Operation Willow Quest (12 page)

The truck driver could not, or more to the
point,
would not
go any further, so Del and Willow,
along with Jorge, were back on their feet once again. It was slow, hard work. Del and Jorge had to cut
a path through the dense jungle with machetes, keeping well clear of anything
remotely resembling a road for fear of rebels lurking.

Willow
swatted at mosquitoes
and other bugs of varying shapes and sizes that seemed to consider her insect repellent
some kind of magnet. Her clothes stuck to her uncomfortably and her hands were
covered in scratches. When they stopped for a rest, she noticed that Del’s
hands were filthy and covered in far worse cuts than her own—some openly
bleeding. Digging through her pack, she pulled out the medical kit she always
kept on hand and found the antiseptic and bandages. Sitting down on a log
beside him, she took one of his hands in her own and, breathing deeply, laid it
on her lap to tend to his wounds.

“Sure you’re okay to do this, Sheldon? I’m not
carrying you on my back as well as your damn camera gear if you pass out,” he
warned, his eyes closed to her ministrations through sheer exhaustion.

“I’d rather do this then have to amputate your
damn arm later when it gets infected and gangrenous.” She ignored his amused
chuckle and winced as he flinched against the antiseptic. “Are you sure this is
the only way? she asked in a low voice. She had no idea how far they’d come,
but she was fairly certain they still had a considerable way to go before they
were safely over the border to find help.

“Yep,” Del
sighed, frowning as she applied antiseptic to another deep scratch.

She wrapped his hands once they were clean, knowing
from experience that even the smallest cut in a jungle environment could become
infected and turn into a nasty infection. She glanced over at Jorge but he held
up his hands and sent her a grin. There was no sign of any scratches having
penetrated the hard calluses his hands had developed over a lifetime of hard
work on the land.

She’d eventually gotten Jorge’s story out of Del earlier. His wife
and eight children had been forced from their farm when guerrillas attacked his
village—murdering women and children, slaying men out in the fields where they
worked. Fearing for his own family’s lives, he packed up and left to find
relative safety in town. However, Willow
knew that with the illusion of safety in numbers came the depressing fact that
he would have faced the reality there was no work. Most families moving from
the country were forced to live in squalor with little food, and where crime
and drugs ran rampant through the shantytown areas of the poor. Jorge was lucky
to have an older brother who’d opened his house to his family. Though it was
not an ideal situation by any standard, at least his family had shelter and a
place to go.

She didn’t question Del’s
relationship with the Colombian, but since Del
spoke Spanish and Jorge treated him like a trusted friend, it was obvious Jorge
and Del had
done this kind of work before.

“I think he thinks you’ve got sissy hands,” Willow said with a smile.
Del’s large
hands were anything but soft; they had nowhere the same build-up of tough skin
the Colombian farmer’s had. He sent her a narrow look that made her smile
broaden. “Hey, I think you’re doing a great job,” she said quickly and packed
away her kit. The two men rose to their feet to begin hacking through the thick
foliage once more.

By nightfall, they’d set out their blankets and
were eating whatever food had been left over in the supplies. Even if they’d
had meat to cook, the risk of a fire alerting others to their presence could
draw unwanted visitors to investigate. Willow
sat cross-legged on her blanket, munching stale bread and hungrily thinking how
good it tasted on an empty stomach. She noticed Del rubbing his leg. “Do you want me to look
at it?”

Del
’s gaze snapped up to
meet hers sardonically. “You know, you don’t need an excuse to get me
outta
’ my pants, Sheldon, all you
gotta
do is say the word,” he drawled.

Willow
narrowed her eyes
before deciding to call his bluff. “All right—you and me, right here—right
now.” She got to her knees before him and tried to keep a straight face.

Del
stared at her
uncertainly as she began to ease her shirt up over her head. She only made it
as far as her rib cage before Del
pounced, dragging her shirt firmly back down, looking over at the gap in the
foliage where Jorge had gone through to scout ahead.

“What the hell are you doing?” he growled
roughly.

“I thought you wanted to…” She had to drop her
gaze to hide the mirth that threatened to overflow.

“Damn it, Willow.
God knows who or what’s out there. I can’t be doing…that…here,” he told her
faintly. Willow’s
smug sense of retribution did a sudden about turn. Sitting so close to him set
off alarm bells. His warm hand—still resting against the bare skin of her front
where he’d yanked down her shirt—seemed to burn like a branding iron. She could
smell the warm, foreign scent of man, sweat and desire, and swallowed
nervously. This wasn’t going the way she’d pictured it…
I’m supposed to have the upper hand here…aren’t I?
 
“You’re right—it was a bad idea,” she
muttered, untangling her shirt from his grasp and moving away. “Do you want me
to put some antiseptic on your hands?” A change in conversation was
definitely
warranted.

“No…thanks,” he added stiffly. “I’m going to go
check on Jorge.” He stood, picked up a machete and stalked away from her.

She stared at his retreating back, and bit her
lip. “Stupid, stupid,” she muttered, and thumped her forehead with an open
palm. Why had she done that? What had she been thinking? She was acting like
one of the bimbos she detested who hung around Peter-bloody-Delaware like bees
around honey. “Stupid!”

* * * *

Del
slashed viciously
through the thick undergrowth, taking out his frustration on the jungle
blocking his way.

The damn woman was driving him insane. He swung
another satisfying arc of the blade. He grimaced at the memory of him running
like a terrified jack rabbit.
Me
…
running—
a grown man, acting like a
fifteen-year-old kid. Del
stood shaking his head; a soft laugh broke from his lips. He couldn’t seem to
win with this woman. He wondered what he’d done that was so bad—he’d been sent
Willow Sheldon to challenge his fragile state of mind.

