“Yes, sir, but we lost a man…”
“And now you’ve got civilians involved, and they’re at risk. Nicely done,” Monroe stated flatly. “You have no idea what the hell you’re doing.”
“All due respect, sir, we need help.”
Monroe sighed audibly. “You disobeyed a direct order, Reynolds.”
“Not technically, sir. I signed myself out on leave. This is on my own time.”
“Then get yourself out of your mess on your own time,” Monroe snapped. “Why are you calling me?”
“General…”
Monroe’s voice turned from angry to businesslike. “You said you’re wounded. How badly?”
“Shoulder. About a seven on a ten scale, but I’m still breathing.”
“Anyone else there? That driver of yours?”
“He turned out to be one of the bad guys. Ate a bullet.” Reynolds drew a painful breath. “I have one of the Americans here – ex-military, so he can handle himself. But we’re exposed, and it’s black as the devil’s heart out.”
“Stand by.” Reynolds could hear someone speaking in the background. When Monroe returned, his voice was dangerously low.
“Reynolds, if you make it out of this alive, you’re looking at a court-martial. I will not tolerate this sort of insubordination on my watch. You’ve blundered into a situation that’s way over your pay grade, in defiance of my orders.” Monroe paused. “I’ve scrambled some birds. We’re triangulating your phone. Leave it on.”
“There appears to be a well-armed force here, sir.”
“Keep your head down, and do not, under any circumstances, make your presence known. Do you read me? Do not try any heroics; do not engage. You’re in the middle of something you don’t understand, and anything you do will just make it worse.”
The general terminated the call, and Reynolds set the phone beside him and shook his head. “I don’t understand anything. That wasn’t the reaction I expected. He was furious.”
Spencer held up the syringe. “What exactly did he say?”
“That he’s sending help, but I’m not to engage anyone. That I don’t understand the dynamics.”
Spencer removed the orange cap from the syringe and eyed Reynolds’s arm. “Fortunately, I don’t work for the DOD, so I don’t have to care about situational dynamics.” He studied Reynolds’s face. “If you die, what happens to my murder charge?”
Reynolds looked away. “At least there’s one more person than me hoping I don’t die.”
“Not yet,” Spencer said, and squirted a few drops of morphine from the needle tip in order to clear any air from the syringe. “I’ll reserve judgment about later.”
He injected three-quarters of the contents into Reynolds and handed him the syringe. “Did your general say what kind of help was on the way and when it would get here?”
“No. Just that birds were in the air, and they would be here shortly, and to stay put.”
Spencer nodded and scooped up his rifle. “You should definitely do that.”
“He meant both of us.”
Spencer grinned in the dark. “I stopped taking orders from stuffed suits a long time ago. Frankly, I don’t trust you or your general, and I half expect a missile strike on this cave, homing on the phone.”
“You’re nuts.”
“You said he’s stonewalled you every step. You lost a man and he doesn’t care. Has it ever occurred to you that he may be playing a game where you’re just collateral damage?”
Reynolds swallowed hard as the morphine spread over him like a warm blanket. “We’re on the same side, Spencer.”
“You may think you are, but I’ve learned that when it comes to governments, there’s its side, and everybody else’s. I’m not about to bet my life that your man is playing straight with you. There’s too much about this that feels off. Sorry.”
“What are you going to do?” Reynolds asked dreamily as his eyelids fluttered closed.
“Whatever it takes. My friends are out there, maybe dead, maybe wounded, and they walked into an ambush that was set up by your trusted driver. If you think I’m going to let them bleed out because some anonymous blowhard in an office somewhere prefers I handle it his way, you have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
“Spencer…” Reynolds’s voice trailed off to a slurred sigh.
“Save your breath,” Spencer said, and turned his attention to the moonlit night. The ruins of the temple stood like broken teeth in the darkness, and the spread of tall grass near the cave mouth shimmered from a gust. He cocked his head and, with a final glance at Reynolds, emerged from the cave and set off for higher ground, AKM in hand, his jaw set in determination and his eyes alert, the only sound his breathing and the thump of his boots on the hard Kashmir dirt.
