The Missionary (5 page)

A blast of AK-47 fire came from behind them, and Nancy twisted, stumbled. Stone caught him as Blake returned fire. The girls scattered, screaming. Stone staggered under Nancy’s weight, his wounded leg unable to support himself, let alone someone else.
 

Get to the extraction point
, he told himself. Blake took Nancy’s weight, shouting and gesturing at their frightened charges, pointing them north. Stone was wet, covered in blood.
 

Nancy was gone.

He heard sounds behind them, let himself lean against a rickety shanty wall, aiming his submachine gun at waist height. The bolt clicked, sending a three-round burst whispering into the darkness, racketing off walls. Pained screams in Filipino told him he’d hit someone. Return fire shattered the silence, a blinding muzzle-burst giving Stone a target. He sent another three-round burst into the shadows above the muzzle-burst, and was rewarded by another scream.
 

He waited a beat, then shoved himself away from the wall, dragging his useless, agonizing leg behind him as fast as he could manage. Ahead of him, Blake carried Nancy’s limp form over his shoulder, arms and legs dangling and flopping, dripping a trail of blood. The girls were huddled together, moving in shuffling knots, holding on to each other, mumbling in a plethora of languages.
 

Stone’s leg was hot, tingling. A glance down revealed that it was seeping through the bandage. All he could do was limp onward and hope he didn’t bleed out before they reached the extraction point.
 

His head was spinning and each step cost him pain, and he stumbled several times, but then black-clad figures were swarming around him, taking his rifle and catching his weight on strong shoulders.

“What the fuck happened, Stone?” Miguel, his voice a low rasp.

“They were…waiting for us.”

“Where’re the others?”

Stone let his head rest against Miguel, tried to breathe and tried to speak. “Back there. Gone. Never…never had a chance. Nancy? He’s—?”

“Gone, man. Blake caught one too.”

“Bad?”

“Pretty bad. You’re worse, though. That leg looks fucked.”

“Feels fucked.” Stone couldn’t stay upright any longer. Darkness washed over him. “Did we get them all out? Did we get the girls out? Lisa?”

“You got ‘em, bro. Lisa is on the other chopper.” Miguel’s voice held that rough note of male tenderness as he lifted Stone onto the waiting chopper. “You got ‘em all out. You shut ‘em down.”

Stone managed a downward glance as the helicopter banked away. Shanties burned. People streamed away in thin lines, running from the spreading flames.
 

Except one figure. Stone was too far away and moving too fast to make out his features, but one man remained behind, near the flames, staring up at the departing helicopters.
 

He heard Blake cough, then spit something up, something wet. He forced himself to meet Blake’s eyes. “You’re fine,” he ordered. “Buyin’ me a beer when we get back.”

Blake grinned, red smeared on his chin. His breathing was labored. “You got it, L-T. A whole pitcher.”

Stone nodded, then let himself succumb to the darkness once more. Someone sobbed quietly. It may have been him.
 

*
 
*
 
*

A hand shook him, and for a brief moment, Stone thought he was back on the chopper. He could almost hear the familiar
whump-whump-whump
of the rotors over his head, the crackle of a headset in his ear. The hand shook him again, and he jolted upright, clutching at the rifle that would have been angled downward across his torso.
 

Except it wasn’t there, and he wasn’t on a chopper. He was on a trans-Pacific airliner heading toward Manila.
 

And the hand belonged to Wren. “Bad dream?” Her voice was quiet. Her eyes conveyed her worry.

Stone blinked, and was relieved that he hadn’t woken up with wet eyes. That happened, sometimes, when the nightmares took him back. Especially when it came to the delivery of flags to wives and mothers and girlfriends, the 21-gun salutes. The first shovel of dirt and the snapped salutes. Nancy’s wife, crying silently, stoically, as his casket was lowered into the dark hole. Blake’s girlfriend sitting at his bedside for three months as he recuperated from the slug through the lung.
 

“Yeah,” Stone mumbled, his voice gruffer than it needed to be. “Something like that.”

“Talk about it?” Wren’s hand drifted over to rest on top of his. Apparently she’d switched spots with Jimmy, who had been sitting next to Stone when the flight started.

Stone stared at her small, dark hand touching his lighter, bigger one. “Nothing to talk about. Just a bad dream.”

“Dream, or memory?”

