While Harvey tended to the wounded, Jonathan and Boxers secured the scene. That meant walking the entire perimeter of the compound looking for living threats and then dispatching them. The fact that he’d heard no gunshots told Harvey that the first round of destruction had been successful.
As the time stretched to ten and then twenty minutes, children who’d run away began to wander back into the camp and to gather around the rescuers. They wanted to know what they should do. Some of them wanted to come along with Jonathan’s team, not even knowing where they would be going.
“We can’t take them all,” Boxers said.
“So how are you going to choose who gets left behind?” Harvey asked.
“The wounded get first priority,” Jonathan said. “We’ll decide on the others later.” Until Evan was safely at home, everyone understood that the rescue team could not return for the stragglers.
“So what happens to the rest?” Harvey asked.
Jonathan shrugged. “They have to be patient. They can fend for themselves. For a while. Hopefully, the villagers will take care of them. Maybe someone else. We’re not in the refugee business. Not today, anyway.”
Harvey listened to the words, and he knew right away what he had to do. “I’ll stay with them.”
“Oh, no,” Boxers objected. “I’m not getting to safety and then have to fly all the way back here to pick you up.”
“I don’t expect you to,” Harvey said. “I mean I’ll really stay.” He looked to Jonathan. “I’ve got nothing to go to back there. I’m a predator, remember? No job, no place to live, lots of people pissed off. This’ll do for me for a while.”
Jonathan stared, unsure what to say.
Boxers objected, “You’re talking shit. Boss, say something.”
Jonathan gave Harvey a long, hard look. “We’re talking a career decision here. Think about it carefully.”
Harvey smiled. “Hey, I’ve got no passport in a country that I invaded outside of any law-abiding entity. What could possibly go wrong?”
When he saw that the humor landed flat, he changed his tone. “Seriously, Boss. Over here I get a new lease. Back home, I’m nothing but an embarrassment to everybody.” He spread his arms to include the crowd of kids. “I have my flock.” His eyes bored into Boxers. “And I’m not what they say I am.”
The Big Guy grew uncomfortable. “Suit yourself,” he said. Then, to Jonathan, “I can have the bird ready to fly in five minutes. If we’re getting out of here, we need to start loading up.” He walked off to attend to it.
Jonathan said, “Harvey, this was never the plan.”
Harvey laughed. “It certainly wasn’t mine. But sometimes opportunities come wrapped in odd packages.”
“How will you make a living?”
“Adapt and improvise. Isn’t that your motto?” He shrugged. “Look, back in the world, nothing went right for me. I pissed on some opportunities, and some stuff just spun out of my control, but when it’s all said and done, I’ve got nothing back there. Seriously, these kids we liberated all need to find their families. They all need an education. Maybe I’ll copy your example and build the Colombian version of Resurrection House. I’ll do fine.”
Jonathan could not have been prouder. “Help us load, then?”
It only took a few minutes. The most seriously wounded got the white leather sofas, while the rest took up space on the floor with Evan, who seemed to be handling the pain of his leg pretty well. Because of weight restrictions, they drew a solid line in the sand that the dead would all be left behind, as would the uninjured children. As Boxers put it so succinctly, “We’re not a damn school bus.”
After some fierce debate, though, an exception was made for Charlie. A promise was a promise, after all.
With the cargo bay full, and increasing numbers of children pressing to climb aboard, it was time to go. Jonathan turned to Harvey one last time. “We can make room for you. Say the word.”
Harvey smiled. “I’ve already said my words. Someone should stay. I want to stay.”
Jonathan found himself speechless-a condition that rarely afflicted him. He held out his hand. “Thank you,” he said. “We couldn’t have done this without you.”
Harvey accepted the handshake. “Oh, I bet you would have found a way. Thanks for thinking I would be crazy enough to come along.”
They held the handshake long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Jonathan wanted to tell this Marine that he should be proud of himself, but he knew that speaking the words would cheapen the moment. Instead, he said, “We gotta go.”
