“Oh, God.”
He told her to stick the gun into her waistband, beneath her loose-fitting blouse. “Don't let anyone see you've got it.”
“Uh-huh.”
Though the guard he'd taken the shirt from was painfully skinny, his ill-fitting uniform was big enough for Ransom everywhere except the shoulders. Considering the time and risk involved, Ransom had opted against taking the man's pants. Anyhow, his own were so filthy as to be unidentifiable as civilian trousers, especially in the dark. And although Madeleine's once-expensive shirt and pants were not the usual costume for women in rural Montedora, they were now so filthy and wrinkled that they shouldn't draw undue attention to her. Unfortunately, her lovely flaxen hair still shone like a beacon. Before alarming the guards, she had pocketed the least blood-stained portion of his shirt which she could salvage. He watched with a grimace as she now pulled it out and tied it over her hair like a scarf. He helped her tuck in stray wisps.
“Well?” she asked.
“Keep your eyes down, they're too blue.” He frowned. “You're too fair-skinned, but hopefully no one will really notice, if we stay in the shadows.”
Ransom covered his own golden-brown hair with a soldier's cap. His tan and his five o'clock shadow minimized his foreign appearance, and his green eyes were at least less unusual down here than Madeleine's blue ones. If seen, they hoped to be mistaken for a grubby soldier who had sneaked a woman into the compound and was now trying to sneak her back out. It was a weak disguise, but the best they could manage under the circumstances. Ransom reminded her that they should stay completely out of sight, if possible.
She nodded. He could see the tension in her expression and gestures. She was being very brave. He would give anything to spare her this.
“You can do this.” He kept his voice hard.
“I can do this.” Her voice was threaded with steely determination. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah. Let's go.”
He turned out the light, then cracked open the door. They needed to move fast now, to slip away before the imprisoned guards woke up and started shouting down into the courtyard. Men all responded differently to physical damage, so Ransom didn't know if they had five minutes or an hour.
There was no one in the dimly lighted hallway.
“Okay,” he whispered. “Now.”
He took her hand and led her quickly down the corridor. Following the route she had taken while Ransom's unconscious body was dragged behind Madeleine hours ago, they turned into a main artery and continued past a set of windows. They flattened themselves against one wall, hugging the shadows and scarcely breathing, when a soldier on guard duty strolled past them near the stairwell. When he disappeared round a corner, they silently descended the steps.
When they reached the main floor, the alarm went off, screeching wildly all around them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Madeleine's heart stopped. She thought she'd die on the spot. She almost hoped she'd die, because living was apparently about to become incredibly awful.
Ransom dragged her against a wall and froze in the shadows again. Half a dozen soldiers came rushing toward them from different directions.
This is it, my God, this is the end.
The alarm wailed overhead. Men shouted from every direction. There were heavy footsteps on the stairs above. A half-naked man appeared out of nowhere and ran right past them.
Madeleine's terror was so great that it took her a moment to realize: he had run right past them. But surely he had noticed them? They had been caught in the worst possible place, with nothing to hide behind.
Ransom's grip tightened on her. She sensed his confusion as three more soldiers dashed up the stairs without even glancing at them.
The roar of activity increased, and they heard sirens wailing outside the building, too.
“Jesus,” Ransom murmured. He stepped away from the wall. “Stay here.”
“No! Where are you—”
She stopped speaking as another soldier nearly knocked Ransom over. He barked an order at Ransom, shoved him, and raced past him.
Ransom turned, grabbed Madeleine's hand, and started heading down the hall. “It's not us,” he said exultantly.
“What is it, then?”
“Who the hell knows? God, we're lucky, Maddie!”
She didn't need to ask why. The general confusion was growing in leaps and bounds, and no one could spare them more than a brief, baffled glance. They passed several closed doors and turned into the small security area through which they had originally entered this building. Chaos reigned. Whatever was wrong, it was clearly something overwhelming. Nearly a dozen men roamed around, all shouting orders and explanations. Only a couple of them were fully dressed.
