jeep streaked toward her, coming fast. She jumped into the ditch, but was too slow. The vehicle stopped on the road above her and a man shouted angrily at her in Spanish. Something about coming out and something else about her hands. She expected the soldier wanted her hands in the air. Oh, God. She was so dead.

CHAPTER NINE

A
LEX
CROUCHED
IN
the steamy heat of the jungle, listening to the Cuban soldiers barreling past. It was shocking how much this resembled his training last summer. The aggressors wore different uniforms, and these ones would torture and kill him for real if they caught him, but otherwise, it all was pretty much the same.

The mud he’d covered his skin with was drying and stretching his face uncomfortably tight. Katie would tell him how wonderful his pores were going to look after he washed off the mask.

His gut clenched. He’d hated with a passion sending her away from him. But it was the only reasonable course of action. He prayed, just in case there was a God, for Katie to make it to Gitmo safely.

In the meantime, he needed wheels. He didn’t relish spending the next week or more making like a monkey tramping through the jungle. On top of his other problems, he was starting to feel a little feverish. If he was lucky, he’d merely picked up some sort of infection from one of his numerous lacerations. If he was unlucky, he needed serious medical care fast if he wasn’t to die of sarin poisoning.

He retraced his steps carefully toward the Zacara factory. He was counting on it being the one spot his pursuers would not expect him to go. It was the likeliest rallying point for whoever was chasing him around out here, as well. Which meant there should be vehicles. Uniforms. A cover.

He topped the ridge above the factory. Sure enough, a half dozen trucks were parked in front of one of the smaller buildings. The helicopter that had made his life a living hell last night was parked in the big open area in front of the dock. And from here, he could see three soldiers in various stages of patrolling or lounging on the grounds.

He zeroed in on the nearest soldier, a guy who was smoking a cigarette close to a hole in the fence. Smokers tended to cluster together and return to the same spots to smoke. If he was lucky, that would be the case today.

Long before he made his way to the fence line, the original smoker had wandered on. But Alex positioned himself so the corner of a building blocked the spot from the sight of most of the rest of the facility, and he hunkered down to wait.

It took about two hours, but the same soldier strolled around the corner, already shaking a cigarette out of a pack. Alex let him light up and take a long, appreciative puff. He timed his attack for when the soldier was exhaling long and slow and pounced. No air in the guy’s lungs meant no warning shout was possible.

Alex jumped the guy from the back and, using the butt of his knife, clocked him in the back of the head. It was quick and quiet; however, the blow cut the guy’s scalp and he began to bleed. As the soldier sagged to the ground, Alex caught him, swearing under his breath.

The guy was heavy as hell. Alex eased him to the ground and hastily stripped off the guy’s shirt before it got too bloody. He went to work fast unlacing the soldier’s boots from his feet. Unlike in television shows, most people had a tendency not to stay unconscious for long. By the time he was ready to strip off the guy’s pants, the soldier was starting to rouse. He chopped the guy hard in the base of his skull to buy himself a few more minutes to make his escape.

Working fast, he tore a piece of cloth off his own ruined shirt and stuffed it in the guy’s mouth. Out of deference to Katie, he checked the guy’s nostrils to be sure they were clear and that the guy would be able to breathe while gagged.

He tore more strips off his shirt and used them to bind the soldier’s wrists and ankles together. Housekeeping matters taken care of, he put on the soldier’s uniform. It was a reasonably good fit. Beret jauntily cocked over his right eye, Alex dragged the guy through the fence and behind a pile of stones. He bunched driftwood over the unconscious soldier hastily, and then jumped back through the fence.

He picked up the guy’s cigarette, which was just burning out. And in the nick of time, too. Another soldier poked his head around the corner and barked at Alex to get back to his post. Face downcast, he ground out the stub beneath his heel and muttered an acknowledgment.

He took a deep breath and rounded the corner. He had no idea what the soldier’s post was. Rather than try to fake it, he struck out confidently across the yard, as if he’d been sent on an errand for someone.

He veered first toward the helicopter. It was an easy matter to open the cockpit door, reach under the instrument panel and yank out a big fistful of wires. He grabbed another handful and tore them out, for good measure.

