Delta Force Read online

  “Oh. She’s your dog.”

  Bianca rolled her eyes at Delta before putting her fingers in her mouth and whistling sharply, a skill Delta had tried so hard to master when she was her age, but which she never quite got the hang of.

  Seconds later, there came a rustling from the trees. Glancing skyward, Delta watched a black-and-white monkey leap with lightning speed and precision accuracy from tree to tree. When it reached the lowest branch, it wrapped its tail around it and slowly lowered itself to Bianca’s head. Reaching with tiny, leather-like hands, the monkey released the branch and sat on Bianca’s shoulders with what could only be called a grin on its face.

  “This is Kiki.”

  With wide eyes, Delta simply stared. She had seen monkeys once when her fifth-grade class took a trip to the zoo, but she’d never been this close to one.

  “You can pet her. Just hold your hand out slowly so she knows you aren’t trying to grab her. Monkeys hate being grabbed.”

  As much as she wanted to, Delta could not move.

  “Don’t be scared. She only bites people who grab her or aren’t nice to me. Really. Just reach your hand out.”

  Delta stared at the tiny face of a monkey who looked like she would laugh if she knew how. Her sparkling little eyes, smiling face, and rosy cheeks made Kiki appear happy. The chirping sounds coming from her as she picked through Bianca’s hair were much like those of a baby.

  “What’s she doing?” Delta asked, watching as the monkey parted Bianca’s hair with her nimble fingers.

  “Grooming me. Monkeys look for lice and other bugs on each other as a form of bonding. Kiki loves to do it even though she never finds anything.”

  “Then why doesn’t she stop?”

  Bianca giggled as Kiki tickled her ear. “They don’t do it for results, they do it for contact and warmth. She loves me.”

  Slowly, tentatively, Delta put her hand out to Kiki, who stopped her grooming long enough to look at Delta’s hand. “Hi there, Kiki,” Delta said in a voice she reserved for her cats. At the mention of her name, Kiki completely turned toward Delta and blinked both eyes. Her pink little face framed in white fur looked so soft and inviting. As Delta’s hand neared her, Kiki reached one of her hands out and grabbed Delta’s index finger. The first sensation that coursed to Delta brain was the softness of that tiny black hand. It was the softest thing Delta had ever felt in her life. And it wasn’t a paw—not really. It looked and felt too much like a hand to be called a paw.

  “Hold your arm out stiff and she’ll use it as a bridge to climb on your shoulders. Just don’t be afraid, and don’t pull away.”

  Delta did as she was told, and Kiki scurried onto Delta’s shoulders. To maintain her balance, Kiki’s tail hugged Delta around the neck. The strength of the tail surprised Delta as it gripped her. It felt like the time one of her grammar school classmates brought a boa constrictor to class and Delta held it around her neck during recess.

  Bianca started back down the path. “We’d better get going or we might miss some action.”

  “Action?” Delta said, as she caught up to Bianca. “What do you mean?”

  Bianca grinned as she turned around and then started to skip away. “You’ll see what I mean. Come on!”

  The bridge crossed over the river’s bend for fifty yards, mixing architecture and nature in bizarre fashion. What surprised Delta were all the people with picnic baskets lined up along the bridge. People had binoculars; some were kicking back in lawn chairs, while others spread out a blanket to sit on. One obvious tourist couple had a camcorder on a tripod, but even they seemed to be anxiously awaiting the arrival of something. As Delta looked at the various faces surrounding the river, she realized that, with the exception of the two tourists, the rest were all Ticos.

  “What’s going on?” Delta whispered as if they were in a theater.

  Bianca shrugged. “Anything. Everything. Sometimes, but not very often, nothing.” Bianca waved to a couple of people before starting over the bridge.

  “You’ve lost me.”

  Bianca grabbed Delta’s hand and pulled her faster. “Three times a day, the wildlife becomes active around here. Natives and knowledgeable tourists come here to just hang out and see what happens. It’s our version of TV, only way better.”

