by Jeremy Bates
Scarlett, however, was focused solely on Sal. He was lying beside her, his eyes closed, his face wet. She took his hand in hers and squeezed, thinking briefly about how he’d done the same to her last week in the hospital. He squeezed back weakly. His jaw muscles were bunched, as if he was in severe pain, and she had no doubt he was. The bullet had gone into his thigh, just above the knee. Given the amount of blood soaking his pant leg, it looked as if it might have hit a deep artery or vein—and if that was the case, she knew he wouldn’t make it until Danny arrived.
She was losing him, and there was nothing she could do about it. She felt as if she’d been caught up in a powerful mudslide, and all she could do was hang on to something and pray for the best.
She gripped the hemline of her dress with shaking hands and tore upward, creating a slit. She pulled horizontally, parallel with the lower edge, until she’d ripped free a long piece of fabric. She folded the cloth in half, corner to corner. Folded it again and again until she had a makeshift bandage that was roughly three inches wide and several layers thick. “Can you hear me, Sal?” she said softly.
He nodded.
“You’re bleeding a lot. I have a tourniquet. I’m going to tie it around your leg. It’s going to hurt—”
“No.”
“I have to, Sal.”
“It’s too late.”
“Don’t say that.”
His eyes opened. They were filled with rage.
“Help me up,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“Help me get to my feet.”
“You can’t stand. Not with your leg—”
“I’m not going to die lying down.”
“Sal—”
“Help me.”
Fighting back tears, Scarlett moved beside him so he could loop an arm around her neck. She stood, pulling him upright with her, taking half his weight. She didn’t know what she was doing, not really. Her mind was numb; she was just going through the motions. A part of her, a part she didn’t want to recognize, thought maybe she did know. Knew she was helping Sal kill himself.
Rambo, who had been overseeing the fire, saw them and laughed. “Where do you think you are going?”
Scarlett could feel Sal shaking—the stress of trying to stand on one leg.
“I love you, cara mia,” he said in a gruff voice. “I’m sorry. I should have been a better husband.”
“I love you too, Sal,” she told him, and now the tears were flowing freely. “Always.”
Rambo barked something to two of his men. They set down the firewood stacked in their arms and started toward them. Sal abruptly shoved Scarlett aside, hard enough she fell to the ground. She stared up at him through the rain and tears and watched as he reached behind his back and took out a pistol that was stuck in the waistband of his pants, against the small of his back.
“Sal! Don’t!”
He swung the gun around and fired two shots at the two man-boys coming toward him. He took the grenade from his pocket, tugged free the pull-ring of the safety pin with his teeth, and lobbed it twenty feet away into the fire pit, where five-foot-tall flames were now tangoing in the storm.
Mayhem immediately broke out. The rebels darted for cover—only there was no cover to be found. Seconds later the grenade went off with a deafening explosion that out-boomed the thunder overhead. Scarlett turned her face away, flattening herself against the ground as a wave of heat blew over her. It scorched her neck and arms and calves. She turned back. Smoke was rising from where the fire had been. Burning sticks and tinder lay scattered everywhere in a twenty-foot radius. Several rebels were writhing in the mud, screaming, limbs missing, stumps spraying blood. Others were doubled over, clutching shrapnel wounds.
Sal, who had either dropped to his chest moments before the blast went off, or had been blown down involuntarily, now pushed himself to his feet once more. He fired off several rounds into the confusion. One kid went down, blood arcing from his throat. The rest who hadn’t been injured or killed—which was still a good dozen or so—took aim and let loose a phalanx of bullets.
Sal stiffened and spasmed. The pistol fell from his hand. He collapsed to his side. His face lolled toward Scarlett, and she watched in abject misery as the last of his life drained from his eyes until they stared at her like marbles, glassy and dead.
“No—” she said, the word trailing off into a sob.
Rambo, who had apparently survived the chaos unscathed, stomped over to her. He pinched her cheeks between his fingers painfully, pulling her face to within inches of his own. His skin was rain-streaked and black as polished onyx, his lips curled back in menace, showing bone-white teeth.
