Foreign Enemies and Traitors (36 page)

The baby was no longer crying, but Jenny could feel its breath against her neck, could feel it squirming inside its blanket wrappings.  It was too difficult to hold her this way, and Jenny needed her arms for balance and support while moving through the labyrinth of frozen flood channels.  She unzipped her outer camouflage jacket, placed the bundled baby against her chest, and zipped it inside.  Even wrapped in a blanket, the infant was so tiny that she fit between Jenny’s neck and the web belt that fit snugly around her waist.  The belt kept the infant from sliding down.  Now it was easier to move, because she could use her gloved hands to grasp at the sides of the gully channels, and catch herself when she slipped.

Images of the massacre site in the ravine filled Jenny’s mind, and she was hardly conscious of walking through the Christmas tree forest, until she passed the edge of the junkyard and found the twin parallel depressions of the snow-covered dirt road. 

But how far could she walk now, with a baby?  Realistically, it was a hopeless situation.  If the odds were against her before she had literally stumbled across the massacre site, they were impossible odds now.  But what kind of odds had the helpless baby faced?  What were the chances that she would have been rescued, found buried alive in that massacre ravine?  Yet here she was, still alive, and so was Jenny McClure.  If God had gotten them this far, alive, then He must have a reason.  The baby’s rescue was a miracle; there could be no other explanation.  If that was true, then Jenny was part of that brushing of God’s hand.  Why would God send her out, lost in a snowstorm, to find one living infant buried in a massacre pit, if it was not part of a larger plan?  The thought kept Jenny moving forward.  God has a plan; this is no time to give up.  Just keep hope alive, thought Jenny, almost laughing at the madness of it all.  Just keep a spark of hope alive, and God will do the rest.

I hope.

                                         
         11

Carson guessed their average speed
on horseback
to be about twice a man’s walking pace.  This might have been eight or ten miles an hour, but he knew his estimate could be far off.  A straight-line distance would have been almost impossible to estimate, and their route had been anything but straight.  After two hours, Boone led them along the edge of more woods, along and then through a wooden fence, and into a small barn.  Boone climbed down, and the others followed his lead and dismounted.  Carson was bone-tired and sore in places he hadn’t remembered, happy just to put his boots on the straw-covered floor of the barn.  Until they entered the stable, he had feared that they might ride all night. 

A dark compact car was parked in the center of the musty barn.  Without talking, the men unloaded the packs from the horses by flashlight.  They transferred some of the loads into the back of the waiting four-door mini-wagon, beneath its raised hatchback.  The rest of the bags went on the wagon’s roof, and were lashed down to its luggage rack.

“How did your ass hold up?” Boone asked in a loud whisper.

“I’ll live.”  The recently healed gash was outside of his weight-bearing areas, and his posture in the saddle had not stretched the wound apart.

“I think you’ll find this a bit more comfortable.  You ride in the back, with Zachary.  Doug, you’re riding shotgun.  Keep your weapons ready: if we come across a checkpoint or an enemy patrol, we’re not stopping.”

They slid into the dry interior of the car and Boone started the engine, but left the headlights off.  In fact, no lights came on at all, not even when the doors were opened.  With night vision goggles over his eyes, their driver had no need for lights.  The vehicle was small for a four-door wagon, and with all of their gear, weapons and bags it was a tight fit.  Carson thought he saw a shadowy figure enter the barn, probably to take care of the horses, but it was too dark to be certain.  They left the barn, bumping and jouncing cross-country over snow-covered fields until they encountered the first dirt track. 

They drove for miles on rutted gravel and dirt roads hidden by snow, and sometimes on asphalt, by the feel of it beneath their tires.  Overhanging tree branches often formed a ceiling above their path.  There was enough moonlight penetrating the low overcast and reflecting off the snow for Carson to make out the basic contours of the gently rolling terrain, but no more.  With NVGs, Boone had no difficulty keeping the car’s speed up, even when Carson saw nothing ahead of the windshield but swirling flakes in the darkness.

