The other boy’s eyes were wide and red. He shook his head.
Evan heard two gunshots, really close ones, and then a rattling sound at the front door. It was like every bad dream he’d ever had, where the monster is clawing at your door to get in, and you can’t do anything to stop it.
He shot another panicked look to Charlie, then flattened himself on the floor as if to dissolve through the wooden planks.
Please God, he thought. But then he realized he didn’t know what to pray for.
That’s okay, Father Dom had told him once. God sees your heart. He doesn’t need to hear your words.
So just please God would do.
The door burst open, and the monster entered. Actually, it was two monsters, and they had guns.
“ En el piso! ” one of them yelled. He was huge-from this angle bigger than the door he’d just come through. “ En el piso! ”
Immediately, on the far end of the room, there was a clatter of beds and people as boys dropped to the floor.
“Evan Guinn!” the other one yelled.
Something dissolved inside him, launching him to a new plane of fear. They were coming to kill him. Then all of that changed with the man’s next words.
“Evan Guinn, we’re here to take you home!”
Inside on the left was for shit-literally, it turned out-so after a quick glance to clear that part of the room, Jonathan shifted his attention to the right.
Boxers yelled, “On the floor!” in Spanish, and then repeated it. To a person, the kids obeyed. Instantly. And kids they were, too. Not a whisker among them.
By Jonathan’s estimate, they were already two minutes into the assault, and that meant they were behind schedule. It wouldn’t take long for somebody to connect the dots on what they were doing, and then the heat of the fire would pale in comparison to the heat of the battle.
“Evan Guinn!” Jonathan yelled. Details of skin tone and hair color were hard to discern with the NVGs in place. “Evan Guinn, we’re here to take you home!”
Two seconds later, there he was. The closest bed to the door on the eastern side of the building. He saw the boy first as movement, and then there was the mop of hair and the white skin. So much for skin tone and hair color being hard to discern. In here the kid was as visible as chalk on a blackboard.
“I’ve got him,” he announced to Boxers.
“Roger that,” Boxers said. The Big Guy sidestepped closer to the western wall to give Jonathan space to grab Evan, but he kept his weapon trained on the room.
The boy was still finding his feet when Jonathan grabbed his upper arm to help. When he was in the aisle Jonathan stooped to the boy’s level and snapped the NVGs out of the way. “We’re the good guys, Evan. From America. We’re here to take you back where you belong.”
In the dancing, deflected light of the fires, Jonathan saw the kid’s eyes go wide. “Mr. Jonathan?” he said.
Jonathan smiled. “The one and only.”
“What are you doing here?”
“That’s a very long story,” Jonathan replied. “For now, I need you to keep quiet, stay close to me, and let’s see if we can all get out of here alive.”
One of the other children scrambled to his feet and rushed toward them, but Boxers planted a hand in his chest, stopping him in his tracks. “Take me with you,” the boy said.
The English startled Jonathan, but he started for the door anyway.
Boxers said, “Go back to bed, kid. We’re here for just one.”
“No!” the boy shouted. “Evan, you promised!”
Evan squirted out of Jonathan’s grasp and buttonhooked around his hip to beckon Charlie to join them. “Come on,” he said.
Jonathan grabbed Evan’s arm again, tighter this time. “No, you come on.”
“But he’s my friend.”
“You’ll make a new one,” Boxers growled. “Scorpion, we need to move.”
With his rifle trained on the other boys, he started to back out as Jonathan half pushed, half dragged Evan through the door. “Mr. Jonathan, Mr. Jonathan, listen to me. That’s Charlie. He was the only one who helped-”
“We can’t,” Jonathan said. “We just can’t.”
Evan yelled, “Come on, Charlie! He said you can come!”
Boxers appeared at the door, his jaw dropped. “What the hell?”
Jonathan was stunned. And then the other kid was there. Well, shit. What was he going to do, shoot him?
It would take less time to capitulate than it would to argue. “Fine,” he said. Then, to Boxers, “Let-”
A chorus of screams whipped Jonathan’s head to the far end of the compound, where the fire had reached the farthest of the barracks-Building India-and was starting to consume the west wall-the one that faced the interior of the compound. Tongues of flame licked up the siding and up to the eaves and the thatched roof. At a glance, he realized that the fire would be rolling into the interior of the building through the high windows. If they didn’t do something, the children would burn to death.
Harvey said, “Boss.”
Jonathan shot a look to Boxers. “We have to,” he said. He let go of Evan’s arm and said to the boy, “Stay with me. Step for step, you understand?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned on his heel and ran toward the growing conflagration, his rifle at the ready. This was the nightmare scenario-the one that he had driven home a thousand times to Unit wannabes when he was an instructor at the OTC-operator training course. On an 0300 mission, the precious cargo was the mission. Everything was secondary to the rescue. And by God, once you have the PC in your grasp, you never do anything to risk their safety. Yeah, well, that was the training course. He’d survived it once and taught it three times, and he knew for a fact that there was no scenario involving the incineration of a dozen children.
The fire grew with startling speed. In the ten or fifteen seconds that it took Jonathan to cover the distance, the far end of the barracks was fully involved. The screams from inside were as terrifying a sound as he’d ever heard. He was certain that they were screaming words, but he didn’t try to catch them. The timbre of the voices told him everything he needed to know. As they closed within the last few yards, Harvey sprinted past him to get to the door first. Jonathan didn’t think the little guy knew how to move that fast.
A burst of machine-gun fire from close behind made Jonathan slide to a stop and bring his weapon to bear. It was Boxers, and his weapon was up, his eyes focused to the southwest corner of the compound. He followed his sight line and turned in time for a second burst to drop a soldier who’d been readying a shot of his own.
“Make it fast, Dig!” Boxers shouted. “This is spinning out of control. We are officially in trouble.”
Jonathan could count on two hands the number of times he’d heard his friend sound this unnerved. Whatever advantage they’d earned through their massive diversion had now been lost. In fact, the diversion itself had become their biggest problem. With the element of surprise squandered, this whole mission would come down to marksmanship.
Harvey pulled on the barracks door, trying to get it open. It was not lost on Jonathan that none of the local soldiers or bosses were doing anything to help the children.
“Move, Harvey,” Jonathan barked. He let the M4 fall against its sling, and raised the Mossberg. He jacked the breech open, ejecting one of the buckshot rounds, then reached to his bandolier of shells and thumbed out a slug round. He slipped it into the breech and closed it before sweeping Evan and his friend behind him. He placed the muzzle two inches away from the shackle loop, calculated the ricochet angle, then pulled the trigger.
The Mossberg bucked, and the lock disappeared. He slid the bolt to the side, pulled open the door, and children tumbled out into the night. They coughed and cried, their faces blackened with soot and smoke, but Jonathan didn’t see any burns. Next to him, Harvey did his best to examine them as they streamed by. Apparently, they were all healthy, because he didn’t stop any of them for further treatment.
A ripple of bullets chewed the wall just to the left of the door, followed an instant later by the sound of the gunfire that launched them. The children yelled and scattered, causing Jonathan to reflexively look for Evan. He was still right where he was supposed to be, his friend close enough for them to share a heartbeat.
