Andrew Britton - The Invisible

The truck hit another pothole. Her body came off the metal floor for a split second, and then she landed hard, her tailbone stinging with the impact. She groaned and slumped to the side, her chest and stomach tightening in a now familiar routine. She started to dryheave, and though she could hear the choking, strangled noises she was making, they seemed very distant, far beyond the steady groan of the truck’s diesel engine. It went on for several minutes, and then the nausea began to subside once more.

She waited for her stomach to stop convulsing, and when it did, or at least came as close as it was going to, she eased herself back into a sitting position and rested her head against the metal wall that divided the cab from the cargo area. This was a bad idea , she thought, the notion arriving like a load of wet sand on the back of a brokendown flatbed. I should have stayed in Cartagena. I should have let it go. I shouldn’t have flushed the pills. . . . Driving that last thought to the back of her mind, she steeled her resolve and reminded herself that it had been her decision to leave. Or at least, her decision to push Harper for another chance. When Machado had returned to the house that afternoon, he had given her back her sat phone, explaining that Harper had called while she was sleeping. When she called him back, she’d noticed that the call log was deleted, but she had let it go. She didn’t know who Machado might have been calling on the phone, or if deleting the log was just force of habit, but it didn’t really matter to her. What did matter was that Harper had agreed to put her into play. He hadn’t exactly agreed to send her to Pakistan, but she knew it was just a matter of time. He couldn’t shut her out forever, and before long, he would realize that he needed her. That Ryan needed her. Hopefully, it would happen sooner rather than later. She knew—

both from Harper and televised news reports—that nothing major had happened in Pakistan, which meant she still had time to change the deputy director’s mind. He had sounded odd when she had talked to him earlier, as though he was holding something back, but she’d decided it was nothing, and she’d let it go. Naomi had been somewhat surprised when Harper had asked Machado to help get her out of the country. She was even more surprised when the Spaniard had readily agreed. He had made a few calls, once again using her phone, and the truck—a Mitsubishi Fuso with a canvas tarp strapped over the gated cargo area—had arrived in record time. Then he’d said something that caught her completely off guard—that he would be taking her across the border personally. It seemed like a huge risk, and she’d told him as much, but he’d waved away her concerns. Still, there was something about his manner that was bothering her, something she couldn’t quite shake. She’d had hours to think about it, though, and she had finally hit upon the change in his demeanor. For one thing, he refused to look her in the eye, even when he was speaking to her, and he seemed nervous. No , she thought to herself, that wasn’t quite right. He didn’t seem nervous. It was more like he was . . . resigned. But resigned to what, she didn’t know. When he returned her phone before they left Cartagena, he mentioned that the battery had died at the end of his call with Harper. She tried to power it up without success, and she’d been unable to find the backup battery, despite an hour’s worth of increasingly frantic searching. In the end, she’d reasoned that it didn’t really matter, as her next stop—if all went well—would be the U.S. embassy in Lisbon. From there, she’d be able to get in touch with Harper and Ryan, and then she could start angling for a seat on the next plane to Pakistan. She heard a voice behind her. For a second, she thought it was the dashboard radio, and then she decided it was Machado. A cold chill swept through her body when she realized what was happening. They had reached the border, and Machado was talking with the entry officials. Lost in her thoughts, she had missed the jerky stopand-go movements that the vehicle had made as it moved forward in the queue.

Pressing her ear to the thin metal wall, she held her breath and listened hard, trying to catch the gist of the conversation. Machado’s voice—a quiet, confident baritone—was easy to recognize, and she couldn’t detect a hint of unease; he seemed as relaxed as he had the day before. She wondered if she had imagined his strange mannerisms earlier that afternoon and decided that she probably had. She wasn’t herself, she knew, caught up in all that had happened, and she was just seeing things that weren’t really there. The Portuguese official was saying something, but even though he was speaking in English, Naomi couldn’t decipher the words, which were distorted by the metal wall of the cab and the vibration of the engine. Machado said something back, which was followed by a burst of shared laughter. Then the truck dropped into gear and jolted forward. Naomi slumped to the floor and closed her eyes, as relieved as she’d ever been. She was well concealed by a group of rough wooden boxes, which Machado had told her contained automotive parts bound for Peniche, but even a casual search would have resulted in her arrest. She couldn’t believe they had gotten away with it, but the truck was still rolling forward, and now it was picking up speed. . . .

They continued on for another twenty minutes or so, the Mitsubishi rising and falling over a series of gentle hills. The ride was much smoother than it had been on the Spanish side of the border, and with the crossing over and done with, most of Naomi’s tension had faded away, leaving her utterly exhausted. She didn’t feel the sleep coming on, but it did, and when she woke with a start a short while later, she realized that they were no longer moving. In fact, the engine was shut down completely; all she could hear was the sound of cicadas or tree frogs, or whatever it was that they had in Portugal. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she heard a movement at the back of the truck and tensed, her breath catching in her raw, parched throat. It hurt to breathe, let alone speak, but she relaxed when she heard Machado saying her name.

“Yeah, I’m . . .” She cursed as her knee banged painfully against one of the wooden boxes. “I’m here,” she said, the words coming out in an awkward rasp. She moved blindly through the cargo area, hunched at the waist to avoid the tarp, which drooped overhead. She extended her arms and moved them back and forth in an effort to detect any obstacles before she ran into them. A blinding white light suddenly pierced the darkness, catching her full in the face. She squeezed her eyes shut again and glanced away, but not before she caught a glimpse of Javier Machado’s bulky profile. Someone was standing next to him, a smaller, slender figure, but she couldn’t see his face, as she was still blinking the dancing spots from her vision. She had seen something else in that brief moment, something that looked like . . . a gun in the smaller man’s hand, but that didn’t seem right. Still, she hesitated before moving forward, and Machado seemed to catch her reluctance.

“Come on, Naomi,” he said quietly, but there was something in his voice that touched off her internal alarm. “It’s time to go.”

“Go where?” she said. She could hear the nervous tension in her own voice, and she hated it. The last thing she wanted was to appear weak in front of them, even though she knew that Machado had already seen her at her worst. “I thought we were—”

“Change of plan, Ms. Kharmai,” he said. “Now please, get out of the truck.”

Naomi hesitated again, but there was nothing to do but follow his instructions.

Carefully, she edged forward, the spots still dancing in front of her eyes, and Javier Machado stepped up to offer his hand.