Crystal Clear Ch. 07

As I talked, I kicked off my boots, jumped into my jeans, and threw on a dark shirt. I grabbed a pair of socks, thought for a second and stuck them into a pocket; boots back on and in less than a minute I bolted for the door. I said to Claire over my shoulder, "Lock this door, and don't open it up for anyone -- and I mean anyone but me."

I slammed out of the van, and beat on the side of Barry Peter's motorhome. He appeared at the door seconds later, naked with an equally naked dark-skinned girl behind him. I spoke, "Jill's been abducted. Get dressed. Call the police in Granada and the others at the hotel there. Warn them. Get some action." He nodded in understanding and turned to get dressed. As I left I told them, "And lock your door."

I circled our van and saw the bodies of two of our guards. I guessed the others were equally disabled or dead.

I cut through the kitchen area and grabbed several sharp knives. I found a flashlight, but verbally reminded myself not to use it at full brightness -- a stupid move at best if I were in pursuit of Jill's captors.

I raced across the parking area to the spot where I'd seen the men disappear with Jill. Sure enough, there was a narrow but discernible trail there. I started into the woods slowly, quickly finding not only near darkness, but also silence -- a silence that told me the men were much deeper into the woods or even gone completely by now.

I covered the flashlight with a sock and gave only a brief flash of light now and then to confirm the trail. Fresh footprints evidenced the fleeing men, and fortunately no blood. I have two assets that served me well in the Special Forces: acute hearing and acute night vision. I put both to use, as I crept through the woods.

Eventually, the trailed opened up into a field with an orchard to one side. On the far side of the open field, I saw a small fire and several flashlights moving around. I ran for the light, keeping low to the ground. I fell several times on the uneven ground but rolled with the event.

As I neared the lights, I could make out six men and a beat-up pickup truck. Two of the men carried rifles, and the others appeared unarmed -- except for knives as I'd experienced. I reminded myself that there were no winners in a knife fight, and then moved closer.

I could hear the men talking and arguing in Spanish, damning my lack of Spanish language skills. I could occasionally make out the word 'Señora' that I did know and that I took to mean Jill. The men were gathered around a small fire about fifty feet from the truck; five were sitting and one standing. A bottle of liquid courage was being passed around.

I circled the sextet, staying well outside their sight range. I wanted to see what was in the truck. When I got the truck between me and the men, I bee-lined for the vehicle. In the flatbed of the truck I found Jill, still unconscious, but apparently alive. Regrettably, I couldn't just grab Jill and run back to camp with her over my shoulder.

Jill's hands and feet were bound in duct tape; a strip also had been placed over her mouth. Staying out of sight I leaned into the truck with a knife in one hand and slit the tape around her hands and feet. As I did she started to move.

Jill's eyes blinked open clearly displaying her fear. She looked at me in the dim firelight. I held my hand up to warn her not to speak; a finger to my lips as well. She instantly got the message and nodded. I pointed at the men and held up six fingers. I also made a motion for her to just stay put and feign unconsciousness. I slipped away.

Step one was to keep them from leaving the area -- once they drove away with Jill I might never see her again -- alive. I slipped under the truck and drove one of the knives I'd carried into each of the right side tires -- the ones farthest away from the men and the fire. I did it on the inside of the tires under the truck to avoid detection of obvious sabotage. I left the knives in so there'd be no great hiss of escaping air. The truck settled slowly until the two tires on that side were flat.

Step two, I had to disable the men. I backed away from the truck until I found the edge of the clearing they were in -- a farm field. Predictably, there were various piles of stones raked from the fields along the edge of the field. I found several softball-sized chunks of granite and returned to the bed of the truck, reaching in and giving them to Jill. I pointed to my head. She knew what to do.

Back at the rocks I'd found, I filled my socks with smaller stones until I had two saps or blackjacks.

Next, I gaged the shortest distance to the woods from where the men sat. Fortunately, it wasn't in the direction of the truck. I moved into woods at that spot and waited.

