He looks around, like he expects someone to jump out.
More Kosztylan commands shout from behind me. I swallow hard and turn around to find a thin man with dark circles under his eyes and an assault rifle in his hands, gesturing toward me with the barrel of his gun.
A thousand scenarios run through the back of my head, all of them bad. Very bad.
“Get in the truck, Penny.”
I have a gun pointed at me. I don’t have much of a choice.
Brad offers me a hand. I take it. I flop down on one of the crates while the truck starts to move, and yank my hand away from his.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“No shit, Brad. Start talking.”
“We’re helping take some food across the border into Kosztyla,” Melissa pipes up. “It’s for the resistance. Also medical supplies.”
“You stole them from camp?”
“No,” she says, her voice wavering.
“The Church has been using our missions in Solkovia to funnel supplies to the Kosztylan resistance. They’re hard-pressed and almost wiped out. The oppression of the—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snap. “If the army catches you doing this, they’ll arrest you and you’ll end up in prison in Solkovia. That doesn’t sound like fun. For any of us. If the Kosztylans catch us, we could be executed.”
“We won’t be caught. I’ve been doing this for years.”
I look at them both.
“Fine, you can be crazy. Melissa, I can’t believe you involved yourself in something like this.”
“They need our help.”
“You talked her into this, didn’t you?” I say to Brad, ignoring her.
“She asked me what I was doing. I told her the truth.”
I let out a long, heavy sigh. “How far is it to the border?”
“About an hour, then half an hour to the camp. They’re in the mountains, in a pass.”
“Great. We’re going to die.”
“We’re not going to die. I’ve done this before.”
“Right, sure you have, Rambo. I’ve seen this movie. I know how it ends. They’ll burn a tire around your neck and pass us around the camp.”
Melissa tenses up.
“They’re not like that. They’re freedom fighters opposing a brutal totalitarian regime. Every man and woman in that camp is risking their lives for freedom. We have a sacred duty support them however we can.”
“You do. I didn’t sign up to be a soldier. I’m a teacher. I’m not helping anyone fight a war.”
“You’re going to have to keep quiet about this.”
“I’m going to talk to the elders.”
“The elders know. The church is using the missions to funnel supplies, I told you.”
“Then I’m calling the State Department. If the Kosztylans find out what you’re doing, they’ll wipe the camp off the map and no one will lift a finger to stop them. You’re putting all of those women and children in danger, Brad. You may have volunteered yourself for suicide missions, but you have no right to involve everyone else without their knowledge or consent.”
Brad snorts. “Half the people in the village are refugees, or have family across the border. What, do you think me and Melissa do all this ourselves?”
“How many times have you done this?” I say, turning to her.
“Um, once,” she chirps. “This being the one time.”
“You trust him to take you over the border into one of the most totalitarian regimes on the planet? Are you that horny?”
“It’s not like that!” She grabs his arm. “We have a real connection. When Brad’s term is up he’s coming back to America with me and we’re getting married. I was going to invite you.”
She turns up her nose, like the invite is withdrawn.
Idiots.
I hold on to the crates as the truck bounces and jounces along, maybe twenty miles an hour. Slow enough that I’m tempted to jump and make a run back to camp, fast enough that I don’t dare, knowing I’ll break a leg or worse. Ending up out here in the middle of the night, crippled, would be a bad time.
There are wolves out here, and the followers of the Old Way talk about worse things I’d rather not believe in, but riding in the open back of a pickup truck through the dead of night toward the Carpathian Mountains, it’s easy to believe the dead walk and feast on the essence of the living. They have some creepy legends in their folklore.
I guess you get really creative when you’re imagining the things that can eat you out here.
The mountains get closer and closer, filling up the sky. The ground just juts upward all at once, and the truck swerves onto a track that cuts a gentler path up the slope, sawing back and forth to level out a bit. The driver is aggressive, and I have to hold on hard. Brad holds Melissa tight against him and grips the rail on the side of the bed with white knuckles.
