Chapter 18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Safe wanted everything to move faster. Kevlar had received a link from Tex with information from the tracker in Wren's toe ring. She was moving deep into the jungle. Their team was moving as fast as they could, but it wasn't fast enough.

He couldn't stop imagining all the horrible things Wren was going through. He'd taught her as much as he could in the limited time they'd had, but he hadn't gone into detail about what the rebels might do to a group of captives. He'd seen firsthand how brutal they could be. And he hated to think of Wren being at their mercy.

They'd arrived in Uganda without incident. Soon they'd slip over the border into South Sudan, where Kevlar was currently making plans for them to fast-rope out of a helicopter into the jungles around Mount Kinyeti. But everything was still moving too slow for Safe.

He stared down at the hand-held GPS that showed Wren's location. The dot on the screen hadn't moved in a couple of hours. Which could mean one of several things. They'd reached the rebels' camp; she was dead and her body was left behind in the jungle; or the toe ring had malfunctioned or been found.

None of the choices were good, but if he had to choose, Safe would pick the first option.

"She's going to be okay," Blink said quietly from next to him.

Safe glanced at the newest member of their group. "You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. She's tough. Tougher than anyone thinks."

She was, but Safe wasn't sure he was in the mood for meaningless assurances.

"Most women would've freaked out when we started talking about the possibility of being kidnapped. But Wren took it all in carefully. She heard our advice. Took it to heart. She's going to be okay."

Safe took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Worst-case scenarios kept flashing through his brain. Each one scarier than the last, but he forced himself to clear his mind.

Blink was right. Wren was tough. She wouldn't have made it through her horrible childhood if she wasn't. "Okay," he said on an exhalation as he opened his eyes.

"Okay," Blink echoed. He clasped his hand on Safe's shoulder before walking over to where Smiley and Flash were going through their gear.

Two minutes later, Kevlar said, "We're headed out in five minutes. Make sure you've got all the necessary gear in your packs. We're going fast and light, so only bring the essentials. Let's do this. "

Safe didn't need to check his pack. He knew down to the tiniest detail what was in there. First-aid gear, two MREs, water purification tablets, bug repellent, a multitool, compass, LED squeeze light, fire-starting kit, collapsible water bottle—currently full—electrolyte tablets, signal mirror, thermal blanket, paracord, safety pins, can opener, duct tape, razor blade, and a handcuff key. The items in the safety kit every SEAL carried was something they'd memorized back in school. He was ready for anything and everything and simply wanted to get moving.

Ten minutes later, the seven men climbed out of the back of an old pickup that dropped them in a dark field less than a mile from the South Sudanese border, where a chopper waited. They climbed onboard and immediately began to don the harnesses they'd use to lower themselves into the jungle. There was a chance the chopper would be heard by the rebels, but using it was much faster than traversing the mountain to get to where Wren's tracker was pinging. As it was, they'd be dropped a few miles from the ping so they could hopefully have the element of surprise.

The plan had been discussed and agreed on during their flight to Uganda. Safe would keep the GPS with Wren's location and his only responsibility was getting her to safety. The others on the team would go after the eight men. Of course, no one knew who'd been kidnapped, other than Wren herself. They had to assume, based on limited intel, that the entire group had been taken. It would remain to be seen how they could extract the group, based on what kind of shape everyone was in when they found them.

As for the rebels…as far as Safe was concerned, they'd ma de their choice when they'd kidnapped the Americans. They would be eliminated without a second thought.

No word had come through about any kind of ransom demand, but it was still early yet. Not even a day had gone by since they'd been taken. Safe and his team assumed that would happen in the morning, if ransom was the kidnappers' intent.

Safe shifted in his seat as the chopper rose off the ground. He was calm. Focused. He'd made a promise to Wren that she'd be rescued if anything happened. He wasn't about to go back on that promise now. She was a part of his family, and no one fucked with one of their own.

Wren swallowed hard. She was terrified, but it was time. It was now or never. It was still raining. She was soaked to the bone, but she barely even noticed. She and the others had been able to rig up a rain cache system with the largest leaves around them, so they could drink a little bit. It wasn't enough, not nearly enough, but it was something. It would have to do for now.

The men around her were all sleeping. They were lying on their backs or sides. Wren had curled up on her side against the base of the tree, trying to stay hidden behind the men.

What was the saying? Out of sight, out of mind. She'd hoped that would be the case as the rebels continued to drink for a few hours after they arrived. To her relief, most of them had passed out or fallen asleep under their lean-tos. The fire had also died down enough that the light didn't reach their little corner of the camp.

