Chapter 16
Linc got to work with the knife, while Raven unraveled her two colorful wristbands, both made of woven paracord.
She and Linc discussed tactical plans as she measured out lengths of the high-strength nylon cord and he cut away a three-inch strip from the bottom of his pant leg before turning his attention to a sturdy stick nearby.
They worked quickly. No telling how far away the kidnappers’ camp was.
A sudden cloudburst unloaded another deluge of rain. With any luck, that would slow the killers down a bit.
Raven scrambled to the top of the hill while Linc finished up.
She was careful to keep her form away from the crest in case one of the killers glanced up and saw her figure silhouetting against the foliage.
She stood on the tips of her toes and wiped away the strands of wet hair smearing her face.
She saw the tops of the bobbing heads of the kidnappers and their victims snaking down the steep path winding in sharp curves around the hillside.
Two kidnappers were up front, two took the rear.
The thirteen bound women shuffled and stumbled in between them.
Raven made a quick calculation and scrambled back to Linc, who had finished up his handiwork in just seven minutes flat.
He handed her a club. Linc had found a two-foot stick with three smaller branches at the top. He cut those down and formed a three-fingered prong, then tied a heavy stone into the cleft with the paracord.
She felt the weight of it. Liked the heft.
“Gonna get my Fred Flintstone on. Where’d you learn to do this?”
“There was a Boy Scout troop at my reform school,” Linc said as he tested the tensile strength of his own weapon, making sure the pouch was snugly tied to the paracord.
“Seriously?”
Linc gathered up a handful of large rocks.
“Nah. Just watched a lot of MacGyver. We clear on the plan?”
“You know what they say about plans.”
“Let’s go.”
The two operators bolted up and dashed forward.
Raven crested the hill, got her bearings, and plunged into the brush, racing down the steepest part of the hill in a headlong rush, desperately trying to keep quiet. Luckily, rain masked most of the noise.
Linc ran in a low crouch as he loaded up his weapon. He was making his own calculations. He had to time his attack with hers.
Without comms.
In the rain.
And the looming shadows growing darker by the minute.
★
The lead kidnapper’s lurid mind was focused on the prettiest girl in the line. He marched blithely down the hill, his imagination filling his mind’s eye with salacious images, keeping him from seeing the length of nylon filament stretched across the path.
He released his grip on his gun as he fell to catch himself before he hit the rocky ground. Pain shot through both of his palms as the sharp rocks cut into them, his agony temporarily blinding him to the appearance of a pair of women’s sneakers suddenly standing by his face.
He glanced up just in time to see the determined face of a black-haired woman swinging her club from high over her head and burying the stone between his eyes, killing him instantly.
The man behind him laughed at first when his commander nearly face-planted in the dirt.
But the sudden appearance of the murderous, swift-footed beauty wielding a two-fisted club startled him.
He fumbled as he tried to raise his weapon to fire, but he was too slow.
Just as he pointed the gun toward her she smashed at it with a baseball swing of her club, breaking his hand before he could pull the trigger.
He screamed in pain as he flinched, his final, fatal mistake. The rock on the end of her club crashed into his jaw with a spray of blood and teeth, knocking him out cold. He crumbled to the muddy ground, never feeling the second blow sinking into the back of his skull and ending his life.
★
Linc had timed his shot perfectly.
He and Raven had worked together enough that they knew each other’s capabilities.
With nearly clocklike perfection, he had estimated how long it would take for Raven to careen down the hill and get ahead of the cruel parade they were determined to stop.
He then added the time he thought it would take to run the paracord across the trail, and he had been keeping track of the marching pace of the group.
Just as the first kidnapper was tripping on Raven’s paracord booby trap, he swung his own sling like a young David and let fly with all of his might.
The paracord sling snapped on release like a mini bullwhip and the fist-size stone rocketed through the air in an unwavering line.
It had been a while since Linc had thrown a sling, one of the many primitive weapons he and Eddie Seng, his Gundog boss, liked to build and practice with.
But a simple injury wouldn’t be enough. Linc had to take the man down, and there was only one strike zone that would do the trick.
His aim proved true.
The hurtling rock hit the man’s neck just below the skull with a sickening crunch. The crushing blow split the C2 and C3 vertebrae and severed his spinal cord. He cried out softly as his paralyzed limbs gave way and he tumbled into the dirt.
The kidnapper in front of the man started to turn around at the confusing sounds behind him, but one of his companions up front let out a bloodcurdling scream. He snatched up his weapon as the women began bunching up, shocked by the commotion ahead of them.
“?Fuera de mi camino!” Out of my way, he shouted as he grabbed one of the women and tossed her aside to clear a path.
But the few seconds it took to move her away were all that Linc needed to close the gap.
Linc was as big as a defensive lineman, but he ran like a wide receiver, and tackled the thug from behind, knocking him down.
He pinned the man’s face into the mud with his frying pan–size hand and slit the killer’s carotid artery with his three-inch blade.
Everything happened so fast the women hardly had time to react.
When one of them turned around and saw Linc straddling the corpse, she screamed.
The other women gasped in horror, quailing and huddling together, confused and terrified all at the same time, unable to comprehend what they were seeing in either direction.
Linc stood as Raven raced up to him. The rain suddenly stopped as if God himself shut off the spigot.
The women saw her and surged forward, grasping at her, begging to be released, or crying tears of thanks.
“You good?” Raven asked. Linc’s muddy clothes were slathered in arterial blood.
“Gonna need a laundromat. You?” He nodded at her blood-spattered club.
“Yeah, all good.” She tossed her gory weapon into the mud. “Let’s cut these women loose, gather up some weapons, and clear out before their friends start looking for them.”
“Roger that.”
Linc wiped the blood from the blade before slashing the hard plastic bonds pinning each woman.
Raven tried to comfort the younger ones still shuddering with terror and utterly confused.
But one of the older women, the first one freed, called out in a loud whisper, “Mira, allí,” as she pointed out a shallow cave in the rocks.
The women who had gathered their wits didn’t need any instructions and helped Linc drag the four bodies into the hollowed rock. A few of the women spit on the corpses and cursed their souls as they tossed leaves and dirt over them.
Raven gathered up the weapons and found an AK with a folding stock and a 9-millimeter pistol, along with mags.
Both guns could be carried concealed. She easily tore down the other AKs and tossed the parts deep into the trees, careful to grab the bolt carriers with their firing pins and hurling them as far down the hill as she could, rendering the weapons utterly inoperable.
Raven then gave instructions to the women to race back up to the main trail, leave behind their dead, and rejoin their friends and family.
She urged them to not discuss the rescue nor identify her and Linc.
The grateful women pledged eternal silence as Linc scattered the last vestiges of blood and gore on the trail with his shoes.
One woman kissed Raven’s hands and blessed her before turning away and following the others up the hill.
Linc and Raven waited ten minutes to give them time to escape, half expecting another band of armed thugs to appear from the bottom of the trail. It wouldn’t be much of a gunfight if they came up in force. But for once, their luck held. No one came.
The two Gundogs retreated up the hill to resume their journey across the Darién. Another cloudburst opened up, washing away their filth.