by Richard Bard
“Marsh, my memory’s toast. We need directions.”
Marshall explained how to get to the prisoner’s cells and how to get back up to the main entrance using a service corridor. Tony wrote everything down on his combat pad.
“Listen up, guys,” Marshall said. “All hell is breaking loose up top. The team is about to blow the pass. Ten minutes after that there will be more than a hundred men overrunning them from a half dozen different directions. They’ve got to retreat to their secondary positions before that.”
Jake and Tony marked the time on their watches.
Jake thought about what would happen if they couldn’t make it out in time. “Marsh, no matter what happens to me and Tony, you’ve got to take off and get word out about what’s going on here. Don’t let Cal risk the V-22. Battista has to be stopped.”
“Just move your ass and get here,” Marsh said.
As Jake and Tony passed the last row of pallets, Tony skidded to a stop. He stared at two tall stacks of crates containing high explosives. “If we don’t make it out of here, these assholes are going to kill a lot of innocent people.” Tony flipped a page on his pad and scribbled a quick duplicate of the directions. He tore the copy off and handed it Jake.
“Tony, we don’t have time,” Jake said.
Tony started working the tip of his KA-BAR under the lid of the first crate. “This has gotta get done. It won’t take long. I’ll catch up. Now go!”
Jake knew he wouldn’t win this argument. Scanning the map, he sprinted into the exit on the right.
Chapter 42
Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan - 3:24 a.m.
BECKER STUDIED THE NARROW PASS through his nightscope, waiting for the first head to appear around the corner. Sixty seconds to go. The detonator was cradled in his palm, his finger on the switch. He was hidden in the rocks on the west side of the clearing, less than seventy-five yards from the cavern entrance and the path leading from the village below.
Papa was crouched at his side, his Grendel assault rifle propped over the boulder they were using as cover. The rest of his fire team was spread out in the rocks around him. Maria remained tucked on the ridge above them with her Dragunov sniper rifle. She was hungry for targets.
Becker and Papa concentrated on the overhead image being transmitted from the Raven to their HUDs.
“They’re close,” Papa said. “I count about fifteen or twenty.”
“Dammit to hell,” Becker said. “We had well over a hundred of them in that pass to start with. Now the bulk of them has turned back. They’ll be coming at us from every which way.”
On their HUDs, they watched several small teams of red dots converging on their position.
“It’s going to take a while for the rest of them to make it over the ridgelines,” Papa said. “But when they do, we better be long gone.”
Becker risked a quick glance at Azim’s limp form sprawled on the ground behind them. His hands were bound with plastic flex cuffs, his mouth sealed with duct tape. One of his eyes was swelled shut from Papa’s violent interrogation. Three of the fingers on his left hand were cocked back at a sickening angle.
“Do you think he sold us out?” Becker asked.
“Damn right, he did. We let a local on the team, and we’re in deep shit because of it. I will say this for him. He’s a tough sucker. I worked him hard, but he wouldn’t sing.”
“Maybe he’s telling the truth,” Becker said.
“Screw that, holmes,” Papa said. “He’s the only unknown on the team. The sucker dropped a dime on us, and Willie’s dead because of it. I still think we should finish him.”
Becker ignored the comment. His attention was focused on the twenty red dots that were about to break into the clearing. He knew the rest of the team was watching the same image on their HUDs. He tightened the grip on his weapon and radioed the team. “Stay tight.”
Switching to his night-vision binoculars, Becker waited with his finger on the detonator for the first of the tangos to race around the corner.
His vision was suddenly blinded by the searing light from two flash-bang grenades.
Becker jerked backward. The detonator switch slipped from his grasp, and he cursed himself for using night vision at such a critical moment. Unable to see, his hands worked frantically over the ground, feeling for the detonator.
The deep rattle of AK-47s echoed off the canyon walls as the first of Battista’s men thundered into the clearing, their weapons on full auto as they sought cover. Papa responded with a series of measured three-round bursts from his Grendel. The rest of the fire team opened up as well, their return fire erupting from the rocks behind Becker. The hollow staccato of Ripper’s LWRC automatic rifle filled the night as it unleashed its deadly hail of 6.5mm Grendel rounds into the rocks around Battista’s soldiers.
