Nando dragged the blade around the man's neck, with the calm expertise of a butcher, halfway decapitating him. Then Nando let the staff sergeant's head flop back, bleeding out into the sand. Every muscle in the man twitched, as if he were having a small seizure, and then he died.
Lucia stepped gently toward her son.
“Nando? Nando, are you all right?”
Nando swiped both sides of the knife across the man’s chest, painting a bloody X.
“That’s Staff Sergeant Meyers,” Nando said. “Now I can never go back.” He stood, and he offered the blade to Lucia, handle first. “The Commandant is going to kill me.”
“He won’t find you,” Lucia said. “Come on, we’re behind schedule now.” She began gathering the desert-colored tarp. Nando and Ruppert stared at the dead man.
“Are you all right?” Ruppert asked him. The boy nodded. “Thank you. You saved our lives. I’m sorry you had to do it.”
Nando stayed quiet for several seconds, and then he shrugged. “It’s okay. Everyone wants to kill Staff Sergeant Meyers.” And the boy turned and marched toward the Bronto’s cab.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Lucia drove them north, into the Rocky Mountains and Wyoming, following a course of high, twisting roads through one of the least populated regions in America. They’d siphoned the gas from the Goblin Valley truck before leaving, and now the Bronto could travel for several hours before stopping again. Ruppert sat on the passenger side, still aching from his fight in the desert.
Nando sat in the back seat of the Bronto, alternating between long periods of silence and long barrages of questions.
“If you’re really my mom, how come it took you so long to come get me?” he asked at one point.
“I tried, Nando. The officials keep your location secret. They don’t want your parents to find you.”
“I don’t believe that. Who was my father, then?”
“I have not seen him in a long time, Nando. He was taken to prison.”
“For why?”
“For helping the wrong war victims. Practicing medicine.”
Nando frowned. “The Commandant told me my father was in Special Forces, and he commanded a regiment of the Nigerian army against the Islamofascists. He died defending America.”
“He commanded a…small regiment of volunteers. Like me. He was a very, very good man. You would have loved him, and he would have loved you."
Nando took that in for a moment, then pointed at Ruppert. "If he’s not my father, and he’s not your commander, who is he?”
“My name is Daniel,” Ruppert said. “I’m just helping your mother.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s helped me, and now it’s my turn.”
“Oh.” Nando sat back and stared out the window again. Then he asked, “Where is your base?”
“We don’t have a base, Nando,” Lucia said. “We aren’t part of an army.”
“So you’re irregulars.”
“We aren’t soldiers,” Lucia said.
“Intelligence?”
“No.”
“You aren’t civilians, I saw everything you did back there. You’re terrorists, aren’t you?”
“We’re just people, Nando,” she told him. “Just trying to survive.”
“You bombed our base,” Nando said. “You took me prisoner. Who was that on the P.A.?”
“That was me,” Ruppert said.
“You don’t speak Arabic too good.”
“I don’t speak it at all,” Ruppert said. “Just what you hear on the news.”
Nando recited a long, fluid Arabic verse, then smiled and translated, “‘In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds.’ That’s the opener for the Koran.”
“They teach you about Islam?” Lucia asked.
“It’s just for controlling foreigners,” Nando said. “In church we study the New Dominion Bible.”
“That’s what we used at my church, too,” Ruppert said.
After a long pause, Nando asked, “Am I going to Hell for going AWOL?”
“No, Fernando,” Lucia said. “You’re going to be fine.”
Lucia shifted gears to climb a steep, narrow dirt road. They were far from any highway, once again relying on the maps stored in Archer’s dashboard computer. Ruppert hoped there weren’t any surprise washouts ahead, or fallen rocks blocking their path.
The driving was rough, steep, and much slower than they would have liked, but the Rockies provided far more cover than the flat, open lands to the east or west. Lucia said that mountains were the best setting for guerrilla war, the kind of terrain that yielded least to control by central governments, which were more interested in ruling cities and masses of people than rocks and goats.
Nando launched into an enthusiastic monologue on the subject, describing in detail tactics employed by mujahideen against Soviet and American soldiers in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan. He seemed to be adjusting to the sudden events fairly well, enjoying the sight of moonlit mountain pinnacles outlined against the stars.
They drove through the night, northward along the roughest mountain roads, Ruppert fading in and out of consciousness. They shared a jug of juice, a bag of nuts and dried berries, a few squares of chocolate. Eventually Nando fell asleep as well.
Ruppert woke to Lucia shaking his arm. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the soft early morning light.
She’d parked by the side of an overgrown dirt track winding through a valley encircled by sheer, dark bluffs. Within the bluffs, blooming meadows and veins of rock sloped down to a clear alpine lake, reflecting the gold and red of the sunrise over the snowy peaks to the east. A white mist emanated from the lake itself, obscuring the far side of the valley.
“What is it?” Ruppert asked.
“Look at this place,” Lucia said. “Have you ever been anywhere like this?”
Ruppert thought of his closest experience, looking at an uninhabited island over a railing as he and Madeline rode the Pirate’s Booty tour boat through the Virgin Islands. The ride had been narrated by Captain Steve, who wore a plastic hook hand, an eyepatch, and an automatronic parrot who squawked one-liners. He shook his head.
“Nando,” Lucia said. “Nando, wake up. We’re stopping for a while.”
The boy stirred, rubbed at his eyes, then gasped at he took in the landscape.
“Can I go outside?” he asked.
They poured out of the truck into the meadow, fragrant and richly colored with late summer blooms. Ruppert stood and stretched, breathing in the pristine air.
“Where are we?” he asked Lucia.
“Wyoming,” she said. “There is nothing out here, no towns. We are as safe as we could be.”
Nando saluted his mother. “Permission to scout the area, sir?”
“Stay where I can see you,” Lucia said. “And you say ma’am when you talk to a woman, not sir.”
“Yes, sir. Ma’am.” Nando clomped through the high grasses and flowers, still dressed in gray pajamas, wearing Ruppert’s extra pair of shoes.
“Do you think that’s safe?” Ruppert passed a hand through the tall grass beside him, nearly as high as his waist.
“He seems disciplined enough.”
Ruppert couldn’t argue with that. They ambled downward along the meadow, toward the glowing lake painted the colors of sunrise. Nando ran far ahead of them, zigging and zagging through the meadow, head low as if avoiding imaginary gunfire.
“Do you think he’ll ever be normal?” she asked.
“I think he’s very prepared for the world he’ll have to live in,” Ruppert said.
They reached the pebbled shore of the lake. The water lay clear and still before them, and Ruppert could see all the way to the stony, sandy bottom. He looked off to their right, where Nando had taken an interest in one of the crooked veins of stone that ran down from the cliffs and divided the meadow into sections. The boy inspected the rocks closely, probably looking for a place to climb.