Victor still had his Louisville Slugger. He unleashed a two-handed home-run swing at the boy’s head. Evan ducked, barely dodging the blow that splintered the hut’s wall, and fell back into the mud. He screamed again.
In the flashing, dancing light of the fire, he saw Victor smile as he brought the bat high over his head. Evan shrieked, first in terror, and then in agony.
Jonathan understood in a single glance what was happening, and he kicked himself for having dropped his guard. You never put all eyes in one direction, and you never leave the precious cargo alone. He had done both, and now a large and very pissed-off local was threatening to ruin everything with a baseball bat.
Jonathan pushed away from the wall. “Stay on the chopper,” he commanded to Boxers. With Harvey’s ruse on the edge of working and the helicopter flaring to land, Jonathan couldn’t afford the noise of a gunshot. He drew his KA-BAR and rushed the man.
Evan was on his left side on the ground, cowering, his knees up and arms protecting his head, screaming like a terrified animal as the attacker raised the bat high over his head, as if it were an axe. Jonathan sprinted toward him, but he was still two strides away when the bat came down with everything he had on Evan’s raised shin. He saw the bone break, heard the resonant crack.
The agonized shriek churned his stomach.
Jonathan hit the attacker hard, driving his shoulder into the man’s side and burying the knife to its hilt into his belly. The man tried his best to yell, but it was a weak effort. Jonathan’s blade had found the descending aorta that he’d been aiming for, dropping the man’s blood pressure to zero in an instant. By the time he withdrew the KA-BAR from the gaping wound, the man had already gone limp.
Behind him, as Evan wailed, “My leg! Oh, God, my leg!” Boxers opened fire on the chopper.
Ponder sensed that something was wrong the instant after he gave the order to land. The man in the rotor wash-the man who, on closer inspection, truly did not look familiar-became distracted by something off to the helicopter’s right-hand side. Ponder looked, but he didn’t see anything.
When he returned his gaze to the front windscreen, the man in the rotor wash had changed. His posture seemed to have recovered.
Ponder yelled, “It’s a trap!” the instant the wheels touched the ground. “Get us up! Up!”
The pilot jumped, and his hands shifted on the controls, and an instant later, his head burst open, dousing the windscreen and the controls with blood and brains. Behind him, in the cargo bay, the gunner made a sound like a barking dog, and when Ponder heard his weapon clatter to the floor, he knew that the gunner was also dead.
He also sensed that he was next. He reached for the door handle, but in the panic, he fumbled the effort. Something big and invisible kicked him in the chest, driving the air from his lungs. Whatever it was-and he knew it was a bullet-had rendered his arms useless.
As blood spilled down the front of his white shirt, he was surprised how little it hurt to die.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
While Harvey tended to the wounded, Jonathan and Boxers secured the scene. That meant walking the entire perimeter of the compound looking for living threats and then dispatching them. The fact that he’d heard no gunshots told Harvey that the first round of destruction had been successful.
As the time stretched to ten and then twenty minutes, children who’d run away began to wander back into the camp and to gather around the rescuers. They wanted to know what they should do. Some of them wanted to come along with Jonathan’s team, not even knowing where they would be going.
“We can’t take them all,” Boxers said.
“So how are you going to choose who gets left behind?” Harvey asked.
“The wounded get first priority,” Jonathan said. “We’ll decide on the others later.” Until Evan was safely at home, everyone understood that the rescue team could not return for the stragglers.
“So what happens to the rest?” Harvey asked.
Jonathan shrugged. “They have to be patient. They can fend for themselves. For a while. Hopefully, the villagers will take care of them. Maybe someone else. We’re not in the refugee business. Not today, anyway.”
Harvey listened to the words, and he knew right away what he had to do. “I’ll stay with them.”
“Oh, no,” Boxers objected. “I’m not getting to safety and then have to fly all the way back here to pick you up.”
“I don’t expect you to,” Harvey said. “I mean I’ll really stay.” He looked to Jonathan. “I’ve got nothing to go to back there. I’m a predator, remember? No job, no place to live, lots of people pissed off. This’ll do for me for a while.”
Jonathan stared, unsure what to say.
Boxers objected, “You’re talking shit. Boss, say something.”
Jonathan gave Harvey a long, hard look. “We’re talking a career decision here. Think about it carefully.”
Harvey smiled. “Hey, I’ve got no passport in a country that I invaded outside of any law-abiding entity. What could possibly go wrong?”
When he saw that the humor landed flat, he changed his tone. “Seriously, Boss. Over here I get a new lease. Back home, I’m nothing but an embarrassment to everybody.” He spread his arms to include the crowd of kids. “I have my flock.” His eyes bored into Boxers. “And I’m not what they say I am.”
The Big Guy grew uncomfortable. “Suit yourself,” he said. Then, to Jonathan, “I can have the bird ready to fly in five minutes. If we’re getting out of here, we need to start loading up.” He walked off to attend to it.
Jonathan said, “Harvey, this was never the plan.”
Harvey laughed. “It certainly wasn’t mine. But sometimes opportunities come wrapped in odd packages.”
“How will you make a living?”
“Adapt and improvise. Isn’t that your motto?” He shrugged. “Look, back in the world, nothing went right for me. I pissed on some opportunities, and some stuff just spun out of my control, but when it’s all said and done, I’ve got nothing back there. Seriously, these kids we liberated all need to find their families. They all need an education. Maybe I’ll copy your example and build the Colombian version of Resurrection House. I’ll do fine.”
Jonathan could not have been prouder. “Help us load, then?”
It only took a few minutes. The most seriously wounded got the white leather sofas, while the rest took up space on the floor with Evan, who seemed to be handling the pain of his leg pretty well. Because of weight restrictions, they drew a solid line in the sand that the dead would all be left behind, as would the uninjured children. As Boxers put it so succinctly, “We’re not a damn school bus.”
After some fierce debate, though, an exception was made for Charlie. A promise was a promise, after all.
With the cargo bay full, and increasing numbers of children pressing to climb aboard, it was time to go. Jonathan turned to Harvey one last time. “We can make room for you. Say the word.”
Harvey smiled. “I’ve already said my words. Someone should stay. I want to stay.”
Jonathan found himself speechless-a condition that rarely afflicted him. He held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”
Harvey accepted the handshake. “Oh, I bet you would have found a way. Thanks for thinking I would be crazy enough to come along.”
They held the handshake long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Jonathan wanted to tell this Marine that he should be proud of himself, but he knew that speaking the words would cheapen the moment. Instead, he said, “We gotta go.”
“Yep,” Harvey said. “Give my best to anyone who gives a shit.”
“I’ll do that. You take care.”
“I’ll take care of me,” Harvey said. “You take care of those kids. I hope you kept current on your combat medic skills.”
“It’s only about a fifty-minute flight,” Jonathan said. This, down from a nearly ten-hour truck ride under the original plan.
“You’ve got the ambulances arranged?”
