Part 19 (1/2)
”This isn't a very good idea,” Rhys said. But after a glance at Jamie's face, she stiffened into the position of attention, eyes front, att.i.tude visibly adamant. ”Sorry, ma'am.”
”Oh christ, Marty , please stop that. Please. ” Rhys continued to stand at attention, but her eyes swung left to meet Jamie's. Beneath Rhys's sideways glare, Jamie finally looked away in defeat.
* 159 *
”I can't stop my commanding officer.” Rhys stepped in front of Jamie. ”But I can try to stop my friend.”
”Your friend needs your help,” Jamie replied hoa.r.s.ely. ”I have to do this. I'm asking my friend to come with me.”
”When was the last time you had something to eat?”
”I'm not hungry.” Jamie started to pace in a tight, tense circle.
”How long since you slept?”
Jamie answered with a small shrug.
Stepping in front of her again, Rhys forced her to stop pacing and grabbed her shoulders. ”Jamie. Why?”
They were alone in a corner of the Three-Eight's FOB, their privacy endowed by a pile of sandbags and a couple of supply tents.
”I have to do this. I have to.” But Jamie lowered her head to avoid Rhys's steady gaze.
”And you want me to do what exactly?”
Jamie shrugged again.
”For G.o.d's sake, you've been cleared,” Rhys said. ”That means you didn't do anything wrong.”
”According to the Corps. After what? A five-minute review of a few ops center videos?”
”According to the Filipinos, too, dammit.”
”What if it was your kid, Marty?”
”s.h.i.+t.” Rhys kicked a sandbag.
”Okay. Never mind. Just forget about it.” Jamie began walking toward the FOB's main gate.
”Christ, I can't let you leave the base by yourself, Gwynmorgan.
You're f.u.c.king dangerous.” So Rhys followed several steps behind her.
Half an hour later, Rhys still a pace behind, Jamie knocked on the door of a modest concrete-block house in a well-manicured Narra neighborhood.
A woman in her late twenties answered. A head shorter than Rhys, her delicately featured face was shadowed and puffy, and her red-rimmed eyes flared as they swept down and back up Jamie's cammies, pausing at the pistol on Jamie's thigh, the rifle cradled in Jamie's arm.
Even so, she asked with preternatural calm in perfect Aussie-accented English, ”May I help you?”
”My name is Jamie Gwynmorgan, and this is Marty Rhys.”
* 160 *
Jamie's voice quivered and she had to struggle not to avert her eyes.
”We're looking for Angara Bulanadi.”
”I am Angara Bulanadi.”
”We'd like to speak with you, ma'am.” Jamie tried to steady her voice but couldn't prevent her eyes from blinking. ”Perhaps we can talk in your garden, in back?”
For a long moment, Angara Bulanadi said nothing. ”All right,” she said finally, and led them along the side of the house and through a gate to a small, very green garden. She closed the gate and turned to face Jamie. ”Please tell me what this is about.” Jamie handed her E112 to Rhys, looked again into Angara Bulanadi's tormented eyes, and tried to get her contracting diaphragm to allow a full breath.
”Ma'am, I'm the one who-”
”It was you? ” Angara Bulanadi asked, immediately winded. ”Oh my G.o.d, you killed my daughter?”
”Yes,” Jamie said, looking away, then dragging her eyes back to this woman's shocked face. ”I did. I-I've come to tell you that I'm sorry for- For what I did. I was aiming at someone else.” Withering under Angara Bulanadi's stare, Jamie broke off to attempt another breath.
”But th-that doesn't m-matter. Your daughter is dead, a-and my life is forfeit to you.”
With a trembling hand, Jamie unholstered the pistol strapped to her thigh. ”I'll end my life now if you wish, or you can do it.” Next to her, Marty said nothing, didn't move a muscle. Jamie gulped a breath, gripped the pistol hard to steady her hand, and offered the weapon to Angara Bulanadi, whose face was now savaged by rage and grief.
”My friend Marty will remove my body and see that you're not in any way involved if there's an investigation of my death.” Jamie paused, lifting her jaw to help her breathe while she glanced at Rhys, who seemed to have been stunned into a kind of blank bewilderment.
She continued when Rhys didn't budge. ”This is the safety.” Jamie flicked the small lever on the pistol. ”And now it's off. All you have to do is point this at me and squeeze back this trigger.” Angara Bulanadi took the pistol from Jamie, who dropped to her knees, clasped her hands behind her back, bowed her head, shut her eyes. And waited. She shuddered once but didn't move again. Her mind * 161 *
offered up no words, no images-just the deep blood red behind her eyelids as the last seconds of her life stretched into an infinity of guilt and regret.
She thought she sensed the barrel of the weapon at her right temple.
Please. Just do it. And then Jamie heard the sound of the pistol's safety pushed back on.
”No,” said a hushed voice. Angara Bulanadi's consummately gentle voice. ”I don't want your life to end. Thank you for showing me that.”
Jamie's eyes fluttered open to see the woman hand the pistol to Rhys, then walk serene and unhurried through the garden to her house and cross its threshold. Before closing the door, Angara Bulanadi turned around, her lovely face now at peace. She peered down at Jamie, who still kneeled, still sought release from a world bathed in blood.
”My daughter's name was Awa.” Angara Bulanadi's voice lilted through the eerie quiet. ”It means 'mercy.'”
* 162 *
Chapter seventeen.
darK and silent A waning moon still mostly full outlined the mountains rising before her and set off a wave of apprehension. How would she get there without a comlink? No comlink meant no satellite downlinks of close-up real-time imagery, no topographical details, no precision info about where she was or whether her path was the most optimal or how far she had yet to go.
Nervous about her visibility in the moonlight, Jamie crouched low and listened. Yes, she heard running water-a creek, maybe even a small river ahead of her, between her and the mountains she needed to reach.