Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  Not surprisingly, as a nation segregated along ethnic lines began taking shape around them, the Kavsaks declared themselves a separate city-state. Their very diversity had left them with no safe place to go. Once blended, there was no return to segregation.

  And so they sat, surrounded by General Cavic’s Nationalist Army, cut off from food, water, electricity, and the outside world—endlessly shelled, shot at, and starved.

  But still, they held on.

  The alternative was genocide.

  Brenna stirred as they banked, pinched her nostrils and blew out the pressure in her ears.

  Ellsworth turned toward her, his face inches from hers. “Brenna? What’s it like, on the ground?”

  She studied his face, so close to hers. She’d never met a man with such an open countenance, who kept no distance between his heart and his face.

  She regretted her churlishness, starting back with her outburst in his office when she had gone to sign the contracts. If your inexperience gets in the way of my safety, I will turn my back on you and walk away, she had spat. His distrust had hurt her and she had lashed back. But he hadn’t defended himself. He’d taken the hit, letting that awful statement wash over him unchallenged. He had stood unprotected before her, and she had wounded him.

  The thought stung.

  She was becoming everything she despised.

  Even so, despite her awful proclamation and subsequent cutting manner, he had brought her water, steadied her shaking hand, and held the bottle to her lips. Kindness ran river-deep inside him.

  And nothing disarmed her like kindness.

  As for his question—how could she possibly explain what lay below? Horror? Tragedy? Savagery? Fear? Humanity turned barbaric? Language was too rational, too removed from the primitive way the body responded. War was the chaos of body chemistry tearing through the physical landscape like a savage wind flattening a grassy plain. It was the human spirit whipped in an instant from despair to elation. Luck and destiny were the same thing. War revealed the best and worst of people and irrevocably changed those who experienced it.

  He had to live it to understand it.

  She shrugged, finally, in response to him. “They eat each other alive,” she said.

  The plane descended sharply and raced along the runway. The airport was utilitarian, nondescript—a control tower, a terminal, and two oblong out-buildings squatting by the runway. At present, it was only used to airlift humanitarian aid into the city. Foreign journalists and dignitaries, plus a handful of Kavsaks with UN transit cards—high-ranking politicians—were allowed to catch rides, but the general populace was forbidden to exit the city, airport or otherwise.

  Because of its geographic exposure, and because neither faction possessed military aircraft, the airport had no tactical value to either the Nationalists or the Separatists. However, at the beginning of the war, when the Nationalists held overt control of the facility, they negotiated a deal for its use with the tiny UN contingent coincidentally headquartered in Kavsak to carry out its peacekeeping mission in the disputed regions surrounding the city.

  Undermanned and with little clout beyond its international role, the UN team was bullied by the Nationalists into agreeing that forty percent of all aid that landed there would be distributed to its own faction. This, despite the fact that the Nationalists—unlike the encircled Separatists—already had free access to all the food, shelter, medical supplies, and weapons available in the world outside Kavsak. Thus, effectively, forty percent of the aid intended for the people inside the besieged city actually supported the army oppressing them.

  The terms of the agreement stipulated UN control of the airport, but the reality was that the airport remained open at the caprice of the Nationalists, who understood its inestimable political value.

  The plane braked hard and stopped.

  The loadmaster threw off his seat belt, and lowered the cargo ramp. A blast of frigid air blew into the interior. The ground crew, their breaths steaming in the cold, swarmed the aircraft.

  Brenna grabbed her bags and sprinted across the tarmac, behind a barricade of stacked shipping containers.

  The barriers, erected by the Canadian UN forces that now nominally controlled the airport, broke the sightlines between the disembarking passengers and the Nationalist tanks ominously encircling the southern perimeter of the facility. The tanks, along with the Separatists who aimed back at them from the five-story apartment buildings directly behind the north side of the airport, put passengers in direct crossfire.

  The front line was that close. The enemies separated by that little.

  She entered an eight-foot high maze of sandbags, chain-link fencing, and barbed wire with Ellsworth at her heels, his head instinctively ducked, and stopped at the reception area.

