Day Three

by Patricia Spencer

  “Why the sudden hurry?”

  “Uh—” she hesitated, wondering how much to tell him. “There’s a break in the shelling.”

  He cocked his ears and listened. “Yeah. You’re right. It got quiet so gradually, I didn’t notice.”

  But I should have.

  “Where will we take them? Back to Dr. J’s?”

  “The airport. Luc can get them to the UN Refugee Agency from there.”

  “I’ll wrangle Mr. Fierce,” he said, “if you can tuck Heckle and Jeckle into a sling for me. You take the camera, Squeak, and Grub?”

  She shook her head. “Your shoulder is hurt. Mr. Fierce is going to fight you. If you take him and Grub, I’ll manage the rest.”

  “It’s too much.”

  “I’m leaving the camera.”

  He looked up sharply. “You never leave the camera.”

  “Hey,” she shrugged. “It’s only the cost of a small car. Besides, we’re finished taping. The documentary’s in the can.”

  He didn’t look convinced but he helped her lift the knotted sheet over her head and adjust it like a tiny hammock across her chest. He settled Heckle inside, then Jeckle. Squeak, being the smallest and lightest, went in last.

  While Daniel pulled the sheet off Grub’s bed to tie his own sling, Brenna went to the kitchen. She dug through the backpack and jettisoned everything but the water, the formula bottles, and diapers.

  The airport was less than a mile away, but getting to it past the Nationalists would not be easy.

  The neighborhood was laid out as a series of nested U-shaped streets. Five-story, cookie-cutter apartment buildings identical to Roza’s lined both sides of each street. The open ends of each U connected to a straight street lined with rowhouses, the backs of which paralleled the airport service road.

  Once they cut through the rowhouses to the service road, the terrain was wide open. No trees, bushes, or other barriers provided concealment. They would have to cross one-hundred fifty feet of open road. Then they would encounter a six-foot high airport perimeter fence with no gates or breaks.

  She and Daniel would have to stop in the open long enough to climb the fence and hand the children over one at a time.

  They may as well paint bull’s-eyes on their jackets.

  “All set?” Daniel appeared in the doorway. He’d had to tie two of the filthy crib sheets together to get them around his broad shoulders. Mr. Fierce was snarling and squirming under his arm while Grub, peeking out of the sling, screwed up her face in annoyance at his flailing limbs.

  Brenna held out the backpack. “Can you take this?”

  “Hold Fierce a sec—” he said, trading the child for the pack.

  Mr. Fierce yowled vociferously.

  Great, she thought. A public address system to go with the bull’s-eyes.

  Given the awkward weight of the children in the sling and the hardscrabble surface, Brenna opted to go down the apartment building stairs on her bottom. Using her boots as brakes, she was able to keep one arm around the precious bundle and use her free arm for balance.

  Although Mr. Fierce was tightly bundled, he was twisting his torso vigorously enough that Daniel decided to follow Brenna’s lead and go down on his butt, too. He placed Mr. Fierce on his lap, gathered Grub into his elbow and slid roughly to the ground.

  The street—which Brenna reckoned was the next-to-outermost ring of the nested U’s—appeared to be quiet. She peeked around the corner. Just the usual death and destruction. She scrutinized the deserted landscape, right, left, up, down, not wanting to miss anything that could get them killed.

  Land mines. Snipers. Nationalist troops.

  She tugged Daniel alongside herself so he could see where they were going. She motioned forward and to the right. “The airport terminal’s over there. We’ll cut across the streets and through the apartment buildings as much as we can, always moving in that direction. Once we get to the service road…we’ll see what we can do.”

  “Got it,” he said. “On ‘three’?”

  She nodded.

  “One…”

  She leaned forward, looking past him, checking the street one last time.

  “Two…”

  She ran out with him, cradling the small heads in the sling, cushioning them from her jarring stride as much as she could.

  Mr. Fierce apparently loved to go fast. Not a peep sounded from him as Daniel dashed across the road. She remembered how he quieted in the nursery when she’d swung him through the hallway.

