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 to you.”
“That’s blasphemous.”
“It’s necessary. You have the right to risk your own life, but you don’t have the right to endanger my men. You do what I say, when I say. No arguing, no questions. If I say jump, I don’t want to hear any nonsense about how high. Just jump. Understood?”
“I’m not good at following orders blindly.”
“You’d better learn fast, or I’ll knock you out and make my job easier.”
She swallowed. She didn’t have any trouble believing Lieutenant Michael West would knock her out if he considered it necessary. “You’re supposed to be one of the good guys.”
“They don’t make good guys like they used to, honey.”
“A.J.”
“What?”
“You’ve called me Reverend, Rev, lady, and now honey. My name’s A.J.”
“Sounds more like—”
It was like being inside a clap of thunder—end-of-the-world loud, floor-shaking, ear-bursting loud.
His “little boom” had gone off.
Two
Michael had the first board popped off before his ears stopped ringing. He’d brought a tire iron for that chore, borrowed from the shed that held the truck Scopes and Trace were stealing at this very moment. He worked quickly, his SIG Sauer in its holster, the CAR 16 on the ground. He’d drugged the closest sentry before approaching the window; he could count on Hammond to take care of the other one.
The nun had let out a screech when the bomb went off. The Reverend was explaining things to her now—loudly.
A voice that was all bone-rumbling bass sounded behind him. “Do I get the one that’s yellin’?”
“Nope.” Michael pried off the last board and stepped back. “You get the one that screamed when Scopes’s toy went boom. In you go.”
“She’ll start screamin’ again when she sees me,” Hammond said gloomily. The team’s electronics expert did look like the Terminator’s bigger, blacker brother, especially in camouflage with night goggles. He sighed and eased his six-feet-six inches of muscle through the small window.
Michael tossed down the tire iron and picked up his CAR 16, keeping his back to the window as he kept watch. He heard Hammond’s low rumble assuring the Reverend she could trust him with the sister; seconds later, he heard the Reverend climbing out the window. He slid her one quick glance, then jerked his gaze back to the clearing and the trees.
She sure as hell didn’t look like any minister he’d ever seen.
That momentary glimpse hadn’t given him a lot details, and his goggles robbed the scene of color. But he’d noticed a slim, long-fingered hand that shook slightly. A tangled wreck of curls that hung below her shoulders. A wide mouth in an angular face, and big eyes fixed on the weapon he cradled. And about six feet of legs.
Lord, she must be nearly as tall as he was. And ninety percent of her was legs.
What color were her eyes?
Hammond was at the window, ready to pass out a blanket-wrapped bundle. Michael traded a CAR 16 for an armful of old woman.
Even through the blanket and the material of her habit, he felt the heat from her fever. She was tiny, so light Hammond could probably cradle her in one arm and still handle his weapon. She’d lost her wimple. Her hair was thin, short and plastered to her skull. Her face was small and round and wrinkled…and smiling.
She looked nothing like Sister Mary Agnes. Michael smiled back at her, told her in Spanish that they would take good care of her, then passed her to Hammond.
The scream of automatic fire shattered the night,
