Prisoner of War

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  The boy who had led her this far pointed to the woman. “She will be able to fix your arm,” he told her.

  “Thank you,” Carmen told him. She ducked under the low roof and made her way to the table.

  The woman looked up as she approached. She had dark circles under her eyes, which spoke of long-term sleep deprivation. Her face was drawn, the cheeks sunken. “You need medical attention?” she asked, her voice graveled with weariness. Her accent was odd and unplaceable, but her Spanish was perfect.

  “My arm—it is just a scratch. I’m sorry to bother you.”

  “Not at all.” The woman stepped around the table and examined her arm, turning it gently. “How did you get it?”

  Carmen told her.

  “I will give you a tetanus shot too,” the woman told her. “Sit down, please.”

  “Do you know who she is, Madra?” came another voice, a male one, from behind Carmen.

  Carmen swiveled in the chair to face the voice. She found herself looking at a man in army fatigue pants and a white cotton shirt that had seen too many washings. He had unkempt long hair that curled around his shoulders and at least a three-day growth of black beard. There was a scar running from the corner of his eye down almost to the beginning of his mouth. The eyes were startlingly blue and sharp with intelligence.

  Carmen straightened her shoulders. “Are you this outfit’s leader?” she asked.

  “This one right here?” he asked, pointing to the mud at his feet. “Yes, I am that.”

  “You’re American,” she accused.

  “Guilty as charged. I know who you are, too.”

  She could feel the old wariness rise in her. “I don’t think that’s possible,” she countered. “We’ve never met.”

  The woman, Madra, appeared again, carrying a kidney tray with medical supplies. “Do you want to take care of this, doctor?” she asked.

  Carmen blinked when she realized that Madra was speaking to the man.

  “Yes,” he said, coming forward and taking the tray from her. “You go and get some sleep.”

  “I just have to do one last round—”

  “I’ll do it,” he said sharply. “Go. That’s an order.”

  Madra nodded, relenting. “All right.” She walked back down the corridor of camp beds and ducked under the overhang.

  The man was fitting a needle to a syringe and filling it with swift, sure movements.

  “You let me think you were the rebel leader,” Carmen said.

  “You asked if I were the leader of this outfit. I am.”

  “You’re the camp doctor and the cell leader?” The needle stung and she hissed.

  “I am the doctor here,” he said stiffly.

  “Then who is the cell leader? That is the man I need to speak to.”

  “Then you’d better speak to me,” he said, dropping the needle back into the kidney tray.

  She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “The leader of this cell was killed a month ago. Now they look to me.” He smiled, but it was a mirthless, hard expression. “God knows why.”

  “But, you’re a doctor!”

  “And you’re the daughter of the President of Vistaria.” Again, the hard smile. “Yet here we are on this island paradise. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  * * * * *

  Minnie didn’t doze. She was too alert, her mind working overtime as she put more and more of her plan together, twisting details into the skein. She feigned sleep while she listened to Duardo moving around the room. Now, more than ever, she was mortally aware of the camera in the corner.

  She also worked out exactly what she was going to do when he left. When Duardo did leave he did not speak to her, which was what she had been expecting. Zalaya would not have acknowledged her in any way.

  She listened to the bedroom door open and then the outer door into the corridor open and shut. He had left the suite altogether.

  Her heart was thudding again, but this time her fear mixed with heady excitement. She climbed from the high bed, trying to make it look unstudied. She went into the bathroom and didn’t bother shutting the door because the camera could not see that far. First, she used the toilet and let the noise of it flushing cover the sounds she made as she removed the lid from the tank.

  Inside, rocking with the swirling water, the knife was propped up in the corner. Hanging from the button that popped the blade was a small key ring with the tiny key to the cuff on her wrist swinging from it.

  Still naked, she moved back into the bedroom and opened the tall closet. She selected a fresh shirt and a pair of trousers and took them back to the bathroom. Away from the camera, she measured the trousers against the length of her legs and used the knife to hack away the bottom six inches of each trouser leg. She cut a long spiral out of one of the tubes of cut-off fabric. It would serve as a make-shift belt. Then she carefully folded the clothes up into a small square pile and hid the knife and key between them.

  She carried the pile through the bedroom into the office and dropped them onto the desk there, the chain stretched almost taut. She undid the cuff, slid it from her wrist and fastened it about the handle of the desk drawer. It kept the chain taut, so the watchers would believe she was still at the other end of it.

  Thrilled to be free of the constraint, she dressed quickly. The trousers were tight in the hip and far too big in the waist, but she used the length of fabric to draw the waist in and hold the trousers up. The shirt billowed and she realized how much fluttering white material would draw the eye. She sliced and tore off the long tails and tied the front ends into a knot at her waist, which controlled the fullness.

  Dressed, she crossed to the console and turned on everything. She was familiar with the controls now and she quickly located both Serrano and Zalaya. They were in the older, sterile-looking rooms that she had learned were inside the administrative building at the front of the palace grounds. Serrano was in what looked like an intense meeting of half a dozen senior officers, including the white-haired Torrez.

