by Cherry Adair
A massive blast from the street below lit the night sky with a demonic glow. Flames and thick black smoke flared high. Their vehicle had made it to the end of the alley.
The noise, and the brilliance of the fire, pulled people from their beds. Raised voices floated up on the still air. A bomb? Who? Where? Contrary to popular belief, Cairo was a very safe city. People were startled and frightened by the explosion. Hopefully, a panicked, curious crowd would slow down their pursuers.
AJ hung by one hand for a second when her sweaty palm began to slip off the rung. The warm metal creaked under her deathlike grip. She swung her body for momentum and managed a solid two-handed grip before swinging up to the next rung. The muscles in her arms screamed. She ignored their SOS.
Shouts from below. The clatter of booted feet on metal.
AJ climbed faster.
A bullet ricocheted off the building, missing her left hand by inches. Okay. Maybe she could manage it even quicker if she stopped thinking about the feeling of… Never mind, damn it! Climb. Climb!
This was nothing like training exercises. Nothing.
Ten stories. She'd tackled more in boot camp, but she was out of breath, her chest heaving when she finally saw the flat surface of the roof at nose level. Thank you, God.
The sudden sensation of a large hand on her butt propelled her the last few feet. She flew up onto the roof, and staggered to keep her balance. "Tha—"
"Go," Kane ordered, even as he crouched low and raced across the roof, weapon drawn. Panic rose inside her like bubbles in boiling water. She stared at his back for an instant. He didn't look either scared or sweaty. AJ gave a small inward sigh, but didn't waste time wondering how long it would take her to be that good. That in charge. That in control. She started running, emulating his movements, as she pulled her Sig from her belt and hurried to catch up.
No amount of training could've prepared her for this reality. Her heart raced with equal parts exhilaration and sheer, unadulterated terror. The buildings were relatively close together—close if one was a flying squirrel or a bird.
A canyon opened up ahead. She caught up with Kane, and they ran hell-bent for leather across the heat-sticky rooftop. At the exact same time they raised their arms, flung themselves forward doing the splits. Their momentum hurled them across the ten-foot-wide, ten-story-deep cliff separating the buildings. AJ slammed into the wall with enough force to jar her from head to toe. Kane was already standing as she threw a leg over the small lip of the roof.
He reached down and grabbed her wrist, yanking her onto the flat surface. Without missing a beat, he hauled her up, then dived behind a small square structure—probably an air-conditioning unit for the building—and pulled her down beside him.
"Scared?" he asked, still holding on to her hand. His was dry and firm; hers, slick with sweat.
"Shitless," AJ panted. She could barely hear over the sound of her own heartbeat thundering in her ears.
He chuckled low under his breath. "Scared keeps you sharp."
"Then I'm a razor."
The smile didn't quite reach his eyes. Something else flashed there as well. Anger? Pain? Empathy? Masked as quickly as it had floated to the surface. AJ had the irrational urge to reassure him. Silly. He was the man of steel. She resisted the impulse, but left her hand in his. Just for the moment.
"Courage is mastery of fear," Kane told her, smile gone. "Not absence of fear. You were sent in because they know you're ready. You have the skills. Trust your training. Focus and breathe. We have a straight shot to the next roof before they get up here. Ready?"
"You bet." She let him haul her to her feet again. The voices were getting louder. They ran side by side. AJ suspected Kane was dragging her with him, and was grateful when he didn't release her hand. He was the Energizer Bunny pulling her along. She needed all the help she could get. They were flying.
The men behind them shouted to one another in Arabic. AJ didn't speak much Arabic, just a word here and there. But she used their voices to pinpoint where they were. Close. Too close. The minute their heads cleared the roofline they'd start firing, and there was nowhere to hide up here. The roof was flat and endless. Its blackness melted into the dark night.
Her booted feet bit into the slightly sticky surface even as she scanned the area for shelter. Nothing. Just the next roof. And the next. And the next.
The flash of weapons-fire. Not even close. They couldn't see them. Not dressed in black as they were, and not against the unrelieved darkness. They were shooting blind. AJ didn't return fire. The muzzle flare would alert them to their exact location.
