CHAPTER 30
The sky gradually lightened.
Brenna woke with a startled cry, and sat bolt upright, gasping.
Day Three.
She glanced at the window. Muted gray daylight.
Great for pictures, she thought automatically.
No harsh shadows. She kicked her boots free of the tangled covers and staggered to the bathroom, feeling the same dread soldiers felt as their tours neared the end.
Something awful was going to happen just as she closed in on finishing the documentary—just when she finally felt an ember of hope warming her heart.
Grace.
She rushed through her morning wash-up, shivering as she worked the cold wet washcloth over her body, first to soap, then to rinse.
The goose bumps made the fine hairs on her arms rise like plumes.
She toweled dry, checking her hair in the mirror.
Not great. Maybe she should shampoo. God forbid, she thought sarcastically, that she die with chaotic hair.
She picked at errant tufts with her fingertips.
What a mess. Her hair. Her life. She stopped in mid-action, gazing at her reflection.
She looked like a ghost, a phantasm of who she once was. Whole sections of her former self had gone missing. Crazy, messed up woman. What did Grace see in her?
She didn’t shampoo. She wanted to get out before Grace woke and made her way downstairs and insisted on going with her.
No way she was taking her out in this. Kav?ak was her obsession.
Grace was the innocent bystander, producing this story because her partner had wanted it and for some reason she thought it was important to finish it.
Whatever that reason, however, it couldn’t possibly justify her walking into the hell that awaited.
Nothing short of lunacy warranted that.
Luckily, Brenna met the criteria. Mariana said so.
She picked her panties off the top of the neat stack of folded clothes on the toilet lid and pulled them on, followed by her turtleneck and fresh cargo pants.
Transferring the contents from the pockets of the old pair to the new, she pulled out her great-grandmother’s tortoiseshell comb and ran a finger over its smooth surface.
Four generations in her family had used it. Surely, she’d live to pass it on.
“No,” she told herself firmly. “No hocus-pocus talisman stuff.”
She had work to do.
But she put it in her pocket anyway.
In the bedroom, she collected all the Euros and U.S. dollars she had squirreled around the room in case she needed to bribe her way through roadblocks.
She divided the bills and stuffed them into different pockets so she could pull out a wad and say it was all she had.
As always, her passport and traveling papers were in her cargo pants.
She filled a backpack with baby formula, pablum, baby wipes and other supplies she’d set aside from the crates.
A guest never arrived empty-handed. Her mother had taught her that much.
She hitched the pack onto one shoulder. Jasha had her camera and gear bag. On her way out, she stood by the door, surveying her room. She lived like a queen, compared to the Kav?aks.
Brenna opened the staircase door to the lobby and stopped.
It looked like Wall Street during a trading frenzy.
Every journalist in the hotel was downstairs, shouting, milling, panicky.
Fixers were organizing rides, grabbing bags, shouting out their destinations.
UNHQ and Separatist HQ news conference for talking heads and press releases.
Hospital, old town, and western suburbs for the real world.
On the sidelines, Vivian Kazanowski was doing a live shot for CNN, holding a mic with one hand, pressing her network feed earpiece to her ear with the other to hear above the din.
BBC photographer Nick Collins knelt on the floor, gear spread around him, stuffing his work kit.
With all that artillery raining down, there would be photo opps galore today.
In the France 24 news bureau—one of the plastic-covered shanties piled with editing equipment—she saw a tech editing footage of Pierre St. Germain doing yet another of his stand-ups from the hotel roof while tracers crossed the night sky behind him.
Ho-hum. The man never left the premises.
His real focus was the bar. Hard-drinking, womanizing, and cynical, he was taxiing down Geoff Garrett’s runway.
She scanned for Jasha.
A barrel-chested man wearing a straw plantation hat fell into step beside her, P.
Hunter Foxworth IV. The Americans had dubbed him ‘Beau’ because he was from Atlanta, old world.
A seasoned New York Times military and political analyst, he had taken pity on her when she arrived in Kav?ak.
Taught her how to read a war, how to distinguish news from bullshit.
He should have retired years ago, but she was glad he hadn’t.
“?avi?’s First Brigade breached Separatist lines last night,” he said without preamble. “Two fronts. Cutting the city in half. Southern armored column rolled in from the isto?ni district and is pushing the Separatists at the bridge. Western column is squeezing the suburbs surrounding the airport—”
“Is it still open?”
“The airport? They’re glaring hard at your friend Luc and his band of Merry Men. But they’re holding. Remarkably disciplined, those Canadians. Wouldn’t catch me looking down the turret of a T-55 with orders not to shoot—but I digress. Other news. Your father arrived in Vienna last night.
His meetings with ?avi?’s people will be much more interesting, now that your negative review has made world headlines. Congratulations, by the way—damned fine footage you got at the market.”
“Has my father made any statements?” She wondered if the U.S. would intervene now that her footage of the General’s massacre had been broadcast around the world.
“Sure,” Beau nodded, making his hand talk. “Yadda yadda yadda.”
