mjdtwain
2005-04-27
ch 1, anonymous You have done an extremely detailed and exciting story. The characters are well defined and fleshed out. Continue with more chapters soon
lisa
2005-04-26
ch 1, anonymous Hey! I love this story, my favorite genre. But your updates aren't updating! Your chapter and word counts keep going up but your story doesn't turn up as updated at all (I still have to find it by it's original publish date)and when I scroll down it still just ends at chapter 5! The Weather Gal
2005-04-11
ch 1, signed Great start! Of course I want to read more! You can't just leave it hangin' there!

And I'm glad you're including Sam! ladypigather
2005-04-11
ch 1, anonymous oh interesting, a lil more would be very nice. how much of an outdoorsman is Josh then! Caia

Thanksd to all of the above for reviewing. You rock, guys!

Chapter 10

The Call

Okay- some slight continuity problems that I want to address: Twenty people survived the original crash- started off as thirty but I think I've corrected that now. And my timeline: Tuesday afternoon- crashed in Qumar. Tuesday evening the phone call. Friday: the first tape. Saturday night to Sunday morning: Chapter 10 takes place

Josh woke up back in his cell with Tony hovering over him worriedly. He ached and his lungs felt like they were on fire. He coughed weakly as he tried to sit up in the tiny cell.

"No- stay where you are!" said Tony, scared at how pale the other man looked. Well, pale with interesting shades of purple, yellow, red and a tinge of green that decorated his cheekbone in particular.

"Well, that didn't go too well." he rasped. He remembered having to read something but then coughing. And then he couldn't stop. He'd forgotten how to control the coughing. And people hitting him unsurprisingly didn't help that much.

"We've got to get out of here." he sighed, sinking back against the wall. He was damned if he knew how.

"They only sent two guys to collect one of us. And the last time they took us by surprise. Could…?" He glanced back at Josh who was looking extremely doubtful.

"Well, I don't think I'd be that much help." he aid rather dourly.

"Oh, I don't know- you could cough alarmingly at them?" he joked lamely. Josh scowled at him but it weakened into a laugh. Which unsurprisingly set off another bout of coughing.

"Hello?" A curious whisper from the right hand wall. Tony ignored it at first, concentrating on getting his cellmate to ride out the attack. Josh managed to control it, out of exhaustion as much as anything else, and waved him towards the far wall with his eyes closed and his head resting on his knees. Tony glanced at him before reluctantly moving off. Not that he could move far.

"Stephen?" he asked.

"Yes- my name is Stephen. You are real then? I spent today thinking I'd dreamed you. What are your names again?" Tony sighed, relieved. At least the guy was making sense today.

"I'm Tony Hamilton. The guy trying to blow the house down with the coughing is Josh Lyman."

"Is there more of you? Outside, I mean." Tony hesitated. Should he tell him? He shrugged. The guy was as mad as a hatter. They guys outside wouldn't pay him any attention.

"Yes. Fifteen more. We survived a plane crash. We were shot down, probably by accident. They tried to cover it up but we escaped. They don't know about the others. Now, they're doing something completely crazy. They know they are not strong enough to get back into power alone- especially not with the UN peacekeeping. They wouldn't get close. What they're doing is crazy though."

"Will they come here?"

Tony shrugged.

"They don't know where we are or how strong the compound is. They don't know if we're even alive. I don't think they'll come."

"I have something that they don't know I have. I was saving for a rainy day. Does your group have phones?"

Tony sat up in surprise. "You are not telling me you have a cellphone!"

"They never knew. It's been off and buried in a cell. Buried beneath the ground away from the day. Away away…"

"Stephen! Stay with us!"

"I am only mad when the wind blows Northwest. Other times I know a haddock from a handsaw."

Tony recognised the mangled quotation from that famous play. He smiled at the quote.

"I would hope so! Try cutting wood with a haddock!"

"Or eating a handsaw!" agreed the wall cheerfully. "Most of it's put on. I live in hope that one day they'll get careless around the lunatic and I can do a runner. They've given up on me for a while now. Especially now that they've got you two to play with."

Tony glanced back at Josh who had seemed to have fallen asleep.

"Playing!" he snorted.

"Here." Fingers slid under the wall, squished at a funny angle by the shallowness of the burrow. He had to dig at it some more for there to be enough room to get the little handset through.

"Josh! Hey, Josh- sorry to wake you up to this again but we need your help here!"

Josh woke up and swallowed to stop himself coughing again. He squeezed his eyes shut for a second to better concentrate. Once he felt he could talk without losing his lungs he looked at Tony. His eyes widened as he saw the handset.

