She stood up slowly, tilting and twisting her neck. She stepped up to the counter and looked around. "Not that there should be any danger."

"Right."

"If you need a translator there are several Ingreji speakers in the medical-clinic tent." She gave me a sideways one-armed hug and left, ostensibly by the rear door, but really from the screened corner at the back of the tent.

I smiled at the girls at the counter and pointed to myself, careful to do it with my right hand. "Cent." I tapped my sternum. Then tilted my hand out toward them.

The girl who reminded me of Tara was called Anika. And there was Rupa, Megh, Kanta, and Sathia. We amused ourselves for several minutes by testing my retention of each name. All of them had black hair and amazingly beautiful brown eyes, but fortunately their saris were of different colors and their nose ornaments differed.

More refugees came for water filters and rations and I stepped outside, watching the river, while the girls did their spiel and demonstration.

There was commerce happening. Several boats were selling vegetables and fruit to those refugees with money. And some boats were taking money to ferry refugees away, possibly to family in unflooded areas, since most of these people's homes were still inundated.

I heard the whine of a powerboat and saw a white-and-green fiberglass police launch come in from upriver, planing, way out in the regular channel. It turned toward us and slowed, coasting on its own bow wave for a moment, then came in slowly, occasionally detouring around flooded structures and trees.

As it got closer I saw one uniformed policeman driving with an older women in elaborate dress standing beside him. Four other men wearing tube sarongs-the lungi-and starched white shirts, sat in the bow.

I wondered if they were more aid workers, when one of the girls behind me gasped.

I looked back at them, but the front of the tent was empty. I went to the counter and looked over. They were on the floor, huddled into the corner where the tent wall met the counter.

They looked terrified.

I looked back at the police boat as it gunned its engines to push the bow up onto the grass at the shoreline. The men in the white shirts were helping the woman over the bow. She shrugged their arms off and jumped down, looking around, then waved her hand at them, flapping it toward the crowd. They moved off while the policeman tied the boat's bowline to a stunted shrub.

I reached up and began releasing the ties that held the rolled-up tent wall. The girls saw what I was doing and leaped, up to the other ties, quickly freeing the panel. It dropped down onto the counter and I tugged it outward, letting it fall all the way to the ground, then ducked into the tent at the corner. There was still a battery-powered fluorescent light on at the back of the tent. I held my finger to my lips, stepped back to the light, and turned it off.

I went out the back door and tied the flap shut, then went looking for Rama.

"Anyone speak English?" I asked at the clinic tent next door.

A man wearing a Bangladeshi army uniform, with a stethoscope slung over his neck said, "Yes?"

"I'm looking for Ramachandra, one of the aid workers."

He nodded. "Rama, yes. I saw him this morning, but not lately. Have you looked at their supply tent?"

"Sorry. Don't know where that is."

He pointed out the door toward the trees and tarps. "In the middle."

"Thanks. Uh, bhalo achi."

He grinned, a flash of white, and said, "I wish you luck." But it came out like one word. "Iwishyouluck."

It was a lot easier to walk through the trees than it had been eight hours earlier, but the mud was still bad and I was grateful for the boots.

I found Rama outside another army tent set up in the middle of the trees. I hadn't noticed it the night before. The rain had made everything dark and the tent's dark green fabric had faded into the murk. Rama was lying in a string hammock, reading.

"Rama," I called.

He turned his head and his eyebrows went up.

"Where did you go all day, little one?"

I shrugged. "Slept. Not adjusted to this time zone. Can you translate for me?"

"The chukri girls?"

"Yes."

He groaned. "I've been talking to Shahjahan off and on all day. I thought he was going to leave them alone?"

"I don't know who you mean."

"The teacher from the madrasa. The one who fell in the mud?"

"Oh. No. It's not him. A police boat just pulled up with a policeman, a woman, and several other men. When the girls saw them, they hid. They looked terrified. I need to ask them what's going on."

