Читать книгу The Spy Who Loved Him - Merline Lovelace, Merline Lovelace - Страница 9

“Carlos?” Anna peered through the open doors of a small crimson and gold antechamber. “What are you doing in here all by yourself?”

“Looking for your cousin. Someone said they saw her come in here a while ago.”

What looked suspiciously like a pout settled over Anna’s delicate features for a moment. She chased it away with a toss of her dark hair. Slipping through the doors, she glided across the room.

“Won’t I do instead?”

Instant alarms sounded in Carlos’s head. Nubile and overripe for marriage, Anna had fixed her sights on him with almost the same determination he’d fixed his on Margarita. He suspected her determined pursuit sprang as much from jealousy of her cousin as from a young woman’s infatuation with an older and decidedly more experienced male.

Another man might have been flattered by her attentions. A few might even have taken advantage of her passions. Carlos didn’t feel the least temptation to accept the seductive invitations she insisted on sending his way. Anna was a pretty little thing, but she wasn’t Margarita.

Smiling, he strolled across the plush carpet. “Let me escort you back to the ball. I have no doubt Miguel is looking for you to claim a dance.”

“Miguel…pooh!” With a careless wave, she dismissed the lieutenant who served as Carlos’s aide. “He’s a boy. A mere boy.”

“Actually, he’s older than most lieutenants,” Carlos countered mildly. “He worked his way up through the ranks and received his commission based solely on merit, not through family connections like so many.”

“I don’t wish to speak of Miguel.” A sulky note crept into her voice. Slanting him a doe-eyed look through thick lashes, she slid her palms up his lapels. “I wish to speak of us.”

Gently, he captured her wrists. “There is no us. You know I’ve asked your uncle for Margarita’s hand in marriage.”

“Yes, well, my cousin has a mind of her own when it comes to choosing her man. As do I.”

“So I’ve discovered,” he said dryly. “Come, Miguel will be looking for you.”

“I don’t want to dance with Miguel.” Stubbornly, she dug in her heels. Her pout was real now. “If you must know, I saw Margarita leave the Palace almost an hour ago.”

“Did you?”

Well, well. That bit of information provided Carlos intense satisfaction. Evidently he wasn’t the only one who’d needed some privacy to regroup from that shattering kiss they’d shared on the balcony.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No.” A sly expression slid across Anna’s delicate features. “Perhaps she went to meet a lover.”

“I think not,” he replied calmly.

In one of their more acerbic exchanges, Margarita had let Carlos know she wouldn’t come to his bed a virgin…if the sky should fall and the mountains crumble and she one day decided to marry him. His jaw had locked at the idea of another man touching her, but he was honest enough to admit that he hadn’t exactly spent the past thirty-eight years in a monastery.

He knew for a fact, however, that Rita’s natural fastidiousness had kept her from forming any casual liaisons since her brief fling with another student during her years in the States. That gave him some consolation. As did the knowledge that her continued abstinence chafed her as much as it did him. She was a passionate woman, with the fire of her people in her veins…a fire Carlos was determined to stoke.

His body hardened once more at the mere thought of Margarita’s mouth hot and eager under his. She wasn’t as indifferent to him as she liked to pretend. She couldn’t tremble at his touch, couldn’t flush with heat the way she had, if she cared nothing for him.

Impatient to find her, Carlos tugged at Anna’s clinging hands. He’d locate Margarita, escort her home, pick up where they’d left off on the balcony. And this time…

“Commandante!”

The urgent call whipped his head around. Although Carlos had given up both his uniform and the title he’d earned as commander of Madrileño’s elite counterterrorism strike force when he accepted the post of deputy defense minister, old habits died hard. His military aide still called him commander, and Carlos still responded instinctively.

“Yes?”

Miguel Carreras hurried into the room. Short, sturdy and well muscled, the lieutenant admirably filled out his uniform adorned with a gold-roped aguillette and fancy dress sword.

“You must come at once, sir. There’s been a…”

When he saw Anna clinging to Carlos’s lapels, the lieutenant skidded to a stop. Surprise and hurt flickered in his brown eyes. Then his training kicked in and he turned a face of rocklike impassivity to his superior.

“There’s been an incident at the castillo.”

