by Ilsa J. Bick
“You could,” Jack said. “He’s the enemy, Kate. More than anyone, you must realize how an enemy, especially one who asks for your help, can turn.”
I’m not getting into a debate about this. “I can’t just leave.” She said this as much to Jack as An. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Fine,” An spat. Her face twisted into something almost ugly, and Dax, who’d started toward the girl, stopped dead in his tracks, his tail lowering like a flag in deathless air. “Because I don’t.”
“Makes two of us,” Jack opined.
Arguing with either was pointless. She hooked another rock and then another, dragging then letting them crash to the floor. Just to her left the ruined stalk of the rail switch emerged like a periscope peering from a sea of stone. “Paulsen, where are you in relationship to my voice? Am I right over you, or—”
“Almost? I kind of…yeah, I see light now in front of me.
That meant his head was to her right. She looked down but even with her improved sight, spotted only dark gaps between rocks and no movement. “Is there something on top of you?”
“You mean, more than a lot of big rocks?” A choking little gurgle that was half sob, half laugh. “My pack. I’m jammed up against the wall. My legs are…I think there’s something wrong with one of my legs.”
Or maybe both. She hooked another rock. Or, God, what if his back was broken?
“Yes, what then, Kate?” Jack nagged. “You going to make a stretcher out of your jacket, use his pack as a frame, carry him out of here?”
One disaster at a time, Jack. She honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead. Redoubling her efforts, she moved faster. Rocks clattered and crashed behind her. As she worked, An remained silent though Kate felt the pressure of the girl’s eyes on her back. She unearthed the switch; the iron handle, weakened by rust and age, had snapped, but then she spotted a single gray eye turned to the light and bright with terror.
“Hey.” She fitted on a grin. “Almost there. Can you move your toes?”
The one gray eye blinked. “I don’t know. I haven’t tried, but…” The eye closed, the corners wrinkling in concentration before opening and finding her again. “My right, not my left. That’s the leg that hurts like hell, though.”
She didn’t know what the lack of movement meant, but pain was good. Best to grab his arms and see if I can slide him out. She resumed working on the steadily diminished pile of rubble. Otherwise, I’ll have to excavate down to bedrock.
In ten minutes, Paulsen’s head and shoulders were uncovered and she had a good idea how he’d survived. When the trap was sprung, he’d been between the rusted metal bar of the switch and the wall. Stumbling back, he’d bounced off the wall before pitching forward. His pack helped cushion the onslaught of stone, but the true reason he was alive was because so many rocks had wedged together. They were, in essence, buttressing one another up the way those bracing a cathedral’s dome redistributed the dome’s weight.
She got down on hands and knees so she could look him in the eye. “Paulsen, can you move your foot up and down? Is there space?”
“Just a sec.” A mixture of dread and terror saturated his sweat-stained features. Blood trickled from a gash above his left ear and painted his jaw to the tip of his chin. He closed his eyes, hauled in a breath then blew out in relief. “Yeah, yeah, I can.”
“Good. That means I can just pull you out.” She hoped. She actually wasn’t sure. “Thing is, don’t help too much, okay? I don’t want you jostling anything loose.” Worming her hands beneath his chest and then under his pits, she set her feet. One nice thing about prosthetics: her legs sure wouldn’t give out. “On three. One…two…”
She heaved. For a second, she thought it wasn’t going to work, but then she heard the rasp of his parka and the buckles of his pack raking over stone as his body began to move. Digging in, she strained. Her left shoulder bawled; her right couldn’t have cared less. Paulsen’s body slipped forward an inch and then two and then five before Paulsen cried out, something about his left arm being hung up, and she paused, eyes searching. She saw the problem. The bore of his damn rifle, still limbered, had wedged between two boulders. She couldn’t push him back nor pull him forward without ripping off his arm like the wing of a roast chicken.
She called over a shoulder. “An, on my right leg, you see the knife?” Wynn had given this back when they’d broken camp. “Take it out of the sheath, please.”
A trembling silence. Then, “Why?”
She wanted to scream. Instead, she closed her eyes a second, took a deep breath, tried counting to two, made it to one. “Because you need to cut this strap and then pull out the rifle so I can get him out. Use the serrated part, the one with teeth. It’ll go faster.”
