Authors: Christopher Reich
They had driven for an hour into the desert, Emma in the front seat alongside Prince Rashid, her wrists cuffed in front of her. At one point he stopped the car and climbed out to bleed air from the tires. From there the journey proceeded off-road, sand dunes alternating with expanses of sun-hardened earth. They stopped, and she saw that there were two cars accompanying them. A dozen of the prince’s police poured from the vehicles, forming a semicircle on the hard-pack. Balfour was not among them. She recognized only one face: the hooded eyes and intense stare of the prince’s client.
“Who?” railed the prince. “Tell me and I will stop. You will die quickly.”
Emma didn’t respond, and her silence goaded him more than any lie.
“If you will not talk, then you will at least eat.” The prince scooped up a handful of sand and stuffed it into her mouth.
She thrashed violently, spitting it out. A new pair of hands held her as the prince forced her mouth open and filled it with fistfuls of sand. She spat them out, gagging, but he continued, undeterred.
“Some fine Arabian sand for my would-be executioner. I hope you enjoy the taste.”
Emma could not breathe. She could not swallow. She struggled and spat.
And then the powerful hands released her. Emma rolled away. She knew that at least one rib was broken. Something else was wrong. Something worse. A pain deep inside.
“Look at her,” said Prince Rashid, arms spread wide, turning to face his men. “Do you know what she is? She is a cow. A fat, lazy cow. And do you know what cows need? They need to move.”
“No,” she said. “It’s enough.”
A white-hot pain seared Emma’s back and a barbed current traveled up her spine, causing her body to shudder.
Prince Rashid withdrew the cattle prod. “There,” he said, looking at the man with hooded eyes. “That made her jump. Shall we try again?”
The prod touched her buttocks, and the odor of burned flesh filled the air.
“Move, American whore! Your friends in Washington can’t help you now. They sent you on a fool’s errand to kill me. Your errand is finished. You failed. It’s not so easy to kill a prince.”
Rashid struck her repeatedly with the prod. On her belly, her thighs, her breasts. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound emerged. The electricity coursing through her body had locked her vocal cords.
“Who’s your controller? It is a housekeeping matter, actually. I need to know where to send your body.” He stood laughing, and all his men joined him. All except the man with the hooded eyes. He stood apart, saying nothing, his unblinking black eyes never leaving her.
“Has this cow had enough exercise?” Prince Rashid turned a circle, imploring his men to answer. No one said a word. “I don’t think so either,” he said finally. “She still looks rather lazy to me. I think she needs a tour of our lovely desert. Strip her.”
Emma could offer only perfunctory resistance. When she was naked, someone yanked her hands above her head and passed a chain around her cuffs. She squinted, watching one of the policemen attach the other end of the chain to the rear bumper of the prince’s Mercedes.
“No,” she said, hearing a desperate voice cry out inside her. “Please. I’m—” She rose to one knee, but the car was already accelerating. The chain grew taut and yanked her to the ground.
The prince drove slowly across the desert floor. He dragged her over rocks and thistles and sage and sand gritty enough to peel paint. When the pain was too much, she lost consciousness. Against her will, the waking world found her. She didn’t know how many times she passed out or how long they drove, only that at some point she was no longer moving and someone had removed the handcuffs.
A hand slapped her cheek and she opened her eyes. Stars glistened like tears in the sky above.
The prince glared down at her. “If your friends know so much about me, surely they’ll figure out where I took you. The question is, my darling, will they find you before the sun dries you out?”
Emma watched Rashid climb into his car and drive away. The sound of the motor faded. In a minute the desert was silent.
She was alone.
And then pain began in earnest.
Emma put her hands to her stomach and cried.
For an instant, shocked silence
ruled the cave chamber.
“What the hell did you do?” gasped Jonathan. “You killed him! Jesus Christ!”
Hamid paid no attention to his words. The scalpel was no longer in his hand. In its place was his cell phone. Oddly, he was pointing it at the nearest guard. There was a bang and a flurry of blood and the guard dropped to the floor. The phone was a concealed handgun. Before Jonathan could react, Hamid fired at the second guard, another head shot delivered with devastating accuracy. The guard fell backward, colliding with Sultan Haq, who was scrambling for his rifle.
“Who are you?” asked Jonathan.