"Take a running jump, and spread wide," he ordered, releasing her hand.
"I'm with you. Go. Go. Go." There wasn't time for ladies first. It was every man for himself. She knew that. They started running together, but his legs were longer. And stronger. And, damn it, surer.
Wright took an upright, running jump. She shot a sideways glance as he almost levitated across the gap and cleared the fifteen-foot space between two buildings.
AJ mimicked his every move. Hot air rushed past her face as she lifted off, her legs in a splits position, her body forward, arms windmilling to keep her momentum. She hung, suspended for a lifetime, above the yawning maw of the street below before landing in an ungainly sprawl on the other side. Safe. Not a great landing by any stretch of the imagination, and she was damn grateful that Wright was yards ahead and hadn't seen her foot slip. Still, a bad landing was better than no landing at all.
Her heart slammed up into her desert-dry throat. Crouching, she followed him across another rooftop, her breath sawing in her lungs, her heart manic. Hot air pushed against her sweaty skin, wrapping her in a thick cocoon.
Suddenly the sharp pinch of a stitch in her side almost doubled her over.
Not now, for God's sake. Not now. AJ raced beside him, holding her side as the sharp pain intensified. Jesus, hadn't she screwed up enough already? Did she really have to be a crybaby and yell "cramp"? Of all the ridiculous reasons to get shot in the back. If it weren't so pathetically… girlie, she'd laugh at herself.
Crap. No wonder Kane wanted to send her home. She might as well go back on the pageant circuit if she couldn't be a better agent than this.
AJ grimaced as she tried to straighten up. If nothing else, she could match him for speed. At six three he was only five inches taller than she was in her boots. Despite the annoying pain of the stitch, her strides almost matched his as they came to the next rooftop jump over an alley.
This would take them down by at least fifteen feet. Down fifteen, across at least ten. Her spit had dried up an hour ago. Nothing to swallow down her dry throat. She dug the heel of her palm into the now screaming pain of the stitch and gritted her teeth.
More shots. Closer now.
"Crazy glue," Kane said grimly into his lip mic.
"Joined at the hip. Got it." A spear of pain radiated from her side directly to her brain, doubling her over.
"Together—" He jumped, and landed on the rooftop below, light as thistledown, then spun around to make sure she was following. Which she wasn't because the pain was so sharp she was cross-eyed.
He swore under his breath. "What the hell are you waiting for, Cooper?"
She panted through the pain in her side. "Stitch."
"Jesus," he said in her ear. "You'll have more than a fucking stitch if you don't jump. Do it now, Cooper. Now!"
Trying to straighten up as she ran, AJ backtracked to get a running start on the jump. No matter how good an agent she wanted to be, if she didn't shake this paralyzing terror of being shot again, she'd end up dead. Worse, she'd end up responsible for the deaths of other operatives. Perhaps even the mighty Kane Wright.
Forget the stitch. Forget everything. Run like hell. Clear the jump.
That's all I have to do. Run. Clear the jump.
I can do it. I can do it…
Her heart cramped as a bullet tore up the roofing inches from her feet. Raazaq's men close
d in. She couldn't control the way she started at the noise and close proximity of the gunfire. Her head went light with fear. Damn. Damn. Damn.
Determined, grim, she rotated to return fire. It was obvious they could see her location. She had nothing to lose. She got off a few shots, then spun back around and started running flat-out for the gap…
Her breath sawed painfully as she ran.
Faster.
Faster.
Twenty yards…
Zigging.
Zagging.
Faster.
Faster.
She tried frantically to put the image of a bullet tearing through her flesh out of her mind. God.
Ten yards…
She struggled with the image. The memory of the feel of the impact. The sharp, hot pain as the bullet sliced through her soft tissue and muscle. The sensation as it went through the back of her shoulder… burning, scorching, agonizingly painful.
"Nonono!" Concentrate on the now, damn it! AJ blocked the memory and ran with every ounce of energy in her body. Flat-out.
Three yards and she'd be flying.