“What kind of an incident?” Carlos asked, calmly disengaging Anna’s hands. He hadn’t missed that look of startled dismay on his aide’s face. He’d talk to Miguel later and explain the situation, perhaps offer him some advice on handling Anna. Although he had to admit his own track record with the de las Fuentes women made him something less than an expert on the subject.

Stiffly ignoring the woman at his superior’s side, Miguel poured out a hurried report. “I don’t have all the details. Only that one of the prisoners was taken in for interrogation. He overwhelmed his guard and threatened to kill him. Margarita…Señorita de las Fuentes…offered herself as a hostage instead of the guard.”

“What!”

Shock and disbelief slammed into Carlos. Every muscle in his body snapped wire taut.

“He took her with him,” Miguel related with a worried frown. “Into the jungle. He commandeered a Jeep and took her with him.”

The vicious curse that erupted from Carlos widened Anna’s eyes.

“The captain of the guard just brought the word,” the lieutenant finished. “He’s waiting for you in the Gold Room.”

Leaving an openmouthed Anna behind, Carlos strode through the doors. Questions hammered at him with each sharp crack of his heels on the parquet floors. What the devil was Margarita doing at the prison? Why had she offered herself as a hostage in the guard’s place? Who was this prisoner who’d taken her?

While his mind whirled with unanswered questions, fear coiled in his gut. Margarita didn’t know the jungle. She’d been raised in the city, spent her summers at her father’s sugar plantation and years at school in the States. She’d never hacked her way through strangler vines as thick as a man’s arm or dodged tarantulas the size of dinner plates. If by some stroke of luck she managed to escape this prisoner, she wouldn’t last a day in the steaming green hell that covered most of Madrileño.

An icy sweat had pooled at the base of his spine by the time Carlos strode into the Gold Room. At his entrance, the captain of the guard snapped to rigid attention, took one look at his murderous expression and blanched. Although democracy had taken firm root in Madrileño, most security matters—including the national police and administration of the prison system—came under the military, which was headed by the Minister of Defense. As deputy defense minister, Carlos stood in the captain’s direct chain of command. He could have the man’s head, or at least his pension, for this incident.

“You talk.” He fired the words through clenched jaws. “I’ll listen.”

“We took this prisoner with the others in the big drug bust yesterday, the one we coordinated with the Americans.”

“I’m aware of the operation,” Carlos snapped.

He should be. After receiving a tip about a major heroine shipment being moved through the mountains to an isolated airstrip, he’d worked forty-eight hours straight to set up a multipronged, multinational attack. His men had taken down two planes, half-a-dozen aircrew members, a number of small-time drug lords and so many locals engaged in transporting the uncut heroin the police were still trying to sort them all out.

“This particular gringo would not tell us his name,” the captain reported. “He’s an ugly bastard, very scarred, with one glass eye. We assumed he was one of the fliers. When they asked us to hold him in special custody—”

“Who asked you to hold him?”

The captain blinked at the whiplike question. “The Americans, sir. We received a call…I assumed you knew.”

Carlos would find out who made that call later. Right now, his only concern was Margarita.

Unfortunately, the captain could shed no light on why she’d asked to see this particular prisoner. All he knew was that she’d showed up at the prison and requested an interview.

“The gringo seemed to be expecting her. He called her by name and smiled when she offered herself as hostage instead of that sweating, sniveling guard, as though he’d anticipated just such a move.”

Carlos stared at the captain, his face shuttered while confusion piled on top of the fury gripping at his chest. What the hell was going on here? What had Margarita gotten involved in?

“The gringo left us locked in the interrogation room,” the captain confessed, shame evident in every line of his stiff body. “The walls of the castillo are so thick, it was a good ten minutes before anyone found us. My men report that Señorita de las Fuentes walked out beside this man as though they were going for an evening stroll. Only after I was found did we discover that a Jeep was taken.”

“So no one saw which direction they headed?”

Miserable, the captain shook his head. “No, commandante.”

With some effort, Carlos held back another vicious curse. When he was satisfied that the captain could provide no further information, he dismissed him with a curt order to draw up a comprehensive plan to prevent such escapes in the future.

“Find Señor de las Fuentes,” he snapped at Miguel. “Ask him to join me here.”