“I was going to give you a quick death,” he hissed furiously, spittle flying from his mouth. “Not anymore. You are going to watch me eat your friend. Then I am going to eat you! Alive.”
He released her face and snapped his fingers. Two rebels pulled Sal’s body across the grass toward what remained of the fire.
“Stop it,” Scarlett said, her voice flat, mechanical.
A third rebel pulled a machete from his belt.
Jesus Mary, don’t do that—
With the first two kids holding Sal’s arms from his body at a ninety-degree angle, the third swung the machete down in a deadly arc. The blade made a wet sound as it disappeared into Sal’s shoulder. Scarlett lurched forward and vomited. Through stinging, tearful eyes she saw one of the kids toss the dismembered limb onto the fire.
Why are they doing this, lord, why are they doing this?
“Please,” she said. “Please stop.”
They cut off his other arm.
Scarlett fainted.
Chapter 33
The storm was at its apex, fully unleashed. Fists of thunder and claws of lightning pounded and tore at the belly of the sky, ripping fresh wounds that bled more rain.
Fitzgerald watched from his vantage point high atop the church bell tower as the Mai-Mai rebels hacked off Salvador Brazza’s arms and legs. He shook his head. No man deserved a death like that. But he was more concerned about what the arrival of the rebels meant for his escape.
After Brazza had left the church to chase Jahja, Fitzgerald had worked his way across the floor until his bound hands could reach trusty old Carnwennan, which was lodged in the belt of Mr. AQ with the caved-in skull.
Just as he’d finished sawing through the restraints, a gunshot had gone off, and he’d known either Brazza or Jahja would be coming back at any moment. Jahja would kill him, and trusting Brazza was about as foolhardy as trusting a hungry shark not to eat you.
So he had shoved open a door that led outside, to serve as a diversion, then limped stiff-legged to the stairwell behind the chancel, climbed several stairs until he was out of sight, and readied himself to spring on whoever came looking for him. No one did.
Brazza returned, swore up a storm when he believed Fitzgerald had vamoosed, then made a call on the sat phone, arranging for transport to pick him up. Cox returned next and spun a story about a struggle in a mine.
After screwing around with the bodies of their fellow hostages for a while, they left the church to help another apparent hostage. Fitzgerald lumbered to the narthex and retrieved the AKM from Mr. AQ #2. He was in no condition to finish off Brazza, let alone make an escape, so he slowly and painfully crawled to the top of the bell tower, where he could watch the cavalry arrive and hold off an attack if it came to that.
He had never planned on Mai-Mai rebels.
There was only one explanation for their unexpected arrival: they used the town as some sort of base, holing up in the church from time to time whenever they were in the neighborhood.
It seemed Al Qaeda wasn’t as smart as he’d given them credit for.
Down on the ground the rebels had finished quartering Brazza, placing each limb on the fire to cook. Now they turned their attention to Scarlett Cox. They spread her arms and legs wide, like da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. They were going to butcher her as well.
Fitzgerald closed his eyes. She was none of his business. He had to watch out for himself. Keep a low profile. Escape in the morning when his strength had improved. But in his mind’s eye one scene played itself over and over again. His wife, Eryn, and daughter, Biddy. Eryn and Biddy chopped up into pieces, their mutilated trunks preserved in the -20-degree Northern Ireland winter weather, frozen in an ice rink of blood on the floor of the living room where he had opened presents with them on Christmas day one month before. Steel railway spikes nailing their limbs unceremoniously to the wall above the sofa, waterfalls of dried blood staining the wallpaper. Their heads sitting on the fireplace mantel like game trophies. Framed family photographs—purposely untouched by the mobsters—mocking and contrasting their smiling faces with their hideous death grimaces.
Fitzgerald’s eyes flashed open. He could feel them burning with hatred, burning red. His jaw was clenched so tightly it hurt. He wanted it to hurt. His hands squeezed the grips of the AKM hard enough to turn his knuckles white. A deep, primitive growl escaped his throat.
