Oh, shit. I duck behind some shrubs to scope out the situation.
Savannah’s having a spirited conversation with the soldier. I can’t hear any of it—the wind’s behind me—but it looks like she’s doing most of the talking.
A tan-and-olive-drab camo Hilux with a roll bar across the cargo bed’s back end blocks the road behind our truck. The satellite shot pops up in my head: there’s no other way out.
A soldier in his mid-teens steps out of the passenger’s side of the camo Hilux. He peers into our truck’s cargo bed, pushes something around. Other than the water and a tarp, I can’t remember what’s back there anymore.
Should I join the party? I can’t decide if I’d make things better or worse. Having a pretty western blonde drop from the sky may be a cute anecdote; two westerners is an invasion. Then again, having me around may make it harder for them to turn her into a sex toy… though, admittedly, not much harder. What’s my best move?
Savannah pulls some cash from a pocket. She offers it with both hands and a big smile to her soldier.
He snaps handcuffs on her.
Holy. Shit. I try to not freak out. It’s hard. I need Savannah. She speaks the language, knows her way around, knows who to bribe when. Not to mention what they might do to her.
She puts up a fight. She doesn’t hit either of the soldiers, but she does her best greased-pig imitation to try to get away. But there’s two of them and she’s not a boxer, so she ends up pinned to the side of our truck with a bloody nose, squawking loud enough for me to hear from almost thirty yards away. Each soldier grabs an arm and marches her toward the camo truck.
Think fast.
I can stay under cover, let them haul her off, then come out when it’s clear. I’ll never find her; I wouldn’t know where to start, and I stand out like crazy here.
Or I can rush the trucks. Not to attack the soldiers—that decision would be worse than most I’ve made in my life—but to somehow hide in a truck so I go where Savannah goes. I have no idea what I’ll do there. In the meantime, they could catch me almost instantly.
Despite her wriggling like a cat about to go into a bath, the soldiers are forcing her into the back of the camo truck’s cab.
Think faster. Or, stop thinking.
I channel my inner Carson, stop thinking, and do.
I launch across the road, then sprint as best I can while bent over. Can they see past our truck? Don’t think. Savannah’s yelps and the soldiers’ growls get louder with each step. It feels like I’m making a whole parade’s worth of noise, but I keep scurrying along, trying to stay out of both the mud and the soldiers’ eyeshot.
Twenty yards. Ten.
A door thumps closed. Savannah’s voice disappears. Time’s up.
I risk a prairie-dog popup to see the two soldiers’ heads bobbing above the camo truck’s cargo bed, talking. A few seconds later, I reach our truck’s tailgate and hunker down for a beat to catch my breath. Now what?
The rental truck’s driver’s door clicks open. The truck shifts a smidge. I can feel the door slam before I hear it. The engine roars awake.
Now or never.
I slither over the tailgate and flatten myself on the steel floor just as the truck jerks forward. I’m directly behind the driver; there’s no reason he should turn around and look down, right? The tarp’s big enough to cover me and still have a mind of its own. That means it’ll make its own landscape that’ll help camouflage the human-sized lump over me.
They drive seemingly for days. The ridged floor absorbs exactly zero of the bumps and heaves as we jounce. Every few minutes, the truck lurches dramatically and my head whacks against metal, sprinkling stars in front of my eyes. The tarp doesn’t breathe and it’s sweltering under here. I peek out to see the sun to the truck’s left. We’re heading north. But to where?
We finally stop in a town that announced itself with an increase in noise and a decrease in speed. The driver climbs out, slams the door again, then helps his bud haul Savannah out of the camo truck. (I can hear and feel all this, not see it.) I listen to the ambient traffic buzz for some time before I dare stick my head out in the open.
Both trucks fill most of a small dirt lot behind a tiny flat-roofed, cinder-block building. The sky-blue paint’s been trying to peel off the walls for years. The parking lot’s rimmed with other squat cinder-block boxes. All the visible windows are papered over with ads or newsprint. Nobody’s around to see me.