  “Bienvenue, Brenna.” A young woman with straight, chin-length brown hair and a bosom that ballooned like bread dough in a hot kitchen greeted Brenna as pleasantly as if she were serving coffees at a Van Houtte’s in Quebec. Canadians, the joke went, were so polite they thanked the automatic doors.

  Brenna reminded herself to exchange a pleasantry. “Merci,” she replied. “Bonjour.”

  The corporal shifted her attention to Daniel, who, like Brenna, extended his travel documents. The soldier accepted them, but did not examine them. Instead, she asked Brenna, nodding in Daniel’s direction. “Il travaille avec toi?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “He’s working with me on this trip.”

  The young woman keyed some data into a computer, handed back their documents, and raised a hand in the direction of the terminal lobby. “The Colonel awaits you.”

  Colonel? Daniel thought. Who was this Colonel guy everyone kept mentioning?

  He walked into the terminal, past a hand-painted sign that said “Maybe Airlines,” and stopped. Armed soldiers guarded every doorway and counter in the departure area. Mothers begged, children cried, and old men gestured vehemently. Kavsaks were clamoring to get out. But…weren’t they forbidden to leave?

  “Brenna!”

  An authoritative voice carried across the commotion. For an instant, the lobby fell silent. Like everyone else, Daniel turned to the source of that confident voice, and watched as a distinguished man in uniform strode across the arrival area toward Brenna. He was fiftyish, trim, and silver-haired.

  Slipping possessive hands around Brenna’s waist, the Colonel pulled her against himself, his desire for her ill-concealed.

  Yeah, me too, pal, Daniel thought. What man wouldn’t want to feel her body against his?

  Brenna embraced the officer warmly.

  An irrational pang of envy jabbed Daniel’s chest. Maybe they were lovers.

  When she pulled back, she exchanged kisses on each of the Colonel’s cheeks, in the French-Canadian manner.

  Brenna motioned Daniel closer. “Luc, this is Daniel Ellsworth, EBS in Washington, D.C. We’re working on a documentary together. And this is Colonel Luc Morriseau, Battalion Commander of the Canadian unit responsible for the airport.”

  Colonel Morriseau took Daniel’s hand—and his measure—while Daniel did the same in return.

  Though French, Egyptian, and Ukrainian UN forces held sway in the city of Kavsak itself, the delicate task of keeping the airport open fell on this man’s shoulders. The most highly regarded members of the multi-national forces, the Canadians had a long tradition of participating in peace-keeping missions around the globe. Highly disciplined and proven to keep their equanimity under the toughest circumstances, they perversely took pride in being equally hated by all sides. His job couldn’t be easy.

  Daniel nodded respectfully, and released his grip.

  The Colonel glanced speculatively at Brenna and then back at Daniel, and let go of his hand. “Come,” he said, motioning them to follow him.

  He led them down a set of stairs to an unmarked door, pushed it open, and crossed a large room divided into cubicles. At his office, he pulled a key ring out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and
pushed it in so his guests could precede him. “It is right here,” he told Brenna, lifting the cover of a gray metal cabinet over his desk. “Your camera. Just as you left it.”

  “Great,” she said. She eased it off the shelf, flipped the power lever on. When the LCD monitor brightened, her fingers played over the switches and dials on the sides and front of the unit.

  Morriseau threw Daniel a look. “Like a mother picking up her child from the day care, non? Has to check for herself that the baby is well.”

  Apparently satisfied by the indicators in the viewfinder, Brenna switched the unit off and straightened. “You have sandbags piled to the sky out there, and there’s—what?—a couple hundred people camped out in the lobby? What’s going on?”

  A flicker crossed the Colonel’s face. “We are expecting a major offensive. Cavic vows to take the city within the week.”

  Brenna’s face turned white.

  “After all this time?” Daniel asked, “What’s the sudden rush?”

  Morriseau glanced at Brenna and frowned. “Perhaps Brenna’s father intends to draw new borders based on the territories each faction already holds when the treaty is signed.”

