W hen he woke, the first thought in Will’s mind was that Sarafina was no longer asleep in her bed. She was gone. He was alone.
But then reality set in. He wasn’t in the mystical world his mind had created as an escape for him. No, he was in real time. There was pain here, throbbing, burning pain, and bone-chilling cold. He was locked inside a metal box, in a dark cave, in the middle of hostile terrain.
Part of his mind, the fevered part that had confused his dream with something real, wanted to return to the fantasyland of the Gypsies. But most of him was aware that he couldn’t do that, not now. He didn’t know where the hell his mind was getting the stories it wove for him. They seemed so real it was difficult to believe they were not. But they couldn’t be.
He was soaked in sweat. He understood what that suggested. The fever he’d been fighting must have peaked while he’d been sleeping. Normally he didn’t dream about Sarafina and her band of Gypsies. He escaped to that realm only under torture.
Hell, his fever, combined with the pain in his foot, must have felt like torture of a sort to have instigated a dream so vivid. And it had added its own new twists, hadn’t it? Now he was seeing vampires and making love to a figment of his imagination.
He moved slowly, carefully, testing his body, stretching his arms, his back, working out the kinks. Then he went still as he remembered what he’d been doing when he’d fallen asleep: waiting for his captors to fall asleep first. Because once they had, he had to make an attempt to get the hell out of here.
It might very well be his only chance. He knew damned well the terrorists’ newest ploy wasn’t going to work. The U.S. government would be happy to learn he was alive when they got that photo, but that didn’t mean they would be foolish enough to release a pile of terrorists in exchange for the life of one soldier. Especially one like him, with no family, no ties. Hell, the general public back in the good ol’ U.S. of A. would probably never even know about his existence. That was part of the reason he had been chosen for this mission, and he’d known that going in. He had nothing to lose.
He crept to the door, pushed it open as far as it would go, listened with every cell in his body and squinted into the darkness.
The room appeared to be empty, though it was so damned dark it was impossible to be sure. It was dead silent. The entire cave seemed soundless tonight.
He located the bread knife he’d stolen earlier by crawling around his box on all fours until his fingers touched it in the darkness and closed around it. Returning to the chained door, he forced his hand out through the narrow opening. The chain that held the door was looped through a short iron bar on the outside of the door. Two bolts held that bar in place, and they had grooved heads, like screws. Will managed to insert the blunt tip of the knife into the groove, and he twisted it, while holding the nut on the inside with his fingers. It didn’t turn easily. When it finally did, the nut turned with it, so he held it more tightly. So tightly that when he finally did get the bolt to turn, the nut scraped the skin off his fingers. It was old, rusty, but he worked on it until he freed it up. In about twenty minutes it was loose enough to remove.
His fingers throbbed, his throat burned, and he was so dizzy he could barely stand, but he’d gone too far to stop now. He set to work on the second bolt.
An hour later, the chain was free. He pocketed his scrap of bread and his lifesaving bread knife, and pushed the door open, cringing at the slight creak of its hinges. He looked around but saw only darkness, broken up by darker shapes, none of them human. Carefully he climbed out of his prison, then closed the door. Taking the bolts from his pockets, he held the bar in place and thrust the bolts back through the holes. By all appearances, his prison was unchanged. Until they tried to open the door to bring him out again-something they might not do for a span of days if they were true to form-they wouldn’t know he had escaped.
He’d wrapped his injured foot thickly in the white makeshift bandage, so it was at least cushioned. He had no choice but to put weight on it as he made his way slowly, silently, across the uneven stone floor. He knew approximately where the opening was that led to other parts of the cave. There was only one, so it wasn’t a matter of making a choice. He found it, went through it, but had no clue where to go from there. He couldn’t see a damn thing. He only knew he wasn’t far from the entrance-if he’d been deep in the earth the temperature would have held to a moderate level, never varying much higher or lower. And that hadn’t been the case.
He was still for a long moment, wishing silently for a clue-and then he heard something: a whispering, moaning sound. The wind? Yes, it was the wind! God, please, he thought, guide me out of this hell. Slowly he moved toward the sound. Every once in a while he would meet a stone wall. Each time that happened, he had to feel his way along the wall, inching sideways until it fell away, and he could again make forward progress.
Finally he saw light, flickering in the distance, illuminating a ragged opening in the cave. He rushed toward it, despite the screaming pain every step ignited in his foot, hope surging in his chest for the first time since he’d escaped the box. But when he reached that opening, he stopped dead, even stopped breathing.
The light came from a small fire in the center of a large room. Around the sides of the room, a dozen or more men lay sleeping, breathing deeply, some of them snoring every once in a while. And just beyond them there was another break, through which he could see stars twinkling in the night sky.
Freedom.
He could smell it, taste it in the air. God, he was so close. Will swallowed hard. Everything in him screamed at him to run for that door, for freedom, but he knew better. He had to think, to use his fever-fogged brain to get himself out of here alive. Licking his parched lips, he looked around at the men on the floor. Most wore robes, others were covered in blankets. But here and there he saw men wearing uniforms. American uniforms. He guessed they had probably taken them from the handful of U.S. troops they’d managed to take out by ambush during the height of the conflict.
Crouching low, Will unwrapped the white cloth from his foot, trying not to make a sound as he did. Then he wrapped it around his head instead, turban-style. He wished to God they hadn’t made him shave. To conceal his beardless chin, he let one end of the turban hang down, then drew it up, just under his chin and tucked it in on the other side.
Finally he moved forward. His foot exploded in agony with each step-even more now, without its protective wrap, than before. But he kept going, gritting his teeth and not making a sound. He moved among the sleeping soldiers, made it past the fire, reached the opening.
One of the soldiers muttered in his sleep and rolled over, and Will went so still he thought his muscles would pull away from his bones.
He waited, waited for a shout, a challenge, the back of his neck tingling in anticipation. But nothing came.
Finally, his heart still pounding, he moved forward again. He stepped through the opening. The fresh night air hit his face, and he sucked it in gratefully as he continued limping, laterally now, away from the cave. Finally he had to pause, to try to get his bearings.
He was high on a mountain, and he had no idea which way would lead him to freedom. There were no roads out here, no landmarks. Certainly no lights shining from below to guide the way.
He was thirty yards from the cave, on a stone ledge that dropped off steeply, when a man’s voice reached him from behind, speaking in one of the tribal dialects. “Where are you going in the middle of the night? Is something wrong?”
He froze. He didn’t turn. He swallowed his fear, told himself not to blow it, not now, not when he was this close. He replied in the man’s own tongue. “Did you not hear the gunfire?” he asked. “It was coming from this way.” He pointed ahead of him, toward the edge, and downward.
“Gunfire?”
“Yes, I’m sure of it. Maybe the Americans have come back.”
The other man sucked in a breath of alarm. Then he said, “But it cannot be the Americans. The border is east of here, not west. And they could only come from that way.” He sighed. “I