Camouflage Heart

Brian froze. Her soft, warm lips pressed against his and short-circuited his brain, sending an electric charge through his skin. He wanted more, he wanted all of her, with an urgency that stole his breath, but he also recognized the kiss for what it was.

A gesture of gratitude and relief.

And he would have had to be the worst kind of bastard to take advantage of it. Brian pulled back and saw surprise flicker in her eyes before he looked away. Surprise at her own spontaneous gesture or at his reaction.

It didn't matter. He wasn't going there.

He couldn't.

Audrey Benedict
—When her sister is kidnapped by Malaysian guerillas, she rushes to pay the ransom money, but is captured.

Brian Welkins
—Member of a top secret military group (SDDU). Four years ago, he was captured by the guerillas and kept in a cage since. All he wanted was to escape and get as far from the jungle as possible. And then Audrey came along.

Nicky Benedict-Sawyer
—She came to Malaysia on an adoption trip to provide moral support to her sister, Audrey. But a simple sightseeing excursion to the island of Borneo ended in disaster.

Jamil
—Once a true freedom fighter, now he leads a small guerilla group that's becoming increasingly difficult to control.

Omar
—Jamil's younger brother who thinks it's past time he took charge and led the group to fight.

Hamid
—Head of the group that took twelve Western hostages. But the kidnappings are not his worst crime. He has plans for the ransom money that will send shockwaves through the region.

SDDU
—Special Designation Defense Unit. A top secret military team established to fight terrorism. Its existence is known only by a select few. Members are recruited from the best of the best.

Colonel Wilson
—Brian's boss. He's the leader of the SDDU, reporting straight to the Homeland Security Secretary.

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Epilogue

Soon.

Don't act strange. Don't draw attention. Don't even look alive.

Brian hid his shaking hands under his arms. He had spent the last four years waiting for a chance to escape, but now that the opportunity was here it overwhelmed him. He took a slow breath. He was in better shape than he'd been at any of his previous attempts. Which still didn't guarantee that he could break out of his prison and make the two-week trek out of the Malaysian jungle.

“We'll be back in three days, four at the most,” Jamil, the guerilla group's leader, said to his younger brother on the other side of the clearing, the tension obvious between the two men even from a distance.

The steadily pattering rain drowned out the younger man's reply. The mesh of banana leaves
Brian had woven among the top bars of the tiger cage leaked here and there, but the makeshift roof kept the worst of the weather off him. He watched his captors from the corner of his eye, keeping his head turned toward the trees. He didn't want them to know he was paying attention.

“Haven't you wasted enough time trying to convince everyone Hamid is wrong?” Omar raised his voice and could be heard now even over the rain. “We've become like old women, talking around campfires. Bullets win wars, not talk.” He spat the words. “We can start by sending this one's head—” he jerked his thumb toward Brian “—to the city.”

Jamil lifted a placating hand. There was a presence to the older man, a careful dignity that the others lacked. “We are freedom fighters, not terrorists.”

And that's where he was wrong, Brian thought. Jamil and a couple of the older men in camp might have started out as freedom fighters, but Omar and his young friends were in this for entirely different reasons. They liked the outlaw power of bending to no government, taking what they wanted when they came across someone weaker.

Jamil nodded to his men and disappeared into the jungle with them. Brian stared straight ahead, not looking at the remaining fighters, but aware of each and every one. The small guerilla group consisted of
about three dozen men. Eight had gone for supplies two days ago. Jamil was taking six to talk alliance with a larger group on the other side of the mountain.

For the next few days, the camp would be as thin as ever, and tomorrow night Ahmad would be on guard duty. Ahmad would let him go to the bathroom without pistol-whipping him first for the bother, or standing behind him the whole time with a rifle barrel pressed between his shoulder blades.

Just a little longer. Just another day.
Brian closed his eyes. He needed some sleep, to have as much energy as possible when the time came. The familiar noises of the jungle filled the night, the chorus of frogs interrupted now and then by the shrill cry of a bird, the buzz and chirp of a million insects filling in the occasional silence.

His mind drifted, but something prickled at the edges of his consciousness. Something was missing. The camp was quiet. Unnaturally so. No human voices joined that of the jungle. He opened his eyes.

Omar still stood on the same spot, but a dozen of his men were gathered around him. Now what? He watched as some kind of silent communication passed between them and the men melted into the jungle one by one.