  Zalaya was moving from room to room, speaking to the odd person, collecting files. Minnie could track his movements by switching from camera to camera.

  Satisfied that both men were far from the palace, she left that bank of monitors on the pair of them and began tracing her route through the palace with the screens on her left. She made mental note of guards, congregations of people, busy thoroughfares. For each risk she searched for alternative routes, using the cameras to check their viability.

  For forty minutes she plotted her course but could not eliminate every risk. She did not bother trying to reverse the path she and Carmen had used to enter the building. The coal chute cover was too heavy and she would never move it on her own. It meant she had to use one of the public entrances and that was where her greatest risk lay. No matter which way she worked her path, she ended up having to move through the rotunda at the center of the palace where the grand staircase and foyer lay.

  She recalled Duardo’s voice again and the harsh instructions. Your only choice will be to use the knife or die. It does not matter what you do with it. Stab, slice, hack. You keep using it, and you get yourself out of trouble if you can.

  So be it. She would have to take the risk. She smiled to herself as she finished tracking her route. It would make Calli laugh if she knew that Minnie planned to escape from the palace the same way Calli had once stolen into it, over the second floor balcony on the north wing and climbing down the sides of the decorative brick wall at the end, screened by the ancient and massive old banyan tree there.

  Her route decided, she glanced at the main bank of screens again. Serrano was still in his meeting, although the meeting appeared to be on the verge of breaking up. Torrez had already left the room. Zalaya was still on the move but hadn’t left the building.

  Minnie picked up the folded knife and weighed it in her hand. It was time to act.

  She climbed onto the desk and stepped up on the console, then onto the high sectio
n at the back of it. It gave her slightly less than six inches to stand but provided the necessary height. She took a deep breath and rammed the butt of the folded knife into the closest screen.

  They were flat panel monitors. She felt the soft screen give under the impact, then a satisfying crunch and an electronic pop sounded. The screen went blank and when she lifted her hand away, she discovered that the flexible screen showed barely any sign of her blow. That was a bonus. Moving quickly, she bashed each monitor into blank oblivion. For the last of them, on the left, she was forced to use the paper punch for extra reach. Balancing on her toes at the edge of the desk, grasping the bottom of the metal frame that held the monitors, she swung it over her head.

  She climbed beneath the console and battered her way through the wood paneling there with the base of the paper punch. She used the knife to slice through any and all wiring she could find. There was a lot of it. She kept at it until bare, shiny wire ends were all she could see.

  About ten minutes had passed.

  She dropped the knife into her pocket and eased open the door to the corridor. There were no posted guards in sight. The second floor of this wing was primarily used as bedroom suites for the more senior officers, so traffic at this time of day would be light.

  The corridor was empty.

  She stepped out, her heart leaping. There was a lightheaded relief at being able to leave Zalaya’s suite, but she ignored it because the relief was premature and inaccurate. She still had the rest of the palace to negotiate.

  She moved down the middle of the corridor, walking normally, as if she had every right to be there. There was no other way to do it. If she tried to run and flitter by unobserved she would draw attention to herself. The cameras were no longer able to track her and alert suspicious watchers. No one else in the palace had seen her before and might possibly mind their own business as she passed them.

  Her clothes would draw attention but if she kept her nose in the air and looked as though she belonged here, it might deflect questions. If it didn’t, then she always had the knife.

  At the end of the corridor, the passage opened onto the rotunda—an elegant stone balcony swept around the full circle, broken only by the big sweeping staircase down to the first floor and the two wings of stairs that curved up to the third. From the ceiling skylights muted light bathed the area, making the white stone of the balustrades glow.

  This was the risky part. She had to circle the rotunda to reach the foyer that gave her access to the outdoor balcony overlooking the front grounds and the administrative building. Even though she badly wanted to stop and take stock, Minnie forced herself to keep walking. It would look odd if she paused to look around.

  When a soldier’s head appeared as he climbed up the stairs, Minnie nearly jumped out of her skin. She took a shuddering breath and kept walking, not looking at him. She was going to have to pass almost in front of him. God this was stupid, he would notice something. Her bare feet for a start—his eyes were right at that level.

  She hurried her pace.

  “¿Apenas un momento, señora?” the man called.

  Sweat broke out on her temples. What would a normal person do?

  She looked over her shoulder and gave him a big smile. “I can’t stop, I’m very late,” she called out in Spanish, trying hard to emulate Carmen’s accent and pronunciation. She glanced past his shoulder. Another soldier climbed the stairs. This one carried a rifle. It was Soto, but his head was down watching the stairs as he climbed.

  “Stop just for a moment!” the first soldier called back. Minnie hurried around the curving balcony. The south wing corridor was about twenty yards away and the little foyer was just inside it.

  “Hey, I said stop!” He was shouting now. Soto would most certainly be alerted.

  She stepped onto the carpet in the corridor and was almost running as she reached the glass doors onto the foyer. She could hear the tread of the soldier behind her, echoing on the terracotta tiles in the rotunda.

  She pushed the doors inward and shoved her way through. She curled her hand around the haft of the knife in her pocket and with her other hand tugged at the knot of shirt tails at her waist, listening for the footfalls of the soldier to change as he reached carpet.

