Out of the Jungle

"But I didn't buy anything."

"Yes you did. There were the dresses that you tried on back at the store and several others that you bought from other shops after you left the store, you didn't realise for some time that you minders weren't following you."

"This friend, was it the woman that came into the change room?" I could see that she was a little jealous.

"She is just a friend from work, nothing more if that's what you're worried about."

"But she was prepared to help you so that I could be with you."

"That was more in self defence, you see I bored her silly by raving on about how beautiful you were," I kissed her, "how sweet you were," I kissed her again, "and how much in love with you I was." We kissed each other.

"But how can you say that you are in love with me when we have only just met?" Her arms were around my neck and she spoke in a husky whisper.

"I fell in love with you when I heard you sing and I fell deeper in love with you yesterday when we met in your dressing room. I have never met a girl so perfect in my entire life and I told myself that if I didn't tell you that I love you today I'd never get another chance."

"Come, I want to see the clothes that I bought." It was a short walk to Suzie's apartment and I took the key from under the pot plant beside the door and we were inside. There were several packages on the sofa, all from fashion houses. Carmen opened them, one of them was the dress that she had been trying on when Suzie walked into the change room. "I must try this on for you. When I saw it yesterday I wondered what it would look like, I have never had anything like this, my mother buys my clothes for me and she is so old fashioned." She went into another room and when she emerged I just stood there with my mouth open, this couldn't be the same woman. Because the neckline was cut so low she had to dispense with the matronly bra that she usually wore and her unencumbered breasts stood proudly from her chest. The skirt was tight over her hips and the slit in her skirt stopped just short of her sensible cotton panties adding to the allure of this beautiful young woman.

"Wow!" I'm never tongue tied, I'm always able to come up with some comment or other to suit any situation but right now that ability had fled from me.

"Do you like it?" She pirouetted across the room and when she reached me I took her in my arms and held her to me. Her back was to me and my hands cupped her breasts, first through the material and later after slipping the dress over her shoulders, in their full naked glory. The sounds coming from her lips told me that she was enjoying the experience, her nipples had hardened to two raisin sized points. "I can never wear this at home, even in my room, if Mother came in she would be so shocked."

"You should only wear it for me." My hand had attempted to slip under the waistband of her skirt but it was too tight so I slid the zipper down to the base of her spine, the dress fell in a heap around her feet. Her panties were no match for my determination to reach my goal and an intake of breath acknowledged my success. Her pussy was moist and hot, my finger was deep inside her and she was moaning in pleasure. She said nothing when I picked her up, or when I put her down on the sofa, or when I slid her panties down over her hips and tossed them on the pile of clothes on the floor, but when my tongue entered the warm, moist recesses of her pussy she cried out.

"Oh my god I have dreamed of this moment but my dreams were never this good. Since we met in the cafe I was wondering if we would get to this point and if we did what I would do. In my head I know that this is wrong but in my heart I want this, I want to feel what it is like to be loved."

"I'm more than happy to oblige my Carmen." I actually was, but at the same time I felt a total arsehole taking advantage of her innocence like this. I know that sometimes the end justifies the means but I can't help feeling that this wasn't going to end well for either of us, but my heart also told me to live for this moment. My tongue continued to work its magic on her pussy until she was begging me to replace it with my cock.

Carmen cried out as I broke down the final bastion of her virginity and began to give her the benefit of my vast (ha!) experience as a lover. My cock was a tight fit in her pussy and I could feel along its full length as it pushed its way deep into her. She clung tightly to me and I could feel her hips rising in time with my forward thrust until with a sob she came, her arms around my neck tightening for several seconds before she released her grip on my and collapsed on the sofa.

"I don't want to go home to my country, I want to stay here with you my lover. I am now a complete woman and it's because of you."

