Absolution (12 page)

Absolution

didn’t matter that Luke was to blame for what Tehrazzi had become. All that mattered was making things right. A chance at absolution before he gave his last breath. The end was close, he sensed it, and he didn’t much care how it would happen. He almost looked forward to it.

Having lost his last remaining shot at a future with Emily made death a hell of a lot more appealing than another twenty-odd years of this bleak existence. Without her, he had nothing. And God knew he had no desire to stick around and watch her die. Even he wasn’t that much of a masochist.

****

Tehrazzi’s sandaled feet left deep imprints in the snow as he walked at the front of the line of his men. The mountains rose steep and sharp against the eastern sky at his back. To his right, the hillside plunged away into deep canyons of snow-covered rock. The straps of his heavy pack dug into his shoulders mercilessly, but he ignored the pain and the cutting wind that sliced down the steep gorge.

Behind him, eight men trudged wearily along the slippery trail. All but a few of them had only a light woolen blanket to keep out the freezing air.

Their clothing was threadbare, their footwear pitiful for the conditions surrounding them. He kept them moving, never letting them stop because the temperature was dropping fast. Staying still for too long in this weather was a death sentence. He forced them onward.

In another day or two they’d reach the foothills and meet up with the convoy to take them into Kabul. The final pieces of intelligence he’d been waiting on would be ready. Then the hunt would commence.

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In the distance behind him, the continued braying of a donkey rose over the punishing wind.

Tehrazzi paused. The animal was frightened and in pain. He could hear it in its cries. Turning, he looked back up the trail, at the end of the column where the pack animals were. None of them moved, but the donkey’s cries soon became screams. The hair on the nape of his neck stood up. The plaintive sounds raked over his spine like icy fingernails until he couldn’t bear it. They reminded him too much of his beautiful mare, Galliyah. She had made those same horrific noises when she’d died in the desert outside Najaf.

Because of his teacher.

She’d been weakened by a bullet to her shoulder his teacher had fired from a high-powered sniper’s rifle, and fallen over the edge of a cliff because of a careless handler. His own fault, Tehrazzi reminded himself as he rushed back up the trail. He had let someone handle her because he’d been too weak and battered to do it himself, and she had paid the ultimate price for his decision. He’d had no choice but to go into the ravine and slit her throat to end her suffering because it was the only humane thing to do.

The donkey’s cries continued to reverberate in his skull, spurring him onward. A deep, burning rage took hold. Whoever was torturing that animal would regret their actions.

His men got out of his way when they saw him coming, the tight expression on his face making their eyes widen in fear as he passed. Up the trail, he finally caught sight of the struggling animal. It was laden down with hundreds of pounds of equipment, nearly lost beneath the mountain it carried on its swayed back. Its head was reared back, ears flattened against its head, eyes rolling white as the chilling cries tore from its open mouth. A man beat 92

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its rump repeatedly with a lash. His arm raised and sliced down repeatedly, cruelly. He beat the animal until its hind legs gave out and it dropped to the snow. Spatters of blood marred the pristine blanket of white around its shivering body.

Tehrazzi flung off his pack and started running.

He was so enraged he didn’t feel the bite of the wind or the numbness in his feet. His sole focus was riveted on the pathetic excuse for a man wielding the whip.

The man looked up when he heard Tehrazzi coming, and his eyes went wide with surprise and alarm. The donkey tried to get up, its forelegs trembling weakly, sides heaving. Dark red stripes stained its soft grey coat along its flanks and rump.

Ruby red and glistening, like Galliyah’s blood when it gushed over her skin. The edges of his vision blurred.

The man dropped the lash but Tehrazzi didn’t stop. He lunged forward and caught him by the throat, tackling him onto his back in the snow. They skidded through it, ending up inches from the edge of the cliff. The man’s eyes bulged from the pressure Tehrazzi exerted on his throat, filling with terror as he tried to claw the gripping hands away. One push, Tehrazzi thought. One push, and he could shove him over the side to his death. Leave him there bleeding out, listening to his own screams of agony as he died.

