Page 1 of Asher

Chapter One

Asher cocked his head, sure he’d heard something. Someone. Couldn’t have been the wind shrieking out of the east, could it? Hard to tell, as fierce as it was scouring the mountaintops.

“Did you hear that?” he asked Beau Villanueva, his companion agent, convinced the scream was human and terrified. Desperate. Not the wind.

But where did it come from? There was nothing up here but the sheer stone face of a cliff to their north. Sure hadn’t come from the goat they were chasing. The pesky thing belonged to the eight-year-old shepherd boy they’d startled on their way to the rendezvous point with the rest of their team. After they’d handed off the Afghan women they’d rescued into his team’s keeping, along with their children, Beau had insisted he and Asher go back and get that goat for the poor kid. Senior Agent Murphy Finnegan had said make it quick, that the Black Hawks were on their way, and he’d leave without them if they weren’t back in time.

So there Asher and Beau were, making it quick and giving that stinky little goat one last chance to stop horsing around. Beauwas sure he could wrangle the skittish thing. Asher gave him ten minutes to make it happen. Not one second more. They’d come here to rescue the endangered wives and families of the men who’d aided America before the war ended in a clusterfuck. Not goats.

He and Beau were part of a privately funded, covert Long Range Reconnaissance team the current administration in Washington, D.C., would deny in a heartbeat. Senior Agent Murphy Finnegan was team leader this time. Former Navy SEAL Lee Hart, USMC scout snipers Renner Graves and Rory Dennison, and former Army black ops Heston Contreras comprised the daredevils who’d already connected with and retrieved the women they’d been sent to rescue. They were all waiting on Beau’s ability to wrangle a goat. This marked the fourth covert excursion funded and manned by former USMC scout sniper Alex Stewart, the boss of every man on this mission. He owned The TEAM, the best covert surveillance company in the world.

Thirty miles east of the now demilitarized Bagram Air Base, Asher and Beau were high on the west-facing mountains in the Parian Province of Afghanistan. Kabul Airport lay twenty miles to the south of Bagram, not that either airfield was functional since the Taliban took over. But those bastards were there, hundreds of them, no doubt training for another assault on their own people, for the love of all things holy. Asher could see Bagram’s runway from where he stood. The way America had left Afghanistan disgusted him.

“You’ve got five minutes left,” he grouched at Beau.

“Yeah, yeah, there he is, on that boulder over there. See him?”

“Yeah, I see him.”

“That little shit’s smiling. He thinks he’s got us beat. You go that way, and I’ll—”

Another scream. Definitely human. A woman, for Christ’s sake. Up here? Where?

“What the fuck was that?” Beau growled, his hand on the pistol in his side holster.

Asher’s two Glocks were instantly up and ready. Their standard magazines afforded him more than two dozen 40 S&W rounds. His sharp eyes zeroed in on a barely visible, narrow vertical crack in that broad stone face, just beyond the flat rock where that goat danced like a naughty kid. Tapping his tactical headset, he advised his boss, “We’ve got a problem, Murph. Pretty sure we’ve located another woman. We’re going after her. Don’t leave without us.”

“Where? On this guldarned mountain? It’s still winter up here.”

“Roger that, but I’m not leaving without her. There’s a narrow-assed opening in the granite wall north of our position. Might lead into a cave. Won’t know till we get there.”

“Make it quick.”

Asher ended the connection and signaled Beau his intention to engage. “I’ll go in first. Cover me.”

“Copy that.”

Two clicks was roughly a mile and a quarter away. Even carrying thirty pounds of gear, Asher could run that easy, in less than ten minutes. But this time, he’d make it in five.

“Keep up,” he ordered Beau. That wasn’t just a scream, it was full-blown terror. Asher turned and ran like the wind.

Chapter Two

More noise. Louder. Nearer. What now? How much pain could she endure? Marlowe screamed, even as fear of what lay ahead slammed her lungs shut, suffocating her. Was the cave collapsing? Was that what the loud cracks and booms were? God, she wished. Was the support timber overhead cracking? Because of her? Was she too heavy for that spindly branch?Please, yes. Let it be me who brings this evil hole in the wall down. I’m ready to die. The sooner, the better.

Freezing wind whistled through the narrow crack she’d been dragged through days, maybe weeks ago, adding a sharp sting to her out-of-control hysteria. “Just kill me now,” she hissed, fighting for air. She’d done what she could. She’d done her best. Whatever happened next, she welcomed it. If this was the end… “Let me die, you fucking creeps!”

More shrieking screams. Louder blasts. Wicked echoes vibrated through the air and around her, battering her already bruised body. Were those explosions? Gunfire? Sharper. Closer. It was hard to tell the difference when your skull might be cracked and even the smallest noises echoed. Rough hands grabbed herpoor bloody head, twisting her entire body around on those inhumane straps she’d been hung on.

“Shit, it’s a woman,” the bobble-headed giant with his hands on her yelled. “She’s barely alive. Beau!”

So loud.Marlowe winced at the volume bellowing out of his big mouth. “American?” she asked weakly, daring to hope. Or was this a different type of torture? A ruse? A nasty trick? Mental torture to make her believe she was saved when she wasn’t?

Marlowe reverted to survival. “Don’t touch me!” She meant to scream but ended up whimpering. Her vocal cords were exhausted. She had no fight left. This tricky bastard’s three friends had already beaten the shit out of her.

Don’t you dare trust him,her instincts screamed.He’s just another asshole, a friend of the jerks who cornered you in the village. Shoved a rag in your mouth. Put a bag over your head. Knocked you out. Stole your beanie. You can’t trust anybody!

How well she knew.

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