For a second, nothing happened. Dax panted. Paulsen’s face puckered as if he was trying not to cry. Then came the scuff of boots. “Thank you,” Kate said as An knelt alongside.
“I hate you.” Dry-eyed now, An’s expression was stony. Metal rasped against nylon as she drew out the blade. “I don’t understand you.”
“I know, but cut the strap, An.” She watched as An reached with the knife, her grip so tight her knuckles tented the flesh white. Paulsen was absolutely still, except for his fearful gray eyes, which tracked the girl. Wordlessly, An slipped the blade under the strap and began to saw. A few moments later, she was through. Rooting around, An pulled out both the strap and rifle.
“Thank you,” Kate said as the girl re-sheathed the knife without being asked. Personally, she thought it was a lucky thing An hadn’t stabbed Paulsen in the eye.
“Or you in the back,” Jack said. “You need to watch her, Kate.”
Yeah, yeah. Like she didn’t have a million other things on her to-do list. “Paulsen. I’m just going to do it, all right?”
“Sure. Okay.” Paulsen gave a jerky nod. “Go.”
She didn’t bother counting. Instead, she yanked back hard. There was a grinding sound that was stone squealing over stone and then metal and then Paulsen was screaming, “Stop, stop! Mac, you’re k-killing…my leg, my leg.”
She didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, would not quit, not when they were close, so close. Roaring, she threw herself backward. Her legs were pillars, banging down, and her right arm was relentless. The muscles of her left popped; her shoulder was on fire. Her pulse pounded like a kettle drum, and she thought for one wild second Paulsen might rip in two—
There was a sudden lurch and then Paulsen shot out the way a cork under pressure blows. As soon as he did, the cavity collapsed, rock smashing down. Coughing against a plume of dust and grit, Kate knelt beside Paulsen, still stretched out on his belly. His pack, she saw, had nearly pancaked and water still dribbled from Nalgene containers that had imploded under the pressure.
“How are you?” she asked, her eyes ticking past his waist. “Where does it—” The rest hung in her throat.
Paulsen’s right pant leg was saturated with blood. A smeary splintered stalk of bone protruded from his thigh. Shreds of red meat dangled from the splinters and she thought, crazily, of the way a person gets stringy roast stuck between her teeth.
“My leg.” Paulsen’s voice spiraled with hysteria and pain. “My leg, oh Jesus, my leg!”
“An!” Ripping open her MOLLE bag on her right thigh, she whipped out a pair of scissors. Have to splint this sucker, make sure he’s got good blood flow. “An, bring me that large bag buckled to my pack.” There were SAM splints in her larger bag and duct tape to secure them. Irrigate the wound, antibiotic powder then cover it. What they’d do for crutches, she didn’t know. Paulsen was gibbering now as Dax, concerned, pranced back and forth. “Dax, sit,” she commanded, tearing Paulsen’s pant leg open the rest of the way. She wished she had something stronger than ibuprofen. Check his distal pulse. Right, right, right. She moved down to Paulsen’s foot, untied the laces then eased off his boot. And what was taking the girl so long? “An, where’s my—”
The snick was
crisp and followed by a second, and Kate’s stomach bottomed out because that meant An knew what she was doing. She’d flipped the selector from a single to a three-shot burst, and who’d have thought An would know such a thing? She saw that Paulsen understood, too, because he’d stopped screaming. Pinned in the beam from An’s headlamp, Paulsen’s face was still as marble and just as white.
“Don’t, Mac.” An leveled Paulsen’s rifle. “Don’t try to stop me.”
Chapter 11
“An.” Her voice was calm, but her mind was already leaping ahead, processing the tableau in less than two seconds because she’d been in plenty of standoffs, including that last confrontation high above Cham Bacha. She was crouched over Paulsen’s right foot, which meant An had a clean shot at Paulsen’s head, his chest. “You really don’t want to do this.”
“You’re wrong.” An’s words were gallows-calm, the tone of a condemned woman who knows she’s at the end. “I really do. You don’t know what some of them did to us.”
Paulsen made a small mewling sound of protest. “But I didn’t. I never.”
