Jonas, page 9
Behind them, Len got to his feet. Barked.
She stilled, then got up and disappeared into her bedroom.
He turned off the lights. Grabbed his phone. Backed into the room and knelt next to Len. “Shh, buddy.” The dog’s body had stiffened.
Then Sibba came out of the bedroom, and even in the darkness, he could make out a handgun.
Right. Military.
The doorknob wiggled on the front door.
Sibba stepped back, and he stood beside her. Sheesh, why hadn’t he become a SEAL like Fraser? Because, hello, what good was identifying nimbostratus clouds when—
The door swung open.
Beside him, Sibba stiffened. And Len barked, then took off for the intruder, who stood in the frame, dressed in army-green fatigues, a backpack, a woolen cap.
The man bent and caught the dog, pulling him into his arms. Said something in Slovenian.
Jonas had already done the math by the time Sibba dropped her gun.
“Dedi!” She ran toward him, landed on her knees, and pulled him into a hug.
He wrapped his arms around her with more words that Jonas didn’t understand.
Finally, he got up and pulled her with him. She flicked on the light.
Time could have pulled him out of the pages of a war epic, complete with steely, battle-weary eyes, a wiry gray mustache, thick beard, and most of all, the army-green attire of a bygone era.
Vietnam.
And on his breast pocket, a name.
Benson.
The man looked at Sibba, then at Jonas, and his smile fell. Then he stepped forward, and though the man had to be in his late seventies, he looked at Jonas with an expression that could fell a man and said, in perfect Midwestern English, “Who are you? And what are you doing with my granddaughter?”
And for a second, Sibba was back in his head.
Run.
Nope. Instead, he stuck out a hand. “Jonas Marshall. We’ve been looking for you.”
Which were exactly the wrong words, apparently, because just like that, the man pushed Sibba behind him. And lifted an ancient double-barreled hunting rifle.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Jonas stilled. Looked at Sibba. “Um.”
“Dedi,” she said, and launched into Slovenian. Which Jonas dearly hoped translated roughly into, “Grandpa, this is a great guy who helped save me from some Russian thugs (twice!) and who is most definitely on our side. And see, even Len likes him.”
Which maybe was true, because Len came over to Jonas, wiggling like, Look who’s here!
He crouched and rubbed the dog’s ears as Dedi-slash-Benson turned to Sibba and answered her in the same tone. Which Jonas hoped wasn’t, “And what is he doing here, dressed in your bathrobe?”
Jonas stood up. Good question. “This, I can explain,” he said, and they both turned and looked at him like he might be interrupting, so he headed to the bathroom. Where his clean radioactive clothes were drying.
Still soggy, but he pulled them out and worked on the pants, pulled on the shirt.
At least he no longer looked like a cream puff.
He returned, barefoot, his socks soggy, to find her grandfather at least disarmed, the gun by the door, again crouched by his dog, listening to Sibba.
Glancing now and again at Jonas.
So he hoped that was going well. He offered a smile. Folded his arms over his chest.
Dedi lifted a hand. Stood up. “Fine. But let’s ask him.”
Jonas drew in a breath.
“Are you working for the government?”
Again, perfect English. Oh. Um. “Not…really.”
A bushy gray-white eyebrow went up.
“I told you, Dedi. He’s a weatherman.”
Storm chaser.
But Jonas offered an innocuous weatherman smile. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but…I’m just a guy who ended up sort of…actually, I’m not sure what I’m doing here.”
Sibba gave him a look. “Thank you for that.”
“It looks like Grandpa is good, so…maybe I should…” Leave?
In what?
She waited for him. Smiled.
“Okay, so it’s a little early to find an Uber.”
“You’ll never find an Uber in Cerkno,” Sibba said. Crossed her arms, almost smugly.
What—
Her grandfather stood up. “Wait, you’re saying that you’re the one who crashed a zeppelin in my field?”
“I…yes. Not purposely. The storm—”
“Then this belongs to you.” The man went to his backpack, opened it, and tugged out a black box.
The black box. Jonas went to reach for it.
The man pulled it back. “Not so fast. First, I want answers, starting with why my village was bombed.”
Six
Jonas needed sleep. Because maybe six hours of shut-eye would untangle the questions in his brain.
Instead, he stood at the window, staring out at the muted darkness, the smallest glimmer of gray just lifting off the faraway mountains.
And really, after the story Henry Benson, aka Sibba’s grandfather, had just told, he might never sleep again. He’d have to wait until he got back to his lab in Ljubljana and unpacked the black box’s data to confirm his suspicions, but according to Henry…
Someone had dropped a dirty bomb on Poče.
Or tried to. The storm had mitigated much of the radioactive dust, although it embedded the soil, the nooks and crannies of the street, and would have infected the population—all forty-one men, women, and children—if Henry and the current mayor hadn’t already taken them all away, hiding them.
Because even Henry knew that Russians invading their city and prowling around couldn’t be good.
“We had enough run-ins with them when I served in Vietnam that I knew something wasn’t right. They drove into town about a week ago, tested the water, the soil, and then left.”
The old man had sat at the table, finishing off the posmodula, drinking a cup of tea, winding out his story in English.
