Show No Fear - By Marliss Melton Page 0,84

cutting off his startled cry. As he fell on top of her, she reached for the pistol holstered to his belt, praying it was loaded. She flipped him over at the same time as she shot him, silencing his protests with a shot that went straight into his heart. Bang!

The other hostages came awake with shouts of fright.

“Qué es?”

“Díos mío!”

The body beneath her went slack. Igor was dead. One down, one to go.

Snatching up his keys, Lucy tossed them at the others. “Free yourselves,” she urged, picking up the fallen flashlight. Briefly she considered joining forces with the former Colombian soldiers. But they had been kept apart from her, the only woman they had seen in years, for a reason.

Snapping off the light, she doused them all in darkness.

“Jefe!” Outside the pen, Goliath came flying from the shanty where the guards slept. “Qué pasa?” As he struggled to get into the gate, Lucy eased around the corner of the lean-to and hid behind it, her heart hammering.

Goliath had forgotten to bring a flashlight. As he bumbled into the pen, he ran headlong into the first Colombian to free himself. With a roar, he went to wrestle him down.

And Lucy darted to the gate, ecstatic to find it ajar.

Freedom!

With the barbed wire behind her, she sprinted past the guards’ shanty, up the path they had trod each day to visit the natural spring. Along a dark tunnel of green, she flew as light as a feather, as fast as a doe.

Behind her, another pistol discharged, ringing out loudly. A cry of agony reached her ears, mingled with hysterical laughter as the captives overcame their captor and took off, fleeing into the night, crashing downhill. She figured their odds of escaping the FARC were at least as good as hers.

Wary of being followed, Lucy kept the flashlight off. She gripped the pistol hard, drawing courage from the hard metal against her slippery palm.

The trail, subtly illumined by moonlight, rose sharply. With every arduous step, the temperature seemed to plummet.

Delayed shock made Lucy tremble, made her legs wobble. Dear God, she’d done it! She’d escaped her captors! Now all she had to do was withstand the cold long enough to find the radio station perched somewhere at the top of this godforsaken mountain.

“ARRIBA IS CLOSE,” Buitre panted as Gus hauled him in his wake along the dark, winding path.

Figuring the Elite Guard had noticed Buitre’s absence by now, the SEALs hammered themselves to climb four thousand feet, staying as far ahead of trackers as possible, but they had only Buitre’s word and his fear of dying to reassure them they were headed in the right direction.

“If we find out you’ve been lying to us, Deputy,” Harley threatened in respectable Spanish, “the lieutenant here will cut out your tongue.”

No sooner had Harley said this than a shot rang out, not too far away. Adrenaline flooded Gus’s bloodstream. Fired at such close range, the shots sounded like mini-explosions. Now what? he wondered as they all crouched and froze, alert to imminent danger.

“Help!” Buitre shouted unexpectedly. “Over here!”

Gus silenced him, slamming the butt of his rifle into the man’s thick skull. He crumpled where he’d stood, still and silent as the SEALs awaited the fallout of his cry for help.

Another shot splintered the night.

The sound of something crashing through the woods to their right had them raising their weapons in readiness. Only a human being—or several—blinded by the darkness and propelled by fear could make that much noise, Gus thought as the sound grew louder, then moved past them down the mountain.

As the beings floundered out of hearing, the SEALs convened over Buitre’s unconscious body. “What do you think that was?” Luther asked.

“People tryin’ to get the hell away,” drawled Teddy.

“Away from what? Arriba?” asked Vinny.

“What else?” Gus murmured.

“Why didn’t they use the path?” Harley wanted to know.

“Let’s just keep moving,” Luther decided. “Maybe we’ll find some answers.”

All five men looked down at Buitre.

“Would you like Vinny to bring him back?” Luther asked Gus. Vinny carried smelling salts for just that purpose.

“No,” said Gus. “Step back,” he advised. As the men scattered, he pointed his silenced semi-automatic at Buitre’s chest and fired a round at close range, killing him instantly, painlessly. With a bitter taste in his mouth, he turned and headed up the path, leaving the body as a warning to any who might be tracking them.

With a shared look, the others joined him.

A hundred yards later, they arrived at what had to be Arriba.