Max spelled it out for Gina. “It’s probably a troop transport.”
Heading toward them.
The million dollar question was, whose troops were being transported?
The fact that a U.S. embassy had moved into nearby East Timor meant that there would also be U.S. Marines around to protect it, didn’t it? So it wasn’t entirely impossible to imagine that the truck might be filled with allies.
But Jones and Max were exchanging a glance that told Molly they weren’t banking on that scenario.
“Can we hide and wait for it to pass?” Gina asked.
“Sounds like there’s more than one truck coming,” Jones said. “And they’re going to be looking for us. They may not just drive past.”
Besides, the houses were close together along this road, hugging the steep mountainside. On the other side of the road was sheer cliff. The view was amazing, but there was nowhere over there to hide.
“This way,” Max ordered, and they headed back the way they’d come.
Because alternatives just weren’t plentiful.
They’d recently passed what looked like a trail, heading off the road and up the mountain.
“That dead-ends,” Jones barked, when Molly started toward it.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I was out here last night.” He wasn’t even remotely winded. Of course, he wasn’t pregnant, with stitches in his breast. “There’s another route we can take to that airfield,” he said to Max. “It’s not as direct. We’ll have to go part way down the mountain and then back up, around the other side.”
Going down sounded good.
Especially, as they continued to backtrack, the sheer cliff on their left turned into a steep, densely covered jungle. Max led the way up and over the guard rail, stopping to give Gina and then Molly a hand.
“Careful,” he said, but Gina slipped. “Jones!”
He was right behind Molly. He held onto her tightly, as Max grabbed Gina by the back of her shirt.
“Oh my God!” Flailing, Gina went down on her bottom, knocking Max off his feet, too. But he didn’t let go of her. He hung on as they both slipped and skidded, sliding quite a ways until Max managed to hook his elbow around one of the sturdier trees.
By this point, she was clinging to one of his legs.
“You all right?” Molly heard Max ask Gina.
“Oh my God,” she said again.
Jones wrapped his hand around Molly’s wrist, showing her how to hold tightly to his wrist, too, so that they were locked together. They began their descent significantly more slowly. “Wish I had a rope,” he said.
“If I had a wish,” Molly told him, “I wouldn’t waste it on a rope.”
“Good point,” he said as they shuffled down the hill. “Wish I could have a half a dozen decades to grow old with you in a little house in some one-stop-sign town in, I don’t know, maybe northern California?”
She laughed her surprise. “Really?” she asked. “I thought you hated the United States.”
Jones shrugged. “I do.” It was possible that admitting that embarrassed him. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to go home.”
And here she’d thought his push to go back to America had been pure selfless sacrifice. She liked it better this way, but there was no time to tell him that, because they’d caught up to Max and Gina.
Max was showing Gina how to hook her arm around the jungle vegetation if she started to slip again.
The fool was holding her around the waist, securely against him, and one of her arms was around his neck. They were practically nose to nose but he didn’t take the opportunity to kiss her.
Instead, Max loosened his hold, looking up at Jones. “Which way?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “This is part of the mountain I didn’t explore last night.”
Max was not happy. “Me neither.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re north of Emilio’s,” Jones told him. “We head due south, we’ll hit that cliff that looks down on the roof of his house. Our best bet is east. Away from the road.”
East it was.
Max led the way, holding onto Gina the same way that Jones held Molly.
“Think you can go any faster?” Jones asked her.
Faster? Oh, Lord . . . “I can try,” Molly said.
But slipping and sliding their way down the mountain was even harder than running uphill, and it wasn’t long before she was out of breath. And Jones slowed their pace.
“Why don’t you go for help?” Molly asked him, barely able to get the words out. God, her heart was pounding.
“Not a chance.” He put his arm around her waist, slowing them down even more.
“Grady, please—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he said. “Don’t waste your breath.”
Jules needed both hands on the steering wheel as he took the first hairpin turn on two wheels. The side of the car scraped the metal guardrail with an ear-splitting screech.
And Emilio clung to the grab bar, up above the door.
With his gun hand.
It was now or never, and Jules blessed Cranky Hank, the former Ranger who ran the firing range where Max’s team regularly trained, who’d made Jules practice shooting with his left hand—over and over, until his eyes were ready to cross.
He reached for his weapon, trying to hold the car steady with his right hand, as they went skidding sideways down the mountain road.
It was easier said than done, and he quickly put both hands back on the wheel before they went into a roll.
“Motherfucker!” Emilio shouted—or at least the Italian equivalent.
His weapon fired, bullet shattering the passenger window behind Jules.
Jesus yikes! That had missed Jules’s head by mere millimeters. He jerked the car hard left, directly into the guardrail as he stood on the brakes, because once they came to a stop—suddenly and unexpectedly from Emilio’s standpoint—he’d be able to get his own weapon into his own hand and . . .
Okay—not part of his plan, this blasting through the rail and . . .
The car flipped as it went down the mountain, and Jules hung on for dear life.
