Relentless (11 page)

“Bloody hell.” He pulled her up short in the deep shadow of an old gnarled sycamore tree on the grassy verge. The warm breeze brought with it the pungent smell of urine, causing Isis to wrinkle her nose.

“The lights in the underpass should be on. Stay here for a minute. I’ll go—”

This time it was she who did the wrist grabbing. “No thanks. I’ll go with you. I feel too exposed out here, and if anything happens to you, I’ll be stuck here alone.”

After several heartbeats, he agreed quietly, not sounding particularly happy. “All right. Hold on to my belt so we stay together, but my hands are free. If we encounter
anyone, fall to the ground and keep your head covered until I give the all-clear. Got it?” His eyes glinted. “And if we should run into any action, don’t bloody well help me.”

“God, no. I’ll run like hell and leave you in the dust.”
Chauvinistic ass
. He managed to make her blood boil in so many ways, and not all of them were good. “Let’s get this over with.”

She didn’t need to hold on to him going down the steep stairs, but once at the bottom, she slid her hand into the back of his jeans to grip his belt. The heat of his skin through the damp fabric of his shirt gave Isis a crystal-clear image of them rubbing their naked bodies together. The picture was so clear, so visceral that her nipples peaked, and she pressed closer to his back, as turned on as if he’d touched her.

She enjoyed the sensation, if not her lousy timing. The nerve-racking darkness and the eye-watering stench got rid of the image pretty fast. Eyes moving from side to side as she strained to see any threats in the gloom, Isis kept pace and acknowledged the duality of her responses to the man. As annoying as he tried to be, she was still turned on by everything about him. Go figure.

They entered the dark mouth of the tunnel. She’d only been inside once, many years before, and tried to picture it in her mind’s eye as they walked. A curved ceiling, lots of cracked, dirty white tile, cement floor, a jog at the end…

There was enough light from the entrance to illuminate partway inside—but from there the rest of the tunnel disappeared into thick darkness. The close confines
smelled strongly of body fluids and greasy french fries. There were American-style fast-food places everywhere in Cairo, and people the world over littered.

Their shoes echoed alarmingly as they crunched on the gritty floor. The air was still and close, and did nothing for her sweat-dampened skin, or her recurring jitters.

“Down!”
Thorne yelled, reaching back one-handed to rip her fingers free from his belt. A shot ricocheted through the space, causing Isis to flinch. Then another. She dropped flat on her stomach on the filthy floor, then rolled out of the way as booted feet converged and the sound of flesh meeting bone mingled with men’s grunts and guttural curses. She rolled into as small a ball as possible and covered her head with her arms—which was insane, because her forearms weren’t fricking
bullet
proof.

FIVE

T
horne was ready for them—in fact, he fucking well
welcomed
them. He’d had enough of this bullshit of running around in the dark with his head up his arse. His lips curled back in a snarl as he got off a shot at the guy on his left, which was answered by a hoarse shout, followed by a bullet coming from his right. Close enough to feel the heat and hear the buzz as the shot whizzed by his ear, then ricocheted farther down the curved walls. The sound echoed in the close confines of the tunnel, mingling with the explosion of shattered tile and cement behind him.

He spared a quick glance to assure himself Isis was out of the line of fire. She was down on the ground, pressed tightly against the wall, head buried in her arms.

He counted four men but suspected there might be more. Thorne spun to face the closest gun, parried the first blow with his forearm, and used his weapon hand to slam into an eye socket. The man howled, grabbing him by the wrist, and wrenched his arm back. Thorne followed the momentum of the twist, extricating himself,
kneed the guy in the balls, and followed through with a right cross.

It would be nice to get some questions answered, but these guys were clearly the brawn so he saved his breath. Feeling a rush of displaced air, he spun around as someone ran up behind him. Parrying the thrust of a knife with a chop of his arm, he felt the thin, white-hot line cut in his skin. Fuck, he hated knives. The man topped Thorne by a good six inches and was at least fifty pounds heavier, all of it fat, but he moved fast. Only a quick, fast-shoe shuffle had Thorne dancing inches out of reach before the man grabbed him around the throat. He spun and fired a shot almost point-blank into the man’s chest. The warm scatter of blood hit his face before the guy dropped.

“Who sent you?” Thorne demanded, shooting out his fist as a third guy, robes flapping, came at him with some sort of cudgel.

Someone else grabbed his arm, trying to wrench it out of its socket. Pain radiated up into Thorne’s neck as he leaned into the wrench. His fingers went numb, and the Glock he was using fell uselessly to the ground. Fucking hell! There was too much action to even consider dropping down to look for it. Thorne spun, rammed his elbow into someone’s jaw, and heard the snap of breaking bone and a grunt of pain. He danced back to avoid another knife, slipped on a pool of blood, and righted himself with a flip in midair before he went down.

Another attacker seized upon his disadvantage and with a wild cry leapt at him. Thorne grabbed his wrist,
wrenched the knife from his fingers, and did a roundhouse kick with his bad leg to the guy’s head. Boot met cranium with a sound like an exploding watermelon. The guy dropped.

So his leg
was
good for something. Good to know.

Fatty was back and sucker-punched him in that nanosecond’s distraction. Thorne’s breath went out in an agonized rush of air. But he’d been hit worse, and he repelled Fatty’s buddy, Robes, by slamming his palm into the bridge of the guy’s nose where there was bone, not soft cartilage. The crunch was satisfying, but he didn’t have time to admire his handiwork. They kept coming, more and more of them, like thugs out of a clown car. One down, two more entered the fray.