Chapter 54
Mehta sat across from three men, all dressed in simple clothing, their heads covered with kufiyas, their beards full and lustrous. Suri stood at the door, watching the proceedings. A suitcase full of euro notes rested on the table in front of the men. Mehta nodded in approval at his bookkeeper, who had spent most of the day painstakingly counting the money and verifying that it was legitimate – Pakistan, from whence the men hailed, was known for counterfeiting, and the euro was a popular target, as was the dollar.
“All is as it should be,” Mehta declared with a wide smile. “You have had an opportunity to inspect the material?”
The oldest of the three visitors nodded. “It is satisfactory.”
“Excellent. Then we have only to seal the casing for you. I trust you will require an escort to the nearest town?”
“We had hoped to leave before dark, but that proved impossible,” the visitor said.
“Yes, well, we were unable to secure automated counters in time. I apologize for the inconvenience. It was unavoidable. If you like, I would encourage you to stay the night and set off tomorrow at first light. If you aren’t comfortable traveling the mountains after dark, I completely understand. You will be as safe here as you would in your own beds, I assure you.”
The men exchanged glances, and Mehta anticipated their objection. “Don’t worry. I have separate quarters for myself and my guests. You might have seen the buildings up top. They are comfortable, if small.” Mehta understood that the men wouldn’t be enthusiastic about the prospect of spending the night underground, in the stinking slave camp, and he’d already made arrangements to have the mobile buildings prepared for them. “And if you require, I can arrange for pleasant company to divert you while you are our honored guests.”
The visitor shook his head. “That will not be necessary. But your offer of sleeping quarters is generous. We would like to take you up on that.”
“Very well. We will also have dinner together, then. My private chef travels with me. Let me know what you would like and I will have him prepare it for you. Anything at all – he’s an expert in all types of cuisine. Gifted.”
The men seemed startled at the idea of a private chef cooking for them, and had a hushed discussion before requesting a simple meal of traditional Pakistani fare. Mehta nodded as though they’d made a wise choice, secretly contemptuous of the men – here they were given the opportunity to have anything they could imagine, and the best they could manage was food fit for a goatherd.
“Suri, will you convey our guests’ wishes?” Mehta said.
“Of course, sir.”
Suri left the chamber and Mehta closed the suitcase and hefted it. “It has been a pleasure doing business with you. I’m hopeful that if you have any further requirements, you’ll come to me first,” he said, eyeing the men.
“Likewise. You are in an enviable position and have earned our trust. We will do more transactions, no question.”
Mehta snapped his fingers and his bookkeeper stepped forward. “Take this to the usual spot, and stay with it. Guard it with your life.”
“As always,” the bookkeeper said. “It shall never leave my
sight.”
One of the three men leaned forward, his hands folded on the table in front of him. “We heard gunfire earlier.”
“It was nothing. Every so often the men go out for target practice.” Mehta paused. “It is useful to remind the workers that the weapons are loaded and that the guards are ready to use them.”
Everyone smiled at that. They were accustomed to the rule of the iron fist, where justice was dispensed at the barrel of a gun, and the visitors respected those willing to use their authority decisively. Schooled in a philosophy that was as strict as it was oppressive, violence was often the punishment for even the slightest infraction, and death never far from the path trodden by the devout. The men didn’t question the presence of a slave camp, nor the existence of the unfortunates whose lot in life was to dig radioactive material from the earth until they died early from related diseases. They lived in a world where such things were commonplace, and the strong ruled over the weak without mercy. It wasn’t their affair, and if the Indian operated a concentration camp, it was his business.
