tipped her head back and noticed the rat was gone. “Eat and run, I get it. I’m not good company right now.”
The door rattled like dungeon chains and she braced herself for another round of “Hey, chica, you wanna do me?” A soldier appeared. At least she thought he was a soldier. Her military training only saw the wrinkled uniform, the abundance of facial hair, and the lack of soap anywhere near him.
“Who are you talking to?” he said, his face against the bars.
Was it her that smelled that bad, or him? “Water. Got any?”
“I got something for you.” He grabbed his crotch.
Oh, like that’s new? “Mouth is too big.” She pursed her lips tightly.
He looked ready to kill her, then laughed like Boris. But right now, she’d strip for a Diet Coke. Two days in here was enough for anyone.
He tossed her a small plastic bottle and she jumped at it, drinking greedily. He found her so oddly amusing that he started telling the story before he left the cell block.
Cell block. Mom would be just so proud. Bless her heart, she can’t help that she’s stupid, but she just shoulda stayed home. She’d only wanted information. Something to help her find the troops. She’d had to be cagey about it too. The team were Spec Ops guys, and she didn’t want to give away whatever they were doing here, but after getting out of the country on a cruise ship and all the way here through Central America, she’d gotten bold.
Bold enough to hire a shitty guide.
The taller policeman had taken her away, tossed her in this cell, and left her here for two days in the sweltering heat. He had her one suitcase and hobo bag, and worse, the Terminator. He could keep the rest, but that she needed.
She gripped her head. I’m so screwed. No one knew she was here. All that sage advice from her dad, “Clancy, honey, look before your leap and look hard,” went right out of her head. She’d walked right into the danger without considering the consequences.
What did she really think she could do? Look for skilled Marines who didn’t want to be found? Once she found them, would they be so jazzed on the effects of the pods that they’d ignore her warnings? Would they even believe her? They’d volunteered for this; surely Yates had informed them of the risks.
Suddenly a thought occurred to her. Guinea pigs.
The military were used all the time to test new drugs. It wasn’t common knowledge; the government had hid it for years but it had happened. Every time they forced her to have a flu shot, she got sick and not with the flu.
Her head shot up when she heard footsteps, and she pushed off the concrete floor. She adjusted her clothing, brushed off the dirt. She had to get out of here. Calling the embassy or consulate wasn’t really an option. These guys didn’t have phones. Only radios. Not that anyone from the embassy would come for her when she’d arrived under a slightly false passport. She felt the real one sticking to her skin down the back of her pants where she’d stashed it. The Grace Murray one was out there with her money. The copies of the Marines’ files—what little she could get at the time—were folded and in a plastic baggie inside her boots. The packet made her feet sweat.
A man, Richora, appeared from the small hallway and unlocked the cell. He grabbed her hands and slapped on bright silver handcuffs, then motioned her ahead. Clancy moved past him, thinking someone probably just bought her for the whopping sum of fifty pesos. Two men had come to look her over last night. They hadn’t said a word, just looked at her in that creepy lip-smacking, “I’m gonna have fun with you” leer.
Richora gripped her arm, pushing her forward.
She yanked free. “I can walk, ya know.”
“Basta ya,” he snapped, keeping hold of her elbow as he ushered her through the police station. It was an old house, really old. Water-stained walls and ceilings, worn desks, and a bulletin board with yellowed wanted posters near a drinking fountain that was stained with rust said just how old. There was so much dirt on the wood floors that it kicked up as she walked. Clancy stretched her neck to see out the windows. It had been nighttime when they dragged her in, but all she saw now was a cracked fountain in the courtyard, overgrown grasses, and great, a stone wall surrounding it. The green land beyond practically made her mouth water.
Richora forced her into a room, and she wasn’t prepared when he pulled out a chair, told her to sit, then took out a small pad of paper. They were actually going to ask her for the truth? When they’d left her in jail for two days?
“What are you doing in my country?”
“Sightseeing.”
“How did you know those men? The Sendero Luminoso.”
Oh God. The Shining Path? “They’re disbanded.”
“Is that what they tell you in your America? That we have conquered them?” He shook his head. “No, they merely hide better than before, senorita.”
“Not really,” she said. “I found them easy enough.”
“You are a woman. They wanted your body more than your mind.”
“At least I have both.”
His scowl darkened, winging his brows low over his dark eyes. “It would be wise to be polite to me.”
Perhaps, but she didn’t think good behavior meant anything in a place like this. “Are you charging me with something?” Was he a real cop or just pretending, going through the motions? Then she remembered he’d killed Fuad in cold blood.
“We are collecting evidence.”
“Like what? I was forced from my jeep and you raided it two minutes later. What do you think I know? Or saw?” Nothing, she thought, all this got her nothing.
“Why do you insist on lying?”
“Why are you being an asshole?”
He laid his hand on the table, and when it came away, Clancy saw the Terminator, a gizmo she’d created to destroy the pods without destroying the brain. She lifted her gaze.
“Explain it.”
“It’s an MP3 player.”
He nudged it toward her. “Prove it.”
The cuffs scraped the desk as she picked it up and turned it on its back. The slim pale gray device was shaped like the nanopod, an oval, almost teardrop, yet flatter. It did a lot of things, but it didn’t play music.
She turned it on. The miniscreen flashed open and it asked a series of questions. Then the key for the high-frequency pulse radiated at a decimal level no human or animal could hear. It would do nothing to them, only the technology, and she had to be touching the troops to use it.
She handed it back, the figures on the screen in the language of computer science.
Richora glanced, frowned, clearly confused. Clancy was hoping he was too proud to admit he didn’t understand.
“Explain this as well.”
It
