CHAPTER 17
Brenna lay in the darkness for a long time, listening to Grace’s breath ease, feeling her relax and fall asleep as Brenna’s body heat spread through her.
As far as she could tell, the Nationalist soldiers had not returned to the yard. Could they have left? She cradled Grace’s head and settled it on the floor, extricating herself from the tangle of their thighs. It was time to scout.
“Wha—?”
Brenna put her fingers on Grace’s lips. “Stay here,” she whispered. “I’ll be right back.”
She nodded and pulled her knees up to her belly.
Crouching along the back wall, staying away from the railing where she could be seen, Brenna took her time checking for sentries in the yard.
The nearest, western, staircase consisted of a single flight down.
No turns, no landings, no place to hide.
At the bottom, iron gates with vertical prison-style bars torched into the once-graceful Turkish arches were chained together and padlocked.
It might be possible to squeeze through the narrow gap at the top, but it was useless as an escape route.
The stairs led to the passageway, not directly to the street.
She expected the eastern gates would be the same, but she wanted to assess them. She moved silently around the perimeter and ended up diagonally across the square from Grace. The eastern stairs were identical. Straight shot down. Padlocked.
However, off to the side of the top landing, a narrow archway led her to an additional set of stairs, that went upward. She crept up in the pitch-black, blindly finding the steps with her boots. At the roof, there was a gate. She tested it. It swung open.
She slipped out and stood in the frosty night, listening. The distance held the usual noise—artillery, intermittent gun fire, the occasional rumble of heavy engines. After so much time in Kav?ak, it was auditory wallpaper, as familiar a backdrop as crickets to a stateside family.
It was the nearness that frightened her.
Fear lurked there, fangs bared, eyes intent, and limbs quivering, waiting for her to falter so it could leap out and savage her.
Only her conviction held it at bay. She was not prey.
She would not agree to be taken down. She would resist, as she always resisted.
Tempting as it sometimes seemed, to just surrender.
Easing herself onto her belly, she crawled to the edge of the roof. Gradually, very gradually, she brought her head over the ledge and looked down.
The street.
Twenty-five feet to the ground, she estimated. If they could ease themselves over the edge and hang from it, it would be… what? Six-foot body length plus arm’s length, say eight feet—from twenty five… a seventeen foot, bone-breaking, drop.
And once down there, even if they landed safely, who’d be waiting?
She stared at the perimeter of the building, willing the abstract shadows to divulge their secrets.
She grew transfixed, as transparent as the bitter night enveloping her, surveying the zone in neat quadrants.
Then she saw it—a tiny orange glow, no larger than the eraser on a pencil.
A guard, smoking.
Stupid, she thought, keeping her head very still. She could have him in her gun-sights right now and pick him off. But he was the one holding the gun, not her. The important thing was that if there was one guard, there would be others.
Suddenly, a woman’s scream ripped the silence.
She was screaming in Kav?ak—not English.
Not Grace. Very near, fighting, and desperately afraid.
Brenna shot a confused glance at the courtyard.
The woman was in the courtyard! The guards shouted, predators beckoning the pack.
Below her, the orange glow hit the pavement in a spray of sparks and the shadow abandoned his post.
Now, she thought. Now!
She sprinted down the stairs to the gallery, placing her feet carefully, her path mirroring the course taken by the sentries crossing the yard beneath her.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a gang of soldiers, ripping the dress off a woman, dragging her to the ground.
They must have captured her in the street.
Brenna rounded the corner, and skidded abruptly to a halt.
Jesus. Oh, Jesus. Grace was in the open, heading for the railing!
Panic rose in her throat. She moved faster, fear at her heels. She was going to give them away, just when they stood a chance of escape! The night was coming undone.
She hurtled into her, shoved her behind the nearest column, and pinned her, belly to belly, with her hand clamped over Grace’s mouth.
Her eyes widened with shock.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Brenna hissed. “You’re going to get us killed!”
She looked at her, confused. “You’re here?” Grace asked, after Brenna eased her hand off her mouth. “I thought it was you in the square. I was going to help you.”
Brenna’s anger collapsed like petals from a dying bloom. Grace would have gone for me. She dropped her face into her hands, undone by the thought. “No,” she whispered.
“Then who’s—?”
Brenna brought her head up again. “We have to go. This is our chance to escape.”
In the yard, the men chanted like frat boys in a beer-chugging contest.