“Yep,” Harvey said. “Give my best to anyone who gives a shit.”
“I’ll do that. You take care.”
“I’ll take care of me,” Harvey said. “You take care of those kids. I hope you kept current on your combat medic skills.”
“It’s only about a fifty-minute flight,” Jonathan said. This, down from a nearly ten-hour truck ride under the original plan.
“You’ve got the ambulances arranged?”
“They should be waiting for us. Venice said she’d take care of it, and that’s as good as dispatching them ourselves.”
Harvey offered his hand again. “Then get the hell out of here.”
Before climbing into the cargo bay, Jonathan stripped himself of all weapons and armor, keeping only his Colt on his hip and his. 38 in his pants pocket. He’d be moving from one patient to another, and the fewer encumbrances he had, the better off he’d be.
Up front, Boxers turned in his seat to look back at him. He offered a thumbs-up as a question, and Jonathan donned the bulky headset intercom with its long cord. “PC is secure.” Even before the final word had cleared his throat, they were airborne.
Evan had never had the experience of flying in a helicopter before, but even though he knew that he should be impressed and grateful, he found himself overwhelmed with a feeling of sadness. May-be even a little shame. Surrounded by all of these wounded boys, he couldn’t help but feel responsible for their suffering. No matter how you cut it, he was the reason they’d been shot. When he thought of the ones who’d been killed, he felt his eyes go hot.
And he still didn’t know why any of it was happening. He didn’t understand why he had been taken in the first place, and he didn’t understand why Mr. Jonathan and the others would risk so much to get him back. Yet they did. And they did it for him. How are you supposed to live with something like that?
“Does it hurt much?” a voice yelled over the sound of the engine and wind.
Evan hadn’t realized that Charlie had repositioned himself at his side. While Evan felt like he’d aged thirty years, Charlie seemed to have grown younger. He seemed meek. Needy, maybe. As he answered, Evan touched his leg without thinking about it. “The splint helps.”
“You know your friend killed him, right? Victor, I mean?”
“He killed a lot of people tonight.”
“But he killed Victor with a knife. I saw it. I saw the look in his eyes while he did it. I think he liked it.”
Maybe by mere coincidence, a pain shot through Evan’s ruined shin, and he grunted against it. “I’d have liked it, too,” he said through gritted teeth. “Son of a bitch said he was going to break my legs with that bat if I tried to escape. Guess I’m lucky he only got one.”
They fell quiet, but in the silence, Evan sensed that Charlie had sat with him for a reason. He liked the company, so he just waited for it.
“What’s gonna happen to me?” Charlie asked after a while.
“What do you mean?”
The boy shrugged. “Just that. Where am I going to go when we get wherever we’re going? Is your friend going to take me back to America with you?”
“His name is Mr. Jonathan. And I’d guess so.”
“And then what? I don’t know anybody in America. I don’t have a place to live.” Charlie waited for Evan to get it. “I’m going to need a place to live.”
Finally, Evan understood. “You want to come and live with me at RezHouse? It’s a nice place.” He gave a wry chuckle. “And they come and get you if you get kidnapped.”
“Would they let me?”
Evan shrugged, and in doing so somehow made his leg hurt again. “I don’t see why not. If anybody complains, just let Father Dom know. He’ll take care of it for you.”
“Who’s Father Dom?”
“He’s a priest. A nice one. He kinda runs the school. You’ll meet him.”
“Will he like me?”
“He likes everybody.”
Charlie thought about that, nodding his head gently. Then he scowled for a moment before dissolving into deep, racking sobs.
It had been a long time since Jonathan had played medic, but he proved to be pretty adept at it. It helped that Harvey had gotten the kids stabilized on the ground before they took off, but for the duration of the flight, vitals all stayed stable. He worried a lot about the kid with the chest wound. Twice during the flight Jonathan had had to lift the occlusive dressing to allow his lung to reinflate. The good news was that even though the boy remained unconscious, his vitals all stayed good, and his pupils remained equal and reactive to light.