This was, of course, after Jonas had given a full biographical account of how he’d ended up in Slovenia, and most particularly, the Benson field.
Or rather, the Kovac farm, because Henry had taken his wife’s maiden name when he moved to Slovenia.
Escaped might be a better word, because although Jonas didn’t have all the details, clearly, he’d taken an unauthorized trip straight from Vietnam to Eastern Europe.
Are you from the government?
It wasn’t hard to figure out the math. Henry Benson was a Vietnam deserter.
Now the old man lay snoring in the recliner in Sibba’s small family room.
Leaving Jonas to sort out what to do next.
We started to get nervous about why they were there, and when we saw the dirigible circling the town for a couple days, rumors started—the kind that got people scared. Jaka and I took pictures, and it looked like one of those old-time zeppelins with a bomb attached.
Sibba had joined them at the table, nursing her own cup of tea.
“Or course, I was thinking tear gas, the likes they dropped on Cambodia. And then, about six hours before the storm hit, the Russians parked their trucks on the road out of town. It was then that we decided to evacuate the town.”
“How?”
“We took them on foot to a secure location in the woods. We couldn’t go farther because of the storm. They stayed there, and I went back for Jaka and his brother, Lan.”
“So, the residents are safe?”
“Yes. Hidden. But Jaka and Lan are sick.”
Sibba had met Jonas’s gaze then. “How sick?”
“Nausea, vomiting. Headaches, diarrhea.”
“Were they in the town when the bomb exploded?”
Henry had nodded, and the knot formed inside Jonas. “They stayed to monitor the zeppelin…and then the storm came through and they couldn’t leave.”
“When did the bomb detonate?” Jonas asked.
“A few hours before the storm. It crashed in my field.”
“Dedi. Did you stay in town too?” Sibba had reached out to him, then pulled her hand back.
“I was at the farm. Went out to check on the debris right before the storm. Retrieved the black box. I wore a gas mask.” He’d walked over then and pulled out said mask from his pack.
Looked like something issued in the 1960s.
“Then I went to check on Jaka and Lan. Took them to where the others were staying. I didn’t plan on returning, not for a while, and finally came here. But Sibba wasn’t around, so I headed back to the farm. But when I saw that our Russian friends had returned, I got nervous. So I came back here to see if I could track down Sibba.”
He shot her a look of affection that made Jonas miss his own grandfather.
“You think you’ll be able to find anything about what happened in this box?” He touched it, and that’s when Sibba had gotten up and gotten a bag.
“I hope so.”
Sibba had handed Jonas the bag for the box. Then she’d turned to her grandfather and sent him off to shower, with another bag for his clothing.
“I still have some of your clothes here from when you last stayed,” she said, and disappeared into the bedroom.
Jonas hadn’t wanted to suggest that he might have worn those instead of the silly bathrobe.
Henry emerged from the bathroom in a pair of polyester pants and a blue sweater.
Or maybe not.
It was during Henry’s shower, however, that Jonas had decided to pry.
And he’d started with the obvious.
“Is your grandfather a Vietnam vet?” He kept his voice low as he helped Sibba clear the table.
“Yes,” she said, and glanced behind them. But her grandfather was in the shower.
“Deserter?”
“Yes. He was injured and was sent to Japan to recover. Instead of being sent home, his orders were to return to combat. So a number of Japanese activists helped him escape to Sweden, where he was granted asylum.”
She rinsed off a plate and handed it to him to dry. “He’d been given new papers, so he used those to travel and finally ended up on my great-grandfather’s farm, working as a day laborer. Where he met my grandmother. And stayed forever.”
“Wasn’t Slovenia part of Yugoslavia at the time?” He finished drying the plate.
“Indeed.” She handed him another plate. “Which is why he felt safe. America wasn’t going to track him down in a communist country.”
“But what about the pardon Carter gave all the draft dodgers in 1977?”
“Draft dodgers. Not deserters. There’s no statute of limitations on desertion. He could still be brought back to the US and be court-martialed. Thankfully, they’ve stopped executing deserters—”
“America never executed deserters.”
“Not since World War Two, but ask Allen Abney what happens.”
“Who?” He put the plate away in her cupboard.
“Deserter. Arrested in 2006 for deserting in 1968. He was fifty-six years old. The sentence for desertion during wartime is now five years.” She lowered her voice. “Can you imagine my grandfather going to prison for five years? He’d be eighty-three when he got out. If he got out.”
“Who is going to find him in Slovenia?”
“Anyone. And America and Slovenia have an extradition treaty, so…”
Jonas had raised his hands. “Your secret is safe with me.”
She sighed. “He has a son who lives in America that he hasn’t seen for thirty years. And grandchildren. His parents died long ago, but I think he’d like to visit their graves. Especially now that Babička has passed. More than anything, I want Dedi to see his son again, my uncle Marek.”
She turned back to the sink as her grandfather came out of the bathroom. He dropped the bag with his clothes by the door. “So, do we burn these?”
“We’ll bring them to the hazardous materials unit in Ljubljana,” Sibba said.
