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Aly fell hard to the path. In her peripheral vision, she saw Juan crumple, half his head gone. She’d been spattered by the pink mist, the brain matter clinging to her lower smock and across her thigh. Gasping, she stared at Juan, a sob wrenching from her as she tried to get to her feet.
The man who had shot Juan reached down, grabbed her by her ponytail and jerked her roughly to her feet.
Pain radiated from her scalp and Aly grunted. Her hands flew toward her head. She was yanked forward, nearly losing her footing again on the muddy path. Sobbing, she was pushed down onto her hands and knees in front of the bald soldier, who smiled. But the smile didn’t reach his dead-looking green eyes.
“Why are you doing this?” Aly shrieked, trying to rise. “You killed Juan! You killed him! How could you!”
The bald soldier’s hand snapped out like a snake strike and grabbed her by her shoulder as she got to her feet. “Allison Landon,” he snarled into her face, “do you want to live? Or do you want to join your friend on the ground with a bullet through your head?”
Tears poured out of her eyes and Aly choked, whispering, “N-no, don’t kill me...”
Her mind gyrated. In shock, terrified and grief-stricken by Juan’s murder, Aly tried to stand still. Her chest was rising and falling with sobs she couldn’t control. They’d killed Juan! He’d been a gentle man, a beautiful soul whose only mission had been to make life better for his tribe.
The soldier’s powerful fingers dug deep into her shoulder and the pain radiated outward. Whimpering, Aly tried to escape him, but his fingers only dug deeper. She stopped, trembling, her eyes on his. She saw nothing but a vat of dead green, swampy darkness. There was no leniency, no compassion in this man. Aly tried to stop sobbing. Tried to stop crying, but she couldn’t completely control her emotions.
“You are now the property of Don Gervasio Duarte.” He smiled a little. “Do you know who he is?”
Aly barely nodded, feeling some relief of his fingers digging into her shoulder. If she stood still, if she tried to stop crying, the pain eased. “I—I’ve heard of him...a local drug lord...”
His eyes glittered. “Very good, señorita. You are much smarter than I thought. Now, you are being a good girl. Fight me, try to escape, and I will hurt you. I will rape you. Do you understand?” He leered at her.
His breath was a foul mixture of fish and garlic. Wincing, Aly closed her eyes and turned her face away from his. Instantly his fingers grasped her. She winced, cried out and faced him. His grip eased a little.
“I am Oleg Rusak, Don Duarte’s chief of security. You will remember me. You will always obey me in an instant. If you do not, I will hurt you. ¿Comprende?”
Aly risked a look at the other four soldiers. They were grinning. Their faces were sweat-soaked, dirty and the sour smell of their bodies almost made her gag. “Wh-what do you want?” she whispered brokenly.
Instantly, Rusak’s fingers dug so deep it took Aly to her knees.
Rusak crouched in front of her, his face filled with rage. “You have no voice, bitch! You do not ask questions! You live to obey Don Duarte and me.”
Whimpering, the agony making her lean into his hand, her face so close to his, Aly cried out, “Y-yes, yes, I hear you!”
Rusak released her and stood. “Good. Now get up. You are nothing more than a slave to Don Duarte. You will know your place. You speak only when spoken to. If he tells you to do something, you do it. You never speak unless he asks you to. Understand?”
Yes, she understood, rubbing her shoulder that was surely deeply bruised and currently throbbing. “I understand,” she whispered. What was going to happen to her? Oh, God, she was in such trouble. And no one knew. No one would miss her until she failed to check in this evening by satellite phone with the office in Manaus.
“Mount that horse,” Rusak growled. “And if you think you can kick that animal and gallop away from us, think about this—” He held the AK-47 up in front of her face. “First, we will shoot the horse out from under you. And then—” he grinned a little “—I will tell my men to watch as I rip off your clothes and take you down on this trail.” He rubbed his crotch with his soiled hand, all the while, staring at her. “If you fight, my man will hold your arms above your head. The other one will spread your legs and I will enjoy having my way with you.” He reached out and ran his large hand around the curve of her breast.