Good things come to those that wait. I can remember an instructor for my Special Forces unit pounding that into our heads. I squatted, watched, and waited ... and waited.

Predictably, one of the men eventually needed to piss, apparently just before they drove off with Jill. He stood and walked in my direction, away from his friends at the fire. I'd anticipated his route.

He found a tree, unbuttoned his trousers, and started to urinate. Behind him, I wound up and swung one of the socks loaded with rocks. When I had adequate momentum, I reached forward and the socks connected with the man's occipital bone with a sickening hard whap and the sharp sound of the rocks in the sock clunking together.

The man slumped forward totally unconscious. Based on what I'd learned in my training, he'd be out for at least fifteen to thirty minutes. I'd hit him hard -- real hard.

A glance back at the fire told me the other men remained unaware of the plight of their comrade.

Crouch and wait. Crouch and wait.

One of the other men finally rose and moved in my direction. He entered the copse and almost immediately saw his friend on the ground next to the tree he'd chosen as his urinary target. He bent to awaken what he probably thought was his drunken buddy, and he too slipped into a painful unconsciousness as my bludgeon slammed into the back of his skull. This time I heard a terrible crunching sound.

The remaining men at the fire had heard the sound. "Jorge? Jorge?" One of the men shouted.

No reply.

"Carlos? Carlos?"

No reply.

One man said several sentences in Spanish, and the men seemed to relax. I slipped back to the truck.

One of the men with a rifle walked to the back of the truck, no doubt to check on Jill. She would have been unconscious about thirty minutes by now, and probably coming awake.

He leaned over the side of the truck and prodded her body with his free hand. Jill struck out as though a snake poised to strike at its prey. She held the rock I'd given her in one hand and slammed it into the man's face as hard as she could.

The man screamed, dropped the rifle, and his hands went up to his bloody face. He wasn't unconscious until the sock in my left hand slammed into the back of his head seconds after Jill's strike.

The other three men scrambled up from where they sat by the fire and ran towards the truck. One carried a rifle, but by the time they'd mustered I had the dropped rifle in my hands and a round in the chamber.

Without blinking, I checked the weapon, an old M16 that had seen better days. I aimed and fired at the legs of one of the men rushing at us. Blood spurted from the entry wound in his thigh, and the man fell screaming in pain.

The other man with a rifle stopped and started to raise the gun at me; I shot him in the chest at a range of twenty feet; from what I knew, he died instantly. The third man stopped and looked at the carnage on either side of him; he put his hands up and started to back away from me. I gestured with the muzzle of the gun for him to lie on the ground -- no translation needed; he dove for the ground.

Behind me, inside the truck's flatbed, I heard Jill say, "Holy shit! You killed him. Oh my God, you killed him -- you shot him in the chest. You shot the other man too -- oh, my God, he's bleeding badly. Oh, shit. Oh, shit." I could hear the near hysterical edge in her voice. She was barely holding it together. With one hand on the rifle, I used the other to help Jill get down from the truck bed. I gave her a hug and felt the trembling in her small frame.

I secured the site. At my instruction, Jill found the duct tape and some rope in the truck. One by one I bound the men starting with the conscious one first. He seemed relieved that I didn't shoot him. I had the one I'd shot in the leg stem his bleeding with his shirt as a tourniquet, and then I taped his hands together behind him. I could see a shard of bone at the edge of his wound; he wouldn't need his feet tied -- he couldn't walk. The three unconscious men were bound or tied next; I dragged each of them to the truck so the six of them were together and were easy to guard.

I checked Jill's head. She'd been cold-cocked by the butt end of the rifle on the left side of her head. I could see the bruise it had left, and the impression of the rifle butt on her skin. She complained of a headache, and I hoped it wasn't a concussion although in that location it would be hard to avoid. The head is more delicate than most people think.

I explained to Jill how to find the trail back to camp and gave her the flashlight. We took the shoes off one of the unconscious men, and she wore those since she had been carried to the site barefoot. She was also nude under the trench coat the men had wrapped her in. Jill took off across the field to fetch help. Somehow she felt compelled to run. The first light of dawn had started to shade the black night sky.

