The Fifth Kingdom

by Caridad Piñeiro

  “Gringo dog. What do you know of our heroes?” Javier shouted in response and backed up his challenge with another burst of gunfire.

  Deanna tossed off her mother’s hand and reached for the ties on the pack again. “I can’t let this happen, mother.”

  Miranda must have realized that Deanna would not be dissuaded, but before Deanna could take the stone out of the pack, more gunfire erupted. This time it was from a greater distance and was followed by the pulsating sound of a helicopter engine.

  As soon the thump-thump-thump came closer, gunfire rang out from those on the ground.

  The walls of the shack shook from a combination of the gun battle occurring outside and the air kicked up by the helicopter as it came overhead. Deanna peeked over the edge of the table and from a side window saw the copter land about twenty feet away from the shack. From the side door spewed at least a dozen heavily armored men with assault rifles and with a sigh of relief, she dropped back down beside her mother.

  “Help is finally here.”

  “Thank God,” Miranda said and wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders, sitting out the minutes that seemed like hours until a final gunshot rang out.

  It was followed by someone calling out over a bullhorn, “Special Agent Santana?”

  Deanna and Miranda rose as one and faced where Bill still hunkered against the body of the woodstove. He rose more slowly, almost uncertainly, until he was visible through the window. He called out feebly, “Santana, here. Area secure.”

  “We’re coming in,” the man on the bullhorn confirmed and Bill slowly crumpled back down to the ground.

  Deanna and her mother raced to his side.

  It was déjà vu all over again as she noted the bullet wound in his abdomen. Placed her hands over the wound to stem the blood pulsing from his body. The warmth of it sickeningly familiar as it seeped through her fingers and his body shook as he tried to draw a breath.

  “This can’t be happening again. It can’t,” she said and glanced back toward the table to where the knapsack rested on the dirt floor.

  She was going to go for it, when Bill laid his hand over hers and said faintly, “You can’t change what is meant to be.”

  “No, Bill. I can change it,” she said, but before she could act, another CIA agent was bursting through the door followed by a slew of Mexican and American soldiers.

  The man grabbed hold of the radio at his shoulder. “We’ve got an officer down. We need immediate medical treatment for a gunshot wound to the abdomen.”

  He waved at the men with him who went to Bill’s side and lifted him from the ground, running with him toward the helicopter.

  “I want to go with him,” she said and the CIA agent nodded, talked into the radio again. “We’ve got two civilians coming with us also. Minor injuries.”

  After he hung up, the agent said, “You’ll need to be debriefed once we get to our destination.”

  Deanna nodded and scooped up her pack as she and Miranda headed to the helicopter. She crouched slightly as they hurried beneath the blades and were assisted into the belly of the copter.

  Bill had been placed on a blanket and two of the soldiers were already at work on him, making it impossible for her to do anything with the relic. To save him much like she had before. But as she nervously played with the ties on the pack, her mother reached out and covered her hand again.

  “Listen to what you know is right in here,” Miranda said, tapping a spot above her heart.

  Although Deanna’s heart ached with the fear of losing him, Bill’s words and her mother’s echoed through her soul. She had saved him twice only to risk losing him again because there was a greater truth she could not avoid.

  It was not in her hands to play God. Only He could decide matters of life and death.

  Releasing her hold on the pack’s ties, she leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder. Accepted the comfort her arms offered and the gentling kiss along her hair. Closing her eyes against the sight of the medics frantically trying to stop the bleeding from Bill’s wound, she prayed silently that Bill would be okay.

  That she had not found love only to lose it too soon.

  It took less than ten minutes to arrive at their destination, a Mexican army facility that was swarming not only with Mexican soldiers, but also American personnel and an assortment of men-in-black.

  “Where are we?” she asked after Bill had been whisked away from the copter and they were standing on the airfield.

  The agent with them replied in detached tones. “This is our base of operations for a joint terrorism task force with the Mexican authorities.”

  Deanna gestured in the direction in which Bill had been taken. “I’d like to go with Bill.”

  “Special Agent Santana is being well attended at the moment. We’ll keep you informed of his status.”

  A second later, two American army personnel arrived. The agent stepped aside to brief them and then returned.

  “These men will take you to quarters where you’ll be staying until we get things sorted out. You’ll be able to get cleaned up and we’ve provided a fresh change of clothes for you.”

  Although Deanna’s main desire was to be with Bill, she recognized that she was caught in the snare of red tape for now. But just to be sure she made her point, she stepped up to the agent who was almost of a like height. Leaning in so close that she almost bumped his nose, she said, “Listen up, Special Agent. You will not get a word out of me about anything until I get to see Bill.”

  Her mother laid a hand on Deanna’s shoulder and urged her away from the agent, but added, “I’m sure the agent will let us see Bill when it’s possible. Isn’t that right?”

  With a curt nod, the agent confirmed that he understood what they wanted.

  “Yes, ma’am. As soon as you’re ready, I’ll have you taken to see Special Agent Santana.”