“Same thing, most of the time.”

“But you won’t talk about it?”
 

Stone felt a rush of irritation. “You’re really pushing this, aren’t you? No, I’m not talking about it. It’s nothing you need to hear.”

“Does it have anything to do with why you’re so against this trip?”

Stone took several deep breaths. “Yeah, I guess it does. But we’re here, and I’ve said my piece. Just…do me a favor, okay?”

“Anything.” Her hand tightened around his.

“Never go anywhere alone while we’re in Manila. Always go in a group, and don’t ever wander away from where you’re supposed to be. No exploring.”

“Why?”

“Manila’s a dangerous place. What we’re going there to do? A bunch of white girls traipsing around the red-light district? It’s like handing ya’ll up on a silver platter.”

“I’m not white.”

Stone couldn’t help the smirk. “No you’re not, I guess. What are you, then?”

Wren shrugged, but he could tell she was trying hard to affect nonchalance. “I don’t know. I was adopted. My adoptive parents think I’m Filipino, though. They’re not sure, because my adoption was closed.”

Stone examined her features, nodding. “I think they’re right.”

“That’s why I needed to go on this trip. I want to know my heritage.”

“Understandable.”

Wren was silent for awhile, lost in thought. Eventually, she glanced at Stone. “What about you? What’s your background?”

Stone shrugged. “All-American good ol’ boy. Grew up in Virginia, near Arlington. My dad’s an Admiral in the Navy. Spent most of my life on the base with the other Navy brats. Joined the Navy at seventeen.”

“What about your mom?”

He stared out the window at the rippling field of ocean waves growing larger as the airliner made its descent. “She was a typical Navy wife. Not much to say. I’m not really close to my family.”

“Brothers or sisters?”

Stone shook his head. “Nope. Just me. I’ve got an uncle, my dad’s brother, but he’s a colonel in the Marines, stationed in Okinawa for the last twenty years. I’ve seen him twice in my life. Once at Christmas when I was eleven, and once when my unit passed through Oki.”

Wren shifted in her seat, clicked the buckle into place. “Why aren’t you close to your parents?”

Stone chuckled. “You ask a hell of a lot of questions, you know that?”

She ducked her head, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I’m just curious.”

“It’s fine, I guess.” He hated talking about himself. “My dad was never around. He was always on base, being important. When he was home, he was an asshole. Sorry, a jerk. I shouldn’t cuss, probably. My mom was always busy too, you know? Always off at fundraisers and brass-wives parties. I just…spent most of my childhood alone, fending for myself. I don’t have any reason to like them. I don’t hate my folks, I just…don’t care about them.”

Wren didn’t seem to know what to do with this information. “That’s…sad. I love my parents. They’re my best friends. I can’t imagine not…not caring whether I ever saw them or not.”

Stone shrugged. “It is what it is. I had my unit. They’re my family. I still talk to them a lot.”
The ones that are left, at least
. His stomach lifted as the jet lowered to the tarmac, and Wren clutched his hand even tighter, her tan face paling. “First time landing?” Stone asked.

Wren nodded. “I’ve never been on a plane before. Taking off was kind of fun, but this is…scary. What if we crash?” She fished her cross from beneath her shirt, rubbing it between her thumb and index finger.
 

“We won’t.” There was a soft bump, and Stone squeezed her hand. “See? We’re already down.”

“You’ve probably flown a lot, huh?”

He laughed at that. “Babe, you have no idea. Big old airliners like this are nothing. Try sitting in the back seat of an F-22 making a night landing on a carrier during a thunderstorm.
That’s
scary. Jumping out of a Hercules at 100,000 feet up is scary. That’s what you call a HALO jump. High-altitude, low-opening. You’ve got to wear special gear, an oxygen mask and an altimeter and a whole bunch of other shi—stuff, along with your regular combat gear. You’re up so high you’re basically in space. You can see the whole earth beneath you, and it’s so cold your spit would freeze the moment it left your mouth. You jump out, and you’re free-falling for minutes. Not seconds, like a normal jump. Literally you’re in the air, falling at hundreds of miles per hour, for
minutes
. Then the ‘chute opens, and your whole body jerks. It hurts, because you’ve gone from rocketing earthward at two hundred miles per hour to a full-stop, in an instant. You have to time your chute just right, too. Too soon, and you’ll basically free-fall, since the ‘chute isn’t big enough to let you drift. Too late, and you’ll splat on the ground.”