"Lisa! She still has the phone on, doesn't she? Do you know the number?" asked Tony. Josh nodded. It had been an easy one and it stuck in his head. Tony switched on the phone.

"Wait! What are we going to tell them?" asked Josh. "We can't put them in danger. We can't ask them to come here?" Tony frowned. Dammit, Josh was right.

"Stephen?" he asked. What can you tell us about the compound?"

A ghostly chuckle floated through the cell.

"Compound? Well, it ain't Fort Knox. The men are armed but there's not many. Twenty and the leader. Maybe one, two more. Always seven or eight out on patrol."

"Ring them. We can say…something. I don't know. But at least they'll know we didn't run out on them." said Josh. Tony turned away in shame. Had his cellmate forgotten what he and the others had done to him? Well, the others had paid for their deceit. He wondered why he'd been allowed to survive. He remembered what had happened. It was never far from his thoughts. They had reached the camp. He was already lagging behind at this point. Nagging doubts about what they were doing were assailing him. The soldiers had taken the unconscious man and then- opened fire. Why had he survived? He didn't know. It would be something to haunt him forever. Josh looked at him.

"I don't blame you for what you did. I don't know if I can forget, but I understand why you did it." he told him quietly. He wasn't the most forgiving man in the world, he knew that. But in Tony's place…how could he blame him? And anyway, the man was blaming himself more then Josh could ever muster up the energy too.

"Ring them."

It wasn't until the change to the third watch that anything had been noticed. Twenty people wasn't a large group and, in hindsight it was perhaps strange that nothing amiss had been noticed before. Claire and Gerry Anderson were on third and the walked up the hill quietly, aware that there were soldiers about, even if they had seemed settled into their camp for the night. They reached the hidden cranny behind the boulder and looking out onto the flat plain below and west and stopped. It was empty.

"What the…?"

"Gerry, go back to the cave. Warn them something's happened. If they've been taken we can't stay here. I'll follow you down- I want to see if there's any clues as to what happened."

"If they've been taken, how safe is the cave?" muttered Gerry but turned back and moved swiftly back downwards. It was then, in the cave that he noticed it was five missing, not just the original two.

"They've done a runner, haven't they!" demanded a voice. Angry mutters filed the cave.

"Hey! We don't know what's happened. They might have been captured! Do you really think that Josh'd abandon us like that?"

"Josh- I wouldn't have thought so. The others- I'm not so sure. They never liked this notion of walking out in the first place." said Kitty thoughtfully. Gerry was relieved. Kitty, while she didn't say much, was usually listened to when she did speak. What she said usually made sense.

"Well, if they'd been taken by force, surely we'd have heard something?"

"Hang on- they weren't necessarily all together. Well, Josh and Jessi yeah. But Jesse and Daniel? What happened to them?"

"So they convinced Josh to leave us too. That's what happened. Well good luck to the lot of them!" Geraldine added viciously. This angry, hurt feeling seemed to pervade the cave. Gerry felt helpless. He wasn't a great speaker. He just didn't think that Josh would abandon them like this. Whatever about Johnson, Owens and whatshisname, the gloomy one.

"They didn't up and leave. At least not all of them and not on purpose. Look."

Claire had entered the cave, tired. She threw down a branch off something. It was knarled and almost fossilised. It was still dark in the cavern although light was beginning to suffuse the surroundings with its dawn shimmer. One end was darker then the other. No one touched it for a second. Then Kitty leaned forward and tipped the dark end. Her fingers came away with dark cloggy liquid on them.

"Blood." she said calmly, as her voice always remained.

It was a quiet fifteen people that had moved out into the early morning darkness. Terry was limping gamely. He'd been lucky really in a clean break. Bandaged as it was, well, it hurt, no doubt about that, but he was coping. The woman with the concussion was almost okay. Her head was fine and, it seemed her ribs were only badly bruised as opposed to broken. The sheet of metal that had worked as a double- stretcher affair had been thrown away as too cumbersome. They'd been given a lightweight swinging hammock affair from someone in one of the villages. This was being used to carry the hip- victim. She'd really come a cropper. The hip was smashed and though she'd survived so far over the last night it had obviously become infected. She was running a fever and it was becoming increasingly obvious that she was not going to make it through the last, gruelling leg of this marathon. They had to go up again, through the Jameston Pass and then, if they just kept walking, they should come to the wide, meandering Umpo River. Across that, they were in Zimbabwe. And safe.