Becker’s vision started to clear. He found the detonator and flipped the switch.
A deep explosion rumbled from within the narrow pass as the towering walls crumbled down on the last of Battista’s soldiers still on the trail. The ground shook. A massive burst of rocks and debris spewed into the clearing, filling the air with dust. On Becker’s HUD, several of the red dots vanished from the display.
But it had been much too late. At least a dozen men had made it through and had taken positions at the far side of the clearing. More tangos charged out of the main entrance, joining their brothers behind the rocks. They unleashed a hail of fire into the rocks around Becker’s team.
Scores of additional soldiers would soon be cresting the ridgeline.
“These guys are going to flank us in about ten minutes!” Becker shouted into the radio. “We have got to be gone before then.”
Becker aligned his first target with the CompM4 Red Dot sight of his HK416 and gave the man a third eye when his keffiyeh popped up over a boulder. A rain of return fire puckered the rocks in front of him and Papa. The two men ducked behind their boulder.
A bright contrail shot up from behind the ridge and sliced across the night sky like a shooting star. There was a bright explosion overhead. The image on Becker’s HUD went black.
A surface-to-air missile had just taken out their Raven.
Chapter 43
Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan - 3:25 a.m.
EVEN THREE LEVELS DEEP, Jake felt the rumble of Becker’s explosion at the southern pass to the clearing. He quickened his pace.
Though the facility’s lights were back on, the ancient tunnel was barely lit. The sour smell of human misery hung in the stale air. He padded softly past several empty cells, stopping when a man’s voice broke the silence from around the next corner. Jake flattened himself against the wall.
The voice was low, guttural, the words too faint to decipher.
He edged forward. A shiver prickled the back of his neck. As he peered around the bend, he saw a stocky figure duck into one of the cells twenty feet in front of him.
A child’s scream pierced the tunnel.
Sarafina!
Jake’s heart caught in his throat. Adrenaline surged through his body, and for a brief instant his abilities returned to him. His mind shoved away the fuzzy effects of the drug. His limbs filled with energy.
But even as he took his first lunging step forward, the drug once again took control. His movements slowed. He pushed on. The pounding of his feet reverberated through the narrow corridor. Before he reached the cell, a shadow jumped out to face him, his knife drawn.
Carlo.
Assessing the threat, Carlo glanced behind Jake, his head cocked to the side, listening for anyone following. The corners of his mouth lifted into a sly grin. “All alone?”
Jake readied himself, rocking back and forth, feeling his balance. He raised his arms defensively in front of him, and his fingers danced in the air as if preparing to dart in and out of a flame. He said nothing. There was no room for a show of weakness here.
“All business, is that it?” Carlo said. His eyes narrowed. “Very well. I have b
een waiting for this moment for some time.”
Carlo leaped forward with a series of diagonal slashes with his knife. Jake’s attempts to parry the swipes were a fraction too slow. He barely avoided a wicked cut from the blade by staggering backward.
Carlo seemed to read the hesitation in Jake’s movements. He redoubled his strikes, moving forward as the knife weaved a blurred pattern in the air. Jake danced backward, looking for the slightest opening, finding none.
“You’re not so fast anymore, Mr. Bronson. Too bad, because I would have enjoyed the challenge.” Carlo lunged with another strike.
Desperate to take the offensive, Jake snapped his hand up to grab the scarred wrist of Carlo’s knife hand. Grinning at the amateurish move, Carlo smacked Jake’s arm with his other hand. He twisted his wrist free and cut a cruel slice across the loose sleeve of Jake’s dishdashah. The blade burned into Jake’s forearm.
Pain signals shot from Jake’s arm to his brain, making him wobble, with his right hand squeezing the wound. For half a breath his abilities once again emerged through the drug-induced haze. But even as the thought formed in his mind that he could now use his speed to strike back, the sluggishness returned.