Her heart sank. She’d risked her life to get the market footage, pressured Luc into risking his career, and her father still hadn’t publicly decried the General. What more proof did the man need? When would the world help these people?
Beau stopped, tugged her elbow so she would look at him, and gave her a paternal look. “?avi? has brought engineers this time, sugar, and infantry.”
Engineers cleared road blocks, she knew, and infantry—foot soldiers—meant house-to-house combat. Her heart spiraled into free fall. “He’s occupying the city,” she said in a scratchy croak.
Beau nodded.
This represented a complete change in military strategy, from ‘making you miserable’ to ‘coming to get you.’ It put the city in the direct path of ?avi?’s accelerating war machine. The blood drained from her.
Beau grasped her inner elbow, steadying her.
“That’s right, darlin’. The General’s done pickin’ at Kav?ak. He’s coming full force.”
He walked a few more steps with her. “Don’t let the Nationalists capture you, my deah. I shudder to think what personal retribution ?avi? might concoct for you. In fact, if you have a way out of here I suggest you take it.”
Fear tore through her.
He gave her a small squeeze and released her elbow. “Well,” he said, spotting his stills photographer. “Off to the wars.”
She lugged her backpack up the three steps to the bar area and scanned the tables for Jasha. He was sitting at a table beyond the bar, her camera and gear bag at his feet, his scarred face taut, the bowl of oatmeal in front of him untouched.
“Any news of your mother?” she asked, pulling out a chair and sliding the backpack off her shoulder in a single smooth motion. There wasn’t any phone service in Kav?ak, but he knew people with technology.
He shook his head, his feelings stuffed down his throat.
He had to be frantic. His mom was his last living family, his anchor, his reason for living—well, her and this god-forsaken city.
Dr. J was in her sixties, a history professor who’d lost her husband, three of her four sons, and the gracious home she had once lived in.
Through all that, she’d still managed to stay sweet.
“I’ll go with you, Jasha. We’ll stop at her apartment before we head to the nursery, and check up on her.” I’ll go in first and see if she’s in pieces. I’ll catch you if you fall.
“Are you ordering breakfast?” a scratchy-voiced waiter asked behind her.
No, she wanted to spit. I can’t eat now. I feel like puking. But when she turned, hoping she could fashion a less caustic response, she saw it wasn’t a waiter.
It was Grace.
“Shit,” Brenna hissed. She needed time to figure out what to do with her.
Grace rested her hand on Brenna’s shoulder and calmly pressed a kiss against her temple. “Good morning to you too.” She pulled out a chair and sat beside her as sedately as if she hadn’t just cursed her arrival.
Brenna put her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands. APCs were going to be scarce, but somehow she had to figure out how to get Grace on one, to the airport.
Grace nodded amiably at their fixer. “The correspondents seem agitated. I heard a couple of them talking about leaving. What do you think, Jasha? Should we extend our stay?”
Jasha nodded gravely. “Perhaps we get rooms on top floor.”
A waiter came and Grace ordered a round of fresh coffees and a basket of warm rolls, along with sandwiches and bottled water for them all for later.
Brenna didn’t like how congested Grace’s chest sounded. “Did you get the down comforter I had the bell boy take you?” She’d thought of it after Grace’d left last night, but hadn’t delivered it herself. Too risky. They would have ended up in bed together.
“I did, thanks, but—”
“You needed the warmth more than I did,” she interrupted. “I think you’re developing pneumonia from all the stuff you inhaled when the windshield blew in. Did you sleep?”
“Woke up coughing a few times. Woke up with the shelling. Woke up worrying. You?”
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
The waiter returned and set hot coffees, a basket of rolls, and bread plates in front of them. The to-go food was coming shortly. Grace inspected the tab and paid up.
Brenna took a roll, placed it on her dish, and pulled off a morsel. She brought it partway to her mouth, then set it down again. “Grace,” she said. “I don’t want you to come with us today. I’ll get Luc to send an APC and take you back to the airport, and I’ll catch up with you there, after.”
Jasha shot a glance at Grace.
Grace paused, her coffee midway to her mouth, and set the cup onto the saucer again with a small clink. “If I can’t get you to stay here,” she said, “then I’m going with you. There’s no negotiation.”
“There’s no point risking both of us. I’ll get the footage, and—”
“Not negotiable.”
“Please, Grace. Please. I beg of you…” She felt such an awful dread.
Grace took a breath, and it caused her to cough. When the paroxysm subsided, she said: “I’m not leaving you alone.”
“Then I’m going without you. Jasha, would you please bring the car?”
Jasha didn’t move. “No,” he said. “Grace is right. You are fragile. If it happens to you like yesterday, we need her. I will not drive if she does not come, too. Out of respect, Brenna. Because you are good woman. My friend.”
His answer stunned her. In two and a half years of working together, he had never denied her any request, no matter how dangerous or crazy. She stared at him in disbelief. Saw his determination. She shifted her gaze to Grace. “You two are colluding.”
“Ayuh,” Grace said, using the classic vernacular of her home state of Maine.
“Fine,” she said. “There are other fixers.”
“Yes, but I need my friend to go with me to find my mother.”