Yet.
Chapter 48
I finally crawl out from behind a stack of rotting wooden pallets when the sky goes fully dark at 8:30. “Crawl” because I’ve been curled in a tight ball for over five hours, terrified to move and risk being seen or heard. The smell’s going to be stuck in my sinuses for hours.
Despite being temporarily crippled, I’m glad I escaped when I did. The teen soldier spent a lot of time supposedly searching our truck earlier in the afternoon. Some of it involved thoroughly testing the radio and air conditioning, but he also looked under the hood and under the chassis (where I’d considered hiding). As far as I can tell, he didn’t work out how to get under the back bench.
The traffic noise has faded to a whisper. Nobody’s come in or out of the blue building’s back door for at least two hours. This may be my best chance to figure out where I am and what to do.
The blue building is on a dirt side road maybe twenty yards away from what looks like a main street bustling with scooters and walkers. Nobody’s coming this way. Two royal-blue metal signs are screwed to the cinder block on the building’s front. On top, under Burmese script and something blanked out by two strips of duct tape, white English text says “MONG TON TOWNSHIP WAN MÉ-KIN POLICE OUTPOST.” Below a smaller sign that says in Burmese and English, “MAY I HELP YOU.” At least, I assume the Burmese says the same thing; given the reputations of the Myanmar Police Force and the UWSA, it could say “GO AWAY” or “ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.”
The sign’s next to a pair of open wood-panel doors, their formerly-white paint about as far gone as the blue on the walls. A trapezoid of cold fluorescent light spills out on the crumbling concrete front step and the dirt. Pop music grates out of a tinny speaker inside.
I trot across the road to get a view of what’s in the police station. The teen soldier is lounging behind a battered metal desk in a bile-green office, smoking. There’s a filing cabinet behind him, some flyers and official-looking paper tacked to the wall, and a little swiveling metal fan trying to move the heavy air around. I edge sideways toward the main street. Just before the left-hand doorjamb cuts off the view, I see a door of old-fashioned iron bars set into the room’s right-hand wall.
That must be where they’re keeping Savannah… if she’s still there.
It occurred to me while I hid behind the pallets that somebody from Mongton (the big city around here) may have collected the western spy anytime this afternoon. The only way to know is to go in the police station and look. And the only way to do that is…
Well, we’ll see.
I prowl the side roads, slipping through gaps between homes, skirting lit windows and the voices of people sitting on their front stoops or back yards. This walking is easier than what I’ve been doing for the past few days; the ground’s level and mostly isn’t a mud pit. But it’s harder, too. I can’t afford to be seen. Any noise I make could trigger someone to peek out a door or window and see a westerner wander by. That would probably be big news here.
After about ninety minutes, I have a plan. I don’t like it. It’s a shitty thing to do. But I need to get the kid soldier out of the police station so I can either rescue Savannah or find out she’s not there. That means giving the soldier something urgent to do.
A quarter-mile north of the station, I find a cinder-block box masquerading as a house. The front door was open when I came by half an hour or so ago; now the door’s closed and the light’s out. A beaten-up motor scooter leans against a beheaded tree trunk ou
tside.
I pluck two men’s black socks off a clothesline next door. I creep back to the scooter, tie the toe of one sock to the leg of the other, then stuff the free toe into the scooter’s gas tank.
During my walk, I’d found a cheap plastic cigarette lighter. Now, as my thumb hovers over the spark wheel, I stop to think. This scooter may be a piece of shit—rust and duct tape are all that’s holding it together—but it belongs to somebody who probably can’t afford to buy a new one. He hasn’t done anything to me. I’m about to ruin his week.
If I don’t, Savannah will rot in a Burmese jail cell because I got her into this mess.
This scooter’s the only one I saw parked far enough from a building to be safely exploded without burning down the house. If not here, where?
Shit. What a time to develop a conscience.
A pair of drunk-sounding dudes trudge down the road past me. I fade into a shadow until they’re long gone.
