Viral

after the darkness returned, and he stood there for several moments looking at it. Body parts from maybe thirty or forty people, scattered across a small rectangle of stone floor: expressions of horror, frozen on the faces of dozens of decapitated heads.

He trained his light up the corridor, checking the doors of each cell for any that were closed. Hearing it again: a nasal breathing sound.

A sudden blaze of lights blinded him. Charlie froze. Coming at him from the front of the prison was a throaty roar of engines, a pair of headlights. Louder, brighter. He turned and hurried back through the corridor the way he had come, toward the connecting tunnel. But it was too late. A burst of gunfire shattered the stone ahead of him, and another ricocheted off the prison cell bars. Then another. Charlie sprinted toward darkness as the vehicle roared closer, diving right out of the corridor and crouching down next to the first pit, catching his breath.

Where were the diversions? Nadra and Wells? Had something gone wrong?

He listened, breathing heavily. Making a decision. The lights of the vehicle were jerking wildly, coming closer. Men shouted in Arabic. Then, a roaring of another engine from the other corridor, a pair of lights on stone. Armed guards converging on the rear of the prison.

Charlie slid himself into the pit, burrowing his legs into the pile of bodies, holding them above his head with his elbows. Breathing the putrid smell of decay, as leaking fluids seeped down his arms. Concentrating so that he wouldn’t vomit, Charlie drew the gun from his sweatshirt and waited as the vehicle brakes pumped at the end of the corridor. He heard it skid around the corner and turn, saw its lights bouncing on the stone. It stopped just past the pit. Charlie listened to the men breathing, speaking urgently in Arabic, words he couldn’t quite make out. One of them carried a light and turned its beam up and down the tunnel. The light moved across the pit, shining for a second into Charlie’s eyes. He waited, trying not to breath. Got a fix on the men as they turned away. As soon as the vehicle began to move again, he lifted his gun, aimed carefully through the corpses and shot the driver in the back of the head. The vehicle slammed into the wall and crashed onto its side. The other man jumped and shouted, having no idea where the shot had come from. He began to fire his pistol wildly without seeing the prey. Three, four times. The noise was deafening, bullets ricocheting off the walls and ceiling, thundering and echoing through the prison corridors. The man shouted at him in Arabic, to come out and show himself. Mallory took careful aim as the man turned in circles, and he hit him with a clean shot in the chest.

More voices. Another cart was coming from the west corridor. Charlie crouched and waited. As soon as it slowed to enter the tunnel, he fired. One, two, three. Two down. The second golf cart slammed against the stone wall, one of its headlights shattering. Then there was nothing. Just silence and echoes.

Four guards head into the rear of the prison. None of them returns. That should spook them a little bit.

But who were they? Charlie checked their clothes, removed one of their handguns. All four carried keys. ID badges. Money. He took all of it, then got behind the wheel of the first golf cart and drove back into the east corridor, the direction he had been walking.

He stopped a third of the way up and killed the engine. Listened. He heard what sounded like breathing again and got out to walk, his senses sharpening with each step.

“Jon. Can you hear me?” He stopped. Heard breathing ahead to his right. His own and someone else’s, a nasal raspy sound. “Jon!” he called again.

That was when the building shook, as if it were being rocked by a powerful earthquake. Charlie instinctively crouched, gun raised. He felt the reverberations again, like an aftershock. That was it. Jason and Nadra at the gate. The diversion. He heard sounds from outside. Men screaming. Gunfire. A steady report of automatic machine gun fire. Bullets slamming stone.

Keep going. Keep moving.

He came back to where he had been: the cell with the decapitated heads. He didn’t look this time, instead turned to his right. Another closed cell door. He clicked on the flashlight and scanned the stone floor. Found a man. Sitting against the back cell wall. Torn clothes. A dirty face. But breathing. Looking back at him, probably only seeing the light. It was a face he hadn’t seen for years.

“Jonny,” he whispered, turning the light to the side.

Jon Mallory watched, half-sitting, half-lying on the concrete.

Charlie tried the keys. The first didn’t fit. The second didn’t fit. He tried a third and felt it slide in. He twisted to his right. The lock turned, its gears opening the door.

“Come on, Jonny!” he said. He helped lift up his brother and walked him out into the corridor. Felt Jon holding him. “Let’s get out of here.”

THEN HE HEARD the second explosion. The floor rumbled, and his legs buckled. Then another. Distant shouts in Arabic. More gunfire.

Charlie tried to find his brother’s eyes in the dark. “Are you all right, Jonny? Can you hear me?”

“Where are we?” Jon said.

“We’re in a prison in Mancala. But we’re getting out of here. Can you walk?”

“I think.”

“Try.”

“I am.”

Charlie retrieved one of the guards’ 9mm pistols from his waistband. “Here,” he said. “Take this. It’s ready to fire. Just in case.” He pressed the gun into his brother’s right hand, sensing that Jon had probably never held a gun before. Feeling a weight of guilt as he let go. What really mattered now was getting Jon out of here alive. Even if he didn’t make it himself. “All right?”

“All right.” Jon shuffled behind him toward the faint light at the front of the prison building, a hand on Charlie’s back.

“Keep going, Jonny. We’re getting you out of here, okay?”

Jon grunted affirmatively. At the end of the corridor, light showed through narrow slats in a tall iron gate. Daylight. The light he had seen from the other end. Charlie pushed through it, and they came into an oval-shaped entry chamber with another light source: a two-foot-wide circular hole in the ceiling, a halo of afternoon sky. He looked at his brother, saw his expressionless face, the eyes watching him like the eyes of an animal.

Charlie studied the walls in the dim light until he found it: a pair of metal entrance doors.

“Let me go ahead for a minute. I’ll come back for you. Okay?”

Jon closed and opened his eyes, a signal of assent. “Okay,” he said. Charlie walked toward the doors. One last barrier before the outside. He located a metal knob and twisted. In the next instant, his eyes were flooded with daylight. He waited to see or hear a rescue vehicle. Where were Nadra and Jason?

Silence. Warmer air. He was under a stone archway, leading to a red-dirt courtyard. He looked back, for Jon, who was in the shadows on the other side of the opened doorway.

Charlie stepped across the archway, his gun raised. Stopped. Still letting his eyes adjust. He took another two steps. Walked out of the shadow into the dirt of the courtyard. Then something slammed against the back of his head, and a hand smashed down on his wrist. No! His gun fell to the dirt; as Charlie grappled to recover it, a knee rammed into his groin.

A man was shouting at him in Arabic. Then Charlie felt the pistol on his temple. Arms pulling him upright. A searing pain in his groin. A man was standing behind him, holding Charlie tight. Using him as a shield. Together, they began to walk, away from the stone archway, out into the open yard.

For the first several steps, Charlie’s eyes were confused by the sunlight. Then he saw where he was: a dirt courtyard, surrounded by tall mud-brick walls. An arched entrance to the west. Two rusted military trucks sat on blocks along the northern corner of the wall, along with a 1980s Ford station wagon. And then he saw other shapes: men lying on the courtyard dirt. More than a dozen of them. And to his left there were others, near the western entrance to the prison yard. Carnage. All of them shot, dark stains of blood in the dirt. Charlie turned his head slightly to see who was holding the gun: a swarthy man, with thick hairy arms and cold glistening eyes.

Maybe fifty feet away sat a rectangular box-like armored transport vehicle. A truck he recognized, out of place here: a French-made Panhard VBL armored scout car, fitted with a machine gun and grenade launcher. The man was using Charlie as a human shield so he could make it to the vehicle without being shot. He had been waiting on the other side of the entranceway, for Charlie to emerge from the prison. Based on the way the man was