No Turning Back (32 page)

Screwing up her courage, she tore out at a full sprint across the open ground to Luke's position, terrified she'd be shot down at any moment. She'd never felt so alone or so exposed as she did then, moving at a dead run while trying not to stay in a straight line in the hopes it would make her a more difficult target to hit. Her knees were like jelly, lungs pumping, boots pounding over the layer of snow and shale covering the ground, dodging rocks and boulders, eyes riveted on Luke's shadowy form in the distance. After a few minutes, a new voice took over.

Get down.

Without thinking, she dove to the ground and stayed there. Shaking, she lay on her belly, face pressed into the dirt, afraid to move. But she had little choice. The only option was to keep moving, and hope they wouldn't see her. Her breaths came in shallow pants, every instinct yelling at her to stay still and hide like a hunted animal, when she knew damn well she couldn't. The enemy had to be close now. She had to get to Luke before they spotted their position and let loose with a hail of tracer-lit automatic fire.

Get up. Move.

It went against every instinct she had. Her body shook. She didn't dare raise her head. Levering up on her forearms, she crawled forward on her belly, desperately gazing around for some cover, but there was nothing to hide behind. She had to keep going, knowing that when she got close enough, the shooters were going to have Luke in their sights as well. She inched closer to Luke and sent up a prayer, trying to reach him over the radio. No response.

Her fingers curled into the loose, snow-covered shale and dragged herself onward, scraping her arms, hips and legs over the sharp edges of rock. In her racing mind, she went over the procedure for loading and firing the pistol. It was only good for short-range targets, but she had a better chance of hitting someone with that than a rifle. She had to get to Luke and build up some sort of protective wall for them, and hope the hell he came to in time to pick off the bad guys, or that Ben came in hot with the helo in record time.

Moving as fast and low as she could, Sam wound her way to Luke's position, called out his name softly when she got within earshot. He moved. Her heart leapt.

“Luke,” she urged again, coming up behind him on her elbows to grab his ankle and shake him.

“I'm okay,” he muttered, his voice slurred.

Wasting no time, Sam clawed her way up beside him and started piling rocks on top of one another, grabbing whatever was within reach to give them some cover. He raised his head slightly, and even in her terror she recognized the pinched expression on his face. “Still four of them,” she whispered, frantically building their barricade. “They must be close now, but I don't think they've seen us yet.”

Luke struggled up onto his elbows, rifle held in a death grip, eyes trained on the horizon before them.

“Are you hurt?” she demanded.

“No.”

Jesus, this was not the time to keep up the alpha male image. “I brought a med kit. Do you need anything?”

“No.”

“Don't tell me there's nothing wrong— you passed out, I saw you!”

His jaw flexed. “I can't see,” he said finally.

“What?” She couldn't help the note of hysteria in her voice. Did he mean he couldn't see the enemy? That his vision was blurry? Or did he literally mean he couldn't
see
? For him to have said anything at all spoke volumes. God, nothing in the medical kit was going to be able to help that, and no medical advice from Ben was going to change anything.

Luke didn't elaborate any further, but when she stole another glance at him, she saw beads of sweat dotting his face, and knew they weren't there because he was overheated. He was scared. She'd never, ever seen him anything but one hundred percent in control at all times, and the knowledge that he wasn't sent a tidal wave of fear crashing through her. She forced it down. “Can you shoot?”

“Yep.” His eyes never strayed from whatever it was he was staring at. Her only comfort was that she knew he'd never quit. He'd stay and fight it out no matter what, to the death if necessary. That's how strong his will was, and why he'd made the SEAL Teams.

She spoke in a whisper to distract herself. “Ben's on his way, should be here in a few minutes.” The rock wall was as high as their heads now, tall enough to duck behind, but not enough to give them good protection. “I've got a pistol, but— ”

To her horror, Luke turned his head and gagged repeatedly, vomiting into the snow. The sour stench of bile rose up, making her own stomach twist.

