Page 24

“Run,” he ordered Katie low and urgent. “Into the brush. Hide.” Crap. He’d been afraid there might be some sort of alarm system in or around the bunker. He’d hoped the storm had disabled it, but apparently not. If nothing else, someone might have been watching the bunker from a satellite.

Katie raced across the road and into the scrub with him hard on her heels. A pick-up truck with two soldiers in the cab and three heavily armed men in the back drove past. Fast.

Those didn’t look like just any soldiers. They were big, physical, and carrying their weapons—AK-47s—like extensions of their arms. If they weren’t Special Forces, he was losing his mind.

As soon as the truck rounded the bend, he started yanking on his clothes. He said under his breath, “When they see the bunker’s been broken into, all hell’s going to break loose. We need to make our way back to the mo-ped and head south.”

“To Baracoa?” she whispered.

“No. To Guantanamo. We’re going to need help to get off this island.”

“But Gitmo’s on the south side of the island.”

“It’s under a hundred miles from here. If we can make it onto the military base, it’s U.S. territory. We’ll be safe. If we get separated, head there on your own.” He pressed the second pistol into her hand and passed her the bag of taped samples.

He shouldered the pack. “Let’s go.”

About three minutes into their egress, shouting became audible behind them. In another five minutes, the sound of more trucks floated to them on the cool evening air.

He’d set a course due south over whatever terrain that offered.

He modified their travel to avoid open pastures and bare mountaintops, but that was it.

The mo-ped was still at Oscar’s ruined home, and they needed a motorized escape if they were going to make it nearly a hundred miles overland across the interior of Cuba.

After an hour of hard going, he paused under a giant fern and dug bottles of water out of his pack. He tossed down a couple of stim pills and passed Katie one of the pills as well. She swallowed it without comment.

Good girl. She was tougher than she looked.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded gamely and they rose slowly to their feet in time to hear a thwocking sound in the distance.

“Helicopter,” she bit out.

He swore under his breath. If that bird had heat-seeking technology on board, they were screwed. “Find water,” he ordered. “A stream or puddle. Anything.”

He moved out from under the big fern and she went the other direction.

“Over here,” she called out low.

A small rivulet, maybe two feet wide and no more than a foot deep trickled past her. He raced down the hill, following the trickle as the helicopter got louder, fast. She crashed along behind him, panting.

“What are we doing, Alex?”

“Hurry.” There. Below them. The trickle widened into a shallow, oblong pool. It was maybe six feet wide and twice that long, where the trickle backed up behind a cluster of small boulders that formed a natural dam.

“Into the water,” he bit out.

She reached for her shirt buttons and he grabbed her hands to stop her. “Now. Just get in.”

Eyes wide, she followed him as he waded into the pool and sat down in it. “Ohmigod, it’s freezing,” she squeaked under her breath.

“When I tell you, take a deep breath and lay down. All the way under the water. The pool will camouflage our heat signatures. And keep your eyes closed. There could be nasty microbes in here.”

“Eeyew,” she mumbled.

The helicopter topped the ridge behind them just then. “Now,” he bit out.

He laid down under the water, his own eyes screwed tightly shut. Something touched his elbow and he jumped before realizing it was Katie’s fingers. Her hand slid down his arm and she grasped his hand.

Even fully submerged, the noise of the chopper was loud. He didn’t know if such shallow water would eliminate their heat signatures or not. But it was all they had. The chopper moved past achingly slowly, which made him think the Cubans were using heat-seeking gear, after all.

Katie’s hand squeezed his more tightly, and he realized they’d been under for nearly three minutes. Well beyond her stated ability to hold her breath. He sat up cautiously, letting just his mouth and nose break the surface. Katie did the same beside him. The sound of the chopper was finally fading.

He sat all the way up, and Katie followed suit.

“Well, that was fun,” she muttered.

“The fun has just begun. Now we get to flee through the jungle at night in wet clothes.”

They waded out of the pool and Katie frowned. “Should we check each other for leeches or something?”

“We should. But we need to get moving. The leeches can dine on our blood in the meantime.”

She made a face and shuddered as they retraced their steps up the hill. And that was when he heard a different kind of engine. Crap. ATV’s.

Alone, he would have had no trouble avoiding the Cubans. But with Katie in tow, the two of them didn’t stand a chance if Cuban Special Forces, riding, all-terrain vehicles, came after them.