by Elle James
Ahktar crossed his arms over his chest and looked down his hawk-like nose at Mac. “Infidels You will tell me who you are and why you plague my country.”
Mac spit on the man’s feet.
The guard beside him kicked him in the side.
Mac bit down hard on his tongue to keep from emitting a sound. He’d be damned if he showed an ounce of weakness to these animals.
Ahktar was known for torturing his victims before he beheaded them and displayed their heads as trophies of his reign of terror. Mac wouldn’t go down without a huge fight. Hell, he wouldn’t go down.
He narrowed his eyes and focused on his enemy.
He’d get through this, free Kylie and destroy Ahktar, if it was the last thing he did in his life.
First, he had to get his hands free. The better to strangle the bastard with…
Ahktar jerked his head toward two of his men and spoke in Pashto.
The men slipped their weapon straps over their shoulders, freeing their hands.
They advanced on Mac, grabbed him beneath his arms and hauled him to his feet.
Another man grounded his weapon and strode toward Mac. When he reached him, he punched him hard in the gut.
Mac would have doubled over, if he could have. The men on either side of him kept him from doing that. His attacker stood back, looking to Ahktar for further guidance.
Ahktar gave him a sneering nod and a short order in Pashto.
The attacker swung his fist at Mac’s face.
Mac moved his head to the side at the last second.
The blow caught him on the side of his left cheek. Pain shot through him. He gritted his teeth and held steady, even when a gray haze threatened to envelop him.
The man swung again, aiming at his nose. Mac turned his head the other way.
Again, the blow missed his nose, but hit his right cheek. More pain shot through his face and head, making his head spin and his vision blur.
He couldn’t lose consciousness. Kylie needed him. His teammate and Josh needed him.
Warm, wet liquid oozed down his face.
His tormentor continued to punch him until Mac hung limp between the men holding him up.
Finally, Ahktar spoke.
The hands on his arms released, and Mac stumbled then fell between Josh and Blade.
Blade let loose a string of curses.
The men who’d held up Mac jerked Blade to his feet and proceeded to pound him in the face and belly.
With his hands tied behind his back, Mac could do nothing to stop them.
“Move back,” Josh whispered as he lay on his side behind Mac.
Mac scooted backward, moving as stealthily as possible.
With all attention on Blade, none of the guards could see that Josh was chewing on the plastic band binding Mac’s wrists.
A moment later, the zip-tie broke, freeing Mac’s hands.
He lay for a moment, reviewing his options. What could one man do against five armed men? Fortunately, three of the armed men were busy working over Blade and didn’t have their weapons at the ready. That left Ahktar with his handgun and his guard holding an AK-47. He couldn’t be sure how many more men Ahktar had outside the building. It didn’t matter. Patience wasn’t a quality Mac possessed.
When the man beating Blade hit him in the face yet again, Mac couldn’t just lay there and let the torture continue.
He bunched his legs, rolled to his feet and plowed into the one man left holding his weapon in front of him.
That man knocked into Ahktar, sending the Taliban leader flying across the room. The handgun he’d been holding flew from his grip and landed in the shadows.
Mac landed on the guard’s back, ripped his weapon from his hands, rolled across the floor and came up, pointing the rifle at Ahktar’s face. Without glancing at the man beating Blade, he bit out, “Let my man go, or I kill your leader.”
The men holding Blade froze in place.
“Tell them,” Mac growled at the Taliban leader.
Ahktar lay on his back, holding his hands up. “They will kill your friend.”
“Then you will die,” Mac said. “Tell them to let him go.”
For a long moment, Ahktar stared up at Mac through narrowed eyes.
His patience gone, Mac shifted the weapon and pulled the trigger, hitting the ground at Ahktar’s feet.
The Taliban leader yelped, jumped back and spoke swiftly in Pashto.
The men holding Blade released him.
Blade staggered forward and righted himself.
