The big man’s cheeks were red and his breath puffed out of his lungs in short bursts. He shook his head.
“Maybe she went out to check the traps?” Cullen suggested, walking up behind them.
Josef shook his head. “None of them have been sprung, and even if they had she’d never leave without one of the receivers.” Cullen looked guiltily away—he had the second one, which he’d filched from camp. Josef was still trying to catch his breath. “The shortwave radio is smashed. Otherwise I wouldn’t have ridden all this way. I’d have called.”
Dempsey pulled Josef from the horse and swung into the saddle. Something was wrong. He could feel it. As the sun was dropping in the sky he kicked the horse into full gallop. Panic squeezed his chest. Where the hell had she wandered off to? Why did he feel like someone had fucked him over?
At full gallop, Dempsey felt a rush of adrenaline as the raw breeze lashed his skin. He let the animal have its head. It seemed to take forever but the horse knew exactly where it was going and was surefooted as any goat. Finally, he could see the pale outline of the camp ahead. Anji was standing outside the main yurt, a look of confusion stamped on his features. Dempsey was beginning to suspect that was his default expression. He pulled the horse to a stop and leapt down. He went inside Axelle’s yurt, noted the bedroll neatly laid out and the undented pillow. Unlit fire. He pushed his way back outside and turned to look in the corral, but the yaks and camel weren’t telling him anything.
He stalked to the main tent and headed straight to the laptop, which was already running. He needed to talk to his CO but wasn’t quite sure where they were in the hunt—aside from the obvious lack of one of the most wanted terrorists on the face of the earth.
Anji came to stand behind him, his fingers dancing agitatedly across his chest. “We checked as soon as we got back but she wasn’t here.”
Dempsey glanced at a box that bumped and moved beside the fire. “The cubs are okay?”
“I fed them. They were hungry. Axelle hadn’t fed them the way she said she would. That isn’t like her.” The Wakhi man reached down and pulled out a fluffy mass of fur.
It reminded Dempsey that the poacher had known about the biologists’ camp all along. They suspected the Russian was using the collars to track the leopards, leaving no doubt he knew about this operation. He was a bold, smart, slippery sonofabitch.
Where the hell was Axelle?
White-hot fear stabbed down his spine. He had the feeling he’d missed something—that he’d been looking straight ahead while someone sideswiped him. That was usually the Regiment’s job.
He frowned. Maybe he was asking the wrong questions. Not where was Axelle, but who was Axelle Dehn?
He googled her name and came up first with her webpage for MSU. Then clicked the link to the snow leopard project that was funded by The Conservation Trust. He scanned the short biography, and clicked another link to the National Geographic article Josef had mentioned.
“Bloody fucking hell.”
The Wakhi man flinched.
“When do Axelle and Josef normally arrive to start tracking the leopards?”
“In summer when she’s done teaching. Josef was supposed to have come earlier than her this year, but—”
“It says here she’s the daughter of the US Ambassador to Great Britain?” It said a hell of a lot more too. Shit. She had more potential enemies than he did, and her name and face and summer location had been broadcast to the whole world. Incredible.
The Wakhi man shrugged nervously. “I don’t know anything about that. She doesn’t talk about anything personal.”
Dempsey jolted. She talked to me.
Anji shifted nervously, placed the cub back in the box.
Dempsey strode outside, grabbed a smoldering torch and carefully examined the ground. Josef’s massive boot prints and Axelle’s much narrower ones. The Wakhi man wore small boots with narrow pointed toes. Dempsey knelt. There was another track, no tread marks on the sole—almost indistinct. He scanned the area, following the indents to Axelle’s yurt, then the deeper indents that exited and arrowed behind the yurts. There were hoof prints here. A jumbled mess that suggested the animal had been tied up. He looked at the corral again and noted they were one yak short. Shit.
He carried on, scanning the ground. It was hard to track over dust and rock, almost impossible at night. Subtle changes in the color of the surface meant he was pretty confident he was following someone carrying something heavy.
Shit. Shit. Double fucking shit.