"Look, Claire." said Reid, coming up to her, where she was sitting during a rest break. "You know as well as I do that Jana can't do this."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" she snapped and immediately regretted it. "I'm sorry, Reid. I do know. I'm wondering myself what's the best thing to do. We might have to beg for help at one of the towns."

"We could go back. To that town where you got the supplies."

"No! No." she added in a calmer voice when she saw his eyebrows shot up at her vehemence. "We've endangered them enough. We can't ask them to do this as well."

"If we don't, Claire, I don't think Jana will even make it to the Jameston Pass, let alone to Zimbabwe!"

"I know that. But the last time we interfered, they came and took all the men from the town. They haven't heard from them since. And yet they helped us. Traded with us. Probably saved our lives. How can we go to them and ask them to risk their lives again for us?"

"I don't know. But I think we have to try. For Jana's sake."

"I shouldn't be making this decision." she whispered. "That's what we chose…" she shook her head.

"We don't know what happened there. We…don't know." he finished lamely. "Did he ever get a choice about being made leader. 'Cos he was." Claire laughed a bit and shook her head.

"He was the one who took charge in the beginning. I guess it just stuck. Don't think he ever wanted to be leader though."

"Like you, he was stuck with it. Like it or not, I think you're the leader now. And it's the leaders call to make the shite decisions that risk peoples lives."

Claire sat there and thought. Jana wouldn't make it to the mountains. And it would put at risk the others in the group. She couldn't risk the many for the one. Not in this case. And yet, could she even think about sacrificing the one? Shit. She snorted sourly. Out of everyone in the group, she was perhaps best qualified to be 'making the shite decisions' But it was different with civilians. And anyway, she was still only a lowly corporal. What would he do? she wondered absently. Would she ever find out? By the end of the rest break she knew what she had to do.

"Jana won't make it to the mountains. You all know that. Some of us have to turn back. I'm going to get her to the town. I don't know if they'll help us. But we have to try. I need one more person to help me get her back. Will someone help us?"

"I will."

"I will"

"And me"

Gerry, Lisa and Tim had stepped forward. As she opened her mouth to speak, more people were moving. Some stepped forward, others just nodded. Most made sounds of assent.

"We're not leaving you behind. We've lost five since yesterday. Are we going to leave another three?" asked Kitty. From the chorus of negatives it seemed the other twelve agreed with her.

"We'll bring Jana back to the village. If they won't help her then we will find someone that will. We won't leave her somewhere where they won't. And then we'll get her help. We're not leaving anyone else behind." said Geraldine, so determined a few minutes ago that Josh and the others had deserted and should be left to their fate.

"It's not that far- about ten k. We shouldn't take more then a few hours." It was still very early morning when they turned around and started walking back into Qumaran territory. And if people glanced back at the promised safety and wondered secretly why they were doing this, they did it quietly enough that no one was only the wiser.

They were lucky. The people of the town were willing to help. Perhaps they felt it a form of secret rebellion against their oppressive masters. Perhaps they were just not willing to see someone so ill and not try to help her. Whatever the reason, Jana was snatched out of the group with dizzying speed and whisked off to the small town hospital. Well, it was almost a hospital. The rest stood meekly while they were scolded in several languages for not having brought her the first time.

"She only got bad last night. The wound was infected and the fever rose late yesterday evening. It was going up all night I think. I'm sorry to come back here. We're endangering you. If it wasn't for that I honestly think she wouldn't survive the next few days, I wouldn't have brought her here." Elisabeth glared at her.

"Foolish! But you were right also." she added in a gentler voice, "You will leave her with us. We will keep her hidden. Having reduced us to a town of women and children, they will not bother with us again. When you get to safety, your people will come back for her. Now, you must go again. And quickly, before it gets light and people are travelling. You cannot be seen around here. There is a compound nearby- Goetzis!" she spat the last word contemptuously.

"Wait- a compound?" She explained quickly what they feared had befallen their comrades.

"You are determined to get yourselves killed, aren't you. Well, I admire your courage- if not your common sense!"

It was almost half way back to the original site when they heard voices. They were lucky, passing by the edge of a chunk of woodland so they could hide themselves. A party of twelve men in a dull khaki uniform passed by on the road they had just vacated. They were heading toward the turning that would bring them to Elisabeth's village. They held their breath as they marched to wards the turning…and past it. Claire breathed out a sigh of relief. They were going on to the larger town of the region, where they had more control and less risk. Claire realised that they must be almost on top of the compound and just how lucky they'd been in not getting caught the first two times they'd passed it. It was just then, as the column of soldiers receded into the distance that a beebly sound could be heard in the still silent air. It was a sound that had once been familiar and common to all of them. A mobile.

