to sink beneath its weight. “Please, darlin’, let me help you!” he cried desperately.
She just stared. Her teeth chattered under the onslaught of cold mud and constant rain. The ground shifted beneath him. He had seconds to gain her trust before they both died. Damn, why hadn’t he learned to speak more than the most basic Tagalog for this mission? But then, those who’d done this to her spoke her native language—they were her own people. “Australia,” he called down, thudding his throbbing, burning chest. “Me. Australian.”
She blinked, slipped further. Her head tilted sideways.
“I know I don’t look it; my face and hands are painted, and I’ve got brown skin, anyway, God knows from who. But I’m not one of them!” He knew his babbling was downright stupid, since she couldn’t speak English; but he said it again. “I’m not one of them. I’m Australian!” He controlled his voice to as soothing a pitch as she could hear. Yelling wouldn’t make her understand him better if she’d never heard the word; it would only remind her of the half-assed genocidal jerks who’d taken her family from her.
The child stared unblinking; then her hand moved to her lips, mimicking eating, a questioning look in those lovely dark eyes.
“Yes, darlin’, that’s it. The people who fed you last week!” Cudgeling his brain, he could think of only one way to convince her. He sang, “‘Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free.’”
She slowly smiled, and started humming the national anthem the Vincent Foundation workers had taught her.
Mitch shook the rope. “C’mon, darlin’. Let’s get outta here.”
She looked down into the hole. “Ima. Tatay.” A sad little chant; a baby’s farewell. Then, thank God, she grabbed the rope.
He half slipped into the hole pulling up even her slight weight. Wrapping the rope around his waist, he crawled back along the crumbling earth, taking her with him inch by excruciating inch. The rain poured down, and the mud kept sliding on top of her, half drowning her tiny body. “Don’t let go of the rope, little darlin’. Hang on!”
A sudden scream; Mitch toppled backward with the lack of weight on the rope, and he knew he was out of miracles.
Three times, handhold by foothold, he inched back, giving her the rope, moving back. He couldn’t even lean forward far enough to show her how to loop the rope over her wrist; his weight would collapse the hole on her.
The fourth time, when he’d all but given up hope, a tiny head appeared above the rim; then her shoulders; then, like giving birth, she slid from the gaping maw headfirst into his hands.
He grabbed her, snatched up the rifle and ran for the plane, stumbling through holes, sliding in mud, holding her safely in his arms, taking the falls on his knees and back.
Three hundred feet to go—two hundred—one-fifty—
A jagged streak of lightning touched ground between him and the Maule.
Oh, my God, not now—Matt, Luke, my beautiful boys, I’m so sorry! So damned stupid, taking risks with his life now! But what choice had he? How could he leave this suffering child to die?
But the fork of lightning hit water, riding on the stream away from him. “Thank you, God,” he breathed, knowing how close they’d both come to being a charred heap of ash and cinders. He stumbled into the Maule, put the child in the passenger seat and buckled her up. She cringed and whimpered, shivering violently. “It’s okay, little darlin’!” He threw a thermal blanket over her, tucking it in tight. “That’ll keep you warm till we get above this freak-show weather.” He rummaged in his backpack, found a half-eaten Snickers and handed it to her. She stared in amazed delight, then shoveled it into her mouth as if afraid he’d snatch it back. Once she’d swallowed it, she gave him a timid smile. “Go for it, little darlin’. There’s plenty more where that came from. C’mon, let’s sing.” Though he dredged his brain for what few songs he’d learned in his stark childhood, only one came to mind. “D’you know this one? ‘Doh, a deer, a female deer…’”
There was only one way to get skyward in this hellhole of lightning, mud and water. The grave. The pit of death, which probably held the kid’s own family, was their only chance at life. If he could get enough speed up, he could use the hole and the falling slope of the hill as a pathetic sort of launching pad. Like a glider, they might just take off. Or not.
Only a psychopath would attempt this liftoff…or Mitch McCluskey. He grinned to himself. They won’t believe it, not even at work. Crazy Skydancer does it again.
The rain pounded down. The lightning kept streaking in jagged paths all around them. The sound of crashing thunder filled the cockpit. The child screamed, covering her ears. Mitch gritted his teeth and propelled the Maule forward, trying to avoid pits and puddles. The needle moved like a slug around the speedo, but he couldn’t afford to go faster in case he buried them in mud. Twenty-five knots. Forty. Forty-five…halfway down the crumbling runway…62…64…68. Water swirled around the plane in flying fountains from beneath the spinning wheels—but thank God, they kept moving, not digging in deeper in a self-made hole.
Moving. Still moving—
“Come on, Bertha, we need 79. We can get there!” He patted the console again in grim encouragement as they hit the three-quarter point. Seventy knots. “Come on, baby, we can do it…73…74…”
A fickle swirling wind hit the plane in front, propelling the craft up. Mitch pulled the throttle and wheel back, sweat running with rain down his face. “Go, baby. Go!”
The plane lifted a bare three feet from the hole, but in the grab of a sudden twister, they jerked skyward. He lost control of the instruments, and they were flung and tossed like salad with the freak winds. Please, God, don’t let us die! Don’t let me die when I’m going home to Matt and Luke. Not when I finally have a chance to see Lissa again. Please, Bertha, just don’t roll!
All he could do was hang on and wait.
The wind released its captive; the Maule wing-dived groundward. Mitch hit half throttle, sailing with the wind until he found an updraft. He leveled off and climbed above the storm, thanking God for his Air Force training, and for the bizarre twist of fate that had stopped the craft from rolling.
He flicked a glance at his tiny charge, wondering at her calm quiet during their life-and-death situation. Cuddled in the thermal blanket, worn-out with cold and shock, she’d fallen asleep. Her chocolate-and-mud-smeared face rested against the door, her matted hair stuck to the handle. “Sleep well, little darlin’. You’re safe now.” He caressed the slimy bob of hair. He turned the craft southwest toward Darwin.
He’d done it. The baby girl who’d seen death too young was safe now. So what if he had to face the music over the child’s illegal entry into Australia? That was small potatoes compared with the crazy hell his life had been the past few years since he’d lost the boys.
The nightmares that chilled his soul had finally gone. Matt and Luke were alive and safe—and they were with Lissa.
Soon, very soon, he would be, too. He’d have his sons with him again, where they belonged—and he’d see Lissa for the first time in twelve years. Delicate, haunting, gray-eyed Lissa with hair like a waterfall of shining honey, an unspeakably gorgeous mouth and a smile as beautiful as the home and hearth he’d never had. He’d ached to see her every single day of the past twelve years. To