Jake continued to retreat, frantically considering what had happened. The pain-induced adrenaline rush from the cut had peeled back the numbing effects of the drug, just as Sarafina’s mournful scream had earlier. The connection was plain—adrenaline pushed aside the drug’s effects and momentarily gave him access to his heightened abilities.
He needed adrenaline.
And Carlo’s knife would provide it.
Watching the blood seep between the pressed fingers of Jake’s hand, Carlo stopped for a moment to gloat. “A master knife fighter knows how to kill a man slowly with a hundred cuts. In your case, I will settle for nine or ten.” He passed the knife casually from hand to hand. “The trick is to avoid the six main arteries.” Carlo positioned the blade over his bicep, making a slice in the air. “Like the brachial artery, here, just half an inch below the skin. Severing it will cause a loss of consciousness in fourteen seconds. Death follows a minute later.” Moving the tip to his neck, Carlo continued, “Or if one’s in a hurry, cut the carotid, one and a half inches deep, leading to unconsciousness in five seconds and death in twelve.”
Oddly, the lecture made Jake feel better about his chances. His desperately conceived plan for survival relied on Carlo’s expertise and his desire to inflict maximum pain before delivering a mortal strike. He hoped like hell that the man was every bit as good as he boasted.
Carlo flashed the knife in smooth, descriptive arcs over different parts of his own body as he spoke. “Wrist, stomach, heart, clavicle, neck, biceps—six major artery locations that we must avoid until the end, eh, Mr. Bronson? All of them in easy reach of my blade when the time comes.” He licked his lips. “And when it is finished, I shall return to the cell for a little fun with your girls.”
Jake gritted his teeth and narrowed his concentration on Carlo’s eyes. He let go of his arm, ignoring the pain from the surface cut, seeking more. He heard the light splat of a drop of his blood as it hit the floor. Fueled with a grim determination, Jake lifted himself to his full height and said, “You’re not nearly as good as you think you are, asshole. If I’m going to die, it’s gonna be on my timetable, not yours.”
Carlo’s cocky smile wavered under the intensity of Jake’s gaze. “We shall see.” His face flushed with anger as he rushed forward, flourishing the knife in a figure-eight pattern.
With a tremendous strength of will, Jake held his ground, throwing his damaged forearm up as a shield. The blade cut into his skin—once, then twice. Hot pain attacked his senses. As his body flinched, he felt a third cut slice into his thigh, accompanied by Carlo’s wild-eyed sneer. “That’s four cuts alrea—”
A tidal wave of adrenaline coursed through Jake’s limbs. In what would have seemed a blur of motion to Carlo, Jake rushed forward, grabbed Carlo’s knife wrist in both hands, and twisted his arm around in a violent corkscrew motion that drove the point of the blade into Carlo’s stomach all the way to the hilt.
A look of shock froze on Carlo’s face, his mouth open in a silent gasp.
Jake whispered in his ear. “So how many seconds ’til death with this strike, you son of a bitch?”
Carlo sagged against Jake as he made a feeble attempt with his free hand to pull at the knife. But Jake held it in place, his gaze locked on the terrorist’s unbelieving eyes. Then, granting the mercy of a quick death where it wasn’t deserved, Jake drew the blade up and across Carlo’s belly, eviscerating Battista’s executioner like a samurai committing seppuku. Jake pulled out the knife and stepped to the side as Carlo, in his final seconds of life, dropped to his knees and watched his severed intestines unroll onto the floor amidst a stew of blood and offal.
Jake rushed down the tunnel to the open cell door with the dripping knife still in his hand. Two smudged, pale faces peered out of the darkness, eyes wide with fright at the shadowed visage hulking before them.
It was Sarafina’s expression that softened first. “Jake!”
The wave of relief that washed over him was like nothing he’d ever felt before. He snapped the blade closed and pocketed the knife, dropping to his knees to gather them in his arms. “Thank God.”
They hugged one another with the fierceness of family. Of belonging. Of hope.
Francesca sobbed, her shoulders quaking under his arm. Sarafina said, “I knew you’d come.” Her little hands gripped the fabric of his tunic.
Francesca pulled back from the embrace and examined his bloodied arm and thigh. “You’re hurt.”
