“They’re busy. It’s around the back. Hurry, while they’re still distracted.”
“Oh my God, this is wrong on so many levels,” Boyboy mutters, but he shifts around and soon I feel his nose burrowing through my hair. “I hate you so much right now,” he grunts into my scalp.
“And you need to bite the end off while you have it in your mouth. The little plastic part.”
He mumbles something unintelligible, and a second later I feel a sharp tug. He pulls back with a grimace, metal between his teeth. Just then I see one of the militia look over at us. Boyboy closes his lips over the pin and sits back quickly. He looks guilty as hell, but the militia guy just glares at us for a few seconds. Beads of sweat creep down my spine. Finally the guy seems satisfied that we’re not going anywhere and turns back to the entertainment.
Boyboy leans back and spits the pin out onto the ground near my fingers, where I grab it. I keep my eyes on the fight, like I’m just as interested as everyone else, and scoot as close to Boyboy as I can. Slowly, I wedge the shim between the wire tie and the clasp. It’s not easy, between my sweating fingers and the unfamiliar bindings, and for a second I think the pin is too thick. But then finally I hear Boyboy gasp with relief when he feels the ties loosen.
“Move your hands over here so I can get yours,” Boyboy says.
I start to, then hesitate. I look from the tent where Michael is being kept, to the petrol drums, to the motorcycles, to Ketchup. An idea begins to take shape in my mind.
I pull my hands back and tuck the bobby pin into my pocket, unused. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“Listen to me, and don’t interrupt. Keep watching those boneheads fight. I think I have a plan.”
THIRTY-NINE
Rule 16: Don’t stop.
? ? ?
Bug Eye taught me how to fight. If he told me once, he told me a hundred times: Stop wilding out, kijana. Elbows in, head down, and focus. You may be smaller, but you’re faster and you’re smarter. Here’s what counts, he said: You find an edge. Just a tiny crack in the foundation. Remember what I said about finding weaknesses? That’s what you do. Then you dig in and, listen to me, you just don’t stop. Fight until you’re beyond exhaustion. Even if you can see the end in front of you. Even if it seems hopeless. Don’t stop.
Not ever.
He took me to a dogfight and told me to watch this brindled pit bull. She was smaller than the others, wiry and delicate. I’ll admit, I was dubious when they paired her up against this big white male covered in scars. But the starting bell hadn’t even stopped ringing before she was hanging on that other dog’s neck, and when they slammed each other to the ground, she clung to him. As the fight wore on, his white neck turned scarlet, and then black with dirt, and then the dog’s owner rushed the ring before she could kill him, and it was over. And I just remember standing there, watching the little dog lick her wounds with her pink tongue like she had already shaken the fight off.
See that? Bug Eye said. Grab on and don’t let go. Hit him. And then hit him again, again, again, bam, bam, bam, bam, till he can’t see straight and he falls down at your feet like Goliath before David.
? ? ?
Boyboy listens to my plan. His frown gets deeper by the second. “I don’t like it. It’s too risky.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“And what if the phone battery is dead? That screws everything.”
“A little confidence, Boyboy.”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “And what if Bug Eye won’t do it?”
“He’ll do it,” I say firmly, to myself as much as Boyboy. “Besides, what other way is there?”
He thinks for a second, then shakes his head.
I take a couple of deep breaths, twist out the kinks in my back, try to tell myself this is going to be just like any other job. Get in, get the prize, get out. Don’t leave traces.
The fight is over, the Goondas having been outnumbered and shouted down into a small, angry huddle. They occasionally give the militia guys foul looks over their shoulders. The loser, Toofoh-or-Toto, is holding a wet pack of leaves to his swollen eye.
I raise my head until I can see Ketchup’s face, and whistle two notes softly. It’s a familiar Goonda signal, and five sets of eyes dart to me. I look directly at Ketchup, and when he sees me mouthing for him to come over, the scowl he’s wearing slowly turns to a sneer. He says something to the other guys that makes them laugh, and then saunters over, a panga and a satellite phone dangling from his belt. He has a gun stuck down the front of his pants too, and it’s a wonder they’re still clinging to his bony hips. His T-shirt reads WAYNESVILLE SOFTBALL CHAMPIONS 1998, and is stained with sweat.
“Oh God, Tiny, be careful,” Boyboy says under his breath. “He’s already angry.”
Ketchup stops when he’s standing directly above me. His crotch and gun are at my eye level and he knows it.