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Keeping low so no one would see her from within the factory, she began the long, arduous trek back to the prison complex.
Chapter 21
Cora was holed up in an area of scrubby brush, the only relief she could find from the unrelenting sun. She had run clear to the end of the chain-link fence that surrounded the airfield to avoid detection. But it had drained her more than she thought possible, and she needed to wait for night to make her way to the prison.
She lay in the shade of a hedge row of thorny bushes, parched and exhausted. The heat and sand permeated everything, and she was plagued by the ever-present flies.
She figured it must be mid-afternoon, the hottest part of the day, a time when anyone sensible was inside an air-conditioned building.
Irritably, she swatted ineffectually at another fly. She might have been able to nap if it weren’t for the damn things perpetually wanting to suck her blood.
Her thoughts turned to Levi. She had to remind herself that he was worse off than she was. Incarcerated in a tiny cell with only a small vent for air. She couldn’t imagine the fear he must have endured wondering what was happening out here and whether he would be freed soon. She wished she could get a message to him, but her comm was rendered useless in the scrambled signal of the secure military compound.
Her mind drifted, as it so often did since they had become intimate, to the sex. He had brought her to heights of orgasm she had never in her wildest dreams thought possible. She had to force herself to avert her libido’s call to focus on the more important task at hand.
She sat up and looked around. The desert stretched interminably before her, quite beautiful in its own way. The sun was nearing the horizon now. It had taken on a deep golden-orange hue, casting long shadows across the yellow sand.
Not long now, my love. She sent the thought out to her imprisoned lover. Not long before she was in his arms again.
She waited in the growing shadows until the sun gently slipped beneath the horizon, and then she got up and stretched. It grew so cold in the unprotected, windy desert night that even her disguise didn’t keep her from shivering. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around herself. The grenades were awkward and uncomfortable tucked inside her jacket.
The time ticked slowly past until she could wait no longer. She crept to the end of the alleyway and carefully looked up and down the service road. It was deserted. Her heart clattered as she stole down the silent roadway to the building where they held Levi.
“Levi,” she called softly through the darkened grate. “Levi, can you hear me?”
No answer met her from the room where he had been before. Her heart was in her mouth. No! Where could he be? she thought desperately. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes. He can’t be gone!
“Levi!” she tried again a little louder. He had to be there after everything! The thought that he’d been shipped off somewhere else, or worse, terrified her.
Then she heard a noise from inside his dark prison cell. It was a groan. “Cora?” came Levi’s groggy voice. “Cora, is that you? I fell asleep.”
Relief sprang up in her heart. She sniffed back the tears and smiled. “Good. We’ll need the rest. I’m so glad you’re there and alive,” she said. “I’ve got the explosives. A few kinds.”
“Oh, thank the gods and stars. I can’t tell you how worried I’ve been about you.”
He held his hand to the vent and touched hers, their fingers interlocking as if their souls could touch.
“I’ve got to get you out of there,” she said desperately. She wouldn’t relax until they were safe and she was back in his arms. “Can you shield yourself from the blast?”
“I have a mattress. If I hide under the bed and pull the mattress across in front of me, I should be shielded enough.”
“Let’s hope,” she said.
“Listen. You’ll set a few at the juncture of the wall to the ground, and one in the vent directly. I’ve got as much padding around the bed as I can. Let’s blow this thing!”
She saw the glint of a smile on his face and returned it with a flash of her perfect white teeth.
The grenades had a timing unit set into each one. One hundred seconds should do it, she thought, wedging two of them on the ground and one in the window.
She had three of the others set and tucked into the crook of the wall. They were already covered, their fuses ticking away. But the fourth one was giving her problems. It was the crucial one that went in the center so she didn’t want to just leave it, but the timer wasn’t working properly.
She got out the small tank of jet fuel and decided she would try the Terran trick, just in case, in homage to her ancestry. She ripped a piece of fabric off her shirt, placed it at the mouth of the tank, and hurled it like a discus thrower.
If the fourth grenade went off, it went off. If it didn’t, she had more than enough firepower without it.
She ran as fast as possible away from the prison and didn’t stop running until she heard the immense crash. She turned just in time to see the walls tumbling.
It was the last thing she remembered before the world went dark.