It was time.

Guilt once again rose within Wren. Guilt that she didn't tell the others what she had planned. Guilt over what the ramifications of her being gone would mean for her coworkers. She had no doubt their captors wouldn't be happy to find her missing.

Very slowly, not making a sound, Wren rolled onto her back. Then she sat up and looked around. No one glanced her way. Everyone was sleeping. She scooted on her butt until she cleared the large tree, circling around it.

She got to her knees, then balanced on her feet, staying low. Taking one last look at her sleeping coworkers—she was startled to see Oliver's eyes open and staring right at her. He was lying a little away from the others, closer to the tree she was now hiding behind.

Wren froze. She had no idea what he would do if he thought she was escaping. He'd been hurt because of Colby. Would he call out a warning and blow her escape, simply to protect himself?

She was surprised when he whispered, "Go."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

But Oliver shook his head. "Don't be. We should've listened to you. Should've gone to that training—or better yet, said no to this trip. Get out, Wren."

"They're coming," she surprised herself by saying. "For all of us. I have a tracker. They're coming, Oliver. You just have to hang on until they get here."

She didn't explain who "they" were, and Oliver didn't ask. She could barely see him in the dark of the early morning, but she saw him nod.

"I'll tell them you went to pee and I heard scuffling, and you never came back."

Swallowing hard, and wishing she could save all the guys, she simply nodded. "I'll scuff up the ground a bit. Make it look like I was attacked by something."

"Good luck," Oliver told her.

"You too." Then, before she could change her mind, Wren turned, staying low until she was deeper into the trees, then she quickly walked into the darkness.

When she was far enough away from the camp that she thought she could make a little bit of noise, she found a tree branch on the ground and made gouges in the jungle floor and tore up the vegetation in the area. It probably wasn't good enough to fool anyone for long, especially someone who lived in the jungle like the rebels did, but hopefully they'd be too busy trying to contact someone for a ransom to worry about a stupid American woman who'd wandered off in the middle of the night to pee.

Walking quickly with her cuffed hands in front of her, Wren zigzagged through the jungle. She had no idea where she was going, other than away from the rebel camp. She needed to get the cuffs off her wrists, but more importantly, she needed to put space between her and the danger.

It was way harder than she thought it would be to make her way through the trees. First, it was dark as hell. Second, the route they'd taken to get to the camp had obviously been traversed back and forth often. It was only a trail, like a deer trail, but still walkable .

What she was doing now…wasn't easy. Not at all. The undergrowth kept tripping her. She fell to her knees over and over. Branches smacked against her face. And every minute or so she swore she heard someone coming after her, making her drop to a crouch and get as small as she could to try to hide.

She wasn't moving fast enough, Wren knew that, but she literally couldn't go any faster. "One foot in front of the other," she whispered, hoping that just hearing her own voice would give her the energy and fortitude to keep going.

But it wasn't until she noticed she could actually see where she was walking that fear struck. Hard.

They'd know she was gone by now. Would probably be coming after her. She was most likely leaving an easy trail for one of the rebels to follow. They could move a lot faster than her because they weren't cuffed, had machetes, and were used to the jungle.

She suddenly felt dizzy, and Wren realized she was hyperventilating.

Leaning over, bracing her cuffed hands on her thighs, she tried to slow her breathing. "You can do this. You're okay," she told herself softly.

Making a decision, Wren plopped down onto her ass. She didn't worry about the dirt or the wet ground. She was already soaked.

Fumbling with the laces of her shoes, she fought to get the wet paracord untied. She thought about using the tiny blade in her shoe to try to cut off the zip-ties, but dismissed the idea because she'd never be able to reach the plastic without seriously hurting herself.

Praying wet paracord would work just as well as the dry stuff she'd used when she and Bo had practiced, she managed to get the cord tied in a loop through the plastic the way he'd taught her. She put her feet in the loop and began to scissor them back and forth.

When nothing happened, tears sprang to her eyes.

She blinked them away angrily. She couldn't cry. She didn't have enough liquid in her body to waste what she did have on tears. And this had to work. It had to! She could continue walking with her hands cuffed, but it would be difficult to defend herself against anything, man or animal.

Stubbornly, she continued to move the paracord back and forth over the plastic. She tired way faster than she had when she'd done this back in California, but determination took over and she refused to quit.

Just when she was about to admit defeat, she felt her wrists shift.