"Quickly, get it!" she hissed, glancing nervously back.

"I'm trying!" Lisa searched through her pockets. The beebling was louder as she pulled it out triumphantly. It was a number she didn't recognise. She pressed the answer button.

"Hello? Who is this?" she asked.

"Uh…Claire? Lisa- who had the phone? It's Tony Anderson and Josh Lyman. We were captured. We are in a compound affair close to the town."

"You didn't run out on us then…" she felt oddly relieved. Tony didn't say anything- how could he?

"I'll… put you onto Josh…" he muttered and handed the little phone down blindly.

"He…hello?" he whispered, not trying for a louder voice in case it became a coughing fit.

"Hiya Josh. We were afraid…" Lisa shook her head. What could she say? She glanced at Claire who was almost hopping up and down. She handed the phone over, now feeling guilty.

"Where is the compound? How well is it guarded. Who's there?" she asked as soon as she got it.

"About… half a kilometre into the woods from the turnoff towards your village…" She frowned at how strange he sounded. He was coughing now. "Daniel Terris, Jesse Johnson and Jessi Owens are …dead…I'm sorry. There's just us and another guy Steven Hennessey in here now. They're using us to put pressure on America to put pressure onto the UN to withdraw troops from Qumar."

"Withdrew troops? But they can't do that! That would mean civil war!"

"And America doesn't negotiate with terrorists. They can't help us. And they can't rescue us because they don't know where we are. You're getting close to Zimbabwe. When you get home, tell them where the compound is. The Qumaran Government would love to know, believe me. We can at least stop them preying on the people around here."

"And what about you?"

Josh looked up at Tony who looked away, shaking his head. He took a breath and replied.

"They've given our Government an ultimatum. Get the troops withdrawn or they'll shoot us tomorrow. The American government can't do it. They're not going to be in time." Claire closed her eyes as the words sank in. They were maybe 500 metres away and they couldn't save them. Why not! Her eyes opened and narrowed in determination.

"How many soldiers and guards are in there?"

"Hey! Don't even think about that!" he said in alarm. It started a coughing fit and she heard the phone thunk off the ground as he dropped it.

"Josh? Are you there? Tony- what's wrong with him?"

"They've got his medication. And he's been beaten up pretty badly. Get help, Claire. You can't help us by yourselves."

"I need to know numbers." she said stubbornly. "Even to pass onto whoever comes back. Anything?" Tony sighed.

"There's about twenty soldiers and our own friend Goetz' ex-2IC. Who's a freaking lunatic." Place not very secure otherwise. No large walls around the perimeter. Hell, who need them when you've got armed soldiers. Other then that. well, they're a bit lazy actually. Seem to spend most of their time playing cards in the mess." He winced. Perhaps he shouldn't have said that. He didn't want to give them the wrong idea. But before he could say anything else the phone died. He shook it, as if that would help but the screen stayed dark.

Claire turned to the fourteen anxious confused faces around her.

"Daniel Terris, Jessi and Jesse Johnson are dead. " she said sadly. "Tony's okay- sounded okay anyway. Josh is in trouble- he's been beaten up and his medicine's been taken. He didn't sound good. They told us to get out of here. Report their position to the American or even the Qumaran Government. The Americans know there were survivors now. We're safe from them anyway."

"So what do we do?" asked Kitty into a sudden silence. "Walk away? I don't think so somehow- by the look on your face."

"What do you mean? The American Government know- they'll bargain for their release." Claire had looked away and her face was twisted with some deep emotion. Anger? Fear? And sorrow, it seemed to be some mix of the three. She closed her eyes tightly for a moment and controlled herself.

"Claire? What is it we don't know? What aren't you telling us?" asked Geraldine sharply. Kitty had already guessed and her face paled. Claire looked at her and empathised. She had spotted the growing attachment between the two- or if it wasn't an 'attachment', perhaps under better circumstances it could have become so. An unlikely couple, Tony and Kitty, but she was the only one he acted normally around and she could talk to him. Could have been… And was there another attachment? she asked herself. Was there…God, was there a possibility she had… no…that was ridiculous. Wasn't it? Could…could there be another man after Diarmuid? Diarmuid, her first husband. She glanced at the third finger of her left hand. A line of pale skin was visible. She pushed the fleeting thoughts out of her mind and looked back at Kitty, speaking as if to her only.

"What they didn't want us to know was that the Goetzis have issued an impossible ultimatum. One that the Americans can't possibly obey. Tomorrow they will kill them. "

Chapter 11 coming soon!

(Insert usual plea for reviews here).