Mastana shuffled down the hall. She looked around for a moment, then led Alton to a heavy door. “This was my cell.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Mastana gawked at him, incredulous.
“We were here earlier,” explained Alton. “Sorry we missed you.”
Mastana stepped to the left a few paces. “This is my friend’s cell.” She began calling out in Pashto.
“She is calling to someone named Sita,” explained Fahima. “She is saying she is here with friends and we will rescue her, as she promised.”
Alton hurried to join Mastana at the cell door. He began inserting random keys from the key ring into its lock, finding success on the third try.
Mastana stumbled into the cell and embraced the occupant, murmuring in the other’s ear. She turned to Alton. “I feel as if we are sisters, but I have never seen Sita’s face until now.”
Noticing the girl’s chains, Alton rushed over to free her. The girl pulled back, and Mastana spoke to her in reassuring tones. Despite the lingering fear made plain on her face, Sita remained motionless long enough for Alton to unlock her shackle.
Alton walked back to the hallway. “Are there any more in here?”
“I do not know,” said Mastana. “Maybe.” She emerged into the hallway and began calling out in Pashto once again.
“Why don’t you call, too?” Alton asked Fahima. “If there are any other girls in here, they’ll certainly respond more to a woman’s voice in their native language than to mine in English.”
Mastana had already started working her way down the right side of the hallway, so Fahima proceeded down the left. As they did so, Sita peeked out her cell door but retreated in terror upon spotting Alton.
“It’s okay,” said Alton, not sure if the teen could understand him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Alton, down here!” Mastana gestured from the front of another cell. Alton reached its heavy wooden door and soon found the proper key, swinging it wide open. A dirty face looked up at him. The prisoner appeared to be a couple of years younger than Mastana. Alton rushed to the girl’s side and unlocked her shackle within seconds.
“Tell her to come with us,” said Alton.
The teen looked blank, uncomprehending. Perhaps the shock of captivity had rendered her incapable of internalizing any more surprises.
“Alton!” called Fahima. “There is a girl in here!”
Alton limped into the hallway and joined Fahima, eventually freeing one more prisoner.
Mastana led the dazed, younger prisoner into the hallway, then coaxed Sita into the open as well.
Alton turned to Fahima. “Explain to them that we’ll have to fight our way out. They’ll need to stick close to us and obey our commands to have a chance of escaping alive.”
Fahima raised her voice and communicated the information. The two older prisoners nodded, but the young one seemed to remain in a daze.
Alton noticed the frequency of gunfire from the front of the building had picked up. “We need to get out of here. Is that all the prisoners?”
“Yes,” said Fahima. “I looked into the cells on both sides.”
“Let’s go, then, before we’re completely cut off.”
Fahima helped Mastana and Sita, while the other older prisoner grasped the hand of the young one. Alton led the group back to the building’s entrance, where David and Mallory were firing almost continuously.
“We have three other girls besides Mastana,” he told them. “Ready to roll?”
Before they could answer, the youngest prisoner darted past them, hurling straight into the open courtyard fronting the prison. Shots rang out from the left. David turned and fired, bringing down a cultist, but not before the young prisoner collapsed to the ground.
“Dammit!” said Alton. “Can we get to her without being shot ourselves?”
“Now that you and Fahima are back, yes,” said Mallory. “We were waiting for you to return before we tried to punch our way out.”
Alton passed a couple of frag grenades to Fahima and Kamaal. “On my mark, use these and your Berettas. We need to lay it on so thick that nobody will try to return fire when we leave.”
“M two-oh-threes loaded?” asked Alton. David and Mallory confirmed, and Alton gave the command. “Fire!”
Bristling with weapons, they opened up with a salvo of grenades, following by a barrage of rifle shots. The walls of the surrounding buildings disintegrated as if a demolition company had been hired for the job. Bits of mud brick, wood, and human flesh flew in all directions as concussion blasts mixed with the steady pulse of gunfire.
“Let’s go!” yelled Alton as the din subsided. They piled out of the door and turned to the left, aiming for the compound’s southern edge once again.
With the smoke of armaments and debris dust heavy in the air, David veered into the courtyard and scooped up the young escapee. He rejoined the others as they reached the relative safety of a half-demolished building’s interior.
“How is she?” asked Mallory, studying the girl with anxious eyes.
David laid her on the ground and felt her neck. “No pulse. Let’s try CPR.” Alton and Kamaal stood guard while David and Mallory knelt by the girl’s side, administering the procedure. After working for two or three minutes, a time that to Alton in their precarious position felt like an hour, David sat back on his haunches. “It’s not working. She’s bled out.” A dark pool of blood on the girl’s side bore somber witness to the truth of his words.
David moved as if to pick up the body, but Fahima laid a hand on his arm. “There are other girls, living ones, who will need your protection to escape from this evil place. We must leave this one here.”
David nodded and straightened the girl’s arms by her side, then rose.
Alton noticed a bright stain on David’s shirt, just over the site of his torso wound. The exertion must have torn open his stitches.
Alton flinched as a cacophony of shouts erupted from the nearby courtyard. Apparently, the cultists had sent reinforcements. He turned to the others. “We need to get moving. We’re not out of this yet.”
