Red, Hot & Blue 09 - A Prince Among Men (17 page)

Jimmy, who was apparently the man in charge, at least of this particular operation, shook his head.

“The less foxes sneakin’ into this henhouse the better, Hawkins. You know that.” In a southern accent that rivaled Wally’s, he squashed Hawk’s bravado in one fell swoop.

Hawk shook his head. “How are you going to find them without our help? Wally can show you the exact point where they were taken.”

“I have the coordinates you gave me, but tracking them on foot from the point of attack is our last resort. I have much better means of locating them at my disposal.” The answer did not come from either Jimmy or Dalton. Instead a man sitting in the doorway of the chopper with a laptop responded. He raised his head and looked at Hawk. “And might I add, if you at least had a tracking device installed in that missing pickup truck, it wouldn’t be missing.”

Hawk’s eyes narrowed. “The Army doesn’t give us any of the good toys, Coleman. You’ve got them all.”

Coleman grinned at him, angering Vicki. Men could be dying somewhere out there, and they were joking around and wasting time fighting? “Ever hear of LoJack, Hawkins? It costs like what, a hundred bucks? I’ll buy you one.”

As she watched Hawk’s mouth harden into a tight line, Vicki figured this smart-ass Coleman was lucky to still be standing, or rather sitting, upright. Vicki never thought she’d see the day, but Hawk was speechless. These guys must be really good at what they did for Hawk to take this kind of abuse from them willingly.

“Who are these guys again?” Vicki whispered to Wally.

“The guys that kicked our asses back in Germany during a training mission.”

“It doesn’t seem as if Hawk likes them very much.”

Wally grinned. “Oh, darlin’. You have no idea.”

“Anyway,” Coleman continued, “I’m hoping to locate them by using a computer program that takes real-time satellite photos of the vicinity and overlays them with thermal imaging. All I have to do is give it the parameters to search for and bingo, we’re good. There is a group of three and a group of five men missing, as well as a pickup truck. Correct?”

Hawk nodded.

“Okay, then. Hopefully these bastards made it easy for me, and I’ll find heat signatures for eight warm bodies huddled together in one spot, nice and easy to rescue.”

Although the high-tech computer talk was impressive, Vicki thought hoping the bad guys would make it easy probably wasn’t the best idea. She glanced at Hawk and Wally. Neither of them looked too hopeful either.

“And what happens if the eight ain’t still together?” Wally asked.

Vicki’s mind asked another, far more horrible question. What if they’re not still alive and warm?

Wally continued, “And even if they are, what are you fixin’ to do? Knock on the door of every hut in the province that’s got three, five, or eight people inside? And what about guards? They’ll show up on the thermal too. So then there will be more bodies.”

Matt grinned again, putting down one laptop next to him and whipping out another one. “I made it all sound much simpler than it is. Believe me, even if the thermal program doesn’t yield a location, I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. Don’t you worry.”

The guy in charge looked totally confident in his computer guy’s abilities. “When we pinpoint the location, we’ll stake it out from a distance and go in after dark. Unless we plan on taking the captors out with a firestorm, which really isn’t our style and would risk the lives of the hostages, we need the cover of darkness to get in and out relatively unnoticed.”

Dark. That was hours away. Vicki felt herself start to shake again and honestly feared that, for the first time in her life, she might faint. She started to sway, and then Wally’s hand was suddenly on her arm, holding her up.

“Hey now, little lady. You okay?”

Vicki shook her head and cringed when Hawk turned toward her. “Shit. I totally forgot about you. Wally, take her back to the hut. And Vicki…” Hawk’s voice lowered to a growl.

“I know, I know. You don’t have to tell me again, Hawk. I’m not to write one word.” Suddenly, the anger helped her stay conscious and upright. “But I am telling you one thing. You don’t bring Ryan home to me alive, and I’ll write a story that will make your head spin.”

Hawk raised a brow. “You threatening me?”

“Damn right I am.”

He smirked and shook his head. “Take her to the hut, Wally.”

Wally cocked one brow and looked down at her. “So, you and Pettit, huh? I knew I should have let you sleep in my bed.”

He shook his head as if disappointed, but before Wally could even turn them back toward the hut, Coleman jumped up. “Got ’em.”

