Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) (40 page)

But Tahir knows nothing of the veterans who’ve established a perimeter around the house. What he would recognize now, if he could see them in their ball caps and hunters’ camo, is a fierceness he knows well: the strength that comes from making a firm and final decision to defend decency.

• • •

Lana watches Tahir race toward them, tells her companions to hold their fire as she kneels by the soldier, who’s collapsed to the ground.

“Pull him out of sight,” Tahir orders. “We can’t take him. We are outnumbered two to one.”

“No we’re not,” Will says. “I don’t know who you are—”

“He’s with us,” Lana interrupts.

“—but we’ve got six combat vets securing the house.”

“Not enough,” Tahir says. “It will be guerilla war in this forest.”

“Which is burning down,” Will responds. “We can drive them like animals right into the arms of my buddies out there.”

“The jihadis are all headed to the house, right?” Lana says to Tahir.

“That is correct.”

“Then we just have to make sure they can’t retreat. And they won’t know we’re behind them.”

Tahir nods, but Lana senses his uneasiness. She has worries of her own. “What about the heat-seekers? Will they use them on that place?”

“No, they want the victory on camera. They will die before giving that up.”

“That’s what I figured.” Web propaganda savvy, as always.

Will calls in the plan to the chief, who tells him they’ll be ready.

Lana and Tahir carry the soldier to the base of the tree with the deer blind.

She, Ludmila, Will, and Tahir circle back, making sure they’re well behind the invaders. Much of the forest is burning, but they glimpse men up ahead advancing along both edges of the fire line.

Lana and Ludmila trail the men on the right, keeping a good couple hundred feet between themselves and the jihadis. Will and Tahir track the men skirting the flames on the left. With all the fire and smoke, it looks like the gates of hell.

• • •

Emma hears shooting farther from the house. She feels horribly abandoned and scared out of her mind, but she can’t make a sound because the man is still down there with her in the dark.

Somewhere.

Minutes pass. An eternity for the terror she feels. She can’t hold the gun out any longer. Her arms throb from the weight, her stomach from fear.

She tries mightily to make her ears hear more than they’ve ever heard before. But of course they can’t. Neither can she understand how he can possibly move without giving himself away. Then she startles when she hears him only a couple of feet to the side. She fires impulsively before realizing he’s tricked her by tossing a tool or …

Or a what
,
Em?
she says to herself.
A head?

She feels sick. Now he knows exactly where she is.

He throws something else. It lands right in front of her. She doesn’t fall for that stunt again. But this time it’s no trick. He grabs the gun and twists it away from her.

“I’ve got you,” he says merrily with an American accent. One of the country’s homegrown horrors. “I had to kill some old creep up there to get to you, and now it’s your turn.”

He forces her to the concrete, jamming his knee into her chest until her ribs feel like they’ll crack. Then he pulls out a penlight and points it at her face, blinding her. “Let’s finish what Golden Voice started.”

He drags Emma across the floor and begins cuffing her to the posts. She screams herself hoarse and tries to fight him off. He pistol-whips her so fast she’s paralyzed with pain and, bereft of hope, gives up because they really are alone in the house. Em’s sure of it now. Her mother would have saved her somehow.

Now that she’s spread-eagled on the floor, he pulls the chainsaw out of Fayah’s chest and starts it. “Still works.” He waves it in front of Emma’s face before letting it idle. “But first, I’m checking the breaker box. Gotta get those cameras working.”

She watches him rest the chainsaw inches from her head and rush up the stairs, where he pauses to look out. Before disappearing from view, he calls out to her, “It’s just you and me.”

Not quite.

A moment later Cairo stands at the top of the stairs. Emma sees him backlit, his nose in the air, sniffing.

“Come, please come,” she calls to him.

The old dog descends slowly and ambles over to her. He sniffs her cuffs, as he had her Mom’s. “Yes, do it,” Em says to him, having no idea what kind of command makes a dog free you. Maybe no command. Maybe instinct for his master.

