Not anymore. Fana was listening.
Phoenix asked Fana to take away her fear, and fear receded like a Miami Beach tide racing away so quickly that the loss of it made her woozy. Alertness and euphoria filled the void: Fana was rescuing her! She was free! The pain from Harley’s punch was still there, but it wasn’t nearly as bad without her fear.
The two men navigated the stairs in silence. Phoenix watched over her shoulder, missing nothing. The soldier in the lead took Harley’s key card and swiped it on the lock panel at the top of the stairs.
“I can walk,” Phoenix said as they waited for the card to register.
The soldier turned to look at her, only his eyes visible through his mask. She had met him before, she realized. He might be Fana’s father, almost too young for a teenage daughter.
“But can you run?” His English sounded American, but with an arresting exoticism.
“I … I think so.”
The light on the panel flickered in yellow. Quickly, he swiped the card again. This time, the panel glowed in green. The door clicked loudly, ready to open. The taller man gently rested her on her feet, holding her steady.
The man who might have been Fana’s father reached out to her. “Hold my hand,” he said.
Phoenix grabbed his gloved hand, grateful for his steady grip. The bigger soldier spoke quickly in their language again, but this time he seemed to be addressing someone who wasn’t in the room. A radio? The bigger man nodded to him, and Fana’s father opened the door, pushing hard against the sudden wind.
Outside, the sun shone as brightly as the star it was. Phoenix couldn’t see anything except brightness as she charged ahead, following the soldier’s sure grasp. The unearthly beating of wind whipped her T-shirt against her skin. A helicopter, she realized.
“Hurry!” Fana’s father said, pulling her along.
Phoenix’s tight stomach slowed her more than she’d expected, but she ran as fast as she could make her legs move. The slate-gray helicopter hadn’t quite landed, but the cabin door was wide open. Inside the cabin, a child beside the window was wrapped in a blanket, peering out.
Marcus? Hope took the rest of her breath away.
“Yes—we have your son too!” Fana’s father shouted to her, urging her along.
Ten yards to run across the rooftop. Loose gravel tried to steal her footing as she craned to see the child better. Five yards. Phoenix couldn’t believe her son was there until—
The toothless grin came. “Mommy!” Marcus cried. She couldn’t quite hear him over the helicopter’s propellers, but she knew even slivers of her son’s voice.
The larger soldier hoisted her by her waist from behind, and suddenly Phoenix was tumbling into the cabin, the soldiers careful not to trample her as they climbed in after her. The cabin door slammed shut behind them, and Phoenix’s ears popped.
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Marcus was chanting, half laughing, half crying, his arms reaching out for her as he fought his seat belt. Phoenix collapsed into the middle seat beside him, blanketing him in her embrace. She sobbed as she touched his warm face, pressed her ear to his beating heart. No noise, no fear, no pain—only Marcus.
Fana’s father shouted something to the pilot. The helicopter lifted into the air, racing away. The cabin tilted sharply.
It took more than a minute for Phoenix to notice that the woman sitting in the seat across from her was Fana. Her face and dreadlocks hadn’t changed since the concert. Fana’s eyes were as sad as the soldier’s who had been shot outside her door.
Biting back another sob, Phoenix reached to clasp the girl’s hand.
Fana squeezed tightly. Her voice floated into Phoenix’s head, ethereal.
I’M SO SORRY THIS HAPPENED. I DIDN’T WANT TO SEE YOU HURT.
When Fana touched her, a tingle cascaded through Phoenix’s body. The cramping in her stomach loosened. Her ribs stopped complaining. Her lungs cleared. Healing. Phoenix’s next tears were ecstatic, the only release for a feeling too big to hold all at once.
Yes I knew you at the concert when I saw you standing between the columns I knew you when I saw the ropes of your hair I knew you when you raised your arms to the sky and you rained down I knew you I knew you I knew you
NO, Fana said. I KNEW YOU. I NEED YOU, PHOENIX.
“Carlos?” Phoenix managed to say, struggling to think past her euphoria to remember her heartaches, so much left undone.
Fana didn’t answer at first. Her eyes had drifted into a private space.