“Luke,” she whispered, close to falling apart as she grabbed his shoulder to steady him. He was way worse off than he'd ever admit, but he pushed her away and propped himself back up on his elbows, laying the barrel of his rifle on the rocks she'd put up and aiming through the scope. She bit her lip to hold back a sob of fear and fumbled to get the pistol out, jamming a magazine into it and taking the safety off before loading a round in the chamber with a metallic clink. Her hands were shaking like flags in a windstorm.

Beside her, Luke sucked in sharp breaths through his nostrils, the SEAL in him fighting through the agony to hold his position as they waited for the enemy to find them and start shooting. Minutes passed in eerie stillness. Sam squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for Ben to hurry.

She jumped when the first bullet slammed into the boulder beside her, instinctively throwing herself to the ground as a second whizzed past her shoulder.

“Stay down,” Luke rasped.

He needn't have said anything. She'd already flattened herself into the dirt, mind racing through the sudden spike in fear. AKs weren't very accurate. Luke had told her that once. They tended to fire up and to the right, and Taliban fighters tended to hold their weapons at waist level. Risking a glance up, Sam turned her eyes to the sky as a line of bullets arced over them, the tracers glowing green through the lenses of her NVGs. Another bullet pinged off a rock to her left, close enough she saw the sparks and a quick sting hit her jaw.

Biting back a gasp, she wiggled deeper into the loose soil and touched the spot. Her fingers came away wet, the metallic scent of blood hitting her nose as her brain processed what had happened.

A ricochet.

She kept praying for the sound of the rotors, hoping Ben would get there before the attackers improved their aim. Nothing came back but the rasp of her shuddering breaths and the slam of her heart in her ears.

Luke hadn't budged, and hadn't fired a shot yet. Could he see the enemy? The tracers must have given their positions away. Either way, she and Luke were fighting for their lives with every heartbeat.

Near command post

“Can you stand without us?”

Tehrazzi ignored the whisper and stepped out of the truck on his own, fighting the debilitating weakness assailing his body. Covering a wince, he slung his sniper's rifle over his shoulder, sweat breaking out on his upper lip as the layers of stitches holding his innards together strained with each movement. Hooking the fingers of one hand through the strap, he left the three other men in the vehicle and began the steep climb up the trail to the place they had decreed to be the best vantage point for his mission.

He'd refused the opium they had offered him. The pain was bad, but he used the hatred within him to devour it, using it to center himself and focus his mind on what he needed to do. He could not fail, no matter what the circumstances. Any weakness would cost him the position of power he'd struggled his whole life to attain. Here, in these barren mountains, he'd struggled and starved in the most brutal poverty on earth, a kind so desperate it never left him, not even with all his millions of dollars and properties around the world. That kind of stain on your soul never left you. It followed you throughout your life and into the next, and only God could erase it.

Fighting back his fatigue, Tehrazzi started uphill, leaning his body weight into the incline, distracting his body from the pain by thinking of those pivotal days that had led him to this very place, at this exact moment. A circle completed.

His grandmother had grown up here. As a boy, he had visited her poor relatives after spending some time in Kabul where she'd been born. He had seen how they struggled to survive and felt a mixture of pity and contempt, hating them for how little they did to advance themselves. But he had also seen the steely core of the Pashtuns, the strength of will bound by the blood of generations reaching back for thousands of years and the strict code of conduct that held the fabric of their culture together. And he had known even then they would always remain. They had survived the Indians and the British, and when the Soviets invaded during his teens, he had watched the news reports back in Syria and known they would prevail. Because they were survivors, just as he was.

He had joined the resistance as a teenager, and there he had met his teacher. And when the Soviets abandoned their tanks and their attack jets in the airfields of Kabul and Bagram Air Base, the Americans had deserted the Afghan people. Without military or financial aid, the country fell into chaos until the Taliban took control and implemented the true rule of Islam. Now that the great Islamic warriors had driven a sword into the belly of the great Satan, the United States, the whimsical tide of American politics had turned. Its leaders and people had taken a sudden interest in Afghanistan's plight, and used it as an excuse to bomb its villages and mountainsides to protect themselves from the very people they had considered so insignificant as to not warrant helping after the Russians left.

