get one foot in front of the other for three or four wobbly steps, but then a leg crumpled and she collapsed. The foreigner caught her before she hit the pavement. He scooped her up and carried her in his arms.
He was taking her to a small plane unlike anything she had seen before, with a strange, ungainly shape. A door opened where the wing joined the fuselage. A second foreigner came out, took Marivic, and lifted her and dragged her into the cabin.
There were four seats, two and two. The second foreigner put her in one of the rear seats. He cinched a seat belt around her waist, then fastened several more Velcro straps: one at each upper arm, one at each wrist, one more that bound her ankles together. When he was done, he climbed up front, behind the control wheel.
The other foreigner climbed in and sat beside Marivic. He shone a small light into her eyes, examining the pupils, and held the tips of two fingers against her neck, taking her pulse.
The plane’s engine whined, coughed, and caught. It made a racket that filled the small cabin.
In the seat beside Marivic, the foreigner opened a black leather satchel and removed an intravenous needle. He examined Marivic’s left forearm, found a vein, inserted the needle. He hung an IV drip bag from a hook above the window, connecting it by tubing to the needle.
The plane was moving now, trundling along. Marivic knew that she was being taken away. She would be lost forever to her family. She thought of them in their little home in the village by the gulf. The image gave her a surge of energy, and she tried to rise out of the seat.
But it was hopeless. The straps held her secure.
She could feel the weariness overtaking her again, the effect of the drugs surging back, and this time she decided not to fight it. Sleep—even endless sleep, if it came to that—seemed preferable to the awful unknown that must be waiting for her at the end of this flight.
Her eyes closed, her head sagged forward. She was completely unaware a few minutes later when the plane lifted off, rising into the humid air, banking over the water.
The guard waved them through, and Totoy and Magda drove back along the airport access road.
“Where’s her phone?” Totoy said.
Magda hesitated before she answered: “She didn’t have one.”
“They always have a phone.”
“Not this one.”
“Bullshit. You forgot to look, didn’t you?”
“You forgot too.”
“It’s not my job.”
“Should we call them? They’re probably still on the ground.”
“No,” Totoy said. “She isn’t in any shape to make calls. But get yourself together. You fuck up the dose, you forget the phone. One of these days, carelessness will bite you in the ass.”
Go to hell, she wanted to say. But she held it back. She didn’t want to argue with him.
She had the bracelet. It was cupped in her right hand, out of Totoy’s sight. He hadn’t noticed it on the girl’s wrist, and she wasn’t going to make a point of it now. They had an agreement to split the money from any valuables, and he would just want a piece of the proceeds.
But there wouldn’t be any proceeds from this one, because she wasn’t going to sell it. Such a lovely piece on the arm of a teenage girl from the countryside—who would imagine such a thing? And with the correct initial “M,” as if it had been made for her. This was Providence at work for sure, and she wasn’t sharing it.
She held her hand casually at her side, between the seat and the passenger door, feeling the delicious smoothness of the herringbone and the gems.
She waited until Totoy reached the end of the access road, where it met city streets. Manila was an early-waking city, and traffic was picking up already. Totoy waited for an opening. As he concentrated on traffic, Magdalena opened her purse and pretended to search for something inside. When she knew that he wasn’t looking, she dropped the bracelet in.
At that moment Totoy saw his spot. He mashed the accelerator and the van darted forward, and the van disappeared into the Monday-morning stream.
Hours later, Marivic awoke fitfully from her drug stupor. Several times she drifted up toward the light of awareness, then sank back into oblivion, before she finally opened her eyes and forced herself into the present.
She was alone in a small room—a cell, really—with four high walls of bare concrete block. Her clothes