Payback

83

Roughly an hour passed before the guard returned to Lia’s cottage. He carried a small towel and soap.

“This is the best I can do,” he told her. “The water is not very warm.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Lia. “No bag?”

The guard didn’t understand what she meant.

“To put the towel and soap in? Oh, never mind,” she said, stuffing the towel and soap into the briefcase. “I’ll use this.”

She walked with the guard to the shower building. He went inside, pointing out the faucets and soap, as if these weren’t obvious.

“Yes, very good,” she told him finally. She reached down and untied her ankle-high hiking boots. He didn’t take the hint.

“Excuse me. You’re not going to watch me take a shower,” she told him.

“I have to take your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

“You won’t need them in here.”

Lia rolled her eyes, but this had no effect on him.

“Take them. You want my bra, too?”

The guard turned red, embarrassed, but he still took her shoes. He also left the door wide open. Lia went to it and closed it just enough to block the view of the shower and window. She stepped back and threw her socks where they could be seen.

“I’m going for it,” she told Rockman.

“We’d prefer you wait until dark.”

“That’s four hours from now. I can get out right now.” Lia saw no reason to stay in the compound until nightfall. For one thing, it was very possible that the rest of the rebels would return, beefing up the defenses.

And for another — she didn’t need to be rescued like a damsel in distress. She could take care of herself.

“All right,” said Rockman, his tone still slightly disapproving. “Charlie’s about four hundred yards away, coming toward the front of the compound. They’re down to six people total in the hamlet and nearby, counting your friend Paolo. You have just that one guard in front of the building. Two others on the perimeter — we don’t have exact locations on them because of the foliage. They were at the north side three minutes ago.”

Lia slipped the envelope with the voter cards out of the briefcase and tucked it into her waistband below her shirt and sweater. She slipped back, turned on the water, and yelped.

“C-old,” she said, stepping back and watching the door. “Oh. Whoa.”

She stepped over to the window and pushed it open.

“Here we go,” she whispered to Rockman, and she pulled herself up and out. The screen smacked against the frame as she slipped to the ground. It sounded almost like an explosion to her, but she was committed now — with two quick steps she was in the brush behind the building.

As she started to slip into the larger trees, something moved twenty or thirty yards away. Lia froze as a pair of guards ambled through the jungle, guns raised toward the sky. They walked a few paces and stopped, chattering about some sort of food they’d recently eaten.

Lia backtracked to the hut, heart pounding. She slipped along the wall to the front, dropping to a knee to peer around the corner. The guard was still at his post, eyes cast down on the ground.

Lia had her pistol in her hand and could take him down easily. But the gunshot would bring the others, and she decided to wait until he went inside to check on her. At that point, she could cross the open area to the jungle opposite the settlement.

The young guerrilla was extremely patient. Lia crouched for five, then ten minutes. She was starting to doubt her strategy when finally he went to the door, knocking and then asking if it was OK to come inside.

Lia took off from a sprinter’s position, keeping herself as low to the ground as possible in case anyone else came out of the buildings. As she dove into the foliage on the other side of the path, she heard the guard yelling the alarm from the window she had used to escape from. She crawled forward, rolled in the dirt, then jumped to her feet.

As she did, something caught her from behind and threw her to the ground.

A hand clamped over her mouth.

“Sshh,” hissed a familiar voice. “You’re making way too much noise.”

It was Charlie Dean.