  She clambered up one side of a garbage pile and down the other, into the shade of the next apartment building.

  “To the back and stop?” Daniel, fast learner that he was, already had his back against the wall, providing the narrowest possible profile to twitchy-fingered snipers.

  “Uh-huh.”

  They repeated the pattern twice more, running to the next street and the next without incident. By now, she estimated, they were dead-center in the neighborhood, at the peak of the next-to-innermost U.

  Though she heard the occasional pop-pop of gunfire, there was still no shelling. That concerned her. Crazy as it was.

  She peeked out to the next street. There was probably one more nested street before they should start moving through the apartment buildings down the leg of the U to the service road.

  She leaned forward, scanning, scanning.

  And glimpsed a fleeting shadow.

  She jerked back.

  “What?” Daniel whispered.

  “I’m not sure.” It was just a shadow—wasn’t it? It was only a glimpse, a flash. Maybe nothing. She wasn’t certain. She eased forward again, took a deep breath, and cautioned herself not to be impatient.

  Mr. Fierce fidgeted, lacking the stimulus of motion. Daniel swung him in an arc to quiet him.

  Squeak mewled, crowded by the larger boys.

  Brenna studied the street, concentrating, individually analyzing each feature of the landscape—every window, every doorway, every flutter of garbage. When the Nationalists came, would they send troops across the neighborhood in a straight line from the west, or rumble up the streets, following their curve?

  “Okay,” she finally said. “One…”

  Daniel tensed beside her, repositioning Mr. Fierce in his arms.

  “Two…”

  She stepped out.

  She didn’t know what caught her attention—a noise, a blur, a winged messenger telling her to get the fuck back, but she braked. Hard. And spun back.

  Daniel plowed into her, not expecting her sudden about-face.

  “Back!” she cried, tromping his feet. “Get back!” She grabbed his sleeve and hauled him, not gently, deeper into the shadows of the shambled apartment.

  “What?” he asked. “What did you see?”

  “Tanks.”

  “You’re sure? Tanks?”

  She nodded. Shadows weren’t slate-blue.

  His face blanched.

  “I think they’re on the service road. Quarter of a mile? I just glimpsed them between two buildings. They must have broken through whatever Separatist line was holding them earlier this morning.”

  “Headed east?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Christ,” he mumbled. “We’re behind Nationalist lines.”

  Nausea rolled through her. She pressed her lips together.

  Inside their cocoon, Heckle and Jeckle writhed against her. Squeak whined.

  Brenna rubbed her fingers across her mouth, thinking. The Nationalists would sweep the neighborhood, house by house, room by room. “Let’s get upstairs,” she said. When the troops arrived, she wanted to hear them in advance.

  Daniel raced up the staircase behind her, his long legs eating up two steps at a time like hers, and followed her through the series of broken walls that connected the third floor apartments.

  She selected the center unit, which was painted throughout in a lugubriously-dark green. The opening where the front window belonged was as distorted as a dental patien
t’s mouth, but part of the wall had withstood the mortar and offered better cover.

  Quickly ducking into the bathroom, kitchen, and two bedrooms—the apartment was laid out like Roza’s—Brenna verified that they were alone.

  Daniel followed her to the rear left bedroom.

  She started clearing the floor with the side of her boot. This was as sheltered a spot for the babies as she would find.

  “Now what?” Daniel asked.

  Well, she thought, that depends.

  Close quarters battle was the purview of elite soldiers. A highly-trained squad entered a room rapidly, broke alternately right and left, and kept their backs to the walls while they assessed the main area of threat. They exercised muzzle discipline, front and side focus, trigger control, and most importantly—target discrimination.

  They distinguished between enemies and hapless civilians.

  Here in Kavsak, she supposed, some adrenaline-crazed boob would pull the pin off a grenade and toss it inside.

  “Bren?”

  Daniel’s voice broke through her reverie. She lifted her face to him. “We wait,” she said. “If the Separatists can hold off the Nationalist troops until dark, we’ll try to cross the service road to the airport.”