Fuck. It was like fighting a goddamned mythical hydra. Cut off one bloody head and two more took its place. A second gut punch elicited a harsh exhale as Thorne staggered backward. Broken ribs, he was sure. No time to feel it. Striking out cobra-fast, he sliced the side of his palm into Fatty’s windpipe. With a gurgle, the man tottered, clutching his throat as he dropped to his knees.

Robes came at him again. Thorne’s philosophy was, if an opponent wasn’t standing, he wasn’t fighting. As Robes got close enough, Thorne grabbed the front of his loose garment, pulled him in, and at the same time stuck out his leg. The guy ran right into the obstacle, went down with a girly shriek, and lay on his belly panting.

Thorne let a short guy get close enough that he could smell the cigarette stink of his breath, Thorne’s eyes watering at the man’s powerful body odor.
Jesus.
He
should kill the guy just for stinking. He hauled back and delivered a lower-rib shot, using the guy’s own forward momentum to make the blow memorable. The man’s gun went one way, the guy the other, but he managed to stagger back upright like a Weeble, then came back in, head lowered like a bull fixated on a red cape.

Thorne let him come, keeping the others in his peripheral vision. Stinky was in their way, so he had at least a couple of seconds to maneuver while their shots were blocked.

Stinky was breathing hard and ragged. Couldn’t get his lungs filled. Thorne compounded his problem by pummeling his rib cage, specifically his vulnerable short ribs, until the man’s breathing became even more labored.

Having sustained a similar beating from his friend Yermalof, Thorne knew how bad the guy hurt, and just how badly the guy’s chest must be screaming for mercy every time he tried to drag in a breath. Grabbing a fistful of Stinky’s thick, wiry hair, Thorne brought the guy’s nose down sharply and his own knee up hard. The sound of crushed cartilage and bone was extremely satisfying.

Flinging him aside, he ground his foot down on the guy’s wrist. A kick jettisoned the knife aside as it fell uselessly from the man’s numb fingers. For good measure Thorne gave the man a little tap on the side of the head with the toe of his boot.

He heard the man behind him seconds before he felt the breeze of a blunt instrument skimming his ear. The blow struck hard to his shoulder, hard enough to drop him to one knee.

He was up fast, but in the intervening few seconds, there was a wild cry, and Isis launched herself out of the darkness to attach herself like a spider monkey to the guy’s back. Arms and legs wrapped around the man’s torso, she hung on for dear life as the man tried to unseat her.

Jesus. If it hadn’t scared the crap out of him, Thorne would’ve laughed.

The man cursed colorfully in Arabic, whirling like a dervish with a determined woman clinging on his back, scoring her nails into the flesh of his face. She was trying to pull him off center with her weight. The man staggered and cursed, trying to pry her legs from around his waist, but she was determined and her ankles were dangerously locked together over his dick.

The diaphragm was a prime target, and Thorne made sure when he hit the guy there, he hit hard enough for every bit of air to leave the man’s lungs. It had little impact.

“Off!” Thorne yelled at Isis. He saw her eyes glinting in the darkness, then she lifted one foot and slammed her heel down with unerring accuracy directly into the man’s groin.

The injured man gave a bloodcurdling scream and doubled over to clutch his balls. Thorne’s balls contracted with him. Isis was on her feet and several steps out of range when the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he was down.

“Good job. Let’s get the hell out of here while the going’s g—”

He shouldn’t have been so goddamned self-satisfied,
because he felt a rush of air. There was someone he hadn’t seen. The man rushed him, knife gripped as an extension of his arm.

“Grab my gun on the ground behind you!” he yelled to Isis. “Hell.
Any
fucking gun!
Move!
”

He and New Guy danced around in a circle, stepping over sprawled bodies as the knife wielder slashed. Thorne kept his distance while also maintaining his balance. He spun to block another attack on his flank, saw just in time Isis’s wide eyes, and grabbed his weapon from her proffered hand. In one smooth continuous move, he turned the weapon on his attacker and fired.

The sound reverberated and echoed down the length of the tunnel. And then there was nothing left but pulsing silence.

Boom. Done. Only the adrenaline remained.

“You all right?” he demanded, crouching to feel for Stinky’s and Robes’s pulses at the same time. Both out, and unfortunately alive, as Isis walked around each man doing God only knew what, bending to pick things up off the floor.

“To say I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life is an understatement,” Isis snapped, voice shaking. Thorne heard the shimmer of anger there, too. She was holding it together, but he suspected that wasn’t going to last.

“Here, do something with these.”

These
were three guns and a heavy wooden object meant to splatter his brains on the walls. Thorne took the weapons and stuck them in his belt.

“Let’s not stick around to ask questions.”

“Or call an ambulance?”

“Or call an ambulance,” he repeated dryly. The underpass had stunk before—now with various new body fluids leaking all over the place it was no wonder Isis had her palm over her face. Thorne slid his arm around her waist and propelled her from the tunnel at a trot.

They emerged into the street, where there were lights and people. Still, he kept his eyes peeled for more trouble as they sprinted toward the mosque, where he knew they’d find a taxi, even at this time of night. “How you holding up?” Adrenaline was leaking out of him, and he was aware of the agonizing pain in his thigh, the sharp sting of the deep cut on his arm, and the bruising ache of broken ribs.