Jonas, page 10
So maybe he was more trouble than she wanted to admit.
Dedi had been awake by the time she emerged from the shower. He’d made toast and tea, and then Jonas rose and disappeared into the bathroom. He emerged smelling clean.
They ate as Dedi explained the location of the hideout. “It’s a partisan hospital used during World War Two. The Nazis never found it, so Jaka and I figured it was a good place for our people to hide.”
She vacuumed out her car, then bagged the contents. Then she ran her Geiger counter over the inside. With the reading negligible, she okayed it for travel.
The fact was, whatever radioactive waste the attackers had dropped on Poče had been mitigated by the storm, the water diluting it, the wind scattering it.
So maybe God had intervened, used the storm to save them.
And that thought sat inside her like a burr. Because she didn’t know a God who intervened.
Who cared.
“We can take this trail down,” Dedi said now, pointing to a mostly hidden path. “They used to blindfold patients when they brought them here so if they got caught, they couldn’t reveal the location.”
As they hiked down, he turned to them. “Be careful where you walk. They mined this area.”
Jonas looked at her, his eyes wide. Mouthed, mined?
Yes, she heard that too. The narrow trail led to a gorge where a wooden bridge spanned a dry riverbed, the logs worn, a couple at jutted angles.
“Careful where you walk. Some of these boards are rotted.” Dedi headed out over the bridge, the boards creaking as they made their way through the gorge, then up wooden stairs and across a cliff face.
They entered a cave, a wire attached to the granite from which lights hung.
“Is this place mined too?” Jonas asked.
“No. But they used to park snipers on the cliff above it.”
Their feet scuffed along the rocky floor. “How do you know about this place?” Sibba asked in English.
“Your great-grandfather showed me. Did you know that he was American too?” Dedi looked at her.
“No, he wasn’t. I saw pictures. He was a partisan.”
“Shot down during a bombing raid. Injured and rescued and brought here. Stayed, even though his fellow Americans were smuggled out.”
The cave tunnel spanned maybe four meters, another three meters high. Light from the other end muted the darkness, but the cool breath fell upon her skin.
“I think it was one reason he took me in,” Dedi said. He looked at Jonas. “I was a patriot. I just didn’t have any more fight in me. Took me years to shake the demons.”
Jonas nodded. “Yeah. Some of us don’t even have to go to war to have demons. I can’t imagine what it was like.”
“It was hell. A place even God feared to go. Or at least I thought so for a long time.” He held his arm out as they came to the end of the tunnel. “Wait.”
They stood at the mouth of a canyon that opened up into forest. But beyond the tunnel, not even the wind stirred the thicket of oak and pine. A trail wound into the clutter.
“The hospital is deep inside that forest, in a pocket inside the gorge with steep walls and narrow passageways. Once you go in, there is nowhere else to go but through.”
“You’re saying if the Russians have found it, then we’re walking right into an ambush.”
Dedi pointed at him.
“Then onward we go.”
Her grandfather smiled. “He might be a weatherman, but he has a soldier’s heart.” He said it in Slovenian and glanced at her.
She frowned. “Dedi. Don’t—”
He put his fingers to his lips.
Oh, she hoped he wasn’t getting any ideas. Because as soon as Jonas helped them rescue the people of Poče, he was back to his life.
And she was back to hers, one day at a time.
Pine scented the air, and the forest seemed to breathe again as the wind shivered the leaves.
“I feel like I’m in an episode of Band of Brothers,” Jonas said quietly. “Or maybe that part in Forrest Gump where he’s in Vietnam.”
“Run, Forrest, run,” she said.
He looked at her. “Are you being funny?”
“What? Did I say it wrong? Dedi has that movie.”
He shook his head. “You are the most confusing—we’re walking into a possible ambush, and you’re quoting movie lines.”
“You never know when your laugh might be the last.”
“You need to stop thinking that way.”
Her smile fell. “No, I don’t. If each day is my last, then I live it to the fullest.”
“Maybe. But pleasure isn’t just for the moment. Pleasure can be found in hoping for things too. If you never look past right now, if you never have to hope for something, then you miss out on the long-awaited dream.”
“What long-awaited dream?”
Dedi walked ahead of them, head down.
“Family. Home. Children. Love.”
“Not for me.”
Jonas frowned.
“EOD and a happy ending are mutually exclusive.”
“Do they have to be?”
His gaze found hers, settled there a moment.
She drew in her breath, slowed. “Yes. I live with a one-meter view of the world. It’s the farthest I can look ahead.”
“One meter is very small.”
“About three seconds. Enough to know that you’re in big trouble.”
“Sibba—”
“No.” She met his eyes, the deep blue of them, something in them he suddenly couldn’t—or maybe shouldn’t?—say. “I can’t lose another partner,” she said softly.
Jonas finally nodded, his mouth a grim slash, and walked out ahead of her.
At least that was over. But her chest had started to burn.
Dedi slowed as the gorge narrowed, the trees closing out the light overhead. He held out his hand and they stopped.
She, too, felt like she was in the middle of some epic war movie. Maybe about the French Resistance. All she needed was a bicycle.