Hell if he was going to sit by and watch when he could do something about it this time.
He shoved the barrel of the Kalashnikov through the carved stone pillars of the balustrade. Flipped the selector to semi, tugged back the reloading handle, took aim through the open iron sight.
A rebel kneeling beside Cox’s limp body raised a machete in the air.
Fitzgerald squeezed the trigger. The full-metal-jacketed bullet ripped a hole through the center of the man’s chest. Inside the heated bore of the rifle, expanding gas set off a domino effect that ultimately drove the bolt carrier back, ejected the spent round, and chambered a new one from the magazine, all in a matter of milliseconds. He zeroed in on a second rebel staring dumbly at his dead mate and squeezed the trigger again. The bastard dropped like a rag doll. The rifle spat out another spent casing from the ejection port.
Pop, pop, pop. Three more down and out.
The rebels finally figured out what was happening and returned fire. Bullets chewed into the stone around Fitzgerald’s face. He flattened himself against the floor. The shit-for-brains continued firing, wasting ammunition.
Five down so far.
He no longer had the leisure to take proper aim, so he flicked the selector up to full automatic, shoved the barrel between the pillars once more, and squeezed off a firestorm of bullets.
The rebels scattered like billiard balls, but they had few places to take shelter.
Six, seven, eight.
Four remaining—
Fitzgerald saw the rebel with the RPG-7 too late. There was a great boom, a puff of gray-blue smoke.
The grenade screamed toward him.
Chapter 34
When Scarlett opened her eyes, she felt as though she was in the middle of a warzone. Rain gushed from the purple-black sky in driving sheets while gunfire rattled and burst all around her. The stench of burnt gunpowder and death filled her nostrils and mouth. She had no idea who was firing at whom until she saw the muzzle blasts from high atop the church bell tower.
From behind her came a startling boom. A line of smoke streaked through the sky. The upper part of the church tower exploded in a burst of stone confetti. The tat-tat-tat of gunshots continued for a few more seconds before trickling to a stop.
Scarlett looked numbly around. Bodies lay everywhere. And Sal.
Oh God, Sal.
She turned away.
Rambo shouted at his three remaining soldiers, who took off toward the church, apparently to finish off whoever had been up there attacking them. He marched over to where she lay. “Who was that?” he demanded.
She shook her head.
Rambo fired his gun so close to her face she felt the displacement of air as the bullet whistled past and plowed into the earth. Her already ringing ears rang louder than ever. Rambo continued shouting at her, but she couldn’t hear anything. He spat out a final curse, then turned his attention to the three man-boys who had reemerged from the church. They were carrying the Irishman by the arms and legs, just as they’d carried Thunder. They tossed him in the mud.
So he never took off after all.
Rambo slapped Fitzgerald back and forth across the face until he came to. For a split second his eyes met Scarlett’s, and something passed between the two of them, though she had no idea what.
A peal of thunder crashed overhead. She realized she could hear once more.
“You killed my men!” Rambo was yelling.
“A jolly good time,” Fitzgerald hissed in that gravelly voice of his.
Rambo said something to the kid with the DiCaprio T-shirt, who quickly scavenged the machete and handed it to Rambo. He pointed the blade at the Irishman and grinned wickedly.
“What should I take first?” he snarled. “Your balls or your heart? I like the taste of both.”
Chapter 35
The Bell 206L Long Ranger was flying low and fast over the treetops. Danny was seated beside the pilot in the cockpit. Both men were wearing night vision goggles, which made the sky and ground appear a bright pea green. Danny’s M249 SAW was propped between his legs, the same belt-fed light machine gun every branch of the U.S. armed forces used. Two members of his team were in the rear cabin. He’d been forced to leave four behind in Dar es Salaam because the helicopter only seated seven, and Sal had told him there were three survivors in total, including himself and Scarlett.
