Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,65

a safe distance outside the blast radius of the explosion.

“I guess we’re ready,” Emiliano said to Jackie. He reached into another pocket, took out a monogrammed silver cigarette lighter, and flicked it open, but nothing happened. He flicked it several more times, but with the same results.

“Must be out of fuel,” he said. He searched his pockets but came up empty. “Damn,” he said, “I’m all out of matches too. You?” Jackie shook her head at Emiliano.

“I guess this isn’t my day,” he said and took out his frustration on the truck by banging on a fender.

“I know,” Jackie said, looking inside the truck. “The cigarette lighter.” She pushed in on the lighter on the dashboard, waited for it to pop, then took it out and held it up to Emiliano. “That’s excellent,” he said to her. He took the lighter from her, its end glowing cherry red.

“Okay,” he told her. “Now, stay in the cab. No matter what happens, don’t come out. Not until you see me or hear from me. Got that?”

Jackie nodded to show that she understood.

“Good.”

Cigarette lighter glowing in his hand, Emiliano started up the road, then stopped and returned to the truck. He took out the monogrammed silver lighter and handed it to Jackie.

“It was a graduation gift. Please hold on to it, and you can give it back to me later.”

“Good luck,” said Jackie, feeling the inadequacy of the words to convey what she really felt. She had known him only a couple of days, and yet she found her thoughts constantly turning to him. She knew what emotional bellwether that signified. Emiliano started back up the roadway and began climbing up the slope until he was lost from sight.

Disobeying Emiliano’s orders, Jackie got out of the truck cab and walked over to the edge of the roadway. Looking down, she could see the jeep. It was still several switchbacks behind, but it would catch up to them in the next several minutes. So even if Emiliano’s plan did work, there was still the tiny matter of having a jeep filled with soldiers and a machine gun on their tail. There was no way they could hope to lose them on this narrow mountain road. She hoped that Emiliano also had some plan in mind to deal with them, because she had run out of ideas, like a car whose fuel gauge was now on empty.

Jackie returned to the truck cab. She thought about all the things that could go wrong. Emiliano sliding down the slope and breaking a leg, or worse. Emiliano underestimating the timing on the fuse and being blown to smithereens by the dynamite. Emiliano not making it back to the roadway in time and having his body pelted by a hail of shrapnel.

Instead, she tried to think positive thoughts and visualize just what was happening as she sat there. She saw Emiliano climbing carefully up the slope until he arrived at the ledge. She saw him straighten out the film leader, then hold the glowing red end of the cigarette lighter against its free end. She saw the film begin to spark as it caught fire, and the flame run down to the dynamite stick’s fuse, which accepted the fire like the handoff of the torch in a marathon race. She saw Emiliano, at the same time, running back down the slope and searching for cover before the dynamite exploded.

KA-BOOM!

Jackie was jerked upright in her seat as she heard the dynamite explode up the slope. A second later the shockwave from the explosion reached the truck and shook the cab. At the same time, the truck was pelted with shards of rock that the explosion had sent hurtling through the air in all directions. It was like a hailstorm of stones that must have lasted only thirty seconds. But Jackie was concerned to see that there was no sign of Emiliano through the smoke and dust that now shrouded the truck.

She stuck her head out the cab window and called out. “Emiliano? Emiliano!” But there was no answer.

She hopped out of the truck and ran through the dust cloud. Three-quarters of the way to the crater, she practically tripped over something in the middle of the roadway. It was Emiliano lying motionless on the ground.

“Emiliano,” Jackie called out to him as she knelt by his side to assess his condition. His eyes were closed, but his chest was heaving up and down, obviously as a result of the run down