“Let’s go.”
In all her years living in Poče and then Cerkno, she’d never discovered this place, although she’d heard rumors of it.
A river ran through the canyon here, and she guessed that it somehow meandered away from the dry riverbed, not far from the cave. A fine mist rose into the air, as if the breath of angels.
“The buildings were washed away in ’07 after a flood. The Slovenian government rebuilt them, but they’re replicas of the originals,” Dedi said as he led them across a bridge over the river. “This is a retractable bridge, the last line of defense.”
He pointed to a dozen simple pine buildings all tucked into the groove of the gorge, nestled against the sheer walls, a thin walkway between them.
“This bigger building is the infirmary, but there are four other buildings that housed the wounded, as well as a surgery, kitchen, laundry, staff quarters, and even an X-ray cabin.”
Jonas stopped, shook his head. “It’s like the eye of the storm. Calm and peace inside the chaos.”
Dedi stopped outside the big infirmary. “Remember what I said about finally seeing God in the middle of war?”
Jonas nodded.
Dedi smiled. “I’ve learned that God is in places we least expect to see him.” Then he opened the door.
Sibba followed him in.
A dozen bunk beds with people seated on them, some huddled in blankets, a couple children sitting on the floor, one of them playing a handheld Nintendo.
“Get ready to go,” Dedi said, now in Slovenian, and he walked over to a man lying on the bed. “How’s the headache, Jaka?”
The man wore a pair of jeans, a woolen sweater, appeared in his early fifties. On the bunk next to him lay a younger man, late twenties. Right—she remembered Lan now. He’d been just a few years younger than her in school.
“Better. And the nausea is gone.” He sat up. “But a few more have gotten sick.”
“Where is Lana?” He helped Jaka up.
“She’s in the kitchen with some of the other women. But she’s not well either.”
Sibba didn’t want to say it, but…
“The radiation poisoning has spread,” Jonas said.
She looked at him, shook her head. Some of these people could speak English.
“Let’s get out of here before we’re trapped,” Dedi said. He turned to Jaka. “The Russians who bombed our town are now looking for us.”
Jaka was a thick man—shiny head, white, close-cropped beard. A benevolent man who smiled, jolly and vocal about his love for Slovenian beer. Now, he groaned as he stood, grabbed onto Dedi’s shoulder. “We can’t go back to Poče.”
“Sibba has a plan.”
Jaka looked at her. “Sibba. We were worried for you this summer. Henrik said you were fighting the fires.”
“Something like that. Let’s get you out of here.”
The women were already bundling up their supplies, their children. A few wore backpacks, many sturdy shoes.
Her father and Jonas visited the other cabins while she helped assemble the children.
The boy with the Nintendo pocketed it, and she stopped a ball that escaped from the younger boy. Maybe five or six years old.
She handed him the ball. Cute, with curly blond hair that flopped around his head. Blue eyes. “My name is Sibba,” she said.
“Petea.”
His mother came up and took his hand. She smiled at Sibba, then pushed out of the infirmary and followed the others along the bridge. Forty or so, most of them tromping along in quiet, some of them coughing, a few with their arms over the shoulders of others.
She spotted Jaka’s wife, Lana, leaning against him as she walked.
They needed medical help as soon as they exited this gorge. Her plan was to call Director Vlasic and ask him to send trucks.
Maybe scare the Russians away.
At the very least, the radiation in Poče, as well as the remnants of the bomb in her grandfather’s field, could be dealt with safely, the people here treated, and their country put on alert for more dirty bombs.
Dedi walked at the front of the crowd, Jonas somewhere in the middle as the group headed along the walkway and back through the forest. The hospital seemed to close up behind them as they headed toward the cave. No wonder no one had found it.
Petea unlatched his hand from his mother’s and started to kick his ball. He’d scoot ahead, kick it, then catch it and turn and kick it to her.
His mother played with him, kicking it back. The sound of his laughter lifted, bouncing off the cave walls.
“EOD and a happy ending are mutually exclusive.”
Sibba glanced ahead and spotted Jonas walking with the kid who was playing Nintendo. They seemed to be conversing in English, or at least trying to.
“Do they have to be?”
She drew in a breath. Yes, they did.
They were drawing closer to the other end of the tunnel, and as she emerged, she spotted the trail of people walking across the bridge. It swayed over the dry riverbed, a three-meter drop below.
Little Petea had grabbed his mother’s hand, his ball under his arm.
She dropped back, waiting for the last to pass, and watched from the ridge as Petea and his mother navigated across the bridge.
It swayed, and Petea grabbed for the rail.
His ball dropped, bouncing on the riverbed below.
He shouted, but his mother pulled him across as Sibba followed down the stairs and out to the bridge.
“Petea! Come back!”
Sibba looked up and froze as Petea scrambled down the bank after his ball, perched in the middle of the gorge.
“Be careful where you walk. They mined this area.”
Dedi’s voice swept through her brain, and maybe not only hers, because suddenly, Jonas appeared, scrambling after the kid.
“Stop! Stop!” he was yelling.
Petea had run out to his ball, picked it up. Turned to run back—
Jonas reached him, swept him up.
