“Wait-” Cory caught Sam’s arm, stopping her in midstride. “What if they’re in there?” His voice was an urgent rasp as he jerked his head toward the small house perched on its stubby stilts fifty yards away across the hillside. The guard they’d seen yesterday was nowhere in sight. “The Lundquists-we can’t just leave them there. They could be hit-killed.”

She gave him a long, furious glare, then abruptly nodded. “Okay, dammit-you’re right.” She pivoted, and instead of ducking into the house, headed for the far end of the veranda.

Once again Cory caught her arm. “Wait-it’s too dangerous. You guys stay here. Let me go. If they’re in there, I’ll-”

“Like hell you will,” Sam snapped, jerking herself free of his grasp. “What if they need help?” And she was already jumping down off of the veranda, her voice bumpy and breathless as she landed in a crouch on the wet grass. She paused to glare up at him. “What if they can’t walk?”

“Fine-we’ll all go,” Cory grunted as he dropped down beside her, knowing it was no use arguing with her anyway. He looked up at Tony. “Unless you’d rather stay-”

Tony peered down at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Are you kiddin’ me, man? Here-hold this…” He handed down his camera, then lowered himself carefully over the side of the veranda, corralling his assortment of bags with one hand. He landed awkwardly, but was grinning as he reclaimed his camera. “You think I’m gonna miss a possible ‘Dr. Livingston, I presume?’ moment? What kind of photojournalist you think I am? Come on, man. I’m thinkin’ Pulitzer, here.”

“Think about staying alive,” Sam snapped. “Keep your head down and run like hell-zigzag! Okay, come on-let’s go, go go!”

And she was off, running like a flushed rabbit, leaping and dodging in an erratic course across the slope toward the little house under the tree. There was nothing for Cory to do but follow her, while trying his best not to think about the thump of explosions and the pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons’ fire all around him. Trying not to think about bullets tearing into the soft and lovely body he still carried in his memory the way he’d seen it last: lit by a flash of lightning to the pristine whiteness of marble.

Then they were there, all three of them, breathing hard and taking stock, backs flattened against the same wall where yesterday they’d seen the bored guard lounging in the meager midday shade.

“Everybody okay?” Sam asked. Barely waiting for two confirming grunts, she spun away again, disappearing around the uphill corner of the house. Cory followed, and found her crouched beside a narrow door. She looked up at him and nodded. He reached across her head to pound on the door with his fist, at the same time shouting, “Hello! Is anybody in there?”

He paused to listen, but the explosions and gunfire were almost continuous now, and he couldn’t be sure…

“I think I heard voices,” Sam said in a low, tense voice. She straightened up and moved aside while Cory tried the door.

He wasn’t surprised to find it locked. He knocked again, then said tersely, “We’ll have to kick it down.”

Sam gave him a sardonic look. “You ever tried doing that? Believe me, it’s not as easy as they make it look on TV.”

“You got a better idea?”

“No, dammit.”

“Okay,” said Cory, glancing over at her, “how ’bout we do it together-the two of us? You’re the athlete-your legs are probably stronger than mine anyway.”

“Okay.” She drew herself up tall beside him and threw him a grin, eyes bright with challenge. “On three-my count. One…two…three!”

The impact hurt in every bone and joint in his body. It jarred his molars together and made his eyeballs vibrate in their sockets. But when he was able to focus again, he saw the door hanging crooked on its hinges, the screws having come loose from the half-rotten frame. With a great surge of triumph, he shoved the door aside with his shoulder and stepped into the tiny house, his heart pounding now with dread at what he might see.

The single room was dim, but in the rectangle of light streaming past the broken door he could see two people kneeling motionless on a mat made of thatching. They appeared to be middle-aged, a man and a woman, both extremely thin and dressed in almost identical ragged dungarees and T-shirts. The woman’s hair was mostly gray-perhaps it had once been blond-and hung past her haggard face in two thin braids. The man looked as if he had once been strong and robust, with a tall frame and sturdy bones. Now his shoulders were stooped, and his gray hair, thinned to almost nothing on top, had been pulled into a scraggly ponytail. His full beard was scraggly, too, and more white than gray. The two knelt facing each other, hands tightly clasped between them, heads bowed…nearly touching…eyes closed, lips moving. Praying.

Something lurched inside Cory’s chest. As he moved toward the couple, still huddled on their mat of rushes, he could hear Tony’s camera clicking and whirring behind him, and was aware that Sam had pushed past them both and had gone to peer out the single tiny window that overlooked the valley.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lundquist?” he said huskily, his chest so tight he could hardly speak.

