"Oh christ, that's just great." Rhys didn't disguise her anger. "Two snoring p.r.i.c.ks and a f.u.c.king wingnut."

Jamie heard the disappointment in Rhys's hoa.r.s.e whisper.

Expected more, huh? Well, this is all I've got. I don't know what else to do. So much for even getting to be friends with Martina Rhys. Jamie squeezed her eyes shut and continued her search. Please, just ten or eleven inches...

"Will you settle down, dammit?" Rhys's voice darkened toward desperation and she seemed not to notice the small snap that came from the top of Jamie's bed frame. "You're driving me nuts now!" For a nanosecond, Jamie ceased all movement. Almost, almost...

When she began a small repet.i.tive motion, she saw Rhys's eyes blink too fast. Chest heaving silently, Rhys turned away from her just as the taunting sounds of the Pirates' poker game and the tunes of an old Latin-hip fusion rock band wafted toward them.

Jamie stretched herself farther, harder, kept her hands circling rhythmically in defiance of the restraints. Come on... come to Mama...

And then, at last, another snap. She raised her hands as much as the manacles allowed and angled her head back, back to gaze at the length of wire. Yes, thank you, yes, yes! Jamie clutched it in both hands and let the rest of her body relax.

But not for long. Okay, okay, now gotta break it in two. Jamie stretched again and pushed the wire against the concrete wall a few inches from the top of the bed frame to make the first bend. The metal resisted-a good thing, since the tools she needed to craft had to be strong, and a bad thing because hard metal would be tougher, maybe even impossible, to craft at all. Sacrificing her hands and her ankles, she kept at it.

* 55 *

"Ha!" Jamie exhaled when she finally felt that third snap. She craned to get a look at what were now two pieces of wire, one in each hand. They still needed a lot of work. She decided to start with the short piece. Can't do s.h.i.t without a torque wrench. She'd work first on bending it.

"Rhys."

Rhys ignored her.

"Dammit, Rhys, talk to me."

Rhys turned and scowled but refused to meet Jamie's eyes.

"What?"

"If we could undo these cuffs, and maybe get the cell door open-"

"Oh christ! Will you shut the f.u.c.k up? This G.o.dd.a.m.n s.h.i.t ain't over yet and if I'm gonna get my a.s.s through tomorrow I need some sleep."

"Listen to me, Rhys, okay? Indulge me for a minute." Jamie stopped all movement and stared Rhys down. "If we can get out of the cuffs and open that padlock on the cell door- if-can you see a way we can get out of the camp?"

Rhys snarled between clenched teeth, her slivered eyes now launching their fury at Jamie. "So you know how to pick locks or something, Gwynmorgan?"

Jamie fluttered her eyebrows and winked.

Lips slightly parted, Rhys gaped. Jamie grinned.

"My G.o.d," puffed Rhys. "My G.o.d. Let me think." She fell into silence, her eyes closing.

"No promises, understand? These pieces of wire I've liberated are a little soft, but they might just work. If I can make them into something, then we need a plan for getting the rest of the way out. And that's on you, Rhys. 'Cuz I didn't see the camp at all. Nothing."

"Okay..." Rhys murmured, her face tightening, her eyes staring through Jamie, who'd already resumed work on the torque wrench.

"How to get out..."

After a while she spoke up again. "It's a long shot, you know? But what the f.u.c.k. If they're not using cameras and if they stick with the same protocols, maybe I can see a way. Mmm, we gotta get out of the cuffs and open the cell before the next watch. Before. We whack the four guys down there playing poker. That'll be the hardest, but we can * 56 *

get pretty close before they see us, since they're around a corner. No line of sight to our cell door."

Rhys paused. After an unsteady inhalation, she continued. "We wait for the next watch to arrive, take them out, too. That'll be easier.

We'll have the advantage of surprise and can use this watch's stunguns.

Then we use their keys to unlock, um, let's see, two other doors. And we walk out as the departing watch. It'll be about twenty-five meters to the gate. But it'll be dark. Our faces will be shadowed by boonie hats.

Nearest guy will be like ten, fifteen meters away. Far as I can tell, they don't challenge the winking skull and crossbones at the gate. We just wave at them and walk right out."

Jamie craned to get a look at the shorter length of wire. The last inch or so of one end had been bent about eighty degrees. "Bingo."

"Yes!" breathed Rhys.

