Point of No Return (2 page)

Buck’s H&K 416 belched a reply first, the sound echoing against the empty shacks.

“Help us,” Jenna cried out in a terrified plea.

“Ma’am, need to leave your location
now
,” Gunny said.

“Take Jenna,” Thornton snapped.

Santiago back-stepped to Jenna and crouched. Thornton lifted the girl to her back and Jenna’s thin arms tightened around Santiago’s neck. “You hang on and leave the rest to me,” Santiago said, hooking her free arm around Jenna’s legs as she stood. Santiago had the strongest heart of anyone Thornton knew. If asked, she would run that girl back to the border.

Thornton turned her attention to Kelly. Instinct told her to snatch the girl and run like hell. Training told her to take it slow, avoid trauma. She squatted and spoke the teenager’s name soft and gently. “Kelly.” The girl’s watery gaze locked on her and Thornton thought she saw a spark of hope. “Kelly, I’m going to lift you. It may hurt, but there isn’t anything I can do until we get out of here.” Thornton shifted some of the sixty pounds of equipment she wore and slipped her arms under the emaciated girl’s shoulders and knees. Kelley didn’t make a sound. Didn’t flinch.

“Major,” Andrews said, “Tango your location. Go low.”

Thornton twisted, bending over Kelly as close as possible without laying on her.

“Head down,” Santiago snapped to her passenger as she flattened against the floor.

Cooper’s single round entered and exited the frame shack, sending wood shards and dust showering over them. The Tango thudded against the outside wall.

“Clear, Major. Move. Move!” Gunny said, as excited as he was ever going to get.

The
dit dit dit dit dit
of Buck’s H&K was answered by the distinctive thumping of an AK and kept Thornton hunched over Kelly. Santiago slithered back from the door.

“I’m leaking,” Buck groaned. “Leg.”

Santiago stole a sideways glance at her and snaked closer.

Thornton tucked Kelly into a corner and lifted a quivering Jenna from Santiago’s back, setting her next to the expressionless, doll-like Kelly.

“I have something to take care of.” She touched Jenna’s cheek and nodded in Santiago’s direction. “This Marine will protect you.”

“Ladies”—Santiago scrambled to a crouch in front of the girls—“I’m Staff Sergeant Gloria Santiago, United States Marine Corps, and I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”

Thornton slapped her staff sergeant’s helmet and went to get them a ride home.

The village, long abandoned after some clan turf war, consisted of twelve bullet-riddled structures scattered along fifty yards of dusty, desolate landscape. Barren hills on one side, a fast-moving river down a rocky embankment on the other. Getting to the truck meant she’d have to cross open spaces between each building. The familiar tingle of fear tried to crowd in on her and she willed it away.

“Gunny, where’s Buck?”

“To your right. Three doorways,” Cooper said from his grunt’s-eye-view position.

Thornton took a quick three count, white-knuckled her weapon, darted into the open and skidded to a stop against the wall of the next shack in a clump of dry knee-high weeds. She turned an ear to the hot moaning wind swirling between the shacks. Somewhere a door creaked on rusted hinges, metal roofing banged, but there were no human sounds. She took a quick look to the hills where Andrews and Cooper were hidden among the scrub and boulders and then bolted into the next space.

“Tango headed toward the truck,” Gunny advised.

“Gunny,
do not
fire near that truck,” she said, slamming against the next house hard enough to rattle loose boards and send up a cloud of dust.

“Say again, ma’am.”

“
Do. Not. Fire. At Tango near that vehicle. I don’t want one of those big-assed rounds going through a body into the truck’s engine.”

“Understood.”

“Major, your next move you are out of sight and one Tango unaccounted for.”

Out of sight equaled no protection. She huffed a quick breath and took two careful steps into the next space.
Fucking flaming fish balls
. It took her brain less than a second to process that the barrel of a
Kalashnikov
semiautomatic rifle was an inch from her right cheek. Her own weapon pointed over the Tango’s shoulder and provided no kill shot. She took a step back. The man holding the rifle took a step forward, following her. He pressed the AK’s barrel against her cheek. Her eyes fixed on his finger hovering in front of the trigger. He raised the barrel to the edge of her custom Oakley glasses and flicked them away. They clattered on the gravel as she took another step back. He took a step forward and her glasses crunched. He moved his cheek away from the AK’s wood stock then tilted his head slightly. She recognized him in the same moment he recognized her. A nasty grin spread across his pockmarked face. Could Cooper see that grin in the crosshairs of his rifle?