****

The baby began crying again,
struggling within its blanket wrappings.  Jenny could do little to comfort the infant tucked inside her parka.  She knew that she had to find a place to get out of the blowing snow, to check the diaper bag for milk and try to feed the infant.  To come this far, to find the baby and save it, only to then lose it to death seemed too cruel a fate.  If God had sent her to save the child, well then, she had to be up to the task and do her best to keep her alive.

                Jenny passed the junkyard, and approached the trailer home.  If she could just get out of the snow and check the diaper bag for milk or formula, the baby would have a fighting chance.  Inside the house, she could use the mini-flashlight attached to the pistol to see what was in the bag, and perhaps find something to make a fire.  If there was any formula or milk in the diaper bag, it would be too cold to give to the baby.  She prayed that there was formula in the bag.  If not, the baby would cry until she died.  It had been at least twelve hours since she had been fed, and almost as many hours that she had been alone in the freezing weather.

                Jenny walked directly across the snowy yard to the wooden porch built along the front of the trailer.  She could see that the snow was now about three inches deep on the edges of the steps up to the porch.  First, she would just try the door, to check if it had been left open.  The white door didn’t appear to have been damaged by looters, who often used crowbars or battering rams to get inside.  There were no hinges visible, so it opened to the inside.  The knob was on the right side.  Above it was a separate keyhole for a deadbolt lock.  She would give the door a good strong push, and then shoot the lock out if she had to. 

Before trying the door, she stepped to the window that was on the right side of the porch, and tried to look into the mobile home.  A heavy curtain was pulled across on the inside, blocking her view.  Not even a faint glimmer of light was visible.  She drew her pistol, just to be ready.  She held the big gun in her gloved right hand and switched on its light.  With her left hand, she grasped the knob and slowly turned it in both directions.  It stopped after only a few degrees of travel.  It was locked.  Still, she might be able to slam her hip or shoulder against the door and force it open.  After all, it was only an old mobile home.  She pulled and pushed as hard as she could, using every bit of her strength while turning the knob.  The snow on the wooden deck hindered her efforts, preventing her from getting a solid footing while she tried to slam her 120 pounds against the door.  It didn’t budge.

Okay then
, she thought,
let’s see what a .45 caliber bullet will do
.  She stood back with her right arm extended and turned her body to the left, to shelter the baby from any ricochets.  She carefully aimed an inch to the right of the deadbolt’s keyhole.  The compact gun light protruded a bit beyond the end of the pistol barrel above it.  The light was almost touching the white door, reflecting a brilliant glare down onto the snow.  She knew the shot would be loud, and she steeled herself against it.  She had walked several miles, and she hoped that she was far enough away from the burning house so that the foreign soldiers would not hear the gunshot.  With her uncle’s Glock, she only had to pull the trigger back a little way, maybe half an inch, for it to fire.  Her right index finger continued to squeeze the trigger by fractions of a millimeter.  Jenny didn’t know at what point she would hear the booming shot, cringing at the thought of metal fragments and wood splinters flying back at her.

Instead of the expected earsplitting explosion, the door swung open away from her!  Jenny’s heart skipped, her index finger froze in mid-squeeze, and then she released the trigger.  A boy about ten years old, dressed in an oversized red mechanic’s suit, stared for a moment into the bright white light on her gun.  Then he shrieked incoherently and ran away hobbling awkwardly, hands clamped over his eyes.

A female voice came from within the trailer. “Ramsey, you quit your fooling and get back inside!  Arthur, I didn’t hear your truck; what took you so damn long?  The fire’s gone out, and it’s freezing in here.”

Jenny quickly scanned inside the trailer with her gun light.  There was a black stove in the center of the room, with a chimney pipe going straight up through the roof.  The interior of the full-width living room was cheaply paneled in fake wood; the kitchen was off to the left.  A bed was against the opposite wall in the far corner, with someone lying in it.  The boy who had opened the door was leaning over the bed, wailing.  He was wearing bright red and black coveralls, covered with patches and letters.  It was a promotional version of a NASCAR racing driver’s jumpsuit, made for a child.  An old woman was on the bed, her body covered in quilts.  A simple cross was nailed to the wall above the head of her bed.

There was no one else in the room.

Jenny said, “I’m not your Ramsey or your Arthur.  Is anybody else at home with you, ma’am, besides the boy?”