They’d been conned.
The boys arrived, bumping wildly over the rocky terrain in the van. Cullen leapt out and ran to his side, concern in his eyes. “What’s going on?”
“I think we’ve been looking at this situation from the wrong angle.”
Cullen’s face remained impassive.
“We were going to use the snow leopards as bait, right?” Dempsey watched the hills, trying to pick movement out of the darkness.
Josef grunted in disgust.
Dempsey ignored him. “I think our poacher was killing them for the same reason.”
Cullen pressed his lips together, silently following the faint trail of human and animal spoor in the dirt at their feet. “You think he was after Axelle all along?”
Josef’s eyes flared and his fists clenched as he started to run forward. Dempsey stuck out his leg and toppled the giant. “Don’t destroy the tracks by doing something foolish,” he told him.
Josef spat dirt from his mouth. “You know what could happen to a woman like Axelle, alone with this man?”
Anger stirred his temper. “I know exactly what could happen.” He’d seen it more times than he wanted to think about. “Running after her unprepared isn’t going to rescue her. You’ll get yourself killed. Leave it to people who know what they’re doing.”
Josef climbed heavily to his feet. “What happens if it becomes a choice between completing your mission and saving Axelle’s life?”
Dempsey stared dispassionately at the Dane, and Cullen answered for him.
“Dempsey’s never failed in a mission yet.”
He flinched. That wasn’t the answer he’d expected. “I’ll get her back.” There was an unfamiliar quiver in his stomach. The stakes had been raised. Axelle was in danger and he was responsible.
“Should we call her father?” Josef asked suddenly.
“Her father?” Cullen questioned.
Dempsey laughed. “It turns out her dad’s an ambassador.”
Cullen rolled his eyes. “No shit.”
“Yeah. Exactly.” Dempsey grabbed his backpack, cognizant the whole camp could have been booby-trapped now that the Russian had Axelle in his grasp—assuming it was the Russian. It explained why he hadn’t set any mines or explosives earlier. He’d wanted the woman alive.
Moving slowly, keeping his eyes open, he grabbed the tired horse he’d ridden and swung back in the saddle. “If this turns into a hostage situation, the ambassador’s going to find out soon enough anyway.”
“Not that the US negotiates with terrorists. And not that he can reach this place before the sonofabitch…” Cullen stopped talking. Nobody wanted to think about what the Russian and his extremist buddies might do to a Western white woman connected to a powerful diplomat.
“You get through to HQ, tell them what’s going on, and find out where the fuck the backup troops are.” Dempsey gathered his reins. “The kidnapper’s got a few hours’ lead on us but he might not travel in darkness and I’ve got NVGs.” But the bastard knew these mountains like the wiring on a bomb. He was proving a wilier adversary than Dempsey had ever imagined.
“I want to come with you.” Josef grabbed the reins.
Dempsey assessed the big man, understanding the need, knowing he’d only hold him back when he needed to move fast. “You travel with Cullen, Taz and Baxter. Axelle said you’d had military training?”
Josef nodded.
“Right, then you get to carry a gun.”
>
“Dempsey’s the best tracker in the Regiment,” Cullen assured the Dane. Josef nodded again but looked sick with worry.
“I’ll take the lead in the search and make sure there’re plenty of tracks for you to follow, plus Cullen can see my GPS signal. Let’s maintain radio silence as much as possible in case the old feck is listening in. See if HQ has intel we can use for a change.”
“What do we tell them about Axelle?”
Dempsey’s mouth went dry. Was this the man’s plan all along or had he taken advantage of Axelle being left alone? What if the man had just wanted a female for a few hours’ entertainment? The thought twisted his gut. “Tell HQ we believe he’s taken a female hostage. Don’t mention her name yet—he might not know it. It might not even be the Russian.” Although instinctively he knew it was. He’d set an elaborate trap in motion.
The Wakhi man watched them from the door of the yurt.
“Check the camp for explosives while you’re waiting for confirmation from HQ.”