  Squeak cried out, her patience for elbows in the face exhausted. Brenna reached into the sling for the first of the boys, whose weight had shifted and was pressing the baby.

  “We wait?” Daniel asked disbelievingly. “Shouldn’t we be running?”

  “Running?” She set Heckle—or was it Jeckle?—on the floor next to the wall. “Where to?”

  She understood Daniel’s desire to escape. It was visceral, akin to the mindless bounding of wildlife trapped by a forest fire. But they had a mountain jutting to the north, tanks on the service road between them and the airport, Nationalist infantry sweeping in from the west, and Separatist-held trenches to the east drawing rocket fire.

  “What if we moved east through the apartments? Couldn’t we outrun the Nationalists?”

  She lifted the second boy out of the sling. “Going east takes us away from the airport. The further from the terminal we try to cross the service road, the more open space we have to traverse at the runway.”

  “Is there cover near the terminal?”

  She shook her head. “It’s just shorter.”

  “How about Luc? Could his guys help us?”

  Daniel was picking through scenarios like a poker player with a lousy hand.

  “Luc has no jurisdiction outside the airport compound. If we make it to the perimeter fence and get fired on while we’re climbing it, Luc’s troops will watch us get picked off.” She straightened and looked him in the eye. “Daniel,” she said, her voice soft with regret. “There won’t be a cavalry.”

  Daniel was stunned by Brenna’s bald pronouncement. The dynamics were so different now that they had the children.

  Also, he realized, he’d missed a big ‘if.’

  If the Separatists can hold off the Nationalist troops until dark.

  They might not even make it to nightfall.

  Moving with the exaggerated care of a drunk trying to coordinate a simple action, Daniel set Mr. Fierce on the floor beside Heckle. The tot’s thrashing had loosened the sheet enveloping him, but he was so tired his relative freedom meant nothing. He lay there, dark eyes silently pinging from wall to ceiling to floor—waiting, like Daniel, for whatever happened next.

  Brenna freed Squeak and sat down with her. Leaning against the wall with the infant nestled on her upraised thighs, Brenna wrapped her hands around the tiny fists and rested them atop her chest. She didn’t say anything—she didn’t even look Daniel’s way—but he knew from her intensity that her interpersonal radar was set on high.

  Grub grunted crossly. Mr. Fierce had heaved himself against her the whole trip and she was put out. Daniel pulled her out of the sling and settled to the floor, back against the wall.

  The baby curled herself into his chest, snuffling at the front of his shirt. He rested his hand on her back, pressed his lips against her scruffy head, and patted her, letting the ineffable comfort of holding her permeate him.

  He wondered as he petted Grub’s back, how many times his own Dad had done the same for him. How many times had he woken his father, fussy and needing solace? A man left his children the legacy of his example—of how to love selflessly, how to nurture a mate and children, and how to shelter his family from the harshness of the world.

  Regret slid into Daniel like a sharp blade. He would not continue the Ellsworth tradition—not as a husband, a father, or even as a son.

  He had no wife. He was childless. And now—because of his quest to avenge Aya, he had neglected the needs of the living: his parents. He had been a hard-won child. Out of four pregnancies, he was the only baby his mom had been able to carry to term. His parents had raised him lovingly, provided the example of how to live an honorable life. But thanks to his decision to come to Kavsak, they would not enjoy his support in their old age. He had betrayed the gift of love that had been bestowed on him.

  And in the end, wasn’t that what mattered—love? Not stock portfolios, prestigious jobs, or social standing. Love. When the World Trade Center went down, how many final phone calls home contained that message? I love you. When people knew they were going to die, it was the only message worth conveying, the sum of a life’s value.

  He tipped his head back, and closed his eyes. This was it.

  End of the line.

  His stomach spiraled like a shot-down plane, trailing a sickening plume of nausea and cold sweat.