  Delta didn’t know what to say. All about her were people with ice-chests, cracking open a cerveza and crunching on some kind of snack. Like in the movies, just before the lights go out, people were visiting, laughing, chatting and preparing for the main event. Delta wondered what the big deal was about a couple of crocodiles. Weren’t they simply giant lizards? They certainly weren’t the most beautiful creatures in the world. Hadn’t Marlin Perkins been eaten by one?

  “But what’s the big deal?” Delta asked, pulling Kiki’s hand from her pocket.

  “The ‘big deal’ is that last night, at five, when the macaws start to leave the forest, en route to the cliff’s shores, this one macaw came flying out before he realized that his mate wasn’t with him. He did this excellent U-turn in midair, squawking the entire time, like he was really mad. When he met his mate, he got even louder, as if he was yelling at her. It was pretty funny.”

  Kiki wrapped her tail more tightly around Delta’s neck and hung like a necklace on her chest. “Sort of like a television show, then.”

  Bianca nodded. “You never know what’s going to happen out here from one moment to the next.”

  Delta looked out into the forest in the distance. “Are there a lot of macaws in there?”

  “Tons.”

  “And your brother is supposed to be here?”

  Kiki suddenly jumped from Delta to Bianca. “Manny’s one of the few people in town with a job other than farming. He’s a tour guide for a company in the city. It’s a pretty good job, really. He works one week on and one week off, and today is his last day on.”

  “He brings people here?” Delta asked, looking around.

  “Sometimes. He will today. This group is a bunch of environmental scientists from Germany. Or was it Sweden? Anyway, he’ll be coming out of the forest any second. Then he’ll go down the road and catch their bus. Oh...look over there.”

  Delta peered over the bridge’s edge and did a double-take. What she had originally thought were logs were actually crocodiles floating lazily in the water next to the river bank. About twelve feet from the bank’s edge, the river picked up speed rapidly as it raced around the bend for destinations unknown. The crocodiles seemed to defy the current and floated with just their eyes, the tips of their noses and parts of their backs protruding from the water. They were a tannish-beige color. Of the five she could spot, their length ranged from five to fifteen feet long. How animals that size could float was beyond Delta, but there they were, hanging out like they had nothing better to do.

  “I feel like Jacques Cousteau,” Delta whispered.

  “I’ve traveled all over the world,” Bianca whispered back, “but no place in the world compares to my home. My teachers say everyone feels that way, but my home is different. It’s so alive, so real.”

  It might be real to Bianca, but to Delta, it was surreal. She had spent so much time in the city that she had stopped imagining the possibilities beyond its concrete walls.

  “How long before your brother arrives?”

  Bianca shrugged. “Hard to tell. I’d say within the hour. Our buses have to deal with potholes the size of tennis courts. They’ll get here when they get here.”

  For the next half hour, Bianca pointed out scarlet macaws eating, playing and preening each other. She showed Delta smaller green parrots, two four-foot-long iguanas, a pair of howler monkeys, whose deep-throated sounds contributed to their names. She showed Delta six-inch-long grasshoppers, various waterfowl which cruised along the bank looking for food, and a variety of reptiles and amphibians out sunning themselves. It was a strange and wondrous world to Delta. And without Bianca’s practiced eyes, she might not have seen any of it.

  As the y
oung girl started to point out another bird, Kiki made a very strange, high-pitched noise.

  “What’s that about?” Delta asked, as Bianca suddenly froze.

  “Shh. Something’s going to happen. Look!” Pointing in the direction in which Kiki was staring, Bianca turned Delta’s attention to a fifteen-foot crocodile which had just surfaced near the bank. In a flash faster than seemed possible, the crocodile leapt from the water, grabbed a bird that had wandered too close to the edge, and returned to the depths of the river as quickly as it came.

  “Holy shit! Did you see that?”

  Suddenly, the water under the bridge erupted like a volcano, as a huge tan crocodile thrashed violently about as it grabbed a white heron that had strayed too close to the water’s edge.

  “I can’t believe it,” Delta uttered, shaking her head. “Unbelievable.”