Startled, Aly gasped and jerked away.
Rusak slapped her.
Her head exploded. She saw stars behind her eyes; felt her legs crumple beneath her. Aly didn’t even remember hitting the hard, muddy ground. Moments later she woke, her cheek in the cooling mud. She felt more than saw Rusak walk over to her. She barely opened her eyes to stare uncomprehendingly at his large, muddy combat boots. Her head spun. She couldn’t think, her cheek smarting with excruciating pain.
Rusak leaned down, grabbing her by the shoulder and hauled her up with one jerk of his arm. Aly was wobbly as he roughly brought her against him. He smiled down into her cloudy eyes. “You are a slave. You will allow Don Duarte to touch you anytime he wants. If he thinks you are good for his bed, then you will go without a fight and you will please him.” Rusak sneered. “Because if you do not please him, Allison Landon, then he gives his cast-off women to me. And I guarantee you, little girl, you will have met the devil. I will not be kind or gentle with you. Understand?”
Oh, God, yes! She understood. Aly barely nodded, hating the smell of him, wanting to push away from him. But she didn’t dare. He would do something else to her, possibly rape her. She couldn’t fight back. She felt and heard him laugh, the sound harsh against her ears, his breath fetid, nauseating her.
Everything spun and when he pushed her to stand on her own two feet, she started to collapse again. Someone behind her grabbed her around the waist, held her upright and walked her over to the nervous horse. They threw her into the saddle. It was the last thing Aly remembered.
The brutal death of Juan, being captured, slapped and roughly treated, overwhelmed her. Aly had never experienced violence in her life. But now, her last thoughts acknowledged she was in a violent world and there was no escape.
* * *
Staff Sergeant Josh Patterson was in a lot of trouble. He’d been taken off an important op in Afghanistan and ordered to Washington, D.C. For what? What the hell was more important than targeting an HVT? As a Marine Force Recon, he’d worked three weeks on that op, watching through his sniper scope as the Pakistanis crossed across the border into Afghanistan carrying weapons, fertilizer to make IEDs and bombs. A top man, a war lord, had been scheduled to come across. CIA traffic had picked up a lot of chatter so Patterson knew their HVT—high value target—would be crossing any day now.
Yet he was now taking the broad stone steps up to the Pentagon with orders to see a General Landon. The name didn’t ring a bell, but being an enlisted man, Patterson had nothing to do with officers other than to take orders and direction from them.
He pushed his fingers through his recently cut black hair. His beard was gone, as well. He was in Marine desert camos. Since he’d been flying for thirty hours, exhaustion now stalked him. As a sniper, he was used to catching catnaps where and when he could. Having grabbed an Air Force C-17 out of Rota, Spain, he’d opened up his hammock, strung it between two containers on the deck and slept until they’d landed at Andrews Air Force Base.
He hadn’t been to the Pentagon often, but located the visitor’s desk and found out where he was supposed to be. There were seven rings to this building; even to a Recon, the layout was impressive. Finding General Landon’s office, he opened the door and stepped inside. A woman dressed in civilian clothes, in her fifties, smiled.
“Sergeant Patterson?”
He nodded, taking off his utility cap. “Yes, ma’am. Reporting as ordered.”
“Have a seat, Sergeant. I’ll ring the general.”
Patterson sat, sensing tension around the woman. Her smile was fixed. Her eyes showed anxiety. Snipers saw the details. Missing one could get him killed. He’d downed five cups of McDonald’s coffee this morning on the way over. God, it had tasted good. It was one of the few things he’d missed about rich U.S. life.
He heard a buzzer.
“Go right in, Sergeant. General Landon will see you now.”
Patterson opened the door into the large room and saw a man in a dark green wool uniform behind a desk, a deadly look on his face. The general had short black hair with some silver at the temples, dark blue eyes and a bulldog-square face. He was about the sergeant’s height of six feet tall and around his weight, two hundred pounds.
Patterson shut the door, snapped to attention and gave his name and rank.
