by Gayle Wilson
He waited, unable to help, as she worked. Although the darkness was too solid to determine without any doubt that they were alone, he could hear nothing inside the bunker but the sound of their still-ragged breathing and the steady whisper of the moving blade.
Outside, the C130 continued to pound the compound. Whatever weaponry Abdul Rahim’s men had, and Landon had no doubt they were well equipped, they couldn’t hope to touch that electronically protected “ghost,” flying high above their heads.
He felt the leather part. As Grace began to unwind it from around his wrists, the blood flowing into his hands caused him to bow his head against the agony. He locked his teeth in his lower lip, fighting against any outward expression of it.
Before the pain had passed, Grace’s hands fastened on either side of his face, lifting it. In the darkness, her mouth closed over his.
Her lips were cold and, like her hands, they trembled. Surprised by their first almost tentative touch, it had taken him a second to react. Then his arm closed hard around her, dragging her against his chest, as his mouth began to devour hers. Claiming what had always been his. Reclaiming what, through his stupidity, he had once thrown away as if it had been worth nothing to him.
Her response was immediate, her hunger as great as his. From long experience, he understood that was a reaction to the realization they were both alive, when only minutes before it had seemed they couldn’t be. Maybe part of this was also because she had realized her long ordeal was almost over. But at least some of her reaction, he was convinced, was the result of the same sense of absolute rightness he felt at having her again in his arms.
Another of the howitzer’s shells exploded outside the door of the reinforced bunker. Grace’s lips broke contact with his, but she ducked her head, burrowing it against his chest. He tightened his hold around her body until the resulting reverberation had died away.
“Since they’re up there, doesn’t that mean they have to know we’re down here?” she asked.
“Except, from where they are, we look like everyone else in the village.”
Shadowy, antlike movements on a radar screen.
He could tell by the sounds filtering in from outside that Abdul Rahim’s forces were starting to mount a resistance. Although he knew they possessed shoulder-to-air antiaircraft missiles, either taken from the Soviets or obtained on the black market, he wasn’t too worried.
The Spooky’s electronic shielding would protect it from anything other than a random hit. And as high as the plane could circle and still conduct its killing bombardment, there was no one down here who would get that lucky tonight.
“But…you do think they’re looking for us?”
Or carrying out someone’s orders, maybe those of Grace’s successor, to hit the opium dealers where it would hurt most—in their warehouses and transport hubs. Still, with as many people as were supposedly searching for Grace, it was entirely possible that someone had finally gotten off his lazy, bureaucratic ass and managed to buy some accurate intel.
Possible, he thought with the cynicism of long experience, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to count on it.
“You leave any orders to strike the drug dealers on your desk in Kabul?” he asked, deliberately imbuing the question with a hint of amusement.
“I didn’t have time to locate my desk. I’m not sure they had even provided me with one.”
“Then maybe they’ve already replaced you.”
“Or maybe,” she said, countering his determined negativism, “someone looked at the satellite images and figured out where we are.”
“Or maybe we’re still on our own.”
If this was a drug raid rather than a rescue, there was no guarantee that the Special Forces would follow the C130’s strike. Maybe the gunship had been sent here to destroy the warehouses and the processing plant. Maybe this attack had nothing at all to do with them, other than some kind of retaliation for Grace’s kidnapping.
“What does that mean?”
“That I’m not sure we can count on boots on the ground as part of this assault.”
“But…that’s what the C130 does. Provides air support for a ground operation.”
Trust Grace to know. And she was right, of course. It was just that Landon had learned through the years not to count on anyone but himself. An old lesson that he believed was still as valid as the day he’d first mastered it.
“Not always. And I’m not willing to wait until that plane up there turns for home to find out whether that’s what they’re doing or not.”
They had left the bodies of their guards in the middle of the compound. As soon as the C130 was no longer on patrol above it, Abdul Rahim’s men would find them. When they did, the search would be on. And the last place they should be then was where they were now.
“So…what do we do?”
“We get the hell out of here.”
“On foot?”
“That’s the safest way.”
Unless they wanted to start searching for some vehicle in which someone had left the keys or for one old enough that he could hotwire it. He had no doubt there would be one or the other around here, but he didn’t want to try to find it with the C130 circling above them and Abdul Rahim’s men on his tail.
Far better to get away from the compound under the cover of darkness. Then, if Grace were right about the Special Forces moving in, they could come back down at daylight and make contact with them.
“You mean…just leave? Without water? Or transportation?” Each phrase had been separate, articulated as she fully comprehended what his suggestion entailed.
Of course, he was the one intimately familiar with the fat man’s idea of hospitality. Dying of dehydration was preferable to the kind of fun and games Abdul Rahim had in store for them. Far preferable.
“If you’re right,” he said, “it will only be a couple of hours until we can come back.”
