To the Brink (17 page)

Beside her, Amy stirred. "What? Is it time to—"

"It's okay," Darcy interrupted quickly. The last thing they needed was for Amy to inadvertently give away that they were waiting for Ethan.

Omar glared at Amy with heightened interest. "Time to what?"

Amy shot to a sitting position when she realized the terrorist leader was here and addressing her.

"T ... time to get up," she improvised, reading the look on Darcy's face. And then Amy looked, really looked, at the way Omar was watching Darcy.

"Oh God," Amy whispered as Omar grabbed Darcy's upper arm and hauled her roughly to her feet.

"No ... no, take me," Amy cried. She struggled to stand. "Leave her alone. Please, sir. Take me. I'll do anything you want."

With an iron grip on Darcy's arm, Omar dragged her against him.

"Leave her alone!" Amy screamed. "Leave her—"

He moved so fast neither of them saw it coming. Omar backhanded Amy across the face so viciously that she stumbled backward and fell, hard, to the ground.

"Amy!" Darcy fought to get away as Omar started dragging her across the campsite.

He jerked her back against him so hard it felt like he'd wrenched her arm out of her shoulder socket. "Fight me and you will die. Submit and I may let you live."

"You didn't have to hit her!" Reeling with pain, horrified at how still Amy lay, Darcy pried at his fingers.

"You would prefer I hit you?"

"I'd prefer that you let go of me." She met his eyes with a defiance bred of rage.

He grabbed a handful of her hair, jerked her flush against him. The knife appeared out of nowhere.

Darcy gasped when he wrenched her head back and set the blade to her throat.

"You are no longer dealing with old men and boys who have not yet learned the proper way to deal with infidels."

Darcy swallowed, closed her eyes. This was it. It was over. She was going to die. With Ethan so close. So close.

She braced herself. Felt the sharp point of the knife prick her skin ... and thought of her mother.

Somewhere in the haze of terror and acceptance that she'd never see home again, a muffled pop of sound registered. She felt something warm and wet spurt across her face. And then the knife and Omar's grip on her hair fell away.

She opened her eyes, heard another pop just as Omar folded in a lifeless lump at her feet. Before he fell, she saw his face. Blood ran out of a hole the size of a pencil eraser, right in the center of his forehead.

It had no more registered that she was still alive and Omar was dead than a hard hand clamped around her mouth. Instinct had her gasping and fighting to get away as she was drawn back against an even harder chest.

"Shhh. Shhh. It's me, babe," a harsh voice whispered in her ear. "You're okay. I've got you now."

Ethan.

She went weak with relief. He was here. He was really here. And because of him, she was alive and Omar was dead. The adrenaline that had been fueling her for days suddenly let down. Her knees buckled and she had to hold on tight to Ethan's arm to stay upright.

"Keep it quiet," he whispered so softly she could barely hear him. "Can you stand?"

She wasn't sure, but she nodded.

Very slowly, he removed his hand.

"Ethan," she whispered, and sagged into him. "Oh God, Ethan. Thank you."

"Thank Manny," he said into her hair. "He's the shooter."

She pulled back and looked up at him. "Manny? Manny's here?"

"Dallas came along for the ride, too. But let's save the chitchat for later, okay? We've got to get out of here before the entire camp wakes up."

Her chest was thick with emotions she couldn't sort or identify. Relief. Joy. Guilt.

Ethan. She was looking at him and still couldn't believe he was real. He looked so good. Even covered in face paint and shadowed by the night, his eyes hidden behind some high-tech-looking goggles, he looked good. Felt good. Strong and solid and steady.

And because of her, he was in horrible danger.

She couldn't think about that now. They were a long way from safe.

She started moving, then startled at the flurry of action at her feet. She looked down. And saw Dallas. Even through the camo paint and goggles, she recognized him.

He grabbed Omar by the feet and dragged him into the jungle brush rimming the perimeter of the camp. The body of her guard—the second pop, she would realize later—lay lifeless on the ground by the canvas tent. She was still digesting the idea that not only Ethan but also Dallas and Manny had come after her when Dallas was back, dragging the dead guard away to hide the body with Omar's.

A rage—for the senseless violence, for the loss of life, for little boys who carried big guns and died in the name of hate—immobilized her.

"Hey." Ethan lifted her chin with a finger, commanding her attention. "Don't think about it."

Darcy saw him though a haze. Saw him nod in reassurance as he unsheathed a knife and with one exacting swipe sliced the rope binding her wrists.

She muffled a sob. Pain shot through her fingers like tiny needles as full circulation returned.

"Can you walk?"

She nodded.

He glanced toward Amy. "Can she?"

Amy was hunched into herself on the ground. But she was conscious now. Her eyes were wide with terror.