  “Just what we need,” she said. “More photo opps.”

  “Oui.” Like so many Montrealers who spoke English and French with equal ease, the Colonel blended his languages. But his lilt was pure French Canadian. He gently placed a palm on the side of her neck. “It will be difficult, hein?”

  Outside his office, across the cubicles, the door burst open. A fresh-faced corporal with bright red splotches on his cheeks clattered in, blowing on his hands, stomping his booted feet.

  “This is Corporal Michael Stanford,” Morriseau said. “He will take you downtown. We’re down to a van right now. Bullet-resistant glass, but that’s it. You can wait for an armored personnel carrier, but it could be some time.”

  Brenna shrugged. “Can’t take pictures through peepholes.”

  The soldier—tall, bony-faced, and wiry-strong—came to attention in front of the Colonel. “Sir.”

  Morriseau put a fatherly hand on the corporal’s shoulder. “Two riders on rounds with you this morning.”

  “Yes, sir.” The youth nodded self-consciously. “Take your bags, Ma’am?”

  “No thanks,” she said. She turned to Morriseau. “But, Luc—I put some…personal effects…in the cargo hold. A couple of wooden crates. Toothpaste and underwear, that sort of thing. I was wondering if you might pop them in the next APC to the hotel.”

  “Let me see,” Morriseau said. “Humans in the van. Personal effects in the APC. These underwear, they are Victoria’s Secret?”

  Daniel looked from the Colonel to Brenna. They were speaking in code.

  “Exactly,” Brenna said, straight-faced. “Very expensive, valuable underwear for my personal use. Not subject to Nationalist quotas.”

  Morriseau nodded, reluctantly.

  Brenna squeezed his forearm. “Thank you. Again.”

  The Colonel turned to Daniel, pulled out his wallet, and handed him his business card. “If you need to confirm any of your facts…”

  “Thanks,” Daniel said, and slipped it into his inside jacket pocket. He shook Morriseau’s hand in parting and followed the corporal. Before he was out of earshot, he overheard Morriseau’s goodbye to Brenna.

  “You will be the end of my career.”

  “Oh,” she said, walking backwards away from him, her camera in her hand and her bags over her shoulders, flashing him a brilliant smile. “You know you want to.”

  Outside, a bitter wind ransacked Daniel’s clothes. When he got to the hotel, he’d have to change into his warmer woolens. From the edge of a huge berm of fresh dirt, he glimpsed a steady stream of rocket fire jetting off the mountainsides, flaring, trailing smoke, headed toward what he assumed was downtown Kavsak. He swallowed hard. That’s where he was going.

  “Sir?” The corporal slid open the door on a white van.

  Daniel frowned. Despite the giant letters ‘UN’ painted on the van, the side of the vehicle was riddled with bullet holes large enough to stick his index finger through. He got in the back, slid down the bench behind the driver’s seat.

  Brenna opened the back door and wedged the camera and the two bags on the floor behind the front passenger seat. She slid the door closed, and rode shotgun, up front.

  Pulling out, the young peacekeeper chatted sociably, saying something about being used to the cold because he grew up on a ranch in Alberta. While Brenna listened, Daniel tuned out, too astonished by the landscape beyond his window to focus on small talk.

  The airport service road ran parallel to a tall perimeter fence that enclosed the airport and runway. Directly across the open road, opposite the facility, there was a row of ruined townhouses. Low-rise apartment buildings sprawled out behind it.

  Daniel had read that over 300,000 shells and rockets had been launched into the city from the surrounding mountains. Over 200,000 people of the 500,000 pre-war population had fled. More than 10,000 civilians had been killed so far—1,500 of them children. But statistics hadn’t prepared him for the reality. This was the Apocalypse. Every dwelling was deserted, gutted, burned-out, every window a gaping hole, every roof collapsed. Reinforcement bars stuck out of concrete slabs like tortured fingers frozen in rigor mortis. Outer walls spilled onto the ground like eviscerated entrails. Nothing had escaped the terrible disfigurement of unrelenting assault.

