The Edge Of Courage

the guard walked between his position and the cabins. When he’d circled around in front again, Rocco went up the hill and crossed to Val.

“Any sign of her?” Val asked.

“No. I didn’t check the van, though. Maybe there were two vans. Maybe the bastard lied. They could be holding her in one of the bathrooms. The third cabin has five guys. The next to the last in that row has three. The others are all empty. I’m going to wait for Kit near the SUV.”

“When you come back, bring my bag. I’ve got plenty of zip ties in there.”

Rocco waited in the cover of a scrub pine. He wanted to rage, to storm the cabins, to kill the bastards working on al Jahni’s terror campaign. Instead, his training and his years of covert ops work kicked in like a core instinct, keeping him calm and focused.

At last, a black Expedition pulled into the drive and parked in front of Val’s SUV. Kit and Owen got out.

“What’s the situation?” Kit asked.

“A quarter of a mile up the road is a ridge that overlooks the campground and cabins.” Rocco knelt down and took up a stick to draw the layout they were working with. “Val’s there. A hundred and fifty meters below him is a line of eight cabins. This one has five tangos, that one has three. One guard patrols the circumference. The green van is here,” he marked an “x” in front of one of the cabins. “Three other vehicles are here, here, and here. No sign of Mandy, so go carefully.”

“Right. Kit will take the patrol,” Owen directed. “Then he and I will take the cabin with the three men in it. You and Val take this one. Let’s go.” They caught up to where Val was lying in wait.

“Any change?” Kit asked.

“Negative,” Val answered without looking away from his scope.

“When the guard is down, radio us,” Owen told Kit. They waited for the patrol to move around the corner before getting into position, four men moving silently as shadows down the steep slope of the ridge. The trees around them were mostly lodge pole pines, with a few aspen mixed in. Soft pine needles covered the ground, damp from the recent snowmelt. If the enemy looked at the right time, they might catch their movement, but they couldn’t be heard.

Rocco’s heart was pounding. With the man he’d caught earlier and the nine here, they’d take ten terrorists out of circulation today. One of them had to know where Mandy was.

As soon as Kit radioed he’d handled the patrol, Rocco and Val stormed their appointed cabin, Rocco coming in from the front, Val from the back. They filled the room with noise and shouts, throwing it into chaos.

“On the floor! On the floor! On the floor! Hands on your head!” Val shouted. Rocco repeated the order in Pashto and then Arabic. Two men complied, crashing to the floor with their hands over their heads. One tried to run past Val, and two turned on Rocco. Rocco slammed the butt of his rifle into the shoulder of one of the men who lunged at him, then jammed his elbow into the other man’s jaw.

“Give me a reason. One goddamned reason,” Rocco shouted at both of them. They didn’t try for him again. “Get down on the floor, hands on your heads.” In short order, they had all five men subdued. Once Val had secured them with zip ties, Rocco collected their weapons.

“Where is the woman, Mandy Fielding?” Rocco asked, watching their expressions. He switched to Pashto, then Arabic, repeating the question, all to blank, impassive faces.

“Was she your woman?” one of the captives asked, his expression smug.

“She is my woman.”

“Perhaps, but not for long. Allah’s will is just. She will pay the price for whoring herself to an infidel.”

“What do you know of her? Where is she?”

“Beyond your reach, I would expect.”

The room fell quiet under that open threat until the metallic sound of Rocco unsheathing his knife broke the silence.

“What are you doing?” Val asked Rocco.

“I’m going to get him to tell me what he knows about Mandy. If he won’t talk to me, I’ll cut out his tongue so that he can’t talk to anyone ever again.” He looked at the row of men sitting against the wall. “And if he loses his tongue, I will start on the next, and the next. One of them knows something.”

“Huh.” Val walked to door and looked out toward the cottage where Kit and Owen were. “Better be quick about it. I doubt Kit would approve.”

Rocco pulled the man away from the line of the others. He forced him to the floor, pinning him with a hand on his throat. “Where is the woman?” The other four captives watched with pale faces and wide eyes.

“Go to hell,” the man spat.

“You first.” Rocco put a knee on the man’s abdomen and gripped his jaw in his left hand. The man clamped his teeth shut and struggled against Rocco’s attempts to get his mouth open.

“Come hold him,” he ordered Val.

Val shouldered his rifle and knelt down, pinning the man’s head between his knees. “Go for it. Just don’t cut me.”

“Stop!” one of the other men shouted. “She is not here. They took her up the hill to another building.”

Rocco sent Val a quick look. “Go,” Val told him. “I got this.”

As he reached the door, a man he’d not seen before stepped inside. He took one look at Rocco and Val, then glanced around the room. Seeing what was happening, he took off. Rocco ran after him. He got almost to the foot of the hill where a drive led up and out of sight before Rocco tackled him. He was shouting a warning-to whom, Rocco had no idea. A quick right hook silenced him.

Rocco heard someone running fast behind him. Kit was closing in on him. He left Kit to deal with the terrorist and continued up the hill, scoping out the area, watching for threats. Straight ahead was another building. An old sign hanging askew over the front door read, “Office & Mercantile.”

Rocco ran up to the entrance, then flanked the front door, straining to hear any sound inside. All was silent. He cleared the main room, then each of the smaller rooms. The building was empty of humans. Its sole occupant was a chair set in the middle of the room. Freshly severed ropes lay discarded on the floor.

Rocco kicked the chair across the room as he bellowed a curse. He took another turn through the building, trying to see if there was a basement, a closet, another space where they might have stashed Mandy, another clue as to what they might have done with her, all to no avail. The place was clean.

When he came back into the main room, Kit was finishing a call. His face was pale, his eyes bleak as he met Rocco’s gaze.

Chapter 20

“Highway Patrol reported a woman matching Mandy’s description walking east on Highway 130, not far from here,” Kit told him.

“Alone?” Rocco asked.

Kit nodded. Rocco ran down the drive to the main road. He turned right and kept jogging. Flashing lights at the crest of a distant hill told him the cops had shut down the road. He rounded a bend in the road and saw Mandy walking up ahead.

“Mandy!” he called, relieved to find her. She didn’t acknowledge him. What had happened to her? Why wasn’t she responding to him? She kept moving forward in a slow, determined stride, like a sleepwalker. She wore a shirt that was too large for her-one he didn’t recognize.

“Mandy!” He came even with her. When she didn’t acknowledge him, he caught her arm and pulled her around, revealing the thick belt of C-4 tied to her waist. He recognized that particular configuration of explosives. Kadisha had worn one just like it when she’d handed Zavi to him.

A paralyzing bolt of fear shot through Rocco. His nightmare was about to repeat. His body felt brittle as he hit his knees.

When she saw his reaction, Mandy drew a ragged breath. “I can’t stop.” She shook her head. “He said I had two hours to get back to my house.” She kept moving, but backward.

Rocco looked up at her as the distance between them slowly increased. “Who said?”