Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(51)

She had to be miserable. Even in the middle of the night the heat was killer, depleting their bodies of fluids and salt. His calf muscles started to cramp from the awkward way he was crouched. He was betting Carrie was struggling with muscle issues as well.

He could tough out the pain. But she was already in a weakened physical and mental state, and he was worried about how much more she could take.

If the guards didn’t move on soon he was going to have to do something. The last thing he wanted to do was shoot them. The gunfire would wake up the entire camp, and dodging bullets on the run was a surefire way to get her killed. He could take one guard out with his knife, but the other would be yelling bloody murder before he could shut him up.

Move, move, move!

And still they stood, leaning against the jeep, passing the cigarette back and forth, talking about women. Carrie pressed her forehead harder into his back, a sign that she was struggling.

He had to do something before she gave them away.

He felt around on the ground until he found a Ping-Pong ball–sized stone. After hefting it to get a feel for the weight, he looked around for overhead obstacles, then gave it a hard fling in the opposite direction from their flight path.

Both guards stopped their chatter and came to attention. So did the damn dogs. Six deep-throated barks rang across the mountainside. He couldn’t pick up the guards’ new conversation, but when they took off at a fast walk toward the spot where the stone had landed Cav didn’t waste any time.

He helped Carrie to her feet and knew by the slow way she rose that she was cramping up.

“Foot or calf?” he whispered close to her ear as the dogs wound down with a few halfhearted yelps and finally fell silent after a shouted order from the guards.

“Calf,” she ground out between clenched teeth.

He handed her the rifle, quickly dropped back to his knees, and felt along the backs of both of her calves. He found the knot—rock hard and the size of a marble—in her left calf and started working it out with his fingers.

Her quick intake of breath and her fingers digging into his shoulders spoke of the pain, but she toughed it out.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered but was relentless until he was satisfied he’d worked out the knot and the muscle wouldn’t seize up again, at least not immediately.

“Can you walk?” He stood and dug into his pack for the salt tabs he’d brought with him.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation and downed the pills with some water. He did the same, then recapped the water bottle and stowed it in the pack.

“Hold on a sec.” He opened up the KA-Bar, dropped to his back, and shimmied under the first jeep in line. If he remembered right, the fuel line ran along the driver’s side of the frame.

He felt around. Bingo. He then felt around for the rubber fittings leading to the fuel filter and cut them. The gas wouldn’t leak out immediately, but when they started her up the fuel pump would spray gas all over, and the engine would run for a bit but then die of fuel starvation.

He slid out from underneath the vehicle, motioned for Carrie to follow, and took the thirty seconds he needed to repeat the process with the middle and the rear vehicles. As tightly as they were parked, the other two weren’t going anywhere anyway.

“Okay,” he whispered, “let’s boogie before they decide to come back.”

He crouched low and, with Carrie close behind, he sprinted toward the far side of the encampment, keeping to the shadows, ducking between the mining equipment and steep wall cut into the mountainside. She stopped him with a hand on his arm before they’d traveled twenty feet.

“Are you sure we can’t free them now?” she asked looking back toward the caged slaves they were leaving behind.

“Trust me on this, Carrie. I’m not going to forget about them. I’ll be back with enough resources to get them out of here. Right now, we’ve got to worry about getting our own asses the hell gone.”

KEEPING HIS PROFILE low, Cavanaugh alternately sprinted and crept along the upper perimeter of the camp, leading them farther from the center of operations and higher up the mountainside. Carrie wanted to ask where they were headed, but she kept her mouth shut and her feet moving, and she made herself think past the painful cut on her foot and the exhaustion and her sore calf muscles.

She was physically depleted. Neither her muscle mass nor her motor control were what they should be, but adrenaline was a wonder drug. She just prayed the rush lasted long enough to get her past the worst of it, because when she crashed she was going to drop like a stone.

In the meantime she followed Cavanaugh’s lead, even though she wondered why he was taking them farther up the mountain instead of down.

“When they wise up to the fact that we’re AWOL,” he whispered as he tugged her down behind a boulder to catch their breath, “they’re going to figure we went down, not up.”

That was at least the second time he’d read her mind. She wasn’t going to question it, just like she wasn’t going to think about the guard whose sandals she wore or the way his body had looked, slumped and lifeless where Cavanaugh had propped him in a sitting position outside the tent.

Except she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it.

“Drink,” Cavanaugh prodded, gripping her hand and shoving a bottle of water into it. “We need to keep hydrated.”