Hunt at the Well of Eternity by Gabriel Hunt & James Reasoner

Author:Gabriel Hunt & James Reasoner [Hunt, Gabriel & Reasoner, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thriller
ISBN: 9780843962468
Publisher: Leisure Books
Published: 2009-01-01T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Gabriel didn’t know if the bandit camp was still in Mexico or over the border in Guatemala. Not that it mattered one bit in this wild territory. Borders meant little here, and governments were far away. The only power that mattered was the power of the man next to you holding a gun. In this case, that was Paco Escalante, and what mattered was that he hadn’t ordered his men to kill them…yet.

They’d been taken, at gunpoint, to what looked like a semipermanent camp, with crude, thatch-roofed huts instead of tents. Gabriel and Cierra were stashed in one of the huts until Escalante could decide what he wanted to do with them.

“Do you think he knows who you are?” Gabriel asked.

She shook her head. “He hasn’t seen me for many years. I’ve changed enough since then that I don’t think he recognized me. He, on the other hand, hasn’t changed at all.”

Escalante was a tall, gaunt man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a mat of silvery hair. His face was weathered and lined from years of living mostly outdoors, much as Pancho Guzman’s had been. Escalante’s men were cut from similar cloth, all of them older, still plenty tough but with an air of weariness about them, as if they had been fighting the same fight for too long.

Gabriel and Cierra had been forced to climb into the back of the pickup with the supplies and ride there while one of Escalante’s men drove and another sat with them, his gun aimed casually in their direction. They left the highway, such as it was, and followed what appeared to be little more than a goat track deep into the jungle that covered the lower slopes of the mountains. Clearly the bandit knew where he was going, because even though the goat track disappeared, he found a way through the jungle and was able to keep the pickup moving.

When they reached the camp and stopped, Escalante had the two prisoners placed in the hut, with armed guards on either side of the entrance, and they had remained there ever since. The fading light that came through cracks in the rough walls told Gabriel that the day was drawing to a close. It would be night soon.

And who knew what dangers the darkness might hold?

“Can you tell me a bit more about what happened on your parents’ plantation?” Gabriel said. “I know it’s painful for you, but it’s important.” Cierra nodded. “You said you’d seen Escalante before.”

“He worked on the plantation at one time. He and my father always got along well. Escalante was even his assistant foreman for a while. But then his wife grew ill and died, and he became very bitter. Didn’t show up for work, wouldn’t come out of his room. Eventually he just walked off. Word came back that he was living as a bandit. It was difficult for my father—he’d considered Escalante a friend. But he rebuffed every effort my father made to contact him.

“At least he left the plantation alone, though—spared it from his raids.

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