A jagged bolt of lightning lanced the darkening sky. The thunder rolled again. The rain started slanting down, pelting the road behind us, turning up dust and beginning to transform it into mud. The van went on bouncing and shuddering along at top speed. I sat where I was and stared out into the storm.
We were clear of the village. For the moment, there were no more soldiers left to attack us. That was a good thing too. I don’t think I would’ve been able to shoot anyone else. What I had done, I had done in a moment of danger and panic—a moment when it was kill or be killed. And I know, I know—I had to do it. I had to protect myself. I had to protect my friends. But now that it was over, I felt sick in my heart. I had ended a human life. And it felt lousy. Really bad.
The van turned off the road and started down a narrow dirt path. If the ride had been rough before, it was really wild now. The van jumped and bucked and leaned this way and that. The jungle trees moved in close on either side of us. The leaves hung over us, so thick they actually held off the falling rain.
We were on the little side road now that led to the airstrip. I remembered the look of it from when we first arrived. Another few minutes and we would be at Palmer’s plane. We would take off and fly north until we reached an airfield in the south of Texas. From there we would take another plane to Houston. From there, we would fly to Los Angeles and make our way home by bus.
It would all take only a few hours. In only a few hours we would be out of this nightmare and back in our homes, back with our families, back in the normal world.
All except Pastor Ron. He wasn’t ever going back to his family again. And neither was the rebel I had shot in the chest.
I thought about that as the van bounced along. I thought about how we would go home and everything would be the same and everything would have changed too. I knew there was a lot of stuff I was going to have to think about and figure out once we got away. But all the same, I was desperate to go, desperate to leave this madness, desperate to get home.
The van came around a bend and began to slow. I looked over my shoulder and saw the airstrip through the front windshield. We had arrived.
The van came to a stop and I climbed to my feet.
“Thank you, God!” I heard Nicki say.
Palmer got out from behind the wheel. Jim slipped open the side door and climbed out too. Nicki scrambled quickly off her bench and jumped out. Meredith turned to me and offered me a sad smile, as if she understood all the stuff that was going through my mind. Then she slid off the bench too and got out of the van.
I set the rifle aside. I was glad to get rid of it. I climbed out through the open back door.
And because I was the last one to leave the van, I was the last one to see what had happened.
The airstrip wasn’t much to look at. It was just a line of flattened dirt in the middle of a small clearing surrounded by jungle. The rain was falling fast now and the strip—that line of dirt—was quickly turning to mud. As I came out of the van, I felt the cold drops pelting me, pelting my hair, my face. I had to squint through the water to see—and I saw the others just ahead of me, standing in a cluster: Palmer in front, Jim at his left shoulder, Meredith and Nicki behind his right shoulder. They were all standing still, all looking out across the field, through the rain.
I joined them—and I saw what they were looking at: Palmer’s plane, which was still sitting where he had parked it at the far end of the landing strip.
The plane had been totally destroyed. As in: totally. It had been set on fire. Even in the rain, it was still smoking—what was left of it—which wasn’t much. Its landing gear was completely smashed, the tires flat, the struts bent out of shape. One of its wings was in fragments, almost gone. The windows were all broken. And the entire fuselage was burned charcoal black.
It wasn’t going to fly us home. It wasn’t going to fly anybody anywhere.
Looking at it, I felt something drop inside me, like an elevator falling out of control. It was an awful feeling. Our only way out of here, our only means of escape—ruined; gone. We had been so close—so close to getting out—only hours from getting back to our families—and now . . . it seemed like there was no way, no way home at all.
“What happened?” Jim murmured dully. “It looks like someone . . . blew it up.”
Palmer nodded. “The rebels. Mendoza said they were everywhere . . . Maybe he even sent a few of his guys out here to make sure no one used it to escape.”
“Well, what do we do now?” asked Nicki. I could hear the panic rising in her voice. She already sounded as if she was about to burst into tears again.
“Could we drive?” Meredith asked. “Could we get back in the van, drive to the border, try to break through to Belize or Mexico?”
Palmer turned to her. He seemed about to answer, but he didn’t—he didn’t say anything. Instead, he just stood there. His eyes were on her, but he seemed to be looking right through her into some unseen distance. And I realized: he was listening to something.
I listened too. Over the heavy pattering of the rain, I heard it clearly. Engines—cars or more trucks. Not far off—and coming closer, getting louder, quickly.
“They’re coming,” said Jim softly. “They’re coming after us.”
Nicki let out a noise, a little gasp. She brought her hands to her mouth as if to hold in her mounting hysteria.
“Mendoza knew we’d come here,” I said. “Where else could we go? He knows right where to find us.”
I looked at Palmer. We all looked at Palmer. With Pastor Ron gone, there was no question who our leader was now. Palmer might not be the nicest guy in the world, but he was a trained fighter, the only one we had, and we needed him.
But for another second, Palmer just stood there, silent. The noise of the engines kept growing louder. It sounded as if the trucks—and the rebels they were carrying—would be here in minutes.
“Shouldn’t we get back in the van?” Jim asked nervously. “Make a run for it . . .”
Finally, Palmer responded. He gave a quick shake of his head.
“There’s only one road and, by the sound of it, they’re coming toward us from both directions,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “There’s no way to drive out of here.”
I swallowed hard. In all honesty, I almost felt like crying. So close, I kept thinking. We had been so close to going home. The lightning struck again and the thunder rolled again and the rain fell harder, washing my hair down onto my forehead. I had to brush it back out of my eyes.
Then Palmer started moving.
“Come on,” he said to us.
“Where?” asked Jim. “Where can we go?”
Moving away quickly, Palmer answered over his shoulder, “Into the jungle.”