“There,” Danny said through the microphone in the Kevlar helmet. “A clearing.”
“I see it,” the pilot confirmed. “What’s that? A fire?”
“Do a flyby.”
The pilot banked left and flew over the fire. “Jesus, are those bodies?”
Danny frowned. Sal had told him he’d taken out four terrorists, but it looked like at least a dozen bodies down there. He counted five, not three, people standing erect. Something was wrong. “Land,” he said, “Quickly.”
The pilot swung back around, braked, and flared as he prepared to touch down. Danny was still watching the ground when one of the grainy-green people started waving. He or she apparently didn’t think the pilot could see them. Then Danny realized the person wasn’t waving but pointing. He followed the direction of the signal and identified the very recognizable shape of a man with an RPG on his shoulder. “Bank!” he shouted.
“What?” the pilot said.
Danny lunged across the cockpit and yanked the cyclic to the right. The helicopter rolled, but not fast enough. An explosion rocked the tail rotor. The pilot tried a desperate autorotation. Too late. The helicopter oscillated wildly, drifting sideways toward a building. There was a loud beep-beep-beeping, like a truck backing up, as the stone wall rushed up to meet them.
Danny guessed he had about three seconds to live.
Chapter 36
When Scarlett heard a throbbing noise, she looked up into the raging sky and saw a helicopter beat past fifty feet overhead. The downwash of the rotors caused her muddy, torn dress and the knee-high grass to blow wildly.
Danny!
Rambo tossed the machete aside and ran. Not fleeing, she realized. He was going for the rocket launcher. The helicopter came back and hovered. Scarlett screamed and waved, pointing frantically at Rambo. It was no use. Rambo reloaded the rocket launcher and fired, scoring a direct hit. The helicopter’s tail rotor burst into a ball of flames. The entire thing spun out of control and careened inexorably toward the church. The main rotor scraped stone, threw up a flare of sparks, and snapped free. It whirled through the air and slammed into the ground like a shuriken, shooting a fan of mud into the air. Half the church wall collapsed inward while the crumpled helicopter fuselage crashed to the ground like a big, broken toy.
The rescue/extraction was doomed. Scarlett understood that in an epiphany of despair. Knowing she had no choice left but to make a run for it, she glanced around madly for Thunder, unwilling to leave him behind, and saw the Irishman instead. He stood tall, a bloody knife in his hand. The two teenag
ers who had been holding him were lying at his feet, dead. He must have taken them out while everybody had been focused on the helicopter above.
He looked at her, cocked his arm at the elbow, launched the knife.
She screamed.
The blade flashed past her head. She spun to follow its trajectory and saw it splat into the chest of Rambo. He released the assault rifle he’d picked up, scowled as if life was suddenly unfair, and collapsed to the ground. Scarlett turned back to the Irishman and was about to say something—maybe even thank him—when, beyond him, the door to the ruined helicopter cockpit shoved open. A dark shape stumbled out, dragging a large gun. The words that had been on the tip of her tongue faltered, and she rushed toward the bedlam scene to help whoever had survived.
The man pulled off his helmet, and Scarlett immediately recognized the dark good looks of Danny Zamir. He heaved over in a fit of coughs.
“Is anyone else in there?” she demanded. The fuselage hadn’t exploded, but it was on fire, engulfed in billowing black smoke.
Danny shook his head. Something inside her shriveled.
“Sal?” he said.
“No.”
Danny didn’t react. Or at least she didn’t think he did. Not until she noticed the cords of muscle standing out in his neck. “How?” he asked very quietly.
She told him.
“Harah,” he mumbled. He hefted the machine gun across his chest decisively. “Who’s left?”
“Just me and Thunder and—”
“Hey! You!” Danny shouted. “Where do you think you’re going?”
The Irishman, who had been limping away toward the woods, stopped. “Where there are some rebels,” he said, “there are likely more. I for one am going to be gone when they arrive.”
Danny stiffened. He’d obviously had no idea the man was the assassin sent for Sal until he’d heard the accent.