Two pairs of eyes flew open and two faces swiveled toward him…wide eyes in bewildered faces. They stared at him like people who’d been roughly awakened from a sound sleep.

Cory dropped down on one knee beside them, heart pounding. “Are you…Harold and Esther Lundquist?”

“Oh…my goodness,” the woman said, and her voice was faint but musical. “You’re real. I was sure I must be dreaming…”

“Praise God…” It sighed from the man’s lips like a breath of wind.

“Are you okay? Can you walk?” Cory spoke to them rapidly, urgently, touching each one on the arm, half-afraid they might break apart when he did that, they seemed so frail and fragile. “We need to get you out of here. The village is about to be overrun. By government forces, but I’m afraid right now they’re in a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later mode. Do you think you can-”

“Yes, yes-of course.” Harold Lundquist lurched to his feet and helped his wife up. He stood staring at Cory, still clutching his wife’s hand and swaying slightly, stooped over like an old, old man. “But…” he said in a puzzled voice, “who are you?”

“They’re Americans, Hal.” Esther Lundquist’s weathered face was beatific, wreathed in joy.

“Yes, but…surely not…military?” Her husband threw a doubtful glance at Sam, who was still standing vigil at the window in what struck Cory at that moment as a decidedly military manner, even though, oddly, her hair shone like an angel’s halo in the light.

“We’re journalists,” he explained, nodding toward Tony. “Sam over there’s our pilot. We came to do an interview with al-Rami. This is the second time he’s come under attack since we’ve been here.”

“Yes, that does happen quite a lot,” Esther said softly.

“The first time they hustled us away under guard, but I guess this time they must have had other things on their minds. Anyway, we seem to be pretty much on our own. So, if you’re-”

“I hate to break up this tea party,” Sam broke in, in a hard, brittle voice as she turned away from the window, “but if we’re going to get out of here, it’d better be now.” As if to punctuate that, something-a shell? a grenade?-exploded close by, bringing a rain of debris pattering down from the thatch overhead.

Harold jerked as if the explosion had jump-started his engine. Muttering breathlessly, “Oh-certainly-yes, of course…” he bent and scooped up a small bundle wrapped in what appeared to be large leaves and stuffed it into a metal pot with a wire handle. Tied to the handle was a section of rope, which he looped over his shoulder and around his neck, the same way Tony carried his camera bags. Esther, meanwhile, was doing the same thing, in nearly perfect concert with her husband and with an efficiency that suggested a routine they’d both practiced many times before. In seconds, both Lundquists had slipped into sandals that had been neatly arranged on the floor near the mat of thatching, and were following Sam and Tony outside past the precariously leaning door.

Cory joined them just as Harold reached out with one long spiderlike arm and caught hold of Sam’s shoulder. “Perhaps you’d better let us go first,” he said in his breathless way.

His wife was nodding eagerly. “Yes-we know where the booby traps are, you see.”

“Booby traps!”

“They have all their hideouts ringed with them,” Harold explained.

“But,” Esther chimed in, the lines on her face deepening with her smile, “we’ve been in and out so many times, we’re quite familiar with the safe route-aren’t we, Hal?”

“Well, yes,” Hal said, looking thoughtful, “unless they’ve changed something since the last time.”

“Uh…guys?” Sam said, as gunfire crackled and bullets spattered into the banana trees nearby.

“Well, then,” said Esther as she took her husband’s hand, “we’ll just have to let the good Lord guide our footsteps, won’t we?” And they beamed at each other as they set off through the chaos of battle, like children on an outing.

“Do you believe these two?” Sam’s voice was bumpy as she ran. “What do they think this is, a Sunday-school picnic?”

“They’ve survived this for nearly a year,” Cory reminded her. “Must have something going for them.”

“You know what they say,” Tony said, panting. “Who is it the Lord’s supposed to look after? Fools, drunks and little children?”

“Yeah?” Cory managed to gasp. “Which one do you think they are?”

“Or…angels. Okay, yeah, maybe it’s angels. Drunks, fools and-”

“Will you two shut up?” Sam yelled. “At least ’til we’re through bein’ shot at?”

Cory could see her point, since bullets were even then zapping into foliage and thumping into tree trunks not all that far away. Not to mention, there were those booby traps. For the next several minutes he concentrated on keeping his head down and following in the exact footsteps of the poor helpless hostages he’d just rescued.