The Darkest Path

he had stepped away. I ducked through the flap in the barracks tent and into moonlight. Kestrel was restful in the dark, quiet except for the rhythm of helicopter landings and the distant artillery booms out at the front.

The ops center glowed with its electric lights. A few soldiers moved importantly from building to building within it. I could predict their every twist and turn: from the command center to the drone operators’ room or, if it was the end of their shift, to the cleansing tent to pray for forgiveness amid the scent of sandalwood. I hated the part of me that grew calm watching them. I kicked at a tent pole as I passed it, welcoming the jolt.

I found myself at the northern edge of Kestrel. Directly in front of me was the perimeter fence and a guard tower. I could see the soldiers inside, one leaning against a wall while the other stood over a machine gun, barrel pointed north. There was a blind spot along the side of a plywood hut. I stepped into it, pressing myself against the boards to watch.

Over the course of an hour a guard with a dog moved along the base of the fence and then vanished around a bend in the line. Later, two new guards emerged from their barracks and crossed toward the tower. The replacements climbed the ladder, and once inside, the four of them gathered in the center of the platform. I could hear a whisper of talk and even laughter. Lighters flared as illicit cigarettes were lit. The place may have looked like Cormorant but these were not her soldiers. I felt a twinge of disgust at their lack of discipline.

Gravel shifted out in the dark. I turned as a figure stepped out of a doorway and down the far side of the street. The last thing I saw before it disappeared into a dark patch was a flutter of white robes. There was no reason a companion should have been out at this hour.

The guards in the tower were still talking among themselves, so I slid along the length of a deep shadow, then across the road. I spotted the companion again, moving through a tight alley behind a line of tents. She stayed low, moving quick and decisively, not like a scared capture, like a soldier. I knew at once that it was Nat. But what was she doing?

Keeping my distance, I followed until she came to the end of the alley and crouched down with her back to me. She pulled her robes off and hid them just behind a tin garbage pail. Underneath them she was wearing nondescript gray coveralls.

The eastern fence was directly ahead of her, a hundred feet down a shallow slope. When she moved, she didn’t look left or right, she just ran straight toward it. Once there, she knelt near the struts of an unfinished guard tower, disappearing into the darkness.

Of course, I thought. Nat would have been looking for an escape route from the second she was taken. I couldn’t say I was surprised that she had already found one. I was just happy she saved me the trouble. A rattle of steel came from the fence line, followed by footsteps dashing away across the grass on the other side. I hesitated, certain I should go back and gather supplies, food and water at least, but then I heard the guard dog bark across the camp. His master was bringing him back this way. I left the cover of darkness and raced across the yard, running for the fence.

I was just barely able to keep up as Nat moved from empty streets and crumbling homes into an industrial area of boarded-up shops and abandoned warehouses.

There was a lull in the fighting at the front but there were signs of old battles all around me. Fast-food restaurants bombed into barely recognizable ruins, pitted streets, and the charred husks of destroyed vehicles. We weren’t alone now, either. Here and there other refugees — whoever hadn’t been swept up in the Path’s net as they ground forward — skulked about in the thin moonlight, scavenging for whatever they could find. They were all horrifyingly thin, with sunken eyes and wasted limbs, little different than the packs of stray dogs that emerged from every alley and shop I passed, their old tags chiming. I tried not to linger over the dogs’ matted fur and too- prominent ribs. Their mournful whimpers as I passed were like fingers probing a raw wound.

Nat stopped at a street corner by a string of warehouses. I thought she was taking her bearings in preparation for moving on again, but she backed into a dark doorway and didn’t emerge for some time. What was she doing? Was this as far as her escape plan had taken her? If so, I was safely away from the base. I could press on alone from here — keep moving north and hope to find a weak point in the Fed line.

I was about to start down the street again when the faint rumble of an engine rose behind me. I pressed myself into a doorway as a civilian pickup truck appeared on the street. Its lights were off and it moved slow, navigating around the craters and piles of debris in the roadway. When it came up alongside me, I saw there were two men inside.

Nat didn’t wait for the truck to stop; she emerged from the shadows and climbed into the bed as it rolled past her. Once she was in, the truck turned a corner and was gone.

Even better, I thought. If Nat had hooked up with Feds who were helping to move refugees across the border, then all I had to do was follow along. I shadowed the truck as it weaved through the streets, ducking into an alleyway when it came to a stop in the parking lot of a warehouse. Two men stepped out and, after scanning the buildings and street around them, knocked on the side of the truck’s bed. Nat emerged and the three of them crossed the parking lot and went inside. I stood in the quiet dark, watching the building. The front was a few miles to the north. What were they doing here?

A rusty-looking set of stairs was bolted to the side of the building, leading up to a second-floor entrance. I made it across the street and started up it, freezing at every creak and rattle of the old metal. At the top was a landing and a door with a narrow window set above the handle. I peered through it and saw a faint glimmer of light coming from the first floor, but there was no trace of Nat or the men.

I eased my shoulder into the door and stepped inside, finding myself on a narrow catwalk high over the warehouse floor. Below were empty boxes and wooden pallets lit by the beams of flashlights. I stole along the length of the catwalk until I came to another staircase, then flattened myself against the deck.

Nat was standing below with her back to me, facing the two men from the truck and another two who held the flashlights. The men were all in civilian clothes, old jeans and flannel shirts, but each of them moved with what I recognized as military precision.

One of the men took a hammer from a bag on the floor and carefully pulled the nails from the top of a wooden crate that sat in front of Nat. He lifted off the lid and reached inside. It was hard to tell what it was he pulled out at first. All I saw were canvas straps and lengths of white material. Nat held her arms up over her head, and the man lowered it over her body.

It looked like a bulletproof vest except it was larger and the fabric was far too thin. The man circled Nat, tightening straps until the vest fit snug against her body. When he was satisfied, he reached into the crate and set another box at Nat’s feet.

When he pulled out what was inside, a sick chill ran through me. I understood what it was that Nat was wearing.

The gray bricks he took out of the box looked like blocks of modeling clay, but the explosive power in each one of those slabs of C-4 was enough to demolish a small car.

He fit the bricks of explosive into slots that had been sewn into the canvas vest Nat was wearing. Two in front, two in back, and one on each side under her arms. Then he took a small battery out of the crate and ran wires from it to each of the bricks. The wires were gathered into one cable and concealed in a channel built into the vest. At the end of the cable he attached a trigger that was about the size of a small lighter.

Once Nat was wired up, the rest of the men moved around her, critiquing the bomb maker’s work and making adjustments. When they were done, the vest hugged her body so tightly that her companion’s robe was sure to conceal it. No one would notice what she was wearing until she pressed the trigger.

The men gathered into a circle while Nat stood before them. They murmured among themselves, then returned to Nat, slowly removing the vest and packing it into an ordinary-looking backpack. Nat slung the pack over her shoulder and was led out of the warehouse by the two men who had brought her.

The men with the flashlights spoke for a moment more, then went their separate ways. A door below opened and then whispered shut. The warehouse was perfectly dark and silent.

I lay on the edge of the catwalk, a dull buzz in my head, too stunned to move. It wasn’t possible. Surely I hadn’t seen what I thought I just did. Nat would never—

An engine cranked outside, shocking me out of my daze. I scrambled up the catwalk and to the door, stepping onto the landing just as the truck pulled away, retracing its steps back to Kestrel.

The ground trembled as the nightly barrage of artillery fire began. I turned toward the front, imagining soldiers on both sides of the border running in a hundred different directions with a hundred different concerns — certainly the least of them would be one raggedy-looking kid slipping across the border. Every muscle in my body