They weren't too far ahead of the main group, which was a motley-looking, straggling bunch. They were walking wounded, retreating to safety from the intense pockets of fighting in Kandahar. Some weren't even walking. There were at least four stretchers being carried, one of which held a boy who couldn't have been more than thirteen years old.
Who, like the rest of them, was carrying a personal arsenal of weapons and ammunition.
These were terrorists. All of them. They weren't poor little tired, hungry, and forlorn terrorists, as much as they currently looked the part. They were terrorists, plain and simple. They were the enemy, and a deadly enemy—period, the end.
They had pledged to die defending Osama bin Laden. They trained their boys to hate and kill, and enslaved their girls by forbidding their education. They supported a killer who fought his war against unarmed men, against women and children.
In theory, thirty terrorists weren't a whole heck of a lot of terrorists. But when they were all crowding one small trail, thirty was plenty.
Muldoon searched for a burqa-clad figure—the reporter— and found him shuffling along in the center of the group, surrounded by dozens of men.
Figures he'd be there. If Muldoon were transporting a prisoner, he'd keep him secured and surrounded by his men, too.
The good news was that the reporter was slight of stature. He'd be easy to handle in the event he wasn't into following orders spoken in rusty French.
As Muldoon watched, he saw that the reporter was guarded in particular by two men, both of whom spent more time eyeing each other mistrustfully than watching their prisoner. And that was more good news.
Jenk , who was crouched beside him, silently tapped his watch.
Here it came. Any second now. Either he'd killed his men or...
Boom!
They were all still alive, thank you, God. The first bomb had hit exactly where Muldoon had asked for it to hit, just to the west of the trail. It was followed immediately by a second in the same vicinity, and he allowed himself to exhale.
As for the tangos, so much for maintaining silence. All thirty began talking at once as they picked themselves up and dusted themselves off.
Muldoon watched the crowd, trying to pick out the group's leader.
Was it ZZ Top over there, with the beard down to his waist? Or was it Young and Angry, with the big arm gestures and the long coat that billowed as he walked? He must've practiced in front of a mirror for hours to get it to do that.
With only a few short months of Pashtu and Dari under his belt—courtesy of Potential Enemy Languages 101, a required class for all SEALs heading into the area—Muldoon could pick out only a word here and there in the din. Still, it was obvious from the gestures and body language that ZZ wanted to take cover, while Angry wanted to push on to the cave at a stepped-up pace.
Jenk tapped his watch again, signaling thirty seconds. Oh, good. Time to find out if this next set of coordinates was as accurate as the first.
Don't. Think. About. That. He knew better than to waste his time worrying about things that were out of his control.
The trail opened up into a clearing just ahead, and for one last time, Muldoon mentally traced the route he was going to take as he focused his attention on the burqa-clad reporter.
The two guards, Itchy and Scratchy, had taken different sides in the run-or-hide debate.
As Muldoon watched, Itchy gestured almost in unison with Angry, toward the mountains to the west, where the first two bombs had fallen. He could imagine what they were saying.
"What, are you nuts? Not only are they shelling to the west, but it's a total minefield out there. We should head for the cave. We'll be safer there."
Scratchy and ZZ both gestured to the east. "We'll never make it that far. We should go this way. We can take cover in the valleys and—"
Boom!
The third bomb—special ordered by Muldoon—hit smack where he'd wanted it to, off to the east, followed by another slightly to the south.
Everyone dropped to the ground again, like some kind of funky dance.
And, as Muldoon had hoped, the decision and gestures became unanimous. They'd head to the safety of the cave. At a dead run. Last one in was a rotten egg.
Two more bombs hit on either side of the trail. Yes, that's right. This was a full-scale attack. Run, you terrorist scum. Run for your lives.
But they were bottlenecked until they reached that clearing ahead. They pushed and jostled and jockeyed for position, no love lost between ZZ's and Angry's men. It was just the kind of ugly chaos he'd been hoping for.
With one last nod at Jenk, Muldoon slipped out from his hiding place and into the severely distracted crowd.
He had his weapon held at ready as he kept the woolen scarf wrapped securely around most of his lower face. It wasn't a good idea to go for a walk in a crowd of Taliban-supporting terrorists with a clean-shaven chin, but there weren't a whole lot of options here.
Muldoon shouldered his way through the crowd toward the prisoner, who was having a hard time keeping up while he had what virtually amounted to a bag over his head. Itchy and Scratchy had begun pushing the guy, united at last in their attempt to make him move faster. It was inevitable, but still, the timing was perfect—the reporter tripped over his long robe and fell smack on his burqa-covered face right at Muldoon's feet.
It was a gift from heaven, and he didn't hesitate. He hoisted the squirming reporter up and over his shoulder as Itchy and Scratchy shouted at him.
"Don't fight me," he muttered in French into the burqa's heavy folds. "I'm here to help you."
The struggling didn't stop, so Muldoon just gripped the reporter more tightly and focused on the shouting. The two guards might have been speaking a dialect he didn't know, or maybe they were simply talking too fast. Either way, he didn't catch a single word.
When in doubt, shout back. And shout louder.
"Go," he screamed at them in Pashtu. "Run. Now!"
But it wasn't until he started to run, too, that the shouters turned the volume down a notch. Although Scratchy, to his right, had a glare that was filled with suspicion.
The good news was that the Frenchman couldn't have weighed more than 120 pounds. It would have been laughably easy to carry him if he weren't trying his best to get away. Something solid kept jamming painfully into Muldoon's back, just hard enough to keep him thoroughly pissed off. It seemed improbable that the terrorists had let this guy keep his camera, but he couldn't figure out what else it might be.