Minutes passed, then came the sounds of gunfire from the distance. Some of Jamil's men jumped up
and ran into the forest. Brian swore under his breath. If Omar managed to wrest leadership of the group, he was finished.

A good hour went by before the last gun fell silent, and not long after that, the first fighters returned to camp. Jamil's men were not among them.

Brian swallowed his desperation and tried to catch Ahmad's eye. If he could get the younger man to come over, let him out of the cage… But Ahmad was busy at the other end of the clearing, joining the celebration that had begun.

It didn't take much before half the camp was drunk and the other half well on their way. Brian looked up at the darkening sky. They hadn't come for him yet, but he knew Omar would get to it sooner or later. Whether or not to keep their prisoner alive had been one of the main disagreements between the brothers. Omar would want to reassert his new authority by making a point.

He had to go. Now.

“Ahmad,” he called out on a low voice when the man walked near him.

The young fighter turned to see what he wanted, but then stopped, his attention drawn to a commotion at the edge of the clearing. The group that had gone off for supplies was returning.

Damn it. Not that, too.

So much for taking advantage of a sparse camp. What the hell were they doing back? The trip to the nearest kampongs, the few villages that were this high up the mountain, usually took five or six days.

And then he saw the hunched figure they were shoving in front of them.

Another prisoner.

He leaned forward to get a better look at the young man. No, not a kid—it was a woman. Definitely a woman.

She was pushed close enough to the low fire that burned under a hatch-roofed shelter, so he could see her clearly now. Her hands were bound behind her, her mouth gagged. The light of the flames glinted off blondish hair.

Jamil hadn't been keen on the practice of exchanging hostages for money. On the odd occasion when Omar's men brought back some easy target they couldn't resist, they were sent upriver to a larger guerilla group whose leader, Hamid, was an expert in this kind of business. There had been talk of a job he had recently pulled, how they were expecting the batch of hostages to bring in over a million ringgits a head.

The woman turned for a moment, and the fire lit her face enough so that he could see her eyes. They were filled with stark terror, so vivid he could feel it in his own chest.

She stirred something in him, bringing back memories, making him remember why he had joined the Special Designation Defense Unit in the first place. It used to be his job to stop this kind of thing from happening, to get to the bad guys before they got to the civilians. But he had failed.

Where the hell had Ahmad gone? Now was the time to slip away, while everyone was busy with the new prisoner.

One of the men tied the woman to a palm tree. They probably would make her write a letter to her loved ones in the morning. Then in a week or two, the money would arrive and someone would walk her to the nearest village. At least, that's how Hamid ran his deals.

He glimpsed Ahmad at last. The man had strode back to the fire and was now taking his turn from the bottle, satisfying his curiosity about the prisoner. He was too far to call to without drawing attention.

The fighters were getting louder, and Omar was busy writing on loose sheets of paper on his knee, looking up now and then when his men toasted him. Then he rolled up the papers, tied them with a piece of string and handed them to Ahmad.

This was it. Brian got to his feet and crouched—the tiger cage did not allow him to stand to his full height. He called to the young fighter as the man walked by the cage. “I need to get out for a minute.”

“I'll tell one of the guards.”

The two men on guard duty were at the fire with the rest, having abandoned their posts to check out the new prisoner. Jamil wouldn't have tolerated that. Omar didn't seem to notice.

“It won't take long. The others…” He let his voice trail off.

The others would beat him for the fun of it. And they were drunk enough so they might not know when to stop. Ahmad understood and stepped to the nearby post for the handcuffs, threw them into the cage. Brian slipped on the rusty metal pieces and clinked them together, hoping it sounded enough like the click that locked them. And it must have, because the door opened to let him out.

He walked in front, dragging his right foot, exaggerating the limp. He wanted anyone who watched to think he couldn't run even if his life depended on it. And it did.

He stepped a couple of feet deeper into the jungle than was necessary, made sure they were behind thick enough vegetation. He fumbled with his rope belt, let his pants drop, then spun with full force and brought his fists to Ahmad's temple. The man folded without a sound.

Brian grabbed the gun even before he pulled up his pants. “Sorry, buddy.”

He pocketed Ahmad's knife, took the rolled up sheets of paper. They would come in handy once he got far enough that he could risk starting a fire. He listened, but no shouts rang out from camp, no sign that his actions were heard or seen, just the coarse jesting of the men about the woman. As he turned to leave, he heard Omar join in. That didn't bode well for her.