We lost the next day of movie making because of all the police, news people, and even people from Sony that flew in. I guess the Policia had friends in the media, because right behind the authorities that arrived in the morning twilight came the press -- the paparazzi, even several American reporters. I guessed it was a slow news week. Shortly after dawn, most of film crew trooped through the woods to the clearing where I had found the six men. The corpses of four of our guards, and severe wounding of several others attested to the ruthlessness of the kidnappers; the remaining guards had been knocked unconscious.

The Policia found from some of the living abductors that they knew Jill Dane was a well-known celebrity, and from the newspapers our film location, so they thought they would capture her and get a ransom for the 'Famous Film Lady.' She had been a specific target; they found publicity pictures of Jill in the truck. One officer who spoke broken English explained to me that the young men were thugs in the area with a known bad reputation.

While I thought the policia left a lot to be desired in terms of thoroughness, I agreed with the conclusions they jumped to, particularly since it absolved me of being detained or of any arrest or prosecution for what I had done to the men, including two deaths.

I had killed one man outright with a shot to his chest. Another had died because of the head wound I inflicted with the rocks in the sock. Two others had severe concussions and would have headaches for a long time. I doubted they had a lot of aspirin in a Nicaraguan prison. I had shattered another man's femur with a rifle shot. The man who surrendered was the only unscathed one of the lot. The police told me that he described me a the devil incarnate.

The kidnappers who were alive were placed one each in four police vehicles and taken away to jail and medical treatment. I offered to appear in court; however, the head of the local Policia waved his hand dismissively. He didn't believe my testimony would be needed inasmuch as the evidence against the six men was so strong, including Jill's identification of three of the men that had burst into her motorhome. Based on his comments, I figured out really fast that the justice system in that country worked a little different from the one in the U.S.

That left only the press to deal with.

From the time they arrived in the small field, the photographers had started to take pictures of me and everything else around, including the dead men, and those I had bound and tied -- even in the dim dawn. There were still photos as well as video on constantly.

Jill came back to the field driven by some of the armed police. She'd put on a peasant dress so she looked like an innocent woman the men had tried to take advantage of instead of the nymphomaniac vamp I knew she could be. A doctor from the American Embassy was part of the entourage; he gave us the good news that she didn't have a concussion, just a bad bruise. She too became the target of the photographers. We promised them a press conference soon. Thus, at noon after working all morning with the detectives, Mark, Jill and I held an impromptu news conference near the pickup truck I'd disabled. Barry Peter's cute girlfriend from the night before was bilingual and served as our interpreter.

Jill told her story to the press, and I followed with mine. Jill described how she had just finished her shower and was drying herself when the men burst into her motorhome with knives and a rifle. She grabbed a raincoat to cover herself, but not before the lead man had 'copped a feel' as she put it. I told the press about being stopped outside my own motorhome and being made to lie face down in the dirt, seeing Jill's abduction as the kidnapper's exited from the clearing where our vans stood. I skipped the part about needing to take a pee in the woods. I briefly described my background as a Green Beret, and then blow-by-blow took them through the steps I took to locate the men and disable them.

Jill spoke and described me as the greatest hero in her life; she pledged her undying love for me in the process, calling me an old friend whose courage and heroic powers she had not known of before that day. I had become her prince in shining armor. She kept using glowing adjectives about me, to the point where I blushed and told her to tone it down. The media ate up all that stuff; the stenographers could barely keep up with her words.

Mark Ang, our movie director forPressure Limit, fielded a few questions about the movie, why they'd picked this site to film -- a good question, and how the attack would impact the movie. After that we ended our panel, and we walked back to the motorhomes at our film site. Behind us, two hearses from the local coroner's office were collecting the two bodies I'd left. The ghouls with the cameras photographed and taped loading the two dead men into the vehicles, and their exit from the field.

