Morgan's Mercenaries: Heart of Stone (25 page)

Was he seeing things? He blinked. No, it was there…again…. What was it? He frowned and narrowed his vision toward the end of the hall and the exit door.

A grayish cloud seemed to be hanging there. It would disappear, then reappear moments later. Scratching his head, Dane watched it, perplexed. Was stress over Maya’s disappearance making him see things? Again the cloud dissipated into nothingness, then came back. He could almost see a shape….

His mouth fell open. He took a step back and gasped as the cloud darkened. This time he saw four black legs appear out of the churning grayness. Stunned, he watched as the apparition became more solid. Tensing, he saw a black jaguar materialize out of the grayish cloud. It stood there, huge yellow eyes with tiny black pupils staring directly at him.

Gulping, Dane wondered once more if he was seeing things. His mind churned and raced. What the hell was he seeing?

And then the truth suddenly slammed into him: it was Maya’s guardian! The black jaguar! Dane sucked in a breath of air. He watched the cat as it stood there, its tail twitching languidly from side to side. It was watching him intently. A sudden sense washed over
Dane, as if a powerful ocean wave had deluged him. The jaguar wanted him to follow it!

That was crazy! Was he going insane because of his worry for Maya? Was he making this up? Dane turned to see if anyone else was in the hall. It was empty and quiet. He started to turn toward the door and call to the other pilots to come and look at the cat—to see if they saw it, too.

The moment he started to turn, he felt an even more powerful message slam into him: he should get into his helicopter and follow the jaguar.

It was so crazy. Dane stared at the cat again. The black jaguar stared back. And then the cat turned and lifted the front of its body, placing its paws against the door. The door opened. Dane gasped. He saw the jaguar leap out and down the stairs. Shaken, Dane trotted down the hall and pushed the door open. Peering down the concrete steps, he saw the black jaguar on the stairs leading to the first floor. It was looking up at him expectedly.

All the conversations Maya had had with him flooded back to Dane. He now recalled that if she was in danger, she could send the jaguar for help. Yes! That was it! She was sending her guide to him to get help!

“Stay there!” he shouted to the jaguar. “I’ll be back in a moment! Don’t move!” And he spun around on his heel and ran down the hall.

Dane knew he probably looked insane as he ran into the room and told them to saddle up, to get every available Apache into the air and follow him. He didn’t tell them
how
he knew where Maya would be, only, that he knew.

The women pilots all stared at him, but Dallas leaped to her feet.

“Maya’s contacted you, hasn’t she?” she exclaimed, and looked around at the other pilots. “I was hoping she’d contact someone. Okay, ladies, let’s saddle up.” She looked up at Dane. “Major? I’m assuming you’ll lead the squadron?”

Dane nodded. “Yes.” As he turned and trotted down the hall, he wondered if the black jaguar would still be there. He’d feel like a fool if it wasn’t. Shoving open the door, he saw the cat standing expectantly, waiting for him. Relief sheeted through him. The cat leaped down the stairwell, and Dane quickly followed.

He wondered if the people in the complex would run in fear as the jaguar pushed open the last door that lead out of HQ and into the cave itself. As he raced down the stairs, the rest of pilots not far behind, Dane was breathing raggedly. His heart pounded with fear and with hope. Maya had sent her jaguar to him. It had worked. Right now, he didn’t care to know how it worked, only that it had. As he hurried out the door, he saw the jaguar running toward the closest D model Apache. To his surprise, no one seemed to see the animal. How could they
not
see him? The big cat was plain as day to him.

As he strapped in, with Jessica as his copilot and gunner, Dane wondered how the jaguar would lead them to Maya. The cat couldn’t fly, yet stood expectantly on the cave lip, the white wisps of clouds sometimes swirling around and yet never making him disappear from Dane’s view. Within minutes, the Apaches were ready for flight, their combined punctuation of rotors echoing throughout the complex. All four Apaches were going up. Was it a wild-goose chase? Was this all part of his fevered imagination? Because of his desperate desire to find Maya? Dane wasn’t sure.
As he eased the Apache off the lip, he saw the jaguar suddenly make a leap through the Eye.

It was airborne! Dane decided he was crazy and delusional. But none of them had any idea of where to look for Maya. The crash site had been scoured, with no luck. The set of tire imprints disappeared into the jungle. All he could do was trust.

