The Breach

CHAPTER SEVEN

String Mustache switched off the thing in his hand, though he kept it inside the woman's arm. With the buzzing stopped, the only sound in the clearing was her soft crying, and the occasional pop of something in the fire.

Travis couldn't see her eyes, but the man facing her-it had to be her father-looked more wretched than ever. He whispered what looked like, "I'm sorry," and then, "I love you," repeating the latter at least three times as his eyes ran over.

Finally he turned to her tormentor.

"Tell," String Mustache said.

The bound man spoke, his voice wasted and all but dead. "The forward-most lavatory-bathroom-right behind the cockpit. Remove the fan cover in the ceiling, reach above and to the right. It's there."

String Mustache had his back to Travis, but Travis could picture the man's eyes narrowing, calculating. Then he turned and spoke in his own language to two of the men at the fire. They got to their feet and went quickly to the ATVs that were parked at the edge of the encampment. Their own rifles slung on their shoulders, they mounted two of the four machines and raced away along the valley floor, in the direction of the crash site.

String Mustache watched them go, then turned to the father, who was still whispering something to the young woman on the table.

"Hope what you told me is true," String Mustache said in his rough English. "I keep going until I know."

Then he switched the handheld device back on, and the woman and her father screamed at the same time.

The two remaining at the fire averted their eyes. The two that comprised the peanut gallery smiled. Travis was just processing his own reaction-rage, beyond what he'd already felt-when automatic rifle fire shredded the air above the camp.

String Mustache dropped his device and threw himself flat-no rifle anywhere near his reach. The other four did as Travis had hoped: they took cover, and they got it exactly backward. He broke from the pines as the masking roar of the staged M16 continued. Fifty feet from the encampment, now forty, thirty. The four armed hostiles crouched behind their trees, looking the other way, backs exposed to him like hay bale targets.

String Mustache was still on the ground, with neither cover nor weapon in hand-his hands, in fact, were covering his ears.

Twenty feet. Travis arrested his forward speed, his feet sliding on the loose soil, and shouldered his rifle. He thumbed the selector switch to single shot-the targets were too widely spaced for a sweep-and brought it up to sight on the leftmost of the armed men.

In that moment the staged gun on the ledge ran dry, the instant silence far more jarring than the gunfire itself had been.

Travis pulled the trigger. His shot took the first hostile dead center in the back, and though he couldn't see the exit wound in the man's chest, the eruption of blood onto the tree was almost absurd. Like the guy had swallowed a grenade.

The others were already turning. Fast. Travis swung the barrel toward the second man and squeezed, the shot catching him through the side of the rib cage and propelling most of its contents out the far side. Following through on the gun's sideways momentum, Travis fired again a quarter second later, the shot going wide of the third man and only slicing open his shoulder.

By now the last two armed hostiles were fully facing him, their weapons coming up smoothly.

What came next, Travis could only think of as autopilot. He'd felt it before, at times when his survival had balanced on a pivot-point made of seconds, or half seconds. His body just seemed to make its own call.

His knees bent. He dropped fast, just as both of the weapons facing him roared. In the same instant that he felt the baked-air trails of bullets passing his face, his thumb flicked the selector switch back to full auto, and then he was firing.

The autofire didn't exactly knock the two men backward-that only seemed to happen in movies-but instead knocked the life from their bodies. Punctured across their upper torsos, they simply dropped, the left of the two crumpling so tidily in place that he cracked his head on his own knee before flopping sideways.

Travis felt the weapon fire empty even as he remembered String Mustache. Turning now, already letting go of the rifle and shrugging the second one from his shoulder, he saw him.

The man was no longer cowering. He was standing. Still not holding a rifle, but drawing a 9mm from inside his coat. He wasn't even looking at Travis. His eyes were on the man tied to the tree, and his pistol was coming up.

The young woman screamed, so much louder than before that the sound baffle strapped to her face seemed not to affect it.

Travis got his left hand on the spare M16's barrel guard. Twisting his body, swinging up the stock, his right hand finding the grip and the trigger well String Mustache put his pistol to the bound man's head and fired. The woman's scream doubled.

