to challenge even her excellent Berzhaani language skills. She put a finger to her lips and then his, startling the child, and in that moment of silence she said, “Slower, bibcha.”
His eyes widened with surprise all over again; his gaze darted over her from head to toe, taking in her attire and her head scarf, her appearance—dark blue-green eyes, razor-cut chestnut bangs emerging from the scarf and all-American features—and trying to reconcile it all with her use of his own language. She crouched before him, her gun still lost in the black leather folds of her coat. “Tell me,” she said. “Why are you frightened?”
He touched the bright red leather piping on the front edge of the coat, following it briefly with his finger as if to confirm this was indeed something out of his ken—but his round, light tea-colored little face with its pointed chin looked about to crumple.
“There, now,” Selena said, fairly brusquely, fighting her natural inclination to soothe him—it would only release those tears, and then she’d learn nothing. “When a brave young man such as yourself runs to greet me, I must listen. What have you to say?”
The boy hovered on the edge of tears for another moment—and indeed, one slipped out to track its way down the baby fat of his cheek. But he pressed his lips together and then said, “Bad men are in the house. Don’t go in there! Auntie told me to run and hide, just like we practiced.”
“I saw you.” Selena couldn’t stop herself from wiping away that single tear where it had trickled out part-way down his face. “You hid very well. Do you think you can do it again?”
“With Spotty and Eleny?”
She could only assume these were two of the goats. “Farther,” she said. “In the temple, where the pilgrims used to sleep when they stayed there.”
He shook his head, flinching at the sound of breaking pottery from within the house. “I’m not allowed—”
“This once, you are,” she told him.
“Mama said—”
She put her finger to her lips again, and gave him a slow, reassuring smile. “I’ll tell her it was my fault.”
He returned a solemn, dark-eyed look, lower lip protruding slightly with the effort of his decision. Selena all but held her breath, waiting, knowing he might well be unable to trust her, as much as he’d been willing to warn her. The Beretta felt solid and familiar in her hand, and just as suddenly as if it could not possibly belong there while she spoke to this child.
Abruptly he bit his lip and nodded. “Will you hide, too?”
“Yes.” She stood; the wind tugged at her open coat. She wished she could pull off her sweater to give him—he wore only a thin wool jacket over his own baggy, loosely knit sweater—but to do so would reveal her knives and her gun, a revelation likely to break the tenuous connection between them. “But I’m going to hide somewhere else, somewhere I can get help for your people.”
This made no sense, of course. But she hoped he would grab for the reassurance without working through the logic. She didn’t give him much time to think about it, not as a muted cry reached her from the still-cracked back door. “Go now!” She pointed up the hill. “As fast as you can! Someone will come for you when it is safe.”
This time. For this child truly to be safe, Selena would have to accomplish much more than this chance, unexpected interference with one besieged house.
After the briefest hesitation, the boy sprinted away, his barely coordinated limbs putting much effort into the action. So young…
Selena smoothed her scowl away and reached for focus. She was on the job now, albeit in a fashion never formally acknowledged. She eased up to the side of the house, up to the small window with open shutters on the outside and a film of curtains covering the glass from the inside. She winced as something else within the house broke, something wooden and splintering this time, followed by another cry of fear. The window showed her little…a gash of sunlight over the floor where the front door had been left open, a chair overturned against the wall, a bread plate smashed near the entrance to a back room. No one in sight. Great. She’d have to slink around and hope another window would reveal how many intruders had—
A stutter of automatic weapons fire sounded from down the street. More than just this one house at stake. And from within, a woman screamed, a full-bodied shriek of fear and denial. No more time. Start with this house, worry about the rest later. She moved swiftly to the front corner of the house, confirmed that no one waited out front and made it to the doorway itself. A quick peek-retreat revealed the main room of the house to be abandoned. From within the room beyond, a man shouted harsh demands for cooperation and the sharp slap of hand against flesh struck Selena’s ears. Bastard. Of course he was going to rape her. Of course. And in this society where the conservative chador was no longer required by law but still often used by custom, rural women still paid every price for rape above and beyond the violation of the act itself.
Selena did another peek-and-duck, still saw nothing, and eased into the house with silence as her shield, her coat whispering around her in swirling folds of leather. A quick glance through the doorway beyond showed her a tiny bedroom, one man in Kemeni green and tan colors pressing a diminutive woman into the corner while his loosely gripped Abakan Russian assault rifle—Abakan…strange choice—pointed at the floor, his avid gaze riveted on the bed. There a second man crouched over a wildly flailing woman, struggling to shove aside the copious material of her modest chador robes. As Selena retreated, taking a deep breath, her gun held two-handed and ready, another resounding slap marked the man’s impatience.
Selena surged around the door frame and shot him in the ass.
He cried out in shock and tumbled to the floor. The woman scrambled back against the wall at the head of the bed, frantically rearranging her clothing, and the second man, caught in flat-footed surprise, started to raise his badly positioned Abakan rifle. The woman he’d squashed into the corner let out a deliberate, ear-piercing shriek, her only remaining weapon.
It bought Selena an instant, and an instant was all she needed to drill the man twice, her finger steady on the long pull of the double-action trigger. Once in the knee, once in the right biceps, and then the woman in the corner gave a fierce cry of triumph and leaped for the rifle. Selena caught a glimpse of the look in her eye and instantly targeted the woman even as she shouted a warning—and reassurance. “Leave the rifle—I am your friend!”
The woman hesitated long enough to realize she was in Selena’s sights, but as she straightened with the Abakan carefully held by the stock alone, she leaned sideways to spit on the floor. “My friend,” she said. Unlike the other woman, she did not wear a chador, only a colorful punjabi and matching hijab scarf. Her thick, woven shawl lay crumpled on the floor in the corner. “American. If you had not been supplying the Kemenis, they would not now be in a position to act—or desperate enough to send out men like this.” She kicked the man in his bloody knee, eliciting a scream. She didn’t wait for Selena’s reply, but went to the woman on the bed, leaning the rifle against the headboard with a frightening familiarity.
Selena lowered her gun but didn’t holster it, not with the stutter of gunfire echoing in her memory. These two pathetic so-called freedom fighters weren’t the only problem this village had. Moving swiftly and not at all gently, she patted them down for weapons, glad for her gloves. Rank sweat and bad beer and gun oil stung her nose. Stepping back from them with a new collection of knives and two more handguns, she piled the stash on the foot of the bed. “Do you have rope? Can you tie them until an army unit arrives?”
The
