Payback

69

Lia felt the body on top of her, pushing and grunting, the devil incarnate. She struggled with all her might, resisting and fighting, cursing the others holding her down. She knew she would lose the battle, but it was the struggle that was important. To resist meant salvation, survival — she would be wounded, but in a greater sense still whole, the most important part of her preserved.

And then suddenly she was free, the rapist gone, light streaming in around her.

Voices murmured in her head. The Art Room?

“Hello?” said Lia. “Hello?”

She wasn’t in Korea. She was in the helicopter, the ruins of the helicopter — they had crashed in the Andes.

She was pitched at an angle, her head and right arm resting on something soft.

Fernandez.

The aircraft had augured in on its starboard side, crushing the cabin downward. She couldn’t see Fernandez’s face, but his left arm next to her chest was drenched in blood. Lia looked toward the front of the helicopter. Bits of metal and wire hung like vines in front of her. Beyond them, instead of the pilot and the rest of the cockpit, she saw rocks and dirt, some scrubby brush. The sky.

Lia slipped down a little farther when she undid her seat belt. The door of the helicopter was above her left arm. It was intact. She pulled back the latch and pushed against the panel, but the door snapped back down, pushed back by gravity.

Squirreling around in the seat, she stood on Fernandez and pushed her way up and out of the aircraft. They had crashed against a mountainside. Rocks loomed above her. Moving as gingerly as possible, she got out, crawling head-first down and around the crushed fuselage onto the slope, then through the dirt to a level spot a few feet from the bits and pieces of the helicopter that lay scattered along the ground.

It was always the easy assignments, she thought, that ended up being trouble.

Lia took a breath, then pushed along the ground a few yards more, going across the slope. Finally she clambered to her feet, pulling herself up on the side of a big rock.

“Just peachy,” Lia said out loud.

She reached to the communications switch. “Are you there?”

“Lia, are you OK?” said Rockman instantly.

“I’m in one piece.”

“I called you on the sat phone twice. Why didn’t you answer?”

Lia realized she had left her bag in the helo and started back to get it.

“Lia, what’s your situation?” asked Marie Telach.

“Tangled and confused. The helicopter crashed. Everyone else is dead.”

“Was it shot down? Or something mechanical?”

“I’m not sure. I was dozing, then I heard a bang.”

“An explosion?”

“I’m not sure.”

She looked into the fuselage. The bag with her clothes and the sat phone peeked out from under a large piece of metal that was anchored by part of the helicopter engine; there was no way she was getting it. But the briefcase with her laptop — and the envelope with the replacement voter cards — had wedged itself near Fernandez’s body. She might be able to snake in and grab it.

“Lia, please,” insisted Telach.

“I’m OK, Marie. The helicopter crashed.”

“Was it shot down? Or was it a mechanical problem?”

“It happened all of a sudden. I heard a boom, but it might have been the engine. I don’t know. I’m going to retrieve the briefcase and voter cards. Hang on. I’ll get the PDA and take a picture for you.”

“Don’t do anything foolish.”

“By whose definition?”

Lia ignored Rockman’s suggestion to put a video bug on her clothes so he could see what was going on. She climbed into the helicopter head-first, leaning as gingerly as possible on Fernandez. She hadn’t actually made sure that he was dead, and though it seemed obvious enough, she put her hand onto his neck to feel for a pulse.

A bone or vertebra had sheered through the skin. She moved her thumb farther up, stubbornly refusing to accept the obvious. His head had been wedged against a metal spar that had flown through the cockpit during the impact. Thankfully she couldn’t see much of it from where she was, she thought, settling her fingers where she supposed his jugular would be.

Nothing.

What if he had gotten in first? Then she would have been sitting on this side of the helo. Dumb luck had saved her.

“Lia, what are you doing?” asked Rockman.

“I’m getting my laptop bag,” she grunted, pushing herself to the left and wedging into the space in front of the seats. She had to push her left hand forward and down, snaking past part of the seat cushion to get the bag. It came easily — for about six inches. Then it caught against something and she dropped it.

Cursing, Lia pushed herself closer so she could get a better grip. She yanked, scraping her hand against the metal, but whatever was holding the bag down gave way.

“All right,” she said, backing out. “Got it. I’ll take some pictures of the wreck so you can figure out whether it was shot down or not. Stand by.”

Lia thought she heard someone in the Art Room mumble something.

“I can’t hear you,” she said, pulling herself out of the helicopter. As she got to her knees on top of the twisted fuselage, she realized the Art Room hadn’t been talking to her — six or seven men were standing a few yards from the wreckage.

“Buenos dias,” she told them.

They didn’t answer.

“Lia?” said Rockman.

“I have company.” Lia eased herself down from the helicopter. She knelt, propping the briefcase so that she could remove the small Glock pistol strapped near her ankle without it being seen. She palmed the gun, holding it against her side; she’d use it only as a last resort.