“Watch it!” Hamid shoved Jonathan to the ground, turning as he did so to fire at Sultan Haq. There was a welter of gunshots, one on top of the other, the explosions painfully loud in the confined space. Bullets ricocheted off rock. Someone cried out. Jonathan covered his head. As quickly as it had begun, the gunshots died. The air quieted and he looked up. Haq was gone, as were the two remaining guards.
“Get a rifle.” Hamid picked up one of the slain guards’ AK-47s, checking the magazine and making sure that a round was chambered. “We’ve got to move before they can regroup.”
Jonathan rushed across the room and pried the machine gun from the dead warrior’s fingers. He had too many questions to ask, so he didn’t ask any.
“You know how to fire it?” Hamid asked.
“I’ve plinked at some cans.”
“Great, they told me you’d done this before.” Hamid snatched the weapon from his grasp, released the banana clip, rapped it against his thigh, then shoved it back into the stock, finally flipping the rifle onto its side and chambering a round. He was no longer the shy, whining doctor in training. This was another Hamid altogether. He was bold, decisive, and thoroughly professional.
“You’ve got a full mag,” he said, slamming the rifle against Jonathan’s chest. “Fire low and in short bursts. Now come on. We’ve got to get our guys before Haq takes care of them.”
Jonathan stared at the elder Haq’s corpse, then at the rifle in Hamid’s arms. The scope of the operation came to him in its entirety. Hamid worked for Division, and Division had used Jonathan as cover to put their operative in place to kill Abdul Haq.
A volley of automatic-weapons fire rattled through the cave. Hamid poked his head into the dim passage. “Stay on my tail. When I move, you move. Ready?”
Jonathan nodded. He was shaking badly.
Hamid slid the barrel of the machine gun around the corner. With crisp, practiced movements, he leaned into the cave and fired at the ceiling. The lightbulbs shattered. Darkness was immediate. There was a breath of wind where Hamid had been standing and a voice called from down the passage, “Come on!”
“Shit.” Jonathan ducked into the tunnel. Gunfire lit the cave. Bullets struck the wall above his head and a shard of rock stung his cheek. Bent double, he ran as fast as he could, his shoulder scudding the wall. Staccato flashes of machine-gun fire illuminated their progress like frames from a stuttering projector. He saw Hamid a few steps ahead, raising his weapon. A rifle responded, the noise deafening, and for a second Jonathan glimpsed the tall, turbaned figure of Sultan Haq, the Kentucky hunting rifle pressed to his shoulder. Jonathan threw himself to the ground as rock burst from the wall above his head.
“In here,” shouted a voice to his left.
Jonathan commando-crawled the last few meters into the opening and rolled onto his back.
Hamid popped a glow-bright bracelet. “You okay?”
Jonathan tried to speak, but his throat was too tight and he had no idea where his voice had gone. He moved his jaw and finally formed a word. “Yeah.”
The captured American soldiers stood in a semicircle facing him. The lifeless body of a Taliban fighter lay at their feet, his head twisted at a grotesque angle. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but I’m glad to see you,” said one of the soldiers, who had a captain’s twin bars sewn to his collar. There was a Ranger tab on one shoulder and jump wings on his chest. “When we heard the commotion and saw old Muhammad here freak out, we figured it was our only chance. I take it you came for Abdul Haq. You get him?”
“Dispatched with prejudice,” said Hamid. “You boys are gravy. Consider this your lucky day.”
“A-fuckin’-men,” said the captain.
“How you guys holding out?”
“We’re good to go.”
“Outstanding.” Hamid handed a roll of medical gauze to each man.
Jonathan got to his feet, confused. “Is someone hurt?”
Hamid peeled away the bandage to reveal an olive-green metallic canister. “Sorry, doc. Had to use your equipment to smuggle in what we needed.” He turned to the soldiers: “Four grenades is all we have. Two antipersonnel. Two Willy Petes. You guys got any extra clips?”
“Just the one,” said the captain. “You?”
“One spare, and the doc’s AK has a full mag.”
“You mind?” One of the soldiers, a sergeant, reached for Jonathan’s rifle.
“Be my guest.” Jonathan handed over the Kalashnikov.
“I take it you got a plan to get out of here,” said the captain.
“There’s a SEAL extraction team waiting in Kunduz,” said Hamid. “I got off a signal that I was going in, but I didn’t get confirmation that they were inbound. With all these mountains, it’s doubtful they got a good read on my GPS. Otherwise, they’d have been here by now.”
Jonathan felt his stomach sink. “What does that mean?”
