Breaking Silence (Delta Force Strong Book 1)

by Elle James

  The older girl who’d helped her dig was the last one through. She was halfway out when she heard the sound of engines and the loud clanking of the heavy metal door being opened.

  Nora yanked the child through, grabbed her up in her arms and ran for the bushes. She set the child on her feet then knelt and slung one of the little girls up on her back to ride piggyback, then lifted two more up into her arms. The rest of the girls grabbed hands and followed Nora through the brush, moving quickly away from their prison and the men who would sell them like animals.

  A shout sounded from the front of the building, echoing off the metal walls.

  Nora moved faster. Their escape had been noted. She couldn’t move too fast or she’d lose one of the girls. If they didn’t move fast enough, they’d all be caught. They needed to keep going and get as much distance as possible between them and their captors.

  She wasn’t sure how far the little ones could go before they wore out and couldn’t go a step further.

  In the back of her mind, she hoped a knight in shining armor would appear and rescue them. Or a dozen knights in desert camouflage would swoop down from the sky in a Black Hawk helicopter and carry them away to safety. A girl had dreams.

  Chapter 11

  The helicopter set them down on the other side of ridge from the coordinates they’d been given. From there, the Delta Force Operatives moved to the top of the ridge, studied the terrain on the other side and still couldn’t see their target. Based on the contour map they’d studied of the area, there was another hill they had to climb over to get to the building where they hoped to find the captives.

  Not hoped…They would find Nora and the orphans.

  The steep terrain slowed the team. Rucker took point, charging up the hills and down the ravines with more speed than finesse. Every second counted in this race.

  As he rose to the top of the hill close to their destination, he slowed and eased up to the ridgeline, keeping low to the ground. He didn’t want to present his silhouette as a target to whatever sentries they may have in place to guard their prizes. He also didn’t know if they had a sniper positioned on the ridgeline he was easing up on. If so, he’d have to take him out first.

  “What do you see?” Mac asked.

  “Nothing yet,” Rucker said. He had his night vision goggles pulled down over his eyes as he scanned the ridgeline in front of him. A bright green heat signature glowed at the top, half hidden in the underbrush.

  They had a gunman in position to provide cover for their men below and to alert them if someone was coming up the road.

  Apparently, they didn’t expect anyone to come across the rugged hills behind them.

  That was their first mistake.

  “One bogey on the ridge. Moving in.”

  “I’ve got your six,” Dash said. “Coming up on your right rear.”

  Rucker eased upward, carefully placing his feet to keep from disturbing loose rocks and alerting his target of his approach.

  The man didn’t even know he was being stalked until too late.

  “Sniper eliminated,” Rucker reported. “All clear on the ridge.”

  The team moved upward as Rucker studied the building below. “I count six bogeys that I can see. One on each corner, two standing near a truck parked at the side and another leaning against the door on the front of the building.”

  “See any sign of the kids or your nurse?” Dash asked.

  “She’s not my nurse,” Rucker insisted. “And no to both.”

  Headlights flashed on a zigzagging road below, leading up to the metal building. A truck approached and pulled to a stop in front of the building.

  The guard at the door turned and opened the door. A man carrying a flashlight stepped inside. A moment later, he came out shouting in what sounded like Pashto.

  The guards on the corners ran to the front to see what was the matter.

  “Someone isn’t happy down there,” Dash said. “I have a feeling they’ve misplaced whatever was supposed to be in that building.”

  Rucker cursed softly. “Are we too late?”

  “The only way to know is to get down and find out for ourselves,” Dash said as he came up behind Rucker. “Your nurse is pretty smart. If there was a way to get those kids out of there, she would’ve found it.”

  Rucker nodded. “We’d better hurry. Looks like reinforcements are on their way up the hill. We need to get to their escapees before those vehicles arrive.”

  The Deltas spread out and slipped over the ridge. Then they half-ran, half-slid down the steep slope to the back and side of the building away from the lights of the trucks.

  The noise of the shouts helped to cover the sounds they made descending the hill to where the structure stood. It looked as if someone had built it recently.

  Rucker’s lips pressed into a thin line. If this was one of Akund’s transfer stations for his human trafficking, the money must be good in the market of selling people.

  The bastard needed to die. Rucker hoped they’d find him there so that he could be the one to take him down.

  As they neared the building, Rucker went around the side away from the one where the truck was parked. As he ran hunkered low, starlight glinted off something shiny. He slowed and reached down to pick it up.

  His heart skipped several beats. He held a single metal dog tag in his hand. In the light from the stars above, he could read the name on it.

  Michaels, Nora

  He looked at the ground again and noticed it dipped down into the side of the metal building where a shallow tunnel had been dug out of the dirt.

  “She got them out,” Rucker whispered into his mic and looked to the brush several yards from the building.

  The beam of a flashlight shined through the tunnel, and a man’s voice echoed off the walls inside the structure.

  “I’m going after them,” Rucker said, heading for the brush.

  “You and the rest of these yahoos,” Dash said.

  Rucker ducked low as he ran away from the men and the building, hoping he was running in the same direction Nora and the children had gone. He had to get to them before Akund’s men found them. They might decide to shoot rather than recapture them. Especially the adult who’d gotten them out right under their noses.