The truck slows to a crawl as it ascends, for another hour at least. I could definitely jump off and run now, but then I’d be trapped in these mountains with no food, no water, and no way to call for help or contact anyone. The border is somewhere in the mountains and while I don’t think we’ve passed it, it must be close. I can feel its presence, like an invisible breeze gusting over my shoulders.
2
By the time we draw close to the camp, I’ve settled between two crates. A couple of times I look over my shoulder and see a thin line of dirt, some rocks, and a sheer drop of about five hundred feet and growing. They picked a good place to set up their camp. It’s too small to be accessible by air, and can only be reached by one narrow road. If they’re well supplied they could withstand an extended siege.
Or get blown to hell by missiles and bombs. I can’t believe this is happening. Penny, you stupid, stupid girl, of course you’d end up like this.
I’m never going home. When my parents don’t get their phone call next week they’ll call the church and demand an explanation, and a sincere, warm pastor with a buttery voice and a calm manner will tell them that the Lord works in mysterious ways and if they pray hard enough, he will see fit to guide me back to safety.
My mom will sit in the kitchen and tear towels apart with her hands and my dad will soldier on and keep going to work, like if he sticks to his routine hard enough, it will force the world to make sense again.
I’ve seen it before.
At five or six miles an hour, barely above idling, it takes hours to ascend the mountain slope. The road is cleverly concealed from below. You’d have no idea it was there if you didn’t know where it was. It saws from north to south up the steep grade. The truck groans and leans at the sharp hairpin turns before leveling out again, working its way up an almost vertical ascent.
Melissa holds Brad’s hand while we ride up. He smiles at her reassuringly and pats her hand, which for her is probably like a hand down her shirt. I can see her just melting under his gaze, and I half believe he’s completely sincere and thinks this is a great idea and doesn’t realize the danger he’s put us all in.
We’re all going to die.
The road levels out again. Ahead there’s a pair of men smoking cigarettes, milling around a wooden gate. The truck driver waves and they pull the big rickety gates open, and we slow. The truck drives very slowly over a little wooden bridge that’s clearly designed to collapse if something heavier rolls over it, so whatever it is will get stuck in a trench. On the other side of the gate, machine guns that look like they came off the set of a World War II movie sit on tripods, aimed at the gate. Bored-looking soldiers in a mishmash of military garb, sweat clothes, and rags shiver behind them.
It’s maybe fifteen degrees cooler in the mountains. I’ve started to shiver and goose bumps have raised up on my legs. Melissa is fine in her long dress. Brad doesn’t seem the worse for wear at all. She leans in under his arm and strokes his chest, forgetting herself as he toys with her hair.
She looks really happy. I hope we don’t all get blown up over
this.
The truck rounds a bend, threading between big rocks. More fighters mill around above, walking obscured paths with slung rifles and cigarettes glowing in the dark. There’s a second gate and then the camp.
It’s smaller than the village and aid-worker camp we left, more tightly packed, an assortment of tents of different colors and camouflage patterns under a huge ceiling of netting held up by poles and wires. The only thing poking out is the antenna on a radio shack nestled up against the rocks.
As far as I can tell there’s some barracks tents, some metal prefabs that look to be Cold War vintage, and one big tent, probably the mess hall and whatnot. The truck pulls to a stop and five or six of the fighters walk up with their Kalashnikovs on their backs and and start unloading the boxes. Brad jumps down and offers Melissa a hand.
I step down on my own, ignoring his offered help.
“When they get it unloaded we’re going back to camp, right?”
Brad eyes me. “Sure. This way first. Let’s warm up in the tent. I need to talk to some people. Stay close by me. You’ll be fine as long as they know you’re with me.”
I frown. That sounds like a warning. Why wouldn’t we be fine if we weren’t with him?