“At ease, Sergeant,” Harrison said, pointing to the seat in front of the desk. “Sit down.”
Patterson nodded and did so.
“This is a black op, Sergeant,” the general said. Picking up a folder, he pushed it across his spotlessly polished walnut desk.
Knowing Recons sometimes performed black ops, Patterson reached for the file. “Yes, sir.”
“Open it, Sergeant.”
The sergeant did so.
He frowned and did a double take. It was a color photo of a young woman. There was a sprinkling of freckles across her high cheekbones and she had soft blue eyes. Her face was oval-shaped, her eyes wide-spaced. She had mussed ginger-colored hair around her face and lying on her shoulders. She was smiling. And she was happy.
Josh looked up at the general, waiting to be briefed. Under ordinary circumstances, he would find this woman very attractive. She was a natural, wearing no makeup, no lipstick or blush. He instantly liked that about her. She wore a bright red tee that showed off the glint of gold, red and burgundy in the strands of her hair. He didn’t try to guess anything about her. He was sure this scowling general would tell him, so he waited, his hand atop the file on his lap.
“That’s my daughter, Sergeant. Her name is Allison Landon. She’s twenty-seven years old and is in trouble so deep I don’t even know if you can help her.”
Eyes narrowing on the officer, Josh felt the air whoosh out of his lungs. This was his daughter? For the first time he saw the general’s game face crack, momentary terror in his expression. And something else he couldn’t read. “Yes, sir.”
“My daughter is a registered nurse, Sergeant. She works for Healing Hands Charity. It’s a global charity. Presently she’s down in Brazil, in drug-lord badlands.” His mouth thinned and he snarled. “I told her it was dangerous. But she didn’t listen.”
The powerful emotion slapped at Josh. It was invisible. But it was real. He wasn’t sure Allison’s father was more angry than worried. “Sir? Do you want my questions? My input? Or do you want me to sit and listen?”
“Sit and listen, Sergeant. When I’m done briefing you, then you can ask questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rubbing his jaw, Landon said, “She’s worked down there for two years. About thirty miles southeast of Manaus, an old rubber town that sits on the Amazon River. Two nights ago Aly—Allison, was supposed to make a prearranged sat call to her supervisor in Manaus. It’s a safety check-in. She was supposed to have arrived at a particular Indian village. But the super never heard from her. Sometimes, sat phones go out. Especially in that kind of heavy humidity, so the super didn’t think much of it. When she didn’t get Allison’s check-in call the second evening, she called the U.S. ambassador’s office in São Paulo, Brazil. That is standard operating procedure. She’s declared Allison missing and unaccounted for.”
Josh could see sweat making the general’s deeply furrowed brow gleam.
“She’s missing,” Landon growled, his hand on the desk flexing slowly into a fist. “There’s a regional drug lord in that area. Duarte is his name. He’s active and his drug soldiers kill and ask questions later. I need you to find her. I’ve cut your orders. You’ll perform a HAHO, high-altitude, high-opening parachute drop, into the area she was last known to be. We can’t use satellites because the area is old-growth, triple-canopy jungle. Once on the ground, you will find her through whatever means at your disposal. You’ll be given a sat phone and anything else you need. If I could send a company of Marines into that friggin’ place, I’d do it, but it’s not possible. I strongly believe Duarte has her. Now, questions?”
Josh sat forward. “Sir, is this a kidnap and ransom?”
“No,” Harrison muttered. “There’s not been one phone call to me requesting money.”
“Why would Duarte grab her?”
The man’s face began to crumple and then he seemed to force himself to remain unemotional.
“Duarte deals in drugs. All kinds of drugs. There’s a dossier in there on him you can study. He...” Landon’s voice cracked for a second, and then he pushed on. “He’s known to deal in the sex trade, young girls and women. He’s got a tie to a Georgian sex ring operating out of that country. The CIA and Interpol have been trying to prove the link.”
“He’s captured Ms. Landon to sell her into the sex black market?” Even Josh felt his gut tighten over that question. But hard questions had to be asked.
