Return to Tomorrow Read Online Free Page A

keep the disbelief out of her voice.
    â€œSorry, they’re hardly standard issue at the embassy.”
    â€œI have one in my duffel.” It was beginning to look like a good thing she’d also packed some bottled water and dried fruit. They’d probably need it before they found their way out of the jungle. “Stop and I’ll get it out.”
    â€œNo need.” Bart pointed ahead of them a few dozen yards. “We’re coming to a clearing.” The “clearing” was merely an elongated opening in the seemingly endless stretch of jungle. A narrow stream ran through it. The trail crossed it on a bridge of half-sunken, flattopped teak logs. The sun was disappearing behind the topmost branches of the trees. When Rachel saw it, the fear inside her grew stronger than ever. The sun was almost directly in front of them, not behind them and to their left, as it should have been if they were still traveling in a northeasterly direction.
    â€œWe’re going the wrong way.” Panic beat inside her with dark, strong wings. How often had she heard herself say that to Father Pieter during the long weeks they’dstruggled through just such undergrowth in their flight from their Vietnamese captors?
    Harrison Bartley stuck his head out of the window of the Land Rover and squinted up at the fast-dropping winter sun. “Damn, I think you’re right.”
    â€œTurn around,” Rachel said. “Now.”
    To his credit, Bart didn’t argue. He drove a short way onto the primitive bridge and began to back around onto the low bank of flat stones and red mud bordering the stream. The roadway was so narrow he simply couldn’t make the turn any other way. Rachel sat stiffly on the leather seat. She could smell the living jungle in the moist, hot breeze stirring the leaves along the stream edge. It was an earthy, damp smell, composed as much of the dead and dying as of the new and emerging. It was at once familiar and strange, exciting and terrifying.
    They had almost completed the turn when the back wheel of the Land Rover slipped off a stone and sank into the mud. Bart gunned the motor. It stalled and they sank deeper. With an oath Bart ground the starter. The engine caught, held, then sputtered into silence.
    â€œFlooded,” he said, making the word a curse.
    All the sounds of the jungle the motor had drowned out rushed in to fill the silence. Birds chattered and squawked. Somewhere not too far away something small and frightened squealed in terror. Tigers still roamed these mountain jungles, as did panthers and wild boars. Rachel had not forgotten that fact. Death—and ruthless men who could make life worse than death—stalked the pathways beyond the trail.
    She was going to be stranded here for the night with a man she hardly knew. Alone with him in the crampedconfines of the Land Rover. That scared her almost as badly as the lengthening shadows creeping closer and closer, even as she willed them away. She had been alone with no man except her father and brothers since Father Pieter had passed away.
    Bart got out of the truck and walked around to the back, the thick mud of the stream bank sucking at his shoes. Rachel heard him muttering under his breath. He slammed his fist against the back window. Any last hope she had of getting out of their predicament in a hurry died away.
    â€œIs there any way we can drive it out?” she asked, defying her own personal demons in leaving the cocooning safety of the Rover’s cab. “Is there a come-along in the toolbox, an ordinary rope, anything like that?”
    â€œNothing heavy enough to get us free. She’s in up to the axle,” Bart reported in a clipped tone. He scrambled up the bank, trying to shake the red clinging mud from his shoes, scowling down at the streaks of dirt on the leg of his fashionable khaki slacks. “There’s no way in the world we’re going to get it out of here without help.