A true leader knew how to rein in his men, but Omar had never been good at delayed gratification. He was too smart to intentionally kill her, but not smart enough to realize that if he let his men go at her, she probably wouldn't survive the night, and they would lose out on the ransom money.

Brian gripped the gun. He should be running right now. He should be a hundred feet away.

Ahmad groaned.

Two hundred.

He couldn't go back for her. What if she didn't speak English? She would probably fight him. He didn't look any different from the guerillas—even his clothing was the same, his original uniform having rotted off him in the jungle's humid air years ago.

She could get both of them killed. And even if he managed to get her away from camp, she would slow him down. What the hell could she know about jungle survival? She would probably keel over from the
first bug that bit her. And no way to get her away unseen, either. The attention of every man in the camp was focused on her, and would probably stay on her for some time—an unexpected gift he should be taking advantage of.

And yet, he could not forget the look in her eyes.

Damn.

He pulled the man's hat off and shoved it into his mouth, tied Ahmad's hands behind his back with his belt. With a last glance at him, Brian crouched and rushed left, moving silently over the mossy ground as he circled the camp.

 

S
HE WAS GOING
to suffocate.

Audrey Benedict tried desperately to draw enough air into her burning lungs, but her mouth was taped shut, and her nose was plugged from crying.

She didn't understand a word the men around the campfire were saying, but she had no trouble interpreting their savage expressions. She had a good idea what they had in store for her. She looked up to the stars and prayed, for herself and for her sister—for someone to get to Nicky in time, now that she had failed.

She took one jerky, hard breath after another, desperate to clear her airway. An urgent shout rang across the clearing. She scanned the darkness beyond the fire, struggling against the ropes that bound
her hands. The guerillas were grabbing for their guns, rushing toward a young fighter who had staggered out of the forest. Some of them ran into the jungle behind him.

Were they under attack? Dear God, let it be a rescue team and not another group of bandits.

She felt a sharp tug on her rope before it went slack, then she was yanked back through the bushes with force. She scrambled to see who or what was behind her.

If she weren't gagged, she would have screamed.

As it was, she couldn't open her mouth, and the wildman of the jungle who had her didn't leave her time to faint. He grabbed her wrist tight enough to cut off circulation and pulled her after him with frightening speed, flying through the blind night without a sound. She, on the other hand, got caught on every branch.

Her right hand was still tied to her feet, loose enough to allow movement, but not so she could reach her face. He had her other hand and wouldn't let it go, though she pulled until she thought her skin would rip off.

She was dizzy from lack of air, her ears popping. Stop! She screamed, but it came to no more than an unintelligible sound in her throat. She threw her full weight to the ground, bent head to hand, ripped the tape off her mouth.

She gulped the night air, her surroundings coming back into focus slowly. The rifle hanging from the man's shoulder knocked against her elbow as he snatched the tape from her before she could toss it. He put a finger to his lips, barely visible under a fright of a beard that came to the middle of his chest. Okay, she was supposed to be quiet. She got that.

The man pulled her up, then forward again relentlessly, and she chose to believe he was trying to help her. She preferred it to thinking she was being kidnapped again. But even if that was the case, he was only one man. She was still better off than a few minutes ago.

A creek crossed their path and he dragged her into it, moving fast from stone to stone, going downstream in the middle. The canopy was thinner here, some moonlight filtering through. She followed his movements as closely as she could, trying to stay out of the water as much as possible. She'd read about the parasites.

“
Bolehkah tolong saya?
” She whispered one of the few sentences she knew in Malay.
Can you help me?

A look of surprise crossed his face before he nodded and put his fingers over her lips. She flinched away from his dirty hand and split fingernails. He didn't seem to notice her distaste and moved on, hauling her behind him.

After a few hundred yards, they reached a bend where thick vines hung into the water from the branches above. He stopped and cut off her dangling ropes, tucked them into his shirt, then turned his back to her.

“Get on,” he said in English.

She hesitated a moment, but when he gave an impatient grunt, she put her arms around his neck, keeping her face from the filthy dreadlocks that streamed halfway down his back.

He bent his knees and reached under her legs with his hands, wrapped them around his waist, then let them go to reach for the vine. The rifle scraped against her side. Could she get it away from him? The sudden possibility of freedom sent blood rushing through her head. Then common sense put in an appearance and prevailed. Even with a gun, her chance of making it out of the jungle alone was uncomfortably close to zero. For one, she had no idea which way to walk.