If the Special Forces had been dispatched to the village to search for Grace, they would know by first light. Despite his cynicism, he hoped like hell she was right. There could be nothing that would excite him more right now than seeing a couple of dozen U.S. Rangers show up down here.
It just wasn’t something he was willing to count on.
Chapter Seventeen
As they had picked their way up the mountainside in the darkness, they had listened to the continuing gunfire from the village they’d left behind. They had climbed for perhaps half an hour before they found the cave where they had eventually taken shelter.
Judging by the sounds of the battle below, however, Abdul Rahim wasn’t going to have an opportunity to mount a search for the two of them anytime soon. He had more important concerns. And with the confusion inherent in this kind of attack, he might not even be aware yet that his prisoners were missing.
The only danger Landon could see in hiding on the mountainside until the fireworks were over was the possibility the C130 had been sent to hit the heroin processing operation rather than to provide air support for search and rescue. Even if that were the case, it still made more sense to him for Grace to be here and not in the village. He was willing to risk not making contact with a rescue team to avoid the chance of Grace being recaptured by that sadistic bastard.
“That’s not the C130,” she whispered.
The gunfire from below was different now. Short bursts from automatic weaponry were followed by relatively long periods of silence. A pattern that seemed to indicate someone was moving from building to building, systematically taking control of each.
“I think there’s an assault team on the ground.”
“Then we need to get back down there before they leave,” Grace urged, gripping his arm.
“It’s too dangerous right now.”
“But…what if they leave without us?”
“If they’re searching for you, they won’t. Not before sunrise, at least. This isn’t some prisoner snatch being carried out in a hostile country, remember. This is territory
we control.
“Maybe in theory. You know how far from reality that is.”
“If they’ve been sent to find you, they aren’t going anywhere until they’re sure you’re not there,” he reiterated. “But if this is some kind of retaliatory drug raid, you’d be in as much danger in that village right now as Abdul Rahim’s men are. Actually, you’d be in greater danger. After all, his plans for you were interrupted by this. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to have you back under his control.”
The threat shut her up, if only momentarily. Given his own questions as to whether this was the wisest course, Landon supposed he’d have to be satisfied with her silence. He wished it were as easy to quiet his own demons of doubt.
“Is that what happened before? You were under his control?”
“Most people don’t live through mistakes of that magnitude. Unfortunately, I did.”
“‘Unfortunately’?”
He had said too much. And he had no explanation for why. After years of keeping what had happened on that last mission locked inside, he had just revealed far more than he’d told anyone about it. Even Griff. And he’d revealed it to the one person whose opinion mattered even more to him than that of the head of the External Security Team.
“Whatever happened…” Grace began and then hesitated. “Everybody has a breaking point, Landon. No matter how brave or how tough you are, there’s a point at which no one can resist torture. We learned that from Vietnam. Actually, we knew it long before ’Nam, but since then we’ve officially acknowledged the existence of that limit.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
He sounded like a child. Or a fool. It didn’t matter to anyone how he felt about what had happened to him. Not “officially” or any other way.
“Is that why you left the Agency?”
It was, of course, but probably not in the way she meant. The loss of his eye and the other injuries he’d suffered had simply given him a legitimate excuse for resigning. They hadn’t really been the reason he’d done so.
“I left because I didn’t feel I could be an effective operative any longer.” That, too, was part of the truth.
“I doubt Griff agreed with that assessment.”
“It wasn’t Griff’s decision.”
“Maybe not, but… I know he wanted you for the Phoenix. If he had thought you weren’t capable of doing the job—”
“Let it go, Grace. It really doesn’t matter. Not any more.”
“But it was Abdul Rahim, wasn’t it? He’s the one who did that to you.”
She meant the loss of his eye. And she was right, of course. As traumatic as that had been, Abdul Rahim’s threat to remove the other had been far worse. One of the many forms of psychological torture he’d employed.
Landon swallowed the rush of bile into his throat, remembering terrors he didn’t want to remember. Images he had steadfastly refused for years to let allow back into his head.
Except in his nightmares. Those he hadn’t been able to control.
Griff had urged him to talk to one of the CIA’s psychiatrists. He probably should have, but he’d known even then that no matter what mumbo-jumbo they would come up with to explain what he’d done to stay alive, it wouldn’t change what had happened. Nothing could.
“Why? Why you? Why him?”
“I passed the word to the Pakistani authorities about a shipment he was sending over the Pass. They confiscated it, of course, but like almost everything else around here, the information about who had tipped them off was apparently for sale. Finding out my name and location cost Abdul Rahim much less than he had lost on the shipment. In any case, he seemed to think he’d gotten a bargain.”
“He wanted retribution for what he’d lost.”
“At first. And then…” He took a breath, again fighting those nightmare images. “And then it got personal. It still is.”
“And he’s the reason you came back.” Her voice was low and flat. Without emotion.
She wouldn’t believe a denial. Why should she? Besides, she deserved the truth. At least as much of it as he could tell.
