The Missionary

by Jack Wilder

  From within the jeepney came shouts and screams, laced through with a wail of pain. Stone glanced through the window. “Shit, they must have hit someone.” He glanced down at Wren. “Are you okay?”

  She touched her ear as she rose up to peer into the jeepney. “I’m fine. I think the first one nicked my ear, but that’s it.” She could just barely make out an older woman leaning against the wall of the jeepney, clutching her upper arm, blood seeping through her fingers. A young man whipped off his shirt and tied it around the woman’s arm, cinching it tight. “They could have killed that woman, and she didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  Stone kept his focus on the street behind them. “I think they’re still after us. They hijacked a taxi, it looks like.”

  She tried to follow his gaze, and could just barely make out the shape of a vehicle barreling toward them, weaving recklessly through traffic. “What do we do?”

  The jeepney slowed, pulling closer to the curb, and then stopped, disgorging passengers, including the woman who’d been shot and the now-bare chested young man who’d helped her. Stone hopped down, wincing at the jolt. Wren followed suit, and found herself pulled into a run once more, dodging through thick traffic carving in an arc around a mammoth traffic circle. Multicolored lights shone from the center of the circle, the source of the lights blocked by trees. Gasping for breath, she held on to Stone’s sweat-slippery hand, hearing his breath going ragged now too. They pushed through knots of tourists all moving in the same general direction, toward the changing lights.

  “What is that?” she asked, between breaths.

  “I think it’s…the Quezon…Memorial…Shrine,” Stone responded, panting. “There’s some kind of…dancing fountain too. Big…big tourist attraction.”

  Blue neon tube lettering spelled out words in English: Circle of Fun. Shapes hulked, inscrutable, in the darkness beyond, some now-closed attraction.

  They passed it by.

  Ahead of them, the shrine was visible. They were part of a huge crowd gathered in a wide courtyard, the central attraction of which was a tall three-pronged structure bathed in color-changing lights. As she watched, the lights changed from red to deep blue, paused for a moment, then changed to green, and then each of the three square pillars were bathed in individual colors, one red, one blue, one green. At the very top of the shrine, the three pillars became angels of some sort, it looked to Wren, although it was too far away and too dark to make out anything more specific than that. Between the crowd and the shrine was a circular fountain, surrounded by a thick curb of stone. A plume of water jetted up from the center of the fountain, turning the same shade of purple as the shrine. The plume rose to something like thirty feet, then ceased momentarily, only to rise up once more, joined by thinner, shorter spouts in a circle around it. Wren didn’t have a chance to watch any longer as Stone drew her in a stumbling jog around the fountain, closer to the shrine itself.

  Behind them, shouts and angry voices reminded her that they were being pursued.

  The base of the huge, white-stone shrine was triangular in cross-section, the walls rising several feet in height, the bright-hued lights of the shrine casting shifting shadows. Knots and clusters of people gathered, chattering and laughing as a remix of a popular American song played. Stone led Wren into the crowds, putting his back to the stone and pulling Wren against his chest.

  The crowd shifted and changed, but never thinned, providing effective cover. The pursuers were pushing through the crowd, shoving and elbowing, drawing dirty looks and Filipino curses that quickly faded when the offended tourist saw the brandished pistols. Using Wren’s body as cover for his actions, Stone checked the loads in his magazine and slammed it home once more, then returned his attention to their pursuers, who were now spread out in pairs. One of the men pulled a cell phone from the hip pocket of his khakis and dialed a number.

  Wren tried to regain control of her breathing, tried to suppress the burning in her lungs and the screaming of her injured ribs. Stone had one hand against his side, his face a mask of concentration. When one of the men turned their way, Stone ducked his head, but wasn’t quick enough. The man whistled for his nearest friend, who trotted over. The first one pointed at Stone and Wren, the second nodded, and they moved in tandem.

  Wren’s heart was pounding out of her chest, both from fear and exertion. “They’ve seen us,” she whispered.

  “I know. I’ve gotta even the playing field a little.”

  “What? What are you going to do?”