“Doristas!” someone screamed. “Doristas!”
They heard distant gunfire. A few people threw themselves to the floor, earning the open contempt of their colleagues.
Ransom's breath caught sharply as he steered Madeleine away from the crowd and into another corridor. “Doristas are attacking!”
“The garrison?”
“Probably the district governor's mansion,” Ransom guessed. “It's an easy target, and those shots sounded pretty distant. The army will have to go defend it. But once this place is three-quarters empty, the Doristas may attack it, too.”
“All the more reason to leave.” It was still prudent to avoid people, too, since Ransom now risked being suddenly pressed into service with the Montedoran army, if his thin disguise held up in the confusion.
Two soldiers guarded a door near the end of this corridor. They were so agitated they scarcely noticed Ransom and Madeleine approaching. She thought they'd be able to get past these men without much trouble, especially if they acted their parts well.
The door the men were guarding opened suddenly. Captain Morena stepped into the hallway. And looked right at Madeleine and Ransom.
He lost one crucial second when he stared at them in shock. Madeleine never saw what happened next. She was suddenly kissing the floor, her legs having been kicked out from underneath her. There was some grunting, and a few nasty smacking and cracking sounds. The AK 47 Ransom had been carrying hit the floor and skittered away. Morena shouted something. Madeleine raised her head off the floor. A limp body flopped down next to hers. She nearly wept with relief to see it wasn't Ransom. She heard more grunting. Sheer instinct made her roll away just moments before four feet shuffled across the spot where she'd been lying. Her gaze fastened on Morena's leg as she heard a bone break in someone's body. A man fell to the ground screaming at the very moment Morena drew the familiar, engraved Bodyguard from its ankle holster.
“No!” she screamed.
Everything suddenly came into such sharp focus it made her eyes hurt. Ransom whirled and stepped between Madeleine and Morena. Then he saw the gun and stopped cold.
“Oh, God,” Madeleine babbled, “no, please, no, please, don't!”
Morena was panting. Ransom didn't even seem to be breathing. Madeleine was choking with terror.
“I would like to ask how you got out,” Morena said breathlessly.
“Please, I'll go back to my cell,” Madeleine begged. “Please don't hurt him.”
“But I'm too busy right now,” Morena concluded with dreadful finality.
Ransom moved. Madeleine screamed. Morena squeezed the trigger.
And nothing happened.
The look of utter astonishment on Morena's face was comical. But Madeleine didn't feel like laughing as Ransom rammed the captain's head into the wall. She stared in numbed silence as Ransom bent over the unconscious body and took his gun back from Morena.
“Come on.” He hauled her to her feet and dragged her down the corridor.
“The gun didn't fire,” she croaked. “It didn't fire.”
“There's got to be another way out of this place.” He shied away from a passing group of soldiers.
“The gun didn't fire.” She'd never get over it. He was alive
. All because his own gun didn't work.
“Did you see any other entrance when they brought us here?” He took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Come on, Maddie. Think.”
“No, no, no...” Her teeth snapped together on her tongue. The sting of pain awoke her brain. She tried to pull herself together. He was right. She must think. “There's a ... a main ... I don't know ... reception area, I guess. The front of the building. We went past it when they brought us here. Big pillars.”
“Do we go through the courtyard?”
“No! Um, no...” She tried to orient herself. “We're on the ... on the right side of the building now. If we keep going that way, we should parallel the courtyard and come to the front entrance.”
“Good.” His kiss was brief and hard. “Good girl.”
He turned and ran, taking her with him. The few people they passed in this wing of the building were too frantic to notice them. When they reached the vast reception hall she had described, there were more than thirty people milling around. Ransom ignored the orders that someone shouted at him. He had dropped the AK 47 during the scuffle with Morena's men, not wanting to bring the house down around his ears by firing it if he didn't have to. Now someone else ran right into him, screamed at him to go get his fucking rifle, and brushed past Madeleine.
