Whatever Gods May Be Part 27

"Thank you, ma'am, for asking," Jamie mumbled at last, her words m.u.f.fled in the delicate balm of the senator's shoulder, her tremble ebbing slowly. "A-And for listening."

Senator Hillinger relinquished the embrace to cradle Jamie's face in her hands and peer up intently into Jamie's eyes. "Can I ask a favor, Lieutenant?"

"Anything, ma'am," Jamie said, her back straightening, the marine in her returning to duty. "Anything."

"I'd like you to call me Lynn. Can you do that?"

"Oh." Jamie felt her eyes widen. "Y-Yes, I can do that. And you call me Jamie, okay?"

It seemed to Jamie that Lynn Hillinger's smile lit the room. "I'd like that very much, Jamie."

And right then Leonard entered the small office, the color drained from his rain-soaked face.

* 220 *

"What?" asked Jamie and Lynn simultaneously.

"I think they're going," he whispered breathlessly, winded from tension rather than effort. "I heard one guy saying beh-un lay-ee. I know that means something like 'home fort' and I got peeks of duffels getting packed. One room's already vacated. They didn't really seem to care what I might pick up on. n.o.body got p.i.s.sy. n.o.body ordered me away. It's like they don't have any explicit instructions about us-what to let us see and hear, or not see and hear." Leonard pulled in a long breath, then blew it out before he said loudly, "Okay, Lieutenant, let's check your test results. Come take a look at the readout. Stand right here so you can see for yourself." He put a hand on her back and let it slip around her waist, where it lingered a bit too long. "Ah. See that? Good news." He stared at her left-hand pants pocket. "Results are normal."

"Thank you, sir." Could it be? Jamie buried her hands in her pockets and suddenly shivered from the adrenaline coursing through her, from the new sense of possibility. In her left pocket were two large-size paperclips. She grinned, then asked Leonard in a whisper, "Think you would've noticed what they're doing if I hadn't asked you to look for it?"

"No, probably not. Not yet. But I sure as h.e.l.l would've noticed that the other two people on our team have left."

"What?" Lynn said, her fear betrayed by the ascending pitch of her whisper. "That wasn't the deal. We're supposed to stick together. Are you sure? Their stuff was here this morning. It was here this morning when they left to go into Malihud center to do the clinic again."

"Well," Leonard said, "it sure as h.e.l.l is all packed up and gone now."

* 221 *

Chapter tWenty-six.

i'M sorry it has to Be liKe this The staccato of automatic weapons fire coming from the administration wing courtyard-and maybe North Carolina screaming that the Zhong had shot Lieutenant Gwynmorgan-changed everything. When Jamie reported on her "meeting" with Shoo Juh, there was no discussion, only Donato's announcement that everyone, including the two civilians, should vote on what to do. Pretending a stomach ailment, Donato himself took the news to the Red Cross office and returned with their votes.

The decision was unanimous: Escape. It was up to the three officers-Donato, Jamie, and an Annapolis two-lite distantly related to and named after William Tec.u.mseh Sherman-to figure out how.

Jamie suggested exploiting the freedom granted Hillinger and Leonard to track the Chinese force reduction. "We move when most of the Zhong've split. Take down the last bunch fast and quiet, then use their food and weapons to get the h.e.l.l out of here before the PIA show up."

"And use their transport," Sherman said.

"Well," Jamie replied, "sort of." Thus began surrept.i.tious hours of debate about the best way to get back to friendly territory.

Sherman favored a straight northeast run some sixty kilometers up the coast past Brooke's Point to Caramay Bay. "We've held that area since early February. We can stay on the back roads at the edge of the foothills, away from the coastal village centers. If we can commandeer even one moderate-size truck, we can all ride most of the way."

"I figure the back roads you want to use are exactly where the * 222 *

Zhong'll look for us," Jamie countered. "Besides, Vargas and a couple of the Filipinos say the Zhong have been crawling all over the roads above Brooke's Point for months because they don't want to relinquish the nickel mines in that area."

