Footsteps moving around the table filled with medals. Chests opening and closing.
Then, over the drone of the ceiling fan, Jody heard the intruder rattle the closet door, on the other side of the trailer. A moment later there were four loud pops.
Jody squeezed the garment bags so tightly that her nails went through one of them. What the hell was going on out there? She backed against the wall, away from the door.
Her heart was punching up against her jaw.
She heard the closet door bang open as the trailer turned a corner. A table leg scraped the floor as the person moved around it— not gingerly, as Jody had before, but roughly, impatiently.
The intruder was coming toward the bathroom door.
Suddenly, it didn't seem like such a good idea to be in here.
Jody looked up, around, behind her. She saw the frosted glass of the window. But because of the metal bars, no one could get in. Or now, out.
Jody ducked down as the bathroom door handle jiggled. She hunkered down low behind the gently swaying clothes, then crept back beside the toilet. The tiny shower stall was to her rear and she leaned against the glass door.
Her heart beat a heavy crunch, crunch, crunch in her ears.
She started to whimper and bit the side of her thumb to keep from being heard.
A burst of gunfire drowned out the sound of her heart, of her whimpering. She screamed into her thumb as wood and plastic chips flew from the door, pelting the floor and garment bags. Then the door squeaked outward and a gun barrel pushed through the neat row of German uniforms. It pushed them to the side and a face peered down at her. A woman's face.
Jody looked from the compact machine-gun-like weapon to the coldness in the woman's liquid gold eyes. The girl was still biting on her thumb.
The woman motioned up with the gun and Jody stood.
Her hands dropped to her sides and perspiration poured down her thighs.
The woman said something in German.
'I— don't understand,' Jody said.
'I said pick up your hands and turn around,' the woman barked in thickly accented English.
Jody raised her hands face-high, then hesitated. She had read, in one of her classes, about how hostages were often shot in the back of the head.
'Please,' she said, 'I'm an intern. I was assigned to this movie a few—' 'Turn!' the woman snapped.
'Please don't!' Jody said, even as she did what she was told.
When she was facing the window, Jody heard the uniforms being moved aside and felt the warm metal of the gun against the top of her neck.
'Please…' she sobbed.
Jody started as the woman patted her left side from breast to thigh, and then her right. The woman reached in front and felt along her waistband. Then she turned Jody around. The gun was pointing toward her mouth.
'I don't know what this is about,' Jody said. She was crying now. 'And I wouldn't tell anyone anything—' 'Quiet,' the woman said.
Jody obeyed. She knew that she would do anything this woman told her. It was frightening to discover how completely her will could be suppressed by a gun and a person who was willing to use it.
The van stopped suddenly and Jody stumbled toward the sink. She hurried back to her feet, hands raised. The woman hadn't moved, didn't look as if her thoughts had been disturbed.
The trailer door opened and a young man walked over.
He stood behind Karin and looked into the bathroom. He had a pale complexion and a swastika carved in his head.
Without taking her eyes off Jody, Karin turned slightly toward the young man and said, 'Begin.' The man clicked the heels of his boots, turned, and started loading the relics into the trunks.
Karin continued to stare at Jody. 'I don't like killing women,' the woman said at last, 'but I cannot take hostages. They slow me down.' That was it. Jody was going to die. She went numb.
She began to sob. She had a flashback to being a little girl, to wetting her pants in first grade when the teacher had yelled at her, to crying and not being able to stop, to the other children laughing at her. Every scrap of confidence and accomplishment and dignity flooded away.
With the trickle of poise that remained to her, Jody fell to the floor. Facing the back of the bathroom, seeing the toilet and sink from the sides of her foggy eyes, she pleaded for her life.
But instead of shooting her, the woman ordered another man, an older man, to remove the uniforms. Then she closed the bathroom door. The girl waited, surprised, half-expecting gunfire to tear through the door. She stood sideways, on the toilet, to make as small and removed a target as possible.
But instead of gunfire, all she heard was a scraping sound followed by a loud whump.
Something had been pushed against the door.
She isn't going to kill me, Jody thought. She's only going to lock me in here.
Perspiration soaked her clothes as she waited. The three hijackers finished quickly in the trailer, and then were gone. She listened. Nothing.
Then one of the hijackers was outside the window. Jody leaned her ear to the wall, and listened. Something metal was turning, followed by clanking, and then the sound of metal being punctured once, twice, and then a third time.
Then she heard fabric being ripped and she smelled gas.
The fuel tank, she thought with horror. They've opened it.
'No!' Jody screamed as she leapt off the toilet. She threw herself against the door. 'You said you don't like killing women! Please!' A moment later Jody smelled smoke, heard footsteps running from the van, and saw the orange of the flame reflected against the frosted glass of the window. They were going to burn the trailer with her in it.
The woman isn't killing me, Jody realized then. She's just letting me die.
The girl threw herself against the door. It wouldn't budge. And as the orange grew brighter she stood in the middle of the small room screaming with fear and despair.
CHAPTER TEN
Liz Gordon had just finished grinding up coffee beans and was lighting her first cigarette of the day when the phone rang.
'I wonder who that can be?' the thirty-two-year-old said to herself as she took a long pull on her cigarette.
Ashes fell on her Mike Danger nightshirt and she brushed them off. Then she absently scratched her head through her curly brown hair as she listened to see where she'd left the cordless phone.
Since rising at five, Liz had been going over some of the things she might say when she visited the Striker team later this morning. At their third group session two days before, the elite but very young soldiers were still in shock as they mourned the loss of Charlie Squires. Rookie Sondra DeVonne was taking his death especially hard, sad for Charlie's family and also for herself. Through tears, the Private had said that she'd hoped to learn so much from him. Now all that wisdom and experience was gone. Not passed on.
Dead.
'Where is the freakin' phone?' Liz snarled as she kicked aside the newspapers by the kitchen table.
Not that she was afraid the caller would hang up. At this hour it could only be Monica calling from Italy. And her roommate and best friend would not go away until she got her messages. After all, she'd been gone nearly an entire day.
And if Sinatra calls, thought Op-Center's Staff Psychologist, you want to be able to get right back to him.
For the three years they'd been living together, Liz's workaholic freelance musician friend had done all the