“My helicopter crashed,” she said in English.

“Helicóptero,” started a translator in the Art Room, feeding her the sentence and then a few lines about wanting to call the authorities for assistance.

Lia repeated the words, twice, but got no response.

“Try it in Quechua,” said Rockman, and another translator gave her a few phrases in the native Indian language. But that didn’t work, either.

Several more men appeared, apparently coming from a trail that ran to the right. They didn’t seem hostile, but they also weren’t overtly friendly. They seemed puzzled by her appearance, almost as if they weren’t sure what a helicopter was. But their clothing was modem, if somewhat worn and mismatched, and certainly helicopters must fly overhead here all the time.

“Are they guerrillas?” asked Rockman.

“How can I tell?” Lia asked.

“Ask them.”

Lia kept her sneer to herself. That was just the sort of thing the Art Room would suggest — a naive question that could get you blown up no matter what the answer was.

“I have to get help,” Lia said in Spanish. When they didn’t respond, she repeated it, this time more emphatically. “_iSocorro!” she said, pointing to the helicopter, though she knew Fernandez was dead. “Help!”

Even that didn’t break the spell. There were now a dozen men standing four or five yards from her, staring but saying nothing.

“This is just too weird,” she muttered, starting toward the trail. As she did, two of the men stepped aside. Two more men appeared from behind the bend. They had AK- 47s in their hands. The men raised their weapons and she stopped.

“Well, at least we know where we stand,” she said. “Two bozos with AK-47s,” she added for Rockman in a quick stage whisper. Then in Spanish she told the newcomers that there had been a helicopter crash and help was needed.

One of the men with a rifle shouted something quickly in Spanish to the men who were standing near the helicopter. But they were as uncommunicative with him as they had been with her.

“What’s this about?” Lia asked the Art Room. “Can you hear?”

“They’re trying to decide who you are, and what to do with you. They’re confused about the helicopter — they thought it was military, but it’s not. They said something about waiting for a commander. Offer them a reward — tell them you can pay them if they’ll help you.”

Lia folded her arms in front of her chest. The briefcase was in one hand, the gun hidden in the other.

“What you’re going to do,” she told the men in English, “is call the local police.”

“Lia, why are you using English?”

“Don’t try and bluff them,” said Telach, breaking in.

One of the men with the guns told Lia in Spanish to shut up.

“Why?”

As long as the men stayed relatively close together, she thought, she could take them — shoot them quickly in the heads, then dive for their guns.

Maybe not even dive for their guns. As long as she was closer to the weapons than anyone else, she could ward off the others long enough to retrieve one.

She’d have to make very good shots.

Lia edged a little closer. The two men began talking to each other, trying to decide what to do. The one who hac barked at her before said that she should put up her hands.

Just as she was about to drop her briefcase and shoot, a burst of gunfire echoed nearby. The two men with the AK 47s jerked around in the direction of the trail. Lia went to one knee and fired twice, dropping the first man with a shoes to the temple and catching the second square in the back of the head.

She dove at the rifles as they fell, sliding into them. She fished around for the gun, spinning back, her head dizzy.

The men by the helicopter seemed like deer caught ir headlights, staring at her with shocked expressions.

Lia went quickly to the other rifle, grabbing it and ther retreating back toward the wreck. She made the mistake of glancing to her right; the sharp drop-off increased her wooziness and she threw herself down against the battered metal of the fallen chopper.

“What’s going on?” Lia whispered to the Art Room.

“We’re not sure,” said Telach. “Put out a video bug.”

Lia slipped her hand in the bag.

“I only have two, and one audio fly,” she said. She stuck one video bug on the helicopter tail and the other near the front of the fuselage, giving as full a view of the area as possible. She left the fly with the bug, then ducked down the side of the hill, crouching with the guns.

Two soldiers appeared, rifles ready. One covered the mer near the helicopter while the other bent to the two men Lia had killed.

“Two people in uniforms. They look like Peruvian army.” Rockman said. “May be a legitimate military unit.”

“May be isn’t good enough.”

The soldiers were joined by an officer, who walked to the small group of men and demanded to know who had shot the two dead men. He used curses when he referred to them calling the dead men traitors and saying the shooter would be rewarded.

The men said nothing. The officer identified himself as a lieutenant with the army, but this failed to impress them as well.

“All right, we’re checking him,” said Rockman.

“I killed the guerrillas,” Lia yelled in English. “Who are you?”

The officer craned his head to see who was talking to him. “Hello?” he said in English.

“Yeah, hello.”

“I am Lieutenant Gomez. I’m here to save you from the guerrillas.”

“Yeah, well you’re a little late.” Lia climbed up and walked toward the wreckage. She kept the rifles pointed toward the ground and walked straight to the briefcase she had dropped.

“Lia!” hissed Rockman. “We haven’t verified that he’s legitimate.”

“He would have shot me by now if he wasn’t,” Lia muttered, grabbing the briefcase.