As he flew the Apache through the Eye, he saw between the noonday clouds wreathing the mountaintops, the dark outline of the jaguar up ahead of them.

“You know where we’re going?” Jess asked.

“Kind of…” Dane answered evasively, keeping his eyes on the jaguar, which ran easily in front of them, almost half a mile ahead.

“I got something on radar,” Jess murmured, “but the signature is unidentified. Right out in front of us. About half a mile. Do you see it, Major?”

Dane was shaken. The jaguar—or its energy, was showing up on their radar! He wiped his mouth. With a tremor in his voice, he rasped, “Yeah, I see it. Can
you
see anything just ahead of us?”

“Uh…no sir, I don’t see a
thing.
” Jess added a moment later, puzzlement in her voice, “But something
is
being painted on our radar…”

“Okay, no problem. Punch into the computer that it’s friendly.”

“Yes, sir…”

“Just keep watching for Kamovs.”

“Yes, sir.”

So, the jaguar could be picked up on radar. Dane looked down at his own HUDs and sure enough, there was a fuzzy apple-green ball of light on his display. It didn’t look like a jaguar, though, just a fuzzy oval ball. He felt a little better knowing that Wild Woman saw
something. He felt a little less crazy. If the other pilots knew that he was following Maya’s spirit guide, they’d think him certifiable. Yet, when Dane checked where they were going, he realized it was straight for the Bolivian border. What if he was wrong? What if he
was
crazy? Dane was torn. He was a nononsense aviator—nuts and bolts. He didn’t believe in stuff like this. Or hadn’t until Maya came along. She made the invisible and impossible a part of her living, breathing existence. She accepted the possibility of the unknown. He’d never believed in magic. Not until just recently.

Narrowing his eyes, Dane watched the jaguar bound through the sky at full speed, its stride long and rhythmic as it ran. His heart ached. Maya? What of her? How was she?
Where
was she? Was the jaguar leading them to her? The pain of losing her was too much to contemplate. Dane kept himself busy flying the powerful Apache toward some unknown destination in front of them. And yet, as he flew, he somehow was in touch with Maya on a much deeper level. As he kept the gunship steady with his hands and feet, he felt her. He felt her in his heart, in his head, as a part of his spirit. She was dynamic. Unquenchable. A warrior. A lover. His best friend. And the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Dane found himself praying for her life, praying for a second chance with Maya. If only…if only she could survive. If only…

Maya sat in the Huey helicopter as it warmed up. The blades were kicking up massive amounts of yellow dust around it. Faro had given her her helmet back, but not her chicken plate. She was without any kind of protection. As she sat in the right seat of the old, olive drab Slick, she watched the gauges. Her heart fell when
she saw that she had barely enough fuel on board to make it to the other end of the canyon. There was no way Faro was planning on her surviving this hunt.

Looking up, she saw the Russian Hind, a much larger gunship loaded with rockets on its stubby wings, warming up. Faro was at the controls, and a Russian pilot with him in the copilot’s seat. She wondered if Faro was really going to be flying it, or his hired gun, who sure as hell had a lot more experience with the Hind. Faro couldn’t be trusted, Maya decided. She cinched up the straps on her shoulders and made sure the lap belt was as tight as she could get it. There was no way in hell, she decided, as she looked out the dusty cockpit windows at the canyon before her, that she was going down without a fight. What Faro didn’t know was that she knew this canyon as intimately as she knew herself. And that was her one advantage. She routinely flew all her pilots up here to learn how to fly in tight quarters, deal with uneven winds and gusts.

Above her, she saw a double-bladed Kamov Black Shark moving into position at eighteen thousand feet. It would follow her progress all the way down the canyon. The other two Kamovs were already in place. Her scalp prickled. She stopped for a moment and lifted her head. Feeling her jaguar touch her aching mind, Maya smiled a little.
Good
. Her guide had made contact with Dane. Because of her head injury and the intermittent pain and dizziness, sending her guardian for help had been the only thing left open to her to do. Would Dane follow her jaguar? Would he believe enough in what he saw to act? Maya wasn’t sure. But it was her only hope. And it was a long shot. If Dane didn’t believe what his eyes saw, if he didn’t listen to the urgency of the jaguar’s message, she was as good as dead.

