She dug in with her long legs, countered him, twisted so she could face the entrance.
She saw the Nationalist in silhouette, rifle butted against his shoulder, muzzle held high. He’d entered the room and stopped. Amateur, she thought dismissively. He stops and blocks the rest of his team. She glanced over his shoulder, confused. No team. He was alone. But—
One floor below, men’s deep voices barked out orders.
The flashlight slipped. An errant flash illuminated the Nationalist’s face. His dark eyes stared down the barrel at them. Sweat ran down the side of his face. His breath was so ragged the muzzle of his rifle was waving all over the place. No wonder he missed his shots.
She stopped resisting Daniel. “You?” she said incredulously. “You’re it?”
The soldier was a boy. Couldn’t be fifteen. And terrified.
She’d spent the day frightened of this? This child? She laughed. Crazily. At herself. At the Soldier-Boy. At Daniel. They were all so bent on survival they’d imagined each other all out of proportion. They were merely a man, a woman, and a youth, tokens in someone else’s game. Anywhere else on earth, they would nod politely and go their separate ways.
The boy’s index finger tightened reflexively over the trigger. Her laughter unnerved him. Males with guns wanted respect. “Stoj!” he barked. Stop!
She laughed more. But it was a wild sound, sob-like, the sound of breaking. She sagged in Daniel’s grasp. She was splintering. They were going to die at the hands of a child.
Soldier-Boy rushed at her, his face twisted with rage, and buried the muzzle of his rifle beneath her jaw. His body was quaking, warring between impulse and self control.
Daniel stiffened. Terrified of making any sudden move, he held Brenna very still.
Brenna lifted her eyes and locked them on Soldier-Boy’s. A great calm came over her. “Pull it,” she said. “Pull the trigger.”
Daniel tightened his grip around her waist. “Oh, Jesus, Brenna, no.”
“Go on,” she encouraged. “It’s okay. Just squeeze it.”
Daniel groaned. “Oh, Jesus, Brenna, Jesus.”
Thump. From the nursery.
Soldier-Boy’s head jerked up. The muzzle danced nervously in Brenna’s neck.
Mr. Fierce. Damaged little boy who’d had enough of adult chaos, was banging his head again.
Soldier-Boy glanced down the hallway, his eyes wide with apprehension. It hadn’t occurred to him there could be others.
“Bebe,” Brenna said, pulling free of Daniel to plead for the babies. “Bebe.”
Daniel lifted a quelling hand. “Now, son—”
The boy spun, youthful reflexes at their height, and rammed the rifle butt directly into Daniel’s face.
She heard bone break. Saw his face distort and gush blood.
Daniel grunted, staggered backwards, and thudded to the floor.
“No!” she screamed, scrambling toward him.
Soldier-Boy grabbed her shirt and threw her back down. “In here!” he bellowed in Kavsak. “Come quick!”
Thump.
The rest of the Nationalist squad stormed in.
The men broke right, left, moving swiftly, circling her, eddying around her. Flashlights flared, swept like spotlights down the hall.
“Bebe! Bebe!” she cried, her voice lost in the footfalls, the jingling hardware, the deep-voiced shouts.
The hardened steel of the boy’s assault rifle jabbed her chest.
A burst of gunfire shattered the night.
Her chest caved in. The chambers of her heart fell open like wedges of an orange ripped apart by brutal hands. The echo of shots ricocheted off the walls. In the instant of silence that followed it, she heard a tiny thud.
Mr. Fierce. The only child able to stand up. Hence, the only one who could fall.
Brilliant bolts of lightning ripped the skies apart. The heavens opened. Swirling thunderheads poured into the chasm, and the Valkyries appeared. Choosers of the Slain, they charged forth on great black steeds, their manes and tresses whipped by winds, sheaths of silk billowing about their shields and lances. A soaring, militant chorus demanding its warrior, the goddesses reached down through the battle and chose the boy for Valhalla.
