Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Major Zamora’s eyes bulged in terror. He instinctively jerked away, but the handcuff chain snapped taut and held him in place. “Disparale!” he yelled. Shoot him!
“You sure?” I asked quickly. “They shoot me, I drop this. Five seconds later, it explodes. How far do you think you can drag my body in five seconds? Far enough?”
Major Zamora had gone pale. So had all of the soldiers close to us. They looked at each other uncertainly. Then one broke rank and backed off. Immediately, another one did the same, and another and another. In seconds, we were at the center of a widening circle.
“Tell your men to put their guns down,” I told Major Zamora. “And I’ll put the pin back in.”
“You’re insane!” snapped Major Zamora.
“Maybe. I’m definitely light-headed. Must be the blood loss. Any second now, I’m going to pass out and then what happens?”
Major Zamora stared at me, then at the grenade in my hand. He looked at his men, at the village. He cursed under his breath.
And then he yelled to his men to throw their guns down. He was a corrupt, merciless son of a bitch but, as I’d guessed, he wasn’t willing to die for his mission.
As the guns hit the ground, JD and the others raced over to cover the soldiers. Olivia dropped to her knees beside me and started tending to my leg and the wound in my side, which was probably a good thing because I really was getting light-headed.
JD crouched on my other side. “You are a sneaky son of a bitch,” he told me. “But you’re our sneaky son of a bitch.” And he patted my shoulder.
“All you’ve done is delay things,” snapped Major Zamora. “The government will send another unit. They’ll send the whole army, if they have to.”
“No they won’t,” said JD quietly, looking up. I heard the blare of rotor blades, and a few moments later, Gina swept overhead in the chopper. I could see a woman leaning out of the open side door holding a video camera and a guy narrating into a microphone. She’d brought a news crew. By that evening, the whole country was going to be seeing pictures of the army invading a Shuar village. “Good luck covering that up,” JD said.
Major Zamora stared up at the glass eye of the camera…and slumped in defeat.
“You’re going to be okay,” Olivia told me. “You’re going to have a nice new scar on your side, and we need to get some blood into you, but your leg should heal fine, the bullet went straight through.” And then she stopped being a doctor, put her arms around my neck and cuddled in tight.
The Shuar people who’d been guarding the school ran over to help, collecting up the guns and watching over the soldiers. Someone let the kids out of the school and they swept out in a wave, finding their parents and hugging them. And I grudgingly admitted to myself that even though I’d lost the gold, it kind of felt like winning.
I cleared my throat and raised my voice over the hubbub. “This is all great,” I said. “But could someone please find the pin for this grenade?”
EPILOGUE
Gabriel
The next few days were busy.
Gina started shuttling the injured to hospital by chopper. By the time she’d made her third run, the story had broken in Quito and other helicopters were arriving, bringing police, government officials, and high-ranking members of the army. Major Zamora and his men were taken into custody by military police. Soon after, it was my turn to be ferried off to hospital. Olivia and the rest of the team came with me and we spent the night at the field hospital Olivia had visited, just before she’d been kidnapped. Olivia asked to borrow the satellite phone, and with shaking hands, she dialed her mother, back in Arizona. The tears started as soon as her mom answered, days of tension finally starting to release. I put my arms around her from behind and held her close. “Mom?” she sobbed. “I’m—I’m okay. I’m coming home.”
The doctors had been in touch with Quito and told us both Dr. Guzman and Marcos were doing well. They gave me a blood transfusion, patched up my leg, and loaded me up with painkillers. At that point, I crashed and crashed hard. We all did: none of us had slept much in the last few days. The rest of the team bedded down in the spare room Olivia had used. Olivia curled up next to me on my hospital bed, and we all slept for nearly fourteen hours.
The next morning, we got to take the first shower we’d had in days. Then we ate an enormous breakfast: fried eggs, their yolks golden and liquid, slices of rich fried plantain, corn tortillas, and huge mugs of coffee to wash it all down. Then, as I hobbled up and down the room, practicing with my crutches, Olivia used the hospital’s computer to check her email. The big US news networks were already filling up her inbox, many of them offering cash for an exclusive interview: her kidnapping had been big news anyway, and now she was at the center of the whole scandal that was unfolding involving Welamco and the Shuar. But Olivia shook her head as she sifted through the emails. “I don’t want to be famous,” she mumbled. “I just want to go home.”