Dammit to hell. This was supposed to have been a simple mission. Simple, at least, for Michael’s team. His men were good. True, Crowe was new, but so far he’d proved steady. But gathering intelligence on the deadly spat brewing between El Jefe and the government of San Christóbal, rounding up a few terrified biologists on the side, was a far cry from snatching captives from a quasi-military compound.
Still, the compound wasn’t heavily guarded, and the soldiers left behind when El Jefe left to take the mountain road weren’t well trained or equipped. Michael and his men had watched the place for two days and a night; he knew what they were up against. No floodlights, thank God, and the forest provided great cover. Once they got their target out, they had three miles to cover to reach the clearing where the Cobra waited with its cargo of nervous biologists. An easy run—unless you were carrying an injured nun with fifteen armed soldiers in hot pursuit.
But El Jefe had thoughtfully left a truck behind. And, according to the Reverend, it had been running a week ago, when they brought her here. There was a good chance it was in working order.
If the truck ran…
She’d giggled. When he’d told her to wait there—meaning for her to wait by the window so she would hear him when he returned—she’d answered with one silly, stifled giggle. That sound clung to him like cobwebs, in sticky strands that couldn’t be brushed off. He crossed a narrow stream in the darkness of that foreign forest, his CAR 16 slung over his back and memories of Popsicles melting in the summer sun filling his mind.
Her giggle made him think of the first time he’d kissed a girl. The taste of grape Nehi, and long-ago mornings when dew had glistened on the grass like every unbroken promise ever made.
There was no innocence in him, not anymore. But he could still recognize it. He could still be moved by it.
He could knock the Reverend out. It would be the sensible thing to do. Downright considerate, even, since then she’d be able to blame him instead of herself for the nun’s fate.
Of course, he’d blame himself, too.
When was he going to grow up and get over his rescue-the-maiden complex? It was going to get him killed one of these days. And, dammit, he couldn’t get killed now. He had to get married.
That wasn’t the best way to talk himself out of playing hero.
He’d reached the fallen tree that was his goal. He stopped and whistled—one low, throbbing note that mimicked a bird call. A second later, three men melted out of the trees. Even with his goggles, he hadn’t spotted them until they moved. His men were good. The best. Even Scopes, though Michael still intended to ream him a new one for his little joke.
He sighed and accepted the decision he’d already made, however much he’d tried to argue himself out of it. He couldn’t leave the Reverend to El Jefe’s untender mercy. Or the nun.
The Colonel was going to gut him for sure this time.
The wheeling of the earth had taken A.J.’s star out of sight. Now there was only darkness between the slits in the boards.
Getting her things together had been easy. They hadn’t let her bring any of her possessions, not her Bible, not even a change of underwear. She had a comb and a toothbrush tucked in her pocket, given to her a few days ago by a guard who still possessed a trace of compassion. Of course, he probably expected to get them back when she was killed. Still, she asked God to bless the impulse that had moved him to offer her those tokens of shared humanity.
Waiting was hard.
He was coming back. Surely he was. And if he did…when he did, he would take her and the sister away with him. He had to.
She touched the place between her breasts where her cross used to hang and wished she knew how long she’d been waiting. How long she still had to wait. If the sun rose and he hadn’t returned…oh, she didn’t want to give up hope. Painful as it was, she didn’t want to give it up.
Time was strange. So elastic. Events and emotions could compress it, wad up the moments so tightly that hours sped by at breakneck speed. Or it could be stretched so thin that one second oozed into the next with boggy reluctance. Slow as molasses, she thought. Into her mind drifted an image of her grandfather’s freckled hand, the knuckles swollen, holding a jar of molasses, pouring it over a stack of her mother’s buttermilk pancakes….
“Hey, Rev.”
Though the whisper was so soft it blended with the breeze, she jolted. “Yes.” It came out too loud, snatching the breath from her lungs. “I’m here.”
“In a few minutes there will be an explosion at the east end of the compound. Are you familiar with the setup?”
An explosion? Her heart thudded. “I didn’t see much when I was brought here, and I’ve been kept in this room ever since. Are you going to…Sister Maria Elena, will you…?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “We’ll take the sister. You ready? Got your things?”
“There’s nothing.” Her hand went to the place her cross used to hang. A soldier with pocked skin and a missing tooth had yanked it off her neck. “Just Sister Maria Elena.”
“Is she ready to go?”
“She doesn’t hear well. I didn’t want to wake her to tell her what was going on. I would have had to speak too loudly.”
“Explanations will have to wait, then. The sentries are taken care of, but there might be other guards inside the house.”
The sentries were “taken care of”? What did that mean? She shivered. “Why an explosion? Wouldn’t it be better to sneak out?”
“We need a distraction. One of my men is going to blow up the barracks at the other end of the compound. When it goes—”
“No.” In her distress she rose to her knees, putting her hands against the boards as if she could reach him through them. “No, the soldiers—they’re sleeping. You can’t kill them when they’re sleeping.”
“It’s a shaped charge, just a little boom. Noisy enough to get their attention, but most of the force will be dispersed upward, taking out the roof. It probably won’t kill anyone.”
He sounded matter-of-fact, almost indifferent. As if death—killing—meant little to him. “Probably?”
“Keep your voice down,” he whispered. “Look, this is war. A small one, but the rules aren’t the ones you’re used to. These men would shoot you and the sister without blinking. That’s if you’re lucky. They’ve done worse.”
A.J. swallowed. The area where she’d been working had been peaceful at first. She wouldn’t have come to San Christóbal if she’d known…but after she’d arrived, she’d heard rumors of atrocities in the mountains. Men shot, tortured, villages burned. In Carracruz, the capital city, they blamed outlaws. In the rural villages, they whispered of rebels. Of El Jefe.
“Maybe so. That doesn’t make it right to kill them in their beds.”
“You worry about right and wrong, Rev. I’ll worry about getting us out of here. Here’s the plan. There’s a helicopter waiting three miles away. While the soldados are busy worrying about the explosion, we get you and the sister out of here and run like hell. There’s a trail that runs into the road about half a mile from the compound. We’ll meet the truck there.”
“What truck?”
“The one my men will liberate. It will get us to the copter. If everything goes well, we’ll be airborne about fifteen minutes after Scopes’s bomb goes off. Got it?”
It sounded good. It sounded so good she was terrified all over again at the sheer, dizzying possibility of escape. “Got it.”
“One more thing. From this point on, I’m the voice of God