Page 43 of Prisoner of War
“I know,” Nick said softly. He was staring into middle-distance. Thinking hard. “If Carmen is on the boat, then where is Minnie?”
Josh pushed his hand through his hair. “I’ve looked in every place I could think of. I even walked through that fashion mall thing.” He shuddered. “Minnie has been hangingaround this house most of the time lately. She has to be somewhere unexpected.”
“She is,” Calli said, as the idea burst into her mind like a sun emerging from eclipse.
They both looked at her again and Nick was smiling.
“Where’s the most unlikely, unexpected place she could be right now?” Calli asked them.
Nick’s smile broadened. “On the boat with Carmen.”
“Are you crazy?” Joshua asked, lookingfrom Calli to Nick.
“It’s so crazy it’s logical,” Nick said. “They both have reason to go back to Vistaria and Carmen is a good sailor. Only, it’s a two-man boat at the minimum. She couldn’t do it herself. She has to have help, even if it’s someone just competent enough to take the wheel while she trims the sails.”
Joshua shook his head. “Are you actually listening to what you’re saying? You’retelling me that two women who couldn’t stand to be in the same room—who clawed each other to bloody pulp less than a week ago—that they’ve got together and are sailing into Vistaria? A country so overrun with Insurrectos and so ground down under their heel that not even refugees can find a way off it...they’re sailing into that?”
“Exactly,” Nick agreed, pushing his hands into his pockets. “Wedon’t know how they got together and agreed to do it, but it doesn’t matter. We do know they’re on the boat.” He glanced at the old grandfather clock across the hall. “Depending on how long they’ve been sailing and how tight Carmen trimmed the sails, they could already be on dry land.”
* * * * *
“Tell me again why we’re here?” Minnie whispered. She wriggled as the long dry grass under the treetickled her nose. Each movement made her nylon suit crackle. “And why this isn’t the most stupid idea you’ve had this year?”
Carmen waved away a fly. “Because this is the last place you saw Duardo and because I know the shack inside out, upside down and backward.”
Minnie stared at the front of the Presidential Palace, her heart tripping along unhappily. There were soldiers everywhere. She knewthey were soldiers because most of them wore submachine guns hanging from their shoulders, but there wasn’t too much in the way of uniforms to identify them.
She and Carmen lay in the long wild grasses at the southern edge of the palace grounds. Carmen had led Minnie through deserted side streets and back alleys to what had looked like a farmer’s field, complete with waist-high wire fence, leaningfence posts and a border of shade trees. There was a three-meter-wide opening in the fence and the dirt between the posts showed tire tracks. Something stirred in Minnie’s memory. “I think I’ve been here before,” she said.
“Possibly. Nick would have used this way if there were people at the front.”
Minnie frowned. She remembered a car. Vaguely. “God, I reallywasn’tpaying attention,” she muttered.“Why haven’t the Insurrectos shut this opening up tight? It’s bad security.”
“They probably don’t even know about it. Few people in my father’s government knew it was here. It was primarily Nick’s escape hole. From the palace, it looks like these trees back up onto vertical mountain.” She nodded toward the sheer rock face just across the road. “It probably hasn’t occurred to them to even investigatethis section of the boundary.”
“Does that make them stupid or lazy?” Minnie muttered. “I’d have checked.”
“C’mon,” Carmen encouraged her, stepping through the opening. “And quiet. We’re on enemy territory now.”
They’d worked their way to the edge of the shady trees and lain down in the grasses to observe the palace and the administrative building and the personnel walking between them. Minniewrinkled her nose again. “There’s something different here too,” she said. “When we were here...” She nodded. “Yeah, they’ve taken away the covering over the path between the palace and the admin building.”
Carmen propped her chin on her hands and studied the buildings. “Son of a bitch, you’re right,” she said after a moment. “Why on earth take the roof away? That’s stupid! It’s either hot orraining...either way, it was useful.” She rolled over on her back, patently pissed.
“What’s wrong?” Minnie asked. “They’ve messed with your house?”
“Yes!” It was a heartfelt growl.
“Just imagine what they’ve done with the rest of the country then.”
“I’m trying not to.” Carmen rolled her head to look at Minnie. “I hope Nick makes his move real soon. Something’s got to be done. Did you see allthe market stalls along the square when we went through?”
“There weren’t any stalls,” Minnie pointed out.
“That’s right. It’s a Friday morning. We should have had to elbow our way through the people in the square. I’d planned on picking up something hot to eat there and there wasn’t a single stall in sight.”
“Lots of men with machine guns, though,” Minnie pointed out.
Carmen sighed and restedher forearm over her eyes. “Yeah, lots of guns,” she murmured. “I’m going to sleep a bit. We’ll trade watches until it’s dark, ‘kay?”