Wren’s eyes were wide. “You did that? A HALO jump?”

“Dozens of times.”

“Were you scared?”

“Every single time. The first time, I peed myself. No lie. I actually wet my pants. The guys ragged on me for months about that, but then, they all did too, their first time.” He grinned, remembering the way Benny had teased him, only to reveal later that he’d done the same thing.

“What do you do when you’re afraid? How do you deal with it?”
 

Stone shrugged. “Well, for us, spec-ops guys, I mean, you’re trained to deal with it. Basic training teaches you to keep going no matter what. BUD/S training takes it that much farther. We learn to let the fear have its way, but not stop us. Fear keeps you alert. It keeps you alive. If you’re afraid, you’re still fighting to stay alive. When you stop feeling fear, you’ve stopped caring whether you live or die. And that’s when you make mistakes.” They were taxiing across the tarmac, and Stone was rambling in order to keep the memories of Manila at bay. “You just do what you have to do.”

“What’s the most afraid you’ve ever been?”

Stone looked at her. “You really want to know what happened, don’t you?”

Wren wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Am I making you mad?”

“No, not mad. I just…I don’t want you to…look, it’s not a pleasant thing. You’re a sweet, innocent girl. You don’t really understand what you’re asking about.”

“We’re back to that, are we?” Wren said, sounding irritated. “I’m not as innocent as you think. And I want to know because I want to know you. I want you to trust me. I want…I want you to think of me as more than just a ‘sweet, innocent girl.’”

Stone groaned. “Wren, that’s not a good idea. Not with me.”
 

She stared at him, clearly angry again. The flight attendant announced the gate information, local time, the usual post-landing welcoming spiel. When the doors were opened, Wren lurched out of her seat, grabbed her carry-on from the overhead compartment and stormed off the plane, losing herself in the cluster of disembarking students. Stone let her go, hating the glimmer of tears he’d seen in her eyes.

Once off the plane and through baggage claim, he felt the wave of heat and humidity roll over him. The sun was high and hot, the sky the bluest blue. The smell came next, the familiar burn of Manila.
 

His stomach roiled, the churning of buried fear, the knowledge of approaching danger.

5

~
Now
~

She had to fight it. It was coming, it was going to happen, and soon. She’d rather die than endure that. As
he
clomped down the creaking wooden steps, Wren realized with a bolt of horrified awareness, that she very literally would rather die than let him—or anyone else—rape her.
 

He knelt in front of her, a cruel smile on his lips. “I got prends come to see you. Pretty American girl, not look like no American girl. Dese prends, dey come see. Maybe, dey want try you. Yes? I make a good deal.” He grabbed her upper lip and twisted it so hard she couldn’t stop the yelp of pain and the start of tears. “You keep shut up, I don’t let them try you before buy you. You like dat? No, I don’t tink so. You keep shut your stupid mout, dey look, dey touch, but dey not gonna
fuck
you.” He hissed the vile, vulgar word, spitting vitriol, making the ‘f’ sound almost a ‘p’, but not quite:
ppffuck.

He smacked her none-too-gently, hard enough to make her ears ring and the cross around her neck swing free and dangle in the darkness. Then he left.

And that was when Wren understood, fully, that he wasn’t just an opportunistic animal. He’d hit her, but he hadn’t damaged her. He’d forced drugs on her, but he hadn’t raped her, or let anyone else do so. He was saving her, keeping her intact. Keeping a product in prime condition so he could reap a maximum profit.
 

Wren was young and sheltered, and she knew she was naive in some ways, especially when it came to men, but she was far from stupid. She wasn’t a virgin, but the few experiences she’d had only served to emphasize how awful things were going to get.

Unless a miracle happened. Unless someone saved her.
 

Someone like Stone.
 

Even tied up, in pain, drug-fogged and addled, terrified and alone, she shivered at the thought of Stone Pressfield. Huge, hard, mysterious, and difficult, Stone was…everything a girl could want. Six-foot-four, a body Adonis would be jealous of, close-cropped dark blond hair and deep brown, almost black eyes. But he was out of reach. He’d made it clear he wasn’t interested. Not like that, at least. He’d made it clear she wasn’t enough for him.