Luis felt his irritation rise. Alvarado was right, but lately he’d been sounding like a broken record, always negative, always warning. This job was a joint effort of the FFOC and the northern drug cartels, and the first time they’d given Luis any role in one of their operations. The FFOC provided the expertise and detailed planning needed to hijack the jet, and the drug cartel provided the planes within the country that would transport the passengers to the exchange location once they were ransomed.
Luis’s role was to deliver the hostages and any valuables to a secure location in the mountains to await ransom. The FFOC and the drug cartels considered Luis’s small group of paramilitary losers to be expendable, and so gave them the most grueling and dangerous job.
Luis knew the majority of his men were morons, long past stupid and incapable of any thought beyond their daily hit. Still, he was proud that he had been able to turn them into some semblance of a military group. The FFOC had finally responded to his repeated requests to be given a job that would prove his value as a leader. He intended to make the most of it.
“By the time the Americans find the crash site, we’ll be deep in the mountains. No gringo knows these hills like we do. It will take them months to search for them. By then, the ransoms will have been paid.”
Alvarado sucked on his cigarette, his eyes never moving from the passengers. “It would be easier if we could load them on the trucks and use the road.”
Luis let his irritation show. “That would also be easier for the Americans to find us. No trucks, Alvarado. We make a trail through the jungle to the first checkpoint. We’ll get them on trucks at that point.”
“We’ll lose at least ten more from the land mines as we march,” Alvarado said.
“We march them in front of us. Better one of them step on a paw-breaker than one of us, eh?” Luis grinned at Alvarado. “And put the fat ones in the front. I want to keep the fit ones for working.”
“And the women?”
“The women we reserve for other things.”
Alvarado laughed.
6
EMMA CAME TO SOME TIME LATER. THE TREES STILL BURNED. Heat reflected off the landing strip, creating waves that looked like transparent streamers undulating upward. She disentangled herself from the bush and moved farther up the mountain to get a better view of the landing strip.
The surviving passengers sat huddled in a circle at the beginning of the runway. Some leaned against their neighbors, while others curled forward with their heads on their knees. Emma recognized several from the plane. An older gentleman, with a full head of white hair, sat tall, despite his age. All but four had their hands tied behind their backs.
Thirty guerrillas, armed with assault rifles, guarded them. They all wore the same dirty green fatigues with lace-up boots. Some drank from canteens that they kept in holders attached to their belts, some smoked cigarettes, and others sucked on hand-rolled brown sticks that looked like joints. All were armed.
One guerrilla stood out from the others. Lean, wiry, with an unshaven, rat-thin face and crazy pinball eyes, he shouted orders and marched back and forth in front of the circle of survivors. The others jumped to obey him.
They’d landed on a dirt airstrip the size of a football field backed on one side by a mountain, on the other by dense foliage. Several trees and jet parts still smoldered, sending thin ribbons of gray smoke into the air. The jungle threatened to encroach on all sides. Stately trees fought with smaller palms for every inch of available space and light. Tropical vines coiled around everything upright and ran along the ground, searching for their next host. The foliage formed a living wall.
Huge potholes dotted the dirt strip, creating a hazard for the landing gear of any plane forced to use it. A deep gash ran the length of it. The end of the gash disappeared under the aft section of the jet. Sun beat down on the strip. Charred bodies, still smoking, littered the dirt around the aft section. Emma gritted her teeth to stop the nausea that rose at the sight of the dead.
The guerrillas barked orders at several male passengers as they worked to pull blackened suitcases from the remains of the cargo hold. Emma recognized one of the passengers who’d sat in the third row. About thirty, tall and slender, with thick dark hair and dressed in a polo shirt and khakis, he had spent the entire flight typing furiously on a laptop computer, stopping only to stare around the first-class cabin with a hyperalert demeanor. On the plane Emma had pegged him either as an overworked oil executive or a paranoid coke addict. She had dubbed him “Wary Man” and hadn’t thought about him again. Now soot covered his face and his polo shirt was in tatters, but he still exuded an air of silent intensity.
A surprising amount of cargo survived the plane’s ill-fated landing. Four guerrillas went to work emptying the suitcases, removing anything valuable. They took laptop computers, jewelry cases, and cameras, but left most of the contents scattered on the ground. Clothing, toiletries, shoes, and hair dryers littered the runway.
