Clearly everything Lazzo had shared with the Libyan commander had been shared with his men. They had all been talking about their mission around the fires. There was even a significant bounty on our heads. The reward for Lazzo depended on him being taken alive. The reward for me was without restriction—dead or alive. Taking that into consideration, it was evident that the Libyan commander didn’t trust Lazzo to come in on his own. He didn’t care what Lazzo’s plan was at all. He was hoping to catch Lazzo and lure Danny into a trap. Lazzo’s life expectancy would be short after that. Once the commander had the book, Lazzo was done. The writing was on the wall. And all over Lazzo’s face.
I imagined Lazzo was pretty conflicted about this. I knew the status of his family was uncertain. He claimed he’d received convincing proof of life, but how long was that good for? Even if he did get the book from Danny and hand it over to the Libyan commander, there was no guarantee the commander would deliver on any of his promises. In fact, the opposite seemed more likely. The commander had lied to him about everything.
I don’t know what Lazzo had been expecting in the beginning—honesty, integrity, fairness—but I could tell he wasn’t confident in that anymore. I could tell he was embarrassed. I could tell he felt lost. As I leaned in to listen to him, I could feel him trembling. I almost felt sorry for him. “I’m sorry I did this—that I’ve brought you here. You shouldn’t be here Hayley. My family was never going to be free. I should have known better and kept you out of all of it. I’ve only made everything worse. You and Flynn deserve better. I’m so sorry.” He seemed to be conceding their death, his own death—our death. Well, I wasn’t. Not yet.
I grabbed him by the arm. “Listen to me. It’s too late to go back now. You need to be a soldier now—a fighter. There’s no turning around. You can’t take back anything you’ve done. Danny is either coming or he isn’t. We don’t know. But we’re six miles from the rendezvous point. We have to at least try to get there. You hear me?”
I was close enough to feel him nod. “Yes, but Boli’s not going to let my family go. He’ll kill them all.”
“Lazzo, hey.” I grabbed his face and forced him to look at me. “Maybe that’s true, but we die here and we’ll never know. We still have a shot. Don’t give up on them. Okay?”
He shrugged. “I—”
“Okay.” I looked around. “I’ve got to get Flynn out of that tree. Lazzo—hey, Lazzo… you with me?”
“Yeah, I’m with you.”
There we go. That’s a start. “Hold my bag.” I handed it to him.
He looked at me like I’d just given him a pink purse. “Where’s your bow?” he asked.
I pointed toward the tree. All of a sudden I heard dogs barking a hundred yards or so uphill from us. There was some crashing in the brush, more barking, and a thundering gunshot echoed down the valley. Then another. Everyone started moving around us at once. A great deal of yelling ensued, and all the soldiers around the two fires closest to us were wide-awake now—most of them standing—guns ready. We froze, and I waited for Lazzo to tell me what had happened. Finally he heard one of the men call out that a couple of deer had run through the troop line and into the clearing. The snipers had taken them out.
We stayed crouched where we were for another hour as everyone settled back in, but I was anything but settled now. The snipers had reinstated my fear of crossing that clearing. They were definitely lying in wait and could see just fine in the dark. Great.
I crawled toward Flynn’s tree and stood up behind it. Two of the soldiers around the nearby fire were facing my direction, but they were talking to each other. I reached above my head and grabbed a thick branch, slowly lifting my feet off the ground. I pulled myself up with my arms—my feet against the bark for extra traction—until I could swing a leg over the branch I held onto. I lay still until I was certain I hadn’t drawn any attention and then continued my ascent into the thick branches until I reached Flynn.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“Hey.”
I put my hand on her arm. “We’re going to be okay, you hear me?” She took my hand and squeezed it. “Listen to me, Flynn. I need you to slowly stand up and stretch out. Get as loose as possible, but be careful not to break any branches or make any noise. Okay?”
“Okay.”
I helped her stand and waited until she felt like she was ready to move. I was just below her about halfway down the tree when there was a loud crack above me and a large branch fell down, hitting me in the head as it passed. As Flynn crashed down against me and slipped past, I grabbed her forearm. She seized onto my shoulder and belt and clung tightly to me as I struggled to maintain my own foothold and hold onto her at the same time. I don’t know how she didn’t scream. I think I would have in her shoes.
The branch crashed down in the middle of the men below us—two of whom had just lain back down. Now they were all awake and upright. Two of them reached for their flashlights. With all my strength I swung Flynn around to another branch and told her to hug the tree. I swung myself around her, covering her as best I could. One flashlight came on and shone up in our direction. The other four men were looking up into the tree too. Another flashlight came on. Then, suddenly, several gunshots rang out behind us, and four of the men fell to the ground. Lazzo. He took off through the brush, drawing gunfire from the other soldiers around us. They began pursuing him—including the last soldier beneath us—leaving Flynn and me alone. Lazzo was trying to lead the soldiers away from us, and it appeared to be working. Up and down the line of campfires, men were running toward the sound of the shots, giving us a way out. Lazzo was moving as quickly as he could, but the men and dogs were going to catch him soon. There was no way he’d make it out of this. He’d given himself up for us.
“Flynn, we’ve gotta go.” I dropped through the branches, and she scurried down behind me. We hit the ground, grabbed the bow and quiver near my tree, as well as the pack Lazzo had left there, and raced for the clearing. I grabbed Flynn’s arm before we broke free from the trees. “We need to crawl. Stay as low as possible.”
“Is this really the only way? Aren’t the snipers watching this still?”
I nodded. “Probably, but we don’t have a choice. Sorry.”
“We could try to go around—stay inside the tree line, head south and cross downhill.”
“Flynn, that’s where Lazzo went. We’d be walking right into all the soldiers and dogs. There is no other way.” I was saying the words aloud as much for myself as for her. This is the last thing I want to do right now.
We began inching across the clearing. I was hoping we’d be lucky enough that they might not see us, but they’d seen and shot the deer—I figured it was only a matter of time. We hugged the ground and used every available rock and stump for cover along the way. A giant boulder sat about halfway across the clearing, and we made it safely to that. As we huddled there to catch our breath, I turned to Flynn. “If you hear a gunshot, just run, okay?”
She nodded. “Hayley, what’s going to happen to Lazzo?”
“He’s dead,” I replied, listening carefully for any sounds of danger nearby.
“So, you’re free?”
I nodded but contradicted myself. “I was never really a prisoner. Okay, so I was a little. But he was a good man who was coerced into making a desperate move to try to save his family. I understand why he did what he did.” A vision of Sam falling over the edge of the boat flashed through my mind. “He didn’t know what else to do.” Flynn remained silent. I hoped the hurt in my voice expressed the feelings I couldn’t. “If I’m honest with myself, I think I’d have done the same to save my family… if I truly believed I had no other choice.”