They only were interested in one thing, and he’d provided it: over a hundred kilograms of enriched uranium, suitable for use in a dirty bomb, which nobody else on the planet was willing to sell to them. Whether he was a despot or an angel was no matter – that he had access to the material and could process the ore into yellowcake deep in the belly of the mountain, and then arrange for further refinement outside of official channels – that was the only thing they cared about.
The visitors stood and offered Mehta a small bow of gratitude. “We will go to the surface now and call our mullah. He will be anxious for a report.”
“Certainly. But for your own peace of mind, wait for Suri to return, and he will guide you. In the meantime, I will have my men bring the material to your sleeping quarters so you’ll have it nearby at all times.”
The leader smiled. “You have a Geiger counter we can use to verify there is no leakage from the container?”
“Absolutely,” Mehta assured them. “That will be our first project before we dine.”
Chapter 55
The ruins were pitch black by the time Drake and Allie were herded back to the clearing, the moon now blocked by a layer of high clouds, and only a pair of torches borne by their captors lit the way. The cult killers made no sound as they directed them down the loose gravel path, and neither Drake nor Allie had any hope of communicating with them, much less convincing them to free them.
When they reached the outer section of the ruined temple, two of the cultists led them to the pole. Drake struggled as the third made to secure his wrists to Allie’s using a length of rope, binding them both together to the pole, and earned a vicious blow to the side of the head from the base of a torch for his trouble. Dazed and bleeding, he was supported by one of the men while another finished the tie job, preventing his knees from buckling until the pole did so.
Once Drake and Allie were secured, the men retreated and tossed their torches into a nearby fire pit before vanishing into the darkness. The wood in the pit was slow to ignite, and the torches had almost burned out before the smallest kindling caught and flames licked from the center of the pile.
“Are you all right?” Allie whispered to Drake.
“Yeah. Move your wrists up a little so I can work on the knots with my fingers.”
“Like this?” she asked.
“Little more.”
She frowned from the effort. “That’s as high as I can go.”
“Then that’s perfect.”
Drake tore at the binding with numb fingers, his heart in his throat as he struggled to loosen the rope, knowing as he did that the chances of them getting free in time were slim. The fire popped and cracked as more of the wood caught, loud as firecrackers in the quiet night, and the flames glowed orange in the periphery of their vision.
“Anything?” Allie asked.
“I think one’s starting to loosen,” Drake lied, hating himself for peddling false hope. “Allie, if we don’t get out of this…”
“We will,” she said, her voice strained.
A rhythmic pounding from beyond the fire pit drifted on the breeze, spurring Drake to redouble his efforts. Allie’s gaze swept the clearing frantically and then locked on the first figure approaching from the gloom.
“Drake–”
“I hear it.”
The drumming increased in tempo, and then the chanting reached them, the name of Kali echoing off the long-destroyed temple stones like the baying of demented animals. Drake fumbled with the knots in desperation, cursing the predicament he’d gotten them into, their lives about to be forfeited in the name of a monstrous cause.
The column of dark figures shambled closer, stretching endlessly into the shadows, and then the figure at the head of the procession stood before Allie, whose eyes were riveted on his mangled features and bloodshot eyes. He inspected her curiously, touching her cheek with a grime-crusted finger as she recoiled, and then he slowly circled around to look at Drake, who noted that the cult high priest’s sharpened teeth were discolored to the same gray as the ash that covered his hair and skin.
Drake turned his head away, the stench rising from the man so toxic that bile burned in his throat, and then the cult priest turned from him and held a curved dagger in the air. The cult chanted its perversion faster at the sight of the blade, anticipation palpable in the crescendo of maimed utterings.
Drake’s voice sounded stronger than he’d feared it would when he spoke the words he’d been saving for a time that now would never come. “Allie, I lo–”
The boom of automatic rifle fire from nearby filled the clearing, and the cult priest’s chest exploded with red blossoms. He screamed in pain and lunged for Drake with the dagger, and then more rounds pounded into him and he tumbled sideways. The knife bounced harmlessly off the stones at their feet as the man crumpled in a heap. More shooting deafened them as Spencer stepped from the darkness, wielding his AKM with mechanical precision.