The lieutenant hurried away, leaving Carlos to think furiously. The certainty that there was more involved in yesterday’s operation than a routine drug bust grew with each passing second. The tip had come at such an opportune moment. The support from the States had been too ready. And this call to the prison…

His face grim, he moved to an ornately carved console and snatched up the phone. He’d spent a few years in the States himself, first as a student at the Army’s Command and General Staff College, then as a military attaché to the Madrileñan ambassador. He still had some friends in high circles. Some good friends.

By the time Margarita’s anxious father hurried into the reception room, Carlos was coldly, savagely furious. Even after four calls and several blunt reminders of Madrileño’s unflagging support for America’s antidrug campaign, he still didn’t know who’d made the call. But he was determined to get to the bottom of it.

“What’s going on?” her father demanded, puffing a bit from his quick walk.

A career bureaucrat, Eduard de las Fuentes had worked tirelessly to help his brother win the presidency and institute badly needed reforms. He was a good man, traditional in his family values but forward thinking when it came to his country’s needs.

Succinctly, Carlos recounted the astounding events of the past half hour. Eduard gaped at him, his mouth popping open and closed like one of the orange-spotted frogs that populated the jungle.

“Margarita? This scum took my Margarita?”

“Apparently, she offered herself as hostage in exchange for the guard.”

“But…but…why did she go to the prison in the first place?”

“I’ll get the answer to that question when I find your daughter,” Carlos promised grimly.

He’d get more than answers, he thought savagely as he strode down the Palace steps into the star-studded night. He’d bring her back safely and drag whatever information she had out of her. Then he’d either wring her neck for walking into this mess in the first place or tie her naked to his bed and keep her there until the blasted woman admitted she wanted him as much as he did her!

At the moment, the former option seemed infinitely more probable.

Within an hour he was back in uniform and had assembled his team.

Within two, he’d pulled together enough intelligence to indicate the escaped prisoner would in all likelihood head for a rendezvous point in the jungle, a cave hidden high in the mountains supposedly used as a way station by drug runners. There, he’d join forces with the heavily armed band that had reportedly been spotted crossing the border.

Worry for Margarita gnawing at his gut, Carlos sat beside his driver for the short ride to the military airbase just outside San Rico. Miguel and a small, handpicked squad of ten men followed in a half-ton truck. Although his aide had tried to hide his feelings behind a carefully blank mask, he hadn’t yet recovered from the shock of finding Anna clinging like a limpet to his superior. Carlos would have to explain that scene to him—later! When his mind was clear and fear for Margarita didn’t crawl through his belly.

The helicopter crew had their bird preflighted and ready to go when Carlos and his team arrived at the airport. The squad filed to the chopper, almost invisible in their dark jungle fatigues and blackened faces. Silently, they climbed aboard and strapped in. While the rotor blades whirred and the engine whined up to full power, Carlos pulled a plastic-coated map from his pocket and ran through his hastily conceived tactical plan.

“We’ll land here, a half mile to the west of the cave to avoid alerting anyone in the vicinity.”

Stabbing a finger at the map, he pointed to an area devoid of towns, of plantations, of any signs of human habitation. The closest village lay a good ten miles to the west.

“With luck, we’ll reach the cave ahead of the fugitive and his hostage and be waiting when they arrive. If by chance they get there before us, we’ll use the element of surprise to come at them out of the darkness.”

Either approach involved risk. To his men. To himself. To Margarita. Still, the plan was the best he could devise.

It might even have worked…if the helicopter hadn’t developed engine trouble while they were still two miles from their objective. Using the chopper’s powerful, million-candle-watt searchlight, the cursing pilot found a hole in the jungle canopy at the last moment and put them down with only a bent rotor blade. Carlos jumped out and surveyed the solid wall of blackness beyond the searchlight’s reach.

Two miles. They’d come down two miles from their planned landing zone, which put them two-and-a-half from the cave. On cleared terrain, he could run the distance in less than a half hour with full backpack. In the jungle, two and a half miles stretched to infinity.

Grimly, Carlos dug a pair of night-vision goggles from a pocket in his lightweight fatigue vest and led the way into dank, murky rain forest.

“Come on! Keep climbing!”

The gun barrel jabbed ruthlessly into Margarita’s spine, prodding her up the steep path. She winced at the bruising pain, but it soon blended with all the others into an indistinguishable ache. Narrowing her eyes against the bright dawn haze, she inched her way up the path toward the distant roar of a waterfall.

