Hostage Zero

Gail dove for cover, pressing herself into the dirt and covering her head with her arms. As if mere flesh and bones could protect her from the shrapnel of a disintegrating helicopter. The ground under her jumped at the impact, and an instant later, a searing wall of heat preceded a low-order explosion that was more a whump than a bang.

She pressed deeper into the ground as something whistled through the air over her head and then sheared off the tops of trees, creating a rainstorm of leaves and branches.

The heat bloomed painfully over the next three or four seconds, and then it retracted just as quickly. In Gail’s mind, she could almost see the roiling fireball tumbling over itself as rolled into the sky. When she dared to raise her head, that was exactly what she saw.

That, and a world on fire. It had started with her truck, and then the helicopter; but when the chopper fell out of the sky, it clipped the roof of Navarro’s house, and now fire was consuming the building’s roof, traveling from the far end to the near.

To her distant left, Navarro struggled to his feet, his rifle dangling from his hand. “Well,” he said. “Shit.” He turned to look at her. “Good thing I keep my keys in the truck, huh?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The rain started to fall the minute Evan Guinn and his escorts arrived at the big camp in the jungle. And when it fell, it fell like a house. No little drip, drip followed by a patter that gradually increased. This rainstorm was born as a gulley-washer. That’s what Father Dom called lots of rain. But even that dramatic description couldn’t touch this deluge. No gulley could contain this rain, so thick and heavy that you couldn’t see more than fifteen feet ahead. The flood of water turned the ground to an ankle-deep river of mud, and again, the boy was grateful not to be burdened with shoes.

This camp was a lot like the one where he’d first awakened, but many times the size, with probably ten times the people, many of them carrying machine guns, and more than a few wearing soldiers’ uniforms. He saw more of those raised-floor huts, too, like the one where he’d awoke, but most had no walls. The roofs were made of weeds, but the sides were wide open. It was hard to know exactly how many there were through blinding rain, but he counted eight, and thought he could make out the outlines of several more.

As he passed the first building, the soldiers who’d been escorting him peeled off and disappeared into the rain. Evan started to follow, but Oscar cupped the back of his neck with his palm and moved him forward. Under different circumstances, it would have been a nearly playful gesture.

“Almost there,” Oscar said.

The deeper they traveled into the camp, the barer the ground became, until finally, they entered what felt like the middle, where the mud was ankle deep. The trek ended at the base of a huge hut, at the bottom of a five-stair climb.

At shoulder height, the hut buzzed with activity and stank of gasoline and rotten eggs. A dozen or so half-naked people, a few not much older than he, moved about at a frenzied pace, clearly in a hurry to finish something, but Evan had no idea what the something might be.

Oscar nudged his shoulder, less playfully than last time. “Up,” he said. “You first.”

“Where are we?”

Oscar smiled, ignoring the water that cascaded from his nose and chin. “This is your new home.”

Evan made a point of showing nothing. Shielding his eyes from the rain, he tilted his head to look up to the top of the stairs, and then climbed. He wasn’t sure it made sense, but the higher he got off the ground, the less the place stank of gasoline. He was grateful for that, because it was a smell that made his stomach uneasy.

When he reached the top, the rain stopped falling, and he realized that he was under a roof. A second later, Oscar rejoined his side and craned his neck to look around, clearly searching for something or someone in particular. He made eye contact with a man on the far side of the enclosure and waved-a big wave, high over his head.

Evan followed his eye line and saw the man return the wave with a nod before turning back and finishing his conversation. The man looked angry, and the boy on the other end of the conversation looked frightened. When the man doing the talking punctuated his remarks with a slap against the side of the boy’s face, the kid cowered long enough for the man to turn away, and then he went back to work doing whatever he was doing. Something that involved cloth suspended over a tub.

The angry man walked with long, quick strides directly at them-so sternly that Oscar took a step away from Evan, who took a step the other way. Evan was not going to let himself be slapped by a stranger. As he closed the distance even more, the man’s pockmarked face drew back into a wide grin that looked more menacing than friendly.

“So this is the famous Evan Guinn!” the man proclaimed. “You look like crap.” He turned to Oscar. “What the hell have you been doing with him?”