LITMIR.BIZ

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she said. “In the temple, where the pilgrims used to sleep when they stayed there.”

      He shook his head, flinching at the sound of breaking pottery from within the house. “I’m not allowed—”

      “This once, you are,” she told him.

      “Mama said—”

      She put her finger to her lips again, and gave him a slow, reassuring smile. “I’ll tell her it was my fault.”

      He returned a solemn, dark-eyed look, lower lip protruding slightly with the effort of his decision. Selena all but held her breath, waiting, knowing he might well be unable to trust her, as much as he’d been willing to warn her. The Beretta felt solid and familiar in her hand, and just as suddenly as if it could not possibly belong there while she spoke to this child.

      Abruptly he bit his lip and nodded. “Will you hide, too?”

      “Yes.” She stood; the wind tugged at her open coat. She wished she could pull off her sweater to give him—he wore only a thin wool jacket over his own baggy, loosely knit sweater—but to do so would reveal her knives and her gun, a revelation likely to break the tenuous connection between them. “But I’m going to hide somewhere else, somewhere I can get help for your people.”

      This made no sense, of course. But she hoped he would grab for the reassurance without working through the logic. She didn’t give him much time to think about it, not as a muted cry reached her from the still-cracked back door. “Go now!” She pointed up the hill. “As fast as you can! Someone will come for you when it is safe.”

      This time. For this child truly to be safe, Selena would have to accomplish much more than this chance, unexpected interference with one besieged house.

      After the briefest hesitation, the boy sprinted away, his barely coordinated limbs putting much effort into the action. So young…

      Selena smoothed her scowl away and reached for focus. She was on the job now, albeit in a fashion never formally acknowledged. She eased up to the side of the house, up to the small window with open shutters on the outside and a film of curtains covering the glass from the inside. She winced as something else within the house broke, something wooden and splintering this time, followed by another cry of fear. The window showed her little…a gash of sunlight over the floor where the front door had been left open, a chair overturned against the wall, a bread plate smashed near the entrance to a back room. No one in sight. Great. She’d have to slink around and hope another window would reveal how many intruders had—

      A stutter of automatic weapons fire sounded from down the street. More than just this one house at stake. And from within, a woman screamed, a full-bodied shriek of fear and denial. No more time. Start with this house, worry about the rest later. She moved swiftly to the front corner of the house, confirmed that no one waited out front and made it to the doorway itself. A quick peek-retreat revealed the main room of the house to be abandoned. From within the room beyond, a man shouted harsh demands for cooperation and the sharp slap of hand against flesh struck Selena’s ears. Bastard. Of course he was going to rape her. Of course. And in this society where the conservative chador was no longer required by law but still often used by custom, rural women still paid every price for rape above and beyond the violation of the act itself.

      Selena did another peek-and-duck, still saw nothing, and eased into the house with silence as her shield, her coat whispering around her in swirling folds of leather. A quick glance through the doorway beyond showed her a tiny bedroom, one man in Kemeni green and tan colors pressing a diminutive woman into the corner while his loosely gripped Abakan Russian assault rifle—Abakan…strange choice—pointed at the floor, his avid gaze riveted on the bed. There a second man crouched over a wildly flailing woman, struggling to shove aside the copious material of her modest chador robes. As Selena retreated, taking a deep breath, her gun held two-handed and ready, another resounding slap marked the man’s impatience.

      Selena surged around the door frame and shot him in the ass.

      He cried out in shock and tumbled to the floor. The woman scrambled back against the wall at the head of the bed, frantically rearranging her clothing, and the second man, caught in flat-footed surprise, started to raise his badly positioned Abakan rifle. The woman he’d squashed into the corner let out a deliberate, ear-piercing shriek, her only remaining weapon.

      It bought Selena an instant, and an instant was all she needed to drill the man twice, her finger steady on the long pull of the double-action trigger. Once in the knee, once in the right biceps, and then the woman in the corner gave a fierce cry of triumph and leaped for the rifle. Selena caught a glimpse of the look in her eye and instantly targeted the woman even as she shouted a warning—and reassurance. “Leave the rifle—I am your friend!”

      The woman hesitated long enough to realize she was in Selena’s sights, but as she straightened with the Abakan carefully held by the stock alone, she leaned sideways to spit on the floor. “My friend,” she said. Unlike the other woman, she did not wear a chador, only a colorful punjabi and matching hijab scarf. Her thick, woven shawl lay crumpled on the floor in the corner. “American. If you had not been supplying the Kemenis, they would not now be in a position to act—or desperate enough to send out men like this.” She kicked the man in his bloody knee, eliciting a scream. She didn’t wait for Selena’s reply, but went to the woman on the bed, leaning the rifle against the headboard with a frightening familiarity.

      Selena lowered her gun but didn’t holster it, not with the stutter of gunfire echoing in her memory. These two pathetic so-called freedom fighters weren’t the only problem this village had. Moving swiftly and not at all gently, she patted them down for weapons, glad for her gloves. Rank sweat and bad beer and gun oil stung her nose. Stepping back from them with a new collection of knives and two more handguns, she piled the stash on the foot of the bed. “Do you have rope? Can you tie them until an army unit arrives?”

      The woman looked as though she wanted to spit again. “What makes you think Razidae’s army cares? What makes you think they will come?” She caressed the cheek of the other woman, a soothing gesture.

      Selena reached into a pocket for the familiar feel of her cell phone. “Because I’m going to call them.”

      She’d have preferred to call in American troops, but she’d already gotten a glimpse of the reception they’d endure. So she made the call, a short, concise conversation with the American Embassy, informing them of the situation. “Let Razidae’s people know,” she told the embassy warden’s assistant. “And keep me out of it—it’s the last thing any of us needs. I’ll be gone by the time they get here.”

      “They’re on alert,” the man told her. “They won’t take long.”

      “Neither will I,” Selena assured him.

      But she didn’t leave immediately. She selected one of the knives from the bed, the one with the dullest gleam of an edge when she held it up to the light from the room’s single small, high window. The one that would hurt the most—and the one her chosen victim, the man still scrabbling around on the floor trying to find a way to clamp both hands to his bleeding buttock at once and not leave himself entirely vulnerable from the front, had been prepared to use on these women.

      She crouched before him, the Beretta held in a deceptively casual grip in the hand that rested on her knee, and gave the knife a speculative look before she turned her gaze on the man.

      “Woman,” he said. “American. You are nothing to me. Your people betrayed us.”

      Kemeni, all right, even if his tan and green clothing hadn’t given him away. Kemeni, and convinced that the recently deceased Frank Black had been working with the States when he’d supplied the rebels with arms. Instead, Black had done so at the behest of Jonas White, a man who liked to play whole countries as if they were game pieces, and whose name popped up in connection with far too many successful black market ventures.

      “My people were never behind you,” Selena told him. “And fortunately for my ego, you’re nothing to me, either.” Except a source of information. “Are you

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