With one quick hand signal, the leader had his team loaded back into the helicopter. He paused in the doorway and yelled back to Hawk, “I’ll radio base when we’ve got ’em in hand.”

When, not if. Vicki liked the sound of that.

Things were progressing much too easily, and that made Ryan really nervous. Loosening the ties. Unbinding the limbs of all the men. His team, finally conscious, though they had headaches matching his own. Apparently, the rifle butt to the forehead was the baddies’ favorite move.

Alpha team was all ready and willing to do whatever it took to get out of here, especially when they heard they were being held by only two guards.

Those two guards were taking a really long time to eat their meal, which left their prisoners alone to plot. Maybe goat meat had the same effect on the body as turkey and they’d all fallen asleep. Who the hell knew, but the waiting was a bit nerve-racking.

Standing by the door now after having switched off the watch with Jordan, Ryan turned to his guys. “Please tell me the five of us didn’t get taken by only these two men who are more interested in eating than checking on their prisoners.”

“Hell, no. It wasn’t just two.” Bender shook his head and then touched it with his fingers as if he was in pain. Ryan knew exactly how the man felt. “We heard a thud and you grunted and then suddenly the four of us were covered in a net with two Soviet-era AK47s pointed in our faces.”

“So one man took me out and two held you four with nothing but a net and two old guns?” Ryan rolled his eyes in disbelief. How embarrassing.

“They had you, Sergeant. You were unconscious, so I took command. I figured we had a good chance they’d take us to where they had the three Brits and the supply truck if we went peacefully,” Moraches explained, looking pale and queasy beneath his usually dark complexion. Definite concussion there.

Bender nodded in agreement with Moraches. “Yeah, and if we’d opened fire, we probably could have taken the two out, but the third was holding your body in front of him. We couldn’t risk killing you.”

Ryan sighed. His men were loyal to a fault at times.

“I guess that leaves the question, where is the third guy if you all only saw two go into the house this morning?” Black asked the room in general.

Walker, a former semi-pro linebacker, shook his dark head, his black eyes looking determined. “Who gives a fuck? It’s eight to three, and this time we’ll surprise them instead of the other way around.”

Wales strolled over to Ryan and glanced out the crack in the door for himself. “Your determination is all well and good, mates, but I want to know why they’re holding us. And why have they left us alone for so long?”

Ryan had a bad theory about that. “What if the third guy was sent off to the head baddie to tell him they got eight soldiers and ask him what to do with us?”

“Then I say we get the hell out of here now. I’m not waiting around to have my beheading be the next video clip on the evening news back home.” Bender touched his own neck and grimaced.

“Here’s a dumb question, but did anyone try opening that door?” Specialist Black—always the logical one. He always had been a good thinker. Ryan tried to not feel stupid he hadn’t tried the door for himself. He was standing right there. He’d blame it on the concussion.

Jordan shook his head. “It’s padlocked from the outside.”

They must have been stashed in some sort of storage shed. There was one small slit of a window high in the wall. It looked like it was meant more for ventilation and light than to see out of. That was the only break in any of the exterior walls. That, and the one really sturdy door, which luckily didn’t fit quite well enough in the frame. It left a nice crack along the doorframe, perfect for viewing their hosts’ abode.

“Can we take the door off by the hinges?” Walker looked ready to tear it from the damn frame single-handedly if he had to sit around and do nothing for another minute.

“Not without drawing attention and getting us all killed. That hut’s window faces this building. I’m sure they’re watching us right this very moment.” Of course the ever-cautious Rumsfield would be against an escape attempt. What was he waiting around for? The baddies to bring him a cup of tea?

A motion from the hut caught Ryan’s eye. “Wait a second. Shit. Someone’s coming. It’s a young girl.”

The entire group froze. Moraches whispered, “What do we do, Sergeant?”

Although Wales outranked him, apparently Ryan was the leader here, at least in his team’s eyes.

He hated to say it, but there was only one clear path to take. “If she comes in here, we grab her. We can’t risk she’ll run and tell the guards we’re all untied.”

She was close now and fidgeting with the lock.

Ryan pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket to shove in the girl’s mouth. She might be small, but he knew what adrenaline could do. A kicking, screaming, biting slip of a girl could be hard to hold, especially since he didn’t want to hurt her if he didn’t have to.