"Stop," he finally ordered in French. The promise of help hadn't worked, so he tried the alternative. "Stop fighting, or I'll kill you right now."
The reporter's immediate surrender was a relief, especially since the scarf around Muldoon's very American chin was starting to come undone.
He tightened it back up and then there he was, in the clearing that he'd noticed when his team had first crept up the trail. But he was there earlier than he'd anticipated. And the next bomb—the most important one of them all; please God, don't let it kill his men—hadn't yet struck its target.
So he tripped and went down onto one knee, much harder than he'd intended. He landed right on a rock, right on what must've been his knee's freaking funny bone. Oh, shit, it hurt like hell, with waves of pain that rolled through him, really ringing his chimes. Still, it did the trick of slowing him down.
The reporter started struggling again, making it that much harder for him to get back to his feet.
Scratchy was tugging at him, shouting again. Itchy was long gone.
Muldoon didn't need to make a show of pulling himself painfully up and then—
Ka-boom!
It was the bomb that he'd been waiting for, and it hit so close the concussion knocked him back on his butt. And probably onto that same freaking rock that his knee had connected with. Son of a bitch.
It rained dust and debris and, still clutching the reporter, he scrambled to his feet and ran for cover.
Due west.
Scratchy was shouting yet again, and this time Muldoon caught the words he'd hoped to hear.
Landmines.
But he didn't slow as another bomb hit, again shaking the ground. He vaulted over an outcropping of rocks—and almost directly into Cosmo's and Silverman's open arms.
They half carried, half dragged both him and the reporter to safety behind yet another ridge of rock, while somewhere nearby Wildcard thumbed a switch.
Boom!
It sounded convincingly like a weight-triggered land mine, but it was quickly drowned out by the din of more bombs falling.
Scratchy apparently had some amount of common sense, because he raced after the last of his al-Qaeda buddies.
There was no time for Muldoon's knee to still hurt like hell, but it did. God, it felt like it was the size of a watermelon, like it was starting to swell. But that was absurd. A banged funny bone didn't swell. You hit it, you writhe with pain and you scream for two or three minutes, and then life goes on. But try as he might, he couldn't seem to get past the writhing part.
He pulled himself to his feet, ridding himself of the extra clothes, refusing to consider the possibility that he'd actually injured himself in that fake fall. So what if it hurt? So what if it swelled? He was a SEAL. He'd worked through pain plenty of times before.
"Get that thing off of him," he ordered Silverman, who was untying the burqa-covered reporter.
"Sir!" It was Jenk, with the radio. "It's 0337, and the F-l 8s are still on course. The helo's picking us up four clicks down the trail, but we've got to hustle to get there before the real bombs start falling."
"Let's go," Muldoon ordered.
"Whoa," Silverman said. "The French guy's a girl."
"Americans," the reporter spat in heavily accented English. She was indeed a woman. "I should have known."
"Are you all right, ma'am?" Muldoon asked her.
Her hair was dyed a ridiculously fake-looking shade of black, and the glare she gave him was venomous. "Do you know how long it took me to arrange an interview with Abdul Mullah Zeeshan? And you have to go and rescue me. Thanks a lot, Captain, but no thanks. I'm going to that cave."
It would have been funny, the way she started marching back toward the trail, if only they hadn't been on such a tight deadline. If only his knee hadn't felt as if it were about to explode, and the only thing keeping it in one piece was his now too tight pants. If only it wasn't hurting so much that a river of cold sweat poured down his back with every other step he took.
"In about fifteen minutes, that cave is going to be destroyed," Muldoon told the young woman.
"Bullshit," she countered, with the kind of withering glance that only European women could deliver with such authority. "Your own government has issued statements admitting that these caves are bombproof."
"They were lying," he said. "It's called misinformation. They wanted Osama to feel nice and safe right where he was."
She said something in French filled with accusations, and turned and ran. Up the trail. Toward the cave.
And wasn't that just what he needed?
She was small and fast, but Muldoon had her tackled in fewer than five steps. His knee was on fire, but he managed to land on his left side, keeping his leg from connecting with the ground as he took her down. It hurt, but it was nothing like it could've been—until, as she flailed harder, trying to get free, she managed to kick him.
Whammo .
Right in the knee.
"Shit!" It was remarkable. Part of him watched from above, disassociated and completely dispassionate, as he damn near retched from the pain.
Don't let her get away!
He held her tightly, even managing to cover her as one of the last of the bombs that he'd ordered exploded, spraying them with more dirt. She was screaming about something, but he couldn't understand. She might as well have been speaking Martian. All he could do was cover her mouth, hope she didn't bite him too hard, and hang the hell on.
And then Wildcard was there, thank you, glorious God, keeping the reporter from sprinting farther up the mountainside.
"Gag and carry her if you have to." Muldoon managed to form words into a direct order to the chief.
"I've got her, sir."
"Breathe," Izzy told him. "Just breathe and you'll be all right, Lieutenant. I promise, it'll get better soon."
Zanella thought he'd gotten whacked in the balls. Muldoon had to laugh. If only...
"You okay, sir?" Lopez hovered above him anxiously.
"Yes." Muldoon pushed himself up onto his elbows, up so that he was sitting, up all the way to his feet. Shit, shit, shit, shit. "Yes, I am." He said it again, mostly to convince himself that it was true.