  The man he was at this moment was the sum of all he ever would be. Kavsak had shattered the rosy mirror he held up to himself. He was less than he thought, uglier. Under duress, he was not gallant, not honorable, not heroic. He had cowered on the balcony during the massacre, not challenging evil, but running from it like everybody else. He had done nothing to help the woman being gang-raped in the market yard. When surgical patients had begged him for mercy, he’d crushed them harder, bruised them more. He had stomped over the dead and not-so-dead, and devoured the rations meant for the starving.

  Grub’s head tipped heavily to one side, and she drifted into sleep with a soft sigh.

  He choked on a hard knob of self-scorn. Don’t trust me, baby. I’m not what I appear to be.

  His eyes slid over to Brenna.

  He wouldn’t get the chance to fully discover who she was, or to revel in the feelings that tumbled through him when she was near.

  Months of dinner dates and Sunday hikes at Great Falls would never have revealed what he’d discovered about her under duress in Kavsak. He’d glimpsed sides to her that he never imagined when she first stood in his office. She was complex—heady as a fine wine that required multiple tastings before its full bouquet could be discerned.

  On the surface, she was abrupt. She cursed. She was disinclined to tact, only rarely mannerly.

  She was an outlaw, a smuggler. Sometimes there was a chasm between law and morality, and she wasn’t a woman to wait for due process. Her actions were humanitarian, but technically, they made her a criminal.

  She had a sexually scandalous past. Imagine the shock a child of hers would experience, surfing the web and finding that picture of her mother, drunk on a billiard table, silk dress down her bare thighs, in mid-intercourse with an Emir! Not exactly role-model material, Brenna was nevertheless bone-meltingly maternal. She’d practically sublimed Squeak into her heart.

  Mariana was right. Behind that brusque exterior was a woman with a heart of gold, who was guided by a singular code of honor.

  Brenna cut through bullshit and made him think about what mattered. She jangled and stirred him as Aya never had. Aya had been safe, above reproach. Always under control, voice modulated, and graciously poised, Aya was a woman who reflected well on a husband.

  His eyes eased down the curve of Brenna’s breasts. Some relationships belonged to a given time and place, and did not transplant w
ell to a different world. After such a short time with her, he couldn’t be sure if theirs was one of them. How would she look in the light of the real world?

  Normally, he was a careful man, not given to impulse, disinclined to make declarations he might regret upon further consideration. Still. In that incautious part of his heart, he knew.

  He was in love with her.

  Squeak slept soundly, her tiny hands warm inside Brenna’s palms. Brenna kept her gaze on the baby, but out of the corner of her eye, she watched Daniel cave in. Lost to his thoughts, she figured he was conducting the usual end-of-life inventory that all men poised at the edge of death conducted.

  The muscles in the human face allowed unparalleled subtlety of expression. Daniel’s, never schooled in deception or trained to dissimulation, listed dismay, sorrow, regret, and the self-recrimination associated with measuring oneself against impossible, and theoretical, standards. This good man, she figured, was mentally punishing himself for his powerlessness, for not being the person that peacetime had allowed him to envision.

  Well, she couldn’t bear to watch him be so hard on himself.

  She lay Squeak gently onto the floor beside the boys, stood, and looked down at Daniel’s raised face. “I’m going to find a bathroom,” she said. It was the one place he wouldn’t follow her.

  He nodded.

  She went to the living room and stood to one side of the gaping window. She scrutinized the street below, listening, looking for tanks and foot soldiers. The street was a still-life, eerily tranquil, motionless in the late afternoon sun.

  But the pop-pops of exchanged gunfire—bursts with distinctive echoes, thrust and parry, advance versus retreat—were getting closer.

  She paced restlessly through the abandoned apartment. She hated the dismay on Daniel’s face, the regret he couldn’t hide, the fate awaiting him. He had hoped to survive. He had a life beyond Kavsak, family and friends awaiting his return. He’d thought he could control what happened to him here, that he could experience this without being transformed.

  He’d been wrong.

  She padded down the hallway to the rear bedroom. Leaning her shoulder against the wall beside the window, she surveyed the back street. Just a burned-out car lying on its side like the remains of some prehistoric beast.