They emerged from the building onto a sweeping driveway with a well-tended lawn. Lights blazed all around them. Overloaded military vehicles hurled past them, hurrying toward the front gates, which lay wide open for the men and machines pouring out of the compound.
“Can we make it without getting shot?” Madeleine asked, following Ransom's gaze.
“They're worried about rebels coming in, rather than people going out. Let's just try to get lost in the crowd.”
She couldn't believe how easy it was. An hour ago, she had half-expected to die trying to escape from here. They had plotted and planned down to the last possible detail. And now none of it was needed. They simply shuffled into a crowd of frightened, sleep-drugged, poorly prepared soldiers who hardly noticed them, and slipped past the front gates.
Madeleine's heart pounded. Free. They were free! Now they just needed to get away from these soldiers.
A shell went off in the street, sending everyone scattering. Ransom drew her against the side of a dilapidated building for a moment, and then they were off and running. The additional fear of being killed by rebel fire lent wings to her feet, and she needed no urging to race madly through the uneven, muddy streets.
They didn't stop for breath until they were beyond the town. Gasping for air, Madeleine asked, “Where do we go now?”
“The pension,” Ransom decided. “We'll need whatever help they can give us. We haven't got much chance of surviving if we just wander off.”
Madeleine doubted the Gutierrez family would be thrilled to see two fugitives on their doorstep, particularly since the army and the Seguridores were likely to start looking for them there once things quieted down. However, Ransom was right; they needed whatever help they could convince the senor to give them. They quietly approached the inn, keeping an eye out for stray soldiers and Doristas. After Ransom had circled the pension and satisfied himself that it wasn't about to be ambushed, he and Madeleine climbed the steps of the veranda and went inside without ceremony.
The building was completely dark. Ransom reached for a light switch at the same moment that someone told them in terse Spanish not to move. Madeleine felt the cold barrel of a shotgun pressed against her neck.
“Uh, Ransom...” she said in a carefully controlled voice.
“Senor Gutierrez, it's us,” Ransom said quietly. “Los americanos.”
“Los americanos?”
Someone turned on a flashlight and pointed it at them. Then the senor cried with relief, “Los americanos!”
Madeleine found she had underestimated the courage of ordinary people. The senor and his family gave her and Ransom a warm welcome, apparently as happy as they were surprised to see them alive and well. She had also underestimated the honesty of such poor people. They assured her that her and Ransom's belongings were all intact upstairs. And she knew it would have been as safe for the senor to steal from them as it had been for the soldiers.
Ransom told Madeleine to go to upstairs and get clean clothes for both of them, his little twelve-band radio, his spare bullets, all the money she could find, and—for some mysterious reason—his necktie. And he told her to do it quickly. They had to be out of here in twenty minutes, he insisted, no more.
“If the army are able to beat back the rebels, then they'll realize by dawn that we're gone, so we need to be far away by then,” he said. “If they can't beat them back, then we could get caught in the middle of a long drawn-out battle here. We've got to get out of the area while everyone's still running around like chickens without their heads.”
“Twenty minutes,” Madeleine agreed, taking a flashlight and heading upstairs.
By the time she came back downstairs, Ransom had collected food and water for their journey, chosen a route, and made an offer on Senor Gutierrez's ancient motor scooter.
“A motor scooter?” Madeleine said dubiously.
“He won't sell me his truck. I tried. He needs it too much. How much money have we got?”
“Between us ... About one thousand dollars in travellers’ checks, another thousand dollars in cash, and about five hundred dollars worth of Montedoran pesos.”
“I love a woman who comes prepared,” Ransom said. Most of the money was hers. “Let's try to conserve the cash. Travellers’ checks are a pain in the ass at the best of times in Montedora, and without our passports...”
Madeleine nodded and waited impatiently while Ransom tried to convince Senor Gutierrez to accept travellers’ checks instead of cash for the motor scooter. Even the big banks in Montedora City took up to two hours to cash a travellers’ check, and there were frequently problems; it was much worse in the provinces. And short of locating and using the black market, which would be pretty risky for foreign fugitives, Madeleine figured there was no way she and Ransom could cash the travellers’ checks without identification. Bank services would probably be suspended for a while, anyhow, considering the current situation.