One minute she was in full, flat-out motion. The next… nothing.
CHAPTER THREE
« ^ »
An agonized scream ripped AJ out of unconsciousness and into heart-pounding awareness.
Not her own scream. Thank God.
What—? Where—?
Preternaturally alert, eyes closed, she remained dead-still where she lay, senses tuned to the sound of violence nearby. Another scream. Male. Cut off mid-shriek. A thump. Something solid connecting with flesh.
Her body jerked in sympathy as another agonized scream ricocheted off the walls and seemed to echo on and on in the blackness surrounding her. Jesus God. A shudder of dread washed through her already sweat-drenched body. Where in God's name was she?
Gingerly, she rolled her head to one side, listening to someone being tortured very close by. She winced as blow after blow rained down on some unlucky bastard. And every groan floating through the darkness reverberated through her body, making her nearly feel each blow. She fought the sensation, aware that at any minute it might be her turn.
Think! Her brain felt slow, annoyingly sluggish. Pain blossomed behind her eyes and stretched out to every corner of her muddled mind. Didn't matter. She had to think around it. Had to marshal her thoughts so she could figure out where she was and what was going on. And most importantly, how to get the hell out of there.
Damn, the floor beneath her body felt hard as a rock. Foul, putrid odors permeated the air and she breathed through her mouth, trying not to think what she was sucking into her lungs. Come on. Come on, she mentally chanted, willing her body to get up. To move. To take action.
Another man's screams of agony joined the first. Tag-team torturing. No interpreter was needed to understand that the two men being viciously beaten next door were begging for mercy and shrieking bloody murder to the accompaniment of the blows.
Goose bumps chased each other down her spine, then settled in the pit other stomach, where they churned into a mass of nerves that had her ready to scream herself. She forced her sticky eyelids open, then blinked a couple of times as the darkness around her wavered and her stomach did queasy flip-flops. The pain in her head was subsiding to a low roar, but she felt new aches and pains popping up all over.
Jesus.
Had she already been tortured?
Where was she, how had she gotten here? More important, how could she escape? Wherever here was smelled like old pee and older sweat, and God knew what else. Lucky she couldn't see where she was lying. Or what she was lying on. The stench made her eyes water as she swallowed back nausea.
Something scuttled in the darkness and she drew her knees up, instinctively avoiding what sounded like the Godzilla of rats.
Another scream, blood-chilling and bone-numbing—then abruptly, and terrifyingly, cut off mid-note.
Jesus God.
Silence throbbed like a living presence. Alive with terror. Thick with anticipation of what was to come next.
A sob shattered the unnatural quiet. A plea for mercy. A slap. Quickly followed by a succession of blows.
Muffled Arabic voices bounced and echoed against stone walls. While the men weren't in the same room as she was, their voices were clear enough. AJ tried to decipher the rough dialect through the pain of a king-size headache.
Frowning made the ache in her head worse and didn't improve her hearing. She wasn't able to grasp more than a word here and there, but what she did understand didn't make her any happier. She tried to push herself upright, and instantly regretted it. Quickly, she lowered her head back to the floor as vertigo washed over her, and nausea roiled through her empty stomach.
"Bite the bullet, AJ," she warned herself, pushing the words out through gritted teeth. "What were they always saying at the Academy? Oh, yeah. Make pain your friend." She pressed a hand to her forehead. She didn't care for her new friend.
Next door, the victims were whimpering. Keeping her voice low, she whispered encouragement that they would never hear. "Come on, guys," she said while trying to stop her own world from spinning, "hang on. Don't let 'em win." She hoped to hell they could hang on through the torture, because as soon as the beaters were finished with the beatees, it'd be her turn. And sympathy or no sympathy, better them than her.
She couldn't afford to hurl right now. She willed the dizziness to pass, but because of the darkness, there was nothing to focus her eyes on until the spinning stopped, and she had/to wait it out. She concentrated fiercely on the conversation next door, hoping for a clue. Something to tell her where she was and what was going to happen next. Beyond the obvious torture thing.