"So what do you suggest?" retorted Sherman.

"We know our people took Eran Bay on the north coast in early March and that we've controlled the interior all the way to Gantung since April. So I suggest we send a small team going northeast on those back roads you talked about-as a diversion. We have them leave enough bread crumbs along the way to get the enemy to chase them.

The rest of us head north into the mountains and make for Gantung." Safety was only fifty klicks away-if they could've flown. It was a lot more on foot. Still, with a decent head start, they'd be much harder to follow over the mountain route. And much harder to catch. Jamie laid out details.

"But two weeks?" Sherman said, scowling his contempt.

Jamie scowled right back at him. She'd wondered why he'd never talked to her much; now she guessed that Second Lieutenant Sherman resented coyotes. He was a big guy who used his size to intimidate whenever he could get away with it, but he retreated under her withering stare, finishing his question with overblown formality. "Uh, ma'am." She kept on staring at him until he looked away from her. For the first time since becoming an officer, Jamie wanted someone to call her ma'am.

"Two weeks is worst-case," Jamie said to Donato, the person who'd make the decision about what they'd do. "The good news is we can use existing paths most of the way. That'll keep down the macheteing. I know some of the Tau't Batu caves and a few of their shortcuts. Plus we might find some supplies in one of the caves near Mantalingajan. If we average about eight klicks a day, if we can contact our people and they meet us part way, if nothing f.u.c.ks up when they come for us, then we could be safe in a FOB in as little as four or five days. But-" Sherman shifted his legs impatiently, his thoughts plain: A keyboard major and some d.a.m.n poser.

"You got a problem, Lieutenant?" Jamie growled.

"No." Sherman crossed his arms over his chest. "Ma'am." Jamie returned her attention to the major. "Sir, in my admittedly * 223 *

limited experience, planning a mission in which success depends on nothing going wrong is sure as h.e.l.l the best way to guarantee that plenty will go wrong."

Donato grunted a.s.sent and Jamie continued. "Our biggest problem, besides being physically weaker than normal, is visibility. We have to a.s.sume our cammies are compromised."

Sherman fidgeted again, briefly, and Jamie knew he thought she was paranoid. Staring at him yet again, she resisted an urge to confront him, to demand he tell her how much time he spent with Shoo Juh.

"Even if we're out there buck naked, they'll be able to spot us with just about any of their surveillance scanners," Jamie said. "So we can hump only when the weather screws up surveillance technology, particularly infrared. At lower elevations, that means rain-the heavier the better. But heavy rain creates the worst possible conditions for the kind of foot travel we need to do. The habagat is our very treacherous best friend."

She leaned toward the major, who, she suspected, believed he'd die escaping and would have voted to risk staying-had he voted first.

He voted last, however, and had the courage to make the prisoners'

decision a true concord. It couldn't have been easy for him.

"It'll be slow and dangerous going, interspersed with stretches when we have to get underground-literally-because we don't have rain or fog or sufficiently high air temperatures to obscure our bodies'

heat signatures. Like I said, we might do it in four or five days. But there may be no supplies on Mantalingajan. Somebody-like our forty-five-year-old senator-may get hurt or be weaker than we expect. There may be landslides, flooding. We may have to lay low because there are PIA all over the mountains. So we have to be prepared for it to take longer.

And we've got too many people to be able to live off the land. We can pick up water as we go, but we need to bring as much food as we can scrounge. Because we d.a.m.n well are not going to lose anyone." Thirty-two people. Get all of them out alive and intact. Get all of them back alive and intact. Donato opted for Jamie's plan and put her in charge of leading the mission, beginning with the escape from Saint Eh Mo's.

Thirty-two people, all a.s.signed to teams, each team a.s.signed a responsibility. The push team would handle weapons and supplies for * 224 *

the journey, making sure everyone had what they'd need. The civvie team would help and protect the senator and the doctor and double as the medical team. The diversion team would journey northeast up the coast. The scout team would lead the way, the perimeter team would protect their flanks, and the cover team would do everything possible to disguise their trail.

