Page 82 of Fear No Evil

Jake turned his head to look at him. “You heard that already?”

“The UN team touched down in Bogotá just as we were leaving, delaying our departure. We heard all kinds of strange reports.”

Jake shook his head. “Whatever you heard was wrong.” He briefly summarized the FARC and Venezuelan’s clever duplicity, how they’d dressed themselves like the JUNGLA in order to sway public opinion against the Jungle Company and garnersympathy for the FARC. “We need to set the record straight. But first we’re going to rescue Lena.”

Lobo heaved a thoughtful sigh. While his preference to evacuate Jake was obvious, he couldn’t dismiss his peer’s wishes out of hand. “Zen, get on the radio and have the Little Bird deliver boots and gear for Jake, ASAP.”

“Size thirteen,” Jake inserted.

“Yes, sir.”

As Zen pulled the high-powered sat phone from his vest and raised the antenna, Lobo shrugged the pack off his back and produced a rugged laptop. While it booted up, Harm thrust an energy bar at Jake. “Here, have some caffeine, sir.”

“Thanks.” Keeping one eye on Lobo’s laptop, Jake wolfed down the snack, marveling that anything could taste so good. With a few keystrokes, Lobo brought up a 3D topographical graph of El Castillo. Realizing the blue dot halfway up its east side showed Lena’s location, Jake’s stomach lurched. He swallowed his food through a constricting throat.

Lobo worked the screen, homing in on her location and reading the results. “According to GPS, she’s approximately seven klicks from here, due northwest, at an altitude of four thousand feet‍—looks like the same location you were both at for days.

“Thecasita?” Picturing Lena there without him made his chest hurt.

“Yeah. As soon as your boots and gear get here, we’ll go after her. Depending on the situation, maybe we can ambush her captors and extract her on a SPIE rig.”

The Special Patrol Insertion/Extraction rig could be lowered by a larger helicopter than the Little Bird. The rig went straight through the forest canopy to lift people out as a group, each of them clipped to a sturdy D-shaped ring.

Lobo made rescuing Lena sound like a walk in the park, which it wouldn’t be. Still, compared to what she had to be enduring, the SEALs had the easier job, no question.

Just keep her alive, Father. Please keep her alive.

Am I dead?

Roused by the closing of the door, Maggie willed away the sluggishness that weighed her down like a heavy blanket. Her eyes opened to a familiar ceiling, patinaed by the first suggestion of sunrise shining through the four screened windows. She was lying in her hammock in thecasita. Dare she hope the awful memories spurring her heart into a gallop were all a dream?

As she pushed onto one elbow, hoping to see Jake’s hammock next to hers, metal bit into her neck and pain lanced her hip.So, not a dream.Gallo had shackled her with Jay Barnes’s chains, and Vargas had used his filthy knife to pry the microchip from her flesh.

Sinking back into her hammock, Maggie willed unconsciousness to claim her. But the silence in thecasitasuggested she’d been left alone. Would Gallo and Vargas really leave her here? Wait, someoneelsehad joined them last night. Ah yes, her unlikely savior, David.

She remembered rising to consciousness as he sawed away at thehamakfibers keeping her strung up and helpless. He’d been standing on a chair, and when the bindings gave way, they’d both nearly hit the floor as he struggled to catch her.

After that, he’d helped her into a hammock where she’d floated in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware that he was tending the gaping wound left by Vargas. Behind him, she couldhear the Venezuelan and Gallo making plans as they boiled rice and beans for their supper.

When she’d roused to awareness later, David had vanished. Feigning sleep, she’d watched Gallo and Vargas eat, petrified that they would attack her without David there.

But then he’d returned, whispering, “Tranquila,señora.” He’d laid cool, wet leaves on her hip, then brewed her a tea and urged her to drink it. The pain had lessened immediately, and she’d grown sleepy. All the while, David stood over her, speaking a mix of his mother’s indigenous tongue and Spanish. It took her a while to recognize that he was praying.

“Thank you,” she’d whispered. He’d quite literally saved her from degradation and more torture. But death was still coming. There was only so long the slightly built squad leader could defend her against his murderous superiors.

The light in the windows told Maggie it was morning. Gallo and Vargas had just left‍—that must have been what woke her. Where would they be going this early? To speak with Rojas?

No. A chill washed over her‍—oh, she knew where. Armed with her tracking device, they were going to lure her rescuers into a trap. Hadn’t she heard them planning such a strategy the night before?

Alarm made Maggie’s heart pound, which caused her wound to throb. Jake’s SEALs, who were doubtless on their way, would track her down by her microchip and fall squarely into an ambush. In the meantime, she would have to save herself, to flee from this place before the villains returned.

Braced for pain, Maggie sat up cautiously. The chain attached to the collar that gouged her chin gave a musical jingle before pulling taut and halting her movements. The end of it was padlocked to the metal ring that held up the end of her hammock. She wasn’t going anywhere.

A dark lump on the ground drew her attention as it unfurled. “Señora!” It was David, shaking off the blanket in which he was wrapped and clambering to his feet. “How…how do you feel?”

All she could do was stare at him.How do I feel?Jake was gone. And for the foreseeable future, she was now a captive of the FARC.

Her gaze slid to David’s ancient AK-47, still lying on the floor at his feet. She licked her dry lips. “Do you have the key to unlock me?” Her voice was hoarse from screaming when Vargas took his knife to her hip.

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