Looking down, she saw the plastic was breaking! Just as it was supposed to.

Renewing her efforts, Wren smiled huge when the plastic snapped completely. Her wrists were bruised all to hell, but she was free.

Hearing the scream of some animal behind her, Wren's elation disappeared. She quickly re-laced her boot and tucked the plastic pieces of the cuffs into one of the pockets of her pants. She didn't want to leave anything behind that might give someone an idea that she'd been there. Wren pulled the tiny knife out of her boot as well, and palmed it. It wouldn't be much of a weapon against a rebel with a rifle or machete, but it was better than nothing.

Feeling better now that her hands were free, Wren started walking again, needing to put as much space as she could between the rebels and herself.

Wren was reaching a point where she physically couldn't go on any longer. She was exhausted, hungry, thirsty, and had started tripping over her feet more than she was walking. She needed to find a place to hide, but nothing around her looked safe. There were no caves, no trees with holes she could crawl into. She couldn't even climb a tree and hide like one of the heroines in a book she'd read once had done.

A sound reached her then, and Wren immediately froze in terror. It took a minute before she was able to move again. And by then, she recognized what she'd heard.

Water.

Walking as fast as her feet would carry her, which wasn't very fast, Wren moved toward it. She almost fell into the stream when she finally found it, and stopped herself from tumbling right into it at the last moment. It looked deeper than the one the rebels had stopped at, allowing her and the guys to drink. It would be more difficult to get to, as well, as there were steep banks on both sides.

A noise to her left caught her attention, and staying in the shelter of the trees, Wren peeked around to look. What she saw left her in awe. A crash of rhinoceroses. She knew that was what a group of the animals was called because the detail had been included in some of the material she'd received from BT Energy before the trip.

There were about ten of them standing together in the water, thankfully downstream from her location. They seemed relaxed but alert. Wren knew their eyesight wasn't great, so she edged out of her hiding spot. She slid down the bank to the water, keeping her eyes on them as she leaned over to drink. She was sure the water probably wasn't the cleanest, but she needed to rehydrate.

She stopped way before she was satiated, not wanting to push her luck, and stayed crouched in the shallower water near the bank, watching the animals.

She'd seen a rhino before…at a zoo. This was very different. These were wild animals, enjoying a drink, cooling off, hanging out before they went off and did whatever it was a rhino did. They were beautiful, ugly, and scary, but Wren was in awe.

Before long, they began to amble off, across the stream and heading into the trees.

It was seeing them disappear so quickly that had Wren's nerves surfacing once more. It was entirely possible she could run into some wild animal as she was slinking around as well. Hopefully they'd hear her before they saw her, and run away.

Shivering even though it wasn't cold, Wren clambered up the bank and back into the trees, on the opposite side of the stream from where the rhinos had gone.

Looking around, she had no idea which way to go. Or what to do.

Water, food, shelter.

The words echoed in her head. She'd found water, had no idea what to do about food—but honestly, sleep sounded better than food right now—and she needed to find a place to hide. With that thought in mind, she started to hike.

Just when she didn't think she'd be able to go another step, Wren saw something out of the corner of her eye, to her right. She'd been walking long enough for the sun to be high in the sky now. It shone brightly between the thick branches of the trees, not directly over her head, but close.

Blinking, trying to be sure she was seeing what she thought she saw, Wren walked in a zombie state toward the large group of bushes on the forest floor. She'd passed bushes before, but for some reason, she'd stumbled upon around fifteen or twenty of them, all right next to each other in a massive group.

Picking up a heavy stick, she threw it on top of the vegetation and braced herself for anything that might come charging out of the safety of the bushes.

But nothing happened.

"Please be empty," she mumbled before getting down on her hands and knees and pushing into the tangle of leaves and branches. It wasn't easy, the branches were tightly interwoven together, but Wren pressed on. If she had a hard time getting to the middle of these plants, so would someone else. And she'd hear them coming.

Unfortunately, there was no open space welcoming her to make a little den when she got as far as she felt she could go without coming out the other side. But Wren didn't care. For the first time in days, she felt safe. Which was crazy, considering she was alone in the middle of an African jungle, possibly with a group of pissed-off rebels on her tail, who wanted to rape and kill her .

She wiggled and contorted her body until she had a few branches at her back and others poking into her front. There was a stick pressing painfully into her belly and another that scraped her head, but Wren didn't care.

Ignoring what creepy-crawlies there could be lurking with her in the bushes, she closed her eyes. Her muscles went lax, and sleep overcame her almost immediately.