A guard outside the Slick made a motion for her to take off. In her headset, she heard Faro’s voice.

“Captain, take off. I’m giving you a three-minute head start.”

Yeah, right.
Maya pressed the mouthpiece against her lips. “Today is a good day to die, Valentino.”

His laughter filled her headset. “Yes, a good day for you to die, Captain. You’re the quarry. I’m the hunter. Take off!”

Maya tried turning the radio dial to another frequency, but nothing happened. Faro had rigged the radio so he could talk to her, but that was all. There was no way she could send a message to Dane or the other pilots. Faro had foreseen that possibility. Heart pumping hard, Maya eased her hands around the cyclic and collective. The Slick shuddered as she upped the speed to take off. It had been a long time since she’d flown the antique aircraft. In her late teens, she had flown one with her father. She had been taught how to fly in a Slick, so it was fitting she would find herself back in one at a time like this. As Maya lifted off, the jagged, ochre walls of the canyon in front of her, she prayed that the machine was truly airworthy. Glancing down at her watch, she mentally memorized the hands. She had a three-minute head start. Gaining more altitude and leveling off at a thousand feet, Maya tilted the nose forward and headed into the mouth of the Canyon of Death.

The sky was a bright, uncontested blue. The sun was high. Her heart was banging savagely in her chest. Wrestling with the surge of adrenaline through her, Maya used it to her advantage and became supersensitive to her surroundings. She watched the jagged spires of the canyon walls carefully. The Huey shook
as it encountered gusting winds when she rounded the first, snaking curve of the canyon. She glanced down at her watch.

One minute.

She had to get moving. Feeling blind without the advanced avionics that were always available to her in an Apache, Maya realized she would not be able to see the Hind stalking her. Only if she risked turning in midair to look behind her, or jinxing around so the tail rotor didn’t obstruct her vision, would she be able to see it.

The Hind, in contrast, was full of avionics and would easily locate her.

The Huey shook as she moved it sleekly around the second curve. The granite was yellowed by dust that clung to the canyon walls. Maya was tense, her breath coming in shallow gulps. At fifteen thousand feet the copter labored mightily, for this wasn’t an altitude it was used to flying at. Air was thin and the rotor blades were gasping for all the cushioning they could find.

One minute, thirty seconds.

Maya didn’t trust Faro. At the next turn, she brought the Slick up and turned just enough to see if he was behind her yet. She saw nothing. But then, the curves were so many and frequent that it would be hard to see another aircraft approaching. Below, Maya saw the sand and rock along the floor of the canyon. Only a few hardy green bushes stubbornly clung to life in the canyon. Compressing her lips, she moved the Slick on and pushed the throttles to the firewall. Her mind raced. What would Faro do? Would he follow her through the canyon or just pop up above it, locate her and fire rockets at her? That’s what she’d do if she were in his place. But Faro had this love of hunting. He might
snake through the narrow canyon as part of the test, because of this mano-a-mano thing that South American men clung to like a shell of armor around them. In her case, that was good. It gave her a slim chance.

Smiling to herself, Maya bet that he’d take the canyon route. The Hind wasn’t the most graceful or quick of the Russian gunships. No, it was a huge behemoth that was actually better suited for wide-open spaces and not the tightness of Muerte. On that point, Maya knew the Slick was a helluva lot better equipped to zig and zag between the curves. Above, she saw the Kamov moving along at eighteen thousand feet, its avionics trained on her.

Two minutes.

Again, Maya halted. Here and there in the canyon were nooks and crannies just wide enough to hide behind to wait and watch. The walls of the canyon sometimes jutted out in a slice of thin rock, and she chose one of them to hover near as she turned to check what was coming.

Her heart dropped.

There was the Hind! It was moving bulkily around the last curve, about half a mile behind her. Faro had cheated! Maya cursed softly and turned the Slick toward the south. Now he would stalk her. She redlined her aircraft. The helicopter groaned and shuddered. She could see the shadow of it against the yellow sand and rock below. The ship shook around her. Up ahead was a long S curve. Maya took a hard right and the Slick literally leaned on its right side as she skimmed as close to the wall as she could. The Hind might fire at her, but the rocket could confuse the thin partition of rock with her signature and hit the wall instead, if the pilot didn’t set the rocket correctly.