On shaking legs, Darcy went to her. "It's okay," she whispered.

Amy stared at Darcy in terrified silence while Ethan squatted down and cut the ropes binding Amy's wrists.

"It's your face," he whispered. "It's covered in blood." Darcy looked up over her shoulder. "His," Ethan added with a hitch of his chin toward the spot where Omar's body was hidden.

Darcy lifted the hem of her shirt and hurriedly wiped away what she could of the blood.

"We've gotta move. Now," Ethan reminded her gruffly.

Dallas materialized again and held a hand out to Amy.

She shrank away with a whimper.

Gone,
Darcy realized. Amy had withdrawn where none of this could reach her.

"It's okay," Darcy promised her. "He's going to help us. Amy," she whispered, trying to make the young woman tune in to her. "You can trust him. He won't hurt you. I promise you," she added as Amy started that horrible keening sound again.

"Oh, sweetie, no. Shhh. Don't." Darcy cupped Amy's face in her hands. Pressed her thumbs over Amy's lips and whispered urgently, "We have to be quiet. Come on. You have to get ahold of yourself. We have to go. We have to go now, before anyone wakes up."

But now was already too late.

A shout rose from across the camp.

Ethan looked over his shoulder just as a burst from an AK-47 exploded into the silence.

Chapter 13

Ethan pushed Darcy behind him, shoving
her toward the cover of the jungle. "Go. Go!" he shouted, laying down a line of ground cover with his M-4.

Dallas hauled the other captive into a fireman's carry and sprinted out of the line of fire.

Walking backward, Ethan sprayed rounds toward the terrorists, who, with few exceptions, were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Some had grabbed their AK-47s and were firing from the hip, shooting wildly into the dark hoping to get lucky.

When Ethan reached a stand of trees, he pulled the pin on a frag grenade, counted to three, then hurled it into the center of the camp.

Beside him, Dallas, with the M-203 grenade launcher attached to his M-4, fired into the thick of things. Amy rocked and hummed in a shell-shocked stupor a yard away. Darcy had wrapped herself around the other woman and was doing what she could to reassure her.

Men screamed when the grenades hit their mark. Shrapnel rained down like volcanic ash, and the scene went as Hollywood as a blood-and-guts war movie.

Only this wasn't fiction. This was too goddamn real.

"Go!" Ethan shouted to Dallas when it was obvious that while they'd taken out several tangos and sidelined a few more, they were still way down on the odds chart.

Manny was still in sniper position in the tree. He was picking off tangos before they ever knew what hit them.

Grabbing Darcy's arm, Ethan hauled her to her feet and headed at a run for the path they had painstakingly marked to avoid the claymores and Bettys.

He didn't ask if she could make it. There wasn't time. When she stumbled and went down, he hauled her to her feet and kept on going.

Ethan lost complete track of Dallas and Manny. He knew only that his brother and the woman were ahead of them, and Manny would stay back to provide cover.

An earth-jarring explosion shook the ground behind Ethan. Another went off directly on its heels.

Way to go, Betty!

The first and secondary explosion of the trip mine was quickly followed by an earsplitting series of blasts and piercing screams. Manny had set off the claymores and sent more jihadists to their warped version of Allah.

That was the good news.

The bad news was, there were still plenty of bad guys left to chase them.

The really bad news—one of the bastards had gotten lucky.

Ethan had taken a round in his leg.

And he was losing blood like a high roller lost chips at a rigged craps table.

Dallas stowed his NVGs on the move as dawn broke over the rain forest within a half an hour of the fireworks at the tango camp. They'd planned it that way. While he and Ethan and Manny could have made good time in the dark, the women didn't have the benefit of the
NVGs. They'd had to make accommodations.

Although,
Dallas thought,
this woman who'd been a hostage could have found her way through a series of caves without so much as a candle.

Man, could she move.

Fear was a helluva motivator—and it hadn't taken long for him to realize that she was as afraid of him as she was of the terrorists.

As soon as the fireworks let up, he'd taken a chance and stopped. Set her on her feet.

She'd shivered out a serrated breath, looked at him like he'd been belched up from the bowels of hell— and taken off at a dead run.

"For the love of Mike," he'd muttered, and sprinted after her.

That had been over an hour ago. She hadn't slowed down yet. At least she was going in the right direction.

Batty. She was as batty as a haunted house.
Not her fault,
Dallas conceded with equal measures of sympathy for her and hatred for the animals who had made her this way.

"Damn," he swore aloud. The woman could move. He had to hump like hell to keep up with her. Of course, he was carrying at least seventy pounds of rifle and gear.

For as frail and fragile as she looked she set a helluva pace. Only when they were a good two or three Ks from the terrorist camp did she start to slow down. And be could tell that it wasn't by choice.