Americans and their western allies were self-serving, corporate pigs who only took their snouts out of the trough if a better opportunity came along, or if they were in danger.

Well, they were all in danger now, and none of them had the will or determination to win this war. Their impatience was yet another advantage to their enemies. The American public expected immediate victory, and had no stomach for suffering casualties. To defeat them, all an army had to do was inflict steady casualties and hold out until the next election, making the war so unpopular that the next president would pull out. The Americans had done the same in Vietnam, and though that war was only a few decades past, the memory had somehow faded from the public perception until recently. But the Pashtuns had been waging war in these mountains since their ancestors had settled here. They understood what resistance meant. Every man, woman and child would die defending their homeland if necessary. America would never win this war.

Tehrazzi's feet slipped on the loose dirt and rock covering the snowy trail, but he propelled himself upward step by step, being careful to make as little noise as possible. He was skilled, but even he couldn't match the locals with their surefootedness and stealth. Once, back during the anti-Communist jihad, he'd seen a band of tribesman sneak up and slit the throats of an entire Russian platoon before any of them could scream a warning.

His heart beat fast as he neared the top. Dropping to his hands and knees and ignoring the hot tear in his belly, he reached the outcrop and crawled forward, putting the scope to his eye. Appearing momentarily from behind the clouds, the thin moon gave him enough light to see as he scanned the plain before him, followed by gunshots— the distinctive report of the Kalashnikovs, and the deeper note of a rifle. And another, higher pitched. More rapid. A pistol. Whoever had fired it must be in desperate shape.

There. There they were. His teacher and the American woman who'd brought him here, pinned down by Assoud and his men. Praise be to Allah.

The hair on Tehrazzi's arms stood up. He tightened the focus on the scope, soundlessly loaded a round into the chamber. The bolt clicked into place. Balancing the barrel on a boulder, he lined up the crosshairs on his target's head, caught in an odd mixture of elation and sadness as he set his finger on the trigger. He curled his first knuckle around the curved edge and tightened it a fraction, his gaze never wavering from his unsuspecting victim. One shot would finish it, and then he would disappear down the mountain and vanish with the help of his fierce Pashtun brothers.

One shot, he thought with a grim smile. He tightened his finger, preparing to squeeze the trigger.

“How much ammo do you have?” Luke asked above the din.

Sam searched in her pack. “Three more magazines for the pistol.” He didn't reply, and she didn't expect him to. The pistol was useless to them. It was only accurate for close range targets and could never reach Assoud and the others at this distance. Unless Ben got here and opened up with the Pave Hawk's M60s, they were in deep shit.

“Keep firing,” he directed.

Not about to question his reasoning, she slammed another mag into the gun and pulled back the barrel to load it, propping the muzzle on top of the rocks to fire, squeezing the trigger repeatedly. The steady pop-pop-pop of the pistol added to the noise, but she wasn't optimistic it would keep the bad guys away for long. Another bullet slammed into the rocks, making her snatch her hand back in reflex. She had the passing thought that if she held up her fingers, they'd all be shot off. Then a battle cry rose up. The eerie howl flowed over her crawling skin as it grew louder. They were charging down at them from the ridge. She cast a frantic glance at Luke. He hadn't moved, his finger still poised on the trigger. She shut her eyes.

The rifle cracked.

Her eyes flew open in time to see the rifle butt recoil against Luke's shoulder.

“One down.” He was breathing fast, but his hand seemed steady as he drew back the bolt and loaded another shot.

Crack
.

“Two down.”

Driven by self-preservation, she reloaded her pistol and added her own firepower, shooting randomly into the open to try and slow their advance. Still no sound of the chopper. She keyed her mike. “How long, Ben?” Her voice was shrill to her own ears.

“Two minutes. You both okay?”

“Just hurry,” she begged, hands shaking as she loaded her last clip.