One passenger fell to his knees from heat and exhaustion. Rat Face pushed off the Jeep he leaned against and sauntered over. He barked an order in Spanish to a nearby comrade. The soldier grabbed the passenger by the arm and dragged him back to the circle, dumping him facedown in the dirt. The other passengers stayed frozen, staring at the prone man, fear on their faces.
The guerrillas pointed to another passenger sitting in the circle. They untied his hands and pushed him toward the discarded cargo. He joined the others, which Emma now dubbed the “work crew.” At one point, she watched Wary Man push a suitcase and a silver metal briefcase behind some wreckage when the guerrillas weren’t looking.
The noise of engines accompanied by a cloud of dust came from a road that ran up a hill next to the airstrip. Two flatbed pickup trucks appeared only twenty-five feet below Emma’s perch. They ground to a halt at the edge of the airstrip, the doors flew open, and three men stepped out.
The first man out of the trucks wore green twill pants and a collared shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows. His hair was dark and full, but his face was etched with wrinkles. Emma held her breath as he scanned the foliage in her direction. His eyes held a dead look that frightened Emma with its intensity. She shivered in the heat.
He pulled on a cigarette as he scrutinized the smoldering airplane. Two men surrounded him. These wore fatigues like the rest of the guerrillas on the airstrip, but theirs looked cleaner, and their shirts were sleeved. They dogged the smoking man’s steps while holding machine guns at the ready.
Smoking Man strolled to the back of one flatbed, lowered the hatch, and flipped open a laptop computer. Next to the computer sat two large field phones, each in its own individual bag. Both the phones and the computer had some sort of satellite uplink. The man dialed a number and chatted on the phone, stopping every few minutes to consult the computer screen.
The second phone sat in the corner of the flatbed, next to a mesh bag of apples and a liter bottle of seltzer water. Emma focused on the apples. Her mouth watered at the thought of them. Her stomach growled and her throat burned. She was so thirsty that each swallow felt painful. If she could reach the flatbed undetected, she could take both the field phone and an apple. There were so many in the bag, she doubted the man would notice one less. She would wait until dark to make her move.
Smoking Man finished with his phone call and waved Rat Face over. Smoking Man pointed to something on the computer screen before indicating the passengers huddled on the airstrip. Smoking Man, Rat Face, and the bodyguards spread out, walking through the people, looking at faces. If a passenger stared downward, the men snapped out an order. The passenger looked up.
When they reached the end of the huddled group, Smoking Man shook his head at Rat Face. He tossed his cigarette on the ground and strolled over to him. Another conference. This time there was a lot of yelling on both sides. Rat Face indicated the bodies gathered around the plane’s aft section. He walked over and kicked one of the burned corpses. He put his hands in the air and shrugged.
Emma gasped. That a human being could treat another in such a fashion, even after death, was a matter beyond her comprehension
Smoking Man barked an order. The guerrillas jumped up and started unloading metal disks from the back of the truck. They carried each disk gingerly, as if it were fine china, not a hunk of steel. Emma watched as they hid these disks on the side of the dirt road, alternating sides in a zigzag pattern. Her heart dropped once she realized that the only road to the wreckage would be booby-trapped with land mines. The entire hijacking now appeared to have been planned with an almost military efficiency. Her hopes of a quick search-and-rescue mission were fast disappearing. The enormity of her situation was sinking in, and along with the realization came anger. She settled back in to watch the proceedings with an eye toward disrupting their plans.
While the guerrillas unloaded the disks from the first truck, Smoking Man’s bodyguard climbed into the second truck. Emma scrambled to her feet. Her fear of losing the phone and food was so great that, for a brief moment, she almost ran straight to the truck. She caught herself and slid behind the trunk of a large palm. She watched while the truck drove away. Emma closed her eyes and put her cheek against the tree. After a minute she slumped back down to the ground.
Ten minutes later, the flatbed truck reappeared and resumed its spot at the edge of the strip. The bodyguard jumped out. There sat the second field phone, the mesh bag of apples, and the bottle of water.
The passengers worked in the heat, the discarded cargo grew to a mountain, and Smoking Man inhaled his cigarettes. Sweat soaked through Emma’s clothes, causing her to itch, and her arms and legs started to ache as her body emerged from the shock of the crash. Her hunger grew, becoming a living thing that she found harder and harder to ignore. Her stomach growled and her head pounded. A fly buzzed in her ear and she batted it away.