After that, he made his way to the parked vehicles. His nerves were jumping all over the place, and he had to consciously force them into silence. Funny thing, fear. Once he’d learned to control it and hold it at bay, it had become more of curiosity to him than an actual force in his life.

He spotted the guy who’d yelled at him heading down toward the dock. Alex hurried his steps to reach the nearest truck before the guy could get where he was going and turn around.

Alex tested the door handle. Unlocked. He slid into the vehicle and hunted in the usual places for keys. No luck. He lay down on the seat and opened the glove compartment, and voilà. A key on a ring.

He snatched it out and tried it in the ignition. For once, the gods of luck seemed to be on his side. The key fit. Hot-wiring vehicles was Spy Craft 101, but it took a few minutes he could ill afford at the moment. Pulling on a pair of sunglasses he found on the dashboard, he started the truck, threw it into gear and pulled out of the yard.

No one yelled at him. Which meant it would take a few minutes for someone to casually ask someone else who’d just left and why. Then there’d be a few more minutes of confusion while everyone was accounted for and then questioned. He figured he would get about ten minutes’ head start, worst case.

The moment he rounded the headland, he floored the truck. The ride was horrendous, but time was against him and banging his head on the ceiling was a small price to pay for his life.

The only passable road in the area was the main one back toward Baracoa, so that was the one he followed. Just north of Baracoa, a secondary road cut inland, eventually curving south to rejoin the main highway in the mountains. It was for this he headed.

The sky stayed thankfully empty of helicopters. He must have done a number on the bird back there. As he reached the south end of the flat plateau of plantations and farming co-ops, he spied a long puff of dust in the distance behind him. The good news was the vehicles were so far back he couldn’t even count how many there were. The bad news was that even the cloud of dust looked pissed.

The road rose out of the long valley into the hills and he banged along, trying not to get thrown out of his seat while looking for the turnoff he wanted.

There. The intersection loomed just ahead. He careened around the corner and screeched to a stop. Leaping out of the cab, he used a big palm leaf to rub out his tire tracks hastily. It cost him precious time, but he hoped it would throw the convoy behind him off his track at least temporarily.

The quality of this road was significantly worse. More than once he tested the limits of the truck’s heavy-duty suspension. He almost got stuck crossing a swollen stream, but the spinning tires caught at the last minute and hauled him up onto the slippery far bank.

He stopped again to erase his tracks from the mud and then proceeded onward. His entire world narrowed down to walls of green growth crowding him, and watching his rearview mirror. Whenever a patch of sky opened up overhead, he scanned it anxiously for helicopters. His hands ached from gripping the steering wheel, and the tops of his thighs were sore from banging into the steering wheel’s bottom rim.

The afternoon passed in a green haze, and as night was falling, he finally emerged into a decent-size intersection. He’d reached the main highway again. Gratefully, he turned south. The quality of the road didn’t improve much, and the tree cover was substantially less. His nerves stretched tighter and tighter.

If he was insanely lucky, the Cubans had pegged him for a simple thief and hadn’t thrown their whole damned military at him. But he wasn’t counting on that much luck. At some point, they would put up another helicopter and his run of luck would cut off. If only Katie was all right, he wouldn’t mind having the entire Cuban Army on his tail. He’d purely hated splitting up with Katie, but it really was the only way. Not that she was likely to forgive him for pushing her down that hill any time soon.

Not long after dark, he spotted blinking lights in the distant sky. He pulled the truck over quickly underneath a tree and hopped out to throw what downed tree limbs he could lift over it to obscure its profile. He crawled under the truck and prayed its warm engine would hide his human silhouette on any infrared radar the chopper might have.

He didn’t have long to wait to find out. The helicopter, a small two-seater, landed in a field maybe a hundred feet from his position. Swearing, he rolled out from under the truck and crept away fast as a soldier disembarked from the passenger’s side of the helicopter.

The terrain sucked for cover. It was open country with only small rocky outcroppings, and the grassy valley sadly lacked for bushes or tree cover. He could low-crawl on his belly through the knee-high grass without being seen, but that was about it. Staying low, he eased around behind the soldier carefully.