Thirty-two people clandestinely coalesced, prepared, and waited for the best moment to make their move. If Shoo Juh told the truth, they had nine days before they'd become PIA hostages. It was a big if.

v "We need the moonlight," Jamie argued when Sherman railed about waiting too long. "And on June eighteen, the moon'll be highest between midnight and zero-four-hundred. So we go after lockdown on the seventeenth."

That the sky remained only partly cloudy when the sun set around 1830 hours was a bonus. By 1930, Jamie had raked open all the locks in the church building and teams were stealthing into the yard's blindspots.

By 2040, the tower, the administration yard, and the room the Red Cross team used as its medical office-with Hillinger and Leonard in it-had been secured.

At 2120, Saint Eh Mo's had been taken by its prisoners-no alarm raised, no shots fired, none of the few remaining Zhong able to escape.

And no time to waste.

v "Bring him in here," Jamie said.

She stood outside the same interrogation chamber where she had last seen Shoo Juh. The commandant, the special chief interrogator, and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d were all, of course, long gone. The gagged and blindfolded Zhong commander that Sherman and two of the larger POWs dragged through the doorway was only a junior officer.

Jamie followed them in and was about to close the door when Lynn appeared. "What are you doing?"

"I'm sorry it has to be like this," Jamie said, using her body to * 225 *

block any view of the room and inch Lynn out of the doorway. "We need to know some things. We've got an officer who can tell us and not much time to persuade him."

"Jamie, what are you going to do?"

"Whatever it takes." Jamie's hands beseeched. "I'm sorry." Lynn stared at Jamie's hands, apparently stilled by the sight of the wounds in the center of each of Jamie's palms. She pulled her eyes from Jamie's hands and glanced toward the interrogation chamber, a sense of recognition evident on her grimacing features.

Yeah, Lynn, they might've done it to me right in there. Maybe.

I can't remember. "I'm sorry," Jamie said again. "I don't know what else to do. So far, this has been too easy. Like they want us to make the moves we're making. We've got to learn all we can about what they're up to. If we don't get this right, we'll be killed way before we reach our own people."

Lynn blinked, then gulped. After a second or two, she nodded, her face betraying that her sense of control over her world had slipped from her grasp. "Yes, Lieutenant, I understand." And then she walked away.

Jamie watched Lynn's departing back and swallowed the sob that cramped her throat. "I'm sorry," she whispered too softly for Lynn to hear, her fingers brushing her cheek where Lynn had touched her.

One touch would have to be enough-because certainly Lynn's corrosive disappointment in her would turn to disgust, loathing, repudiation. But Jamie knew Lynn Hillinger would live long enough to despise her only if the right information could be extracted quickly from the Chinese officer waiting in the room behind her.

G.o.d help me, I'll torture him if I have to. I'll kill him if I have to.

v The Chinese officer turned out to be a man of conviction. Among his unshakable beliefs: The world's most dangerous wild beast is an unleashed hong mao.

Lieutenant Sherman unwittingly played the role to perfection, even landing a couple of punches before being restrained. Once the Chinese officer appreciated that cooperating could save him from the savage hong mao, his interrogation was over in twenty minutes.

In addition to a few rifles, pistols, and machetes, he delivered up a * 226 *

pair of infrared eyewraps and a multiwave scanner-both pa.s.sive, both with tracking chips that Donato speedily figured out how to remove.

The Chinese officer also divulged that the POWs' boots were clean but their uniforms were compromised, just as Jamie suspected. His scanner confirmed it: Not only had their uniforms' detection countermeasures been neutralized, the hems of their pant legs had been embedded with enemy nanoscale tracking devices.

After Sherman's second punch, they learned about a good-sized, fully fueled truck-transport that would get the diversion team well up the coast by morning. And the Zhong officer told them about a small trove of plastic explosive and detonators intended for the PIA; they'd put these to good use, too.

Maybe there was even more to get. Sherman thought so.

"What about when the PIA're coming?" he yelled. "From where.