“Ain’t Arthur?  Ain’t Arthur?  Well then, who are you?  You sound like you’re just a girl.”  The old woman stared up at the low trailer ceiling, only her pale white face visible above her bed covers.  A blue knitted nightcap was pulled down almost to her unblinking eyes.  Her elderly voice was quavering, but not weak.  She was at least eighty, by what Jenny could see and hear.  The boy in red moaned an unintelligible question to her, then ran clumsily into another room and slammed the door.

“My name is Jenny, ma’am.”  The temperature inside the mobile home was not much above freezing, but still it felt wonderful to be inside, out of the wind and blowing snow.

“Jenny is it…  Well, Jenny, can you please tell me what time it is?  I can’t see, except I can tell you got a powerful strong light.”

“I don’t know, ma’am, I don’t have a watch.  It’s late, probably sometime after midnight I’d guess.”

“So what’re you doing out traipsing around the countryside after midnight, young lady?”

“I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.”

The old woman cackled.  “Oh, I’d believe most about anything these days.”

“I found a baby, ma’am.”  Jenny hardly had to say so; the foundling was crying again.

“I can hear that plain enough—I’m blind but I still got ears.  It’s not your own baby?”

“No ma’am.”

“So where did you find this lost baby?”

Jenny couldn’t form the words to describe the ravine massacre.  She had to think of something else to say first.  “Ma’am, were you expecting someone to come home tonight?”

“I still am.  My son and my nephew.  They should have been home before suppertime.”

“Were they in Mannville today, at the market?”

“That’s right, they were.  How did you know that?  They were selling good usables, like they do every Saturday.  Stoves and such, made from our junkyard.  Did you see them?  Did they send you here?”

“No ma’am.  That’s what I have to tell you.  I was in Mannville today too.  Foreign soldiers came, on horses and in big trucks.  I’m so, so sorry to tell you this, but…but the foreign soldiers put everybody onto school buses, and took them to a ravine not far from here.  Then, well—they shot everybody, ma’am.  Everybody.  If your kin was in Mannville today, then I’m real sorry to tell you this, but…they’re probably not coming home.”

The old woman was silent, staring up with unseeing eyes.  She sighed audibly and said, “I was afraid it was something like that.  I heard the shooting today.  Five or six big volleys like crackling thunder, about a half hour apart.  Or maybe more than that.  I can’t see, so I can’t tell time, but that’s my guess.  It was a powerful lot of shooting.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And you got away, with a baby?”

Jenny answered in just a whisper.  “Yes ma’am, I did.”  She stood very close to the stove, where it was a few degrees warmer. 

“God must love you more than most, Jenny.  Is it a boy or a girl baby?”

“A girl, I think.  I just found her.  She’s tiny, maybe less than a month old.”

“Well, she’s hungry, that’s certain.  What do you have to feed her?”

“I don’t know.  I found a diaper bag near her.  Do you have a lamp that works?  I don’t know how long this flashlight is going to last.”

“On the table.  There’s a lighter by it.”

Jenny lit the big oil lantern with an old-fashioned silver Zippo.  She took off her fur hat and dropped it on the table, then pulled off the diaper bag and let her pack slip to the floor.  The infant remained snuggled in its nest, between Jenny’s torso and the parka, supported by the pistol belt.  She unzipped the diaper bag on the table, and checked inside it with her gun light.  There were folded diapers cut from old cloth rags, a pair of clean outfits, a crocheted blanket, rattles and toys and a pacifier…but no baby bottles, and no baby formula. 

“Ma’am, there’s nothing to feed the baby in this bag.  Nothing!”

“No?  Well, of course not—the baby was breast-fed.  Where would a momma find such as baby formula these days?  These days, it’s the old way or no way.  Listen Jenny, don’t give up quite yet.  We have a box of instant milk, and I can tell you where to find a baby bottle.  Look for a big orange box in the cabinet over the sink, that’ll be the milk powder.  And there should be a baby bottle or two left in…in…let me think…  Okay, if there’s a baby bottle left, it might be in the bottom cabinet on the other side of the fridge.  Probably way back in the corner, past all the plastic cups and Tupperwares.  Way in the back, if it’s still there.”