CHAPTER 41
Brenna lurched down the center of the road, weaving like a drunk, her thighs quivering under Grace’s dead weight. Mari?’s men had carried Grace down the stairs, lifted her onto Brenna’s shoulders firefighter-style, and let her walk away.
Brilliant flashes of destructive power lit the night sky, deadly strobe lights that alternately blinded her and cast her into darkness. She staggered over the uneven ground, picking a path through the potholes, the chunks of concrete, the garbage.
Grief clutched her, a wringing, body-wide spasm. I left them. I walked out on four babies. Heckle and Jeckle, Grub, and most of all, Squeak, who had looked into her eyes and trusted her.
She doubled over, feeling like she was going to vomit.
Grace’s body shifted.
Brenna spread her feet apart, rebalancing.
If Grace slid off, Brenna would never get her on her shoulders again.
Resolutely, she straightened, swaying beneath her.
She didn’t know how far she’d come, didn’t know how far she still had to go.
She just knew she had to keep placing one foot in front of the other and get to the airport, to medical care.
She had to save her. If Grace died, Brenna would have lost the children for nothing.
Despair eddied through her like a dark current. She stumbled grimly forward. Dark-windowed ruins lined her procession route, shocked mourners mutely witnessing her final fall from grace.
Leading with her right leg, she searched the ragged pavement with her boot, seeking her next solid foothold. The sky flashed, and her pupils contracted like the iris of a camera lens, turning everything black around her.
The ground disappeared. She pitched forward and fell into a shell hole with a spine-jarring thud.
Cold water, pooled at the bottom of the pit, flooded her boots.
Grace’s center of gravity shifted over the tipping point, too heavy to counter-balance.
Slowly, like some mythological beast that had been lanced with a final, mortal spear, she folded, one hinged joint at a time, and succumbed to the inexorable pull of the earth.
“No!” she roared out, her rump splashing to the bottom of the pit. Oh, God damn it. No.
She barely managed to control their descent enough to keep Grace’s head from hitting the ground.
Extricating herself from beneath her, she scrambled to her side. She was half-in and half-out of the crater. “Grace,” she whispered, lifting her bloodied face in her hands. Wake up and dispel the nightmare.
Her head rolled sideways. Moonlight fell across her bloodied face.
Brenna gathered her into her arms again and tried to lift her.
The crater was uneven, without solid footholds.
Her boots scrabbling against the edges of the mortar hole, she climbed out, plopped her butt on the pavement, and bracketed Grace with her legs.
She snaked her hands under her arms, lifted her upper body against her chest, and locked her hands together.
She leaned backwards, using the length of her own torso to gain leverage.
Straining, she pushed with her feet, her muscles trembling from exertion.
Grace’s inert body inched upwards.
Tightening her fists, Brenna heaved backwards again. “Move,” she growled, her frustration mounting. Move.
The next leverage failed. Grace’s pants had gotten caught on the asphalt rim of the crater. Digging beneath her, Brenna yanked at the fabric. Unhooked, Grace’s weight shifted suddenly, and Brenna lost her grip.
Grace slid downwards, deeper into the hole.
Brenna cursed, jumped in, skidded alongside her, cradling her head as she went.
Her legs folded into the pool of water, slowing her descent.
Brenna staggered awkwardly, barely able to keep her feet beneath herself.
Inexorably, Grace’s torso slid sideways and she came to a rest on the slope of the shell hole.
Brenna stumbled. Lunging forward, she couldn’t get up. She was too weak, trembling from over-exertion.
The eastern sky was tinged with pink. Soon, the Herc would land, unload, and take off again. There was a ten-minute window.
She gathered Grace into her arms as she had once gathered Ari’s lifeless body, and rocked her, keening. She saw herself as if from above, spiraling, becoming smaller and smaller, a tiny figure dwarfed by a flashing sky and the violence of man.
Hallucinating, she heard whispers. Out of nowhere, something thumped into the crater beside her, light-footed as a cat landing from a leap. She jerked, frightened.