“Major, break left,” came the instruction she waited for.

Like an NFL linebacker making an easy tackle, she bent her left knee and dipped her shoulder. She pushed hard with her right leg, forcing her body left. A pressure wave from the six-inch sniper bullet sliced the space where she’d been a moment ago. She landed on her side, rolled, and scrambled to a half-sitting position against the nearest wall, ready to do a John Wayne and fire from the hip. She lowered her M4, no need. Cooper’s shot had erased the man’s nasty grin. Hell, it had erased his face. Most of his head. Beyond the building she leaned against, a car engine caught and rattled to life. River sounds and her raspy panting made it difficult to judge exactly where, or the distance. “Major?” Andrews’s anxious voice said.

“Okay,” she whispered. She forced herself to a standing position and spit to rid her mouth of dirt and the taste of fear. She had no spit. Her mouth was as dry as the surrounding landscape. Cautiously she darted her head out and back around the corner of the shack. Cooper and Gunny had saved her ass once, no sense pushing it.
No one.
She passed under broken-out windows with scraps of cloth and plastic snapping in the wind and entered the next shack, weapon high, ready to fire. Acrid smells of blood, body fluids and cooling brass assailed her nose. The Tango lay to her left just inside the door, a grizzly sucking sound coming from his chest wounds with each tortured breath.

“He’s done,” Buck said matter-of-factly.

Buck, blood soaking his camos from the knee down, sat on the floor, taping his shin.

“You?”

Instead of one of his usual smart-assed remarks, the big Marine gave her a solid nod and an apologetic look.

“Broken?”

He shook his head and went back to taping. “Hurts like a motherfucker though.” His eyes darted to two open packets of heavy-duty pain meds on the floor. “I’ll keep up.”

“Heads up. Tango headed your way in that pickup,” Gunny’s voice cracked in her earpiece. The warning wasn’t necessary. The rattle and bang of the truck bouncing over rocks and potholes echoed in the small room. Thornton charged out the door into the path of an ancient Toyota. Startled, the driver swerved and braked. In a perfect world, she could have grabbed the door handle, pulled it open and jumped in. This wasn’t a perfect world. The fucking door wouldn’t open.

The wild-eyed driver stared at her through the dust-coasted and cracked windshield, saw the M4 pointed at his head, regained his wits and floored it. The truck lurched forward and promptly stalled. The man worked frantically with the steering column until the Toyota’s engine ground to life. The rear tires spun, creating clouds of billowing moonscape dust obscuring her vision. The tires gained traction and then the rear fishtailed, narrowly missing her.
Flaming fish balls. Enough of this bullshit!
Thornton fired a burst into the driver’s side of the cab. A line of red decorated the small back window. The truck spun, clipping the edge of the shack and slowing forward momentum enough for her to throw herself onto the open bed. She caught sight of Buck hobbling out the door as the Toyota swerved, bounced, and righted with direction. The son of a bitch was still alive. Hit, but alive and turning the wheel with force. Each time she got a grip on the side and raised herself up he swerved violently, pitching her back down like she was on a demented amusement park ride. She flattened against the rusting metal bed to gain as much resistance as possible, hands and feet scrabbling for any hold. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the fucking tailgate wasn’t missing.

“Major’s got trouble,” Buck’s voice snapped in her earpiece.

“Hang on, Major. We’re on the way,” Andrews said.

Hang on? What the hell did he think she was doing?

“Forget me,” she said, fending off a tire iron and odd pieces of lumber bouncing around her. “Hostages . . . Buck . . . need medical.” A hard pothole hit lifted her off the bed, banging her rifle against her face and ending any more conversation. She released the M4 from its safety strap and it clattered away as the driver tried a new tactic. He sped up, slowed and gunned it again. Shit! Her boots were brushing air and she was about to follow her weapon onto the rock-strewn road. Her hands curled into claws. Bare fingertips burned as they slid across the cracked surface. Soon she’d be kissing the road. Industrial-strength adrenaline bursts gave her the strength to throw herself to her back, bring her knee to her chest and blast her boot against the rusted side, hoping like hell it wouldn’t fall off. It bowed with the pressure but held steady, giving her sufficient leverage to get to her knees. The driver looked at her over his shoulder through the blood-splattered window and jerked the wheel, sending her off balance again. She braced a boot, grasped the side, and pulled herself up, banging a fist on the cab and yelling
Stop
in three languages. It got her another maneuver that damn near sent her over and out. “Motherfucker.”