“That will keep,” Jake said. “We have to go.”
But Francesca was already tearing the hem of her dress into long strips. “You’re losing too much blood.”
Tony’s voice broke in from behind them, startling the three of them. “She’s right. Tie ’em off and let’s go.” Tony glanced at Francesca’s battered bare feet. “I’ll be right back.”
“He’s with me,” Jake said. “My best friend, Tony.”
Francesca spoke while she worked. “There’s something I must tell you. I tried to tell you at the ball. Your tumor—it’s gone.”
What?
He searched Francesca’s eyes and thought back to their conversation in the ballroom. She had said that she looked at his medical records and that she knew. She’d been trying to tell him that the cancer was gone, not that she knew he was dying. All this time he had thought he only had months to live. An involuntary shiver raced through him when he flashed on all the risks he had welcomed, secretly hoping to end his life before the pain from the cancer took over.
He suddenly knew she was right. The night sweats had disappeared. The telltale rash and itching on his back were gone. He had felt imbued with renewed energy since the accident in the MRI. In fact, other than the headaches whenever he overused his new talents, he’d never felt more alive.
Tony returned and handed Francesca a pair of worn lace-up boots. “I stuffed the toes so they’ll fit a little better.”
Grateful for the protection, Francesca put them on, ignoring the blood that was still moist on the laces.
Tony gave a warrior’s nod that Jake knew was his way of acknowledging his defeat of Carlo. “Let’s move,” Tony said. “In twenty minutes this joint is gonna blow sky high.”
Apparently noticing Jake wince when he held her hand with his injured arm, Sarafina walked over to Tony. “Hi, Tony. My name is Sarafina. We probably should run, so will you carry me?”
“You bet, darlin’,” he said as he lifted her up. “Off we go.”
Chapter 44
Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan - 3:25 a.m.
MEXICAN STANDOFF.
Staring into the eyes of your enemy. Becker had been raised by his grandfather to like it that way. Even five-to-one odds weren’t bad as long as you were properly prepared. But twenty to one? Not good at all. And that’s what was
about to happen.
For now, the score of enemy soldiers, dispersed in the rocks sixty yards in front of the team, were content to wait for their hundred-plus compatriots to show up over the top of the ridges. They wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
Becker and Papa were still hunkered behind their boulder. Snake, Juice, and Ripper held positions in the rocks nearby. Maria was halfway up the slope behind them. If their intel had been right, the six of them would have had no problem securing the clearing—blow the pass to keep their reinforcements out and pop anybody who stuck their head out of the cave entrance.
Simple.
But everything had gone wrong.
He looked over at Azim, who was lying bound and gagged behind Papa. The man had denied his betrayal so vehemently. Even now, Becker sensed a stubborn determination in the mujahedin warrior’s proud eyes, as if by the pure force of his will he could convince them of his loyalty. Becker felt an odd bond with this man whose heritage of living on the land so paralleled his own. Had Azim truly betrayed them?
One thing was certain: Battista and his men had been expecting them, and Becker and the team were up to their necks because of it.
Without the Raven’s overhead surveillance, they wouldn’t know for sure when the first of Battista’s soldiers would crest the ridgelines.
“Okay, mates,” Becker said. “It’s time to bug out to the secondary position. Heads up while I bring up Lil’ Smokey.”
Positioned at the far end of the clearing, the prototype device was the cornerstone of their evacuation plan. The earlier breeze had died away. The air had stilled in the clearing—the only bit of luck they’d had since this mission began—providing an ideal environment for Little Smokey to do her thing.
The self-propelled smoke-generating system resembled a junior ATV. With a top speed of thirty miles per hour, the camouflaged vehicle supported a triple bundle of tanks and tubes that combined to supply a dual-pulse jet engine with a mixture of fuel, oil, and thin graphite fibers. Little Smokey could spew a thick white cloud of fog-oil vapor that would hang in the air like volcanic ash for up to thirty minutes, although a stiff wind would scatter it in a heartbeat. The cloud would defeat both infrared and visual-range observation and tracking methods, including lasers.