“But you also didn’t help us or try to stop the others.” An’s gaze was unwavering. “Don’t move, Mac. I don’t want to hit you.”
And then An did something that raised the hairs on Kate’s neck. She hit the selector again. Snick.
“Kate,” Jack warned.
I know. Of course, Paulsen’s weapon could go full auto. Illegal as hell, but these were drug smugglers, sex traffickers, brutal men who would not hesitate to employ brutal means.
She wondered how long the girl had waited for an opportunity. Had she begun on the trip over to Canada? On the ride to the border? In the van with Jean? When Lambert’s crew force-marched them for days? As girls escaped only to be hunted down? When Miin died? Or had An begun planning the moment a man—or a woman because it might have been Jean, for all she knew—placed fat little baggies and a glass of water on a table and said, Swallow these and if you don’t, we’ll kill you because there are a million more girls just like you.
“You’ve got two choices,” Jack said. “Dax or—”
Or me. Still where she’d downed him, the dog only watched, his gaze switching back and forth between An and her. She knew Dax waited for a command and she sensed he would listen to her. But it would take Dax a few precious seconds to make his feet and spring. When she saw Dax or heard the scrape of his nails on rock, the girl would startle, and while Dax was fast, he was only flesh-and-blood. If, surprised, An turned, she’d more than likely hit Paulsen before the rounds, which would still be coming, struck the dog. There would be no avoiding it. There was also a chance the bullets would fly in an arcing spray as An turned. A bullet might hit her, but Dax would be in the air by then, his body between Kate and the girl—and again, the shepherd would be sacrificed. It was that way in the military, too. No way of sugar-coating that. On average, a military working dog saves a hundred and fifty soldiers. When a dog dies, people grieve and hold ceremonies. At the end of the day, however, this cold, hard fact remains: better a dog die than a soldier.
Well, she couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t risk it. Not the dog.
Her hands were free. She thought twelve feet, probably. Maybe a little more. Her eyes were sharp and thank you, biobots, despite the shadows and relative gloom, she saw that An’s index finger had taken up no slack on the trigger. She had no idea how many fractions of a second were required for a brain to tell a finger to tighten up and a trigger to depress, but she bet they were few. As soon as she twitched, An would fire. God, she hoped the dog stayed down. If Dax was trained as well as he seemed, he ought to.
If she’d had toes to tense, she’d have felt them. She didn’t, but she was ready. Bad luck her left arm was closest. Stay low. Then, Please, Dax, stay down. He should. He was a good dog and obedient. Lucky the alpha wasn’t anywhere around. That wolf would probably go for An if he thought Kate was in trouble.
“Kate,” Jack warned. “Honey, you’re fast, but you’re not faster than—”
She sprang, exploding from her crouch, her legs propelling forward, hurtling through the air so fast the cave blurred.
And Jack was right. Kate wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet. She wasn’t trying to be. She was only trying to be faster than An.
Slamming into An’s legs, Kate cut them out from under the girl at the exact moment An squeezed the trigger. Bullets rocketed from the rifle’s barrel, but An was already toppling, falling backward as a startled yelp jumped from her mouth. The cavern erupted with blinding yellow spurts of muzzle flash. Rounds exploded in an ear-splitting, rapid-fire stutter to stitch a wild swooping arc above and then to the right, zipping just over Kate’s head and so close she felt the hot and angry hornet’s burr of their passage. Paulsen had already flattened, his arms flying up to cover his head and neck. Bullets ricocheted and zigged, chipping sprays of stony shrapnel and sending up tiny geysers of pulverized grit. Then An was on her back, finger hooked on the trigger and bullets were still coming, pounding into the rock above and wood. Kate heard the dull chockchockchock, the sound like the chop of a butcher’s cleaver against a cutting board.
“Kate, the post,” Jack urged, “She nailed the top of a prop, too, but the post, Kate, the post.”
She knew. Even without the sudden, high skirling screee, she knew. Swarming over the girl’s body, she ripped the rifle from the girl’s grasp and so violently, An cried out in pain as her trigger finger snapped as cleanly as dry kindling. Kate was sorry about that, but broken fingers healed while squashed people did not. If she could’ve done the same to the rifle, snapped it in two over a knee, she might have, but there was no time to test that.