My God, she suddenly thought, will we survive this?
Yesterday, Montedora had been an unstable country with internal unrest; now it was on the brink of civil war. Things had happened so quickly she couldn't process it. Veracruz had been quietly overthrown by a madman, and the Doristas were at this very moment launching their most ambitious attack to date.
What will happen to us? How will we get out of here?
She clenched her teeth and tried to repress the wild voice of fear shrilling inside her skull.
Ransom will know what to do. He always knows.
She twisted her hands together, stomach churning, steeling herself not to flinch at every sound of distant combat while Ransom haggled with the senor. Soldiers could come and occupy the building at any moment. Doristas could swarm into this end of Doragua in just seconds. The gunfire sounded a little closer now.
Come on, come on, come on.
“Eso basta,” Ransom said with conviction.
Senor Gutierrez didn't think the offer was enough, though, and the haggling continued. Madeleine ground her teeth together. She was seriously considering kicking both men by the time they finally agreed on a price and shook hands.
“Well?” she prodded.
“One hundred dollars in cash, and five hundred in travellers’ checks,” Ransom told her. “Start signing.”
“What?” Madeleine's eyes bulged. “I could buy a ticket home for that!”
“Not at this particular moment, you couldn't,” Ransom pointed out. “He says, quite rightly, that the travellers’ checks are likely to be useless to him.”
“But ... Oh, the hell with it!” She pulled out her checks and started signing.
“Be sure to write your passport information on the back,” Ransom t
ranslated for Senor Gutierrez. “Just in case.”
“I will, I will. Tell him to go get the motor scooter ready, and to make sure it's full of gas. And to give us a jug of extra gas, too.” She glanced up and said, “What are you grinning at?”
“You. You're starting to sound more like yourself, milady.”
She glared at him briefly, then signed more checks. He went into the kitchen to quickly wash up and slip into his clean clothes. When he came back, his shirt tails hung outside of his khaki pants. The Colt .45 was stuck through his belt and concealed by the billowing shirt. His necktie was nowhere in sight, she noted with sartorial relief. He suggested she go change while he loaded their few possessions onto the scooter and made sure it was ready to go.
Once briskly washed and restored to some semblance of her usual self, Madeleine tied a clean silk scarf over her blonde hair, stuffed most of their money into her underwear, and went outside to find Ransom. She heard a sudden explosion in the distance and resisted the impulse to cower and hide. She forced herself to keep moving. They had to get away. She rounded the corner of the inn and found Ransom warming up the scooter and talking with Senor Gutierrez.
She stopped and stared. “You just bought that for six hundred dollars?”
“It's sturdier than it looks,” Ransom said. “Come on, get on behind me.”
“You paid six hundred American dollars for that?”
“You rich people really slay me.” He shook his head and asked, “Does the money matter so much?”
“You've been had, Ransom.”
“Need I remind you that we didn't have time to shop around?”
“Next time we buy something, I'll do the bargaining.”
“Your Spanish is lousy.”
“But it's better than your business sense.”
He sighed. “I will gladly fight about this with you later, okay? But for now, can we please concentrate on escaping?”
He had a point. She climbed on behind him. The seat was hard and narrow, and the little motor scooter scarcely seemed big enough to carry the two of them. Senor Gutierrez took her hand and wished her a safe journey. She supposed he had no reason to feel guilty; if the travellers’ checks turned out to be useless to him, then the cash price they had paid might not even cover the cost of a replacement. He'd taken a gamble tonight, in more ways than one. If the army or the Seguridores came back here, Gutierrez would claim that Madeleine and Ransom had threatened the family at gunpoint, then stolen the scooter and other supplies. But there was no guarantee that he'd be believed. And even if he was believed, there was still no guarantee that the soldiers wouldn't take out their frustrations on him anyhow.
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