“Don’t move!” Sibba shouted.
He stilled, looked up at her.
Nodded.
“Just stay there.”
He nodded again and she pushed past people on the bridge to the other side. Dedi had run down the path to meet her.
“Was there water under this bridge during the occupation, when this hospital was built?”
“No. Dry bed.”
She blew out a breath, looked at Jonas. “Just stay where you are. I’ll get you out of this.”
Jonas didn’t exactly know how he’d ended up in this riverbed, just that when the kid had taken off for his ball, something inside him had simply ignited.
Twenty seconds later, he was balanced on a rock in the middle of the semi-sandy dry gulch, holding a kid in his arms.
A kid and his little orange ball.
And him, an island in a sea of mines, because as soon as Sibba screamed, her “Don’t move!” had cemented him into place.
Nope.
Because suddenly, every step had turned lethal.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jonas said, his gaze on Sibba.
The little boy squirmed in his arms.
His mother—Jonas guessed at that, but he’d seen the kid playing with her in the cave—leaned over the bridge and yelled at him. In Slovenian, of course.
But the kid stopped struggling. Instead, he started crying.
Yeah, Jonas felt a little like doing the same. Not really, but, well, maybe.
“I’m coming to you,” Sibba said then from the opposite shore.
He wanted to shout at her to stay put, that he could figure this out, but, like he’d said, he wasn’t a Navy SEAL. And he hadn’t a clue how to get out of here without blowing himself, and maybe too many bystanders, into unrecognizable pieces.
So, “Okay!” he shouted back to Sibba.
Because she was the EOD superhero here.
She had armed herself with a long stick that she’d broken off a tree and a number of hats and scarves. Then she took the stick, maybe four feet long, crouched and extended it, slowly pushing it into the dirt at an angle.
After a moment, she pulled it out and stepped into that spot. Then she turned and dropped a hat in her previous footprint.
The crowd had gone completely silent as she turned and repeated the drill.
Hats, scarves, a towel, another hat. She took big steps, but not so large that she lost her balance.
She was halfway across the riverbed when she looked up at him. Offered a wan smile.
And he heard her words, spoken on their way to the camp. I can’t lose another partner.
He’d never understood them more than now, as she crouched and moved the stick under the earth, maybe two inches. Stopped. “There’s a mine here.”
His entire body turned cold, painfully aware that he’d probably stepped three inches from that spot.
She took her stick and broke it at the top, shoving it upright near the spot, propping it up with a rock. “See this?”
“Got it,” he said.
She probed away from it and found a safe spot for her next step. Then the next.
By the time she reached him, four such sticks rose from the riverbed, a couple that she’d retrieved from the fallen debris.
And through the clutter, a pathway made of hats, scarves, towels, and one red child’s mitten.
She stepped up to him then and met his eyes. So much calm in them, it reached into him, through him.
And then she blinked.
No, not calm, because for a second, emotion flooded her gaze. “You okay?”
“So far,” he said.
She put her hand on the little boy’s back and spoke to him in Slovenian. Then looked back at Jonas. “I’ll help you put him on your back.”
Taking the ball from the boy, she put it between her knees. Then she lifted him, holding him around the waist as Jonas turned in place. The boy climbed onto his back, his arms around Jonas’s neck.
His mother was shouting at him from the bridge, and the boy clamped his legs around Jonas’s waist.
Jonas grabbed his legs to steady him, then turned back to Sibba. She held the ball under her arm.
“I’ll go behind you,” she said. “Walk exactly where I marked the path.”
He nodded, but she hadn’t moved her gaze from his.
“Exactly, Jonas.”
And he didn’t know why, but he leaned down and pressed his forehead to hers. “Breathe, Sibba. I got this. I will walk in your footsteps.”
A beat, and she finally nodded.
Right. Good. And here went the rest of his life. He stepped out onto the red mitten.
So far, still alive.
He eased off it, then stepped on the next marker, a white towel.
Leaned off that to the next marker.
He didn’t look behind him, but he could hear her steps, small crunching sounds in the sand.
It felt a little like playing the floor is lava. Only, with real consequences.
Especially when the kid shifted his weight while Jonas was mid-step.
“Hey. Stay put,” he growled, and all likeness to the game vanished.
They finally reached the riverbank, and here, it was just six more steps up the bank. But going up, his arms useless for counterweights, turned out to be harder than he thought. Still, he stepped on the black stocking cap, then a lavender patterned scarf, two more berets, and finally let Dedi and another man pull him to safety on the road.
The little boy’s mother ran up, grabbed him off Jonas’s back, crying.
He turned and spotted Sibba also being pulled to the road. She had shoved most of the debris into her jacket as she crossed, still holding the ball.
She handed it to a man, maybe the boy’s father, then shed her jacket and let it fall, with the debris, onto the road.
People moved in to grab their belongings, but Sibba turned to Jonas, put her hands on his chest and backed him away.
Moisture edged her eyes, and she was breathing hard. “Don’t…ever—”
Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and embraced him.
Oh. Oh. His arms went around her, and he held her, feeling her tremble.