As Emilio somehow managed to shoot at him yet again.
Sky.
There was too much brilliant blue sky ahead and Max tightened his grip on Gina, slowing them both down.
For about a half a second, he dared to hope that they’d reached the road that snaked down this side of the mountain. But there was way too much sky for a mere road.
“Hold up,” he called to Jones who, with Molly, was lagging quite a bit behind.
No, instead of finding the road, they’d come to the edge of the world.
Not really, of course. It just looked like it.
The jungle ended at a sheer cliff.
“Hold on to this.” He anchored Gina to a sturdy tree, making sure she clasped her hands together, then cautiously approached the edge.
“Be careful,” she called, anxiety in her voice.
Max moved even more slowly. He didn’t want to scare her. God knows Gina scared him enough for both of them, back when she’d started sliding down the hill, up by the guardrail.
It was due to some pretty solid luck that his fingers had caught her shirt, and he’d managed to hang on to her.
Although, if he hadn’t, he would have dived headfirst after her.
As it was, it had taken him far too long to hook onto a plant that didn’t get uprooted. He’d had a clear and sudden vision of the two of them going over the side of a cliff, and him being unable to do a goddamn thing to save them.
It was amazing how fear could mask pain.
He’d gotten whacked directly in the balls by some errant branch, but he didn’t feel a thing as he hauled Gina up and into his arms, as he lay there on the jungle floor, just holding her.
And shaking with terror.
The difference between de
ad and not dead had never been so hard to see. It was the slimmest of lines. Possible to cross at any given moment.
As Max now approached the edge of the cliff, he tested each hand- and foothold.
“Max,” Gina called again.
“I’m okay,” he called back. He had to make sure that the cliff didn’t just look daunting from this perspective and . . .
Nope. There was no trail down. No obvious or easy route.
The view was breathtaking—the green of the jungle making the hills and valleys below look inviting, like they could jump and land with a bounce on its softness. The harbor town was a splash of color in the distance, the ocean beyond shimmering and blue.
The cliff curved around to the south—with no way to circumnavigate it in sight.
Max climbed back up the steep hillside to Gina. It was actually easier to climb up than down, because he could grab and hold on to roots and vines that he tested before trusting them with his full weight.
“This way,” he said, pointing out a path that would parallel the cliff.
She reached for him, and he took her hand.
And once again they were moving.
Jules kicked out the battered driver’s side window so he could crawl from the wreckage.
The engine was steaming and making that ticking sound that engines made when they cooled down after being too damn hot.
Emilio was gone. He hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt, and he’d somehow departed the car—either involuntarily or by choice. Possibly when, plunging down that hillside, Jules had managed to remove his sidearm from his shoulder holster and discharge it.
His aim had been questionable, but he’d hit the son of a bitch, that much he knew. There was a spray of blood on the passenger side window.
And as far as Emilio’s grand exit? Whether it had been on purpose or not, Jules hoped it had been at bone-crushingly high speeds.
Still he hadn’t been under consideration for that FBI team leader position for nothing. He held his weapon now as he squeezed out of the window—which was much narrower than usual due to the partially crushed roof.
Damn, he was lucky he was vertically challenged.
His right leg wasn’t working very well and instead of standing outside the car, he fell to the ground. The damn thing didn’t hold his weight, didn’t want to move at all. Like it was someone else’s leg that was now attached to his body.
He crawled, using his elbows to pull him away from the car. Ow. Ow. Ow.
And Jesus, his head. Despite the airbag, he’d whacked himself something fierce. His brain felt scrambled, his vision funkatacious, all doubled and blurred.
But he was alive.
He knew he was alive, because every cell in his body hurt. His armpits hurt. His toenails.
But first things first. Warn Max.
He had to roll onto his back, which made him feel exposed, kind of like a turtle or a cockroach. But it was the only way he could dig for his phone.
He found it—covered with blood.
Son of a bitch, that was his blood. That bastard Testa had shot him.
Jules put his weapon down on his stomach, in easy reach, as he checked out the damage.
The bullet—small caliber, or he’d still be back in the car, in two very dead pieces—had caught him in the fleshy part of his side, going in, front to back. There was an exit wound, which was relatively good news.
Stopping the bleeding would be better news.
He applied pressure with his left hand as he wiped his phone off on the leg of his jeans with his right. Goddamn it, no wonder sitting up was as much of a challenge as walking. No wonder he hurt so freaking much.
He wished his head would stay attached to his shoulders. Damn, he was woozy. But okay. Okay. First things were still first. This wasn’t his phone, it was Max’s—which meant he had to call himself. He concentrated, trying to get his eyes to focus . . .
“They took the cell towers out. You won’t get through.”
Big ugly shit, on a big ugly stick.
“I guess it was too much to hope that you’d broken your neck,” Jules told Emilio, turning his head to look—yes, it also would’ve been too much to hope he’d lost the damn thing in the melee—into the barrel of the other man’s gun.