Mark assembled the entire film crew and cast -- everyone -- in front of the makeshift hut we'd been filming at the day before. He announced that we would not sleep overnight or work in the dark at the film site again. He had already arranged for some of the motorhomes in our caravan to be driven to Granada mainly with our luggage. They would be parked adjacent to the Granada Hotel and Spa, but we would not sleep in them; we'd sleep in the hotel under continuous armed guard -- guards he guaranteed would be more alert and vigilant that the previous ones. He also introduced a new Head of Security; a man whose profile resembled a large block of granite; he talked about new security precautions both during filming and when we were 'off duty.' We had another week in Nicaragua to finish filming at this part of the film, and we would be well protected.

Late that evening, I didn't hear the timid knock on my door as I worked on the movie script on one of the two beds in our room; the knock was so soft. On the other bed, a very naked Ellen caught my eye and pointed to the door; she lay in bed reading -- Claire sat next to her in transparent light blue baby doll pajamas working on her laptop. The room was hot and didn't invite sleeping. In my briefs, I unlocked and opened my hotel door; Jill stood there with a forlorn look on her face. My new personal bodyguard and hers stood behind her -- wearing bullet proof vests and looking like large blocks of granite; Jill had on the same trench coat she'd been kidnapped in.

"I can't ... It's just ... Oh, please let me sleep with you guys tonight. Please. I don't want to be alone." She had tears in her eyes and reached for me just as I invited her in. The two guards smirked. They already knew I'd retired for the night with my two younger and beautiful 'assistants.' Now, eat your hearts out, one of the hottest movie stars in the world also wanted a piece of me. I smirked back and shut the door. I wondered if that little episode would end up in some scandal sheet. It didn't.

Jill hurled herself into my arms and held on for dear life. She was trembling and crying. I had apparently under-estimated the effect of the prior nights abduction on her. All day, she had been cool, calm, and collected, even through our group dinner in the hotel's restaurant. I really had believed she had found a way to blow the whole episode off as a crazy night and nothing more.

Jill starting sobbing into my chest as she hugged me. Ellen and Claire came over and surrounded the distressed woman. After a couple of minutes, her pent up stress seemed to drain from her body, and Jill allowed Claire to help her remove her coat. Beneath the long coat, she wore a scoop neck pink silk camisole that flared into a very short skirt of the same material. The little outfit left little to my imagination.

Claire pulled Jill into my bed and arranged Jill so she reclined between Claire's legs with her back to Claire's torso -- Claire wrapped her arms around her and hug her. I lay against one side of Jill; Ellen's nude body spooned against Jill from the other side. I dimmed the lights. We wrapped our arms around Jill from all directions. We kept whispering words of solace and comfort to her -- words of safety, protection, and security.

Occasionally, Jill would break out sobbing for no particular reason. She was in shock. After shuddering, she finally quieted down, psychic exhaustion took over, and she fell asleep in our arms. The three of us slept holding her all night.

After a long quiet spell about Hollywood in the media, punctuated only by another Lindsay Lohan's DUI charge and series of court appearances, the abduction of Hollywood's hottest female star -- Jill Danes -- hit the media like a nuclear explosion inside a doll house.

Every reputable newspaper, magazine, and newscast, as well as all the scandal sheets, had Jill and me on the cover. The headlines of some told the whole story:

They went on and on, everyone slightly different from the previous one. Some magazines proclaimed they had exclusive interviews with the two of us, only to repeat -- with some inaccuracies -- what Jill and I had told the assembly of the paparazzi in the impromptu news conference in that Nicaraguan field the same day I rescued Jill.

People magazine devoted a dozen pages to the kidnapping and rescue. They had the best picture spread too, even with shots of the two bodies covered in tarps. Dozens of other pictures in their coverage also showed Jill and me at the site, talking to the police, at the news conference, and pointing to various areas of the site for the other paparazzi or the police. Every supermarket tabloid had us splashed across the cover with other salacious headlines about aliens helping me or sea monsters actually doing the abduction.

In Hollywood parlance, this was a 'Really, Really, Really Big Deal!'