  Stone stepped in front of Wren, putting his back to her front and pinning her against the base of the shrine. “Buying us time.”

  Wren felt panic shoot through her. He was going to fight again. Right out in the open, in the middle of a crowded park. People were being hurt, maybe even killed because of her. Stone was tensed in front of her, his stance wide, pistol held by his thigh.

  All Wren could see was his back, the flagstones under her feet, the spuming fountain off to the right. She heard Stone pull the slide on his pistol, felt him step away a couple inches.

  Shoes scuffed to a stop, dirty white ADIDAS sneakers. Wren wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. She peered around Stone. Two men, both armed, less than six feet away.

  “You come now. Give us dis girl, Cervantes, he let it all go, let you go home. All he wants is da girl.”

  Stone laughed, a mirthless bark of disbelief. “Yeah, okay,” he said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “How about you two walk away now, while you’re still alive.”

  Wren tasted the tension in the air, felt the danger like palpable waves. The other park-goers had noticed the standoff and were quickly scattering. Wren wanted to run too. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend this wasn’t happening. But she forced herself to watch, to pay attention, to be ready. Stone’s fist rose, his palm cupping the butt of the pistol.

  Seconds passed like hours, drawn out like stretched taffy.

  She saw it happening. She watched one of the Filipino men raise his pistol as if in slow-motion, his lips drawing back in a rictus. Before he could get his gun level, Stone’s pistol barked—BLAMBLAM—and then Stone shifted, just the tip of the barrel twitching slightly, and then—BLAMBLAM—and both men dropped to the ground. Screams echoed, shrieks and shouts. Blood pooled like spreading inkblots.

  Wren felt herself jerked into a run, and she ran, but she couldn’t wrench her gaze away from the dead men, eyes open and staring at the dark sky, holes in foreheads, lives ended. Dead men. Dead men. She tried to breathe, but the sight of the blood glinting purple and blue and red in the shifting technicolor fountain lights stole her breath.

  “Don’t look. It was us or them.” Stone pushed her ahead of him, forcing her look away. His touch on her shoulder vanished momentarily, and she saw him stoop and scoop up a dropped pistol, and then again, and then he was behind her, propelling her, running with her.

  She heard sobs break from her chest, slip through her lips. She clacked her teeth together, silencing herself.

  A playground, railings and tube slides and empty benches, waving treetops all around them, soughing in the wind. It was still misting, not quite rain, but everything gleamed slickly wet. Sirens howled, the sirens of authority always too far behind. Shouts, a gunshot.

  Wren ran on autopilot, guided by Stone’s hand on her shoulder, turning her this way and that. Lungs and legs burned, but she ran on. Ribs protested, ached, but she ran on. They came to the other side of the circular park, traffic a thick white-light ribbon in the wet midnight darkness.

  Another ribbon of cars, now the red of receding tail lights.

  “I think that’s Quezon Avenue,” Stone said, more to himself than to Wren. “I think that’ll take us toward the Embassy.”

  “Why can’t we just take a taxi?” Wren asked, wondering if it was a stupid question.

  Stone hauled her through the traffic, following close behind a man on a bike who seemed entirely unafraid of the rushing cars and trucks. “Same reason
we can’t go to a hospital or the police: because those places are too public and Cervantes has informants everywhere. Bus drivers don’t ever really see their passengers, while taxi drivers will. And Cervantes might have enough manpower to question taxi drivers, but not to canvass everyone who rode on a bus.” A bus nosed around the traffic circle and onto Quezon Avenue, stopping a few hundred feet away from Stone and Wren. “Get on that bus!” Stone urged.

  Wren ran, pushing her exhausted body as fast as she could go. She stumbled, felt herself lifted onto the bus and then into a seat next to Stone, who was panting, pressing a palm to his side.

  “Rest for a minute, baby,” he muttered into Wren’s ear. “We’re safe for the moment.”

  She shut her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder. Would they ever be able to stop running? Hard lumps at his waistband prodded at her hip—his confiscated pistols. He tucked her hair behind her ear with his thumb. Sounds faded to a blur, and Stone’s arm around her shoulders was a comforting weight, enough reassurance to let her slip under.