Em would never learn the answer because the jihadi returns, throwing on the lights. The camera directly above her responds to movement, pointing down at Emma. She tells Cairo to sit. The dog settles on his haunches.

As the young man approaches, she begs him not to hurt Cairo. “He’s my dog. He’s really old. Just leave him alone, please.” Her plea is genuine, and she doesn’t have to force the tears, but she’s trying to pull off a trick of her own.

“Your pet, huh?” he says, smiling.

“Yes,” she sobs. “He’s old and sick. Just leave him alone.”

The guy walks closer. Cairo glances at him, but remains sitting as commanded.

“Good dog, eh?” He smiles, petting Cairo’s head.

The dog remains still.

“So you won’t hurt him, then?” Em says, crying.

“No, why would I do that?”

The man crouches down, one hand on Emma’s breast, the other resting on Cairo’s shoulder. He’s petting both. “Matter of fact, I’ll give him a new home ‘cause he’s gonna need one, right, boy?” His hand moves back to Cairo’s head, which he strokes affectionately.

“Don’t ever hurt him, whatever you do.”

“Of course not, but I’m gonna have to hurt you. You’ve got it coming. Him, never,” he adds with a glance at Cairo.

Em’s trying desperately to remember the command for attack.
Kill?
 
Get him?
She and her dad learned all that with the trainer when they brought Jojo home. She thought it would be the same with Cairo but she can’t remember.

Em’s about to try “Kill!” when the man pulls Cairo close to cuddle.

With a grisly growl, the old Malinois rips into his face, tearing off beard and cheek down to his jaw, then seizes the bastard’s neck and pins him to the floor.

Cairo has one of his own commands:
never ever try to cuddle with me
.

He’s growling with a mouthful of neck, fangs deep in the man’s flesh.

He shakes his prey as he might a big fat rat, and looks at Emma, who sees the man reaching for his gun.

“Kill him!” she screams.

A second later, certainly no more, there is only a gaping red hole where the man’s throat was.

Jugular severed, he bleeds out quickly.

Cairo starts to work on one of Emma’s wrist cuffs.

• • •

Lana moves as quietly as she can to the right of the charred, smoldering forest. Ludmila is by her side. The flames move forward on the strength of the onshore breeze.

She and Ludmila have one objective: keep the jihadis in front of them so the chief and his posse can ambush every last one of them.

Each step Lana takes in the brittle undergrowth sounds like a thunderclap to her, even though the sharp crackle of burning trees and bushes overwhelms their footfalls.

There are at least six killers up ahead on their side of the fire.

Lana knows she’ll do anything to stop those madmen from slaughtering the vets and getting into that house.
That cellar
. Emma always foremost in mind.

Looking left, she glimpses Tahir and Will, the one so dark, the other fair. She remembers meeting Tahir for the first time, the anger she felt from him as palpable as molt. But Tahir’s love for Sufyan, and his nephew’s love for Emma, had turned the former jihadist around. The irony of love’s role in bringing them to this blood-ridden battleground is not lost on Lana.

Ahead of her, through shifting veils of smoke, she sees jihadis nearing Fayah’s backyard.

Ludmila, as tall as Lana, settles next to her and motions for her to kneel in the sparse cover. They both watch as the bearded men venture into the open.

When the posse’s first shots ring out, she and the Russian duck deeper into the unburned forest to their right, seeking shelter from the potential friendly fire.

Two jihadis are hit instantly. Four others race forward shooting and are also cut down. But the rearmost fighter retreats, running hard from the posse’s small-arms barrage. He barrels into the forest and hunkers down.

Lana and Ludmila watch him. They creep forward, staying low.

One of the men in the yard looks back at the sound of their shooting, but the next instant is killed himself.

Lana hears distant shots and sees that Tahir and Will on the far side of the fire are also cutting down jihadis. One of the men in front of them barrels toward the woodpile before detonating his suicide bomb. His cohorts, Lana guesses, must already have been hit. The woodpile, eight feet deep and six feet high, is singed and shakes violently. Most of it, though, remains standing.