  With a quirk of his index finger, he commanded the two Army soldiers who came up to them and escorted them into a nearby building. Once inside, they were directed to a small dormitory with half a dozen bunks. There was no evidence that anyone was bedding down in any of the cots, but on the surface of two of the beds were sets of clean clothes.

  One of the privates dipped his head toward an open space at the rear of the dormitory. “The showers are in the back. Towels, soap and shampoo are in each stall. We’ll be at the door in case you need anything.”

  Another quick dip of his head placed him and his partner into motion, leaving the two women behind staring at each other and then at the pack that Deanna still held.

  “You go first and I’ll watch your things,” her mother said and after a hesitant look down at the leather knapsack, Deanna handed it over. After all, she had to be able to trust someone.

  Moving quickly, she snared the clothes from the bunk and hurried to the shower stall. She ran the water and stripped as it heated. The warm water was a welcome balm and as she stepped beneath the stream, it loosened some of the tension within her, but also stung the myriad cuts and scrapes all over her body. The shampoo and soap added to her awareness of the many small injuries, but she ignored them, quickly washing away the dirt and blood of their travails in her haste to be with Bill.

  Wrapping a towel around herself, she poked her head out to her mother, who was sitting on one of the bunks, deep in thought.

  “Mom,” she called out and her mother slowly picked up her head, but smiled.

  She hurried over, understanding what Deanna wanted. She handed her daughter the pack and then went about washing up herself while Deanna finished drying off and dressed. Laying the damp towel on the narrow bench in the stall, Deanna sat and opened up her pack, stared at the relic within.

  So much power in such a tiny object and only three of them knew how it worked. It occurred to her in that moment that the fate of the relic was in their hands. If they kept its secrets, the sun stone would likely be placed in a Mexican museum and her mother would finally get vindication for the many
years that her theories had been discounted. If they revealed its secrets, or if they were inadvertently discovered, there was the possibility its powers would be abused.

  She understood that all too well, having struggled with using the stone to save Bill a third time, putting her personal needs above what was right.

  It was a moral dilemma that scientists had faced for centuries, balancing invention and discovery versus its impact on society.

  A knock came on the wall of the shower stall.

  “Deanna? Are you okay?” her mother asked.

  Deanna closed up her pack, rose and pulled aside the curtain. “I’m okay.”

  Her mother nodded, reached out and grasped her hand. “Then let’s go see Bill.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The Army personnel walked them to a second building which housed the base’s medical center. They passed a number of exam rooms and dormitories on their way to a small waiting area outside the surgical wing. The CIA agent who had been on the copter was standing guard by the door and at their approach, he came up to them.

  “They’ve taken Special Agent Santana into surgery. It may be some time before they’re done.”

  “We’ll wait,” Deanna replied and plopped down into one of the hard plastic chairs along the wall. She placed the pack at her feet and Miranda took up a spot in the chair beside her while the agent resumed his guard at the door to the surgical wing.

  It was difficult just to sit there, knowing that Bill was fighting for his life. Unable to do anything to help him other than pray that he would be all right.

  Miranda didn’t need to be a psychic to know what her daughter was thinking. It was there on her very expressive face and in the way she fidgeted in the seat, tapping her feet in a staccato beat on the tiled floor. Rubbing her hands along the olive green of the borrowed pants.

  She covered Deanna’s hand with her own to still the nervous motion. Sought a way to engage her daughter’s thoughts to keep her from worry about Bill.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said, but Deanna only shrugged.

  “What’s there to tell? I teach high school to New York City’s upper-crust teenagers. Give lectures and write boring papers that only academics have any interest in.”

  Understated, Miranda thought. “You’re considered an expert in your field. That’s quite an accomplishment.”

  But as her daughter shot a worried glance at the door to the wing it brought that kind of accomplishment into perspective. Somehow academic accolades meant little when issues of life and death were involved.

  With a comforting squeeze of her daughter’s hand, Miranda said, “Your father tells me you like to travel.”

  “Do you and Papi talk often?” Deanna asked in response and shot a questioning look in her direction.

  “Every other week or so. It all depended on whether our schedules allowed time for a call,” she said, thinking of the many stretches in the early days after she had first left when it had been more difficult to reach out to her husband. Thankfully the advent of cell and satellite phones had changed that and made their exchanges more frequent.

  “Why did you call me to come down and help?” Deanna asked, her voice small, like that of a lost little girl.

  She stroked her hand along Deanna’s hair, still damp from the shower. Tucked an errant wave behind her ear the way she had so many times when Deanna had been a young child. She had never had a doubt about why she called Gonzalo. About why she had kept the journal filled with bits of her daughter’s life.

  “I had shared so little of your life and thought we could share this. Plus I wanted to know how you were doing. I wanted to know what was happening in your life,” she freely admitted.

  “Then why didn’t you stay? Why did you leave?” Deanna immediately challenged.

  Why? she asked herself, thinking about the many reasons and how to express them. Wondering how to make it clear to her daughter that it had never been about anything she had done or any failing on the part of her father. That it had always been about her own weaknesses and doubts.