“Free him,” Mac ordered, pointing the AK-47 at Ahktar’s other leg. “Now!”
Again, Ahktar issued an order.
The man who’d been beating Blade and Mac, pulled a knife out of the scabbard on his belt and advanced on Blade.
“If he hurts my man, I’ll blow a hole in your leg so big you’ll lose it.”
Ahktar spoke. His guy with the knife snarled and answered back. The Taliban leader addressed one of the men who’d been holding Blade. That man raised his rifle, pointing it at the man holding the knife.
Blade looked to Mac, then turned his back on the guy who’d been using his face like a punching bag.
The knife sliced right through the plastic zip-tie.
Blade spun and divested his torturer of his weapon, yanked his arm up behind him and pressed the blade to his neck. “You bastard. I should kill you.”
“Not until we find Kylie,” Mac said. “You and Josh take their rifles, tie them up.”
“You think we’re just going to walk out of here?” Josh asked as Blade cut the tie holding his wrists.
“We have our ‘Get of Jail Card’ right here.” Mac pointed at Ahktar. “We still have three other limbs to negotiate with, before we put him out of our misery.”
Josh and Blade used the turbans the men wore to tie their wrists and ankles.
Once they’d finished securing the leader’s men, they confiscated their weapons. All the while, Mac held his pointed at Ahktar. It would give him great pleasure to blow the Taliban terrorist to hell where he belonged, but they needed him as a hostage. That might be the only way they got out of the Taliban camp alive.
Blade and Josh hauled Ahktar to his feet and pushed him toward the door.
“Take us to the woman,” Mac said.
Ahktar shook his head. “I cannot.”
Mac pressed the barrel of the AK-47 to the Taliban leader’s leg. “Take us.”
“I cannot. I don’t know where she is.”
“You lie,” Mac said.
Ahktar snorted. “I cannot tell you what I do not know. I had her brought here, but my leader took her. He will use her as an example as to what will happen to news reporters who kill.” The Mullah’s eyes narrowed, and his lip rose in a feral snarl. “She will pay for what she did to my brother.”
“She did what she had to in order to survive,” Mac said.
“She murdered my brother,” Ahktar spit out. “My family will be avenged.”
“We’ll see about that.” Mac shoved him through the door. “You can start by telling your men to hold their fire. My finger is on the trigger, pointing at your hip. If anyone tries to stop us, I will destroy you.”
As he passed through the door, the Taliban leader called out in Pashto.
With one hand on Ahktar’s shoulder, the other on the AK-47, finger resting on the trigger, Mac followed the man out into the open.
Several Taliban soldiers stood in a semicircle around the building, all holding weapons, mostly AK-47s and a few M4A1 rifles like the ones issued to the US military.
“That’s my rifle,” Blade said through gritted teeth.
“We don’t have time to sort out what belongs to who.” Mac poked the barrel of his weapon at Ahktar’s hip. “Tell them to lay down their weapons in front of my men.” Mac felt the longer they jerked around with Ahktar and his men, the farther away Kylie would be taken.
If Ahktar had told him the truth of her being taken away by his supe
rior.
Dread gnawed at his gut. Though he didn’t trust Ahktar to tell the truth, he also didn’t doubt that someone had taken Kylie. Instinct told him she wasn’t there. If she had been, Ahktar wouldn’t have appeared so smug about Kylie being used as an example to warn other journalists.
Which meant he had no idea where Kylie was being taken.
Chapter 9
Kylie stood to one side and waited for the door to open, her boot in her hands…ready.
The door opened outward.
A burly-looking guard dressed in black stepped inside, his bushy dark eyebrows forming a V over his nose. He glanced back over his shoulder, saying something in what sounded like Pashto.
Because he was looking back, he didn’t see the boot coming at him.
Kylie aimed for the nose, swinging hard and in an upward motion, hoping to break it and drive the cartilage up into his head, making his eyes water so that he couldn’t see her.