The cult scattered, its members running from the gunfire back into the cover of night, and then they were alone. The dark priest lay dead near the fire pit, face down in a lake of blood.
Allie eyed Spencer as he approached and unfolded a pocketknife. “Took you long enough.”
“I had a nap,” he said, and then glanced at Drake. “You okay? Looks ugly,” he said, studying the bleeding tear in the side of Drake’s head left by the torch.
“It only hurts when I breathe.”
“Hold still, or you won’t have to worry about that for long.”
Spencer worked the small blade through the knots that bound them together on the pole, and after a few judicious cuts, Allie pulled free. Drake shook off the rope and turned so Spencer could sever the bindings that secured his wrists. Spencer freed Drake’s hands and was attending to Allie when the staccato rattle of rifle fire shattered the silence in the clearing, and fountains of rock and dirt geysered around them.
“Take cover,” Spencer cried, pulling Allie down with him behind a small mound of stone blocks. Drake dove in the opposite direction and dragged himself to the crumbled base of an ancient wall as rounds whizzed nearby.
Spencer returned fire and emptied his magazine in a sustained burst as he felt for another in his pocket. He slipped it free, ejected the spent one from his rifle, and slapped the fresh magazine home as more gunfire strafed their location.
“I guess we drew some unwanted company,” he yelled to Allie, their ears ringing from the gunfire.
“You got a spare gun?” Drake called to him.
“Just my pistols,” Spencer screamed. “Useless at this range.”
“Toss one over here. Better than nothing.”
More slugs thudded into the stone blocks as Spencer freed his holstered pistol. He waited until there was a lull in the firing and hurled the gun to Drake. “I’ll lay down some cover,” he called out, seeing the gun fall short. “You try for it when I
start shooting.”
“Try?” Drake said, and then more incoming fire chewed up the ground near the pistol. “Maybe I’ll wait.”
“How many more rounds do you have?” Allie asked.
Spencer frowned. “One more magazine, but it’ll go quick at this rate.”
“Shoot slower.”
Spencer loosed another volley. “I can’t see much.”
“I know,” she said, and winced as a stray bullet blasted chunks of stone a few feet from her head.
Rounds pounded their hiding place from off to the right, and Spencer shifted his aim to the new threat, doing his best to conserve ammunition but fighting a losing battle. He emptied his rifle and ejected his second spare magazine before seating the final full one, and then continued fending off the attackers, who were multiplying like mosquitoes with each heartbeat.
Drake rolled and snatched up the pistol and barely made it back behind his remnant of wall before a flurry of shots ground the earth around him to hamburger. He kept his head down and held his fire, recognizing that to waste shots was foolish – the pistol would only do him good when the enemy was within thirty yards.
Spencer emptied the AKM and tossed it aside, and then drew Helms’s Beretta from his waistband. The slavers sensed their opportunity in the sudden halt in the shooting, and Spencer spied movement from the brush as the gunmen closed in. He looked over to Drake with a grim expression. “Make every shot count,” he said.
“How many rounds does it hold?” Drake asked.
“Eighteen-round box mag.”
“That won’t go far.”
Spencer eyed Allie. “Best to save two bullets, Drake.”
Drake swallowed hard – Spencer’s message was clear: better a swift end than whatever horror the death cult had in store for them.
“On your left,” Spencer warned, and Drake twisted in time to see a pair of gunmen nearing, crouched low. He squeezed off six shots as Spencer fired at more slavers closing in from their right, the report of the pistols mere pops after the AK’s blast. One of the two gunmen went down, but the other opened fire, and it took Drake four more shots to silence him. More shooting exploded from the trees, and then another slaver ran toward Drake, strafing his hiding place with his assault rifle. Drake loosed a half dozen rounds and the man pitched forward no more than fifteen yards from his position.
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