Grief rolled through her. She spiraled into an abyss. Bleeding from the very cells that comprised her, the toxins poured out, drops formed trickles, trickles formed streams, streams turned into rivers of poison inside her, building and building until she could no longer survive the venom. A blood-curdling sound erupted from her chest, a single, sustained, high note of primal anguish, a torrent of inchoate, unbearable pain, calling after fates long-disappeared behind closed heavens.
Chapter 17
“Slap her.”
Brenna heard a deep voice issue the command from somewhere off to the side. She scarcely had time to translate the words from Kavsak before a meaty hand walloped her face. She felt the impact, the sting, from some detached place, but didn’t care. It was a mere flick compared to the raw, uncontrolled pain escaping from her chest.
The torrent raged out, unstoppable.
The dark silhouette standing in front of her twisted. His arm swept up in an arc and back-handed her across her left cheek.
You call that pain?
Nothing short of death would overcome this anguish.
She heard an irritated sigh from off-sides, and another order that her sluggish brain didn’t have time to translate.
She was punched. A hard right, that sent her sprawling further across the floor, toward Daniel’s death-still body. She grunted. Stars danced before her eyes, and all she could hear was a ringing sound. No screaming. Just her own ears, ringing.
Silence enveloped the room, as if the world needed a moment to catch its breath before it went on.
She came to—into the moment, the immediacy of perception.
And felt nothing. No emotion. No sadness. No fear. Not even anger. Just a vast, exhausted, void. She lay there, on her side, her face throbbing. Physical pain, at least, didn’t need explanation.
“Now.” The shadow with the deep voice stepped forward, obliquely illuminated by flashlight.
She looked up. And up. And saw him in silhouette, glimpsing the two Captain’s rosettes on his epaulettes. He was a huge man, bulky and muscular, Paul Bunyan-esque. A picture came to her, of him striding over mountains, pushing trees aside with his bare hands, roaring so powerfully that rivers trembled.
He didn’t address her, as she expected.
“Aleksandar,” he told Soldier-Boy. “Lower the rifle.”
The youth looked at him with a mixture of sullenness and defiance, but the muzzle went down.
“Step back.”
Aleksandar cast a shame-faced glance at the men surrounding him.
“All the way. To the corner.”
Aleksandar retreated into the shadows until his back touched the wall.
“Set it down,” the Captain said.
She heard the tick of the stock touching the cement floor.
“Now calm yourself.”
She cast a quick glance in Daniel’s direction. He was a couple feet away from her, his half-naked body a dim outline. She eased her hand toward him, an imperceptible millimeter at a time.
The Captain lifted his flashlight and pinned Aleksandar’s face in the beam. “Idiot,” he said. “My own son. Ignorant fourteen-year-old thinks he knows it all and risks everyone’s lives.”
The boy hung his head, mortified by his father’s cold appraisal.
“For what? To prove your manhood? What good is a man who doesn’t think?”
Brenna inched toward Daniel.
“And you—” The Captain whirled his beam on the three men in camouflage standing by the nursery-room door. “I hear babies. What brilliant military tactic have you wreaked upon them?”
The men looked at each other, two with loathing toward the man in the middle, and he at them as if they were animal droppings.
“I see,” said the Captain. �
��And how many did you kill, Dragoslav, before your brain engaged?”
A flash of light reflected off Dragoslav’s eyes. Hump-shouldered, long-necked, and rough-haired, the nocturnal predator caught feasting on the kill bared its canines.
“Show me your handiwork. Bring the dead out here where we can all see the powerful enemy you vanquished.”
Dragoslav told him to fuck himself.
The hairs on the back of Brenna’s neck rose. Dragoslav’s snarl emanated from hell itself.
The Captain’s back stiffened. “Very well.” He nodded to the two point men in the hallway. “You are free to express your sentiments.”
His flashlight beam hit the floor at the same moment that the first fist plowed into Dragoslav’s gut. Wrath, dark and dangerous, unleashed the men.
The flanksmen by the front entrance turned their lights on the fight and cheered.
She scooted forward, using the diversion for cover, and reached toward Daniel.
A boot pinned her wrist.