Grace tilted her head in the woman’s direction. “We can’t leave her.”
“There’s nothing we can do for her.”
“Can’t we—”
She turned her by the sleeve. “Look. Six armed men. Fifty feet of open ground. You’ll be dead before you’re off the balcony. Or worse,” she added, nodding toward the woman in the courtyard. “We’d be next.”
Grace stared at her in horror.
Brenna concentrated on the tiny compass imbedded in her watchband.
She was trying to travel northeastward, toward the hotel, where she could put Grace in an APC back to Luc’s clinic at the airport.
But they weren’t making progress. The compass merely pointed.
It didn’t account for snipers, switch-backed streets, barricades, firefights.
She’d lost track of the number of times they’d retraced their steps to try a different route.
She glanced at Grace. She was keeping up, but her grimace said the morphine was long gone.
A deafening burst of gunfire ricocheted through the narrow passageways.
Brenna ducked. Grace landed on her knees beside her at the base of the sandbag barrier, squeezing her temples with the heels of her palms.
Concussions and loud noises didn’t mix. She held her breath, listening intently.
A man shouted in the distance, then another, and the street became silent again.
“Couple streets over,” she decided. “Maybe further. Hard to tell with the echo.”
Grace struggled to her feet, swaying unsteadily beside her.
Brenna hesitated, studying her, then slid her hand into the crook of her elbow. “Come on,” she said, retracing their route to a dark doorway. She motioned her into the recess. It stank of urine.
“Wait here,” she said.
“What?” Grace stared at her, stunned.
“I’m going scouting.”
“No. Not alone. Dammit. Didn’t you just see that woman being raped? I’m going with you.”
Amazed that she was on her feet at all, Brenna found it touching that Grace still wished to protect her.
Resting her palms on her shoulders, Brenna made a confession. “Grace, I’m lost.” Old City was a labyrinth, difficult enough to navigate in full daylight. For all she knew, there was no way out. Maybe the General controlled it all.
Grace’s eyes widened with alarm. She straightened. “We’ll find our way out together.”
Brenna shook her head. Grace’d been sucking up pain for too long already. She’d stayed steadfastly beside her, never complaining. But Brenna knew: Grace was in trouble.
She pulled the camera bag off her shoulder.
“I’m leaving the bags.” She didn’t want her to think she was abandoning her.
“If I’m not back by daybreak, take this one with the first aid kit and the water purification unit, and leave the other one. Don’t drink water. Not a drop unless you purify it first. There’s cholera, Alcott. Typhus. Dysentery.”
She issued brisk orders to cover the squeeze of her heart. Grace was injured. She didn’t know the first thing about Kav?ak, and now Brenna was walking away. But it was the only chance she had of getting them out alive.
Grace’s eyes were glassy. She was straining to focus on Brenna’s words.
“Grace? Grace, listen. If I’m not back by dawn, you’ll have to get back to the airport on your own. There are land mines—thousands of them all over the city. Stay on the pavement, don’t cut across dirt or snow. If you must, step inside the footprints of others. Don’t pick anything up—no string,
no paper, nothing. If you see others walking, you walk. If they run, you run. Snipers see you day or night.”
She shook her head. “I can’t let you risk—”
“Cut through the apartment buildings. Navigate by the sun. Go west, then south around the mountain. Don’t wait for me.”
Shit. She could tell she wasn’t absorbing her instructions. Her eyelids were drooping, nearly closed now.
“Here,” she said, pulling her shirt out of her cargo pants and unbuckling the leather pouch clasped around her waist.
“The morphine, and some antibiotics. Drugs are as good as money. You can buy safe passage with this. If you can’t make it without more morphine, inject a cc or two, only. Not too much. You need to be clear-headed.”
She pushed the pouch back. “You need this, to stay safe.”
“Hey,” she said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. You’re just watching my stuff.”
She spun on her heel and strode out of the doorway, rapidly distancing herself. This could be a terrible mistake. Two blocks away, she whirled around and stared down the ravaged street to the dark doorway, memorizing the landmarks so she could find her way back.
Her throat ached. If the tables turned, the hideaway would become Grace’s tomb.
Gunfire cracked loudly to her left. She jumped, ducking deeper into the shadows. Who the hell was doing all this shooting? If she knew who the players were, maybe she could stop reacting blindly and find a way out. She broke into a run.