Jonas had his own ideas. His brother worked with some private security group that might have the right resources, although probably Sibba was right—they should alert the Slovenian military.
Except, that would lead to questions and then to Henry’s doorstep.
No wonder Sibba had been so secretive when she’d opened the door to him back at the farm.
“We need to get Lan and Jaka to medical help,” Henry said then.
“And you tested,” Sibba added.
Yes, this was going to get complicated.
Her grandfather had stood there then, in the light, and something had simply washed over him.
It looked a lot like defeat. “I just can’t seem to escape war.”
Another beat and Sibba nodded.
Henry grabbed a blanket off the chair. “They’re hiding at the old partisan hospital near Dolenji Novaki. We’ll get them in the morning.”
Then he sank into the recliner.
Sibba turned off the kitchen light, just the light from her room illuminating her face. She, too, looked tired.
And Jonas had the terrible urge to reach out and pull her to himself, like he’d done in her room. To tell her that maybe, if he could, he’d figure out how to make everything all right.
In fact, his entire body pulsed with that hope, and sure, maybe it was the guy inside who ran toward the storm, wanting to understand it, to survive it. But also, maybe it was simply Sibba. And the fact that she stood alone. Strong, but maybe a little weary.
“C’mon. I promise, I won’t let you get hurt.” His words to her a month ago on the mountain crept back, clung.
Except, she’d drawn that invisible line between them, so he didn’t move, didn’t reach out.
Tried to mute the strange feelings budding in his heart.
“I’m going to bed.”
He nodded. “Good idea. Try and think only happy thoughts…”
“Thank you, Jonas. I…” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I…”
“Next time, I’ll say yes.”
She frowned.
“When you ask me to go flying.”
A smile slid up her face. “You’d better.”
You’d better. He let her words settle inside him, along with her smile, a sort of balm to the crazy day.
He’d cleaned up the kitchen, then headed to the sofa. But he woke up early, to Henry’s snores.
Got up and fixed himself a cup of coffee. Now, standing at the window, the earliest hint of dawn simmered against the mountains, the firelight of the sun turning the white peaks to gold.
How had the Russians gotten ahold of his dirigible? If they were even responsible. But given their testing of the soil and the water prior to the attack, then afterward…
But why, and why Poče? Or was Poče simply a random small town. For what—testing the effects of a dirty bomb? Because clearly this was some attempt at that.
Yes, he needed to get the box to the right people, find out what kind of radiation they were dealing with.
But first, probably, he had to help Henry and Sibba rescue the people of Poče.
When he’d asked God for more, he’d maybe meant a little less than this.
“I did mention that I’m just a weatherman and not, say, a Navy SEAL, right?”
The words came from Jonas, who stood with her on a cliff overlooking the gorge where the occupants of Poče now hid at the old Franja Partisan Hospital.
Oh, he was funny, but Sibba didn’t smile or laugh, because, well…
They could probably use a special forces operator right about now. Mostly because the Russians who were blocking the road, clearly searching for the hideout, seemed serious. And out here, in the middle of a forested countryside, no one was around to ask questions.
Except, maybe, she, Jonas, and her grandfather.
When Jonas had spotted the trucks this morning, the ones that had tracked them around Poče yesterday, Dedi had directed Sibba to a farmhouse off the main road.
There, they’d taken another two-wheel rutted path into the forest all the way to the end of the road, then gotten out and walked a half mile up a hill.
Her grandfather had handed her a monocular, aged and battered, and pointed to the trucks kicking up dust on the road, clearly searching for the group.
“How did they find them?” Sibba asked. She handed the monocular back to her grandfather.
“Maybe they followed me. I came yesterday to check on everyone.” Her grandfather stood up. “But for now, they’re safe. Let’s go.”
Her grandfather had turned into some kind of guerrilla fighter, despite his age. Suddenly, despite the fact he’d deserted, the stories he’d told her about his missions on Vietnam before his injury clicked in turned vibrant and real.
Tough. Determined. Resolute. For the first time, she saw him as the soldier he’d once been.
Before his country had betrayed him. She’d always grown up with a disdain for America.
And then she’d met Jonas. Who’d sort of blown apart everything she believed about the United States. Sure, she’d met Americans in London and around the UK, but they’d always been arrogant tourists, needing their selfies or souvenir pictures.
But Jonas…
Sure, he’d made to leave last night, but she couldn’t blame him after the way Dedi went after him.
Who she couldn’t blame either.
So, to find them both asleep, peacefully, in the main room this morning had seemed a hint of a miracle.
Jonas had slept fully clothed, his arm up over his eyes, as if struggling to catch some winks. He’d looked peaceful, despite his pose, and it had occurred to her that since she’d met him, even a month ago, he seemed to be always moving.
Always rescuing.
C’mon. I promise, I won’t let you get hurt.
Indeed. She didn’t know why those words curled inside, like a whisper, winding around her as she showered, again, and took her own clothes and bagged them.
Maybe it was because she always said them to others.
Never, however, herself.
But with Jonas’s words last night, about saying yes the next time she invited him to fly…shoot, he had her thinking about tomorrow, and the days after that. Like she actually might be around.