Someone was going to die come morning. She got that part. The who, where, and why eluded her. However, the fact that they sounded excited about it filled her with dread. Nothing worse than a bad guy who loved his work. She'd hazard a wild guess there weren't that many victims left to choose from.
Carefully touching the back of her head, AJ discovered a huge, tender lump on the left side. Which accounted for the headache, but didn't tell her who'd hit her or how she'd ended up in this pit.
She rolled to her knees, wanting to put at least a body-length distance between her nose and the floor. The air wasn't much better at two feet than it was at ground level, but at least nothing could crawl into her hair. She was either in a bathroom or a cell. She'd vote for the cell. Or perhaps she was two for two.
It took less than a minute to travel around the room and trace the circumference with her hand. Eight feet by eight feet. Stone walls. No furniture. No toilet. There went the bathroom theory. Cement floor. Wooden door. Locked, of course. That was it.
And one female T-FLAC agent who was shit out of luck.
"Don't panic," she told herself firmly as her heartbeat sped up, and sweat popped out on her brow. Just don't panic. Yeah, right. Trapped. Beat up. Maybe about to be killed. Why spoil the fun with panic?
AJ braced her arms on the wall, and shifted her feet apart to do press-ups against the rough stone. She needed energy, and a plan. Thinking about what was happening next door or her various aches and pains wasn't going to achieve either. The physical movement helped her concentrate.
"Come on, AJ," she ordered quietly, "think. You're a smart girl. The cream of the Academy. Now's your chance to prove it." Her muscles quivered in protest as she lowered herself slowly. First she had to figure out where she was. Somewhere hot… it was stifling in here… she raised her body away from the wall, slowly.
Arabic… She got a mental flash of the pyramids. Egypt… Yes! She was here to eliminate Raazaq!
That was it. AJ gusted out a relieved breath. Okay. The blow to the head hadn't scrambled her brains totally. She was here with a team to take out Raazaq.
And the team consisted of—?
And the plan was to—?
She let her forehead rest for a moment on the rough stone wall. Totally or not, her brains wer
e scrambled. "Oh, shit."
Kane slumped against the wall facing the small rural jail on the outskirts of Cairo and took another clumsy swig from the bottle cradled in his gnarled hand. Damn fool woman had got herself locked up. And not by the Cairo police, either. Raazaq had damn long arms.
They'd kill her in the morning. They'd sure as hell worked over the two guys locked up inside with her. Their screams of pain could be heard quite clearly in the hot, still night. Damn it to hell.
Oh, yeah, they'd kill AJ Cooper without a blink. After they tortured every scrap of intel she had out of her. In the most painful and brutal ways possible. He suspected the only reason they hadn't interrogated her yet was they were saving the woman for last. To prolong their entertainment.
If they knew how scared she was already, it would probably take all the fun out of it.
She'd spill her guts in two seconds flat at the fast hint of torture.
He shuddered at how cleverly cruel they could be. How they'd withheld food and water in exchange for intel. And when he hadn't given it up, how they'd brutalized his team. One at a time. Until he'd thought he'd go mad with their screams of agony. It went on for days, and days…
In a cold sweat, he shoved his personal nightmare aside. Wasn't going to happen. Not on his watch. But Jesus, he fucking hated being put in this position again. Responsible for somebody else's very existence…
He was good at a number of things. But keeping his teammates alive wasn't one of them.
Which is why he'd worked alone for the past two years.
He swore viciously under his breath. Angry at himself for giving in to the order to bring her. Angry at Cooper for being the rookie that she was… Hell, angry at God for putting up another roadblock to his sanity.
Never again. Never a-fucking-gain.
And never with a rookie in this lifetime. No matter how good they said she was. No matter how many sniping and sharpshooting medals she'd won. No matter how hard up he was for a sniper.
Damn it. He needed her.
Which just went to prove how fucked up this operation had become.
He glanced down to see a scorpion, tail curved to strike, walking across the hand he had braced in the dirt beside him. He flicked it off before it struck, and again lifted the sealed bottle to his mouth, watching the jail through narrowed eyes.