A half second later, as the man pivoted to execute the young woman as well, Travis's M16 barked, already set to full auto. Three shots caught String Mustache across the face before the recoil pushed the weapon off target. Travis stopped firing, watched the torturer fall, his 9mm tumbling away over the dirt and pine needles.

Travis swept his gaze across the bodies of the first four hostiles to be sure they were dead. They were dead.

He slung the rifle and went to the woman on the table, taking his knife from his pocket as he went. She startled when she saw him, and he realized she had witnessed almost none of what had just happened-just her father's death and then String Mustache's.

The mechanics of the crank table were obvious enough. Travis took hold of the metal handle and turned it until the surface lay flat. He carefully lifted the strap of the sound baffle, cut it, and pulled the thing away.

She wasn't screaming anymore. She lay there hyperventilating instead.

The straps holding her body were sturdy, but his knife got through them without any trouble. Her hands went to her face; her legs folded up to her chest as she rolled on her side. She felt for something inside her mouth and pulled it out. A rubber clamp of some kind.

Her upper right arm looked as bad as anything Travis had ever seen, but she paid no attention to it now.

Thinking to give her some privacy, Travis turned and walked to the edge of the camp, cocking an ear to listen for the ATVs. He could hear the engines, very distant now and still receding; no way could the riders have heard the gunfire over the roar of those machines up close. They'd left maybe ninety seconds ago. They were probably halfway to the crash now.

"Who are you?" The young woman's voice was broken and faint.

Travis turned, and was surprised to find her sitting up on the table. Her body still shuddered with sobs, but she showed remarkable control, all things considered. She looked to be in her late twenties. Dark hair. Large, dark eyes. He found himself thinking she must be beautiful on anything but the worst day of her life.

"Travis," he said, suddenly lacking a better answer. She seemed to be waiting for more. "I'm just a guy. I found the plane, found Mrs. Garner."

"She lived?"

"Long enough to leave instructions."

Before she could ask about that, movement between them drew their attention sharply.

String Mustache was alive, trying to turn himself over in the dirt. Though a good chunk of the man's face had been cleaved away by one of the bullets, Travis now saw that the other two had glanced on the hard cheekbones and skull. He unslung the M16 and was an instant from finishing him when the woman spoke.

"No." The word came out rough, halfway between whisper and growl.

Then she surprised Travis by pivoting and putting her feet on the ground, and standing-shaky for a moment, but standing all the same.

With her undamaged left arm she took Travis's knife from where he'd set it on the table, and dropped hard with one knee onto String Mustache's back, pressing him flat to the ground. She put the blade, edge-up, under his armpit and pulled savagely. Travis heard a sound like heavy elastic parting, and the man screamed. The arm quivered, uncontrolled. She did the same to the other arm, then turned a hundred eighty degrees and slit both of his hamstrings behind the knees. His screams ebbed to a low moan, gurgling blood in his throat.

The woman stood, put the knife aside, then stooped and gathered a fistful of String Mustache's back collar.

Had Travis actually wanted to stop her, he wasn't sure he'd have had time. She lifted String Mustache's upper body, dragged him ten feet across the needles and loose soil, and dropped him facedown into the white-hot embers of the campfire. He screamed and thrashed, but could only command his limbs to jerk about; all control had literally been severed. He managed to contract his back muscles and raise his face for a few seconds, but then the young woman put her foot on the back of his head and pressed him deep into the coals again. She kept the foot there until his hair caught fire. By that time he'd stopped moving and screaming. She watched him for another ten seconds; then she picked up a rifle dropped by one of the hostiles, thumbed it to auto without even looking at it, and fired a burst into the back of String Mustache's head.

She dropped the gun and turned back to Travis, and for a moment he wasn't sure her eyes were even human. Then they fixed on her father, dead against the base of the tree, and all doubt about her humanity evaporated.

She crossed to the pine and sank beside his bound corpse, pulling herself against him, her face pressed to his despite the blood. She cried again, silently.

Travis went back to the edge of the camp and listened to the distant ATV engines. Thirty seconds later they stopped.