Reckless: Midnight Rainbow / Tears of the Renegade

Obediently she followed his direction, but found that her burst of adrenaline was already dissipating. She felt more exhausted now than she had before the short rest. She stumbled once, catching her booted foot in a liana vine, but he rescued her with a quick grab. She gave him a tired smile of thanks, but when she tried to step away from him he held her. He stood rigid and it frightened her. She jerked around to look at him, but his face was a cold, blank mask, and he was staring behind her. She whirled again, and looked down the barrel of a rifle.

The sweat congealed on her body. For one moment of frozen terror she expected to be shot; then the moment passed and she was still alive. She was able then to look past the barrel to the hard, dark face of the soldier who held the rifle. His black eyes were narrowed, fastened on Sullivan. He said something, but Jane was too upset to translate the Spanish.

Slowly, deliberately, Sullivan released Jane and raised his arms, clasping his hands on top of his head. “Step away from me,” he said quietly.

The soldier barked an order at him. Jane’s eyes widened. If she moved an inch this maniac would probably shoot her down. But Sullivan had told her to move, so she moved, her face so white that the small freckles across her nose stood out as bright dots of color. The rifle barrel jerked in her direction, and the soldier said something else. He was nervous, Jane suddenly realized. The tension was obvious in his voice, in his jerky movements. God, if his finger twitched on the trigger...! Then, just as abruptly, he aimed the rifle at Sullivan again.

Sullivan was going to do something. She could sense it. The fool! He’d get himself killed if he tried to jump this guy! She stared at the soldier’s shaking hands on the rifle, and suddenly something jumped into her consciousness. He didn’t have the rifle on automatic. It took her another moment to realize the implications; then she reacted without thought. Her body, trained to dance, trained in the graceful moves of self-defense, went into fluid motion. He began moving a split second later, swinging the weapon around, but by then she was close enough that her left foot sliced upward under the barrel of the gun, and the shot that he fired went into the canopy over their heads. He never got a chance at another shot.

Grant was on him then, grabbing the gun with one hand and slashing at the man’s unprotected neck with the side of the other. The soldier’s eyes glazed over, and he sank limply to the ground, his breathing raspy but steady.

Grant grabbed Jane’s arm. “Run! That shot will bring every one of them swarming down on us!”

The urgency of his tone made it possible for her to obey, though she was rapidly depleting her reserves of energy. Her legs were leaden, and her boots weighed fifty pounds each. Burning agony slashed her thighs, but she forced herself to ignore it; sore muscles weren’t nearly as permanent as being dead. Urged on by his hand at her back, she stumbled over roots and through bushes, adding to her collection of scratches. It was purely a natural defense mechanism, but her mind shut down and her body operated automatically, her feet moving, her lungs sucking desperately at the heavy, moist air. She was so tired now that she no longer felt the pain in her body.

The ground abruptly sloped out from under her feet. Her senses dulled by both terror and fatigue, she was unable to regain her balance. Grant grabbed for her, but the momentum of her body carried them both over the edge of the hill. His arms wrapped around her, and they rolled down the steep slope. The earth and trees spun crazily, but she saw a rocky, shallow stream at the bottom of the slope and a small, hoarse cry tore from her throat. Some of those rocks were big enough to kill them and the smaller ones could cut them to pieces.

Grant swore, and tightened his grip on her until she thought her ribs would splinter under the pressure. She felt his muscles tighten, felt the desperate twist he made, and somehow he managed to get his feet and legs in front of him. Then they were sliding down in a fairly upright position, rather than rolling. He dug his heels in and their descent slowed, then stopped. “Pris?” he asked roughly, cupping her chin in his hand and turning her face so he could see it. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no,” she quickly assured him, ignoring the new aches in her body. Her right arm wasn’t broken, but it was badly bruised; she winced as she tried to move it. One of the straps on the backpack had broken, and the pack was hanging lopsidedly off her left shoulder. Her cap was missing.

He adjusted the rifle on his shoulder, and Jane wondered how he had managed to hold on to it. Didn’t he ever drop anything, or get lost, or tired, or hungry? She hadn’t even seen him take a drink of water!

“My cap came off,” she said, turning to stare up the slope. The top was almost thirty yards above them and the slope steep enough that it was a miracle they hadn’t crashed into the rocks at the streambed.

“I see it.” He swarmed up the slope, lithe and sure-footed. He snatched the cap from a broken branch and in only a moment was back beside her. Jamming the cap on her head, he said, “Can you make it up the other side?”

There was no way, she thought. Her body refused to function any longer. She looked at him and lifted her chin. “Of course.”

He didn’t smile, but there was a faint softening of his expression, as if he knew how desperately tired she was. “We have to keep moving,” he said, taking her arm and urging her across the stream. She didn’t care that her boots were getting wet; she just sloshed through the water, moving downstream while he scanned the bank for an easy place to climb up. On this side of the stream, the bank wasn’t sloped; it was almost vertical and covered with what looked like an impenetrable tangle of vines and bushes. The stream created a break in the foliage that allowed more sunlight to pour down, letting the plants grow much more thickly.

“Okay, let’s go up this way,” he finally said, pointing. Jane lifted her head and stared at the bank, but she didn’t see any break in the wild tangle.

“Let’s talk about this,” she hedged.

He gave an exasperated sigh. “Look, Pris, I know you’re tired, but—”

Something snapped inside Jane, and she whirled on him, catching him by the shirtfront and drawing back her fist. “If you call me ‘Pris’ just one more time, I’m going to feed you a knuckle sandwich!” she roared, unreasonably angry at his continued use of that hated name. No one, but no one, had ever been allowed to call her Priscilla, Pris, or even Cilla, more than once. This damned commando had been rubbing her face in it from the beginning. She’d kept quiet about it, figuring she owed him for kicking him in the groin, but she was tired and hungry and scared and enough was enough!

