Alli knew what she had to do; she and Thate had gone over it during a short break in the trek while his men had surveilled the area just ahead. She now had to do it. She recalled with perfect clarity the Ukranian mistress Milla Tamirova and her dungeon with its restraint chair that had brought back with a sickening rush her week at the mercy of Morgan Herr. Something inside her quailed and tried to shrivel up. But she wouldn’t let it; she was stronger than that now. The guerillas’ eyes burned into her pale flesh. The inner halves of her breasts were exposed, moving as she approached them. She walked as Milla Tamirova walked, putting one boot directly in front of the other so that her hips and buttocks swayed gently back and forth.
She was close enough to them now to smile, her white, even teeth shining in the light of the bare bulb above the door. She kept her lips slightly open. She had moistened them just before she had stepped into the light.
And then something odd—and thrilling—happened. Their very stares, which had terrified her a moment before, buoyed her. Their eyes caressed her, moving over one body part after another. They weren’t repulsed; on the contrary, naked lust suffused their faces, warming her, fueling her. Emma had made her feel beautiful. But now, for the first time, she realized that her childlike body was not connected to the womanly power inside her. This was the moment of her final flowering into womanhood, the moment when all childhood things were left behind, when she saw who and what she could become.
Finding her voice, she began to sing again. The guerillas licked their lips seconds before they died. She watched them with a curious dispassion as the light went out of their eyes, and she shivered, suddenly cold.
“Fucking beautiful,” Thate said. He called Paull and gave him the all clear.
As soon as the chatter of machine-gun fire bit into the night, he led his men into the school.
Alli followed him, feeling like a shell sucked up in a powerful undertow.
THREE OF Thate’s men had been killed by the time the kid brought her face-to-face with the orphans. Until that moment, he had kept her safe in the rear guard, guarded by two of his
The orphans were huddled in one darkened classroom. Before she stepped into the doorway, she handed Thate her assault rifle.
He offered a handgun. “Don’t go in there unarmed.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “They need to trust me.”
As she stepped into the room, she sensed the orphans shrinking back, and knew she had been right to come in without a weapon. Then, as they saw her, expressions of surprise and perhaps curiosity bloomed on their faces.
“I don’t speak Macedonian,” she said. “Which of you speak English?”
There was a rustling of bodies. Then a voice from the rear said, “English?”
A young girl pushed her way to the front of the group. She was delicate, her porcelain beauty all the more potent for it. But there was a tigerish look to her eyes and this made Alli wary.
“You are English?”
“American,” Alli said. And then, because there was no time and, really, no other way to state it: “There is danger here. These people are bad.”
“I know,” the porcelain girl said.
One of the other girls behind her said, “They are our teachers.”
Alli, hearing the fear in the girl’s voice, thought about Morgan Herr, who had claimed to be her teacher. “Yes, but they’re teaching you only what they want you to know. They’re making sure that when you grow up you’ll be just like them—terrorists, smugglers, and murderers. I’ll take you to a better place, where you’ll be free to make up your own minds about what you want and don’t want.”
There was a brief silence, and Alli decided to concentrate on the porcelain girl.
“My name is Alli Carson.”
“Edon.” The porcelain girl looked into her eyes. “Edon Kraja.”
Arieta’s sister! A thrill of elation and foreboding ran down Alli’s spine.
The rest of the children remained stone-faced. Assessing their continuing hesitation, Alli held up Emma’s iPod. “Michael Jackson. ‘Thriller.’”
A smile split Edon’s face. “Michael Jackson. Really?”
Alli nodded.
“We’re not allowed to listen to Michael Jackson,” Edon said. “No American music.”
“Where I’m going to take you, you can listen to any kind of music you want.”
Fitting the earbuds to the iPod, Alli scrolled down to the track she wanted and pressed Play. She offered the earbuds to the girl, who cringed back until Alli put one of the earbuds in her own ear. When she offered the other one, the girl took it and hesitantly put it into her ear.
Her grin returned. “Michael Jackson,” she said. “‘Thriller.’”
Alli began to mimic the dance in Jackson’s video and, as Edon hesitantly joined her, the other orphans crowded around. Alli passed the earbuds to a couple of the closest kids.
“Okay, Edon, we have to go. Now. You must tell everyone.”
She did as Alli asked. Alli took back the iPod and earbuds as, like an inverted version of the Pied Piper, she led the orphans out of their personal rat-infested Hamelin.
When they were safely away, hidden in shadows of the trees, Edon turned to Alli.
“Thank you,” she said, “from all of us, even the ones too young to yet understand.” She burst into tears.
Alli put her arm around Edon’s shoulders. “That’s all right. You’re free now.”
“Yes, I,” Edon said through her tears. “But my sister Liridona is not.”
JACK WAS forced to begin his rear-guard action sooner than he had expected. No matter, he had plenty of ammo and convenient cover. He took out three of Xhafa’s guerillas before they fell back, regrouped, and came at him from both sides. Behind him, he could hear the continuous roar of the machine gun. The sound calmed him. Paull had his back.
As the two groups of guerillas began to converge on him, guided by his shots, he crab-walked straight ahead, into a dense copse of trees. Turning around, he fired into their flank, mowing down half of them before they could adjust and return fire. By that time, he had climbed up into one of the trees. Lying out on a thick branch, he brought them into his gun sight, picking them off as they scrambled futilely for cover.
Dropping down, he went from man to man, checking them for breath or pulse. Finding none, he turned back to where Paull was continuing his fusillade. It was then that he felt the cool breath on his cheek.
He felt death coming from behind him and darted to his right. The knife blade slashed through cloth and skin just above his hip bone. If he hadn’t moved, the thrust would have punctured his liver. Stepping into the attack, he whirled and, cocking his elbow, slammed it into his assailant’s throat. The guerilla staggered back, gasping, and Jack drove the butt of his assault rifle into the man’s nose. Blood and cartilage whipped through the air, and the butt whacked the side of the guerilla’s head so hard his neck snapped.
Leaping over the corpse, he joined Paull just in time to pick up the phone. He listened to Thate’s voice, cut the connection, and said, “The kids are out.”
Paull did not let up the volleying for even an instant. “You know what to do,” he said.
Jack picked up the shoulder rocket launcher he had previously loaded, took aim at the school through the launcher’s telescopic sight, and yelled, “Fire in the hole!” just before he pressed the trigger.
The night exploded into white light and a tremendous thunderclap that resounded throughout all of Tetovo.
TWENTY-ONE