Oh shit, now I've done it, I was only supposed to get close to her, but she still has to go home for the plan to succeed. One of the dangers with plans like this is that the professionals who come up with these ideas fail to take into account the fact that there are actual people involved, if it hadn't been for this little wrinkle I would now be the happiest man alive. "I would love for that to happen but I don't think that your father and prospective husband are going to allow that to happen any time soon, we are just going to have to savour this moment and store it away for those dark times ahead. I love you Carmen Chavez."

"I love you Xavier Ortiz, with all my heart."

"I hate to be the one to spoil this moment but you have to get out of here and get back to your apartment and get ready for your next show. I will be there but I will not come back stage to see you, it will be better if I'm not seen with you too much or your minders will get suspicious, but I would like to speak to you so I have here a pre-paid cell phone with my number on speed dial, the lock code is 2991, your birth year backwards."

I handed her the phone and she unlocked it and pressed speed dial 1, I answered it "Please may I speak to Xavier Ortiz, the most wonderful man in all the world?"

"Only if you are Carmen Chavez the most beautiful and talented opera singer, and lover in the world."

Carmen flung her arms around my neck and kissed me passionately on the lips before picking up the clothes that she wore when she went into the store this morning. She left the dress that she tried on that caused all of this. "I want you to keep this for the next time we meet. I will wear it to remind us of this time together and because it makes me feel sexy." She kissed me again, only this time she knew it was a farewell kiss, and slipped out the door.

Minutes after she left Suzie let herself in. "I don't need to be a detective to work out what you two have been doing." She picked up the dress that Carmen had left. "I guess that it was this that did the trick." She handed me the receipts for all of the clothes that she bought. "Cash will be fine along with your thanks."

I took out my wallet and paid her. "I don't know how I can thank you, but I'm sure that I can think of something."

"An invite to your wedding will do."

"Who said that there's going to be a wedding?"

'What, don't tell me that you're losing your touch?"

"I never had the touch in the first place. If you must know she'll be going home at the end of her season to marry the son of one of her father's friends, it has all been arranged and there's nothing either of us can do about it."

"Here, give me a hand to clean up this mess, I hope that I can get the blood stains off the sofa."

That was the last time that I saw Carmen. I sat in the back of the theatre waiting for the curtain to go up and to listen once more to her magnificent voice and see her beauty radiating out from the stage. The house lights dimmed and a single spot shone on the curtain. The producer stepped through the gap on the curtain and stood in the spot. "Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that Signorina Chavez will be unable to sing the role of Mimi tonight. Her mother has been taken ill and it has been decided that she should accompany back to their country to seek urgent medical treatment from her regular doctor." The orchestra struck the opening chords of the overture as I stood and left the theatre.

The message ringtone came from my cell phone, it was from Carmen. 'You will have heard the news by now that I have to leave and travel home with my mother. It is good-bye my love, I will never forget you.'

A month ago I received a message from what I thought would have been a long dead cell phone. 'If you still love me please come for me.' And that is why I am standing here now looking down the barrel of a machine pistol while a phone call is made to the Mendez compound in the hills to see if Carmen was prepared to see me. The soldier on the phone said 'Si' a lot and nodded his head before hanging up the phone. "Senor Mendez has ordered that we bring this man to him. I didn't much like the sound of that and on arrival at the heavily fortified compound things only got a lot worse.

"So you are Xavier Ortiz the famous journalist?"

"I am Xavier Ortiz a journalist, I don't claim to be famous."

"I understand that you are here to interview my wife, I fail to see why you would want to do that because she is no longer an opera singer, so what interest could she be to your readers?"

"The interest is from opera fans who want to know why she stopped singing so suddenly and when or if she will be making a return to the opera stage."

"You could have found the answers to this without coming all the way here, unless of course you are here for another reason."

"There is no other reason, I just want to interview her as a follow up to my previous interview." From his expression he doubted that statement.

My bags had been searched, my toiletries had all been opened, clothes removed and the lining patted down looking for anything and my laptop taken from its case. "You will switch this on."