He slashed at another overhanging branch and
stopped to catch his breath. Bending, he braced his tired arms against his
thighs and drew in deep rugged breaths. His shirt, constantly soaked through,
clung to his chest. He’d been sweating for two days straight now and it showed
no signs of improving. He wiped his brow on his arm and looked around at the
never-ending undergrowth with an unenthusiastic scowl. The sooner they got out
of this hellhole the better—the jungle wasn’t a civil place and he blamed it
for what it had been doing to him. He was
not
behaving like his usual cool, rational, self. With a reluctant sigh, he
lifted his machete and ploughed on. The more headway they made now—the quicker
they’d get through.

* * * *

Willow
did her best to avoid Del, although there was
only so far you could go to avoid someone you were travelling with. She offered
on numerous occasions to relieve them and take her turn with a machete, but
both refused, leaving her to shake her head at whatever bizarre male chord it
struck in them to continue without a brief respite. Jorge came back from his
scouting trip just after their second rest stop for the day with an anxious
frown—his conversation liberally peppered with sharp hand-waving gestures.

“Stay here.” It was the first direct thing Del had said to her all
day. “Jorge’s come across something up ahead.”

The news didn’t sound good, especially if that
something
was a large gathering of drug
smugglers or
para
-military forces. Listening to the
strange jungle noises, she stiffened as she heard a rustle nearby, then sighed
as Del
appeared, shadowed by Jorge.

“There’s a camp not too far away. We have to
backtrack and make a slight detour.” Seeing her alarm, Del managed a brief grin. “It’s all right,
most of them seem high—they won’t bother us if we keep out of their way.”

“Who are they?”

“I’m not sure. Probably some small
drug-smuggling ring. They don’t look like FARC or ELN troops and they’re too
undisciplined to be AUC.”

“Doesn’t sound too productive if your employees
use all your product,” Willow
quipped.

“Don’t worry, there’s plenty more to go
around,” he muttered grimly, as they set off once more.

* * * *

There was another frantic signal from Jorge a
few miles further up and once more Del made her drop and wait quietly, then
moved stealthily away. A while later, appearing ahead of her, he held up a
large branch and beckoned her towards him. Keeping low, she moved as fast as
her pack would allow, ducking under his arm holding the branch and looking up
at him expectantly. Warning her to be quiet, he waved her to follow him and
they headed into the tangled undergrowth. Without hacking it away with a
machete, it made the going extremely hard—her pack and hair kept getting snagged
and she had to keep stopping to reach back and untangle herself.

Then she saw them. Flat on their bellies, Del and Jorge were
watching something just beyond the undergrowth. She joined them and took a
look. A large scouting party of military were cautiously working their way,
single file, along a clearing of grass between two patches of thick jungle.
They were dressed in military uniform and carried large, ugly rifles. Their
faces were covered in green and black face paint, and all wore bandana-like scarves
around their foreheads.

Willow
’s heart leapt into her
throat as she watched. She counted eight people she assumed were men, but as
they drew closer she discovered there were at least four women amongst them.
Not one of them could have been a day over sixteen—but they looked as fierce as
any warrior Willow
had ever seen and she prayed they would move on quickly. As they drew closer,
she was shocked to discover a familiar face drawing up the rear as number nine.
The man at the end of the line was Alistair Whitehall. He walked with dogged
determination, but there was something fundamentally different about him. Gone
was the business suit and haughty attitude. He looked harder—meaner—he looked
like a cold-blooded killer. A shiver ran up her spine at the
realisation
.

Willow
sent a swift glance
toward Del
and saw that his eyes were narrowed and his mouth was a hard, straight line.
When it was safe to do so, he tapped her shoulder and
signalled
it was time to move out of their hiding spot.

“I know that man at the end of the line,” she
whispered.

“Yeah—me too. He was the guy in the bar talking
to you the day I arrived.”

“What’s he doing out here?”

“I have no idea, but I haven’t seen many
businessmen walking around a jungle carrying assault rifles,” he said.

Willow
stopped in her tracks.
“You think he’s working for
Trèago
?”

“I really don’t care at this point in time—I’m
more concerned about getting the hell away from an armed group of fanatical
militia.”

Put that way, she could concede he had a point,
and hurried to keep up with him. They continued to battle with the undergrowth
until Del was
certain it was safe enough to start hacking with the machetes again. The distant
sound of gunfire halted them in their tracks but after no more than a pause Del
pushed on with a renewed
fervour
, clearly eager to
clear this part of the jungle as fast as possible.

When they paused for a quick break, Willow handed him a drink
bottle and cast a fearful look over her shoulder. “What do you think they were
shooting at?” she asked, watching as he sipped at the warm water.

“About twenty doped-up drug dealers would be my
guess,” he said, as he wiped his brow with a swipe of his arm.

“They’re looking for us, aren’t they?” she
suggested quietly.

“More than likely,” Del agreed.

Willow shuddered, thankful they’d already
passed the camp—coming across and finding the ugly remains of the slaughter
that had no doubt just taken place would have been too much to handle in her
fragile state. “Do you think their camp will be nearby?” Willow rubbed her arms, feeling cold.

“I’m not planning on searching for it,” he
replied, softening his tone when he saw her frown refuse to budge. “Hopefully
we’ll make it across the border without any more sightings—shouldn’t be too far
now.”

They trudged on with a renewed urgency, determined
to push on away from the threat that continued to lurk. As another vine whipped
across her cheek, she grabbed it—snapping the plant then releasing a growl of
frustration as she lost her footing again and slipped over onto her butt.

Looking up at Del’s concerned expression, she gave a small
groan. “I can do this, I’m just out of condition,” she told him, tossing away
the remnants of the vine she’d been trying to tear to shreds before falling.