He moved so quickly that she didn’t even have time to blink. His hand snaked out and caught her drawn back fist, while the fingers of his other hand laced around her wrist, removing her grip from his shirt. “Damn it, can’t you keep quiet? I didn’t name you Priscilla, your parents did, so if you don’t like it take it up with them. But until then, climb!”

Jane climbed, even though she was certain at every moment that she was going to collapse on her face. Grabbing vines for handholds, using roots and rocks and bushes and small trees, she squirmed and wiggled her way through the foliage. It was so thick that it could have been swarming with jaguars and she wouldn’t have been able to see one until she stuck her hand in its mouth. She remembered that jaguars liked water, spending most of their time resting comfortably near a river or stream, and she swore vengeance on Grant Sullivan for making her do this.

Finally she scrambled over the top, and after pushing forward several yards found that the foliage had once again thinned, and walking was much easier. She adjusted the pack on her back, wincing as she found new bruises. “Are we heading for the helicopter?”

“No,” he said curtly. “The helicopter is being watched.”

“Who are those men?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? Sandinistas, maybe; we’re only a few klicks from the Nicaraguan border. They could be any guerrilla faction. That damned Pablo sold us out.”

Jane didn’t waste time worrying about Pablo’s duplicity; she was too tired to really care. “Where are we going?”

“South.”

She ground her teeth. Getting information out of this man was like pulling teeth. “South where?”

“Limon, eventually. Right now, we’re going due east.”

Jane knew enough about Costa Rica to know what lay due east, and she didn’t like what she’d just been told. Due east lay the Caribbean coast, where the rain forest became swampland. If they were only a few kilometers from the Nicaraguan border, then Limon was roughly a hundred miles away. In her weariness, she felt it might as well have been five hundred miles. How long would it take them to walk a hundred miles? Four or five days? She didn’t know if she could stand four or five days with Mr. Sunshine. She’d known him less than twelve hours, and she was already close to death.

“Why can’t we just go south and forget about east?”

He jerked his head in the direction from which they’d come. “Because of them. They weren’t Turego’s men, but Turego will soon know that you came in this direction, and he’ll be after us. He can’t afford to have the government find out about his little clandestine operations. So...we go where he can’t easily follow.”

It made sense. She didn’t like it, but it made sense. She’d never been in the Caribbean coastal region of Costa Rica, so she didn’t know what to expect, but it had to be better than being Turego’s prisoner. Poisonous snakes, alligators, quicksand, whatever...it was better than Turego. She’d worry about the swamp when they were actually in it. With that settled in her mind, she returned to her most pressing problem.

“When do we get to rest? And eat? And, frankly, Attila, you may have a bladder the size of New Jersey, but I’ve got to go!”

Again she caught that unwilling twitch of his lips, as if he’d almost grinned. “We can’t stop yet, but you can eat while we walk. As for the other, go behind that tree there.” He pointed, and she turned to see another of those huge, funny trees with the enormous buttressed roots. In the absence of indoor plumbing it would have to do. She plunged for its shelter.

When they started out again he gave her something hard and dark to chew on; it tasted faintly like meat, but after examining it suspiciously she decided not to question him too closely about it. It eased the empty pains in her stomach, and after washing a few bites down with cautious sips of water, she began to feel better and the rubbery feeling left her legs. He chewed a stick of it, too, which reassured her in regard to his humanity.

Still, after walking steadily for a few hours, Jane began to lose the strength that had come with her second wind. Her legs were moving clumsily, and she felt as if she were wading in knee-deep water. The temperature had risen steadily; it was well over ninety now, even in the thick shelter of the canopy. The humidity was draining her as she continued to sweat, losing water that she wasn’t replacing. Just when she was about to tell him that she couldn’t take another step, he turned and surveyed her with an impersonal professionalism.

“Stay here while I find some sort of shelter for us. It’s going to start raining in a little while, so we might as well sit it out. You look pretty well beat anyway.”

Jane pulled her cap off and wiped her streaming face with her forearm, too tired to comment as he melted from sight. How did he know it was going to start raining? It rained almost every day, of course, so it didn’t take a fortune-teller to predict rain, but she hadn’t heard the thunder that usually preceded it.

He was back in only a short while, taking her arm and leading her to a small rise, where a scattering of boulders testified to Costa Rica’s volcanic origin. After taking his knife from his belt, he cut small limbs and lashed them together with vines, then propped one end of his contraption up by wedging sturdier limbs under the corners. Producing a rolled up tarp from his backpack like a magician, he tied the tarp over the crude lean-to, making it waterproof. “Well, crawl in and get comfortable,” he growled when Jane simply stood there, staring in astonishment at the shelter he’d constructed in just a few minutes.

Obediently she crawled in, groaning with relief as she shrugged out of her backpack and relaxed her aching muscles. Her ears caught the first distant rumble of thunder; whatever he did for a living, the man certainly knew his way around the jungle.

Grant ducked under the shelter, too, relieving his shoulders of the weight of his own backpack. He had apparently decided that while they were waiting out the rain they might as well eat, because he dug out a couple of cans of field rations.

Jane sat up straight and leaned closer, staring at the cans. “What’s that?”

“Food.”

“What kind of food?”

He shrugged. “I’ve never looked at it long enough to identify it. Take my advice: don’t think about it. Just eat it.”

She put her hand on his as he started to open the cans. “Wait. Why don’t we save those for have-to situations?”

“This is a have-to situation,” he grunted. “We have to eat.”

“Yes, but we don’t have to eat that!”