Close Quarters

His lungs burned and his legs ached with every stride.

Christopher Harland had been running through the dense jungle for the past half hour as if his life

depended on it—because it did. He didn’t know the identity of his pursuers, but there was no doubt about what would happen if they caught him. That was all the incentive he needed to run this race—giving up was tantamount to a prolonged and painful death. Or worse, even, as his pursuers might actually subject Harland to the same things to which they had subjected his trusted colleagues, his friends, even a woman he loved.

Who the hell knew about their fates? He couldn’t even be sure of his own at this point.

Harland’s lungs threatened to give out on him. He heard the crash of the small armed unit as they closed the distance. He couldn’t keep this pace forever. No amount of track and field at Rutgers could have prepared him for it. He could only thank his coaches now for the training, although the repeated wind sprints at the time hadn’t seemed all that useful to most of the members on his team.

Harland’s flagging endurance ceased to be a concern as he felt something snag his ankle. He stopped and turned to see what it was, but got no further in his inspection—the sensation of his body leaving the ground proved as distracting as it was disconcerting. The world around him seemed to swirl in a haze of reds and blacks, stars popping in front of his eyes from the abrupt change in orientation.

Harland coughed as he fought for air. It felt as if his heart might explode in his chest. Would that be such a bad way to go? Not as bad as the way he’d exit this world at the hands of the figures who emerged from the jungle shadows. Most of them were dark-skinned but not in a mestizo way. These faces implied a more exotic place of origin, most likely somewhere in the Middle East or northern Africa. Harland had learned quite a bit from his ethnic studies in college.

Harland’s head hammered as he dangled helplessly from the tree. As he spun he could see that at least a dozen men had been chasing him. Why? Was he really a target of that importance or was it merely that they didn’t want him to get away? Clearly these men were operating in secret here, although Harland couldn’t imagine who they were or why they’d be interested in him. He’d heard the stories of Americans being kidnapped and held for ransom or missionaries murdered for proselytizing, but this situation seemed much different.

Harland opened his mouth and gulped air. He thought about speaking to them, but before he could decide his body suddenly plummeted to the ground. He cursed as putting out a hand to break his fall sent shooting pains up his wrist, resulting in what was more likely a sprain than a fracture. Either way, it hurt and he wished these men would either kill him outright or let him go instead of toying with him.

It wasn’t to be.

In a minute that seemed more like an hour, two men grabbed Harland and hauled him to his feet. They shoved him against the gnarled trunk of a giant tree, the surface biting into his skin like sandpaper. They pinned his arms behind him, and then Harland felt something thick and smooth being inserted under his right armpit and drawn across his back until it extended out the opposite side under his other armpit. The men then jerked Harland’s arms down, causing a fresh wave of searing pain to travel up his arm from his injured wrist. They bound the stick to him with thick cord at shoulders and forearms and then spun him.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, first in English and then in Spanish.

That bought him a slap across the mouth. “Shut up!”

Harland’s face stung and he surmised the striker had left a red welt.

Without another word his captors each grabbed one end of the stick and lifted just enough that Harland had to walk almost on his tiptoes to accompany them. He’d probably managed to make it at least a couple of miles from the Peace Corps encampment—walking all that distance back in this fashion would not be pleasant. Then again, what was pleasant about any of this?

His forced march turned out to be even more grueling than he’d suspected it would be, and Harland was exhausted by the time they reached the volunteer camp. Or what was left of it. The wooden buildings that had been home for the past three months were now smoldering hulks, their insides gutted by fire and the exteriors little more than charred, smoking frames. Only the concrete pads on which they’d been built had managed to survive. Harland noticed an odd, thick haze—a mix of orange and green in the late-afternoon sunlight filtering through the jungle canopy overhead—had fallen on the camp. It wasn’t caused by the smoke. This was some sort of natural phenomenon he’d never experienced before and he wondered if it had something to do with the fire.

The men half dragged, half walked Harland across the remains of the encampment until they reached the one building that had remained untouched: the camp mess. A man stood there, dressed in camouflage khakis like the others. A belt with a mixture of shotgun shells and high-velocity rounds encircled his waist in some kind of military webbing. His boots were highly polished and muscular arms bulged taut against the rolled-up sleeves of his uniform shirt. While the other men wore black berets, this one wore a blocked utility cap with gold wreaths braided along the brim and some kind of circular emblem on its crown.