Rama swung out of the hammock. "No idea. Let's go see."

He led me out of the trees on the river side, near the madrasa students and teachers. The policeman was there, talking with Shahjahan, the headmaster. Rama threaded his way to the outer ring of seated students and asked one of them something in Bengali. I moved closer as the student answered. Rama turned to me and said, "They're looking for the girls. The policeman says they're thieves-that they stole valuable property under cover of the flooding."

I frowned. "What? Did you see them bring anything?"

Rama shook his head. "Only themselves."

The madrasa headmaster apparently had the same point. He said something back to the policeman and Rama translated. "What property did they steal? They arrived here with only their clothes."

I winced. I guess we'd gotten beyond the point of claiming they'd never arrived here.

Rama exhaled. "You said he came with a woman? A police woman?"

"No uniform. She wore a fancy sari." I swiveled my head around. "There she is."

The woman was up at the north end of the crowd, walking through the refugees, peering at faces, occasionally asking questions.

"I bet she's their shordani. And they brought mastaans." Rama said. At my blank look he translated. "Musclemen. Gangsters."

"Why the policeman, then?"

"Oh, he's their cop, probably. The local police on the take. The brothels have to pay off the police to operate."

The policeman was shouting at Shahjahan now, but his students didn't like it, apparently, for several of them stood up abruptly. The policeman's voice dropped in volume, suddenly, and he stepped back.

I heard a scream and then another from the north, from the tents. I said, "They've found the girls!"

Rama yelled something in Bengali and ran toward the tent. I ran back into the trees and jumped to the screened back corner of the tent.

It wasn't as dark as it was before. The front flap at the corner had been pulled up onto the counter and there was a gap. I heard a man yelling and saw movement between me and the light.

I moved forward and saw a silhouetted man struggling with two of the girls, pulling them along by their upper arms. I jumped in place and added thirty feet per second toward him. My left shoulder hit his back. He flew into the counter and flipped over it, ripping the wall of the tent away and tumbling out into the sunlight, wrapped in the heavy fabric. I fell to the floor of the tent, my shoulder numb, the wind knocked out of me.

With the light flooding in I saw that the girls he'd been manhandling were Rupa and Kanta, now staring at me and rubbing their arms where the man's grip had torn free. The other girls were not in sight. Gasping, I struggled to my feet and leaned over the counter. Two men were pulling Megh and Sathia toward the boat. The woman, the shordani, was already stepping up onto the bow, pulling Anika after her by the hair.

The students from the madrasa were following Rama up the shoreline, hampered by the other refugees scattered across the grass. The refugees had jumped to their feet and were looking around, trying to figure what danger the crowd of students was running from.

Rama was shouting, the students were shouting, the policeman, trying to catch up with the students from behind, was shouting. I wished I understood Bengali.

The policeman went straight to the boat, pushing though the crowd until he reached the water's edge and then splashing up the shallows.

The students stopped, forming a barrier between the two men with Megh and Sathia, and the boat.

The mastaans tried to push forward, pulling the girls behind, and the students shoved the men back, some of them also pulling at the girls, trying to get them away from the mastaans.

The mastaans yanked the girls back and one of them reached under his shirt to the waistline of his lungi, coming out with a blocky automatic. He fired a single shot into the air and the crowd shrank back.

Oh, no.

I was breathing again but the numbness in my shoulder was changing to a sharp ache. I thought about jumping to the man with the gun, but I saw him duck suddenly, as a rock flew overhead. He pointed his gun toward the thrower, and three more rocks hit him from different directions. He clutched at his head and dropped to the ground. Sathia, released, turned to Megh and pulled her away from the remaining mastaan, who dropped his hands to his sides and eyed the crowd.

The motor on the police launch roared to life, and it backed away from the shore even as the crowd lunged toward it. I could see the shordani, one hand still gripping Anika's hair, yelling at the policeman as she gestured back toward the shore with her free hand. The policeman gestured at the crowd and yelled back.