  15

  Stone didn’t dare close his eyes. If he closed his eyes, he would sleep too, and that would get them killed. He had to be alert. He had to watch. No one on the packed bus seemed suspicious, but you never knew. He scanned each face around him, watched the cityscape pass through the window, tried to plan, to distract himself from the heavy weight of exhaustion.

  The exhaustion itself was a distraction, though. It kept him from seeing the faces of the men he’d killed.

  He blinked, clearing the blur, fighting the sliding, aching, scratchy burn of his eyelids. To keep himself awake, he thought of Wren, of her dark, soft skin pressed against his. Her sighs and moans in his ear, her fingers on his chest as she rode him to mutual climax.

  He shifted in his seat and glanced at her. She seemed so innocent, asleep beside him, rocking as the bus jounced, head lolling against his shoulder.

  The bus seemed to get darker, quieter. He blinked hard, rubbed his eyes, pinched himself, but the weight was too much.

  Starts and stops filtered through his awareness, but couldn’t penetrate. He felt a strange desperation inside his chest, the swelling of complete unconsciousness rising up. He fought it.

  “Banawe stop!” The voice of the driver, muddy and accented and distant.

  Time and silence; Stone clawed at the sleep dragging him down. He heard Wren moan beside him.

  More time; more silence.

  “Cruz! Vicente Cruz stop!”

  He managed to get his eyes open, briefly. An old man sat across from him, staring. The old man nodded, but Stone felt his eyelids falling, fought and lost once more.

  Danger. The feeling, the instinct flitted through him, churned in his gut.

  The bus stopped yet again. “Quiapo! Quiapo stop!”

  Sound altered. The noise of the road, the rumble of tires over concrete became a strange hum, layered over something wide and deep and significant. Stone strained for awareness. He had to wake up. He had to wake up. The dim interior lights of the bus blurred, focused, and he twisted awkwardly to look out the window behind him. He saw moonglow filtering through black clouds, refracting and glinting off of water; rods and rails and crossbars and wires: Quezon Bridge, then, going over the Pasig River.

  Close, now.

  He shook his head to clear the sleep away, a vain gesture, and the old man across from him only watched, then cut his eyes to the side. Stone followed the old man’s gaze to a teenaged boy in rain-soaked cutoff shorts, a clinging yellow tank top and tattered high-top shoes, who was tapping at a cell phone he shouldn’t have been able to afford. The boy’s eyes shifted from his phone to Stone, and then immediately away.

  Danger. The instinct was focused on that boy. Skinny arms and legs, clumsily buzzed hair, dirty clothes, rotting teeth, and a too-new piece of technology.

  Stone’s brain was sludgy, connecting the dots only with effort.

  “Lawton! Lawton stop!” No one moved as the doors whooshed open noisily.

  Stone lurched to his feet, bent and lifted Wren in his arms. She moaned, , twitched in his arms. Stone tripped over someone’s foot, caught himself before he dropped Wren, who was shaking her head and whimpering, caught in a dream or a memory. Solid ground underfoot, and away from the bus, away from the boy with cell phone. The bus stop had a bench, and Stone slumped onto the wet seat.

  “Wake up, Wren. You gotta wake up.” He shook her gently. “C’mon baby. Wake up for me.”

  She murmured, mumbled. “No…no. ‘Member, gotta…no—no more…”

  He kissed her lips softly, touched her cheek. “Wren, wake up sweetheart. It’s Stone. You’re with me, babe. Wake up, okay?”

  Her eyelids fluttered. “Stone?”

  “We gotta move. I think someone snitched on us.”

  “Huh?” She wiggled, stretched, accidentally elbowed Stone in the injured side. He gasped in agony, bending over and stifling curses of pain. “Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” She slid off his lap and onto the bench next to him, hovering anxiously.

  He waved her off, wincing as he straightened. “It was an accident. It’s fine. We gotta go, though. We gotta move. Someone saw us and reported us to Cervantes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He shrugged. “Am I one hundred percent positive that’s what he was doing? No. But I can’t afford to be wrong.”