  If Akund wasn’t there, these men were in jeopardy of the Taliban leader’s wrath for losing the product that would pay for the man’s next expensive SUV or the weapons he would employ against NATO forces.

  Yeah, they’d be pretty desperate to find Nora and the orphans. But not as desperate as Rucker. He had to get to them first and provide some kind of protection to keep them safe.

  “Go,” Dash said. “We’re coming up behind Akund’s men. We’ll do what we can to keep them from catching up to you and the children.”

  Rucker settled his night vision goggles down over his eyes and scanned the terrain ahead. At first, he could see nothing but brush and hills. Then as he looked again, he spotted a faint green heat signature in the distance, running down into a ravine. It wasn’t an animal but a human, running upright and too big to be a child.

  He chased after it.

  Men shouted behind him, crashing through the underbrush, heading in Rucker’s direction.

  “Could use a little support about now,” he murmured as he ran after the silhouette he hoped would be Nora. It was a single figure, making him wonder if it was her at all. Where were the children? Had they already been moved, leaving Nora behind? Was he racing after someone other than Nora? If so…who?

  With the enemy behind him and the hope of Nora in front of him, Rucker kept running.

  As he grew closer to the figure ahead of him, he could tell by its shape and the way it ran it was a female.

  It had to be Nora. But where were the children?

  “Got a couple of truckloads and a moving van headed up the hill,” Dawg reported. As originally planned, their best sniper had chosen a position overlooking their target location. “It appears there are two
big trucks headed this way, loaded to the max with men and guns. I’m guessing about two dozen. We’ll want to deal with the few we have and bug out before the rest arrive.”

  “How long do we have?” Dash asked.

  “Five minutes tops,” Dawg responded.

  “I’m following the lieutenant,” Rucker said. “I’m betting she’s stashed the kids somewhere close. Find them. Airlift them out of here while the lieutenant and I create a distraction.”

  “Roger,” Dash said.

  As Rucker drew closer to the green blob in his night vision goggles, the silhouette grew more distinctive—it was definitely a woman running ahead of him.

  “Nora!” he called out, afraid he’d alert the men following him to his location, but more afraid Nora would fall over the edge of a cliff before he caught up with her.

  Ahead of him, she fell.

  Rucker pushed harder, taking advantage of her fall to catch up.

  She scrambled to her feet and took off again.

  He caught her arm and spun her to face him. “Let go of me!” she yelled and pounded his chest.

  “Nora.” Rucker wrapped his arms around her, trapping her hands between them. “It’s me, Rucker. Stop fighting. We don’t have time for this.”

  She looked up, starlight glinting off her eyes. “Rucker. Oh, sweet Jesus.” Her body went slack, her chest heaving to fill her starving lungs.

  “Sweetheart, we don’t have time. We have to keep running.”

  “I can’t. I just can’t,” she said, sagging against him and resting her forehead on his chest.

  “We have to. There are men behind me.”

  As if on cue, a shot rang out.

  Nora’s head jerked, and she turned to run.

  Rucker pulled her over the edge of a hill and pushed her to the ground. Below them he could see the winding road leading up to the building in the hills. The two trucks Dawg had mentioned were halfway up the winding road.

  “See those trucks?” he whispered.

  “I do. Are they ours?”

  “No,” Rucker said. “The first two are filled with Taliban. We have to slow them down while my guys find the children and get them out by chopper.”

  “What about the men following us?”

  “We’re about to take care of them,” Rucker said as he poked his head above the ridgeline, fitted his night vision goggles in place and identified the men heading his direction.

  “I have three bogeys in sight, approximately twenty yards from my current position. Tell me it’s not any of you,” he said into his mic.

  “Blade, Bull, Dawg and I are still back by the building,” Mac said. “We took out four guys standing around the truck.”

  “Tank and I will clean up the two slackers chasing after you,” Dash said. “Can you manage the three closing in on you?”

  “Will do,” Rucker said. “Then we’re heading down to the road to slow the arrival of their reinforcements. Find those kids and get them out ASAP.”

  “I left them hidden in a big ravine behind the building,” Nora said.

  “Look in the big ravine behind the building,” Rucker said into his mic.

  “Roger,” Dash said.

  Rucker studied the three men, not far from each other, moving through the brush in their direction.

  He waited until he had them close enough he couldn’t miss. With three of them, his aim had to be true and fast in order to take them out before they dropped to the ground to hide.

  He zeroed in on the closest man. They all moved slowly, having lost sight of their quarry.

  Rucker stared through his sight, squeezed the trigger and shifted to the second man quickly, squeezing off the next round.

  The third guy dropped to his knees.

  From Rucker’s position on the ridge, he was slightly above the man and could see him clearly.

  He fired again, and the man fell the rest of the way to the ground.

  With little time to spare, Rucker turned, grabbed Nora’s hand and shouted, “Move!”

  They half-ran, half-slipped down the hill moving toward a position in the road below he hoped to arrive at before the two trucks did.

  They had seconds to get close enough to make a difference.