  The crocodile, now holding the heron in its ominous jaws, shook the bird back and forth in a powerful display of viciousness, before plunging back into the water. The crowd around the bridge cheered their good fortune. They had just witnessed a sight most wildlife photographers would wait a lifetime to see.

  Bianca nodded and beamed proudly. “Better than TV, huh?”

  Delta nodded vigorously. “Much better. If I lived here, I’d come here every day.”

  “Many do.”

  Delta looked out over the river, following its path upstream to the rainforest just ahead. “I imagined someplace completely different. I kept hearing words like third-world and underdeveloped.”

  This made Bianca laugh. “Hardly. We’ve let the rest of the world think that so they’ll leave us alone. We’re afraid Americans and Europeans will find out how lucky we are and then we’re doomed. Look what happened to Hawaii.”

  Delta cast her gaze down at this girl-who-would-be-woman. There was so much more to her than her precocious nature. “How come you’re so smart?”

  Bianca shrugged. “My father is a Canadian diplomat. He sent me to the finest schools in the world.”

  “I thought you were Costa Rican.”

  “I am, silly. I live with my mother when I’m on holiday. My father comes home whenever he gets the chance. It’s a good arrangement for them, because my mother enjoys her time away from him.”

  “Why didn’t she go to Canada with him?”

  “And leave all this?”

  Suddenly, a flock of screaming, squawking scarlet macaws took flight. Delta could only look up at them in wonder. With their long tails waving grandly behind them, they were fireballs against a blue, blue sky. Their powerful wings beat quickly and majestically as they sliced through the air. These incredible birds were the reason Megan was missing, and, in this instant, Delta was truly beginning to understand why. Two by two they left the rain forest, squawking back and forth in what could almost pass for laughter. Some flew higher than others, but no matter what the distance, no one could miss the bright red tails waving as they flew.

  Everything about them took Delta’s breath away. “God, they’re beautiful.”

  “Nothing like them in the world, that’s for sure. Hey, here comes my brother.”

  Glancing at the other end of the bridge, Delta watched a young Costa Rican male pointing toward the macaws while talking. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two. He had short, curly black hair, a smooth caramel complexion, and piercing brown eyes, much like his sister’s. Delta studied him as he helped everyone load onto the bus. He was very gentle with an elderly couple who had a hard time getting up the steps.

  “What makes you think your brother knows anything about Augustine’s disappearance?”

  “Manny knows a lot about everything that goes on here. I think he’s a spy, myself.”

  “Will he tell us if he knows anything?”

  “Us? He won’t tell us anything. He’ll tell you whatever it is you want to know. Manny is a sucker for green-eyed women. One look at you, and he’ll tell you where Amelia Earhart is.”

  Delta laughed. “How old did you say you were?”

  Bianca picked a leaf off a tree and handed it to Kiki. “Age is just a state of mind.”

  Shaking her head, Delta stared down into Bianca’s dark eyes. “You remind me of a woman who would have said the exact same thing.”

  Bianca grinned. “Smart lady.”

  Delta grinned back. “The smartest.”

  “I wish the embassy could have been more help,” Liz said before dropping Connie off at the Gran Hotel. After saying her good-byes, Connie grabbed Megan’s journal and the note Megan had left for Liz and Terry, and ran upstairs to her room. But even before the door was fully opened, Connie knew Delta was not there. Not there, nor would she be returning any time soon—she just knew it. Checking her watch, Connie shook her head. It was a little after one, and Delta was already late getting back. Damn! Never should’ve left her to her own devices. But the reality was that sometimes, stopping Delta Stevens from doing what she wanted was as impossible as stopping the rain.

  Tossing her purse on the bed, Connie heaved a sigh. “I should’ve known.”

  A sudden knock on the door made Connie raise an eyebrow. Only half-expected to find Delta standing on the other side, Connie threw open the door.

  “Pardon, señorita,” the concierge said, bowing his head. “But your friend call. Left these note for you.” Handing Connie a piece of notebook paper, he grinned and started back down the stairs.

  Opening the note, Connie read:

  Nothing at Megan’s. Went to Rivas. Will return tonight. Don’t worry. Love, Storm.

