Mission of Honor

Chapter Sixty-Three

Light.

Throughout this long and troubling night, the danger had all been about light. The searchlights of the helicopters in the sky. The hungry eyes of predators behind the scrub. Finally, after a long trek, Maria and her group were endangered by the failure of light.

The flashlight died nearly a half hour before Maria and the others reached the extinct geyser. Fortunately, Wraith's Point was appropriately named. The group was still able to locate it. The site howled deep and hollow. It reminded Maria of a strong canyon wind in the Pyrenees. The sound came intermittently, every minute or so. It was caused as gases baked underground throughout the day rose through the channels just below the surface. The group simply followed the sound. With nothing to create an echo, it was relatively easy to track the howling. They stumbled here and there over rocks and into gullies. But if there were any predators, Dhamballa's solution kept them away.

Aideen had asked Maria why they were going to the geyser. Maria told her. Aideen accepted the information without cornment. Maria did not know whether the woman believed her. She did not know whether she believed it herself. Over the years, she had grown extremely skeptical about people and their promises. But cynicism did not mean having no hope. She had that.

When the three reached the mound, they stepped around it single file. They moved carefully, feeling their way as they went. They determined that the geyser mound wtfs approximately twenty feet around and three feet tall. Up close, the howling sounded like someone was blowing into a giant bottle. Maria was surprised to find that there was very little outgassing from the geyser. It was primarily an acoustic phenomenon.

After rounding the geyser, the group sat. There was nothing else to do. Father Bradbury had been given the cell phone. By now, he was probably safe aboard the helicopter. Maria felt a great sense of accomplishment about that. But she also felt sadness for Dhamballa. He was a young man with a vision. Maybe he was too young to have carried this through. If his beliefs were as important to him as he said, he would be back.

Maria also felt bad for Leon Seronga. She did not imagine that he had survived the night. Someone had to take the fall for the deaths of the deacons and the killing of the Unidad Especial del Despliegue. He would not want the Brush Vipers to take that hit. They were protecting their leader. Presumably, the soldiers would all return to the lives they were living before the Vodun movement began. She did not know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. Sometimes nations benefited from a good shaking. Maria came from a country that had its own active, separatist movement. As long as the challenge did not degenerate into anarchy, she found the process, the questioning, to be a healthy one.

But Maria felt good about what she and her colleagues had done. She enjoyed being in action, in a new environment. Yet there was also something disturbing about it. A familiar loneliness. A familiar weight. The responsibility of leadership, of getting friends and adversaries to do what you needed them to do. Maria wondered the same thing she had wondered when Darrell proposed this second time. Whether it was a good idea to continue carrying that load. The challenge was invigorating, exciting. Yet when that responsibility became too much, and it was time to put it down, she did not want to be alone.

That puts you right where you were when you said yes to Darrell, she realized.

They sat there in silence for forty minutes. There were no sounds other than the blasts from the geyser. There were no more lights moving in the sky. Their eyes were accustomed to the dark, and the stars were breathtaking. It was good to have this short stretch of peace.

And then there were two lights on the horizon. They were far away, moving toward them on the ground. If Maria was correct, they were lights that signified help, not danger. A few minutes later, there was sound.

"I don't believe it," Aideen said. She started to rise.

"Stay down," Battat said. "We don't know who it is."

"David is right," Maria said. But she rose anyway. She brushed off the dirt of the mound as she walked slowly toward the oncoming lights. Maria did not think it was a military vehicle. They would most likely be traveling in pairs for protection. It could be a ranger on patrol for poachers. Or it could be a tour group out on a real safari, not one of those luxury trips. They might be heading for a site to watch the sunrise.

But it was none of those. It was a taxicab.

It was Paris Lebbard.

The taxi bounced forward and pulled to a stop near the geyser. Maria walked over as Lebbard rolled down the window. She could see his face in the wide glow of the headlights. He was smiling broadly.

"Thank you," she said.

"You are very welcome." Lebbard beamed. "This is going to cost you a great deal."

"Doesn't it fall under the day rate I paid you?" she asked.

The Botswanan shook his head. "This is a new day, my friend."

'True enough," Maria replied. "I will pay, and I thank you anyway, Paris. You saved our lives."

"Several times today," Lebbard pointed out. It was a proud statement not a boast.

The others had walked over. Maria introduced them by first name. Lebbard invited them to get in the back.

"You smell of petrol," Lebbard said as Maria got in beside him.

"Animal repellant," she replied. "It's probably a good thing I gave up smoking."

Lebbard swung the taxi around, and Maria slumped in her seat. She was spent. Her mind immediately lost the focus to which it had clung for so many hours. She found herself feeling detached from the others. They were not the familiar faces from Interpol. And what was this place? The salt pan, even Maun, were not the well-known streets of Madrid or the outlying cities and towns and mountain roads. And she had never smelled like this.

It was all very disorienting. Maria had never worked set hours. It was always on a case-by-case basis. But maybe she needed structure more than she had ever imagined.

There will be time enough to consider all that, Maria told herself. To think about the past and the future. Right now, she needed to rest.

She did not close her eyes, but she closed her mind. And for the moment, that was enough.