“Miss March, I have not given you my word, not once, but if it will make you come with me, then you have it,” Teplov said with an artificial smile on his face.
Jen knew she had no choice. Feeling as if she were deserting everyone to a certain death, she nodded. Walking out of the tent without saying another word, she made her way towards an idling, beat up, old-looking military-style Hummer jeep. Waiting at the far end of the camp were a couple more Hummers. A young thug wearing a red beret, green shorts and nothing else opened the rear passenger door of the lead Hummer. Jen felt the man leering at her, but defiantly, she held her head high as she silently climbed into the back of the vehicle.
Teplov barked some orders in Tagalog, the local language, to the men guarding the students and climbed in the passenger side of the vehicle. He looked back at his hostage. “Hang on, the road out of here is a little bumpy,” Teplov said with a grin.
Jen stared back at him; she may have been scared out of her mind, but there was no way that she was going to let him see it in her eyes. Crossing her arms over her chest, she sat back with a defiant look on her face.
Teplov laughed aloud, turned around and with a wave of his hand, the driver slowly pulled away from the camp.
Jen looked out of the vehicle window at the people she was leaving behind. She prayed that Teplov would keep his word and not harm anyone else, but deep down, Jen knew that he was probably going to kill them all.
4
High above the dig site, like an eagle soaring on the winds, a small, almost invisible unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) turned and began to follow a convoy of vehicles as it snaked its way along the bumpy red dirt road. Painted ghost gray to blend in with the sky, the UAV was nearly impossible to see, its high-tech cameras sending a feed directly to a laptop computer over twenty kilometers away.
Jen March sat dejectedly in the back of the Hummer as it bounced up and down the rough track that passed as the local major thoroughfare. She bit her lip and wanted to cry. Jen could not fathom why anyone would want to kidnap her for ransom. Neither she nor anyone in her family had any real money. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Who would be so monstrous as to plan to kill seventy students and locals just to cover her abduction? Despondent, she was about to hunker down deeper into her hard seat, when suddenly out of the corner of her eye she saw a vehicle, like a charging rhinoceros, burst out of the thick jungle. An instant later, with a loud crunch of compacting metal, it smashed headlong into the side of the closest Hummer behind them, sending it spinning off the road and into the tropical forest.
Nate Jackson, a heavyset African-American, held the jeep’s steering wheel tight in his large hands. The impact of hitting the Hummer at over fifty kilometers an hour had instantly crumpled the Land Rover’s engine bumper guards and shaken up Jackson and his passenger. Quickly spinning the wheel around in his hands, Jackson expertly turned the vehicle onto the road, only a few meters behind Jen’s Hummer.
“Aren’t you glad we were wearing seatbelts?” said Jackson’s passenger, Ryan Mitchell.
“I hope they weren’t,” said Jackson with a wide grin.
“Time to lose our company,” said Mitchell as he unbuckled his belt, turned about, and crawled over his seat until he was standing in the open back of their Rover, his hands resting on a machine gun mounted on the vehicle’s roll bar. Quickly, he pulled back on the charging lever and loaded a round from the belt already inside the GPMG. With his shoulder jammed tight into the butt of the weapon, Mitchell aimed it squarely at the cab of the Hummer behind them.
The driver of the Hummer saw Mitchell and tried swerving from side to side, but with thick jungle on either side of the narrow dirt road, he had nowhere to go.
Taking aim, Mitchell slightly lowered the weapon’s sight and let loose a long burst of 7.62 mm rounds into the engine block of the Hummer. Within seconds, steam and black oily smoke rose from the stricken engine. The Hummer lurched forward, started to slow, and stopped moving altogether, a cloud of steam blocking it from sight.
Seeing that the vehicle was no longer a threat, Mitchell turned about and jumped back into his seat. He could see the lead Hummer with Jen inside it trying to get away, but the awful road conditions combined with Jackson’s driving skills meant that they were not going to escape that easily.
“Now what?” said Jackson over his shoulder to Mitchell.
With a bang, Mitchell slammed home a fresh thirty-round magazine into his M4 rifle. “I don’t know, I honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead,” said Mitchell as he charged the weapon.
“Wonderful,” said Jackson under his breath as he changed gears and floored the gas pedal, instantly narrowing the distance between the vehicles.
“What the hell is going on? Who are those people?” screamed Teplov at his equally perplexed driver.
“I don’t know, sir,” the young man replied.
Jen squirmed around in her seat. Looking out the rear window, she could see a jeep racing towards them, like a lion chasing down its prey. She had no idea who they were, but for the first time since this awful day had begun, Jen dared to hope that she might be saved.
“Pull up beside them, I’ll try to shoot out their tires,” said Mitchell as he raised the M4 into his shoulder.
Jackson shook his head; this was something that was easier said than done, and only in the movies. Edging up slowly, Jackson brought Mitchell in line with the rear driver’s side tire and held his breath.
Mitchell took quick aim and fired off a three-round burst into the tire. The sturdy tire did not shred, but started to leak air from the holes shot into it by Mitchell.
Waving his hand forward, Mitchell signaled to Jackson to speed up so he could shoot the driver’s tires, when the loud pinging sound of automatic gunfire hitting the back of their jeep caught their attention. Pivoting around in his seat, Mitchell was surprised to see the battered Hummer they had smashed off the road speeding up behind them. He hoped they had dealt with them in one blow, but it was not to be.
“God damn it,” said Jackson, as he bobbed and weaved his head while bullets flew past him. Jamming his foot down on the gas, he sped up and shot past the lead Hummer, intending to use it as a shield. “Think of something, will you, Ryan? We need to ditch that other vehicle, and fast.”
Mitchell looked over his shoulder and smiled to himself. Pressing his throat-mic, Mitchell gave a quick set of orders to the UAV operator, watching the struggle on his computer from their base camp, and settled back down in his seat.
“Mind telling me what you’re thinking, Captain?” said Jackson, struggling to keep their battered jeep on the bumpy road.
“I hope UAVs aren’t too expensive,” said Mitchell, as the shadow of their UAV suddenly raced over them like a massive bird of prey diving down.
A second later, the driver of the battered Hummer following Jackson’s jeep was horrified to see the image of a large flying object hurtling towards him. He did not even have time to scream. With a loud crash, the UAV smashed straight through the front windshield, instantly killing the driver and the lead passenger before its near-full fuel tank exploded. A bright orange fireball shot up into the sky as the Hummer was incinerated.
“The general is gonna be pissed when he hears what you did,” said Jackson, slowing down as he tried to force the last Hummer off the road.