Page 25 of Freedom Fighters
Minnie snorted. “The catalog is just a way to see what’s available. We can buy it cheaper and get it sooner if we go to local vendors. What is it you want, anyway?”
“Oh, nothing important,” Téra said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No, really,” Minnie insisted. “What do you want? It’s mytreat.”
Téra glanced at Rubén helplessly. His gaze dropped to the book in her lap and back up.
“Just a book I would like to read,” she told Minnie and mentally thanked Rubén.
“Hell, we can get that on Amazon,” Minnie said, with a grin. “What’s the title?”
Téra grasped for a book title she knew wasn’t in the big house and Minnie pulled up the bookstore and found it, then set about orderingit for her. When Minnie’s attention focused on her laptop screen, Téra caught Rubén’s gaze again and gave him a small smile.
He touched his fingers to his chest and his head bent forward a little.
Téra opened her book once more and tried to remember not to smile.
* * * * *
Efraín found Carmen just after eight in the morning, barely an hour after she had left Garrett in his office. She hadwalked and taken a cold shower and walked around the monastery again. Yet she still shook with rage whenever she thought of the exchange in Garrett’s office.
Efraín held out a sack. “Orders. We go in like locals. No visible weapons. Nice and innocent, instead.”
“Garrett left innocence behind in his crib.” She took the bag and looked inside. Then she sighed and pulled out the multi-hued silkgarment. “Fiesta clothes? I’ll stand out like a neon sign.”
Efraín shrugged. “It’s market day inValleLeñosa. Probably why they set the meeting there.”
Carmen took the sack from him. “There’d better be shoes. I can’t wear army boots with this.”
Efraín grinned. “Barefoot works.” He winked and walked away, hitching his rifle over his shoulder.
All the older towns in Vistaria had a weekly marketday. It was a long-standing tradition where local producers brought their wares and produce into town, for others to barter for and buy. It was one of the last traditional economic structures to survive the twenty-first century. Because of the war, it was one of the few remaining ways for anyone to acquire fresh food. The market would be well attended. Traditional clothing wouldn’t be out ofplace. There would be many others dressed in their Vistarian finery.
Carmen put on the silky skirt and the white peasant blouse that slid off one shoulder every time she moved. Therewereshoes in the sack. They weren’t traditional dancing shoes but flat black slip-ons that would let her move across terrain easily. They were a tight fit, but they would do.
She dug through her backpack and foundher brush. She unpinned her hair and brushed it out, working the brush through tangles and knots, until it was falling about her shoulders freely.
No visible weapons, Efraín had said. She slid her Glock down the front of her shirt. The weight of the gun pulled the shirt until it threatened to slide right down her arm and expose her breast. She fished the gun out again and hefted it.
Llora, oneof the elderly women who tended the cooking pots and ade factomother to many in the camp, shuffled over to where Carmen was weighing her gun in her hand. Llora’s feet were swollen and painful to walk on, yet she smiled at Carmen and held out a thick piece of elastic.
Carmen frowned at her. “Elastic?”
“For around your leg. It will hold your weapon under your skirt.”
Carmen stared at her, startledthat such a passive, gentle woman as Llora would come up with a way to hide weapons. “The skirt is silk. The gun is bulky. It will show under the silk.”
Llora shrugged. “A knife is flat. Take a knife.”
Carmen threaded the flat holster for her knife onto the elastic and tied it around her thigh. A knife was useless in a gun fight. However, the whole point of this expedition was to slide intotown, have their meeting and slide out again, all without being spotted by the Insurrectos. With luck, the knife would stay strapped to her thigh, unused, until she came back to the camp.
When she was ready, she made her way through the monastery to the big courtyard where the three working vehicles were kept. They had creatively acquired all of them and let the monks use them when they neededhorsepower. Most of the time, the vehicles sat unused. Roaring around in a vehicle drew attention they didn’t want.
They were useful for hauling heavy loads and when they needed to move camp. Carmen hoped they wouldn’t have to move for a while. They had shifted camp four times in the first three weeks she had been with the unit. Moving was uncomfortable, hard work and unsettling. It always tookher a few days to get any decent sleep after a move. There were too many strange noises and objects around to relax enough to sleep.
If they were trying to look like locals, then arriving in a Jeep would be logical. Jeeps were everywhere on Vistaria, useful for their four-wheel-drive capabilities and because they could handle the steep mountain roads, too. They were cheap, reliable and as commonas ants.
Efraín and Ledo were already there, leaning back against the open-topped Jeep. Neither looked armed. Both had washed and shaved and wore button-through shirts and the tight black trousers that made Vistarian men all look long-legged and slim hipped, especially if they were wearing traditional shirts over the top.