“Your husband was being detained at a separate facility,” Fana’s father said. “He’s already safe on the plane. We’re taking you to him now.”
Twenty-four
As the helicopter sped due north for San Francisco, Dawit could only shake his head while the singer comforted her child. True, their joy was touching, and he hadn’t minded slicing the throat of the singer’s captor, who had been ready to brutalize a woman under the guise of duty. But at what price?
A DEBACLE! Berhanu complained, staring out the windows for aircraft in pursuit. Berhanu was seeking out thoughts of approaching pilots; Dawit and Berhanu would never have made it into the building without Berhanu’s ability to monitor remote thoughts.
If they were being chased, they would divert away from the others. Their waiting jet was well armed, but Dawit wasn’t looking forward to skirmishes with the air force.
Dawit leaned back to call to Teka in the pilot’s chair. “Have we triggered a war?” he said in Amharic. He didn’t need to tax his telepathy for private conversation. Teka was intercepting military radio transmissions, listening on his headphones.
WE HAVE NO AIR PURSUIT AS YET, Teka said. THERE IS CHAOS WITHIN, BUT FANA HAS MASKED THE HELICOPTER.
Fana was the only one of them with the power to hide such a large object, manipulating the appearance of its mass to make it virtually invisible. She alone could alter the sounds for multiple listeners, dimming the racket of the helicopter’s blades.
Fana had practiced the skill on automobiles, eluding police before. If not for that, Dawit would have preferred to leave Fana on the plane with Jessica in San Francisco.
Their plan for a nighttime raid had been scrapped after their sources in the DHS and NSA had reported that nightfall would be too late. Since Fana could conceal only one vehicle at a time, Fasilidas and Teferi had gone by car to find the singer’s husband fifty miles north, without Fana’s protection. Luckily, the singer and her child had been only two floors apart.
Teka had corrupted the facility’s surveillance cameras. The flimsy cover wouldn’t survive scrutiny, but they might have carved a clean escape. It was a pity they’d killed so many personnel—at least five. Two of the dead had worn military uniforms, and one had been from a covert branch that wore no uniform. Three more had died trying to keep the boy, including a female bureaucrat who had believed she was protecting him.
Made public, it would sound like war on U.S. soil. If they were forced to ask Glow loyalists in Washington, D.C., to intervene, it would be a civil war. All for a singer!
SHE IS MORE THAN A SINGER TO FANA, Teka said.
“I pray we can leave the airport with our precious new cargo,” Dawit said.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL IS AN EASY MATTER, Teka said. IF WE GET THAT FAR.
Dawit turned back to Fana. Camouflaging the helicopter was a monumental mental task for Fana, but Dawit had learned that he could trust her to answer when she was able.
“Michel did not keep his word,” Dawit told Fana in Amharic, leaning toward her. “She was on the disposal list, Fana. She would not have survived until nightfall.”
All men, regardless of power or station, could be judged by the chasm between their words and deeds. If Michel had promised Fana that he would free the singer, he had lied to her. If Michel was still lying to her, they could not trust him to receive Fana with honor.
Fana seemed not to have heard him. Her eyes fell closed.
Dawit persisted quietly. “If Michel believes the c
ircumstances of this rescue were favorable, he is lying to himself. That is the worst kind of liar.”
WE HAVE ALL THREE OF THEM, Fana said. THAT WAS HIS PROMISE.
“She was on the disposal list. Her husband, too. We reached them by chance.”
HE EXPECTED US TO BE EFFICIENT.
“He gave us nothing, Fana.”
Dawit realized that his one-sided conversation with Fana must look strange to a mortal in any language, but Phoenix was too intoxicated by her son to look their way. The helicopter veered again. Without pursuit, it was safe to proceed directly to the airport.
HE MAY BE PUNISHING ME FOR JOHNNY, Fana said. Finally.
His dear Fana had inherited her father’s foolish, destructive heart.
“Then we might wait and judge how much you have offended him,” Dawit said gently.
HE KEPT HIS PROMISE BETTER THAN I KEPT MINE.
She was right, of course. In Michel’s eyes, she might have broken trust first.