  “God damn you, Storm,” Connie muttered, crumpling the note and missing the trash can as she threw it. She had christened Delta Storm when Delta was just a rookie storming headfirst into any fracas or investigation, with little regard for rules or regulations. Even now, years later, Delta still stormed into battle before taking inventory. Connie remembered how on one occasion, when Delta thought there were children in a burning building, she’d raced in, forgetting her childhood fear of being burned alive—which was what almost happened to her. Connie could only hope Delta wasn’t storming around the countryside now. “We’re not in River Valley,” Connie said softly, feeling the same dread she had felt the night Delta was shot after she went into a warehouse to confront a killer.

  Tossing the rest of her things in her bag, Connie hustled downstairs to the concierge, arranged for another rental car, and made the only phone call she could think of making.

  “Hello?” came a small voice on the other end.

  “Thank God you’re home. It’s Connie. I need your help.”

  When Megan reached the opening of the mine, she cast one last, longing look at the bright sun. It made her realize once again how much she loved being a part of the magic of daytime living. Ever since she’d been snatched by General Zahn’s men, she’d spent grueling, backbreaking hours in the cavern, panning, separating, sluicing, and chipping gold from the walls of this great underground cavern which had become their daytime prison. Day after day, she and the others worked their fingers until nearly bloody, panning in the crevices of the underground stream, or shoveling loads of silt into sluice boxes so that tiny gold flakes would not escape.

  Escape.

  Megan had thought of nothing else since her abduction. But even if she were to escape, where would she escape to? There was nothing but wilderness out there, and without a guide, escaping into the forest might result in an even swifter death than if she stayed with the general. But…which was worse? Dying as a free woman in the rainforest, or as a slave at the hands of a killer?

  “Megan?” came Siobhan’s soft voice from behind her.

  “Yes?”

  “I...I don’t know how to thank—”

  “Don’t thank me, Siobhan,” Megan replied, looking over at the guard who had followed them down. Yesterday, her group had toiled to separate the gold; today, they moved beyond the separation area toward the panning place. While panning, they stood in knee-high water which flowed in
from an underground source. It was a back-bending, neck-straining job, and Megan was dreading every second of it. Unlike the warm Caribbean waters washing on the shore, the water entering the cavern was icy. “I only did what I thought was best,” Megan added. She had to smile. How many times had she heard Delta say that very thing? How often had Delta used that phrase to justify going out on a limb? Megan’s smile disappeared as quickly as it came. Where was Delta now?

  “You’re a good person, Megan.”

  This put the smile right back on Megan’s face, not because it made her happy to hear, but because it was just too ironic. Before Delta Stevens jumped headfirst into her life, Megan wasn’t a good person or a bad person—she was a non-person by societal standards—a prostitute who fed off the lust of men all too eager to pay a high price for her services. She’d been a person on the fringes of a system that didn’t want her and didn’t know what to do with her.

  “I’ve never met a woman as strong as you, Megan,” Siobhan said in a low voice as she peeked over her shoulder.

  “Thanks, Siobhan...I had good teachers.”

  Siobhan nodded as she entered the dusty chamber first and retrieved the special screening equipment lying on the bank. “I don’t think I understand. Your teachers were strong women?”

  Megan took her screen from Siobhan. “In a manner of speaking, yes, they are. I’m fortunate enough to run with a very special group of women. Before them, there wasn’t much joy in my life. But now...now I have a lot of living left to do, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to die in this hellhole.” Megan glanced up at the entrance to make sure the guard had not come down to listen.

  “You’re still thinking about leaving, aren’t you?”

  Megan nodded as she removed a small nugget from the screen.

  “But two men have already been killed trying to escape, and you’re just...” Siobhan lowered her voice even more, “...a woman.”

  “Just a woman? If I had a dollar for every stupid person who ever thought that of my Delta, I’d be a rich woman. Gender doesn’t make you better, Siobhan, attitude does. Miguel and Jorge were caught because of poor planning. I’ll know everything I need to before I take off.”