Francine Mathews - The Cutout

An army of the disappeared had seized the hallway ahead. Caroline caught sight of the man who had saved her, his black head and wiry body pushing a tortured path through the shrieking faces. Fear and pain overwhelmed the adrenaline surge that had propelled her out of the tunnel mouth; a few more minutes, and she might crumple to the floor. She tried to keep the black hair in her sights, wavered, and then toppled against the wall, waiting for the dizziness to pass. A screaming woman clutched at Caroline's wounded right arm. She cried out in pain, and felt the blackness roll up to claim her.

Blue eyes, fierce and relentless. He had come back. The man threw his arm around her waist and pulled her forward through the chaos. The wall beside her disappeared and abruptly, Caroline was falling sideways. The doorway to a room.

She landed hard on the floor and rolled over. The door behind her slammed.

Darkness. Not the heavy weight of unconsciousness, but the absence of all light.

The man flipped a switch on the wall; nothing. Someone had gotten to the camp's generator. Caroline glanced swiftly around, her eyes adjusting to the gloom, and staggered to her knees. She was in a cubicle, a room with one unshaded window, a metal cot, an IV stand, some crates for a table. The blue-eyed man threw a torrent of Serbian at her. Useless.

A boy's voice answered, broken with exhaustion and grief. Jozsef. He lay in a heap at the foot of the cot. Caroline pushed herself toward him, but he flung out a hand in mute warning. He did not need this stranger. What she could see of his face was blank with shock.

There was a clatter behind them, a spattering of words. The blue-eyed Serb had turned the crates on their sides and jammed them against the closed door. Then he pulled the sheet from the cot and tore at it with his teeth. A roll of cotton from the room's supplies was already in his hand.

He was making her a bandage.

The Serb pressed the folded linen against the shredded fabric near her collarbone. Caroline's breath hissed raggedly through her clenched teeth. It was an awkward area to dress — but the man wrapped cotton gauze several times around her armpit, then tied it off with ruthless force. Caroline bit down so hard on her lip that blood oozed under her teeth. Unhygienic, inexpert — but it would do.

She grabbed his hand as he stepped away, looked up into his eyes. She knew not one word of Serbian.

“Thank you.”

He nodded, then crossed the room and thrust up the window. He held out his hand to Jozsef.

Unable to stand, the boy crawled.

“Halt,” Caroline said hoarsely. “Sophie Payne. We ist Sophie Payne?”

The boy's head came around; his eyes widened.

“She konnen die Dame?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“I know the lady. Jozsef, I'm Michael's wife. I came to help you.”

The Serb prisoner stared at Caroline, uncomprehending, then spat something harsh and desperate in his own tongue. Fists pounded against the locked door. The wave of violence sweeping the camp was indiscriminate, now; the only sane thing to do was flee.

“You killed my father,” Jozsef whispered in lacerated English. “You are the one who shot him like a dog.”

“The camp killed him. I came for Mrs. Payne.” With her left hand — Krucevic had broken the other wrist — Caroline pulled Eric's homing device from her pocket. The signal was fainter than in the fields below the compound.

“Jozsef, where is she?”

“Ich u'eiss NightI”

The twelve year old was sobbing, his hands beating the cement floor, on the edge of hysteria. And why not? A few minutes ago, his father had held a gun to his head. And now his father lay in pieces somewhere down the corridor.

“She's not with you?”

Jozsef shook his head.

Caroline crouched close to the boy and held out the homing device.

“See this red light? It's a signal. Michael buried a transmitter somewhere in her things.”

“The lady has nothing,” he said dully.

The Serb prisoner tossed two words at them and then thrust himself through the open window. At that moment, the door frame shattered and the wooden crates were pushed backward into the room. Caroline seized Jozsef's waist — he was as light as a cat from illness, a bundle of sticks to be tossed on the fire — and hurled him at the sill.

“He left her down below,” the boy said against her cheek. “He told me she was dead and buried.”

Dead and buried. The tunnels of old Ziv Zakopan.

There was a six-foot drop from the windowsill. He sat for an instant, weak legs dangling, then crumpled to the ground. Wishing uselessly for her Walther, Caroline thrust herself face first through the window, kicking at the frame. She dropped with a sharp jolt onto her left side, and her collarbone creaked and shifted under her skin; she cried out, then clamped down on the pain searing through her chest.

She felt for Jozsef.

“Here,” he breathed, and she saw his eyes peering through the slit of a doorway opposite. She crawled over and ducked inside the small shed.

The stench was overwhelming. He had hidden in a latrine.

Caroline held her breath against the sour odor. Feet thudded past them.

Something crashed into the door of the latrine with a piercing shriek, bounced away, fell silent. Jozsef shuddered and pressed against her. Caroline put her good arm around him. They waited for what seemed hours, probably no more than eight minutes. The smell of excrement and lime would cling to her clothes and hair , Caroline thought, a stink so solid she would taste it for days to come. If she survived .

Her collarbone was numb, and the bandage had stanched the flow of blood. But she was weakening. Her eyelids drooped. Maybe she could sleep for a while and look for Sophie Payne in the morning.

“I gave her my rabbit's foot,” Jozsef muttered. He seemed to have slipped sideways, down the current of a dark river. She groped her way back to him.

“What?”

“My good-luck charm. The lady needed it more than me. But what if the luck fails?”

Dead and buried. The tunnels... Caroline roused herself with effort. The screams from the compound were fainter now, the pounding feet gone elsewhere.

“Jozsef — can you show me the gate?”

He reached for her hand.

“I do not think it will be guarded any longer.”

It took them thirty-three minutes to descend the narrow path through the rocks.

Caroline's vertigo returned, and Jozsef fainted halfway down, a dead weight dragging on her left arm. She stopped to revive him, chafing his wrists and slapping him methodically; and remembered, as he lay senseless, the antibiotics in Ziv Zakopan's labs. Antidotes to anthrax that might have saved two lives.

They were probably smashed to pieces by this time.

Caroline cursed viciously. It was too late to go back. Jozsef's eyes flickered open. She crouched beside him.

“I can't carry you.” Blood had soaked through her makeshift bandage. “You can stay right here. Close to the cliff face. I'll come back soon with help.”

She had no idea whether she would find Sophie Payne or how to summon help, if any was at hand; but there was nothing else to tell the boy. Jozsef struggled to his knees. And began to crawl. The Skoda still sat where she had left it, wide open to the world. No one had seen fit to use it for a getaway. Despite the slow torture of the hillside path, they were the first to descend from Ziv Zakopan. The rest were too intent on blood and vengeance.

Jozsef heaved himself weakly into the back of the car and lay motionless.

Caroline fumbled in her pocket for the homing device and held it to her ear.