The fourth mastaan, who'd been at the south end of the camp and not part of the struggle, came running up the shoreline before plunging into the water, to swim out to the boat. The mastaan who'd released Megh shoved his way through the crowd and followed, leaving the man who'd been struck with stones and the man I'd shoulder-checked back at the tent.

I would've just let them go except for Anika.

I jumped to the boat.

The policeman tried to twist around when I hooked his belt from behind, but I added thirty feet a second velocity up and we both rose off the deck.

I jumped back to the control station almost immediately. The policeman, yelling, rose to fifteen feet before he fell back down. The current had moved the boat sideways enough that he splashed into the water, just missing the gunwale.

I turned my head to the shordani and grinned. She let go of Anika and leaped off the side of the boat, shrieking.

Anika looked at me with wide eyes, but she stayed where she was. There were lifejackets under a bench locker and I threw four out, two toward the shordani and the policeman, and two toward the mastaans who'd were swimming toward the boat. The controls were straightforward, a throttle and a wheel, and I gunned the engine, pulling well out of range of the mastaans, then turned the boat back into the shore. The crowd shrank back as the bow skidded up onto the grass but Rama came forward, slowly, followed by Megh, Sathia, Rupa, and Kanta.

Rama was looking stunned. "How did you sneak onto the boat? You were behind me!"

I like your version, I thought.

"And how did you throw the cop into the air?"

I smiled weakly. "Adrenaline?"

He opened his mouth to say something else but I cut in. "I'm thinking you might use this boat to take the girls over to that village you found, the one with the Imam from the antitrafficking network? I mean, if you're okay in a boat."

He looked offended. "I'm Bangladeshi. I can handle a boat."

"Then, after, maybe you could leave the boat someplace different? Someplace away from here?"

He looked out into the water. The life-jacketed shordani, policeman, and mastaans had drifted past the end of the refugee camp, well into the current.

"I'll take it back upstream to Bhangura. That's where it belongs." He gestured at the distant orange dots. "But when that policeman gets to a phone, you probably want to be gone from here, you know?"

I nodded. "How do you say goodbye in Bangla?"

"Abar dakha hobe."

I smiled at the girls, put my hands together, and said "Abar dakha hobe." I thought about jumping away, right there, but there was always the chance that the people really thought I'd stowed away on the boat.

A chance.

Anika looked upset and said something quickly, in Bengali, her eyes shifting back and forth between me and Rama.

Rama translated, "She hopes you aren't leaving because of helping them, that you won't get in trouble with the police."

I shrugged. "I have to get back to school. I could only be here a short time, anyway. Good luck in your new lives."

Rama translated.

Almost in unison, the girls said, "Bhalo achi!"

I nodded gravely. "Kichhu mone koro na."

Back at the tent, the man I'd turned into a tent burrito was stirring. I wondered if he had spinal damage, but he suddenly sat up, twisting back and forth, trying to get clear of the tightly wrapped fabric.

Can't be too bad.

An army corpsman from the clinic tent came over and helped the man worm his way out of the tent fabric. I thought about hiding but was pretty sure he'd never seen what-or who-hit him.

Behind me, I heard the motor of the police boat rev up again. I looked out to see it pull away from shore with Rama at the controls. The girls saw me looking and waved.

The man shook off the corpsman and staggered toward the boat, but it was well out from the shore by the time he'd managed ten steps.

I waved back until the girls were too small to see.

The man walked toward the shore and found his bleeding compatriot sitting on the grass where he'd been felled by the rocks. The corpsman hadn't discovered him yet. There was no sign of his gun. I hoped he didn't have it.

I went back to the tent and checked inside, looking for anything personal that Mom or Dad may have left. But there were only the supplies: rations, tarps, water filters.

I stepped back into the screened corner and jumped away.

Dad was at the warehouse.

He took one look at me and dropped the box of rations he was holding onto the concrete floor. "Are you all right?"