She squinted, but she didn’t see anything that looked like a temple. She shook her head.
“It’s just broken walls now. I was here when they blew it up. I hate seeing history erased.”
He was trying to calm her, she thought. Talking about history when all that mattered to her was the present. “Yes, I think I see it now.”
Without warning, the helicopter angled sharply, and Marion’s stomach rolled with it. The men at the open doors hugged their weapons tighter, their legs stretching out with the Huey’s momentum. The door gunners were alert, fingers on the triggers. Then one fired, blasting seven hundred rounds per minute into the sky, and the other one started up, shooting at something Marion couldn’t see. The guns’ vibrations thundered in her chest, and the gunners’ bodies shook with the weapons’ motion, moving in a blur. Marion tried not to hyperventilate, tried not to sob with panic.
“What’s happening?” she shouted, gripping Daniel’s arm. “What’s—”
She screamed and ducked as bulletspinged!and ricocheted inside the chopper, then she grunted when Daniel’s arm slammed across her middle like a steel belt. One of the men on the side fell back, clutching his leg, and someone dragged him inside so another soldier could take his place. Then she heard a different sound, a kind of snap then crack, and the helicopter’s windshield became riddled with holes and fissures. The pilot was yelling into the microphone attached to his helmet when suddenly he slumped, and his head rolled sideways. Marion gawked in horror as the copilot took over, battling the controls and calling for help.
“We’ll be all right,” Daniel shouted, but she didn’t believe him.
A jolt knocked her forward, then the chopper lost control, turning on its own axis as it spiralled from the sky. The green of the jungle awaited them, the shapes and shadows giving way to individual leaves and branches. Far too close and coming closer.
“Hang on!” Daniel yelled, but she was already braced, hugging her knees, holding her breath, praying as hard as she could.Please God, please God, please—
thirty-eightMARION
Can’t move. Can’t move. Trapped…
“Marion!”
That voice. It sounded like it was coming from far away and through a pillow. Hands were shoving her, moving her. She smelled smoke. An unfamiliar sense of urgency bloomed.
“Marion! Open your eyes!”
She did. Daniel loomed over her, his hands clenched on her biceps. Fresh blood painted the scarred side of his face, and his helmet was gone. Hers was, too, she realized dazedly.
“Are you hurt?”
She blinked at him, confused. Then she remembered the helicopter, free-falling to the earth while she screamed and prayed.
“Are you hurt, Marion?”
She did a mental inventory of her body. She tasted iron, but felt no specific pain. She must have bitten her tongue when they crashed. She had no idea. “I don’t think so.”
“Can you move?”
She sat up, toppled back, then roused herself again, noting she was about twenty feet away from the crash site. The burning chopper was on its side,smoking amid a shattered stand of trees. Its tail was missing. She counted half a dozen soldiers standing at a distance from it, guns on their shoulders, eyes on their scopes as they scouted the trees.
“We gotta go,” he said quietly.
“How did I get over here?”
“I carried you,” he said, holding out his hand. “Let’s go.”
But where? Everything looked the same. Beyond the throbbing in her ears, she heard gunfire. The American soldiers fired back and yelled directions at each other.
Daniel helped her stand, then he pointed. “Do you remember that old temple you saw? The broken wall? It’s that way. No matter what happens, I want you to go toward it. You have that compass they gave you in your pack? Good. Pull it out and follow it.”
A new panic seized her. “What about you? I can’t go without you.”
“I will be right behind you.”
“How far is it?”
He shrugged. “Just keep running.”