"Now I gotta file it down. Cross your fingers." Again Jamie sacrificed her shackled ankles and hands to reach the concrete wall and sc.r.a.pe the wire against it. She sc.r.a.ped for a long time before examining the result. Yes, the wall was hard enough, the wire soft enough. "Slow going," she said. "Need to taper this f.u.c.ker down." Sensing Rhys's eyes move slowly over her nakedness and inspect her while she worked, Jamie counted the number of times she'd feel a swath of warmth on her skin and then find Rhys's gaze on the very spot.

Once, twice, four times, five...

Too many times. Because I'm going too slow. How long 'til a Pirate shows up? How long have I got? And then, at last- "Yesss!

We're in business!"

Rhys didn't hide her tears this time. Neither did Jamie.

"We make for their barracks," Rhys said, triumph in her whisper, while Jamie began work on the longer length of wire. "It's about twenty meters beyond the gate. Should be a truck there, maybe two. If we can get a truck, we can drive around the bay and be back in our own racks sometime tonight."

Rhys stiffened, her face ominous. "But the fellas have to go along with us. Four guys in the Pirates' watch. We need four of us to pull it off. The boys might want to just wait it out."

"Plus I have to make this wire into a workable pick," Jamie added, rewarding herself with a sneak-glance at Rhys's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "Needs a little forty-five-degree bend at one end and- f.u.c.k! "

* 57 *

Like it had a life of its own, the wire had flipped out of Jamie's fingers, which chased it, fumbled with it.

"No, Jamie, please," Rhys gasped just as Jamie caught the precious wire and managed to hold on to it.

"Okay, it's okay. I got it." Jamie closed her eyes, swallowed against the acidic splash of fear that stung her throat. She'd almost lost the torque wrench, too. "I got it."

"Take your time, Jamie. We got time."

"Yeah." Jamie let her eyes slide open and closed and open again.

"Yeah, I'll take my time. Thanks." With swollen, b.l.o.o.d.y fingers, she continued while Rhys lay still and stared at the ceiling. Rhys didn't say it, but Jamie knew: They were running out of time. "Not as smooth as it should be, but I got one end done," Jamie whispered finally. "Gonna give it a try."

She began with the handcuff lock on her left wrist, twisting and warping her hands to work the torque wrench and the pick. Seconds, then what must have been minutes ticked by, and her hands started to cramp. "d.a.m.n. I popped a pair of these in thirty-eight seconds once.

Ah, wait."

The first cuff clicked open, freeing Jamie's hands.

"Yes!" Jamie and Rhys whispered in unison.

With a groan of relief, Jamie raised her arms. Then she tried to sit up, but the cell went spinning again. "Dizzy," she murmured and flattened onto her back.

"Take it slow," Rhys said. "Nice and slow. And quiet, Jamie. Real quiet."

"Yeah. We still got time, right?"

"Yeah. Plenty of time. Just lie there a minute and breathe." Still on her back, Jamie soon got the cuff on her right wrist to open. Not long after that, she sat up and stayed up. In another couple of minutes, she had her left ankle liberated, then her right.

"Easy, easy," Rhys said when Jamie tried to stand. "One small step for womankind, okay?"

Jamie forced what she hoped was a smile; she'd need all four limbs to get to Rhys's bed frame two feet away. "How about one small crawl?"

Like it would hurt too much to watch, Rhys's eyes shut when * 58 *

Jamie leaned erratically toward the handcuffs on her wrists and inserted the torque wrench and pick into the first lock.

But Jamie's feel for the lockpins was reviving, and soon Rhys was free. She eased up from the bed carefully, giving Jamie's shoulder a thankful squeeze before she moved off to survey the hallway outside the cell.

"s.h.i.t!" Rhys's face had gone crimson. "I knew it. f.u.c.king knew it! All the other cells are empty. I bet everyone else but us is back at the squadbay."

Behind her, Jamie tottered to Arnoldt's bed to wake him. "Wanna get the h.e.l.l outta here? Rhys has a plan." Wide-eyed, Arnoldt nodded. If he was thinking about lying there naked with two naked women standing over him, he gave no hint of it.

"Good man!" Jamie patted his chest. "Gotta wake up Moss, so give me a minute. And keep snoring, Arnoldt, but not too loud." Moss roused more slowly, but he also agreed to the escape attempt, wrath flaming his eyes. Five minutes later, the men were on their feet and Jamie worked the padlock while Rhys laid out what each of them would do.

They executed Rhys's plan with resolute precision. Moss knocked two Pirates out cold before the other two knew what was happening.

By Jamie's estimation, they completed the almost noiseless takedown in less than two minutes. Once all the Pirates were stungunned, Arnoldt and Moss kept up the sounds of the poker game while Jamie and Rhys dragged the four Pirates back to the cell. One by one, Jamie and Rhys stripped them, hogtied them with the cuffs, and gagged them with their own underwear.