  “Papi said that you were like the feral cat down at the shore house. That even though you seemed to be domesticated, inside you were still wild and needed to be free,” Deanna offered up in an effort to help her.

  “Your father was always a very wise man, which makes me wonder why he decided to marry me,” she admitted, shaking her head as she recalled the rather studious and handsome young man she had first met at a remote dig in Peru.

  “He loves you,” Deanna stated without hesitation and sadly Miranda knew it to be true. Gonzalo had never stopped loving her and she wondered if that was part of the reason he had never remarried. But then again, she had never stopped loving him either.

  “I don’t deserve someone like him. Or you. I could never be there in the way that I ought to have been.”

  This time it was Deanna who squeezed her hand in consolation. “Did it ever occur to you that all we needed was for you to be there when you could? Even if it was only for part of the time?”

  No, it hadn’t. Miranda had always been the odd man out amongst the other mothers, especially the stay-at-home moms. She wasn’t the kind to make playdates or do lunch at the mall and shop. The free time that she’d had when she wasn’t on digs was spent researching in libraries as she worked on her various projects. Even the working moms were a world apart from her, with their nine-to-five jobs and holidays crammed into whatever vacation weeks they’d managed to scrounge from stingy bosses.

  “Mom,” Deanna prompted and stroked her hand across Miranda’s back.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for even part of the time. But I never stopped loving you,” she said, choking back a sob.

  Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, hugging each other hard as Deanna said, “It’s not too late for things to change, Mom.”

  “I know that now, DeeDee,” she replied, using the affectionate nickname that she hadn’t uttered in so long.

  “Dynamite Deanna,” her daughter said with a laugh and shake of her head. “I’d forgotten that.”

  Wiping away tears, Miranda said, “I didn’t. You were always so quick with your mind and full of energy. Special and I know Bill feels the same way.”

  The mention of Bill dragged Deanna’s attention back to the door to the surgical wing, which was exactly the opposite of what Miranda had wanted to do. But maybe talking about Bill was precisely what her daughter needed to keep him with her. To prepare her for whatever would happen.

  “Tell me about Bill.”

  Deanna thought about her mother’s request. Thought about all that she had discovered about Bill in the course of just a few days. There was so much she didn’t know where to begin.

  “The first time I saw him, I thought he was an obnoxious ass. He accused me of hiding at Halcyon Prep and I guess it really bugged me because he touched a nerve.”

  “You’re not happy there, DeeDee?” her mother asked and laced her fingers with Deanna’s. Urged her to lean back in the chair and relax. The action brought back memories of long summer days along the Jersey shore where their family had spent weeks when they weren’t taking a trek together to some remote location.

  “I am happy there. It’s just that I refused to admit how much I liked the time away as well. Maybe because I was afraid that would make me too much like you.”

  Deanna risked a quick glance to see if she had offended, but her mother only nodded in seeming agreement. “And Bill made you question that?”

  “I guess in his line of work you need to be intuitive because he saw right through it. Saw right through me to who I was. What I needed,” she confessed. But then she shrugged and laughed as she added, “I guess he didn’t expect to have to face what he needed as well.”

  “And what was that?” her mother asked, offering a gentle squeeze of her hand.

  With a smile, Deanna replied, “Me.”

  “He’d be a lucky man to have you in his life,” Miranda said and Deanna
looked toward the door again and the agent posted there. It had been over an hour since they had whisked Bill away. She was tired of not knowing what was happening with him. Surging to her feet, she stalked to the door and rooted herself directly in front of the agent.

  “I need to know what’s happening with Bill.”

  The agent barely shifted a muscle as he lowered his gaze to glare at her.

  “You need to go find out. Now,” she insisted and the agent must have realized she would not stop until he did as she asked.

  With a resigned sigh, he whirled and pushed through the door to the surgical wing, leaving Deanna pacing back and forth in front of the doors.

  Her mother came to her side and offered up a calming clasp of her hand. “Bill is going to be fine.”

  “How do you know that?” Deanna cried out, fear beginning to overtake her as she recollected how Bill had died in her arms. How it had yanked her heart out of her chest, leaving her feeling dead inside.

  “I just know,” she replied with a certainty that was calming to Deanna’s frayed nerves.

  The agent pushed through the doors before Deanna could reply, no hint on his face to clue her as to what he might say.

  “Special Agent Santana is still in surgery. He’s holding his own, but the doctors expect it will be at least another hour before they’re done.”

  Another hour, she thought. She’d go crazy in another hour.

  “Deanna, let’s sit down,” her mother urged and Deanna nodded. They were about to return to the hard plastic chairs when another black-suited man entered, bracketed by two military men. One American, one Mexican. Both of the man had lots of brass up at their necks, a testament to their rank.

  “Doctors Vasquez and Adams, I presume,” the man-in-black said. “I’m ADIC Williams. I’m working with Special Agent Santana.”

  Gesturing in the direction of each of the officers, he continued. “Colonel Richards. Commander Mendoza.”

  Deanna examined the faces of each of the men. “I presume you have some questions to ask.”