Page 4 of Draven (Special Forces: Operaton Alpha) (Nemesis Inc. Bravo Team #3)
CHAPTER FOUR
India jerked as a noise from outside the cave alerted her to a problem. She cocked her head to one side and listened carefully. There it was again, scuffling and the sound of boots scraping off rock.
Shit!
Please don’t come in here.
She didn’t know if this cave was known to the locals, but she hoped it wasn’t. Not that all of the men in the LRA were always locals. The Christian extremist organization was known to have reach across northern Uganda, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, along with here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
She lowered herself silently into a ball in the darkest corner, curling over herself. If she was small enough, maybe they wouldn’t notice her. If Draven could hurry his butt up and get here any time right about now, that would be fricking wonderful.
What’s that saying about wishes and horses?
That’s you today, chick, and you are going to be in a whole lot of trouble in about two minutes flat.
Trapping herself in an enclosed place like this cave had been the wrong move. She knew that now. She just couldn’t do anything about it. She didn’t even have a weapon, for heaven’s sake. Her handlers had decided the team with her would be armed, but it wasn’t realistic for her cover story for her to have a weapon. She’d been ridiculously naive to agree with them during the planning stages of her mission.
I’d like it noted for the record that I no longer agree with me not being armed.
She could hear the footsteps getting closer and closer. Finally resigned to her fate, she patted the cave floor looking for a rock or stone. Anything she could use as a weapon was fair game. With a collection of hand-sized rocks in her grasp, she got silently to her feet. She would not make it easy for them—if they wanted to take her captive, then she was determined to leave a hell of a lot of bruises in her wake as they did so.
She tried to gauge where the people approaching were by the sounds of their footsteps, but everything echoed weirdly in here. Sounds bounced off the rock walls, making it almost impossible to figure out their position.
Just when she thought they would enter the lower portion of the cave where she was hiding, yelling started from outside, followed by bursts of gunfire. She could picture the LRA with their weapons in the air as they fired off rounds. She thought it was a ridiculous waste of ammo to just fire into the sky, but all reports she had read and everything she’d seen over the years said terrorists thought it made them look intimidating.
One man yelled something in a language she’d heard before but couldn’t place, his voice so close she almost jumped in spite of her resolve to keep silent. A second voice yelled from farther away, as if he were outside the cave.
“Get down, drop your…” The voice was shut off by the sound of shots, and immediately followed by what sounded like return gunfire.
She once again made herself as small as possible in her little cubby hole at the back of the cave. She’d just heard someone yelling in English. She was not getting shot… if that was Draven out there on his own, then her odds of getting out of here with the papers she’d been tasked with carrying back to the US had just risen by almost eight percent since last night. If he’d brought a team, then she was close to ninety percent. She’d take those odds.
“She’s fucking here somewhere, Charlie One. Keep fucking looking.”
There it was—the voice she heard in her dreams when her nightmares threatened to pull her under their cloud of darkness.
“Draven.”
She slapped her hands over her mouth, but it was too late. The bad guy in the cave was on her before she had time to regret her life choices.
A hand fisted painfully into the hair at the back of her head and she was dragged to her feet.
“Press. I’m press!” she yelled, knowing if she’d been able to hear Draven, he’d be able to hear her too. “Don’t…” She stopped midsentence when the cold steel of what felt like a machete was put to her throat.
“Shut up,” the man hissed in heavily broken English. “You will be quiet, or I…” He dug the blade into her skin.
Oh, god . This was how she was going to die. In a hot jungle cave filled with creepy crawlies and a terrorist with no appreciation for human life. She didn’t dare struggle as he pulled her out of her hiding spot and pulled her against his chest, then replaced the knife at her throat.
“If they come in here, I will keeeel you.”
Yes, this was how she would die for sure. While she’d never seen Draven in action, at Langley, she’d seen some of the Ground Branch operators, most of whom had been recruited from Special Forces, in action. The silence outside told her what was coming. If they had prevailed in the firefight which had raged, then Draven was coming in through the cave opening as soon as he located it. She refused to close her eyes. If she was going to bleed out right here then she wanted the last view she had to be of Draven Kilkenny’s beautiful blue eyes.
How the hell am I so calm?
Why am I not screaming, shaking, or peeing my pants?
“They do not see the cave.” The terrorist chortled in her ear. “I will take you with me when they leave.”
She could feel the warm trickle of blood down her neck. Despite his bravado, this man was shaking so much he kept nicking her with the blade every time he spoke.
“Do you trust me, Indy?”
Draven’s question out of nowhere made both her and the terrorist jump, resulting in yet another cut to her throat. This one deeper than the rest.
“Yes.” She wasn’t proud of the fact her voice wobbled more than Mrs. Mac’s Jello salad. At least her reply had been clear enough that he could understand, she hoped…