CHAPTER 70
Escaping with the teens was proving to be problematic. The former prisoners had all been deprived of proper nutrition, Mastana worst of all. While her spirit showed a fiery determination to escape, her body confounded that intention, sending her stumbling with almost every step.
“Kamaal, can you help Mastana again?” asked Alton.
Kamaal looped his left arm around his young charge, leaving his right hand free to grasp his Beretta.
As he limped along, Alton eyed Sita and the other escapee. They appeared fatigued but had no trouble matching his pace. The others seemed to be faring reasonably well, albeit disheveled and covered with dust and sweat. David paused for a moment to rest his hands on his knees, drawing a deep breath as the exertion took a toll on his torso wound.
Alton knew they needed an escape plan. Surely, all the sentinels in the guard huts would be on full alert, looking for them to escape from within. He spoke into his microphone. “Let’s head for the guard hut at the eight o’clock position. Hopefully, the guard we took out there was the only one manning that spot. If so, we should be able to slip right through.”
They hugged the walls of the closest buildings, fearful of stepping into the moonlight and revealing themselves to the guards and random search parties scouring the grounds for them.
Continuing along the southern arc of the compound’s inner perimeter, they soon reached the spot corresponding with the eight o’clock hut. Alton glanced in its direction. Had the light inside the shack been on when they passed earlier? He didn’t think so.
Alton turned to ask David and Mallory about this when the question was answered for him. The light from the hut winked twice as armed cultists emerged from within and passed in front of the hut’s light fixture.
“Well, that option’s out,” he said. “Anyone got any bright ideas?”
“W
hat about the main gate?” said David. “They may be so sure we wouldn’t try to use it that they’ve deployed their forces elsewhere, to the more isolated spots where it’d be easier to slip through their lines.”
Alton glanced to Mallory, who nodded. “Okay, let’s try that,” he said. “Plus, it’s at the nine o’clock spot, just a little further down. I’m not sure how much further the girls can travel.”
Crouching while slipping from shadow to shadow, the band at last scurried breathless behind a low, rock wall directly east of the main gate. To Alton’s dismay, a crowd of six or seven armed soldiers peered from behind the windows of the gate’s dual stone guard huts. He could see another score of cultists in the desert beyond the huts, kicking apart patches of dark scrub brush in an effort to locate the intruders.
“That’s not an option. We could take out the huts, but by then, half the people in this place would be breathing down our necks. We need a less fortified spot.”
Shouts and flashes of light caused Alton to swing his head in the direction from which they had just traveled. The Brotherhood members had apparently recognized the best potential escape route from the compound: the one they were on. Rounding the bend in the site’s southern arc was a cultist search party, fifteen or so armed men sweeping the berm with flashlights. They would spot Alton and his friends within seconds.
Alton removed the A4 from his shoulder. “There’s no gap in the guard huts, and that search party will see us any time now. This is where we make our last stand.”
CHAPTER 71
“Wait. I know this place,” said Mastana, casting her gaze around their surroundings. “I saw it from out there, when I almost escaped a few days ago. There is a spot near here where the ground is low, where the water used to flow. It is a little further along, the same direction we are going.”
Alton shouldered his carbine. “Let’s go. Hurry!”
As they stumbled forward, Alton turned to his young friend. “Show me the place as soon as you see it.”
She nodded, too exhausted to vocalize an answer.
They crept past the compound’s ten o’clock position. Hadn’t she said the dried creek bed was nearby?
“There it is!” hissed Mastana. “See how the ground goes down?”
Patches of scrub brush concealed both sides of the culvert. But they’d have to cross an open field to reach it, and the crowds of cultists searching for them seemed to grow thicker every moment. They needed a way to travel to the escape route unseen. In the meantime, they moved a bit further into the compound, ducking under the shadows provided by a nearby building’s crumbling eaves.
“We need a diversion,” said Alton to David and Mallory. “How about the M two-oh-threes? The rounds travel about four hundred meters. That’s gotta be more than halfway to the other side of the compound. And from here, they won’t see us launch.”
“Sounds good,” said Mallory, glancing in the direction of the search party they had spotted moments ago. “We’d better make it quick.”
Alton turned to the rest of his group. “Be ready to run. We’re going to fire the grenade launchers. When the Brotherhood members run off to investigate, we’ll head for the creek bed.”
Fahima explained the strategy to the escapees in Pashto while the former soldiers pointed their rifles skyward.
“Fire!”
Stubby rounds streaked into the night sky. By the time the sound of distant explosions ripped through the compound, the group had already moved to the edge of the building, waiting for their chance to break for the culvert.
Explosions boomed, and the cultists’ heads turned in unison. Nearly all of them dashed in the direction of the noise.
Two of them remained at the main gate, standing in the road between the guard shacks. They seemed mesmerized by the cacophony but unwilling to leave their assigned posts.
Alton lined up the closest one with his SIG Sauer. Doing his best to steady his frenetic breathing, he squeezed off a shot. The target fell to the ground.
The second cultist registered shock, then swiveled his head wildly. Unable to spot his adversaries, he bolted for the safety of the nearest stone guard hut.