“It means there’s a fifty-fifty chance no one’s going to be waiting for us when we get out of here.”
“How many Tabbies are out there?” asked the captain, “Tabby” meaning Taliban.
“I counted fifteen armed,” said Hamid. “You can add on a couple of camp followers. And then there are the thirty-caliber machine guns on the jeeps. That’s what worries me. Any of you got a good arm?”
“That’d be me,” said the sergeant.
“What do you think, cap?” asked Hamid.
The captain extended an arm into the passage. There was no fire. “They’re waiting for us to show our faces. Doesn’t look like they have night vision, so we’ve got that in our favor. We’ll cover and roll, make ’em keep their heads down until we can chuck a grenade their way. We need to force them outside the cave and into the open where the chopper can hit them.”
“If the chopper’s even here.” Suddenly Jonathan wanted a machine gun very badly.
“Have faith, doc,” said Hamid. “When you get out, keep your head down and your legs moving.”
“Let’s do this.” The captain tapped his sergeant on the shoulder. The sergeant nodded, then ducked into the passage and opened fire. The Rangers ran out first, then Hamid, and last Jonathan. He’d made it five steps when there was an explosion in the main entry chamber. He glimpsed a body launched into the air and heard a scream. A grenade. Keeping a hand on Hamid’s back, he kept moving. The corridor grew light. The Rangers kneeled at the mouth of the passage, firing. Jonathan heard a smack, and one of the soldiers collapsed.
“Man down!” shouted the captain.
A second grenade exploded near the doorway and the Taliban fighters escaped outside. Jonathan rushed to the wounded Ranger. He could see blood spreading from a chest wound. He felt for a pulse. Nothing. Then, a faint tremor.
“How is he?” asked the captain.
“Unconscious. He needs attention fast.”
“Can you carry him?” asked the captain.
Jonathan nodded. Bending double, he hoisted the soldier onto his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. “Let’s get out of here.”
The officer ran toward the doorway, followed by Hamid and the sergeant. Jonathan took a breath and staggered into the large chamber. Exhaustion, adrenaline, and the din of combat blurred events. He saw the captain firing in disciplined bursts. He saw Hamid cross the chamber, throw open the exterior door, and lob a grenade. He saw the sergeant bolt upright, with half his head shorn away, then stumble backward and fall to the ground.
And then Jonathan was at the door leading to the clearing, the captain and Hamid next to him. From high in the sky came the dull, rhythmic chop of a helicopter. A moment later, an earsplitting roar louder than anything Jonathan had ever heard filled the air. The ground shook. Men screamed.
“Gatling gun,” said the captain. “Let’s move!”
“What about the sergeant?” asked Jonathan.
The soldier lay a meter away, his brains spilled on the ground beside him.
“He’s gone.”
Hamid opened the door and tossed the last grenade. There was a flash of light, and a stream of white smoke curled into the air. The captain ran ahead, turning every few feet and spraying the area with machine-gun fire. Hamid pushed Jonathan out the door.
“Run to the far side of the plateau. Don’t stop for anything.”
“You don’t have to tell me that twice.” Jonathan jogged unevenly behind him, head down, his only thought that he must deliver the wounded Ranger to safety. He sensed rather than saw the helicopter hovering overhead. Geysers of dirt and crushed stone erupted from the Gatling gun’s rounds, spraying his face. Dead Taliban lay everywhere. To his right, the pickup trucks burned magnificently. Afghan fighters dashed across the clearing, seeking shelter from the withering cannon fire.
The helicopter touched down at the far end of the clearing. SEALs jumped to the ground and ran toward them. Jonathan transferred
the wounded Ranger to their care, then pulled himself into the open compartment. The captain hauled himself in next to him. “You did good, doc,” he shouted, barely audible above the rifle fire and rotor wash. “We could use you on our team anytime.”
Jonathan looked at the Ranger, seeing him clearly for the first time. The captain had shorn blond hair and wide, knowing blue eyes that were too hardened for a young man. The name Brewster was stenciled on his uniform.
“No thanks,” said Jonathan. “Never again.”
Gunfire raked the helicopter. Jonathan saw an Afghan fighter nearly enveloped in flames manning the .30 caliber machine gun. Another burst of fire struck the helicopter. Something hit close to Jonathan. Captain Brewster was flung onto his back. A string of bullet wounds laced his chest, and Jonathan knew immediately that he was dead.