Chapter Eighteen
The spider was huge. The weight of its massive legs and thick body crawling over her chest slowly awoke her. Enough moonlight shone down through the tall trees and leafy foliage to outline its enormous, fuzzy, hideously ugly body right in front of her face.
The high-pitched shriek erupted before she could pull it in, and suddenly Chase’s hand was shooting out, knocking the spider away, sending it flying into the air. It landed in the forest below with a heavy thud that made her skin crawl.
“She all right?” Kil called out, on watch somewhere in the darkness.
“Spider,” Chase answered. “Big as a dinner plate. It didn’t bite her. Just scared her.” He turned toward her. “Right?”
“I-it didn’t bite me.”
“Motherfuck...” Bran grumbled sleepily from his pallet, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
Harper kept shaking, couldn’t seem to stop.
Chase eased her into his arms. “Adrenaline rush. You’re okay. It’ll be over in a minute.”
Chase continued to hold her, his arms like steel bands around her. She wanted to just curl into him, forget she was in the middle of a Colombian mountain jungle, pretend Michael was safe and that she was in bed with Chase for real.
He eased away. “About time for my shift. Will you be okay?”
“I’m... I’m okay.” Reluctantly, she let him go. “Thanks for...umm...the spider.”
“I don’t mind spiders so much, but I hate the hell out of a snake. As you may have noticed earlier today.”
A soft laugh escaped. It felt good under the circumstances.
“Go back to sleep.” Chase slid out of his bedroll and pulled on his boots, climbed down from the pallet and disappeared into the darkness below. She heard soft whispers as the men changed places, then nothing but silence.
She needed sleep but finding it wouldn’t be easy, not with Chase gone and the night so black and impenetrable around her. For the next half hour, she listened to sounds in the darkness, the growl of a big cat—jaguar or puma—somewhere higher in the forest; the hoot of an owl; something slithering through the foliage below.
She must have fallen into an exhausted slumber. When her eyes cracked open, purple light streamed through the lush green leaves and the rich aroma of coffee drifted up from the tiny campfire in the clearing below. It was enough to get her moving.
Chase’s bedroll was already gone. She packed her own, climbed down and checked the rest of her gear, then took a bathroom break, privacy being fairly easy with the dense forest around them.
At the campfire, Chase handed her a tin mug of coffee and a broad green leaf-plate filled with the corncakes and cheese that Francisco had prepared, cooking over what Bran told her was the last campfire they would have until their mission was complete.
A thread of worry slipped through her. From now on they needed to be careful. They couldn’t risk alerting the rebels who lurked in the higher elevations of the mountains.
Chase scraped dirt into the fire with his boot, erased any other sign of the camp, and they set out behind Francisco as they had the day before, though the trail seemed steeper today. Narrower and even more overgrown, winding relentlessly upward, it strained her tired muscles even more.
When a rainstorm blew in, they put on their slickers and kept walking. Her feet still ached, but the overnight rest had helped, and without the heat, her ankles were no longer swollen. The sun had crested overhead and tipped a little to the west when Francisco called a halt to the march.
“I am sorry,senores y senorita, but this is as far as I go. If you follow the trail, you will find the plateau where the rebels are camped. It is in the flat spot before the mountain begins its final rise to the peak.”
The peak being more than seventeen thousand feet, Kil had told her. Fortunately, they wouldn’t be going that far.
“You should be there before nightfall.” Francisco stuck out a dark, calloused hand and all three men shook. Kil handed him the balance of the money they owed for his services, plus a little extra, and Francisco tucked the money into his shirt.
“Vaya con Dios, my friends. God go with you.” Turning, he started back down the mountain, his thin legs moving like well-oiled pistons, lean body disappearing into the leafy foliage as the trail wound around the bend, out of sight.
Silence descended in his absence.
“A couple of things before we go,” Bran said, regaining their attention. “First, I’ll be moving out ahead of you. I want to scout the area, see if I can locate an LZ that will work for a helo extract. I’ll meet up with you before you reach the plateau. Second, you’re in rebel territory now. Keep your eyes open. Stay quiet and out of sight as much as possible. You don’t want them to spot you.”
Harper figured the warning was probably more for her than the men, but she didn’t really need a reminder. If she were any more worried, she’d be turning around and heading back with Francisco.
“I’ll see you up the trail.” Bran moved off the path and disappeared into the bush. Harper had heard the men talking enough to understand that Bran was heading off to find a landing zone for a helicopter to pick them up if it became necessary. Sounded darn good to her.