I can’t stay out here forever debating the ethics of what I need to do. I can’t leave Savannah with the cops. (Would she leave you? Of course I wonder that now.) Besides what they might do to her legally, there’s a whole list of things they might do illegally. Whatever she’s up to, she doesn’t deserve that.
I flick the lighter.
The socks are mostly polyester, so they flame right up. It’ll still take a minute or two to hit the gas tank. I need to be well on my way back to the station before they do.
Moving quickly and silently isn’t anything I usually need to do, so I’m not very good at it. Dogs bark; a cat yowls; a door squeaks open behind me. But whatever noise I make stops being a problem a minute and eighteen seconds after I lit the socks.
Foom.
I glance back in time to see an orange glow above the rooftops behind me. People spill out of their homes to gawp at the light and the uplit thread of smoke and chatter about what was that, anyway? They don’t notice me edge through the shadows.
Half a dozen people crowd the doorway into the police station by the time I slip behind a tree across the street. I can’t translate what they’re shouting, but I understand it: What was that? What are you doing about it? Protect us!
The kid soldier’s standing in front of the crowd, his palms out toward them, trying to yell over them in a reedy voice that doesn’t carry far. It sounds like the usual don’t worry, be happy speech that usually means head for the hills.
Come on, dude. Do your job. Go find the terrorists.
The crowd’s not buying his act. They eventually badger the kid into strapping on his gun and following them to the disaster site. He closes the station doors on his way out.
Did he lock them? We’ll see.
Once the street goes back to sleep, I trot to the station and twist the rusty doorknobs. They turn but the doors don’t open. There’s a deadbolt, though judging from the few inches of play in the doors, it’s not much of one. I scour the neighborhood for people being too interested in me, then yank on the knob. The doors rattle and give a bit, but stay shut.
Well, I’ve already committed arson. What’s a little B&E on a police station?
I start yanking on the knob in time with “We Will Rock You.” Each time I pull, the doors bow out a little more. The deadbolt soon starts making crunching sounds. Finally, the bolt gives way with a loud crrrack and I nearly clock myself with the door.
The lights are still buzzing loudly. I rush to the barred door. “Savannah?”
She spins, stares my way for a few moments, shakes her head hard, then whispers, “Rick?”
“Yeah. Are you okay?”
“No.” She shuffles toward me.
“Where’s the key?”
“I don’t know.”
I rifle the desk—our truck keys are in the middle drawer—and a metal credenza before I discover an old-school skeleton key in the top drawer of the filing cabinet. The cell lock needs WD-40, but it still works. The hinges shriek like they’re being flayed.
Savannah staggers out of the cell, shaking. Dried blood coats her lips and chin. Her dress is caked with dirt and her nosebleed blood, and the right-hand sleeve droops from a torn shoulder seam. “You came back for me.” She sounds like she doesn’t believe it. “My hero.” I don’t think she’s kidding. When I step in for a hug, she stiff-arms me. “Don’t touch me! I’m filthy. This place is disgusting.”
I’m more worried about her face than the cell, but whatever. “You said you’re not okay. Can you walk?”
She nods way too fast. “I can walk. I need to get clean. Get me out of here.”
I close and lock the cell, put the key back, then fit the front doors together so they look unmolested. Savannah climbs into the cargo bed. I say, “What are you doing?”
“Don’t wanna get this mess on the seats. Go south. Hurry!”
I pull through the alley. The kid soldier’s standing in the middle of the road.
We stare at each other for a beat. He scrabbles at his holster. I stomp the gas and fishtail down the road with my heart beating as fast as hummingbird wings. A hole appears in the back window about a foot to my left. There’s a clang behind me.
Highway 45 isn’t busy at this time of night, but there’s still traffic and it’s all going slower than I like. I start driving like the Thais do—creating my own lanes, swerving into oncoming traffic, passing in the slow lane. Closed shops flash by on both sides. None of the other drivers seem to think this is strange.
We need to get out into the open countryside. We have options out there. We’re too easy to bottle up in town.