The crunch of the boot hitting his nose indicated she’d struck gold.
The man cried out, blood spurted and he grabbed his face, cursing in his language.
Another man lunged through the door.
Kylie didn’t have time to cock her arm for a second swing. She had to rely on the skills she’d acquired in the Krav Maga course she’d taken for over a year while stateside.
She slammed her palm into the second guard’s face, hitting him in the nose, hoping to accomplish much the same scenario as she had with the boot. Only this man’s nose didn’t break. He grabbed her arm and slung her around, clamping his elbow over her throat.
Kylie stomped on his instep, rammed her elbow into his gut, grabbed the arm around her throat and bent double.
In that final move, she flipped the man over her head. He landed flat on his back, the wind temporarily knocked from his lungs.
She didn’t have time to think. Kylie dove for the door, swung it closed and locked it from the outside.
The men inside shouted loud enough that others would hear and come to see what all the fuss was about.
Kylie didn’t plan on being there when they arrived. She ran around the mud and stick hut to the rear and raced past a line of similar huts.
“Mac,” she whispered loudly as she passed each one. “Blade? Josh?”
No one answered.
She stopped in front of the hut beside the one she’d escaped and lifted the lever that locked the door in place. She pulled it open and peered into the dark interior. “Mac?”
Rustling sounded and a man wearing ragged clothing crawled toward the opening.
Kylie jumped backward, horrified at his appearance.
His face had been badly beaten. His eyes were bruised and swollen. Dried blood caked beneath his nose.
He said something in Pashto.
Kylie shook her head. “I don’t understand.” She couldn’t wait long. The two men yelling in the hut behind her were bound to draw unwanted attention to her plight.
“Help me,” the man spoke in English.
Although she needed to keep moving, she couldn’t leave the man. Kylie bent to help him to his feet.
He struggled but managed to straighten then bowed slightly. “I am Musa.”
“Kylie,” she said curtly, shooting a glance over her shoulder. “I have to go. I have to find my friends,” Kylie said.
“You are American,” Musa said.
She nodded. “I am. I was with three other Americans. Do you know where they are?”
He shook his head. “I heard Ahktar’s men talk about them. They were dropped off five kilometers south of here to be killed.”
Kylie’s stomach roiled. “No. I have to get to them. They can’t die.” Not after she’d reconnected with Mac, not after all those wasted years she could have been with him. Now that they’d been given a second chance, she’d be damned if it was taken away.
“Which way is south?” she asked.
The man glanced up at the star-studded sky, so pure and neutral to the human situation. “I will show you.”
Kylie frowned. “Can you make it?”
He nodded. “I have to. If I stay, they will kill me in the morning.”
“Why?” she asked. “What did you do?”
“I am a teacher. I dared to teach young girls how to read and write.”
“Bastards,” Kylie muttered. She slipped her arm around the teacher’s waist and draped his over her shoulder. “We have to move fast. They will soon learn of my escape.”
Together, they moved through the dark village, trying to keep hidden in the shadows of the low, crudely built huts.
Shouts sounded behind them. An engine roared to life, and headlights blinked on somewhere in the midst of the structures.
As they came to the edge of the village, Musa stopped and removed his arm from around her shoulders. “I am too slow. You must go on without me.”
“No way,” Kylie said. “You’ve come this far, you have to go the distance to make sure I don’t get lost.”
He shook his head. “I can create a diversion. It will give you time to get away.”
Kylie stared up at the man, the starlight shining down on his kind eyes. “I can’t let you sacrifice yourself. You deserve to live as much or more than I do.” She squared her shoulders. “We leave this village together or not at all.”
Musa’s lips curled upward in a tight smile. “You may be sentencing yourself to death.”
“I’ll take that chance. I’m not leaving you with them.” She picked up the pace, hauling him along with her as fast as she could go with his weight bearing down on her.