A brilliant slash of light cut her eyes. She turned her head away as if she had been struck again. She heard the Captain’s knees creak, and sensed him crouch near her. He smelled of cigarettes, cold night air, and dirty wool.
The intensity of the light striking her closed eyelids subsided.
“I work with imbeciles,” he said in English, at her ear level. “Easily-distracted morons who underestimate you.”
She opened her eyes, lifted her face to him, and saw him fully for the first time. His face was dark, his eyes deep beneath the ridge of his eyebrows, his nose such a sharp blade it might have slashed the hard thin mouth beneath it. The crater-shaped scar on his forehead, she guessed, was an old shrapnel wound. She lowered her eyes and saw a pistol handle protruding from the front of his belt.
“But you—” he spoke softly, voice carrying beneath the dull thud of fists, the grunts, and the brutal scuffling men in the hallway. “You are as intelligent and courageous as I suspected.”
The men encircling her, who were supposed to have been guarding her, abruptly realized they’d been diverted from their task by the beating in the hallway. One by one, they lowered their lights and repositioned their rifles, leaving her and the Captain in a single pool of light surrounded by darkness.
She lifted herself on a trembling elbow and looked for Daniel. She didn’t care if a Nationalist thought she was smart.
The Captain tipped his head in Daniel’s direction. “He’s alive.”
Her stomach buckled onto itself like a stack of blocks when one was quickly knocked out. She caught her belly and bent forward, stifling a cry.
“No!” the Captain ordered, his cold equanimity momentarily abandoning him. “No crying. I can’t stand the sound.”
“Captain Maric?” the smallest of the three men from the hallway interrupted. His lip was puffed out, his eye bloodied and nearly closed. “Dragoslav is ready to follow your orders now.”
Captain Maric stood, still looking down at Brenna, held his hand out to his men, and wiggled his fingers.
She sat up and turned toward the hallway. She didn’t want to see. She pressed her hands to her face, the horror welling up inside her. Oh, God. Oh, God. She felt a wildness, an hysteria rising in her chest.
And despite that, she dropped her hands and looked up, the witness.
Dragoslav shuffled into the light, his jacket and shirt ripped open, his face grotesquely disfigured. He turned to the light and lifted his arm, holding his trophy. Mr. Fierce dangled sideways by an ankle, his head, arms, and second leg flopping. His chest was riddled with a marksman’s neat cluster of bullet holes. A single gleaming baby tooth caught the light, Mr. Fierce’s one forlorn defense mechanism.
She gasped, staggered by the evil tableau. What was Dragoslav going to do, holding the baby like that? Drape him over a tree limb, and eat him later?
“Silence.”
Maric stepped closer to Dragoslav. “Where’s the rifle?” he asked, in Kavsak.
Dragoslav stared at him, uncomprehending. “The what?”
“The rifle. The bayonet. The hand grenade. What weapon did this boy raise against you? I want to see it.”
Dragoslav shifted his glance around the room to the other men and found no sympathy.
Blood seeped out of Mr. Fierce’s chest wound. Brenna watched a trickle slide downward, heard the soft tick as a drop hit the floor.
“Who else was in the room?” Maric continued bloodlessly. “Because I hear voices.”
“Babies,” Dragoslav finally mumbled.
“Did they have guns?”
“No.”
“And when you entered this apartment—” Maric pointed at Brenna, his cross-examination not yet finished, “—was this woman in the room?”
Dragoslav nodded, wary as a fox sensing a trap.
“What was she saying, over and over, in Kavsak—your native tongue?”
Dragoslav shifted uncomfortably. Mr. Fierce was getting heavy.
Maric wiggled his fingers at the two other soldiers in the hallway.
“Bebe,” they said in unison.
“Hmm.”
The Captain closed in on his subordinate. “Hold that child properly,” he ordered.
Dragoslav swung Mr. Fierce in a half circle, and caught him roughly with his free hand.
“Cradle him.”
Dragoslav jerked Mr. Fierce into position, glaring at the commander.
Maric paced briefly, then stopped in front of him. “I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that this boy could be your son.”
Dragoslav snorted incredulously.
