Show No Fear - By Marliss Melton Page 0,17
the army to the FARC and start a war.”
In the end, Mother Nature got rid of the soldiers for them. The sky darkened abruptly. Leaden clouds opened up and rain poured down. The motorcycle floundered. Soon it was just a speck behind them, eventually disappearing altogether.
The team members smiled at one another in relief. Their van slogged on, traveling over a highway that went from asphalt to gravel, to a muddy trail riddled with potholes of deceptive depth.
With every hundred meters, the road seemed to narrow until it was just wide enough for one car. Windshield wipers beat a frenzied tempo but never succeeded in clearing the fogged glass up front. The music on the radio crackled and faded into static. The driver turned it off.
A somber silence descended over the occupants of the van. Lucy dragged air into her tight lungs and wondered if the others were thinking what she was thinking: They’d come this far; now there was no going back.
Staring out a fogged window, all she could see were coca fields and banana groves. A swollen brown river ran parallel to the road for a while, then veered away. With every hundred meters, she felt their isolation deepening.
“There’s La Montaña,” Fournier finally announced.
Peering up the length of the van, Lucy felt her mouth go dry. The ominous-looking mountain had planted itself squarely before them, its twin peaks buried in rain clouds. Somewhere in the looming mass of vegetation, Howitz and Barnes remained hostages.
If she didn’t screw her courage on tight, they might never make it home.
It was dusk when they arrived at the last outpost of civilization, Puerto Limón, a tiny pueblo at the foot of the mountain. In the single-story ranchita advertised as an inn, the UN team was warmly greeted by their indigenous hosts, offered bread and goat’s cheese for supper, and dismissed to private bedrooms.
“Sleep well,” called Fournier, instructing them to awaken early for another dawn departure.
Lying on a twin-sized mattress made of straw, Lucy realized that, while thoughts of sharing a queen-sized bed last night had unsettled her, she was looking forward to the feel of Gus’s arms around her tonight, a circumstance that secretly worried her. She wasn’t growing reliant on him, was she? Of course not. All she needed from him was his body heat.
Beneath the glow of a naked lightbulb, she could feel the mountain’s looming proximity. Anxiety sat like a heavy weight on her chest. How was she supposed to throw it off?
Lucy Donovan operated alone. She was utterly self-reliant.
Or had the experience in Venezuela robbed her of her self-sufficiency? What then? It was her job to combat terrorists. She didn’t know any other kind of life—didn’t want to. She couldn’t afford to be afraid.
The door groaned suddenly inward. Gus ducked into the room, his damp head nearly touching the ceiling. At the sight of her cowering in the bed with the blanket pulled to her chin, his jaw hardened. He whipped off his glasses, set them by the bed, and bent low to whisper, “You can’t fight fire with fire, Luce.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re trying to scare off your PTSD. That’s not the way to cure yourself.”
“I don’t have PTSD,” she insisted rigidly. “And I am not scared,” she added.
“Jesus, Luce,” he swore in disgust. Reaching for the string, he snapped off the light. “Make room,” he warned her shortly.
Her senses clamored in anticipation of his touch. As he stretched out next to her she fitted her body to his, swallowing a sigh of relief as his warmth seeped into her limbs, his strong arms drove back the demons chasing her.
But then she imagined what tomorrow would bring. Soon she’d be sharing a campfire with guerrillas who blew up people in the name of libertad and exploited innocent children, forcing them to fight. A fresh wave of anxiety rolled through her.
“Relax, dear. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
Lucy snorted at the macho assertion. At the same time, she hoped it was true.
She listened to him lapse into sleep, his soft snores deepening by degrees. With her head on his rising and falling chest, she waited for hours for sleep to claim her.
The FARC made them wait, choosing not to arrive in Puerto Limón until 10 a.m.
The UN team had been up since dawn, waiting tensely under the ranchita’s covered porch, listening to the rain drum the red-tiled roof. For hours now they had stared up the muddy track that wound into