Only one thing left to do.
Leaving the van, Lev doubles back on foot to the gate. From his position on the floor of the van, he hadn’t been able to see how many Juvies were at the gate. Now, as he gets close, he sees there are only a handful—all the rest are in the battle zone. The scant chaparral of the desert doesn’t provide enough cover to hide him, but he has to get closer.
He told the kid at the gate to get Miracolina and take her someplace safe. The kid said he would do it, but Lev has to be sure.
There’s a squad car right in front of the spot where Miracolina had been, and a Juvey-cop leans against it, talking on his radio. The moment the Juvey-cop looks away, Lev darts behind the car, keeping low, and checks behind the dry bushes.
She’s not there.
He breathes a silent sigh of relief, then turns and hurries back to the van. Once there, he pulls Nelson out and leaves him unconscious in a ditch. Then Lev does his best to drive the van down the narrow two-lane road—which is much different from driving a Jeep off-road, across open desert. How stupid would it be, he thinks, if, after all this, Connor and I both die in a car accident because I don’t know how to drive? He can only thank God that the road is straight.
For once he’s batting a thousand, and although he knows he may never see Miracolina again—and that she may, in the end, submit herself for tithing—he knows that he’s done everything within his power to save her. To free her.
Be safe, Miracolina, he says to himself, hoping that by saying it, he can make it true, never knowing that the kid at the gate was only interested in saving himself, and that Miracolina was still unconscious just a few feet away from where Lev was searching . . . because he didn’t think to look in the backseat of the squad car.
72 - Starkey
“Well, Starkey, what do we do now?”
“If you ask me one more time, I’ll rip your freaking head off.”
Bam storms away in frustration.
“At least we got out of there!” Starkey yells after her. “We’re probably the only ones who did!”
Although it’s not going to mean much if they crash.
Kids sit in groups on the floor of the seatless cabin, some of them crying at the ordeal they’ve been put through and the friends left behind.
“Suck it up!” he yells at them. “We’re storks—we’re better than that.” Then he holds up his crushed hand, which is now so swollen and purple it barely resembles a hand at all. “Do you see me crying?” This war wound, he realizes, has already become a symbol of his power and a talisman of respect.
The whimpers subside, but not entirely. The truth is, in spite of the morphine swiped from the medical jet, his hand still aches too much to have patience for anything or anybody.
“Where are we going?” someone asks.
“A better place,” Starkey says, then realizes that’s what they say when you die.
He storms to the cockpit, and storks clear out of his way. Trace sits at the controls with no copilot, and Starkey begins with a threat.
“If you as much as touch that radio . . .”
Trace looks at him, disgusted, then back to the control panel. “Just because you’re the one leading these kids, it doesn’t mean I want them to be unwound. I haven’t, nor will I notify anyone.”
“Good. Tell me the plan. Tell me what you schemed up with Connor.”
Trace grips the controls to maintain stability as they hit a patch of turbulence. More whimpers from the cabin. Once the turbulence subsides, Trace says, “We’ll be over Mexican airspace in a few minutes, which buys us time, because our military can’t pursue without permission, and theirs won’t until they see us as a threat. Next we fly within a mile of another jet headed north, switch signatures, and when that other jet hits American airspace, they’ll think it’s us.”
“We can do that?”
Trace doesn’t even answer the question. “The plan was to double back into the U.S. and land in an abandoned airfield in the Anza-Borrego Desert, east of San Diego—but there’s a problem with the landing gear.”
Starkey already knows this. They all felt the collision as the plane smashed the truck in its path. Everyone heard something rip loose. There’s no question that there’s damage, but it’s impossible to know how much. All they have is an idiot-light on the control panel that says LANDING GEAR FAILURE.
“So what do we do about it?”
“We die.” Trace lets the thought linger for a moment, then says, “I can try to set us down in a body of water. I’m thinking the Salton Sea.”
“In Utah?”