El Jefe’s headquarters was like the rest of his military efforts—military in style but inadequate. The self-styled liberator should have stayed a guerrilla leader, relying on sneak attacks. He lacked the training to hold what he’d taken. In Michael’s not-so-humble opinion, San Christóbal’s government would have to screw up mightily to lose this nasty little war. In a week or two, government troops should be battling their way up the slope El Jefe’s house perched on.
But what the guerrilla leader lacked in military training he made up for in sheer, bloody fanaticism. A week would be too late for the soft-voiced woman Michael had just left.
What was the fool woman doing here? His mouth tightened. Maybe she was no more foolish than the three U.S. biologists they’d already picked up, who were waiting nervously aboard the chopper. But she was female, damn it.
One sentry rounded the west corner of the house. The other had almost reached the end of his patrol. Michael bent and made his way quickly and silently across the cleared slope separating the compound from the forest. Then he paused to scan the area behind him. The goggles rendered everything in grays, some areas sharp, others fuzzy. Out in the open, though, where the sentry moved, visibility was excellent. Michael waited patiently as the man passed the boarded-up window. He wouldn’t move on until he was sure he wouldn’t lead anyone to the rendezvous.
He was definitely going to kill Scopes.
It was Scopes who’d passed on word from a villager about some do-gooder missionary who’d been captured by El Jefe’s troops. He must have known the minister was a woman, damn him. Andrew Scopes was going to strangle on his twisted sense of humor this time, Michael promised himself.
Maybe the minister’s sex shouldn’t make a difference. But it did.
He remembered the way her voice had shaken when she’d whispered that she couldn’t go with him. She’d probably been crying. He hated a woman’s tears, and resented that he’d heard hers.
She was scared out of her mind. But she wasn’t budging, not without her nun.
A nun. God almighty. Michael started winding through the trunks of the giants that held up the forest canopy. Even with the goggles the light was poor here, murky and indistinct, but he could see well enough to avoid running into anything.
Why did there have to be a nun?
Since he’d joined the service, he’d had more than one hard decision to make. Some of them haunted him late at night when ghosts come calling. But a nun! He shook his head. His memories of St. Vincent’s Academy weren’t all pleasant, but they were vivid. Especially his memories of Sister Mary Agnes. She’d reminded him of Ada. Mean as a lioness with PMS if you hadn’t done your homework, and twice as fierce in defense of one of her kids.
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.”
