“Where do we go? There are villages a few miles from here, but I’m not sure it’s safe to show our faces.”
“We just have to get to the alternate LZ…” Bishop’s voice trailed off for a moment, then an ember of his earlier rage flared to life. “Damnit!”
Felice flinched a little, but quickly laid a steadying hand on his forearm. “What is it?”
“My glasses are gone.”
She had no idea what he meant by that, but before she could ask for an explanation, he pulled away and took out what looked to her like a mobile phone from one of his cargo pockets. He stabbed a finger at it, then shook it, and when nothing happened, closed his fist around it. There was an audible crack as the device imploded in his grip.
He let the pieces fall to the ground. “We’ve got no comms. No way to let anyone know we’re alive.”
Felice grasped his arm again. “Hey. Let’s deal with one thing at a time, okay?”
He clenched his jaw so tightly that Felice could hear his teeth grinding, but then he nodded.
“Good. I’m going to bandage his… his face. I don’t think we should try to remove any of the metal from his wounds yet. Not until we have time to put in some sutures.”
Bishop nodded and withheld further comment, while she packed Knight’s eye with gauze and swathed his head with a long strip of self-adhering Coban wrap. “Should we try to wake him?”
Felice pressed two fingers to Knight’s wrist. “His pulse is strong and steady. I don’t think he’s in shock, but he’s going to be in a lot of pain. Ideally, he shouldn’t be moved at all, but since that’s not an option, getting him walking is going to be better for him than riding on your shoulder.” Felice gave a helpless shrug. “Sorry. I can’t give you a better answer. He needs a real doctor.”
“You’ve done a pretty good job so far.”
The compliment was so unexpected, and so totally unlike anything she thought she’d hear from this man, that she found herself laughing. “Well, I know some basic first aid. You probably know more about battlefield medicine than I do.”
“You kept your head when I was about to lose mine.”
Something in the way he said it made Felice realize that staying cool under pressure was of paramount importance to the big man. His comment was both high praise for her and harsh self-criticism. “Well, I have my bad days, too.”
Bishop passed her a small foil pouch. “This should wake him up. Smelling salts.”
Felice shook a small capsule out of the packet and crushed it, releasing a strong odor of ammonia and eucalyptus. She expected a strong reaction, but when she held it under Knight’s nose, she was startled at the violence with which the injured man returned to consciousness. He jerked and flailed his arms, as if falling out of a dream, and then let out a scream that echoed back from the jungle ceiling.
Bishop caught Knight’s arms before he could tear at the bandage covering his face. Knight’s one good eye seemed to fix on Bishop’s face and he calmed a little, but he kept struggling to reach the wound.
Felice reached in as well, placing one hand on Knight’s forehead and another on his chest, soothing him as a mother might soothe a feverish child. “It’s okay.” She felt a pang of guilt at the lie. It wasn’t okay, not by a long shot. “I know it hurts, but you have to settle down.”
Whether it was her words and soft touch, or simply the return of Knight’s higher reasoning abilities she could not say, but she felt him relax beneath her hands.
“Shit!” he rasped. “It feels like there’s a knife sticking out of my eye.” His expression grew even more agonized. “Oh, God. There is, isn’t there?”
Before Bishop or Felice could give an answer — the bitter truth or a poisonous lie — a voice shouted from somewhere nearby. It sounded to Felice’s ear like the Swahili dialect some of the expedition’s bearers had used, and while she didn’t understand a word of it, the message was clear. I’ve found them.
The shout was followed immediately by the report of a rifle shot, then another and another. Three shots, not directed at them, but at the sky. A signal.
Bishop launched into motion, spinning on his heel, scooping up the enormous machine gun and holding its stock to his shoulder. He swept the jungle with the muzzle but did not fire.
He turned to Felice. “Take him. Run. I’ll find you.”
And then he was gone, running at a gallop toward the place from which the shots had come.
Without Bishop to hold him, there was nothing Felice could do to restrain Knight, but when he shook free of her grasp, it was not to tear at his wound. Instead, he tore the intravenous line from his arm, then groped for his rifle and rolled over into a prone firing position, facing in the direction Bishop was moving.
Felice gripped his arm. “You heard what he said. We have to run.”
“I don’t run,” Knight said. His teeth were clenched against the pain, but his voice was unnaturally calm.
“But I have to,” she said, matching his tone. “And I can’t make it on my own.”
Felice saw immediately that she had found the right pressure point. Knight’s posture relaxed, and then he sprang to his feet. “Bring the gear.”
She closed the med kit, stuffed it into Bishop’s rucksack, and hefted it onto one shoulder. Knight was staring at something on the ground, and she saw that it was the crushed remains of Bishop’s cell phone. “Should I bring that, too?”
When Knight didn’t answer, she gathered up the pieces and shoved them in a pocket. “Which way?”
He stared at her, his face twisting between inscrutable stoicism and unimaginable pain. Finally, he pointed away from where Bishop had gone and then lurched into motion.
They had only taken a few steps when the forest behind them erupted with the noise of machine gun fire.
18
Asya put her fingers through the metal grating that had been erected to close-off half of the small room, turning it into a makeshift detention cell. The wire mesh barrier, the sort of thing used to block off cashier booths and the back seats of police cars was a poor substitute for iron bars, but a cage was a cage.
One of the soldiers guarding them jabbed the muzzle of his carbine at her and grunted for her to move back. She wasn’t sure why. King and her were no threat to anyone now. Nevertheless, she moved back a few steps and looked to her brother, hoping to see the glimmer of an escape plan in his eyes.
If it was there, she didn’t see it. King just stood there, as still and silent as the Sphinx, staring through the barrier, looking at nothing.
As the troops had herded them through the palace, following a labyrinthine course that seemed designed to keep them away from curious eyes, she had listened as King reported everything to Deep Blue in a series of rapid-fire reports, which he disguised from their captors by feigning a cough. “We’ve been arrested.” Cough. “Regular army troops.” Cough. “Don’t know who’s behind it…” Cough. “… or if we have any allies.”
The soldiers hadn’t caught on to what he was doing, but as soon as they were in the cell, they performed a more thorough search, taking the glasses and the phones from King and Asya. Asya could see them sitting atop a folding table on the other side of the mesh. King had fallen quiet after they were shut in, and Asya knew why. Their captors would almost certainly be watching and listening carefully to see what the prisoners would reveal. Silence was absolutely necessary, but as the minutes stretched on, she began to feel truly alone.
She was obliged to change her mind about the merits of solitude when the room door opened and Monique Favreau entered, flanked by the two-steroid monsters. They had changed out of their business formal attire, and now wore BDUs with the same camo pattern as the soldiers. Favreau had a holstered pistol on her belt while her goons carried H&K MP5s.