With every stumbling step, needles of fire shot up her bound arms. Her shoulder sockets burned. Cramps pulled like iron tongs at calf muscles straining from the hard climb. At that moment, she would have given almost everything she owned for a few sips of water.

They’d driven all night, each twisting turn of the road taking them higher into the mountains. For the first hour or two of that long ride, Margarita had listened with every sense straining for sounds of pursuit. Hope of rescue faded with each grind of the Jeep’s gears. She should have known the elusive criminal SPEAR had been hunting for months would have planned his escape well.

Well, she wasn’t going to make the escape any easier for the walking piece of slime behind her. Deliberately, she stumbled and went down on one knee. Sharp rock cut into the jeans she’d hurriedly thrown on before rushing to the prison. Her gasp of pain was only half feigned.

“Get up!” her captor snarled, panting even harder than Margarita from the arduous trek. He’d emptied his canteen early in the climb. Thirst and exertion put a rasp in his throat. “You’re not fooling anyone with this weak, helpless female act. I know the kind of training you’ve had.”

With an awkward twist of her upper body, Margarita propped a shoulder against the cliff face and pushed herself up. Her breath cut like razor blades into lungs starved for oxygen.

“How do you know what kind of training I’ve had? Who are you?”

A sneer twisted his lips. “You tell me.”

“All right.” Her chest heaving, she propped her aching shoulders against the vine-covered rock wall behind her. “You’re Simon.”

“Very good.” The sneer deepened, tugging at his scarred face. He stepped up beside her and dug the pistol barrel into the soft flesh under her chin. “And we both know who you are, don’t we? The bitch who’s been interfering in my operations in Central and South America.”

With her back against sheer rock and a gun barrel grinding into the underside of her chin, Margarita weighed the odds of taking him down right then and there. If she twisted her head just a few inches to the right, hooked her shoulder into his chest and shoved the bastard over the side of the path before he got off a shot…

“It took me a while to figure out who Jonah had operating in Madrileño.”

Jonah! The casual way he dropped the name froze Margarita in place. Dios! This man knew more about SPEAR than many of its own agents.

“What makes you think I work for Jonah?”

Vicious satisfaction laced his voice. “I have my ways of getting information…just as SPEAR does. You caused me considerable inconvenience, Señorita de las Fuentes. You and that bastard deputy defense minister.”

“Carlos?”

Her surprised gasp drew a parody of a smile. “Yes, Carlos. Between the information you supplied SPEAR and Caballero’s internal crackdown on the drug trade, the two of you just about destroyed my base of operations in this corner of the world.”

Carlos! For the merest instant, she could hear his voice. Feel his mouth on hers. Just the thought of his strong, solid form brought the craven wish she’d never left his arms. Then reality returned in the form of a vicious killer.

“Good.” Despite a throat parched with thirst, she managed a sarcastic smile. “I’m glad we inconvenienced you.”

“I wouldn’t look so pleased with yourself.” The gun barrel ground into her jaw. “Your interference will end as of today.”

Ignoring both the threat and the agony of steel against bone, she swept her captor a disdainful glance. His disfigurement had been startling enough in the dim prison interior. In the bright light of dawn, the puckered, angry flesh could weaken anyone’s stomach. His glass eye remained fixed. His good eye followed hers as they roamed his scars.

“Hideous, aren’t they?”

She refused to give him so much as a hint of sympathy. “I’ve seen worse.”

With the cosmetic techniques available today, he could have had the scars removed. That he chose not to told her he took some kind of perverse pride in his disfigurement—or that he wanted a bitter daily reminder of whatever cataclysmic event had caused it. When she suggested as much in a cool voice, something so evil flared in his one good eye that Margarita’s palms flattened against rock behind her.

“I want Jonah to see them. Which he will…and soon. Now move it, Señorita. I’ve wasted enough time in this stinking green cesspool you call a country.”

The slur to Madrileño only added to his hostage’s growing determination to shove his gun barrel between his teeth and make him eat his words along with a good six inches of cold steel. Laughing at the deadly promise in her eyes, he stepped back and motioned her onward. With her chin bruised and fire burning in her heart, Margarita resumed her climb.