Shh.
Brenna felt the brush of fingers as the mirage set his hand on her shoulder. He squatted beside her, face silhouetted against the lightening sky. “Come,” he murmured. “Come with us.”
She turned her head slowly, and blinked, bewildered. Five or six figures, clad in black, AK-47s in their hands, surrounded her and Grace. She reached out a disbelieving hand. “Jasha?” she whispered. “Are you real?”
“Yes,” he said, capturing her fingers. “I am here.”
The sight of him, the sweetness of his care, broke over her.
The last vestige of her self-control vanished.
She broke down, babbling incoherently, her words a senseless torrent about Mari? and his men, about Grace and her head injury, about Mr. Fierce and the other children—and most of all, about trust and betrayal and the infant girl, Squeak.
Shh. Shh, Jasha admonished.
But she couldn’t help herself. She was disintegrating.
A soldier behind her snarled at Jasha in Kav?ak. She was making too much noise. Drawing attention. They were exposed in the middle of the road.
Jasha nodded, then tipped his head in Grace’s direction. The men moved in.
“No!” she cried, holding her tighter. “Grace!”
Jasha put his hand over hers. “They will carry her.”
Grace’s weight came off her. She felt herself lifted to her feet, assisted up the incline of the crater to flat ground.
“Come,” Jasha said, supporting her. “To the airport.”
The men led off, carrying Grace by her arms and legs like a bagged deer on a pole.
Her head hung backwards, barely clearing the ground.
Brenna stumbled after them, her feet and legs still numb from being immersed in the frigid water.
Following silently, she relied on Jasha’s strong arms for support.
Every step she took felt like the last one she could manage.
Ahead of her, the men halted at an intersection, in the lee of the last of the apartment buildings. A row of abandoned houses stood across from them, all abreast along a straight road. The service road and the airport runway surely lay behind them.
She noticed an old farmhouse standing off to the left, away from the more-recently-built row houses.
The men shot across the road, headed toward it.
Brenna searched the sky. Sunrise. They were heading eastward, toward the lightening sky with its whimsically pink clouds. Away from the terminal. “Jasha—”
“I know. Keep going.”
She obeyed. She was in his hands.
The men double-timed it into a wooden shed attached to the farmhouse.
Jasha pulled her alongside and followed them into the darkness.
Voices rose excitedly. She heard the scuffle of boots, smelled the musky scent of unbathed males crowding a small space.
A light came on, narrow as a laser beam, and flashed chaotically across sandbags, ammunition boxes, uniformed Separatists, and Jasha’s scarred face before it was extinguished.
In rapid Kav?ak, his edicts unmistakably those of a commander, Jasha issued orders to the men carrying Grace. The soldiers’ boots thudded heavily over the rough-hewn plank flooring. They pushed the farmhouse door open and entered.
Jasha’s grip tightened on her elbow. “Come,” he said.
Indoors, another thin light beam cut through the darkness.
The tiny glow glanced off the walls and floor, and led them down stairs to the basement.
A trap door creaked open, then fell back on the floor.
She glimpsed a dim square of light, half a dozen rough-planked steps, and narrow-gauge railroad-type tracks at the bottom.
“The tunnel,” she murmured. The rumors were true. It existed, deep beneath the airport runway.
Jasha’s men, wrangling Grace’s body, momentarily blocked her view. She whirled on Jasha. “All this time, you—”
“There is no time,” he said, pressing her forward. “The Hercules is in its final approach. The Nationalists will stand down on the artillery for only a few minutes before resuming.”
She had to duck when she reached the bottom. The tunnel ceiling was low—only four-and-a-half feet high.
In front of her, Grace was laid on a stretcher. Made of pipe, welded in a metal-working shop, it was designed to ride on the tracks. One of Jasha’s men began pushing, while a man at the front pulled. A third man ran ahead of them, following the string of dim light bulbs.
