targets and the battery packs sent fifty thousand volts into each man. The men dropped and the shooters released the battery packs to allow their guns to chamber the second rounds. The packs would continue to send maintenance charges through the flechettes until the batteries ran dry, say about twenty seconds. Four down, four to go.
Lydia pulled another shotgun from under her billowing black chador and hammered an officer into the wall with the beanbags. I pivoted and fired two shots at a screaming cop trying to crawl toward a desk with a phone on it, hitting him once and missing once because he went down that fast. Khalid and Top used the Tasers on the other two.
In the space between the flash-bang and my first shot, I heard an explosion in the cell area. Bunny blowing the back door off its hinges with a blaster-plaster. Then the sound of shotguns and Tasers.
And that fast it was over. Eight men up front, four in the back. All of them down, no fight left in anyone.
I turned. “Warbride, secure the door. Sergeant Rock, Dancing Duck-bag ’em and tag ’em.”
We were using combat call signs. Lydia was Warbride, Top was Sergeant Rock, Khalid was Dancing Duck. I was Cowboy.
Immediately Top and Khalid produced plastic flex-cuffs, which had been designed to hold pipes together but have become a staple of law enforcement worldwide.
One of the officers began to stir. Maybe the Taser flechettes hadn’t lodged deeply enough for him to take the full shock, or maybe he was one of those rare types who can bull their way through it, but he lunged at Lydia and tried to tackle her. Lydia is five eight and one forty. Solid for a woman but far smaller than the cop. However, she stepped into his rush and hit him three times-nose, solar plexus, and groin-in less than a second. The cop went down like he’d been poleaxed. Lydia spun him onto his stomach and cuffed him, then bent and whispered, “Next time, pendejo, don’t let your balls get your ass in trouble.”
Once he was down, my team cuffed the officers by the wrists and ankles and then connected those cuffs, leaving everyone hog-tied. Sponge balls with elastic cords were used to muffle voices. The cops would be able to spit them out once they got their wits about them, but I intended for Echo Team to be a memory by then. Lydia locked the door and pulled down the slatted metal security shutters. Then she started ripping out phone lines, smashing laptops, and crushing cell phones under her heel.
I ran past her, through the security office and into the holding area. Bunny was finishing the last of the hog- tying while John Smith searched the officers for keys. He found them and tossed the set to me as I ran past.
“Green Giant,” I yelled to Bunny. “Talk to me.”
“Last one.”
“Chatterbox, watch the door.”
John Smith nodded and crouched down by the shattered rear doorway. There were people on the street, poking their heads out of doors and second floor windows to see what the fuss was about.
“Drawing a crowd,” he said.
“Out front, too,” called Lydia. “ Truchas! Neighbors are coming!”
The three hikers were in the cells. They looked terrible. Haunted faces, emaciated bodies, fresh bruises, and healed-over scars. However, I noticed that the jailers had provided each of the young prisoners with a big plate of fresh food and plenty of clean water. It was a small courtesy, but it said a lot about the men we’d just roughed up. Human beings. They couldn’t do anything about what had been done to the hikers, and they had no say in what was planned for them-a bullshit trial and either execution or life in a much more terrible state prison-but here, on the street level, these were frightened, starving young people and the cops did what they could to take care of them. They’d even rigged blankets on the bars to give the girl, Rachel, a measure of privacy and dignity. Top saw me looking at that and when I noticed him looking, he flicked an eye to the front room and nodded. I nodded back. There was nothing else to say or do.
The college kids, however, were jabbering and screaming and yelling. The panic was such a huge thing for them that they’d lost all control. Bunny kept trying to calm them down, but his voice was lost beneath the barrage of theirs.
From the doorway, Top yelled, “ Shut the fuck up!” with all the volume that his leather-throated drill instructor’s voice could manage.
The hikers shut up at once and stared at him, goggle-eyed.
I said, “We are United States Special Forces. We’re here to take you home.”
They started yammering again, rushing the cell doors before we could even open them.
“Stop!” I snapped, and they did. Scared as they were, they paid attention, which I knew was going to help make this work. Hysteria would get everyone killed. I was also reassured by seeing them all on their feet. I’ve heard horror stories about prisoner rescues where the people the SpecOps forces liberated were broken and catatonic wrecks who had to be carried out.
One of them, the only woman among them, stepped forward. She wore a scowl that was half anger and half hope. “They tricked us once with something like this. How do we know-?”
“Smart question. When you were ten your mom gave you a guinea pig for your birthday. You named it Olivia.”
Her eyes stayed hard, but they grew wet as well. She nodded.
“God, thank you-” she began, but I cut her off.
“Listen to me. We will get you out of here but you need to do exactly as you’re told. No questions, no talk.”
Khalid produced a PDA and called up photographs, matching them against the faces of the prisoners. “Three for three,” he confirmed and handed the device to me.
I unlocked one cell and handed Top the keys.
“Each of you will go with one of my team. You’ll get into separate cars and you’ll be taken out of the country. You’re going home. This is for your own safety,” I said. “If any one car gets stopped, the others will get away. Now, no more talk… let’s move.”
When I said the word “separate,” they looked terrified and suspicious, but they did not panic. I found myself liking them. I’d had reservations at first-like a lot of people, I guess-because they had put themselves in harm’s way by going on a science field trip in a war zone. But now I understood. These were very tough young people. Resourceful and capable. If they had a fault, maybe it was that they had too much faith in people. I’m not about to slam anyone for thinking that other people will aspire to their higher values. It’s just too bad they got caught in a moment when the Iranian soldiers were not listening to their better angels.
Khalid stepped into the cell with the senator’s son. “Jason McHale?”
The young man saw Khalid’s Arab face and hesitated, but I stepped close.
“He’s an American soldier. Go with him or stay here. Decide fast, kid, ’cause your dad’s waiting for you in Kuwait City. He wants to see ‘Ranger.’”
That did it. “Ranger” was Jason’s nickname as a little boy. Tears welled in his eyes and he tried to hug me. I pushed him gruffly back. I felt for him, but this wasn’t the time.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No need to be sorry, brother,” I said. “When we get out of this I’ll buy the first round.”
He smiled. It was a good smile, conflicted in the moment but that was a veneer over a clear and evident openness. “The next one’s on me.” He allowed Khalid to guide him out of the cell.
Top entered Rachel’s cell and held out a hand toward her, palm up. An invitation rather than a command. “Come on, darlin’” he said in the fatherly way he has. He’s the only Echo Team member with kids. “You can tell me everything I need to know about rare tigers on the way to Kuwait.”
Rachel stared blankly at him for a moment. He had warmth, and you knew on an instinctive level that it was genuine. Then she smiled-maybe her first real and unguarded smile in months.
“Asiatic cheetah,” she corrected as she took his hand. He grinned back at her.
The kid in the last cell, Bryan, was the youngest of the three. His twentieth birthday had happened behind bars. He was also the most clearly damaged, and he stared through the open cell with sunken eyes. It was pretty obvious that the experience had fractured something inside him. Maybe-with luck and the right doctors-he’d find his way out of the dark. Top put a hand on his shoulder.
Top started to say something, but Rachel stepped past him.
“It’s okay, Bryan,” she said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore. We made it. We survived. We’re free.