Landon’s blue eyes were raw and grief-stricken.
“She’s a nurse,” he muttered. “CIA briefing in that file will show that Duarte is a diabetic. He’s slowly dying of it. I’m hoping, that if he has taken Aly...Allison, it’s because he needs her medical expertise. Duarte is a wanted criminal everywhere in South America. If he shows his face in any hospital, they’ll arrest him. And he knows it.”
With a shake of his head, the general growled. “He may need medical help and that’s why they captured her. God...I hope that’s correct...” He rubbed his face with his hand, his voice trembling for a second.
“And where is he right now?”
“He owns a villa. The map is in the file. We’ve got a few bad photos from the satellite. We simply can’t penetrate his hideout because it’s protected from all satellites by that damned triple canopy. That’s why I need you, Sergeant Patterson. You’re the best of the best. You’ve taken that jungle training course down in South America several years ago and were one of the few men to graduate from it. I need someone who can recon, sniff out the land, find her and then rescue her.” He shook his head and gave Josh a hard look. “Sergeant, she’s my little girl. The only family I have. Aly is simply incapable of dealing with something like this.... She’s fragile...idealistic.” His voice deepened and became annoyed. “Aly thinks the world is filled with hope. That there are no bad guys around. I don’t see how she can operate that way,” he muttered with a shake of his head.
“Is she capable of fighting back, sir? Does she have heart? Because if I can find her and rescue her, we’re going to be running for days. I know the Amazon jungle too well. There are no openings to get to a helicopter and be lifted out of there. The only possible route of escape is by utilizing Navy Riverine boats that ply the Amazon.”
“Aly—” Landon shook his head. “Okay, maybe this will answer your question about my daughter having heart. My wife, son and Aly were hit by a dump truck going seventy miles an hour one morning when they were being taken to school. Aly was the only survivor,” he said, his voice lowering. “She suffered many internal injuries, a broken leg, arm, jaw and nose. She was twelve years old when it happened, Sergeant. That kid fought with everything she had to get well. She was critical, but she had a fighter’s heart and soul. I was with her in ICU for two weeks before she came out of that damned coma. And from that moment on, Aly took the fight to her body. She got well faster than any of her team of doctors had ever seen. I know she looks soft, Sergeant.” He gestured to the file folder. “Don’t let it fool you. She’s softhearted, but she’s got a steel spine when the chips are down.”
Josh’s heart wrenched in his chest. Because the photo of Allison Landon spoke of a sensitive, warm, compassionate-looking woman. Not a fighter. “Thank you for sharing that personal experience with me, sir. I needed to know.”
“Yes,” the general said heavily, “you do. You’re not going to be able to extract her without her direct help. I know that. And there’s not a damned thing we can do to help you in this scenario. Your closest help, if you can extract, is a hundred miles downriver, working your way toward the Amazon and that Riverine Squadron boat crew who knows you’ll be coming with her. You’re going to be up against some of the most ruthless killers on earth, Sergeant. You think the Taliban is bad? Try drug soldiers. They like to torture, kill and maim even more than the enemy you’re presently fighting. They have no religion pushing them. They have pure greed, a love of raping and hurting others. They’re all sociopaths. No conscience. No human anything left in their dead souls.”
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I understand.”
“And you’re still willing to do this, Sergeant?”
For a moment Josh hesitated. He lived for these kinds of missions. He knew he was the best. And right now, Allison Landon needed help. His heart twisted and that surprised him. It meant he was getting emotionally involved and that just couldn’t happen. Josh could not afford distraction because it would get him and possibly Aly—Allison—killed. “Yes, sir, I’m more than willing to do this.”
Landon grunted and looked at his watch. “Wheels up in two hours, Sergeant. Get your ass over to Andrews. I have a car waiting for you outside. My attaché, Major Durmond, will take care of the details for you. You just check over the equipment before you board that C-130 heading for that GPS point in Brazil.”