Maric nodded. “With all those rapes you boast about? Certainly. Where do you think these children come from?”
He turned his back on Dragoslav, took three steps in Brenna’s direction, and stopped, his hand closing in on his belt.
Brenna read his intention. Her stomach flipped over.
Maric spun back to Dragoslav. In a single fluid motion, he raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger.
One dark hole marked the center of Dragoslav’s forehead. He crumpled. Mr. Fierce rolled from his grasp.
Maric retraced his few steps, prodded Dragoslav with his boot. “There,” he said, re-holstering his pistol. “War crimes tribunal. Case concluded.”
The execution had been cold, ruthless, brutal.
And maybe even moral.
Maric lifted his gaze to the dark corner of the living room where he had exiled his son. “Aleksandar.”
The lad approached, rifle in hand, pointed downward.
“Pull the shirt off Dragoslav. Use your drinking water to bathe the baby’s body. Clean him well, then wrap him in the shirt—neatly. Respectfully. Say some prayers. This child was one of ours.”
Aleksandar nodded, but the look of distaste on his face said he’d rather do anything but.
Maric grasped his son’s elbow on the way past. “Get the feel for the dead,” he said. “And while you handle them, give some thought to how often you want to be part of this. Discipline protects your life, the life of the men in your unit—and the lives of the innocents.”
The boy nodded somberly. “Da, tata.” Yes, dad.
Maric turned to his men. “Strip Dragoslav of his uniform. Take his weapons—everything that could be useful.”
“What should we do with the body?”
“Toss him off the balcony into the rubbish heap below. Nobody will miss him.”
Maric walked to the back of the apartment, slowed briefly to check the bathroom and the kitchen, then paused at the nursery-room door. He methodically scanned the room with his flashlight.
Brenna heard Squeak’s meowl, Grub’s scratchy cry, Heckle and Jeckle’s whimpers. She dropped her face in her hands in relief.
Maric disappeared into the bedroom, returned, and dropped something on the floor beside Brenna. Daniel’s jacket.
“He is shaking from the cold. You may place this over him.”
She hesitated. Two guards stood over h
er. Maric ordered them to stand at the entrance and shoot her if she tried to escape.
She grabbed Daniel’s jacket and scrambled over to him.
He was lying on his back.
Her heart tumbled with dread. She didn’t see his chest rising. She bent over him. Resting one palm on his bare chest, hoping to feel it expand, she dug in his neck with her other hand, seeking a pulse. His face was swollen, his nose shoved to one side, running with blood.
Come on. Breathe.
She felt a pulse. His chest rose, shallow. He was still alive!
She sagged forward, choking down a sob of relief, ordering herself to remain silent. If she cried, Maric might take Daniel away from her. Maybe draw his pistol and shoot him outright. She placed her lips on Daniel’s ear and whispered so only he could hear. “I’m here,” she murmured, her voice and eyes and nose wet with the tears she didn’t dare shed. She lowered her face and rested her cheek against his, cupping his sticky face with her hands. “You’re not alone.”
His skin was cool. She sat up, and chafed his chest and his belly, stimulating his circulation, warming him up.
Despite the stimulus, he remained unconscious. He’d fallen backwards and hit his head on the concrete floor.
The brain floated in cerebrospinal fluid that helped cushion it from injury. But with severe enough a blow, it would swell. The skull was a closed vault, so there was little room for the brain to expand. And that scenario, without medical intervention, could be catastrophic.
She lifted his head and gently palpated the back of it, feeling for indentations or fractures. She found a lump, felt blood.
She set Daniel’s head down carefully, lifted his nearest arm across his chest, then picked up his far knee and bent it. Pulling it toward herself, she rolled him onto his side, and placed him in the recovery position. If he vomited, he wouldn’t choke on it. It also minimized body contact with the cold floor, which would help fight hypothermia.
She shook out his jacket and draped it over his head and shoulders to conserve the heat over his critical organs, and started chafing his back, warming him as much as she could with just her hands. It was all she could do for him.
Maric studied her intently, his brows drawn together.
Day Three Page 27
