“They should be waiting for us. Venice said she’d take care of it, and that’s as good as dispatching them ourselves.”
Harvey offered his hand again. “Then get the hell out of here.”
Before climbing into the cargo bay, Jonathan stripped himself of all weapons and armor, keeping only his Colt on his hip and his. 38 in his pants pocket. He’d be moving from one patient to another, and the fewer encumbrances he had, the better off he’d be.
Up front, Boxers turned in his seat to look back at him. He offered a thumbs-up as a question, and Jonathan donned the bulky headset intercom with its long cord. “PC is secure.” Even before the final word had cleared his throat, they were airborne.
Evan had never had the experience of flying in a helicopter before, but even though he knew that he should be impressed and grateful, he found himself overwhelmed with a feeling of sadness. May-be even a little shame. Surrounded by all of these wounded boys, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for their suffering. No matter how you cut it, he was the reason they’d been shot. When he thought of the ones who’d been killed, he felt his eyes go hot.
And he still didn’t know why any of it was happening. He didn’t understand why he had been taken in the first place, and he didn’t understand why Mr. Jonathan and the others would risk so much to get him back. Yet they did. And they did it for him. How are you supposed to live with something like that?
“Does it hurt much?” a voice yelled over the sound of the engine and wind.
Evan hadn’t realized that Charlie had repositioned himself at his side. While Evan felt like he’d aged thirty years, Charlie seemed to have grown younger. He seemed meek. Needy, maybe. As he answered, Evan touched his leg without thinking about it. “The splint helps.”
“You know your friend killed him, right? Victor, I mean?”
“He killed a lot of people tonight.”
“But he killed Victor with a knife. I saw it. I saw the look in his eyes while he did it. I think he liked it.”
Maybe by mere coincidence, a pain shot through Evan’s ruined shin, and he grunted against it. “I’d have liked it, too,” he said through gritted teeth. “Son of a bitch said he was going to break my legs with that bat if I tried to escape. Guess I’m lucky he only got one.”
They fell quiet, but in the silence, Evan sensed that Charlie had sat with him for a reason. He liked the company, so he just waited for it.
“What’s gonna happen to me?” Charlie asked after a while.
“What do you mean?”
The boy shrugged. “Just that. Where am I going to go when we get wherever we’re going? Is your friend going to take me back to America with you?”
“His name is Mr. Jonathan. And I’d guess so.”
“And then what? I don’t know anybody in America. I don’t have a place to live.” Charlie waited for Evan to get it. “I’m going to need a place to live.”
Finally, Evan understood. “You want to come and live with me at RezHouse? It’s a nice place.” He gave a wry chuckle. “And they come and get you if you get kidnapped.”
“Would they let me?”
Evan shrugged, and in doing so somehow made his leg hurt again. “I don’t see why not. If anybody complains, just let Father Dom know. He’ll take care of it for you.”
“Who’s Father Dom?”
“He’s a priest. A nice one. He kinda runs the school. You’ll meet him.”
“Will he like me?”
“He likes everybody.”
Charlie thought about that, nodding his head gently. Then he scowled for a moment before dissolving into deep, racking sobs.
It had been a long time since Jonathan had played medic, but he proved to be pretty adept at it. It helped that Harvey had gotten the kids stabilized on the ground before they took off, but for the duration of the flight, vitals all stayed stable. He worried a lot about the kid with the chest wound. Twice during the flight Jonathan had had to lift the occlusive dressing to allow his lung to reinflate. The good news was that even though the boy remained unconscious, his vitals all stayed good, and his pupils remained equal and reactive to light.
Like any flight in any aircraft, this one had certain rhythms associated with it, such that Jonathan knew without being told that they had begun their approach to the little-used general aviation airport on the distant outskirts of Santa Marta. Using Jonathan’s money, Jammin’ Josie had arranged for Gulfstream transport back to the States for the tail end of the mission, using a plane that belonged to a former Nicaraguan Contra who’d done very well for himself. As it turned out, flying out of Colombia was no problem at all as far as the government was concerned.
“Hey, Boss,” Boxers said over the intercom. “I think you want to take a look at this.”
Jonathan stepped around one of the wounded kids and over Evan and his friend to rest his hand on the back of the pilot’s seat. Boxers pointed to the airport runway up ahead, where a cluster of ambulances stood at the ready, awaiting their arrival. “What can I say?” Jonathan quipped. “Venice’s true to her promises.”
“I’m not talking about the meat wagons,” Boxers grumped. “Look at the line of soldiers.”
Several dozen had clustered around one of the jets on the tarmac, and Jonathan could only guess that it would prove to be the tail number they were looking for. “Well, shit,” Jonathan cursed into the microphone.
“What do you want me to do?”
Jonathan ran the options and couldn’t come up with any. Clearly, they’d been made. Jonathan had known all along that it was a possibility given Josie’s betrayal, but he’d been hoping for a break. If they aborted this landing and headed for another airport, they’d just prolong the inevitable, and they certainly couldn’t fly all the way to the States in a helicopter.
“Go ahead and land,” Jonathan stated.
“What’s Plan B?”
“I don’t have one,” Jonathan admitted.
“Maybe Panama will take us.”
“Look at your gas gauge,” Jonathan said, pointing. “Even if they’d take us, we don’t have enough fuel to get there.”
“Well, we can’t fight that many.”
“True enough.”
“And I ain’t rotting in some jungle jail cell.”
“One crisis at a time, Box,” Jonathan cautioned. “Put us on the ground and I’ll give diplomacy a shot.”
“I’ve still got about a hundred rounds of five-five-six diplomacy there on the floor,” Boxers quipped, eyeing his cache of weapons on the seat next to his.
“There are more lives than ours in play, Big Guy. Just get us on the ground.”
Boxers sighed loudly enough to be heard over the ambient noise. He shook his head in disgust and squared up the aircraft for a landing. “This shit grows old, Digger,” he said. “This shit grows very, very old.”
Jonathan pulled his. 45 from its holster and placed it on top of the other weapons. Depending on the mood of the soldiers, he’d get to say a lot more without a gun on his hip than he would with one.
He turned to his passengers. In Spanish, he instructed them to stay where they were after they landed, to wait for the ambulance people to come and get them. Then he told Evan in English, but with the addition, “You don’t leave with anybody but Big Guy or me, okay?”
“You mean die on the street before getting into the car?” Evan asked.
The familiarity of the phrase startled him, and it must have shown in his face.
“You told us that at an assembly,” Evan clarified.
That earned him a wink. “I remember that. One way or the other, we’re getting you home today.”
Jonathan positioned himself in the doorway to the cargo bay as they made their final flare to land, standing there like a human X, his hands and feet braced in the opening. As the wheels touched and Boxers killed the engine, the soldiers moved forward, even as the rotors were still turning.
“I have wounded children in here,” he called out in Spanish. “I’m bringing them in for medical care. Please don’t harm them any more than they’ve already been harmed.”