Reining in his anger with effort, Tehrazzi kept one hand anchored around his victim’s neck and ripped the loaded pistol from his waistband. He shoved the muzzle against the man’s forehead and held it there, breathing hard. Before, he’d never been comfortable killing people by his own hand. He preferred to have others carry out his orders, and that’s why he’d kept his dangerous bodyguard for as long as he had. But since the day he’d set out to put Assoud down like a rabid dog, something had 93

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changed in Tehrazzi. Taking a life was no longer the burden it had once been. And he trusted no one. He was a lone wolf, living on nothing but instinct and cunning. He was more than capable of killing to protect himself.

“Please,” the man begged, wheezing beneath the pressure around his throat. “Please I beg you, do not.” “I should kill you,” Tehrazzi snarled. He was barely aware of the men gathering behind them, of a few of them trying to soothe the traumatized animal.

“N-no...the donkey...he would not move...”

“So you chose to beat it to death?” Tehrazzi fought the urge to smash the man’s darkening face with the butt of the gun.

He tried to shake his head, face turning from red to purple. “No...had to get it...moving...”

Tehrazzi’s hand shook slightly around the grip of the pistol. The hazy edge around his vision began to clear. His breathing slowed. With a warning snarl, he jerked the man to his feet by the hand on his throat and shoved him toward the shaking animal. He landed face first in the blood spattered snow, and when he raised his head, the mix of it created pinkish rivulets that dripped down his face.

Without another word, Tehrazzi put his gun away and carefully approached the wounded donkey.

His other men backed away and watched him in silence, some of their expressions making it clear they thought he was crazy. He wasn’t. Few things disturbed him anymore, but the suffering of horses was one of them. This donkey had not deserved such hideous treatment.

The beaten animal regarded him fearfully as he neared it, crooning in Arabic. He got on his knees before it and held out his palm. The flared nostrils blew against his callused skin, its sides still heaving with a combination of exhaustion and pain. Tehrazzi 94

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knew exactly what it felt like to be betrayed by someone you trusted. He recognized the anguish in the wide brown eyes staring up at him. Just as he understood why the animal kept its ears flattened against its skull and tensed its muscles. A lesson like that was never forgotten. Once someone learned not to trust, it stayed with them every waking minute. It turned them wary and mistrustful, even around people they once considered friends.

Tehrazzi gently stroked the velvety muzzle and continued speaking. The animal’s thickly-lashed eyes regarded him warily. He scratched its forehead and behind its ears, sliding his hand down over the thick, soft winter coat covering its neck. The donkey shuddered beneath his touch and heaved a groan.

Rising, he went to its side and undid the straps and buckles that held the loaded equipment in place.

Two other men rushed to help him. The donkey let out another deep groan as he relieved it of its burden, then shakily climbed to its feet. Tehrazzi praised it with soft words and continued the gentle strokes over its neck until it pricked its ears up and stood calmly. Running his hands over its forelegs, he lifted each hoof and found a walnut-sized stone lodged in one.

Lips pursing in disgust, he picked it out and set the animal’s foot down. Holding it up, he faced the man who’d lashed the beast so cruelly. “This is why it wouldn’t move,” he ground out, wanting to hit him all over again. He had no tolerance for that kind of stupidity.

Still pale, the man nodded. “Yes. I see that now.

I’m sorry.”

He would be sorrier yet. Tehrazzi threw the rock over the side of the canyon. It made a high-pitched crack when it hit a boulder partway down. The sound seemed to echo in the vastness of the canyon below. He stared hard at the man.

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As if reading his thoughts, the man backed away and raised his hands when Tehrazzi approached him. “N-no—”

He grabbed the offender by the scruff of the neck and dragged him, letting him think he was about to be thrown over the edge. Tehrazzi held him at the lip of the gorge while he struggled and squirmed, staring down into the deep abyss. But then he shoved him back down the trail and nodded to the massed supplies lying in the snow. “You will carry this down the mountain.”

The man stared back at him in

incomprehension. “A-all of it?”

“All of it,” Tehrazzi snapped. It would take him at least five trips to get it all down the trail, maybe more unless the others helped him. Tehrazzi would never give that order. If they helped, so be it, but he suspected they would let the man face his punishment alone. “I know every last item in this pile. If you show up at our base camp and any of it is missing, I’ll kill you.”

