Although Lantan had a population of less than ten thousand, Eddie knew he’d attract attention. He didn’t speak the local dialect all that well and didn’t have a plausible reason for being in the isolated town if questioned by a curious soldier. Which was why he’d spent the past five hours under a bridge in an irrigation ditch just outside the town limits. He didn’t plan on leaving his hiding place until the officials and military rolled on to the next target of their intimidation.

But once again the luck Eddie tried to make for himself had left him.

He’d been lost in his own world of cold and pain and didn’t hear the voices until they were almost directly overhead.

“Just a little farther,” a male voice cajoled. “I saw a spot when we entered town.”

“No, I want to go back.” It was a woman’s voice, but young — maybe a teenager. She sounded frightened.

“No, it will be okay,” the male said. He had a cosmopolitan accent. Beijing or its environs. The girl sounded local.

“Please. My parents will wonder where I am. I have chores.”

“I said come on.” The man had lost all pretense of civility. His voice was sharp, tinged with a manic, desperate edge.

They were on the bridge spanning the ditch, just a few feet over Eddie’s head. A patter of dirt rained from the joints of the heavy wood decking. Their footfalls had become uneven. He could picture the couple in his mind. The girl was holding back, trying to slow them, as the man drew on her arm to the point of having to drag her.

Eddie gently pushed himself from the bank and sidled silently across the eight-foot ditch, listening as the man drew the girl across the structure. “It will be fun,” he said. “You’ll like me.”

There was a dense copse of trees just beyond the village along the dirt road, a secluded spot that Eddie knew would soon become the scene of a rape. As the man and his victim gained the road, Eddie pulled himself up the embankment, exposing himself had there been a sharp-eyed observer in the nearby town. He shouldn’t have even moved from his original spot. What was about to happen wasn’t his concern, but he was about to make it so.

The man was a soldier, an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, his uniform clean compared to the dirty peasant clothes the girl wore. He had her by the arm, lifting her so her feet barely touched the ground in a frog march to the nearest trees, already in shadow as the sun set beyond a range of mountains to the west. She wore a skirt and simple blouse, long hair in a thick tail dangling between her narrow shoulders.