The man turned and studied Harland for a time, his eyes indiscernible behind his sunglasses. A scar ran along his meaty jaw, very faint but evident. It was thin and looked as if it might have been caused by a razor blade or very sharp knife. His breath stank of cigarettes as he leaned in and studied Harland with a steady gaze.

“What is your name?” he asked in English.

That accent! Where the hell had Harland heard it before? He couldn’t remember and it was driving him nuts because it sounded nearly identical to the accent of the one who’d yelled at him. Harland knew it didn’t really matter, however, since his chances of getting out of here were slim. And even if he did manage to escape or they decided to let him go, who would he tell?

“I asked you your name!” the leader said. He tapped Harland’s forehead and said, “Are you stupid, American?”

“Harland,” he said. “My name is Christopher Harland. What’ve you done with my friends?”

“You should be worried for your own future,” the man said with a smile that lacked any warmth.

“Where are you from?” Harland asked. He looked around him at the men busily emptying the trays and silverware and other materials from the camp mess and then affixed his gaze on the man. “You’re not part of any guerrilla outfit I’ve ever seen. And I should tell you that we’re a U.S. Peace Corps group. If we’re out of contact long, you can bet your ass someone will know about it soon enough. They’ll come looking.”

The military leader favored Harland with another flat smile as he removed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, put one in his mouth and turned his head to the side. An aide immediately stepped forward and lit it. The man took a deep drag, let out the smoke slowly through his nostrils and studied Harland, nodding steadily.

“Yes, yes…I’m sure you’re correct. And that is exactly why you have been chosen among your people to walk out of here alive.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m saying as long as you do what I tell you, your friends will remain alive. Otherwise, they are all dead and so are you.”

Harland considered this for a time, finally realizing he didn’t have any choice. If Dee and the rest of his entourage were to survive then he would have to do exactly as the man said. He couldn’t very well risk their lives. He’d never wanted this responsibility anyway—never asked to be responsible for the safety and welfare of others—so it didn’t make cooperating with this man seem so bad. Whoever he was, it made little difference. Harland was going to come out of this breathing and save a lot of lives in the process. How could that be bad?

“All right, I’ll play the game your way. What do you want me to do?”

And so the man issued Christopher Harland detailed instructions.

CHAPTER TWO

Little Havana, Florida

The stifling humidity had put Carl “Ironman” Lyons in a foul mood.

Only the ice-cold beer served by a smoking-hot waitress with wild brunette hair kept his temper in check. The sweat from the frosty bottle dribbled across

Lyons’s left hand and pooled onto the table. Once in a while, he’d wipe the cool water against his forehead but it didn’t help much. Lyons couldn’t remember the humidity being this bad during his time in Los Angeles when he was a cop with the LAPD.

Watching his Able Team partners stuff their faces with jalapeño nachos washed down by copious amounts of Malta Hatuey soft drinks didn’t improve his disposition. Lyons, leader of the elite covert-action team, sighed as he took in their surroundings for the tenth time in the past half hour. “Once more we’ve been

relegated to doing a job that should be assigned to the federal boys.”

“You know what I think?” Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz managed to ask around a giant bite, cheese and sour cream running down his chin. “I think we should order another one of these.”

Rosario “Politician” Blancanales made a concerted effort to chew and swallow his own decadent mouthful before saying, “Cheer up, Ironman. You should make the most of this. Try to think of it as a vacation.”

“A vacation.”

“Sure,” Blancanales said, drawing the word out like a man tempting his grandchildren with a story. “I mean, there are much worse places the Farm could’ve sent us.”

“Oh, yeah? Like where?”

“Well, I—”

“Alaska,” Schwarz said.

Blancanales jerked a thumb at his companion. “There you have it! Alaska. It’s cold there.”

“They also have some of the best fishing this time of year,” Lyons countered.

“They also have polar bears,” Schwarz mused. “You could get eaten alive.”

Blancanales feigned a conspiratorial whisper, cupping his hand to his mouth as he said, “I don’t think they’d find Ironman too palatable.”

Lyons ignored the gibes from his friends as two men escorted a third across the street. They headed straight for Able Team’s table in the cabana-style exterior setting of the lounge. Lyons scowled at them, wondering how they’d managed to escort the guy this far without getting him wasted. Their charge wore khaki shorts and a Hawaiian-style silk shirt; sandals adorned his feet. He had light red hair that protruded in clumpy tufts from beneath his Marlins baseball cap. The man’s dress perfectly blended with the styles worn by the Able Team warriors, but his escorts stood out like highway cones in their government suits.