I booted it up and typed in my password, Windows 7 burst into life. "I can show you the questions that I will ask Senora Mendez so that you can see that there is nothing there that can be of harm to anyone." I opened the file and he looked at it briefly. I switched it off and closed the case.

"Come." He strode out of the room leaving me to pick up my bags and follow him. We crossed the compound to building set apart from the other buildings. It didn't look good what with two armed guards either side of the door and bars on the window. He signalled one of the guards to open the door and then signalled that I should follow him inside. "Carmen, Senor Ortiz is here to interview you." A frightened Carmen entered the room carrying a young child. "Senor Ortiz say hello to your whore and your bastard son." With that he stormed from the room.

We stood open-mouthed in the centre of the room for several seconds before she placed the child on the floor and flung herself at me. "Xavier my darling why did you come here?"

"Didn't you send me a message asking me to come?"

"No, my husband found the cell phone that you gave me after taking it away and charging it up he forced me to turn it on, he played with it for a while working his way through the menus until he came to the call records, he read the message that I sent you and became very angry with me. "He already knew that Miguel was not his son. . . . ."

"How could he know that, you were married so soon after we made love?"

"Che, My husband is not like other men, he told me when we first married that he did not want to have children and to prevent that happening he would only make love to me in my bottom."

"Christ! Is that why you are here and not in the main house?"

"That is part of it, in the main house lives his mistress, she has been with him for at least four years, his wedding to me was to ensure that my father does not interfere with his drug smuggling operations." This much I already knew. She bent down and picked up our son, I could see instantly that Che would have doubts about being the father of this child if he had made love to her as a husband normally would. Miguel, Carmen had thought to call him Xavier but decided against it, had my nose and chin.

"I have to find a way of getting you out of here. I have some things with me that will help but I must know certain things."

"Such as?"

"Do the sentries outside the door stay there all night?"

"No, they leave at midnight."

"Your husband drives a Range Rover, a silver Range Rover, is this true?"

"Yes it is, you would have seen it as you crossed the compound." I did see it and was pleased to see that it bore the registration plates that the photograph we had obtained from the US Embassy were the same.

"When he leaves here does he drive the car or take the helicopter?" I had noticed the helicopter behind the building as we wound down the mountain on the other side of the valley on the trip here. By the look of the trucks around it preparations were being made for a flight.

"It depends on whether he is going in to the city or delivering drugs. He drives to the city."

"So he is making a delivery soon" I hoped that it wasn't too soon.

"He usually leaves as soon as it is light, that way he is airborne before the air traffic is fully operational at the airport."

"You seem to know a lot about how he does things?"

"I have nothing better to do than watch out the window at the comings and goings of this man that I detest."

"Okay, do you have any sugar in this place?"

"Yes, what are you going to do with that?"

"I'm going to disable his helicopter, it'll be able to take off but it won't get far. Now can you get a saucepan and dissolve about five hundred grams of sugar in about a litre of water, as soon as it's dissolved take it off the heat we have to let it cool down." Carmen went into the kitchen to carry out my directions. In the meantime I stripped the hard plastic lining from my laptop case, in the lid was a large plastic bag holding a thin layer of iron oxide (rusty iron) powder while in the base was another bag with aluminium powder. In a cavity in the spare battery for my old clunker of a laptop were three containers, the first held a bonding agent to allow me to mix and mould the iron oxide and aluminium powders while the other containers contained potassium permanganate and four vials containing anti-freeze, this was the ignition source for the thermite that will destroy the hinges of the massive entrance gates to the compound.

Carmen came back and I explained how I had planned to get us out of here. "I'm going to borrow his Range Rover and drive through the gates after they're blown off, if he tries to chase us with the helicopter I figure that he'll last no more than five minutes before his engine seizes and it falls out of the sky."

"How will you be able to steal his Range Rover, it has a sophisticated security system."