When I look around at the fighters, I get an inkling why. These guys are eyeing us both like pieces of meat, and I wish I’d worn something other than shorts. Their gaze on my legs makes my skin crawl, and Melissa whimpers when one of them passes close to her. She tucks up to Brad’s back as he walks toward a tent at the far end of the camp. I stay a couple steps behind, my head on a swivel.
The pressure in my skull grows with every step. This isn’t right. We’re not supposed to be here. My instincts are screaming shrilly at me: run, run, you dumb bitch, run now, but there’s nowhere to go. Brad got us in and I have to trust him to get us out.
That’s just great, Penny.
A metallic taste twists my mouth when I remember how I got here: at gunpoint. I lost track of the guy who waved the rifle at me back at camp. Nervously rubbing my arms, I duck inside the tent, close behind Brad.
It looks like the set of a cheesy eighties action movie. Faded map on the wall, cheap folding wooden tables and chairs, and some kind of officer in a more uniformy uniform seated behind the desk, poring over a different map with little pins stuck in it. He rises and offers Brad a hand but gruffly shouts at him in Kosztylan.
It’s close to Solkovian, but it takes me a second or two to puzzle it out.
He said something like, “Your ass is (late?), CIA.”
The CIA part was in English, or at least he just recited the letters. They start talking too fast for me to follow and I hear something like Amerikaneesh, the Kosztylan word for “American.”
CIA. Fucking CIA. Alarm bells start going off in my head. My knees buckle a little and I feel the blood drain from my face as my stomach drops. Melissa stands there with a blank look on her face. She’s checked out, just great. I do my best to pretend I didn’t understand, blinking and gazing blankly at the wall. I look away from the map as my heart pounds, hoping they don’t think I’m some kind of spy.
Brad and Bearded General go back and forth for a few minutes, talking about supplies. I can’t understand every word but with context and some guesswork I can rough out what they’re saying.
“You did not tell me there would be extra merchandise.”
“It was a last-minute addition. These help workers are too questioning. Keep stumbling on the operation.”
Bearded General laughs. “Too bad for them. Not bad for us. Last merchandise we sold very much money, wealth for cause. Bought new shipment for trade. You bring more weapons, we bring more (something I can’t make out).”
I stare at the floor, hackles rising on the back of my neck. They keep talking about merchandise and trading stuff. I remember my kooky Twentieth-Century History professor from school and the day he spent ranting about the CIA, Operation Paperclip, Iran-Contra, the cartels, drug running. He had this whole map laid out with all these connections between the CIA and drug runners and stuff. I thought he was nuts, but it sounds like that’s what they’re talking about here.
I wonder what the merchandise would be, though. The crates were marked food, but some were clearly military crates painted over. I’ve seen pictures. Besides, an identical crate sits in the tent just now, with the top pried loose.
Sitting inside, in a bed of blankets and straw, is a long black tube with a sight, a grip, and a trigger. Some kind of rocket launcher or grenade launcher or something. The bomb parts sit in a neat row next to the launcher, big tubes that taper to a fatter width and narrow again at the tip. They look like those RPG things the bad guys use in video games. Looking around the tent reminds me of Red Dawn, except Brad is no Patrick Swayze.
The alarm bells are getting louder. Is Brad selling them weapons? What did he mean by merchandise? It sounded like they were selling the merchandise for drugs, whatever it is.
I keep my head down. They think we don’t understand. I don’t think Melissa does. She just smiles blankly like she’s trying to make a good impression. I tug on her arm, trying to get her attention.
Brad says something like, “The extra one stumbled on us while we were loading the truck. I try to bring once upon a time. Second one too smart. Wasn’t planning to bring her. Damaged goods. Blonde untouched. Lot of money.”
Untouched, what?
Bearded General eyes Melissa. She smiles, again trying to make a good impression. She’s probably thinking about how awesome it is to support these brave, democratic freedom fighters. When Bearded General looks at me I feel like some insect is crawling over my skin, down my top, and up my shorts.