Like any flight in any aircraft, this one had certain rhythms associated with it, such that Jonathan knew without being told that they had begun their approach to the little-used general aviation airport on the distant outskirts of Santa Marta. Using Jonathan’s money, Jammin’ Josie had arranged for Gulfstream transport back to the States for the tail end of the mission, using a plane that belonged to a former Nicaraguan Contra who’d done very well for himself. As it turned out, flying out of Colombia was no problem at all as far as the government was concerned.
“Hey, Boss,” Boxers said over the intercom. “I think you want to take a look at this.”
Jonathan stepped around one of the wounded kids and over Evan and his friend to rest his hand on the back of the pilot’s seat. Boxers pointed to the airport runway up ahead, where a cluster of ambulances stood at the ready, awaiting their arrival. “What can I say?” Jonathan quipped. “Venice’s true to her promises.”
“I’m not talking about the meat wagons,” Boxers grumped. “Look at the line of soldiers.”
Several dozen had clustered around one of the jets on the tarmac, and Jonathan could only guess that it would prove to be the tail number they were looking for. “Well, shit,” Jonathan cursed into the microphone.
“What do you want me to do?”
Jonathan ran the options and couldn’t come up with any. Clearly, they’d been made. Jonathan had known all along that it was a possibility given Josie’s betrayal, but he’d been hoping for a break. If they aborted this landing and headed for another airport, they’d just prolong the inevitable, and they certainly couldn’t fly all the way to the States in a helicopter.
“Go ahead and land,” Jonathan stated.
“What’s Plan B?”
“I don’t have one,” Jonathan admitted.
“Maybe Panama will take us.”
“Look at your gas gauge,” Jonathan said, pointing. “Even if they’d take us, we don’t have enough fuel to get there.”
“Well, we can’t fight that many.”
“True enough.”
“And I ain’t rotting in some jungle jail cell.”
“One crisis at a time, Box,” Jonathan cautioned. “Put us on the ground and I’ll give diplomacy a shot.”
“I’ve still got about a hundred rounds of five-five-six diplomacy there on the floor,” Boxers quipped, eyeing his cache of weapons on the seat next to his.
“There are more lives than ours in play, Big Guy. Just get us on the ground.”
Boxers sighed loudly enough to be heard over the ambient noise. He shook his head in disgust and squared up the aircraft for a landing. “This shit grows old, Digger,” he said. “This shit grows very, very old.”
Jonathan pulled his. 45 from its holster and placed it on top of the other weapons. Depending on the mood of the soldiers, he’d get to say a lot more without a gun on his hip than he would with one.
He turned to his passengers. In Spanish, he instructed them to stay where they were after they landed, to wait for the ambulance people to come and get them. Then he told Evan in English, but with the addition, “You don’t leave with anybody but Big Guy or me, okay?”
“You mean die on the street before getting into the car?” Evan asked.
The familiarity of the phrase startled him, and it must have shown in his face.
“You told us that at an assembly,” Evan clarified.
That earned him a wink. “I remember that. One way or the other, we’re getting you home today.”
Jonathan positioned himself in the doorway to the cargo bay as they made their final flare to land, standing there like a human X, his hands and feet braced in the opening. As the wheels touched and Boxers killed the engine, the soldiers moved forward, even as the rotors were still turning.
“I have wounded children in here,” he called out in Spanish. “I’m bringing them in for medical care. Please don’t harm them any more than they’ve already been harmed.”
A young officer-a lieutenant-peered beyond Jonathan, and his face showed deep alarm. He saw the rivulets of blood on the floor and the clusters of small people who created them. “My God, what happened?”
“Slave drivers up in the mountains shot them. The drug manufacturers. They shot these boys just as they shot their fathers before them. My friend and I rescued them and brought them here for medical assistance.”