Leaving the man to his fate, Tehrazzi walked back to the donkey, now shivering in the wind.

Without a word to anyone he picked up the halter lead and led the animal down the trail himself.

Behind him, the others got back into line, as he’d known they would. They would follow him anywhere, even to the afterlife if he asked them to.

Because every last one of them knew the rewards waiting for them once they reached Kabul: more money than they would make in a decade of back breaking labor in some opium farmer’s field.

And for Tehrazzi, there he’d find the intelligence he needed to complete his final mission. His teacher’s days were numbered.

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Two days later

Emily followed Bryn up the jetway to the gate, the weight of her carry-on and purse dragging at her shoulder.

“I see Ben,” Bryn called over her shoulder.

“Go on ahead,” she urged. “I’ll catch up.” Emily held her pace while Bryn rushed ahead. The long flight had left her in a kind of fog, and her body felt heavy and sluggish.

Rounding the corner at last, Emily caught sight of Ben wrapping Bryn up in a hug and lifting her off the ground. For some strange reason, finding out Luke wasn’t there was both relieving and disappointing. She wanted to slap herself. Did she want a repeat of the argument from the other night?

What was wrong with her?

Setting Bryn down, Ben smiled when he saw her. “Hi, Emily.”

Before she could do more than return the smile, he took her bags from her and gathered her up into a hug as well. For a moment she leaned into his shoulder, grateful for the warmth and strength of his arms around her. But secretly she’d have given anything for them to be Luke’s.

“You feeling okay?” he asked as he released her, his pale green gaze running over her. “You must be tired.” His pleasant South Boston accent erased the

‘r’ in tired.

She liked Ben, had from the moment she’d met 97

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him at Rayne’s wedding. He’d chauffeured her around town because Luke didn’t want her taking a taxi. “A little,” she admitted, “but I’m okay.” She dug into her purse. “Here, I brought you something.” She pulled out a box of the Big Red gum he chewed all the time and gave it to him.

Ben grinned. “Hey, thanks. You’re such a sweetheart.”

Emily waved the thanks away. “It’s nothing. I just wasn’t sure you’d be able to get it here, and I’m not sure how long we’ll be here, so...” She reached for her bags, but Ben stopped her.

“I’ll get them.” He swung the straps of the bags over his shoulder as if they weighed nothing at all, then took Bryn’s on the opposite shoulder.

Bryn laughed at him. “You look like a pack mule.”

He grinned and shrugged his wide shoulders.

“That’s already the second time today someone’s called me an ass.”

“What, Rhys beat me to it?”

“Nope. My own darling Sam did.”

“Oh God, Ben, please say the wedding’s still on.”

He rolled his eyes at Bryn. “Of course it’s still on. You think I’d let her go?” He set a brawny arm around each of them. “Shall we?”

Emily lengthened her steps to keep up with their long legs. The airport was crowded and the noise bombarded her over-sensitive ears, so she tuned out as much as she could on the walk to the luggage carousel. When they stopped to wait for the rest of their baggage, Emily was aware of the way Ben’s gaze kept scanning the crowd. Though he carried on a light conversation with Bryn, he maintained constant vigilance. And that slight bulge under his thin jacket wasn’t her imagination, it was a shoulder holster. He probably had another gun tucked into his waistband. She met Bryn’s eyes 98

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briefly, and Emily read the increased tension in her friend. And little wonder. Bryn had been through hell the last time she’d come here.

An answering prickle crawled over Emily’s skin.

She was suddenly all too aware that the threat hovering over them was real.

Exhaling, she forced herself to calm down. Ben was more than capable of protecting them, or Luke would never have hired him. Provided she stayed close to him, she’d be fine. Or Bryn for that matter, who could inflict plenty of damage with her hands and feet if she needed to. Thanks mostly to Ben, who’d trained her for her black belt. Emily suddenly wished she’d had some sort of martial arts training, too. Ben snagged the luggage from the conveyor belt and pulled out his cell phone. He put it to his ear and said, “We’re coming out.” There was a short pause, then, “Roger that.” Putting it back on his belt, he smiled at them. “Ready?”