  She ripped the last of the buttons undone and held still, her back to the swing doors.

  “Lady, I said just a minute!” he exclaimed as he barreled through the doors behind her.

  Minnie spun to face him, a bright, enquiring smile on her face, the shirt pulled aside to reveal her bare breasts. “Hi there!” she told him, walking right up to him.

  He stared at her breasts, his eyes widening and his mouth shaping into an almost perfect “O”.

  Time slowed down. Sound became muffled. Minnie could hear her heart beat loud in her mind and it was steady and calm.

  She withdrew the knife from her pocket when she was a pace away and triggered the blade as she whipped it toward him. He seemed to move sluggishly. He lifted his hand to fend her off but she slipped the knife past it, aiming for a point just below where she thought his ribs would end.

  The knife slid into him with little resistance, right up to the hilt.

  Time restored itself to normal speed. Minnie stared at him as he looked down at his stomach and up at her. He looked surprised. Then he crumpled to the floor and the knife was jerked out of him because Minnie still had her hand curled around the handle.

  His green shirt turned brown as the blood soaked it.

  The hot, coppery taste flooding her mouth made Minnie sick. Her stomach cramped and spasmed and she put her arm across her face. It was only the lack of food this morning that saved her from vomiting. Trembling almost violently, she leaned down and wiped the blade on the man’s trousers as best she could and tottered toward the other set of glass doors at the end of the foyer. The balcony lay beyond.

  She fumbled to knot her shirt together as she went. The buttons were beyond her capabilities right now.

  The doors didn’t give under her hands and she stared at the handles stupidly until she thought to try turning them. The catch gave way and one of the doors swung open. She slipped outside.

  It was the first time she had tasted fresh air in nearly a week and she took deep lungfuls of it, feeling a touch of calm return. The sky was low overhead, black with menace. The air was thick and warm. A storm was building.

  She forced herself to keep moving. Soto would not be far behind.

  The wide balcony ran the length of the north wing, ending in the decorative open-weave brick wall that was as good as a ladder for climbing. She hurried toward it, glancing out over the balcony to the grounds below.

  Then she stopped.

  Duardo was walking toward the palace along the concrete path that connected the two buildings. He was about halfway between the two. Farther behind him but hurrying to catch up, was Torrez. There was something about the way he steadily stared at Duardo’s back that made Minnie’s neck prickle with almost painful intensity.

  She went to the balustrade to watch. As she spread her still trembling hands on the smooth stone, Torrez swung his rifle over his shoulder and brought it up to aim at Zalaya’s back, just as thunder cracked almost directly overhead with a noise like an explosion.

  Fright tore through Minnie, sharper and harder than any fear she had felt that morning. She heard the little squeak of the balcony door as Soto stepped through but ignored it. She knew what she had to do. She gripped the stone and took a deep breath.

  “Duardo! Behind you!”

  He looked up sharply and spotted her. She pointed to Torrez and he spun instantly, alerted.

  Torrez fired, but Duardo’s spin had pulled him out of the line of fire. The bullet smashed into the palace itself. Minnie could hear the sour “zing” as it ricocheted.

  Even as Torrez tried to re-cock the rifle, Duardo dived at him, grabbing the rifle and jamming it across the white-haired man’s throat.

  “Get your hands up, woman!” Soto yel
led.

  Minnie turned to face him, knowing time had run out for her. She was content, knowing she had helped Duardo. As she turned, she realized she still held the bloody knife in her hand.

  Soto saw it too. His face hardened. “Oh no, you don’t,” he muttered and aimed the rifle.

  “Hey, asshole!” came a woman’s voice in English.

  Soto looked up and to his left, his eyes widening.

  A gun fired and Minnie saw a black round spot appear on Soto’s forehead. His fingers squeezed the trigger of his rifle as he fell back and an invisible force rammed into Minnie’s upper arm and sent her staggering. She fell against the balustrade and her head knocked sharply on the stone. At once her thoughts scattered as dizziness swamped her. She fell to her knees and still the floor swayed and rolled beneath her. She toppled sideways and felt the cool tiles beneath her cheek. As she lay, she heard the rain begin to fall heavily, hissing and pattering.

  Hands were on her, rolling her onto her back.

  Nick’s voice, low and fast. “Hurry,” he commanded. “Her shout will have roused them.”

  “Minnie?” It was Calli’s voice. “Where did the bullet get you?”

  Minnie looked up, blinking and swallowing convulsively. “Calli?” She giggled. “You climbed the balcony again?”

  “It’s shock,” her father said and she felt a light touch on her arm. She rolled her head to look at him.

  “Dad?” Of all the astonishing events in the last few seconds, this was the most bizarre. Her father’s face moved into the field of her vision.

  “Yeah, hon, I’m here.” He looked up at someone. “Just a graze.”

  “She hit her head on the balcony rail as she went down,” Nick’s voice came again. Minnie couldn’t see him.

  The sound of boots running along the balcony came to her.

  “No, no, no...” It was Duardo’s voice. Minnie saw Calli look up, her mouth opening.