older than nine asked, haunting blue-gray eyes gleaming as if he’d just met a hero.
Quinn motioned Garcia up beside him. “We both have. This is my wife. She was trained in Chechnya.”
Ronnie spoke a quick sentence of Russian to illustrate her origin. The boys, pressed closer, instinctively hungry for friendly female companionship. Tears filled the younger boys’ eyes.
“You have a prisoner?” Quinn nodded at the woman in the corner. She stared back at him with a raised brow, as if trying to figure him out. “You have done well.”
“She has a good accent but isn’t useful anymore,” the green-eyed blond boy snorted. He leaned in and gave a conspiratorial wink. “She refuses to talk with us after the teachers cut off her lover’s head.”
“Too bad,” Quinn said, working hard to hide his disgust for the little tyrant.
“It’s okay.” The boy shrugged. “Dr. Badeeb gives us lots of music CDs and videos to watch.”
“Your English is perfect,” Garcia said, smiling as if she was really glad to meet him. “What’s your name?”
“Kenny,” the boy said, puffing his chest proudly. “I am small for my age, but I’m almost fourteen. Dr. Badeeb visited us a month ago and said I could go to America before winter is over. I cannot wait to go to the U.S. and begin to kill Americans. Have you killed many?”
“A few,” Quinn said honestly. “I hope to be going back very soon.” He took a step sideways so his back wasn’t to the door. “Learning some good English from the television, I see. What else do they give you to watch?”
Kenny ignored him, his own questions gushing out like a river. “Tell me about America. Have you met any others like us? We have watched videos of the actions at the CIA. Seth… he became Seth Timmons-was my teacher when I was a small boy. He died as a martyr. Maybe you knew him… Do you get to see others of us who have gone before? My sister was here-she is so very smart. Maybe you have met her.” The boy grinned, showing huge white teeth. “You’d know her if you had. We kept an oil company worker here from Abilene, Texas. He would not shut up, but that was a good thing. My sister talked to him day and night for weeks… before Dr. Badeeb had the man’s head sawed off.” The boy smiled, lost in the memory. “I was young, but Dr. Badeeb tells me stories about her. I remember her face. She loved to practice her accent.” Kenny grinned proudly. “She always told me she was going to go to America and be the queen of West Texas bitches-”
Quinn felt Garcia stiffen beside him. She opened her mouth to speak as the wooden door flew open.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The three guards entered quickly, fanning out across the room. The apparent leader held his fire, screaming in heavily accented English for the children to move out of the way. Quinn knew they wouldn’t take him prisoner a second time.
Grabbing Kenny by the collar of his heavy sweater, Quinn heaved the little terror like a screeching sack of sand at the nearest guard.
Garcia stepped into the guard nearest her, slapping away the barrel of his Kalashnikov to give him a well- executed cross elbow to the face. He staggered back against the wall, down but not out.
Somehow comprehending that things had changed with the new arrivals, the captive woman launched herself at the guard nearest her. With her bound hands and feet there was little she could do but roll and bite. But even that made a difference. The guard screamed in pain as she drove her shoulder into the side of his knee. His finger convulsed on the trigger, popping three rounds into the gap-toothed blond kid beside Garcia.
Quinn’s opponent swatted Kenny out of the way. Before the man could bring his weapon up again, Quinn swarmed him with a quick round of percussive blows to his neck and throat. With both hands on the useless AK-47, the stunned guard was unable to defend against the onslaught. He slumped to his knees, gasping for air, as Quinn snatched the rifle, still hanging from the sling, and shot him in the chest.
Quinn put two rounds in each of the other two guards. The captive woman had managed to climb on top of a squalling Kenny. She bashed his head against the stone floor again and again before rolling off, exhausted.
Alive, but subdued to tears with his head covered in blood, the glaring boy crawled to the rest of his cowering group against the back wall.
Jericho did a quick peek outside the door. The hallway was empty for the time being, but it was sure to start raining guards soon enough. He’d counted at least seven when they’d first entered the mountain school-and that didn’t count the men outside in the yurts.
He stooped to cut the woman free with his Swiss Army knife, taking stock of the room as he worked. Three guards and two boys lay dead. Kenny’s scalp was awash in blood and Alan Alda still bantered away on the episode of M*A*S*H.
“Quinn, U.S. Air Force.”
“Karen Hunt,” she said. “Civilian, attached to the Army.”
“Can you walk on your own?” he asked.
“I’m fine.” Hunt rubbed circulation back into her wrists. “Your friend’s not so good, though.”
Quinn handed Hunt the AK. “Mind watching the door?”
The woman nodded, checking the weapon as if she had handled one many times.
Garcia stood, swaying slightly in the center of the room. A quizzical look crossed her oval face.
“Ronnie?” Quinn grabbed her by the shoulders. “Are you hit?”
She shook her head slowly, not sure herself. Blinking, she twisted, reaching over her shoulder to claw at her back.
Quinn’s eyes fell to the dead boy who’d been killed by one of the guard’s stray fire. To his horror, the grimy hand held a sharpened metal spike just larger than a number-two pencil. Garcia followed his gaze down to the weapon, realizing what had happened at the same moment as Quinn.
Her knees buckled and Jericho lowered her to the cushions the boys had been using to watch television. Gasps and muffled croaks escaped her trembling lips as she strained to speak. Frothy pink blood pooled on her tongue.
“How we looking at the door?” Quinn pulled Garcia toward him, rolling her on her side. He tugged up her coat. Her head lolled as he yanked the back of her shirt out of her wool pants and pulled it up over her head. She shuddered in his arms as he searched frantically for a wound.
Hunt shot a quick burst down the hall and got a string of return fire. “Doin’ just fine over here,” she said.
Quinn gave a withering look to the boys, who cowered less than ten feet away, backs to the wall. It occurred to him that more than one might have a homemade weapon.
“Are you all ready to die today?” he said.
They shook their heads emphatically. Even zealots need time to work up to the task of martyrdom-especially zealots in embryo.
He swore under his breath when he found the place where the spike had punctured her skin. Nearly the size of a dime, the wound was below her right shoulder blade in the pale flesh left by the tan line of her bikini top. Bubbles of pink blood oozed from the wound.
“Sorry, Ronnie,” Quinn said though clenched teeth. “I have to leave you on your stomach for a minute.”
Garcia nodded weakly. Her breath was reduced to shallow, labored croaks.
“Did it get a lung?” Hunt asked. She was barefoot and the translucent white robe did little to hide the swells and creases of her otherwise naked body. But she moved like a professional and the way she handled the AK was an intimidating sight.
“Afraid so,” Quinn said. He fished a black Cordura wallet from the cargo pocket of his pants. It was a simple wound kit he’d carried with him everywhere since his first deployment. It contained just four items-a windlass tourniquet he could apply by himself, a foil envelope of QuikClot, a 14-gauge needle, and an air-tight Vaseline bandage.
He ripped the seal from the bandage and applied it to the wound. It stuck well to the smooth skin over Garcia’s back, sealing the entry point.
Her eyelids fluttered when he rolled her over on the cushions. She struggled, mouthing something. Her eyes