I finally let off the gas when we pass the man-made ponds at the southern edge of town. Savannah knocks on my window. She yells, “Keep going! He’s probably after us.”
“Probably not yet.” I fish something out of my pants pocket and heave it into the river we cross just past the ponds.
“What was that?”
“His truck keys. They were next to ours in the desk.”
“He still has a phone.”
“I know. Where are we going?”
“Keep going straight. Turn right in about half a kilometer. There’s a road.”
I don’t bother to ask how she knows this.
“Road” is a generous description for the rutted path we turn onto. The forest crowds both sides and blots out the cloudy sky. Twigs scrape the side-view mirrors. I stop when the trees close in behind us and climb out onto the dirt. My hands ache from my death grip on the wheel.
Savannah pops up in the back. “Why did you stop?”
“To catch my breath, and find out where we’re headed. Are you okay?”
She sighs, settles back on her heels. “I’m better than when you found me. I went to some pretty dark places in that cell.” Her voice is fast and shaky. “Keep driving to the river. I gotta wash, I gotta get clean. I peed myself in there. My skin’s crawling. I can’t tell if it’s bugs or just… just a reaction, but I have to wash now. Okay?”
The road breaks out of the trees after a couple hundred yards and takes us almost due west across planted fields. Low hills make dark shapes against the sky ahead of us. I pull the truck into a stand of trees to hide it from anyone looking for us. When I get out, the tumble of rushing water fills the air.
Savannah bustles past me toward the river’s sound and smell. I step-slide down the embankment in time to watch her literally rip off her dress and panties, then wad them in a ball and heave them into the river. She plunges into the water.
There’s barely any light. I turn on my phone’s flashlight and sweep it around. We’re at the edge of a slow pool sheltered from the rest of the river by rocks and a tree trunk. The light splashes on Savannah as she dunks her head. “Sure you want to swim in that?”
“Get my bag. Please? There’s antiseptic soap and lice shampoo.”
When I hand her the squeeze bottles, she scrubs at herself so hard I expect to see blood. I’m not sure what kind of reaction I expected from her, b
ut this wasn’t it. “Did they hurt you?”
“They roughed me up some. I fought them.”
“I know.” I add up her cleaning frenzy and the shell-shocked look in her eyes when I let her out. “Did they do… anything else?”
“Like rape me?” She splashes water on herself, then starts scrubbing again. “No. The younger one wanted to, I could tell. They groped me pretty hard when they were searching me.” Suddenly she stops washing and stares at me, her face dissolving. “They didn’t get a chance. I was lucky. Lucky.” She starts to cry.
I wade into the water—it’s on the edge between cool and cold—wrap my arms around Savannah, and let her bawl into my shoulder. Her skin’s solid goosebumps. The water or her experience? Doesn’t matter. I rock her gently, whisper “Shhhh” and “You’re safe now” and pat her back. All the things I used to do with Janine when she came undone.
Her sobs eventually settle into hiccups. She draws back enough to look up at me. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. If you didn’t freak out, I’d worry.” I kiss her forehead and give her a long, tight hug. “Sorry I took so long. I had to wait ‘til nighttime.”
Savannah holds my face in both hands. “I almost gave up on you.”
I take her hands in mine. Her knuckles are raw. “Sorry I wasn’t there in time to keep them from arresting you.”
She shakes her head. “I’m glad you weren’t. If you were, they’d have got you too, and we’d both be in that nasty cell.” She squeezes my hand. “Let me finish washing.”
“Okay.” She’s a faint glow in the darkness as she steps back into the pool. “Is that safe to be in?”
“With all the rain, it’s cleaner than most of the tap water here.”
I sit on a log and listen to Savannah splash in the river. I never expected to see her cry. Vulnerable isn’t a word I associate with her. But I know first-hand how shattering it is to have that door clang shut behind you and not know when—or if—it’ll open again. She’s going to dream about today for a long time.
She finally perches on a rock and runs a fine-toothed metal comb through her hair. “You should take a bath, too, while we’re here.”
Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3) Page 30