“Hey!” It was Paulsen, coming out of his turtle’s hunch, as wood wailed. There was a pop and then another and then another, and if you didn’t know better, you might think, That’s some pretty green wood in that fire. “Hey, the wood! The beam, it’s cracking! Hey!”
“Get up!” Rifle in her right first, she knotted her left in the girl’s parka and yanked more roughly than she ordinarily might, but what the hell. The girl weighed next to nothing, and the way An flew to her feet was almost comical. The effect like watching a Raggedy Ann snatched by a peevish child. For a crazy second, Kate thought about simply throwing An the way you’d chuck a sack of laundry. Instead, she turned and gave the girl a hard, fast shove toward the tunnel on the left. “Go, go! Grab my pack, get in the tunnel, go!”
Wheeling, Kate covered the distance to Paulsen in one huge stride. “Dax!” Because, incredibly and through it all, the dog was true to his training and still down. Muscling a screaming Paulsen to a stand, she got them moving in an awkward stumble, she and Paulsen in a three-legged race against time and the sing and shriek of old, worn wood. “Dax, come!”
They made it into the tunnel a split second before the roof thundered down.
Chapter 12
Afghanistan
They moved as fast as they could but slower than they’d have liked because of Tompkins, who lurched along unsteadily, right arm draped around Pederson’s neck. The doctor had pointed out he was a lousy shot and Kate might as well have her hands free. They went even more slowly because Gholam was intent on documenting everything, stopping at every junction, new room, or new tunnel to snap a picture, and it was either leave him or humor him.
For all their equipment, they moved in near silence and through a gloom broken only by lantern light and the soft tick of Six’s nails on stone as he ghosted by Tompkins’s side. The tunnels were silent as a catacomb. Every scuff of a boot, every click of a buckle—every insectile shutter whirr from Gholam’s camera app—made her heart jump. She wished he’d silence the damn thing and was surprised Jack hadn’t asked.
One thing she noticed was the lanterns hanging at every branchpoint. When she mentioned it, Tompkins whispered, “Yeah, I got curious. That’s a lot of fuel you’re burning through, you know? I followed them down a bit, and there are a couple...” He paused, sucked down air. Th
e dog handler’s skin glistened with sweat and he was breathing hard, but at least he’d stopped coughing up blood. “Couple more lanterns down each tunnel. Jawad said some lead to other rooms like what we saw.”
“Who is this Jawad?” Gholam demanded.
Either Tompkins didn’t hear or was pretending not to. “I marked a couple of those junctions, too. But others are dead ends.”
“Seems a waste,” Pederson said.
“No, it’s smart,” Jack muttered. “Anyone who’s got no business here wouldn’t know which tunnel to take unless they’ve got a map or you leave a marker. The lanterns are fake-outs. Make people waste time, get lost.”
“Who is Jawad?” Gholam asked again. “Is he one of these kids?”
There was a pause as Jack measured Gholam with a look. “Beats me,” he said then calmly turned back to Tompkins as Gholam’s face flushed nearly purple in the weak lantern light. “Makes you wonder if those are outfitted with trip wires, too. The place is a maze. You have to know where you’re going. An uninvited guest doesn’t make the same mistake—”
Gholam thrust a finger into Jack’s face. “You think you can ignore me? This is my district!”
“Not until midnight,” Jack said calmly. “Until then, the U.S. military still has jurisdiction, which means you answer to me, Major, not the other way around. Is that clear? And I’ll thank you to keep your fucking voice down, unless you want to advertise where we are to anyone who might be listening. Sounds carry in tunnels, especially echoes.”
Oh, Jack. Gholam’s mouth quivered; his fists bunched. Kate wouldn’t have been surprised if the major took a shot. A quick glance at the others, watchful but stone-faced, though she spotted Lowry’s finger resting just inside his trigger guard.
Amir must’ve read the threat because he limped up and hooked a hand around Gholam’s elbow. “Sir.” When Gholam didn’t look around, Amir said, even more quietly, “Uncle. He is correct. There is a time and place to settle grievances, and it is not here.”