Cullen nodded. “Don’t do anything stupid, Sergeant.”
He wound a scarf around his head to keep off the worst of the cold. “Roger that. I’ll wait for the cavalry—unless she’s in immediate danger. Then all bets are off.”
“Does he know we’re here, do you think?” Cullen asked, halting the horse with a grip on the reins.
Dempsey nodded. “He created a diversion and we fell for it. Maybe he’s been setting them up all along, hoping to get Axelle alone.”
“But you kept getting in the way. What do you think he wants?”
Dempsey bent his lips into a smile that wanted to rip something apart. “That’s what we’re going to find out.”
***
Axelle came awake slowly. Painfully. A sharp ache pulsed inside her head and made her wince as she tried to open her eyes. What? She was facedown over an animal, no saddle. The animal’s spine dug into her hips and stomach.
Her hands were bound. The lack of blood flow and frigid temps meant they were like ice blocks on the ends of her arms. Dammit, what if she had frostbite and was too far gone to even know it? She wriggled her fingers, and the returning blood made her gasp. She kept moving, tried to wriggle her legs but they were also bound. The struggle shifted her center of gravity until she was in danger of toppling upside-down beneath the animal and being trampled. Hell. Who’d done this to her? What did they want?
The smell of musty fur was overpowering, making her throat heave as her stomach rebelled.
“I’m going to be sick.” The contents of her stomach splashed against the gray talus that the horse was working hard to cross. Despite her situation they didn’t stop moving. She spat the residue of bile out of her mouth, grateful she hadn’t eaten in hours. A dull dawn seeped along the edges of the mountains. She tried to look ahead but her view was blocked by a fold of the blanket. Behind them, desolate foothills stretched in a shadowy silence as they climbed higher along a narrow mountain pass.
Had members of the Taliban captured her?
Fear made every muscle clench. There must be a misunderstanding, although exactly what kind of misunderstanding led to being hogtied over a horse didn’t compute. She had to escape, had to get back to the camp and figure out why the whole goddamned world had gone mad.
The horse reached the end of the loose shale and the sound of the hooves changed as they clambered onto hard-packed dirt.
“Please, I need to stop. I need a bathroom break.” Her head pounded and her vision swirled. Aftereffects of drugs, combined with dehydration and altitude.
To her surprise the caravan came to a halt. She heard the slide of cloth against leather as a heavy weight dropped to the ground. She braced herself, expecting a black-bearded Arab to approach her. Her eyes widened in recognition of the tall, ragged-looking man with white hair poking from his pakol hat and plenty of ginger among his whiskers. The man from the camera trap images. The man killing her leopards.
“You? What do you want with me?” She pushed the words through her raw throat.
He said nothing as he reached beneath the horse’s belly to undo the bindings on her hands and feet. Her legs swung over her head, and she rolled forward and landed with a solid whack on her back. If he’d gone around the other side to release her she would have given him a taste of her boot. Maybe he knew that. She crawled inelegantly away from the unshod hooves. Her legs were numb and she struggled to stand.
“You need to piss?” He raised a brow, all matter-of-fact. “Piss.” He pointed to the ground.
“Here?” Axelle asked incensed. “Aren’t you going to turn around?”
“You have nothing that I haven’t seen before—”
“You haven’t freakin’ seen mine!” Anger choked her. She did not want to be a hostage to anyone, and in this part of the world being taken captive was often a death sentence. Assault. Beatings. Rape. Torture. Decapitation. Damn. She couldn’t even think about it.
With a grunt he turned his back.
Quickly, she undid her trousers and squatted because she was afraid that if she didn’t she wouldn’t get another chance. But her hand found a large rock, and as she pulled up her trousers one-handed, she swallowed her hesitation and smashed the rock into the back of the man’s head.
He lurched forward and missed the worst of her attack.
She tried to grab the horse but the man caught the reins and held on tight even as he stumbled to his knees. She planted her boot on his ass and shoved. The horse danced out of reach, so she took off like a markhor down the loose shale, slipping and sliding, lungs sucking air so frantically she thought they might collapse. She held up her pants with one hand. There was nowhere to hide, but she didn’t stop.