He lowered his voice to a hiss and mouthed to Wales, the closest one to him near the door, “You help me hold her. I’ll make sure she doesn’t scream.”

Wales nodded, bracing for the moment the door opened, but it didn’t swing open. In fact, they heard the padlock drop to the dirt with a thud and then saw the girl run back for the hut as fast as she could.

“Fuck. Did she hear us?” Moraches asked.

“She couldn’t have.” Ryan had barely spoken loud enough for Wales to hear on this side of the door and thick mud walls.

“Well, what do we do? Did she go to get them?” Bender had moved to the slit and was tall enough, standing on tiptoe, to look out.

Jordan shook his head. “I think she just let us go. She’s setting us free.”

“No fucking way.” Bender turned from the slit in the wall, his eyes opened wide. “Why?”

“I’m not waiting around to find that out either.” Walker pushed closer to Ryan, ready to bolt out the door the moment Ryan ordered him to, if not before. “I say we hightail it out of here.”

Ryan had the same impulse himself.

Black nodded. “I agree. If she can sneak over here and open that lock without being seen by the guards, then we can sure as hell sneak out.”

Ryan agreed. He would have rather waited for cover of darkness, but he didn’t want Vicki seeing his beheading on Fox News either. “Let’s go. I’m on point.” He hesitated a moment to look at the Brits. “You three with us?”

Jordan let out a snort. “Are you daft? Of course we are.”

“I think we should reconsider—”

“Shut it, Rumsfield.” Wales silenced the worrywart quickly. “You lead, Pettit. We’ll follow.”

Ryan nodded. If only their good luck held.

It could be really unnerving waiting for the bomb to drop. There was nothing more disturbing than having everything go your way. But as the group filed out of the hut and took off toward the cover of the orchard, Ryan thought that was exactly what had happened, until they heard the shout from the house.

“Shit. We’ve been spotted,” Walker yelled, taking off at a full-out run for the shelter of the orchard.

Ryan, in front, reached the dense cover first, but not before he heard gunfire from the house.

Which way to go? Think.

The answer to Ryan’s unspoken question came from an unexpected source. Wales. “This way. The truck is here.”

They could use a truck about now. The two guards, on foot but well-armed, were hot on their tail.

They didn’t even stop to take off the netting. Jordan jumped in the driver’s seat and luckily found the keys in the ignition. Ryan and Wales ended up crushed in the seat next to him. The other men leapt into the back, wedging themselves behind the boxes of supplies.

Gunfire peppered the body of the truck, but the engine started, the tires stayed inflated and as far as he could tell from inside, no one had gotten shot. That was more than Ryan could have asked for as Jordan barreled out of the foliage, fishtailed and finally got them onto the road. Once on the hard surface, they took off as fast as the truck would go, looking back and waiting to be pursued the whole way.

It was soon apparent that the third man, wherever he had gone, must have taken the bad guys’ only other transportation. The two guards had lost their prey and had nothing to follow them with except perhaps a goat or two.

Jordon steered the truck due west in as straight a path as he could to lead them back to base. Nothing further happened. No bad guys. No ambush. Nothing. Ryan was ready to believe in miracles and that they’d actually gotten away from what could have been certain death for them all…until Moraches banged on the back window and pointed up.

“Chopper,” Moraches yelled. The man had eyes like an eagle. Ryan couldn’t see it from inside the truck and had to stop trying and hold on for his life as Jordan swerved off the road and crashed through the foliage before stopping dead and cutting the engine.

“I hear it now.” Ryan looked up. “Can’t see shit from in here. You think it’s one of ours?”

Wales, in the middle seat, shook his head. “It has to be. Since when do we get attacked by air? That’s not the enemy’s usual method, mate.”

Ryan held up one hand. “Shhh. They’re setting down. Stay here. I’ll try and get closer.”

With a nod from the two others in the cab of the truck, Ryan opened the passenger-side door and made his way as silently as possible toward where the chopper had set down. Wales was right—the chances were slim these were the bad guys. Call him stupid, but Ryan was still a little suspicious being unarmed and in the middle of escaping from captors who had given him one hell of a headache.