Gina recognized that sound. It was the sound of her nightmares.
Max was several steps behind her and he started shouting, “Get down, get down, get down!”
They were being shot at.
He was on top of her, shielding her, pushing her forward. “Go! Go!”
With Max right behind her, Gina ran.
Just moments before, she’d been so relieved. They’d finally come down off the mountain and onto a road that led them back to a cluster of houses.
But that road had curved to the right and . . .
Max and Jones had both said quite a few choice words.
Because they were back where they’d started. At Emilio’s house.
And there was nowhere to go but forward. The road opened on to that village square—an empty, dusty marketplace surrounded by a knee-high wall, surrounded by other houses.
There was no one about—no one on foot, at least. There had been children playing there when they’d left Emilio’s, but upon their return both the square and the streets were like a ghost town.
Until the shooting started.
Across the square there was a truck—no, two. One was smaller—a Jeep—with some sort of machine gun mounted on it. It was bouncing toward them, making that awful ripping sound.
“Get them inside!” Jones shouted.
Max grabbed Molly—he already had Gina—and pulled them both with him into the shadows of Emilio’s garage.
The ripping sound was louder then, as Jones fired back at the trucks, as he backed his way into the garage, as Max lowered the garage door.
Someone was screaming, and it wasn’t until Max got in her face—“Gina! Were you hit?”—that she realized she was the one making all that noise.
So she stopped. Because God knows it wasn’t helping.
“Are you hurt?” he asked her again, checking her, touching her, turning her around.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Are you?”
Jones came out of the house—which was weird. She hadn’t seen him go in. “Clear,” he told Max.
“Good,” Max gently pushed her toward Molly. “Get inside.”
“We’re fucked,” Jones told Max. “There’s no back door, remember? They’ve got us pinned.”
“This place is built like a fortress,” Max said. “There are worse places to be pinned. Let’s get as much of this inside as we can.” He was taking the guns from the back of Emilio’s blue car, piling them into Jones’s waiting arms.
“I can help,” Gina said.
Max pulled a backpack out of the trunk. “Here.” It was so heavy she staggered under the weight.
“Ammo,” he said, “take it inside. Go!”
Gina handed it to Molly with the warning, “It’s heavy,” and Max gave her another. She was ready for it this time.
As she went into the house through that door, she realized that it looked like one you might find on a bank vault.
Or a bomb shelter.
Or your house if you were a super-paranoid gun smuggler and kidnapper and all-around baddie, and you wanted to withstand a siege against an entire army.
“Gina, are you . . . ?” Molly had blood on her hand. She touched the backpack again—there was even more now, on her fingers. Bright red.
Gina looked down at her own hands, at the pack she was carrying.
There was blood on hers, too. “It’s not me,” she told Molly.
Heart in her throat, Gina turned back to the garage, where, yes, Max was bleeding.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
You’re bleeding,” Gina said again.
“I know,” Max also said again as he surveyed the weapons and ammo they’d taken out of the trunk of that car. “I’m all
right, though.”
He’d taken the two women back into what he thought of as the hostage room as Jones, far more nimble without a bullet in his ass, did a closer look-see at the rest of the building.
From the quick glance Max had had of the lower level—kitchen and two living areas, one with a window and one without—Jones’s eloquent description of this place was dead-on. It truly was re-in-fucking-forced.
Emilio had installed far more than a bunch of super doors in his narrow little two-story house. The few windows—all on the front of the structure—were encased with entry-proof bars.
At first glance that wasn’t so different from many of the other houses on this street in this semi-well-to-do part of a piss-poor island. But unlike the other houses, these bars were not designed merely to discourage the casual burglar. These bars were meant to keep out the most determined intruders.
The walls were thick, too—three feet in some places. Even the interior walls. Which was unusual, to say the least.
Miniature security cameras positioned outside the house added a high-tech slant to its impregnability.
Gina got in his way. “All right is what you are when you’re not bleeding.” She was indignant.
And scared to death, Max realized. For him.
He gave her his full attention. “I’m mostly just bruised,” he said. This entire scenario had to be a nightmare for her. God knows that he’d been sent on his own little time-traveling trip to hell when she’d screamed, back when the shooting first started. Instant cold sweat. The last thing Gina needed now was to think he was going to drop dead any second. “The bullet that hit me was almost completely spent.”
But she still looked so worried. “I don’t know what that means. Spent?”
“Think about the physics of firing a weapon,” he explained as he went back to sorting ammunition: 9mm versus .44 cal. Grabbing the wrong ammo could have deadly consequences. An HK 9mm MP5 submachine gun was a formidable tiger of a weapon. But an MP5 with a backpack of .44 caliber bullets was about as formidable as a poodle.
“A bullet doesn’t just follow its trajectory until it hits something, right?” Max continued. “Because what if there’s nothing there to hit? You can’t fire an assault weapon on the Jersey Shore and expect to hit someone in Spain, just because there’s nothing but ocean between the two of you.”
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