  Six centuries of civilization—the onetime jewel of Southeastern Europe—had been reduced to rubble.

  The corporal whizzed past the shell of a house spray-painted with graffiti. “Welcome to hell,” it said, in English. Press corps humor. Pulling the steering wheel to the right, the young driver entered a long curve around the base of a single jutting mountain. The mountain was clear-cut, nothing left on it but tree stumps. Daniel ducked, peering upward through the glass, trying to see the top. Too steep for housing, it was one of those mountains that looked deceptively climbable, but took half a day to get up.

  Out of the curve and over a bridge, the road widened to a straight-open boulevard running parallel to the black waters of the Kavsak river. The corporal stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The van hurtled forward, tires squealing as the corporal swerved from one side of the debris-strewn road to the other without regard to the lane markers. Fortunately, they were the only vehicle on the road.

  Daniel glanced over the young driver’s shoulder. The speedometer needle was approaching the 130 kilometer mark. Eighty miles an hour! It would be too ironic to travel all this way and die in a car accident. “Son—“

  “We’re a rolling bull’s-eye,” Brenna explained, turning in her seat to look back at him. “And this is Sniper’s Alley.” She pointed across the river to the high-rises on the south shore. “From there, they use scopes so powerful, they can see the color of your eyes. The faster we go, the harder the shot.”

  He stared at the high-rises, wondering if someone knew his eyes were blue.

  “They’ll aim for the driver,” she said, as if she had read his mind. “At this speed, if they take him out, they get three-for-one.”

  She pointed thirty yards ahead to a row of shambled buildings that sheltered the road from the snipers. “If we make it into those shadows, we’re out of their sight-lines.”

  He lifted his gaze to where she was pointing. Three hard thuds thumped the windshield. An instant later a sudden frost raced across the glass and obliterated his view.

  Brenna cursed.

  The corporal’s hands flew off the steering wheel and he fell forward. The van caromed wildly out of control. Engine screaming, the vehicle roared into the shadows—out of sniper range.

  And directly toward the fortifying walls of the Old City.

  The right front axle thudded, tripped by a gaping hole in the road.

  Brenna was catapulted toward the windshield.

  Daniel lunged for her.

  The van swept out in an arc, fishtailing across th
e pavement, spinning out of control. He saw flashes of road and river and concrete. And all he could think was: Don’t let go of Brenna.

  The rear end swung around and the side of the vehicle smashed into the wall. The impact hurled him against the door.

  An instant later, still expending its kinetic force, the van rammed head-first into a second wall. Daniel plowed into the back of the driver’s seat with devastating force. Pain shot through his face and his shoulder.

  A numbing white hiss enveloped him.

  Chapter 7

  Tick, tick, tick.

  Brenna foggily identified the sound: Internal combustion engine sputtering, misfiring, still sparking when by rights it should be dead.

  Something warm dripped on her upturned face. She opened her eyes. The corporal’s torso was folded over the steering wheel above her, his face unrecognizably pulped, his blood dripping on her cheek. She thrashed, knocking tempered windshield glass off her chest.

  She was stuck on her back, her hips wedged in the gap between the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Her scalp was grazing the dashboard, and the gearshift was high-sticking her. She jerked, struggling to free herself, but the front of her shirt was so soundly snagged she could scarcely budge. Fighting gravity, she tightened the muscles in her belly, and rose to a semi-situp position to see what she was caught on.

  Ah. Ellsworth’s fist. Bunched up in the front of her shirt.

  Locked in a death grip.

  When he’d lunged for her just before the impact, he hadn’t been flung forward, as she thought. He’d caught her. Kept her from being ejected headlong from the van. Not bad, for a suit.

  He groaned.

  She lifted her eyes from the front of her shirt and saw his face.

  It was plastered against the back of the driver’s seat, his cheek distorted by the impact.

  “Ellsworth?”

  His steely grip on her shirt tightened.

  “Ellsworth.”