“What Griff asked you to do…” she went on. “Finding me. That was just an excuse to return.”
His motives in coming back to Afghanistan were so complicated by what had happened on that last mission, he knew he couldn’t explain them to her. And in trying to make her understand, he also knew he would hurt her. Something he’d never intended to do.
The truth was that he had come here to find Grace. And to get her safely out of the country. But again, that was only part of the truth. The rest was between him and Abdul Rahim.
Personal.
“But if you were so determined to find him—” She stopped, obviously figuring it all out as she went. “They restricted your passport so you couldn’t come back. God, that sounds like something those bastards would do.”
They both understood that the State Department wasn’t worried about protecting him. It was the possibility of having a rogue agent on the loose in Afghanistan, an agent with a personal agenda and a thirst for revenge, they had tried to prevent.
“After 9/11 Abdul Rahim was smart enough to see the writing on the wall. Suddenly—and at a time when the Agency desperately needed one—he became a highly reliable source of information about the activities of the Taliban and their forces. Whatever…enmity there was between us very quickly became secondary to that concern.”
As it should have been. Besides…
“So when Griff asked you to find me,” Grace said, “you jumped at the chance to come back and confront him. And the friend with the truck?” she went on. “The one who was going to take us into Pakistan? Did he ever exist? Or was that just part of the plan to get you here?”
“You know me better than that, Grace. I would never intentionally involve you with someone like Abdul Rahim.”
“So…you were going to take me into Pakistan and then what?”
“After I had put you on a plane to Washington, I was going to come back across the mountains.”
Just get her on a plane and out of his life again. That had been his original intent. At least until he’d seen her.
“So the encounter with Reynolds, Abdul Rahim’s ambush…You’re saying you set none of that into motion?”
“My intent was exactly what I told you. Come in through Pakistan and take you back out the same way. Everything went wrong, almost from the first.”
“And now? If those are Special Forces down there, Landon, what’s the plan now?”
“I’m going to do what I promised Griff. I’m going to put you into their very capable hands.”
“And then you’re going after Abdul Rahim. What makes you think that he’ll still be there? He’s a bully, and most bullies are cowards. He won’t stay to fight. He may order his men to, but he’ll be gone long before dawn.”
The anger in her voice had been replaced at the last by something that sounded like triumph. Except she was wrong, of course. Not about her assessment of Abdul Rahim, but about the effectiveness of the plan of attack.
“Nobody’s getting out of that village tonight. Not with that C130 patrolling overhead. You saw how quickly the equipment honed in on our movement. If Abdul Rahim attempts to leave, he’ll be signing his own death warrant.”
“Good,” Grace said, the anger back. “Then it will all be over, and you won’t have to do a thing.”
It won’t ever be over. Not for me. Not unless I pull the trigger on that fat bastard myself.
“Promise me something,” he said, realizing that he might be missing out on his last chance to do exactly that.
“Not until I know what it is.”
“I want you to wait up here.”
“While you go down there and try to find Abdul Rahim? If you show up down there now, looking like you do, you’re just another of his men to that assault team.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
“But I’m not willing to let you
take it.”
“Grace—”
“I’m your passport, Landon. I’m your safe passage down there. The only one you’ve got. If they are looking for me, they aren’t going to shoot first and ask questions later. And even if they aren’t, I think they’ll recognize me. After all, there can’t be too many ‘ice maidens’ roaming around in this part of the world.”
“That’s insane.” Despite his denial, he found he was thinking about it.
“I’m your ticket to Abdul Rahim. You know it and I know it. If we go down there together, we kill two birds with one stone. I end up in the hands of coalition forces, which is what you promised Griff, and you have your chance at him.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Yeah? Well, so is blood poisoning.”
The non sequitur threw him. Then, when he remembered her injury, a trickle of cold moved through his stomach.
“What does that mean?”
She took his hand, putting it just above the bandage he’d wound around her arm. Even through the material, he could feel the swelling and the heat radiating from her skin.
Inflammation. Infection. Blood poisoning. The same deadly progression that had killed Mike Mitchell. And if they missed making contact with the Special Forces unit he believed was on the ground in Abdul Rahim’s village…
“It’s been less than forty-eight hours.”
Not long enough for an infection to develop. Not nearly long enough, he told himself.
“Maybe those things in that first-aid kit were contaminated. Or maybe you didn’t get out all the debris. I don’t know. All I know is that since last night it’s hurt like hell. Far more than it did when it happened.”
That was to be expected, but still, he didn’t like the hot swelling above the wound. He wished he could take a look at it, but to do that, he would have to wait until sunrise. And the stakes of that being the right decision had just been raised.
“Your choice, Landon. And time’s running out for you to make it.”
The very sound reasoning that had sent them scrambling up here and away from the attack no longer made sense. Now it seemed that Grace’s best chance lay with those elite soldiers searching Abdul Rahim’s stronghold.