Confusion invaded the officer’s look of horror. “That’s not what we were told.”
“Well, it’s the truth. In any case, can you please let the medicos through so that they can get to doctors?”
The soldier hesitated.
“They’re just children, Lieutenant,” Jonathan said softly. “Let’s give them a chance to be adults.”
The lieutenant nodded and gave the appropriate orders. Thirty seconds later, soldiers and ambulance personnel alike were lifting children out of the helicopter and placing them on stretchers.
“Not the one with the blond hair, or the boy next to him,” Jonathan said twice. “They’re with me. I’ll take them to the doctor myself.” It was a long shot, but if he presumed that he’d be allowed to go free, maybe it would come to pass.
Boxers remained still and quiet in the pilot’s seat. They’d had a tacit understanding for years that Boxers would never allow himself to be taken prisoner, and Jonathan had no reason to suspect that anything had changed. If it came to that, there’d be violence of a very high order.
As the last of the children were being carried away from the helicopter, two soldiers with little to do suddenly looked startled and snapped to attention. Stiff hands shot smartly to their brows as they saluted in unison.
Jonathan followed their gaze and saw an older man approaching. He acknowledged the salutes, but he did not encourage them to stand at ease. Jonathan knew from his gait alone that he was a general officer, and when he stepped more squarely into the light, the three starbursts on his epaulettes confirmed it.
Etiquette and years of indoctrination made Jonathan stand straighter in his presence. Even if you didn’t respect the man, you respected the rank. For all Jonathan knew, he might end up respecting both.
“So you are the invading American army I heard about?” the general asked in impeccable English as he approached.
Jonathan scowled. “Excuse me?”
“I recognize this helicopter,” the general said. “It belongs to a friend of mine.”
“If that’s the case, sir, then with all due respect, you need better friends. The owner of this helicopter was a murderer and a kidnapper.”
The general’s eyes narrowed. “ Was? ” Clearly, he’d heard the use of the past tense.
“Yes, sir. We killed him.”
The general looked shocked. “You admit this?”
“I celebrate it,” Jonathan clarified. “He was a rapist and a murderer. He tortured people. I presume we’re both talking about the same man? Mitchell Ponder?”
The general peered past Jonathan into the bloody interior of the helicopter. As he got closer, Jonathan saw from his name tag that the general was named Ruiz. “This blood,” he said, making a sweeping motion with his hand. “This is all from the children?”
Jonathan nodded. “Yes, sir. Ponder’s blood is all in the cockpit. Would you like to see it?”
The general gave him an odd smile. “No, thank you. How sure are you that he is dead?”
“Extremely.”
“I see.” The general reached into the pocket of his tunic and produced a pack of Marlboros. He shook one out, placed it between his lips, and then returned the pack and produced a lighter from the same pocket. He lit up, took a deep drag, then picked something off of the end of his tongue.
“It occurs to me that you have some very interesting skills,” the general said. “Is it safe for me to assume that you have visited my country before?”
Jonathan forced his face to reveal nothing. “It’s safer to say that if I had been here, it probably would have been under circumstances that I could never discuss.”
General Ruiz arched his eyebrows and aimed two fingers at Jonathan to acknowledge that he’d made a good point. “I’ve never thought much of the drug trade,” he said. “But soldiers like me are merely servants of our governments. Mine has a weakness for the revenue that the drug trade creates. Where there’s revenue, there’s power. And a politician can never have enough power.”
A long pause followed, during which Jonathan was unsure what to do. He remained silent and still.
“I, on the other hand, have a weakness for justice and the health of small children. Something tells me that you’ve helped to make the world a better place by killing Mr. Ponder. You’ve done my country a favor, even if the leadership won’t agree.” He considered his next step for a long moment before he punctuated his decision with a nod. “I will consider it a personal favor if you make this your last trip to my country.” He dropped his cigarette onto the tarmac and crushed it with his toe. “You are free to go.”