A bold idea struck him. It was crazy. Stupid, even. But it just might work. He waited until the soldier’s full attention was lasered in on the truck. The guy had a weapon drawn and was approaching the vehicle cautiously. Alex darted behind the soldier’s back, sprinting for the helicopter.

Even if the guy turned around and spotted him now, the soldier couldn’t safely fire toward the ’copter and its flammable fuel tanks. Not to mention, it was the guy’s ride out of here.

Alex closed the last few yards to the passenger door. Sure enough, the soldier behind him shouted. The pilot, not understanding, looked out his own door toward his colleague, who was waving his arms frantically. It was the opening Alex needed.

He threw open the passenger door and slid into the seat, pointing his pistol at the pilot. The guy lurched and shouted incoherently at him. Alex held up an imperative hand to silence the pilot.

Tersely, he explained in Spanish, “I know how to fly this. I can kill you and toss you out, or you can take me where I want to go and no one will get hurt. You have my word on it.”

The pilot babbled a little bit but put his hands on the controls. Alex watched the guy like a hawk as he strapped himself into the passenger seat. The bird lifted off jerkily.

“Easy, buddy. No need to kill us both because you’re panicked.”

The pilot keyed the radio transmit button on the collective, but Alex swatted the guy’s hand away, tsking. He reached across the guy’s body and yanked the plug for the guy’s headset and microphone, and then efficiently turned off all the radios, the radar identification system and the exterior lights.

The pilot’s eyes widened.

“I wasn’t kidding,” Alex shouted over the engine noise. “I don’t need you alive to fly this thing. So be cool. Okay?”

The pilot nodded, the fight gone out of him.

Dammit, Katie was a lousy influence on him. He should’ve killed this guy the minute he opened that door. But here he was, giving the pilot a shot at being smart and saving his own life. Still, he watched the Cuban like a hawk and his finger never left the trigger of his pistol.

“Fly south,” he ordered. “Gitmo.”

The pilot looked alarmed but banked the bird to the left and pushed the throttle forward. Without any navigation aids turned on, he and the pilot were going to have to find Gitmo the old-fashioned way. By looking down at the ground.

The trip was tense, but shockingly fast. In fewer than twenty minutes, the mountains fell away beneath them and the ocean came into view. It was pitch-dark below. Power was still out to most of this end of the island. But off to their right, a very faint glow lit the horizon. Alex punched up the GPS function on his cell phone to verify that Gitmo was a half dozen miles or so to the west.

“Fly that way.” Alex pointed.

The pilot whined a little about getting shot down, but Alex ignored him. The Americans would let them land. A major hurricane had just turned the entire island on its head. Nothing was ops normal right now.

Following the coast, the sprawling naval facility came into sight soon. Pockets of light here and there on the base indicated where emergency generators were up and running.

“Land in the first open space you see inside the fence,” Alex instructed.

Throwing him a skeptical look, the pilot did as ordered and landed in a parking lot. “Now what?”

Alex snorted. That was Katie’s favorite question. “Shut down. Get out. Lie on the ground, facedown.”

“You said you wouldn’t kill me!”

“I’m not going to. I’ll be lying down beside you, buddy.”

Indeed, Alex held his gun on the Cuban until the fellow was facedown, his fingers linked behind his head. Then Alex stripped off the Cuban military shirt and beret he’d stolen and knelt beside the pilot, keeping his pistol trained on the guy until the cavalry arrived.

Which took about three minutes. Three jeep loads of heavily armed soldiers with no senses of humor whatsoever pulled up. Alex let the glare of their headlights catch him, and then he slowly popped the clip out of the pistol. He tossed the weapon one direction and the clip the other. Then, in cautious slow motion, he linked his hands behind his head and laid down on his stomach beside the pilot.

“Are you crazy, man?” the pilot demanded.

“I have been called that before,” Alex commented before the soldiers started shouting at him to be quiet.

“They’re going to kill us both,” the pilot cried out.

“Not if you lie still and do what they say—”

The pilot panicked. He jumped to his feet and made a run for it. Whether he’d planned to head for his helicopter or the fence, Alex couldn’t tell. But the guy was gunned down so hard his torso was almost cut in half by the barrage of lead. Blood sprayed all over him, hot and metallic tasting.