The guerrillas stopped to eat. They fed the passengers, handing them reddish brown strips of some sort of smoked meat and flattened bread made out of corn or maize. Emma closed her eyes while the group on the airstrip ate. She was so hungry that watching them made her weak. The entire crew was massed on the far side of the strip, concentrating on eating. Emma decided to make her move.
She shoved her pack under the bush. She crouched over and worked her way through the trees, keeping low. She focused on her feet in order to avoid stepping on twigs. The thick bed of rotted leaves and soft earth served to muffle her footsteps. While she was grateful for the soundproofing, the sheer density of the jungle made it difficult to move without slapping through branches or rustling through plants, and the leaves were slick underfoot.
She crab-walked for almost a hundred yards, taking pains to move up the side of the mountain. She twisted her body sideways to slide between branches of a palm, and placed each foot down toe-first to minimize sound. She stopped thirty feet above and to the right of the vehicles. The truck with the apples sat on the other side of the truck that contained the tarp. They were lined up next to each other, five feet from the edge of the tree line. To reach them, Emma would need to step out into the open, climb over the first truck’s flatbed into the second’s, grab the apples and phone, and retreat back the way she came.
Rivulets of sweat poured off her. It ran down her face and soaked under her arms. Her heart raced. She took several deep breaths to try to regain some composure. She cast a glance at the guerrilla group. Rat Face, his men, Smoking Man, and the bodyguards, all stood in a semicircle with their backs to Emma. She could hear the sounds of their voices rising and falling. Emma needed to get to the truck before they finished with their conference.
She plunged down toward the flatbeds. While she tried to move as quietly as she could, she didn’t want to spend the time it would take to move through the brush in silence. Her world coalesced into one goal: reach the truck.
She slipped on the wet leaves, but was able to catch her balance at the last minute. She was twenty feet from the flatbed, then ten feet. Now she didn’t bother watching for sticks. Her need for speed trumped any concern about noise. She closed the gap to the tree line. She reached the edge. Now she was five feet from the truck. No time to waste. She lowered to the ground. Took a deep breath and crawled into the open.
The sun hit her back full blast. Within seconds she began overheating. Her heart raced, the pounding blood sounding loud in her ears. She worked her way to the first truck’s rear. She crouched behind the wheel well. She cast a glance at the airstrip. The passengers remained huddled in a large group, between her and the now-conferencing guerrillas. They stayed in the same position they were in two minutes ago. Only one looked at her.
Wary Man stared, a look of astonishment on his face. They locked eyes. He turned his head to look at the guerrillas, still in a circle. He turned back to Emma, shook his head slightly, then cocked it to the side, as if to tell her to get back into the trees. But Emma wasn’t about to quit now. She frowned at him, shook her head, and mouthed the word no. Wary Man frowned back at her with a look full of frustration.
She rose until she could see over the side of the first flatbed’s walls. It contained only the tarp, and the sides matched that of the flatbed containing the prize. She needed only to scurry across the first flatbed to the second. The unused field phone sat in the corner farthest from her along with the apples. She’d have to crawl into the bed to reach them.
She stepped onto the wheel well and swung a leg over the side. She stepped onto the truck’s bed and lowered herself back into a crouch. She crawled to the opposite side on all fours. Her foot hit the large rolled tarp. It moved.
Emma nearly screamed her surprise. The tarp wriggled again and the edge fell away to reveal the frightened face of a boy. He had a bandanna gag in his mouth, and his dark eyes were wild with fear. The tarp fell farther away to reveal that he wore the same faded T-shirt and camouflage pants as the other guerrillas. He appeared to be no more than sixteen years old. Emma took a quick look over her shoulder. Smoking Man yelled at Rat Face, jabbing a finger at him for emphasis. All of the guerrillas watched the argument raging between the two men.
The boy pulled his hands out of the tarp. They were tied with a rope. He made frantic noises while he shoved his hands at her.
“Shh!” Emma hissed at him. The noises stopped. Emma reached around his head to yank at the bandanna’s knot. The old, dried cloth resisted. Emma’s blood pressure shot up even higher. She could feel her panic rising. She took another look back at the guerrillas. Now they were nodding, as if they’d reached an agreement. The conference wouldn’t last much longer. She took a quick look at Wary Man. He craned his neck to see over the truck’s hatch. This time he shot her an urgent, questioning look. He swung his head around to check on the guerrillas.