Chapter 2 (#ulink_766b913a-9cb1-58e0-b4ad-e669761be0aa)
Aly tried to hold on to her escaping terror as the drug soldier, Barrosa shoved her from behind, making her walk faster across the red-dirt courtyard within the villa. She had ridden for three hours through the jungle, in a direction she did not know. The ten-foot green concrete wall surrounding the villa appeared slowly out of the jungle, camouflaged. She would never have known it was nearby. She’d had time to recoup from the slap that Rusak had given her, but her left cheek was badly swollen and throbbed without relief.
It was the least of her worries as Barrosa kept her walking down a red-tiled walkway. Other men, armed drug soldiers, turned and looked at her. What were they going to do with her? Was she a slave? Aly couldn’t wrap her mind around what was happening to her.
Her ponytail had come undone when Rusak had slapped her and now, as she hung her head, not wanting to see the stares of the other soldiers, it provided a wall between them. She was dying of thirst.
“In here,” Barrosa snarled, grabbing her by the shoulder, yanking her to a stop. He kept a grip on her as he opened the door and pushed it open. “Get in!” He shoved her hard.
Aly gasped, almost losing her footing. She saw three women, all dressed in what could only be described as designer clothing, staring at her as she nearly fell into the huge room.
Barrosa growled, “Jakun, get her cleaned up. Don Duarte wants to see her as soon as possible. Put her in jeans and a T-shirt. She’s his medical doctor.”
Aly watched a very tall woman, who was painting her nails at a desk, rise. She was stunningly beautiful, her red hair piled up on her head, her oval face heavily made up with cosmetics. It was her huge green eyes, painted and emphasized, that got her attention. The woman wore white capris that showed off her long legs, a tight bustier that more than showed her breasts barely hidden by the dark green material.
“Of course, Barrosa. I will take care of everything.”
The door shut.
Aly stared at them. They all stared at her. Only Jakun, who swayed toward her like a model on a runway, bearing five-inch heels, didn’t seem surprised.
“I am Jakun,” she said in poor English. “Welcome to Villa Duarte. They had told us that Don Duarte was getting a medical doctor. You must be it?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Aly swallowed tensely. “Who are you? And why am I here?” She wondered if the tall woman was going to slap her for asking a question and tried to prepare herself.
Jakun’s red lips pulled into a smile. “I can see that Rusak has already trained you to be subservient.” She flicked a long, elegant finger toward Aly’s face. Her smile disappeared. “You are now the property of Don Duarte. I am his mistress and these two...” she said, shrugging, “are his play toys when he desires a change from how I can pleasure him.”
A sickening feeling rolled through Aly. “Why am I here?”
Jakun pointed toward the white-tiled hall. “You are his doctor. He needs medical help. Come, I must get you out of this medical uniform, get you a shower and change of clothes. He’s been expecting you.”
“I—I’m thirsty. Do you have any water?” Aly looked around the opulent living room. The other two women, also dressed and made up, were reading magazines where they sat on two buttery-yellow leather couches. They ignored her.
Jakun nodded. “Yes, of course. Come to the bathroom. Everything you need is there.”
She followed the swaying Jakun. Everything about this apartment was elegant, richly appointed, modern. In the bathroom, which was as large as the living room, Aly saw bottled water on the counter. She grabbed it, twisted off the lid and gulped it thirstily. Jakun seemed amused, her arms across her breasts, a faint smile on her red mouth.
Aly drank all of it and half of another bottle. “Thanks,” she whispered, rubbing the water off her lips.
“You are welcome. What is your name, please?”
“Allison Landon. My friends call me Aly.”
“I am responsible for you and you must do as I ask.” She sniffed through her fine, thin nose. “Otherwise, Rusak will come in here and beat me. And I have had enough of his fists to last me a lifetime.” Her eyes narrowed on Aly. “You will obey me instantly. If you do not, I will call in Rusak to deal with you. Do I make myself clear?”
Oh, yes, perfectly clear. Aly had no desire to be anywhere near that bastard again. “Yes. What do you want me to do?”