“Stay in the middle,” Jasha said. “Live wires on the left, oil pipeline on the right. Go quickly!”
She ran, stumbling, into and out of the pools of light, following the stretcher.
An intersection appeared ahead of her. A hand-painted sign pointed forward. “Paris—3765 km.”
“Turn right.”
Good, she thought crazily. I don’t think I can make it to France.
The muscles in her lower back burned as she lurched forward, past scores of seemingly-endless support timbers. Jasha gripped the waistband of her pants, keeping her upright. If she fell against the live wires, they would both be electrocuted.
She heard thumping, a fist against metal doors. She pushed on, breathless.
Doors clanged open. Light flooded the tunnel. She stopped, hands on knees, drawing great gulps of fresh air into her lungs.
“The terminal,” Jasha said raggedly. “A little further, Brenna, and we arrive.”
She nodded, pushed on, saw stairs. She clambered up them on all fours, and fell onto the gray tile floor at Luc Morriseau’s feet.
“Brenna.”
Luc’s medics transferred Grace to the medevac stretcher and hovered over her with a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff. Outside the terminal, she heard the Herc roaring down onto the tarmac.
Luc squatted beside Brenna. He tipped his head, caught her chin in his fingers, and turned her face to better light. “You’ve been punched.”
“How long has this patient been unconscious?” a medic shouted. “Does anybody know?” It was T. Brownlee, the man who had previously taken care of Grace.
She withdrew from Luc. “An hour?” Two? She was dazed, unsure.
“Any seizures? Vomiting?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Medevac her.” Luc stood up, pressed a button on his walkie-talkie and ordered the plane held.
“She needs to be stabilized, sir.”
“We may not land another plane. Get her out.”
“Yes, sir.” Brownlee and the second medic rolled Grace away.
Watching them disappear, Brenna clasped a hand over her mouth, fighting back tears.
Jasha squatted beside her. “You, too,” he said gently. “You must leave.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I left the children. Four children. I have to go back and see if— Oh, Jasha, the infant girl, Squeak…”
“You are so exhausted, you can barely stand up,” Luc said. “You are in no condition to—”
“No.”
Luc got down to her eye level. “You are in love with that woman,” he said, motioning in the direction of the receding stretcher. “It is plain to see. Get on the aircraft and stay by her side.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t go. She had to undo what she had done.
Jasha put his hand on her shoulder. “The war is bigger than one woman. Kav?ak’s children were betrayed long before you found them.”
“The children—Squeak—was in my care!”
He shook his head resolutely. “It is time for you to go, my friend. You have done everything you could.”
Luc pulled her to her feet. “I can’t keep the aircraft on the ground any longer.”
“All right,” she lied. “I’ll go.”
Jasha lifted an arm to embrace her. She hugged him and stepped back. “You keep secrets,” she said.
“You are a smuggler.” He grinned with the half of his face that wasn’t scarred into immobility, then became serious again. “Someday I will find you and we will talk.”
She nodded, turning to Luc. “Bye, Luc.”
He slid his arms around her and held her tightly. “Brenna.”
“Keep in touch.”
“Bien s?r. I will catch up in one moment,” he said, turning to Jasha with a scowl.
She ran after the medics, pulling the memory cards from the camera out of her jacket as she went. “Wait!”
The medics slowed. She caught up, stuffed the cards into Grace’s jacket pocket, bent over her, grabbed her hands, and kissed them. “My darling,” she said, tears in her eyes.
“Ma’am—” T. Brownlee warned.
“Yes,” she said. “Go.”
Brownlee and the other medics hastened forward with the stretcher.
She ran alongside until she reached an intersection with another corridor.
Behind her, she glimpsed Luc coming toward her.
She broke away, turned the corner. Out of Luc’s sight, she ran full-out, snaking through hallways until she reached a rear exit. She smashed through double doors, raced past a startled guard, across the parking lot, spidered up the chain link fence, and dropped to the other side.
“Brenna, tabarnak!”