  Another bus came, heading south, and he tugged her to her feet, fishing the fare from his pocket of Filipino currency. The bus stopped, and they got on, riding it to the Ayala Avenue stop, then getting off again and crossing the street into Rizal Park. Another lighted fountain played with spumes of red and blue and green and purple water, dancing to the rhythm of a song Stone didn’t recognize. The fountain was distant, but loud and highly visible even through the trees and buildings in the way. Wren was stumbling beside him, trying to run but not quite able.

  Some internal drive was pushing him. There wasn’t any pursuit that he could see, but he felt the need to run anyway. He hauled Wren into a jog.

  “Why are we running? Is there someone behind us?” She twisted to look behind.

  “We’re close to the embassy, I think,” Stone said. “I have a bad feeling. We need to move.”

  Wren didn’t argue, just shook her arm free of his hold and moved under her own power. They jogged side by side through the park, cutting through the circular area surrounding the Sentinel of Freedom monument, then crossing a street before finally reaching the central lagoon with the dancing fountain. The park was well-lit by globular streetlights, and it was packed with tourists and locals coming and going, taking photos and milling around the wide, grassy open space. Flagpoles lined the approach to the Rizal monument, the flags horizontal stripes bicolored red and blue with a triangular wedge of white near the hoist, the white marked by a golden sun: the flag of the Philippines.

  Stone felt the churning in his gut, the warning sign of impending danger. He led her past the monument and out of the park, across Roxas Boulevard, hustling them between honking cars and rushing taxis. They were near the Embassy, now. Less than a mile, surely, although he wasn’t sure. He was operating on a distant memory of Manila’s layout, maps memorized long ago, locations to remember in case the mission had gone completely haywire and he' found himself adrift in Manila. Now, those hours spent poring over maps and bus routes were saving his life, and Wren’s.

  If they could reach the Embassy, they’d be safe. The Embassy would protect them, help them get home. But, Stone’s gut warned, Cervantes knew this, and he was sure to have the Embassy watched. Wren was silent beside him, panting, gasping, but keeping pace.

  “We’re almost there, babe,” he told her. “Almost there. The Embassy is just ahead.”

  Trees blocked their view, but he could see the lights shining through the foliage. His pulse pounded, and his gut screamed.

  Tires squealed, horns honked, and then two bright headlights shone, approaching them from the south, barreling toward them the wrong way up
the boulevard. Stone stumbled to a halt. He hunted for an escape, any kind of gambit to get them away, but there was nowhere to go. The wall of the embassy stretched away on either side of them. There was only the street in front of them, their way forward blocked by the approaching vehicle, its tires squealing as it skidded and swung sideways—a battered blue van, nondescript and easily forgotten. Stone shoved Wren behind him and racked the slide of his pistol. The van lurched to a stop, the sliding door wrenched open and the dim interior light showed three bodies kneeling on the floor, AK-47s leveled at Stone and Wren.

  Twisting to look back the way they’d come, Stone saw four more men with automatic pistols approaching on foot, striding toward them at a leisurely pace, guns held down by their thighs.

  “Shit.” Stone’s gut dropped away. “They’ve got us cornered, babe.”

  “No. No. Nononono.” Wren shook her head frantically. “You can’t let them take me back there.”

  “I’m sorry, Wren. There’s too many of them. If I so much as twitch, they’ll kill us both.” Guilt and horror rocketed through him; he’d promised Wren he’d get her home.

  Wren was choking on her own sobs. “Let them, then. Let them kill me. I won’t—I won’t—”

  “It’s not over yet. I’ll get us out of this. Okay? Just go along for now, and be ready.” He slowly set the pistol on the ground at his feet, then took Wren’s hand, lifting her chin so she met his eyes. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Okay? I promise. I’ll get us out of this.”

  Wren didn’t look very reassured by this promise, especially when one of the assault rifle-wielding men hopped out of the van and scooped up Stone’s pistol, then grabbed Wren by the arm and shoved her toward the van. Stone’s heart stopped beating. The barrel of the AK turned, trained on him.