Sacrifice

Annja wondered what they hoped to achieve by kidnapping her.

She looked around the makeshift camp. There were several huts built a foot off the ground on stilts. Their rooftops had been painted and thatched over to help conceal them among the other plants of the jungle canopy, probably to discourage them from being seen from the air by the military units that hunted the terrorists.

She wondered if it was true that U.S. special-operations troops were involved in the hunt for Abu Sayyaf. She supposed they could be, and the thought of them attacking the camp cheered her.

The reality of it seemed unlikely, though. Annja hadn’t heard any type of aircraft in the area since she’d been here.

The jungle, she knew, could be utterly impenetrable. Walk in any direction and within ten yards, you’d be totally lost unless you knew exactly where you were going and how you were going to get there.

She heard a chicken clucking off in the distance. They were one of the few animals that Abu Sayyaf members seemed to keep around the camp. She was grateful they at least fed her well enough. Last night she’d had a chicken-and-rice dish that had filled her stomach and set her at ease for the first time in a few days.

They kept her well hydrated, too. Of course, they had to. In this heat, even just being leashed to the wooden pole a few feet away, Annja could dehydrate fast. Someone stopped by about once an hour and forced her to drink water.

The dark skin of her Filipino hosts suggested they were indigenous to this area, rather than city transplants. She knew that Abu Sayyaf, like many terrorist groups, preferred the disenfranchised lower classes to the middle class or wealthy. It was easier to recruit them, easier to get them to commit to suicide missions if they believed their families were going to be taken care of after they were gone.

From her vantage point in the camp, Annja had seen a total of twelve men and four women. Each one of them was dressed in camouflage fatigues. And even Annja was wearing fatigues. Her own clothes had been unceremoniously stripped off when she’d first arrived. Annja wondered if her nakedness might have aroused any of her guards, but they merely looked away while she put on the new clothes, which smelled of mothballs.

She heard the tramping of feet and looked up. One of the guards, a guy she’d named Big Nose because of the bulbous snout he had, approached with her hourly ration of water.

“Drink.”

Annja tilted her head back and opened her mouth. The water was cool. Annja wondered if they had a refrigerator somewhere, and if so, what sort of power it was running on. A generator out here would be too noisy and would require a supply of gasoline to run. She didn’t think they would opt to trade their concealment for a creature comfort. But who knew?

She swallowed some water, pausing to take a breath before finishing off the water off. She felt a few drops run down her chin and smiled at the guard. “Thank you.”

He frowned and walked away.

So much for making a friend, she thought. I don’t think I can count on him as an ally.

She continued the struggle to get her hands around to her front, but couldn’t make it work. She slumped forward, straining to stretch her back muscles. She’d already worked on keeping her legs flexible, but her arms had pretty much gone numb.

She sighed and took another deep breath. Now what? Annja closed her eyes and looked inside of herself. The sword she’d somehow inherited from Joan of Arc hung in its ready position. All she had to do was reach in and take it.

But how could she do that when her hands were cuffed?

She was still learning about the powers of the sword and what she could and couldn’t do with it. Maybe I don’t need my hands free in this plane to do it in that plane, she thought. Perhaps she could reach into the otherwhere and then, when she opened her eyes, the cuffs would be gone. All she had to do was see it so.

Annja saw her hands as free as she reached toward the sword.

She felt the hilt and wrapped her hands around it.

She opened her eyes.

Her hands were still cuffed behind her. The sword was nowhere to be seen.

Annja frowned. So much for that.

She knew she had to get her cuffs off before she tried to do anything at all that might spring her from this place.

The problem, she realized, was that even if she did escape, where would she go? She had no idea where she was. They’d blindfolded her until she arrived in the camp. And stumbling through the jungle wasn’t the smartest thing she could do.

There had to be another way. But what?

Annja looked up. Somewhere in the camp, there seemed to be some sort of commotion. She heard more voices. They spoke loudly. Was it an argument? Annja strained to listen, but her knowledge of Tagalog was minute. And there was no way of knowing what particular dialect these terrorists were using.

The voices seemed to be getting closer. Annja sat back, trying to feign disinterest.

The guard with the big nose came into view. The AK-47 assault rifle he wore dangled from its strap on his shoulder. The gun looked large in his smallish hands, but he kept it fixed on Annja.

She wanted to smile. Like I’m any type of threat right now, she wanted to say. But she kept her mouth closed.

Big Nose knelt behind her and untied the leash binding her to the tree. He stood and gestured to Annja with his gun. “You will come with me,” he said.

Annja nodded and the guard motioned back the way he’d come. Annja took a few stumbling steps, waiting for the blood to flow back down her legs. She tried flexing her arms, but the cuffs really restricted her movement.

The man led her to a large hut. As Annja walked toward it, she saw other members of the terrorist cell peering at her intently. Did they know who she was? Was this why they’d kidnapped her? Did they even get Chasing History’s Monsters out here? And if they did, Annja would still be surprised they might know who she was. Since she didn’t make a habit out of wearing skimpy clothes, her fan base was significantly smaller than her buxom cohost’s.

The guard walked her up the steps of the hut. Annja’s feet felt the rough-hewed wood flooring under her. It felt good to be standing again after sitting for so long. She ducked under a palm frond opening and walked inside the hut.

It was much darker inside. But a small fire kept it just shy of total darkness. The heat was worse in here and Annja instantly felt herself sweating even more than she had outside.

“What is your name?”

The voice wasn’t one she’d heard before. It sounded quite cosmopolitan.

“Annja Creed,” she said, looking for the source of the voice.

“Where are you from, Annja Creed?”

“Brooklyn.”

Annja strained to make out any details, but she could only see that he had close-cropped hair. There was also a vague tinge of some sort of cheap cologne on the air. He’d obviously showered recently. Or maybe he’d rolled around in the cologne sample inserts that they stocked magazines with these days.

“What brings you to our country?”

“I work for a television show. One of the story ideas brought me here,” she replied.

“You’re a reporter?” he asked.

“Sort of.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m not with the news. It’s more of a history show. Like documentaries.”

“You don’t have a camera crew with you?”

Annja shook her head. “I came over first to see if the story was legitimate. Only then would the camera guys come over so we could film it.”