Her chance would come.

It had to come.

The path twisted and turned. The sun crawled higher, a blazing ball visible through gaps in the vines and trees clinging to the mountain. Twice, Margarita stumbled to her knees, only to be jerked upright by a cruel hand in her hair. Once, the little locket stuck to the sweaty skin beneath her blouse began to vibrate.

The feel of it humming against her breasts made her want to weep with frustration. The tiny device hidden inside only received signals, didn’t send them. There was no way for SPEAR to pinpoint her location.

Gradually, the roar of the waterfall grew louder. When they rounded a bend and Simon dragged back a straggling curtain of vines to reveal a gaping hole in the cliff face, Margarita knew time was running out. She’d have to free herself quickly, before his accomplices appeared on the scene and her value as a hostage ended.

With a grunt, he planted a fist in her back and shoved her inside the cave. She made a frantic sweep of the dank interior for snakes or other inhospitable inhabitants before she hit the rock floor. The thud jarred her teeth. Cursing fluently in both Spanish and English, she twisted up and around.

“My friends will be here shortly,” he said with callous indifference to her curses. “While we wait, I’ll fill the canteen at the waterfall.”

Swiping his forearm across his sweaty forehead, he dragged another length of rope from his back pocket and tied her ankles. He seemed to take particular delight in yanking the knots until they cut almost through her boot tops. Margarita refused to so much as move a muscle at his rough treatment, even when he slid his palm up her calf and squeezed, hard.

“Be a good girl and I’ll give you some water.”

A smile dragged at his misshapen mouth. His hand roamed higher, to her thigh. She felt its damp heat through her jeans.

“Then again, maybe I won’t. Maybe you’ll have to beg for it. I like my women hot and desperate.”

“I imagine that’s the only way a scum like you can get them.”

His casual backhand snapped her head back. She tasted blood…and the absolute conviction that she’d see this man in hell before he touched her again.

“You’ll beg,” he predicted with a sneering confidence that ground her teeth together. “Long and hard.”

The son of a pig!

The moment he disappeared through the vines, Margarita dragged herself up and began searching the cave. All she needed was a ragged edge, a sharp protuberance of any kind to saw through her bonds. She’d wiggled her way out of worse situations than this during SPEAR’s brutal escape and evasion training.

That was training, a nasty little voice inside her head heckled. This is for real.

As if she needed the reminder! Ignoring the scream of protest from her shoulders, Margarita rolled over to the nearest wall and fumbled behind her with numbed fingers for its surface. Panic rose in waves when she felt nothing but smooth rock. Choking with frustration, she humped and stretched and humped again, propelling herself snail-like along the floor, searching the surface behind her with desperate fingers.

She’d almost given up hope when she scraped against a small, sharp crack in the rock. Praying its flintlike edge would do the job, she pushed up on one elbow to gain leverage and went to work. Her back arched at an awkward angle. Every back-and-forth movement caused a white-hot lance of pain in her shoulders. Sweat ran in rivulets from her temples. Blood dripped onto her balled fists from wrists scraped raw by rope and stone.

Straining, grunting, sawing, Margarita struggled to keep track of the passing seconds. Her heart hammered as she listened for the thud of footsteps, but she knew she’d never hear Simon’s return over the thundering falls and her jackhammering pulse.

When the ropes finally parted, what began as a fervent prayer of thanksgiving spiraled instantly into a silent scream. For several precious moments, Margarita could only writhe on the cave floor while her abused shoulder sockets exacted their revenge. Finally, the agony subsided enough for her to sit up. Panting, she fumbled at the ropes binding her ankles. When they, too, gave, she dropped her forehead onto her knees and allowed herself one moment of sobbing relief.

Not a heartbeat later, the faint scrape of rock on rock brought her head up with a jerk. Molten fury coursed through Margarita. This time, she wouldn’t hand herself over so easily. This time, she’d have a few surprises in store for a certain one-eyed bastard.

She was gathering herself for an attack when gunfire burst out in the valley below. Her heart contracted painfully as monkeys screamed and birds flapped noisily into the sky. In almost the same instant, a shadowy figure appeared at the curtain of vines draped across the cave’s mouth.

She caught the glitter of sunlight on a gun barrel. With a feral snarl, Margarita launched herself through the vines.