Then they donned Pirate uniforms, careful to place the black bandanna armbands just right to show the red winking skull-and-crossbones insignia. So far, so good. Rhys's what-the-f.u.c.k plan was actually working.

"Wish we had time to play unstrip poker, fellas," said Rhys when she and Jamie brought Pirate uniforms to Moss and Arnoldt. "I'd beat your a.s.ses."

"Like h.e.l.l," objected Arnoldt, who actually held a hand of cards.

"I've never once lost to a girl."

Moss did not seem amused. "Jeezus, Arnie. Put that s.h.i.t down!"

* 59 *

They gathered intel from the Pirates with brutal, stungun-supported efficiency. Rhys zapped the one with the most att.i.tude while the other Pirates looked on, then she and Jamie hauled the one who seemed the most nervous out of the cell for a quiet conversation about who and what was where. The ashen-faced Pirate told them everything they wanted to know. Sincerely and as fast as he could.

Soon after, a second, somewhat less cooperative Pirate confirmed what the first one said.

"Okay, so we believe them, right?" Rhys asked, fingering one of the stunguns.

"Yeah, I think so," Jamie answered.

"Well, if they told us the truth, then we still got a few minutes before the next watch shows up. We need to zap them again. All of them. Five-second jolts. That'll do them for a solid fifteen minutes.

Five-second jolts, okay?"

"Yeah," Jamie said. Long time, five seconds. "I can do that." v "Don't go fast, Rhys," urged Jamie. "Not yet." She didn't say what she couldn't stop thinking. Walking right out of the camp, creeping through the Pirates' barracks like we owned it-way too easy.

Rhys nodded, her hands tight on the steering wheel of the Pirates'

truck as she maneuvered it away from the mock POW camp area.

"Still clear," Arnoldt said again without looking away from the rearview mirror, which he'd angled so he could watch the road behind them.

They all consumed saltine crackers and bottled water taken from the Pirates' barracks like it was the last food they'd ever get.

"You said you punctured all the tires, right?" Jamie asked for the third time.

"Every frigging one," Arnoldt replied for the third time, then allowed himself a long swig of water. "And you didn't wake anyone in their barracks, right?"

"Nope," Jamie said, exchanging a quick smile with Rhys.

A kilometer down the road, driving faster now, Rhys jerked the steering wheel hard to the right.

"What the f.u.c.k are you doing?" screeched Arnoldt.

* 60 *

"Let's go get the black boxes. Your squad's first, since it's the closest," Rhys said, already heading toward the water tower.

Arnoldt's are-you-crazy look became a shrug. "What the f.u.c.k."

"How about you, Jamie?" Rhys asked. "Up for it?" The water and crackers had helped Jamie stave off the sensation that her body was turning to Jell-O. She fingered the stungun she still held, a real weapon. And I'll use it, too, if any of those Pirate b.a.s.t.a.r.ds come near me. "Yeah, okay. What the f.u.c.k." Moss stuck his head in the truck's rear window, his spirits obviously buoyed by water and crackers. And freedom. "What the f.u.c.k," he said.

"I got plenty of room back here."

Shortly after 2300 hours, the truck rolled to a noisy halt under the floodlights outside Cla.s.s 2801's squadbay on the other side of the base.

They'd have arrived sooner, but after picking up the black boxes, they detoured to the Exchange for more water and crackers. After nine or whatever days, water and crackers was all they could handle. Except for Arnoldt, who bought Slim Jims and several beers with money they'd found in the Pirates' pockets.

"Rise and shine!" Arnoldt hollered as he stumbled out of the truck.

Private First Cla.s.s Rhys's two semesters of college gave her time-in-grade that put her senior among them. Hence Rhys was in command, and she'd wanted them to a.s.sume the position of attention upon exiting the truck. But she adapted. "Okay, Arnoldt, so let's try parade rest."

"Yes, ma'am!" But Arnoldt's feet splayed too far apart and his hands, on a mission of their own, formed an unsteady cone around his mouth. "Hey, you G.o.dd.a.m.n jarheads!" he bawled. "I said rise and f.u.c.king shine!"

The crowd he attracted in short order included the chief instructor, whose presence inspired Arnoldt to shut up and grin at Jamie instead.

Standing at attention, Rhys cleared her throat. "Private First Cla.s.s Rhys reporting," she said. "Along with Private First Cla.s.s Gwynmorgan and Privates Moss and Arnoldt."