"Ah but I have a spare key, you see if you have the details of a particular vehicle you can buy a duplicate key, you have to prove ownership but that's not a problem if you have the right contacts and enough money, they are bloody expensive. I just walk over to where it's parked push a button and hey presto I'm in. Be prepared to leave at three in the morning." I was feeling like a cross between McIvor and that Michael guy in Burn Notice, using simple ingredients to cause the greatest chaos.

"But this will be dangerous for you, you can't just walk around the compound when you feel like it, there will be guards everywhere."

"What is the alternative? I can't leave you and Miguel here and because I am here I feel that we will not be safe if we stay here. I know that there will be some danger in this but I have to save you." I took her in my arms and kissed her. "I love you." As if that was explanation enough for my actions.

"I love you too. I desperately want to get out of this prison but is there not another way?"

"No my darling it has to be now." I didn't want to have to tell her that there were other forces at play here. I kissed her, holding her to me as if I never wanted to let her go, that much about this operation was true, I had thought little other than how I could get her out of here safely over the past eighteen months.

"Hold me please my darling, I feel safe in your arms." She held me so tight I could feel her heart racing in her chest, my instincts had been right when I first met her, I had fallen in love with her the minute we met in her dressing room.

"You had better get some sleep, I need to watch for a while to get my bearings and check the guards."

"Be careful my love." With that she went into the bedroom. I turned out all of the lights and in the darkness I sat and watched out the window at the night activities of the compound. I let myself out the back door of the house just after midnight carrying a bottle with a little over a litre of sugar syrup. Finding the helicopter's fuel filler I upended the bottle in the filler pipe and waited in case a guard should stroll along while it was happening, until the syrup had drained into the tank. I replaced the filler cap and left.

Keeping to the shadows I made my way to the gates, there were no guards this time of night and I had little problem packing the thermite around the hinges and placing a little potassium permanganate in a hollow on top along with an electronic trigger consisting of a small solenoid switch with a sharp point that would fracture the vial allowing the antifreeze to mix with it causing the high temperature chemical reaction needed to ignite the thermite. Thermite burns at around 2500 degrees Celsius and iron melts at around a thousand degrees less than that. When the hinges melt the gates will drop to the ground and fall over and we will simply drive over them and make our escape, at least that's what the plan is.

I was back in the house before one o'clock and stretched beside Carmen in her bed. She rolled over to face me. "I was having a dream that you have come to rescue me from this prison that I lie in but I know when I wake up it will still be a dream just like every night since we met and made love."

"It is no dream, I'm here to save you. Now go back to sleep I'll wake you when it's time." Her arm snaked around my neck and she kissed me with a contented little sigh before dropping off to sleep. I on the other hand lay alongside her going over the plans from the beginning to end before starting again.

I woke Carmen at two forty-five and she picked Miguel from his bed. He whimpered and was about to cry when she opened her shirt and pushed a nipple against his mouth, he instinctively suckled for a few minutes until it dropped from his mouth, he was asleep again. The three of us walked in the moon-shadow to the waiting Range Rover, I pushed the button on the remote key and the hazard lights winked once signifying that the vehicle was unlocked and the security system disabled. Miguel was stretched out on the floor with his blanket around him, the few bags containing essentials along with my laptop case were stowed in the back. It was nearly time.

I opened the laptop and booted it, scrolling down the menu until I found the file I was looking for. Entering the firing sequence I waited until the computer told me that all was ready then I pushed the button that sent a signal to the firing mechanisms. Within seconds the thermite charges began to glow red then white and then the gates dropped to the ground, stood for what seemed like an eternity and then toppled over, falling with a loud crash to the ground as I hit the starter of the Range Rover and moved forward gaining speed as we travelled across the compound.

We were through the gates and almost to the first bend in the road before the first shots rang out, thankfully they were wide of the mark. I knew that it would be a matter of minutes before the helicopter was airborne and I had to reach the spot that I had noticed on my trip here and that would provide us with some small cover from the probing landing light. It was a large tree that overhung the road on a sharp bend, I drove as far as I could under the canopy and we waited.