Chasing the White Lion, James Hannibal [ebook reader macos .TXT] 📗

first and gave him the wheel before helping the others into the back. “Nice of you all to drop in, yes?” she said to Talia in a singsong French accent, handing her a towel.

“Hilarious.” Wiping the river from her eyes, Talia looked warily back at the berm. Where Darcy went, explosives were sure to follow. Something was about to go boom.

She hoped.

Before following the rest of the team, Tyler took the time to strap Oleg into the sinking truck with a set of tie-downs.

“What are you doing?” Talia asked.

“Keeping options open.”

The Russians had carried enough momentum to drive the sedan to the top but not over. Five men piled out, all armed with submachine guns.

Talia pulled Tyler into the boat. “You’ve given them the high ground. If you’ve got another trick up your sleeve, now’s the time.”

“Oh, ye of little faith.” He pulled a wet handkerchief from his rear pocket and scrubbed at a spot of Oleg’s blood staining his jacket. “Darcy, you’re on.”

“Wait.” The French woman watched the pack of thugs with interest, as if watching lemurs at the zoo. “I want to see their smiling faces, yes?”

A fusillade of bullets peppered the water, and more than a few poked holes in the fiberglass at the back. Mac revved the engines. Everyone but Tyler shouted at the chemist.

“Darcy!”

“Yes, okay. Here goes.”

With a tremendous foomp, an entire section of the berm rose skyward. Five thugs and one car went flying on a cushion of dirt.

Finn poked Talia on the shoulder and laughed. “I told you it would work.”

CHAPTER

THREE

BAN DOI HENGA REFUGEE CAMP

THAI/BURMA BORDER

MAE HONG SON PROVINCE, THAILAND

NINE-YEAR-OLD THET YE jogged barefoot down the steps of the wooden church, squinting in the early light as he scanned the main road of the refugee camp. “Hla Meh?” He didn’t see her.

A few girls sat in the dirt and played e-keb, tossing a stone in the air and sweeping up pebbles with their hands. Hla Meh was not among them. Other children raced, rolling woven bamboo hoops past a line of wobbly houses, also bamboo. Hla Meh was not among those either.

What had become of his best friend?

She could not have gone far. Hla Meh had better not have gone far. Only a few minutes remained before the school day started. Attending classes beneath the thatch shelters beside the church was a privilege. He didn’t want Hla Meh to lose hers.

At the bottom of the steps, Thet Ye caught the shoulder of another boy, Aung Thu. “Where is Hla Meh?”

“Who knows? Your best friend is a girl. You never know what’s going through their brains.”

The other boys often picked on Thet Ye for choosing a girl as a best friend. He gave Aung Thu his usual answer. “When you best her in a foot race or take the ball away from her in a soccer match, maybe I’ll pick you.”

“Psh.” Aung Thu flopped his hands in the air and walked up the steps.

The church steps. The butterfly. “Hla Meh!” Thet Ye ran around the church to the thin patch of wild grass separating the building and the jungle. Hla Meh had chased a butterfly in that direction before Thet Ye had run inside to get a drink of water.

“Where do you think she lives?” Hla Meh had asked him.

“Wherever the other butterflies live, of course.”

“And where is that? We should find out.” Hla Meh followed the creature from the rail of the church steps, to the shoulder of a girl playing e-keb, to a stalk of grass at the rear corner of the church. And Thet Ye followed Hla Meh, until he became thirsty.

Fresh water was not so easy to come by in the mountain refugee camp. Thet Ye knew that well. His mother had given him the daily job of walking down to the river with empty jugs and trudging back with full ones. Lately she boiled the water. The teacher at the school had taught her how. But the church had fresh, cool water, brought in each week by the American group that helped the pastor open a school. Thet Ye could drink as much as he liked. And he had, leaving Hla Meh to follow her butterfly to its home.

“Hla Meh?” Thet Ye jogged to a stop in the middle of the grass patch. She wasn’t there.

Something rustled in the trees. “Hla Meh?” They weren’t supposed to go into the jungle, but Hla Meh was not always good at following the rules. He ran toward the sound.

The morning sun faded quickly to dim green shadows. Thet Ye pushed a tangle of vines aside, stumbled over a dead branch, and then paused to listen. The rustling continued, ahead and to his left. “Hla Meh?” At a small clearing, near the base of a big yang na tree, he found her. Thet Ye let out a huge breath. “Hla Meh.”

“I lost the butterfly.” Hla Meh picked at the underbrush with a stick. “She was right here, but then I lost her.”

Girls. Aung Thu had been right about one thing. You never knew what was going through their brains. “We have to get back. School is starting.”

“One more minute. I know she’s here. Look at that tree. It must be her home.”

“Her what?” Thet Ye struggled to understand Hla Meh’s words sometimes. When distracted, she often reverted to Kayah, her native tongue. Most of the children in the school had grown up in the camps and learned Thai from an early age. But Hla Meh had crossed the border from Burma with her mother, fleeing the most recent purge of Christians. Thai came harder for her.

Nearly everything came harder for her. It was the main reason Thet Ye had taken her on as a best friend.

“There she is!” Before Thet Ye could stop her, Hla Meh pushed apart a pair of saplings and disappeared again.

He chased after her, but a few steps in, he caught his toe on a low vine. He crashed into Hla Meh, and the two