Mahmoud had teased Dawit for his perfectionism in battle, which was, of course, an oxymoron. Plans were only the beginning of a long and arduous conversation between expectations and circumstance. They had emerged without injury or capture, so far, but he could not be at ease. They nearly had been overmatched already!
Dawit had banished his doubts about Fana’s visit to Michel—and visit was the word he stubbornly clung to—but the doubts had reappeared. How could Fana trust him?
Dawit had prepared for the worst with the rescue, but he had hoped for courtesy. Even with internal sources, a technological advantage, and access to the facilities’ computers, the rescues had been dangerous. They would be lucky to lift off from San Francisco without F-14s scrambling behind them.
Dawit closed his eyes and took a breath. If he was quiet, he heard his own wisdom.
“They can’t cry war over prisoners they never had in official custody,” Dawit said, assuring himself aloud. “If the public knew she’d been detained, it would cause an international outcry. Her music is beloved. Bureaucracy will keep it contained.”
MICHEL WILL KEEP IT CONTAINED, Fana said.
Dawit hoped Fana wasn’t relying on the same intuition that had driven her to share her Blood with Johnny Wright, passing him the Life Gift from her own veins. What good was their tortured celibacy if Fana offered Johnny the one thing Michel treasured so much more than the body? And on the eve of her arrival, no less.
Dawit could see the child in her, unchanged.
“I have to ask you …” the singer began, addressing Fana. Gently, so gently.
Fana opened her eyes.
“Where are we going?” the singer said. The poor woman’s ordeal stamped her face: dark pits under her eyes from lack of sleep, lips flaking and bleeding from dehydration. Fana had visited a typhoon on her, and Phoenix was gazing at Fana as if she were the face of the sun. The rescued were always eager to follow.
Fana smiled. “Right now, I want you to have some time with your family,” she said. “We’re about forty minutes from the plane, and the three of you will have a private cabin tonight. I want you to hold each other. And you should rest for tomorrow.”
“What happens tomorrow?”
Fana closed her eyes again, smile fading. “You’re coming with me to Mexico.”
The plane seemed to stretch for a city block.
Phoenix had hoped Carlos would be her first sight, but instead she was in a galley with a marble floor and fully stocked bar. And then a cabin full of the Africans she had first seen at the concert, who still looked like nobles even in unremarkable street clothes.
Then a long conference area with a sofa, plush leather chairs, long desk, wide-screen TV, and another stranger, an American woman: Fana’s mother, Jessica. The woman’s face was fresh from the memories Fana had shared with her. Jessica pampered Marcus like an aunt, but she wasn’t Carlos. “Let’s go see your daddy,” Jessica said, and led them to yet another door in the rear, only half open. “He’s in here. I’m so sorry about—”
A shadow moved inside the cabin, and the door flung open. Carlos stood there wearing a towel, dripping from the shower, freshly shaved. He looked like a snapshot from their life in Paso on an ordinary day. Judging by the pain in his face, she looked like a nightmare.
“Daddy!” Marcus shrieked, and leaped into Carlos’s arms.
Marcus’s exuberant weight was a burden. Phoenix saw Carlos lean on the door frame to keep his balance, his knees nearly buckling. Like her, Carlos was weak.
“Phee?” Carlos said between kisses to his son’s neck and cheek. “Are you okay?”
He reached for her hand, pulling her closer.
“Fine, baby. I’m fine now.” Phoenix folded herself behind Marcus, taking some of their son’s weight in her arms.
They sank into the cabin, and the door closed behind them, the privacy she had been promised. The compact bed by the window was just big enough for the three of them to rest without having to let go. Once they were wrapped inside each other, remembering and forgetting, Phoenix heard her own wailing sobs and Carlos’s muffled ones, and Marcus was saying, Why are you crying? We’re back together now.
But that only made Phoenix cry harder, until she had to clamp both hands over her mouth so she wouldn’t worry Marcus on his celebration day. How could she explain to either of them? How could she destroy their homecoming?
They both quizzed Marcus on his time away from them.
“I cried a lot and said I wanted to be with my mommy and daddy,” he said matter-of-factly. “They gave me pizza and ice cream, though. And DVDs.” As if it were a fair trade.
