“Justice? Sir, I didn’t betray anyone.”
“That’s enough, First Seargent. We’ll be taking you into custody. You’ll remain here until we find transport to the nearest military installation with proper holding facilities where you’ll await your trial.”
Trial? Holding facilities? Dak knew he wouldn’t see such a place. Soldiers didn’t take kindly to those who turned their back on their own.
“Sir, what are you talking about?” Dak ventured. He had nothing to lose. “Why are you doing this? We went to the camp as ordered. We took out the cell. But Bo and the others left me there. They wanted something out of the cave.” He kept the secret of the treasure horde from the colonel, figuring that information was on a need-to-know basis.
“Don’t lie to me, soldier. Five men have corroborated what happened. Their stories match up perfectly. You will go to trial. That is if you make it that long.”
Dak knew what the man was talking about. From time to time, accidents happened. Soldiers who stepped out of line—went against the grain—ended up severely injured and sometimes worse. Such methods weren’t mainstream. But out here in a backwater outpost, no one would know the difference if a traitor happened to trip in front of a Humvee.
He’d never seen it himself, but Dak had heard the stories and it sickened him that his commanding officer insinuated such. Not only that, these were his brothers and sisters soldiers he’d served with, sacrificed with, protected. Now they were treating him like a common street thug. Worse, actually.
Two more soldiers stepped around the colonel, moved behind Dak, and shoved him to the ground.
Dak didn’t panic. That instinct had been bred out of him a long time ago. Now, though, he found himself fighting a wave of anxiety, confusion, and shock. How was he being arrested?
One resounding truth pounded at his brain as the soldiers behind him twisted his arms and prepared to zip tie his wrists.
Dak couldn’t let them arrest him.
Fifteen
Hamrin
The soldiers pressed Dak's head painfully into the dusty earth. The hard surface grated against his skin and a rock stabbed at his cheek, narrowly missing his eye. He struggled for a moment, but one of the soldiers pinning him down pushed harder and issued a warning, telling him it would be better for him if he didn't put up a fight.
Dak knew that wasn't true. If he let them arrest him, his life was over. He'd spend the rest of his good days in a maximum security prison with all the lowlifes of the military world.
That was something he couldn't abide. There was no chance he'd let them put him away for life.
The arresting soldiers had made a mistake when shoving him to the ground. They hadn't bothered to check him for weapons. It was standard procedure, yet they'd mistakenly forgotten.
He felt the knife against his skin, tucked under his belt and hidden from view by his shirt.
The soldier straddling him grabbed his left wrist and tried to bring it back to the other where he could bind the two together. He drove his knee into the small of Dak's back, using his weight to keep the prisoner down.
If he didn't make his move now, he'd never get another chance.
He subtly twisted his body to position the soldier's knee off center to the right. Knowing the grips, the pressure point moves, and the protocols the soldier would use came in handy as the guy tried to tweak Dak's wrist to a compromising angle. In a flash, Dak twisted his body one way, then the other, forcing the man's balance off kilter. The knee that was so solidly planted a second ago, slipped to the right, shifting the soldier's weight.
The abrupt move caused the men with guns to raise their weapons, but they couldn't fire for risk of hitting their own men.
As the arresting soldier slid to the right, Dak whipped both legs up, driving the heels of his boots into the man's middle back. He grunted in pain and his grip on Dak's wrists loosened.
Dak rolled hard, jerking his hands away and shoving one into his shirt where the belt lay in wait. In the blink of an eye, he unsheathed the weapon, while using the dazed soldier's torso for leverage to vault over and behind the man. Within two seconds, Dak went from nearly being arrested to holding the soldier hostage with a forearm gripped tightly around the man's neck.
Dak's feet shuffled backward as he held the soldier tight against his body as a human shield.
The other soldiers trained their weapons on the target, but he gave barely an inch of space as he poked his head around the hostage's right ear.
"Weapons down!" Dak shouted.
The men didn't move. Neither didn't the colonel, who simply stood there with his hands folded behind his back, watching the event play out.
"Did you not hear me? I said put your weapons down."
"You know what to do, men," the colonel said with a grim expression on his face.
The soldier in Dak's grasp now displayed sheer terror in his eyes, like a child jumping into a pool for the first time. He said nothing, though part of that was due to his windpipe being crushed under Dak's sinewy forearm.
"He won't kill anyone," the colonel continued. "Isn't that right, Dak? I mean, if you truly are innocent, you won't hurt one of your own. Right?"
The words seeped into Dak's soul, and deep down he knew them to be true. He wasn't going to hurt another American soldier, not these anyway. Bo and the others, that was a different story.
He pushed the sharp blade's edge into the man's neck and a trickle of blood dribbled onto the metal. The hostage swallowed and the blade sunk a little deeper.
"I wouldn't do that," Dak