The mechanical slide of a rifle being loaded made her sprint even faster as dread sliced through her. He was going to kill her.
Run, run, run.
He called out, his voice echoing calmly off the bare rock. “If you don’t stop, I will shoot you. First in the arm”—she automatically tucked her arm in front of her body and a shot whizzed past and blasted the ground ahead—“and next in the ankle, meaning you will never walk again.” A bullet spat dirt at her feet.
“Last chance.”
She slowed as she heard the awful finality in the next ratchet of the rifle. There was a vast plane of nothingness ahead, nothing but dirt and rock. She staggered to a halt, lungs pumping madly in the cold air. Turned around. “What do you want from me?” Her cry echoed off the mountains emphasizing their isolation.
“A blood debt.” His eyes were dispassionate. “A debt paid. A life saved. That is all I ask.”
She wanted to run. She wanted to fight. She did not want to die. She set her teeth and fastened her pants zipper. Then she walked back to her captor, head held high. “I don’t owe you any debt.”
He watched her silently as she marched to within a foot of his rifle. She didn’t shy away from the barrel. She wasn’t cowering from a spineless killer.
“Your blood owes me.”
“My blood?” She frowned, suddenly unsure. “My family? I don’t understand.”
He spun her around and tied her hands behind her back. “You don’t have to understand, you just have to endure.”
She rolled her eyes. The bonds hurt but she wasn’t about to let the sonofabitch know it. Her gaze swept ahead to the yak packed with goods and her heart jammed for a moment. There were furs rolled upon its back and she recognized the regal hue of a snow leopard pelt.
“Did you kill the leopards for money?” She kicked out behind her and connected with a sharp shinbone. He jerked her arms high up her back. Sweat poured down her brow as she bit back a scream of pain.
“No.” He leaned close, until she could smell his sour breath and count each whisker sprouting from his leathery face. “I killed them for you.”
CHAPTER 9
Gunfire. No corpse.
So far. So good.
The guys were a couple hours behind Dempsey. No worries there. He’d catch
up with his target, establish an OP, settle in and wait for reinforcements.
Mist steamed from his mouth as his lungs strained for oxygen. He’d found where the abductor had tethered pack animals outside camp and marked the spot. Traveling through the night meant he’d gained some ground, but he’d seen no evidence the other man had stopped to rest so he hadn’t caught them yet.
Why take Axelle hostage? Did he know she was the U.S. ambassador’s daughter? Shit, Dempsey wasn’t even sure it was the Russian who’d kidnapped her as opposed to some white slave-trader just passing through.
Whoever it was, they were about to get a taste of SAS justice.
Women often got caught in the crossfire. Bullets and bombs didn’t differentiate between the innocent, guilty, men, women or children. Shit, that’s why he was here. He’d get Axelle out of danger and hopefully sew up this mission while he was at it. Then he could go home and forget about the difficult prickly female and her fierce dedication to her cause.
And if the kidnapper wasn’t his target? They would have saved a civilian who happened to be an American diplomat’s daughter. Win-win.
He constantly checked the ground for sign. The way the rocks were pushed around showed definite evidence of having been trodden on recently by man or beast or both. He checked the sky. A bank of storm clouds bore down on him from the east. The scumbag up ahead would be thinking about making camp soon. Dempsey passed a patch of damp earth where an animal—or human, he realized, checking the ground for prints—had relieved themselves. He noticed the stones were disturbed for about a hundred meters in a straight line down into the valley.
He followed the tracks and saw where bullets had scored the earth—that explained the shots he’d heard a half-hour earlier. Axelle had made a break for it. He shook his head, not knowing whether to be impressed with her spirit or terrified she was going to annoy the gunman so badly he’d shoot her. Something brassy caught his eye and he jumped off the horse and pocketed a spent bullet. The trail dead-ended, suggesting she hadn’t got away.
Dempsey started back up the hillside.
The Killing Game Page 14