The shooting stops, but Lana feels the tension still building. Who among the jihadis is simply wounded and now waiting with his hand on a button? And there’s the man hiding ahead of them in the trees.

They continue moving toward him, wary of another suicide vest, when he rises up with the rocket launcher, which must have been stashed behind a tree. Lana realizes the missile is the jihadis’ last resort. She and Ludmila open fire, cutting him down.

After moving closer, Ludmila shoots him in the head, taking no chances. The pair enter the clearing with extreme caution, every step feeling like a passage through a minefield, not of munitions but of men.

Ludmila puts a bullet into the brains of all six bodies. Lana didn’t have the stomach for systematically executing men who might be wounded, but she can’t deny that she’s grateful for Ludmila’s actions.

The posse has yet to step from behind the woodpile, but the police chief calls out to them: “Thirteen accounted for here, plus the seven back at the house. There’s still one out there.”

“No, he’s in here,” Emma calls from the house.

Lana can’t see her daughter, but warns her to stay inside.

“Cairo killed him,” Em goes on.

“Then that’s twenty-one, all of ’em,” the chief yells.

But it’s not over.

At that moment, Lana realizes the posse doesn’t know about Tahir.

They’ll mistake him for—

“We have an African man with us now,” she yells, interrupting her own thoughts. “He’s one of us.”

Her shouts issue just as Tahir steps from the brush and smoke to join Will, who’s keeping his distance from the fallen, but eyeing them carefully.

Tahir, like Ludmila, spares no sentiment. He shoots six of the enemy in the head, veering left for the seventh, a man lying crumpled on the ground. Tahir raises his rifle for the last time when the jihadi detonates his suicide vest.

Will, Ludmila, and Lana dive for the ground as a roaring pressure wave expands the air around them. She hears burning fragments whistle by her, every one of which can kill or maim.

“Ludmila?” she says the second she knows that she herself has been spared.

“Fine,” the Russian replies.

So is Will. But Tahir is not.

Lana runs to the bloodshed, hoping for a miracle. There is none. She freezes at the sight, eyes squeezing shut. All she can think about is the life-saving choice the Sudanese made minutes ago up in the deer blind. He didn’t have to kill the four jihadis. He could have let her die along with Will, Ludmila, and the soldier. But he bet that after so many years of his double life, he could take a final stand and try to give his family a stable future.

And perhaps he had.

THE BRIDE STOOD WITH
her father at the end of an aisle, flanked on both sides by rows of crisply attired guests on folding chairs. She glowed in the brilliant sun-cast rays streaking her white gown. The park setting was as lush as the orchids and magnolias adorning the bridal arch, where the pastor, groom, and best man waited.

A harpist struck the familiar first notes. About a hundred people rose to watch the young woman stroll past.

Don stood to Lana’s left on the aisle proper, Emma beside her with Sufyan. Lana glanced at the young man, knowing how empty his home felt since the loss of his uncle. He had grieved for months, but smiled now as Em took his hand. At least his uncle had long ago seen to their well-being.

Lana also took some comfort in the fact that while Fayah Kouri’s indoor and outdoor cameras had captured most of the violence in Hayden Lake, smoke had obscured the gruesome killing of Tahir by a suicide bomber. Sufyan would never have to endure the sight of that explosion.

More than one billion viewers had so far clicked onto the videos of the battles at Fayah’s house. The decisive defeat of ISIS and Al Qaeda’s first major act of joint terrorism had led to the exchange of vicious recriminations on social media from partisans of each radical Islamist group.

Divide and conquer.

Maybe.

Emma took her mother’s hand. Lana noticed that she still held Sufyan’s, and wondered whether they’d marry. She hoped that decision remained a few years away, although they had both decided to attend the University of Maryland at College Park to study computer science. Emma planned to minor in criminal justice with an eye on eventually joining the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. Sufyan joked that he planned to minor in basketball—a small miracle that he could laugh at all so soon.