take him now if you have a shot.”
Zebediah said into his phone, “I understand. Yes, sir. Right now.”
Jonathan drew his KA-BAR knife from its scabbard on his shoulder. It would take only seconds. At this distance, he could be in the hallway and have both guards bleeding to death in less than three seconds, well before they would be able to process that they were under attack. One slash each across the throat, and they’d fall like big bricks. He’d have Ryan, and they’d be out of here, and then they could sweep in and rescue Christyne.
Brother Zebediah closed his phone-Jonathan could hear the snap of the plastic-and said, “It’s time.”
“Both of them?”
“Both of them. Now.”
Jonathan glanced back at the screen of his PDA. Both of them. Christyne Nasbe wasn’t here. They’d left the door Ryan had been imprisoned behind open and unguarded. If she were here, someone would be guarding her.
“One is better than none,” Boxers said in his ear, as if reading his thoughts.
Ryan had never realized just how useless his left hand was to him until he tried manipulating himself to pee. You had the zipper, the underwear and finally the business parts. For a while there, the smart money said that he’d end up letting fly while still inside his trousers, but in the end, he got everything where it needed to be, but without much time to spare.
Then, when he was done, there was the whole matter of reassembling himself. On a different day, it would have been funny. He was smiling, in fact, when he opened the door again and addressed his captors. “Wow, do I feel bet-”
Something clearly had changed. Brother Zebediah looked way angrier than before, and Sister Colleen looked as if she might cry.
Ryan stopped and took a step backward. “What?”
They grabbed him.
The boy yelled, “Ow!” and there was a scuffle on the other side of the door. “My arm! What did I do? Please!”
Jonathan’s fist tightened on the knife handle. The screams were excruciating to hear.
There was more scuffling, and something hit the door to Jonathan’s room hard. He imagined that it was a person, and because it wasn’t accompanied by a shriek of pain, he figured it had to be one of the guards.
“Stop fighting,” Brother Zebediah commanded. “You’re coming with us one way or the other.”
“I’m not fighting you!” Ryan yelled. “You’re hurting me!”
That last part sounded farther away. A moment later, the door at the end of the hallway opened and closed, and then Jonathan was bathed again in silence.
He keyed his mike. “They’re coming toward you, Big Guy. Do not take them here. PC-Two is not accounted for. We’ll let PC-One lead us there.”
“For all we know, PC-Two is already dead,” Boxers said. Then his voice dropped again to a barely perceptible whisper. “I see them. Shit, there’s only two guards.”
“Gunslinger here,” Gail said over the radio. “I’m flooded with guards out here, white side. Soldiers. Whatever. I count fifteen, and many are armed with rifles. I concur with Scorpion. We need to let them go.”
“But I can take them.”
“Stand down, Big Guy,” Jonathan said.
Boxers hissed, “This is a mistake.”
“Stand. Down,” Jonathan said forcefully. “It’s my mistake to make.”
He wondered if the Nasbes would disagree.
Outside, Gail had positioned herself in the trees out front, roughly in the position that Jonathan had held earlier. Once the team was inside, it made sense for her to reposition herself to where the action was. And as the parade of people took to their cars, she realized that it was time to reposition yet again.
She’d been listening to the communications, so she knew that they were taking Ryan Nasbe to his execution. The presence of all the cars indicated that they had to drive to the place of execution, and that meant that she had to follow them or lose them.
She needed to get to the truck. That meant running faster and farther than she had in a very long time, but only after she’d backed away far enough from the house that she could afford to make some noise. She gave it about twenty yards-long enough that she heard the sound of engines starting-and then she started to jog. Having arrived in the daytime, yet leaving at night, she had to guess at her directions until she fished her GPS out of a pouch pocket in her pants. It confirmed that she was right.
Tree branches slashed at her as she sprinted through the night, and bushes conspired to trip her. But for the night vision, it would have been impossible. As it was, her rucksack, with all of its equipment and bulk was making it nearly impossible.
She keyed her mike. “I’m following them in the car. Be advised I’m shedding my ruck in the woods.” As she shrugged out of the straps and let the pack fall to the ground, she punched a button on the GPS to mark the spot so they could come back and get it later, if that’s what they decided to do. Forty pounds lighter now, she was still burdened with her rifle, sidearm and ammunition, yet she still felt light enough to float away.
Between clatter of her equipment and the racket raised by plowing through the underbrush, she knew she was making way too much noise, but she didn’t know another way.
A voice yelled from the dark, “Hey! Stop.”
At the very same instant, Venice said in her ear, “Gunslinger, there’s a sentry on the live feed. He’s very near you.”
Gail’s heart skipped, but she kept moving.
“Stop!” the voice yelled again. “Stop or I’ll shoot you.”
“He’s gaining,” Venice said. “And the cars are loading.”
Jonathan’s voice crackled in her ear: “Turn and shoot, Gunslinger.”
“I swear to God, I will shoot you!” the pursuer yelled.
Gail slid to a halt and turned. The sentry was indeed close, maybe twenty feet away. In the green glow of the night vision, he looked young, but it was hard to assign an age. Early twenties, maybe.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” the sentry asked. His voice cracked, the fear obvious. He held his rifle at chest height, the stock tucked under his armpit. Either he hadn’t been trained, or the training hadn’t stuck.
Gail said nothing.
“Cars are rolling,” Venice said.
“What’s Gunslinger doing?”
“Looks like she’s talking. The guard has her at gunpoint.”
“I said, who are you?” the sentry pressed.
“Gunslinger, Big Guy and I are on the way,” Jonathan said. “We’re clear of the house.”
Gail searched her brain for alternatives. Things were unraveling quickly.
The sentry stopped. “What… holy shit, you’ve got a gun!” He shouldered his weapon.
That was it. As Gail dropped to a knee, the sudden movement must have startled the sentry because he fired a wild shot as she swung her M4 up to her shoulder. She fired three times, hitting him twice in the chest and once in the head, the third bullet drilling him after he was dead.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” she heard in her ear. She thought it was Jonathan, but wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything other than the fact that she’d just killed a young man in cold blood.
The voice in her ear said, “Gunslinger, sit rep.”
He lay so still. Such was the awesome power of a bullet that it could end everything in a fraction of a second, snuffing a life that had barely begun.
“Gunslinger! Answer up.”
Venice said, “She’s not moving, but appears to be okay.”
“Gunslinger, Gunslinger. Can you hear me?” Now the stress in the voice-it was definitely Jonathan’s-was obvious. She could hear the impact of his running footsteps in his words.
Her body felt leaden, paralyzed. By any reasonable standard, she had just committed murder. Jonathan would tell her otherwise-that the larger cause justified the sacrifice-but that wouldn’t change the facts. She knew the