Marcus had not been mistreated, thank God. Phoenix had told God flatly that if she had to choose between her husband and her baby boy, please let her baby boy be safe. Carlos would have said it, too. But she had both of them. Both of them. Phoenix sobbed from joy.
Each new sob brought questions to Carlos’s eyes. He asked in Spanish, but she just said, “I’m fine. I was hurt, but Fana healed me.” Then he wanted to know how she had been hurt, who had hurt her, and how. She heard the question violado, a word that made her remember Harley’s hand. But Harley was far behind her now.
“Nothing happened,” she said. “My room was cold. I was hungry. What about you?”
Carlos didn’t want to talk about his experience, either. She fumbled through her Spanish to ask if he’d been beaten. His shrug alarmed her. “Agua,” he whispered. “Agua.”
“I know that means ‘water,’ Daddy,” Marcus said, proud of himself. Blissfully oblivious.
Phoenix’s next sob was for Carlos. Her mind flashed images from the news, documentaries and protest signs, and her limbs seized with horror for him. She imagined his face smothered with a wet towel while he gasped for air.
“Shhhhh. Don’t cry,” he said. “I survived.”
She hugged him around his neck, and they rocked together. “That didn’t happen to me, baby,” she whispered. “They didn’t do that to me. Hear me? Nothing like that.”
Happy tears came to his eyes. “I kept seeing you drowning….” Carlos’s hand trembled as he grabbed hers to anchor him against his memories.
Phoenix kissed his hand, but it took his trembling a long time to settle. Phoenix decided never to tell him about Harley’s hand on her back. Dawit’s knife had washed away the need to tell her husband that story. Fana’s mission made Harley irrelevant.
“Please forgive the intrusion,” a pleasant male voice said from the loudspeaker above their doorway. He also spoke exotic English. “We have been cleared for takeoff, so please stay seated in case of mishap.”
Phoenix had forgotten they were on a plane.
All three of them huddled at the windows by the bed, watching as the jets and rampways passed in a blur. It was still daylight, but the fog was as thick as smoke. How had the pilot ever gotten clearance to take off? Could he fly blind? Phoenix thought she saw the flashing red light of a police car, but it was only a luggage cart on the tarmac. They all held hands
as the plane gathered speed, shaking the wall. As the plane rose, an ocean of ghostly fog unfurled beneath them, swallowing the city except for the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The rising fog banks could have followed Phoenix from her dream.
“I’m …” Marcus mumbled. Then his chin bobbed to his chest, and he was asleep. The motion had rocked him to sleep, just like when he was a baby. Phoenix rested her cheek against his forehead, feeling him breathe. What would she give to be Marcus, safe in his parents’ arms with no idea what was outside?
For a time, Phoenix and Carlos watched Marcus sleep. They each held one foot to take off his black sneakers, which were a size too big, someone’s best guess. They curled him in the upper corner of the bed, beside the plane’s gently humming wall, and smothered him in blankets.
A knock at the cabin door. One of the men brought a tray: baked salmon, mashed potatoes, freshly steamed broccoli. Garlic bread. Phoenix didn’t think she was hungry, but she ate voraciously. Despite the generous helpings, she could have eaten more. She kept eyeing the minipizza set aside for Marcus, wondering if pizza had been ruined for him by his captors.
Carlos ate purposefully, slowly, trying not to rush. They had both been hungry for days.
While Carlos finished his plate, Phoenix followed his example and took a shower. The sky wasn’t bumpy enough to make her delay cleaning herself, since she hadn’t been allowed to bathe. The shower was surprisingly large, as big as a shower in a budget motel room. It had been a long time since Phoenix had flown on a private jet, and none had been as big as this one. This was a queen’s quarters.
The hot water dancing on her skin ignited her gratitude.
Thank you thank you thank you Fana.
Phoenix could have stayed in that shower for days. When she came out, Carlos was holding his head in his hands at the edge of the bed, where Marcus was sleeping.
“I never could believe it,” he said. “The worst moments, it was all that kept me sane: ‘This can’t be happening. I reject this.’”