“Older one no good. I keep. Blonde lot of money. Keep away from these dogs, yes. They ruin goods. Can have other one as long as I get first. Take them both to my tent. Broker arrives when sun gets up.”
Oh fuck. Fuck me. The wheels stop spinning and slam into place. If they’re not talking about selling me and Melissa to someone, they’re playing the world’s most unfunny practical joke. I weigh my options in two or three seconds, grab Melissa’s arm, and bolt.
She just stands there and almost falls down.
“What are you doing?”
“Run, you idiot. They’re going to kidnap us. They’re traffickers!”
Neither Brad nor Bearded General seem especially concerned by my outburst, nor do they raise any alarm when I run out of the tent with Melissa.
It becomes clear why. One of the fighters drives the wooden buttstock of his gun into my stomach. Hard. It knocks me on my ass and rams all the air out of my lungs. They grab Melissa by the arms and she starts screaming and flailing, which only prompts them to grab her harder.
Her screams of fear and pleas for help turn into a shrill cry of pain as they twist her arm until I think it has to be broken, and she arches in agony, trying to relieve the pressure. The fighter holding her takes the opportunity to shove her at his friend, who grabs her dress and pulls hard. Melissa screams and starts to cry, begging them to stop.
Brad casually steps out of the tent, aims a sleek black pistol in the air, and pops off a shot. The crack jerks all the fighters’ heads around to face him, and he bellows in Kosztylan, too fast for me to make out anything more than a stream of profanity.
The fighters shove Melissa to her knees and she begs for mercy in a mishmash of English and Solkovian.
One of the fighters bellows, “Solkovian cunt!” and moves toward her, until Brad aims the pistol at his head.
Bearded General steps out. They start arguing. He barks orders at his men, and they pull Melissa to her feet, then me. They grab her arms, leering at her. A hand grabs my ass, another pinches my nipple through my shirt. Brad shouts again and waves his gun when I feel a pair of fingers pushing up inside my shorts.
Melissa has lost it. She’s just wailing and crying. As they drag us into a tent they shove a wadded-up sock into her mouth to shut her up, tie her wrists behind her back, and shove h
er onto a straw pallet. I’m next, bound at the wrists and ankles. The straw is so thin it’s like being dumped on the ground.
I hear a moan and realize there’s another girl in here with us. She’s got a black eye and swollen lips, and a ragged, scabbed cut on her jaw. Bound at the wrists and ankles like we are, her legs are covered in bruises and she has a dull, glazed look in her eyes like she’s staring through us.
Brad steps into the tent and sticks his gun behind his back, in his waistband. I follow it as it disappears from sight.
“You dumb bitches. I wouldn’t have let them hurt you if you didn’t provoke them. You’re lucky they didn’t tear your limbs off right there. Half these guys have been fucking goats for the last five years.”
Melissa wails through her gag and presses her eyes shut, like if she concentrates hard enough she can wake up from the bad dream. Brad stares at me and sighs.
“You’re going to have a bad time if you try something like that again.”
He takes a good look at Melissa.
“Go to hell, Brad. If that is your real name.”
“It’s not.”
“So the church is a CIA front or what?”
“Penny, I’m not a comic-book supervillain. I’m not going to explain my nefarious plans to you while you concoct an escape. Yeah, it’s a front. We bring them supplies, they move drugs through the mountains, we buy the drugs with weapons and women and funnel it into black programs. It’s complicated and frankly you’re too thickheaded to understand how it all works.”
“You’re selling us.”
“Hell yes. An American virgin is worth seven figures to the right people. You, unfortunately, are not. If the general is tired of this one,” he glances at the other girl, “he’ll throw her to the boys and fuck you for a few weeks until I bring him a new one. If you’re lucky, you won’t get pregnant. Then he’ll take you home and you’ll wish you were dead. These mountain tribesmen don’t fuck around.”
I just stare at him.
“You’re fucking evil.”
“I’m patriotic. Sacrifices must be made in the name of democracy.”
Count On Me Page 25