  One more rise, one more ravine, and they’d be there.

  As they passed over the rise and dropped down into the ravine, Rucker grabbed Nora’s arm. “Ever thrown a baseball?” he asked.

  “I was on the softball team in high school,” she said.

  He grinned. “How about a grenade?”

  “Once during leadership training, but it was just a dummy grenade,” she said. “Why?”

  He plucked a grenade from his vest and handed it to her. “You remember how to use this?”

  She nodded with her eyes wide. “Yes.”

  “This is important,” he said. “When we get up to that road, I’m going to throw mine at the first truck. You will throw at the second. All you have to do is get it close to the wheels. Disable the truck, and that will slow them down enough for the helicopter to get in, load the children and get out. Got it?”

  She nodded, still looking scared but her jaw firming. “We have to give them time to get those girls to safety.”

  “Right.” He captured her cheeks between his hands and kissed her hard. “You’re amazing, Lieutenant Michaels. Abso-fuckin-lutely amazing.” He grabbed her free hand and helped her out of the ravine.

  They ran toward the road. When they were within fifty feet, Rucker pointed to a boulder. “Get behind that. Once you throw, duck low, hands over your ears and wait for the bang.”

  Nora dropped down below the boulder, holding the grenade in her hand.

  Rucker ran a little farther up the hill and dropped behind another boulder.

  Seconds later, the first truck rounded the curve in the road and lumbered toward them.

  The second truck wasn’t very far behind.

  Rucker waited until the truck was within a few feet of his target. He pulled the ring, counted to two and lobbed the grenade at the truck’s wheels.

  After a quick glance in Nora’s direction to witness her most excellent throw, he ducked behind the boulder, pressed his hands over his ears and closed his eyes.

  The first grenade went off with a loud bang, shaking the ground beneath Rucker.

  Two seconds later, the second one went off.

  Rucker didn’t wait for the dust to clear. He ran to where Nora was hiding behind the boulder, grabbed her hand and took off for the ravine.

  Shouts behind them made him run faster.

  Nora kept up, leaping over rocks, brush and anything in the way of their goal.

  As they scrambled down the steep sides of the ravine, gunfire sounded over their heads.

  Rucker kept Nora moving, traveling down the hill, away from the extraction operation above. Hopefully, the men in the backs of the trucks would be more interested in chasing them than continuing up to the building to surprise the helicopter lifting the children out of the hills.

  “Found the girls. Loading them into the helicopter as we speak,” Dash reported. “Might have to make two trips to get all of us out.”

  “Can’t,” Rucker said. “Get all of them out of there. I’ll get the lieutenant to somewhere safe.”

  “We’re not leaving without you,” Dash said.

  “You have to,” Rucker said as he leaped over a crevice. “There are too many of these guys down here. We can’t risk the girls being caught in the crossfire.”

  “What about you and the lieutenant?” Bull asked.

  Struggling to hear what they were saying, breathe and get the hell away from the men they’d just pissed off, Rucker barked into his mic, “We’ll get as far from here as possible. I have the GPS tracker the CO gave us, you can come back when you’ve delivered the children to someplace safe.”

  “Roger,” Bull said. “Good luck.”

  They’d need a lot more than good luck to outrun the men from those trucks.

  As
they reached the base of the hills, Nora stumbled and fell to her knees. She was tired, bruised and breathing so hard she couldn’t stand up straight.

  Shouts from above indicated the men from the trucks were still on their tails.

  A vehicle roared along the road, heading toward them at extreme speed.

  Nora and Rucker’s instincts had them turn back toward the hills from which they’d just emerged.

  The vehicle, a battered, older model small pickup rumbled to a stop, and a man got out, wielding an AK-47.

  They didn’t have time to run for cover. If this man intended to kill them, he could already have done so.

  “Lieutenant Michaels? Sergeant Sloan?” the man called out.

  Rucker recognized the voice, and his eyes narrowed. “Pazir?”

  “Come quickly,” he urged.

  Taking a leap of faith, Rucker hooked Nora’s arm and ran toward the truck and Pazir.

  The truck was small, too small to fit them both into the front seat with Pazir.

  “In the back,” he motioned toward the bed of the truck filled with boxes, junk and a blanket.

  Rucker helped Nora into the back as Pazir slipped into the driver’s seat and set the truck in motion. Running alongside the truck, Rucker leaped up onto the rim of the bed and rolled in, landing on top of Nora.

  For a long moment, he lay with his entire body pressed the length of hers.

  A particularly harsh bump reminded him where they were. If that wasn’t enough, the shots fired as they retreated brought him back to his senses.

  “Rucker, you two gonna make it?” Dash’s voice came over his mic, the static making it almost unintelligible.

  “We got a ride out of the hot zone. You got the girls?”

  “We got all of them,” Dash said. “On our way up and out.”

  “I’ll get word to you about how to collect us. Might be tricky.”

  Rucker glanced toward the hilltop as the Black Hawk helicopter rose into the sky.

  The men emerging at the bottom of the hill aimed their rifles at the truck until they saw and heard the helicopter as it banked and flew away from the Taliban and their cruel intentions for a bunch of little girls.