Alton aimed again and fired—and missed. The guard continued running. Mallory and David had their Sauers out by now and fired as well. After errant shots ricocheted off the ground and hut, one finally found its mark, sending the guard collapsing forward in an unmoving heap.
“Let’s go!” said Alton. “We’ll only have a few minutes before they realize what’s happened and return.”
They dashed across the open space and tumbled into the culvert. Mastana looked incapable of rising from the spot in which she had fallen, but Kamaal pulled her up and murmured words of encouragement. She nodded and wrapped an arm around his back to steady herself.
The group moved along the creek bed, distancing themselves from the compound. By leaning over, their heads fell below the surrounding ground. They picked their way over dried channels, rocks, and scrub brush, attempting to strike a balance between speed and stealth.
“Alton,” whispered Mastana, “I am worried about the dogs.”
“What dogs?”
“When I escaped a few days ago, they sent dogs after me. I could not run faster than them, and there is no water out here to keep them from smelling me—not any that I could find, at least.”
“Last time, you weren’t armed,” said Alton. “This time we are. I hope we won’t have to use a weapon against a dog, but we may have no choice.”
After traveling twenty minutes along the culvert, Alton waved to the others to stop. Thankfully, no canines had appeared. Deprived of their leader, the cultists seemed incapable of rising to that level of independent thought.
Alton peered over the culvert’s edge. Using the compass app on his cellphone, he located the mountain road on which his party’s vehicles were hidden, then rejoined the others. “Let’s head south, straight back to the tree line on the mountain. That will minimize our time and distance in the open. Then we can make our way east again, staying above the tree line, until we hit the mountain road. We’ll follow the road up the slope, back to our SUVs.”
Pulling themselves out of the culvert, the exhausted party staggered towards the safety of the mountain ridge. Their distance from the compound eliminated the risk of giving themselves away with sound, but in the dark desert night, any light would have been spotted immediately. They picked their way across the obscure landscape, often stumbling but always pressing forward.
Alton felt the drip of blood from his head wound reach the left side of his neck and trail down to his collar. He didn’t bother to wipe it off.
The disheveled band reached the mountain at last. Plodding up its slope a hundred meters, they collapsed behind a clump of blackberry bushes.
“Alton, do you have any water?” asked Mastana.
“Not here, but we have plenty in our vehicles. And food, too. If you can make it just a little further, you’ll have both.”
“That is good.”
“I know we’re all tired, but we need to leave,” said Alton, still breathing deeply from the exertion. “The Brotherhood will soon realize we didn’t get to their compound by walking. They’ll know we drove, and the mountain road is the first place they’ll look for our vehicles. It’s the only place to hide them. We need to get back to our SUVs before they find them.”
The thought of escaping on foot without food or water spurred them to action. Thankfully, they hadn’t arrived at the mountain too far west of its solitary road. They rose in unison and stumbled in a daze across the mountain slope, using trees and bushes to hide their movements. In the space of thirty minutes, the exhausted party reached the road and wound their way back to the two SUVs.
Alton climbed behind the wheel of the lead vehicle, while Mallory volunteered to drive the second one. The others fell inside. In Alton’s SUV, David leaned over in the backseat, the bloody stain on his shirt growing larger and his chest expanding with deep breaths. Mas
tana and Fahima sprawled in the seat next to him, soiled, sweaty, and too exhausted for further movement. Alton felt sure a similar scene was playing out his wife’s Cherokee.
“Ready?” asked Alton into his microphone.
“Yep,” replied Mallory. “Let’s roll.”
The lumbering vehicles bounced over the rough terrain and turned onto the treacherous mountain road. Unwilling to reveal their position by turning on their headlights, Alton and Mallory instead trusted on the waxing moon’s dim light to illuminate their way. David groaned a little as the SUV bounced over the uneven ground, jarring his wound.
Alton breathed a sigh of relief as they crested the mountain and began to nose down the other side.
The respite proved to be short-lived. Rounding a bend in the road, the glare of headlights coming up the road signaled a convoy of vehicles headed straight for them.
CHAPTER 72
“Off the trail!” said Alton into his mike. “Follow me.”
Alton swung his wheel hard to the left, jostling downslope towards a heavy grove of evergreens mixed with scrub brush. He pulled behind the foliage and nosed into the plants, leaving room for Mallory to pull in beside him.
“Kill the engines!” hissed Alton. The two vehicles sat motionless in the night. He slipped on his night vision goggles to get a better look at the oncoming vehicles. He could scarcely believe his eyes as he identified them. The convoy reached their position and rolled past for five minutes. It left as suddenly as it came, leaving a cloud of dust behind.
Not wanting to break radio silence with the convoy so close, Alton exited his SUV. He limped over to Mallory’s Cherokee and knocked on her window, causing her and the rest of the vehicle’s occupants to jump.
“Sorry,” he said as his wife cracked the door. “Can you come talk for a minute?”
She climbed out and met him in the darkness.
“What the hell are US troops doing here?” asked Mallory.
“Reinforcements?” suggested Alton.
The Devil's Due (The Blackwell Files Book 5) Page 23