As they left the little village, they had to cross an open stretch of ground that left them vulnerable. If the vehicle they’d revved up reached the edge of the village before Kylie and Musa reached cover, their escape would be short-lived.
The Taliban could recapture them or just shoot them in the back. Either way, they’d be dead by morning.
With that in mind, Kylie pushed on when her exhaustion threatened to slow her down.
Running was hard enough alone. With a wounded, beaten man, it was exponentially difficult. Twice they stumbled and almost fell.
“You should leave me,” Musa said. “I will continue by myself.”
“No,” Kylie said through gritted teeth, her lungs and muscles burning with the effort. If they could make it just a little farther, they could hide in the hills, making their way south in more rugged, yet protected terrain.
Kylie had to stop to catch her breath. A glance over her shoulder made her blood run cold and her pulse ratchet up. A vehicle left the village, heading their way.
In the light from the stars above, she could see it was a truck loaded with men. Each man held a rifle in the air, shouting as the truck raced toward them.
“Run,” Kylie whispered. “Run!”
She tightened her hold on Musa and half-dragged, half-carried the man toward the hillside south of the village.
“Just a few…more…feet,” she gritted out.
She could hear the truck rumbling across the dirt road behind her, the men on board firing their weapons. Whether they were shooting at them or into the air, Kylie couldn’t say. She wasn’t looking at them. She focused on the hills in front of her, knowing that even if she and Musa reached them before the men in the back of that truck, they still had to climb.
Though her strength waned, she couldn’t give up now. They’d come too far. Ahktar wouldn’t let her live after killing his brother. He’d make her die a slow painful death.
Hell, she’d rather be shot and killed in her attempt to escape than captured and tortured to death. Ahktar’s reputation scared her more than she cared to admit. If she only had a smidgen of a chance to escape, she wasn’t going to waste it.
“Come on, Musa,” she said, breathing hard, her lungs feeling as if they would explode with as much air as she was forcing through them.
Then they were climbing, up and away from the road. She thought she couldn’t catch her breath o
n the flat ground. Now she was moving on a prayer, her body almost played out, her back aching from taking the bulk of Musa’s weight.
Kylie didn’t stop, she couldn’t not now. She had to get away from these men before she could get back to Mac, Blade and Josh. They needed her.
She didn’t stop to think that she might need them.
* * *
Mac walked Ahktar to the nearest vehicle and stopped.
“Tie him up,” he said to Blade.
Blade ripped a strand of fabric from the man’s turban to secure his hands behind his back. Then he tied his ankles with the remainder of the turban.
Without the head covering, the man’s hair stuck out wildly. He didn’t look as intimidating or tough.
Mac knew better. The man was a monster who loved to torture his victims in the most painful ways. He was pure evil. He’d be damned if he let him get away.
“Now, you’ll tell me where your boss took Kylie.”
Ahktar lifted his chin, his eyes narrowing. “I do not know.”
“Which direction did he go when he left?” Mac demanded.
“I do not—”
Mac grabbed the man’s arms and raised then up behind him as far as he could.
The man cried out and bent over to ease the pain. He fell on his face since his ankles were secured. “They went north,” he said into the dirt.
Mac nodded toward Blade and Josh. “Load him up.”
The two men he shoved the Taliban leader into the back seat. Blade climbed in beside him, holding his rifle pointed at the man’s head.
“How good are you at driving stick shift?” Mac asked Josh.
“Good,” Josh answered.
“You drive,” Mac said. “I’ll ride shotgun in case we need firepower.”
Josh slipped into the driver’s seat and started the engine while Mac climbed into the passenger seat. “Let’s find Kylie.”
Josh fumbled with the shift and popped the clutch.
The SUV lurched forward and died.
Josh swore. “I know how to do this.”’
“Breathe,” Mac said. “Now…get us out of here.”
Drawing in a deep breath, Josh started the engine, cupped the shift in his palm and moved it into first gear. He eased off the clutch and the vehicle moved forward smoothly.
