“I think we might be.” He stepped closer to the vines, moved the light over it, and chuckled. “Well, hello.”
Shanti saw something white poking out of the green leaves, stepped closer—and realized she was looking at the top of a human skull. She clapped a hand to her mouth, choked back a scream.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s a friend.”
“What do you mean?”
Connor pushed the vines carefully aside, revealed a red circle surrounded by white and blue. “It’s a British Blenheim bomber from the war. Our buddy here was shot down, and he’s been here ever since. Let’s see if the fuselage is intact.”
Shanti stayed where she was while Connor walked around the plane, stepping through deep undergrowth.
“It looks like he lost a wing, but the fuselage is mostly unbroken. There’s a hole here big enough for us to enter and shelter for the night.”
“You want tosleepin there?” Shanti would rather keep walking.
“Don’t worry.” Connor’s teeth flashed white in the darkness, a note of amusement in his voice. “I’ll make sure no one else is home before we move in.”
Connor leftShanti to heat their MRE—Beef Tacos with Santa Fe Style Rice and Beans—and went about making their extremely cramped shelter safe, the interior of the plane lit by his flashlight, rain falling hard outside. He had already cleared the plane of anything that might bite, including a young Burmese python. To keep predators out, he taped old webbing from inside the plane over the hole in the fuselage and covered that with one of the squares of space blanket he’d brought from the tree house. It wasn’t a serious obstacle, but it would keep out mosquitoes and snakes—and give him enough warning to respond should anything bigger and meaner come for them.
That meant he could truly sleep tonight.
When that was done, he took out the first aid kit, put on a glove, and treated the shrapnel wound on his shoulder. It wasn’t deep and hadn’t bled much.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s just a nick.” He finished with that, then replaced the bandage on his temple with a clean one and put the first aid kit away.
“I think dinner is ready.”
He got the towelettes out so they could wash their hands, and then it was time to eat. “Today was hard, but you handled it.”
“The only easy day was yesterday, right?”
“You got it.”
“What happens tomorrow?” There was apprehension in her eyes.
“I wish I knew.” He took another bite, ravenous for real food. “They’ll send all of their resources to this side of the river. There will be helicopters and soldiers on foot. They might bring dogs. The best way to defeat them is to keep moving. Just do what you did today, and with any luck, you’ll be in The Hague in two days.”
She didn’t look as relieved by this news as he’d imagined she would. “I thought you said it would take seven days.”
“That was back when I didn’t know what a hard charger you were. It would have taken us seven days if you’d been able to go only twenty miles a day. But I think we gained a good forty-five miles today. That leaves about fifty miles ahead of us.”
They would be the fifty most dangerous miles of their journey, but she didn’t need to hear that now.
She nodded and said nothing, probably beyond exhaustion.
He finished eating, pulled out the food he’d taken off the soldiers he’d killed. “Do you know what this stuff is?”
Shanti took a packet of what looked like crumbly tamales without the corn husks. “These are peanut rolls.”
Connor took one, ate it. “They taste like Butterfingers without the chocolate.”
“These are tamarind flakes—like fruit chews made of tamarind. These little dark nuggets are called jaggery. It’s made with cane sugar and date tree sap.”
Connor took a piece of jaggery, popped it in his mouth, sugar melting on his tongue. “I like it. This isn’t a lot, but together with the mangoes, it will give us some extra calories.”
Shanti nodded, but didn’t eat, sitting there, looking at nothing, a distant expression on her face. He’d seen that look on young soldiers’ faces after a day of fighting. He’s seen it on the faces of civilians who’d fled their homes to survive.