“What’s going on out there?” Santiago said. Cooper gave her an instant replay of the action.

Thornton braced her left shoulder against the cab and fired four rounds from her sidearm through the window. The driver slumped, his foot going heavy on the gas, his body on the wheel, guiding the truck toward a ten-foot rocky descent into the river. Using the gun’s barrel, she pounded the remaining glass from the window, shoved off her helmet and wiggled through the space. Less than halfway in all progress was stopped by the mag pouches on her body armor. She stretched her spine more than the owner’s manual suggested, punching the dead man’s knee until his foot moved off the gas. The truck slowed. A quick glance through the windshield did nothing to make her happy. The truck was dangerously close to the drop-off. Thornton grabbed fists full of shirt, hauled his body off the wheel and forced the shift stick into low. Gears ground. The back tires locked and the truck hopped, skipped, and jumped. An ugly grinding noise came from the engine before it clunked, sputtered and stalled. The steering was dead, forward momentum wasn’t. In a few seconds she’d be on a bruising nonstop ride to the river. Her fingers grappled along the console, searching for the emergency brake handle and finding the nub where it had once been. Fuck! She couldn’t catch a break of any kind. The foot brake was her only chance. She squirmed in the window, sucking in her belly, stretching, twisting her body and arms. Outside her legs windmilled to gain an angle that would let her slide in farther. She gave it up. There was no way she could reach. Time to bail before she couldn’t.
Fuck
.
She couldn’t.
She was jammed tight. She braced for the downward hurtle as the driver’s door swung open. Gunny, running, hopping, and finally swinging in a leg, filled the space, cracking his head in the process and releasing a growl.

“Damn it, Gunny, hit the brake.” The right front dipped.

“I’m trying,” he grunted as his size-twelve boot pounded the floor, searching for the pedal.

“To the right. It’s to the right.” The truck nosed down farther.

He found it, stomped hard and nothing happened. “Get clear, Gunny.” He hit the brake again. Nothing. “Get your fucking ass out of here.”

His response was to recite the Marine Corps dictionary of cusswords and keep stomping. The truck lurched. Gunny stomped again, bringing them to a jarring stop, pelting her with the litter in the cab. They stared at each other, both huffing to feed air-starved lungs.

“Geeze, Gunny, I didn’t . . .” She sucked in a breath. “Know you . . . could run that fast.”

His sweaty face split with a grin. “Neither did I.” He patted his chest.

“You okay, old man?”

“My blood pressure is a little high but . . . son of a bitch.” His grin slid away as fast as it arrived and he yanked the driver’s body from behind the wheel. “You’re hit.” He grabbed her shoulders and twisted.

“I am?” She patted frantically, feeling for warm stickiness, a hole,
something.
“Where?”

Gunny did the same. Running his hand over her head and neck, fingers probing, he let out a loud breath. “Not your blood. The Tango’s.”

“Jee-sus.” She shoved him away. “You scared the shit outta me.”

“Major,” Cooper’s voice broke in, “we’re about to get company. I don’t think they’re the white linen and fine china type. Two vehicles. We got maybe twenty minutes.”

Flaming fish balls. No break at all.

Chapter 2

Major Honey Thornton and her team were hustled to DC for intel sessions on the hostage extraction and some overdue R&R. She’d had many assignments but frequently returned to Washington for temporary duties, her favorite being in the Pentagon. Its charged air, its smell of power welcomed and renewed her. On hot and humid DC days, the faint smell of aviation fuel and smoke validated her work with the Corps.

Navigating the Pentagon’s seventeen miles of corridors, Honey stopped at the door with the simple nameplate
General P. Moore,
USMC.
Walking through that door would be as gut-tumbling as walking through a door where a dozen terrorists were hiding. But it was worth it if she was appointed to the team investigating the girls’ kidnappings.