What about stuff that son of a b.i.t.c.h in there can tell us about Zhong units-"

"Asked and answered. We go north as planned, into the mountains," Jamie said, her voice low. "You are dismissed, Lieutenant Sherman."

"But-"

"You don't have much time, Lieutenant. Move." Sherman knew explosives, and soon he'd placed claylike C-Six in several spots around the base. He also rigged up the truck, which would transport them all to the banks of the Malihud River where it descended out of the foothills. After driving it toward Brooke's Point for another fifteen kilometers or so, four Filipino volunteers would blow it up, then head north on foot toward Mount Mantalingajan to rendezvous with the main group.

By 2250 hours, the Zhong prisoners had been stripped naked, gagged, hogtied, and locked in the church cells. Saint Eh Mo's commo systems had been disabled, the bottom couple of inches were cut off the marines' trouser legs, weapons and what food they could find were packed up, and all thirty-two veterans of Saint Eh Mo's had begun piling into the truck.

As they drove away, Jamie noted the time on the Chinese officer's scanner: 2309. By 2352, twenty-seven people were following Jamie into the foothills above the Malihud River.

Almost immediately, Jamie found herself battling one surge of panic after another. What she felt so sure of back in Saint Eh Mo's-the * 227 *

near-eidetic recollection of Operation Repo topographical maps, the knowledge of which paths through the forest would take them to their own people-now wavered and dimmed in the dense blackness ahead of her.

She'd been counting on her recall to get twenty-seven souls well into the high forest on this first night. To build enough of a lead that by the time the Zhong focused radar and infrared detectors in their direction, they'd be invisible, hidden under thick forest canopy or tucked into a cave.

And, she now realized, she'd been counting too much on the moon. The cloud cover had thickened; when fits of rain interrupted the ashen moonlight, so little ambient light remained that the Chinese officer's pa.s.sive infrared eyewraps didn't help much.

Nor did Jamie dare illuminate the path onto which she'd led these people-the path she thought, she hoped was the right one. The one she was supposed to have taken last November sixth. She moved slowly, too slowly, feeling her way, careful to keep the meager lights of Malihud behind her, clenching the muscles in her gut to stop her hyperventilating. Oh G.o.d oh G.o.d, it's so frigging dark.

You just keep on going, Alonzo told her once. Each tenuous step became a supplication to the deities of light and bodily equilibrium and rhumb lines. Please, Jamie beseeched them. Please... Please...

Later-somewhere between 0100 and 0200 hours-the moon emerged from a larger break in the clouds, casting a silvery glow into the forest's shadows. It was enough that they could pick up their pace.

Enough to resurrect Jamie's hope.

They climbed to an elevation of close to eight hundred meters before early hints of light on the eastern horizon forced them to shelter in a large cave southwest of Mount Maliz.

It wasn't the cave Jamie wanted them to reach. By her reckoning, they'd traveled only six kilometers. But dawn was less than an hour away and they were all exhausted.

If their escape hadn't been discovered yet, the explosives Sherman laid around Saint Eh Mo's would detonate any time now. Would she hear them? Jamie lingered near the cave entrance, listening. Sherman joined her a few seconds before the barely audible sounds of explosion rumbled toward them from the south.

* 228 *

"Yes!" His malevolent grin reminded her of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, even though she had no memory of the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's face.

"Got the watches set up, everybody good and dark?" Jamie asked, trying not to think about the people in Saint Eh Mo's. She'd ordered the church building full of Zhong prisoners spared, but the explosions nearby probably damaged it. Them or us. Them or us.

"Yes, ma'am. All squared away. p.r.i.c.ks won't see us."

"Excellent. Go get some chow, Lieutenant."

"Ma'am," he acknowledged crisply.

"And Sherman," Jamie said, "make sure you get some rack time, too. We're gonna use this afternoon's rain to make Mount Mantalingajan, come h.e.l.l or high water. So to speak."

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am." But his face refused to disguise his skepticism about her forecasting skills.