Page 48 of D-Day

On his knees,Zorro’s side and head throbbed in rhythm to his heartbeat, his body stiffening against the next blow. It didn’t come. He really needed to learn to curb his sarcasm. The rain had finally abated, but the NPA had bound and gagged them, left them on the wet, muddy ground during the darkest hours of the long night, while they dispatched the government troops who had been steps away. Unfortunately, the wrong faction had found them first.

At the crack of dawn, a man came to them, cut their ankle bonds, and pulled out the gag. Between the NPA surrounding them, he saw a man coming toward them, shouting orders in Tagalog. Beside him, Buck lay in a heap, moaning, and the goat fuck just kept fuck-fuck-fucking along.

Suddenly, someone jerked his head back. He stared into a pair of dark eyes and knew this wasn’t going to be fun. “What are you doing here?” he asked in his native language. “Who are you?”

Zorro looked confused, shrugging. “We’re just tourists,” he responded in Spanish.

The man backhanded him in disgust as he rapidly spoke to one of his subordinates, blood filling Zorro’s mouth, his knitted lip splitting open again. Then it was a blur of a body-punishing march, his side on fire, as someone carried Buck across his shoulders, and they trudged through some of the thickest jungle Zorro had ever seen and he’d been to most parts of the world. There was nothing but green as far as the eye could see.

The sun came up, the brightness hurting his eyes as they broke out of the trees to a base of layered jagged, black shale-looking rocks on both sides of a paved road. Vehicles were waiting, one a technical, a pickup truck mounted with a fifty-cal machine gun, along with two jeeps. He was forced into one, and Buck was deposited into the other.

Before long, they reached a bridge, spanning what looked like a dam, water rushing below into a reservoir, and on the other side was a full-blown compound, including a nice, modern mansion of brick, stone, and metal. What the fuck was this?

The vehicles stopped and Zorro and Buck were jerked from the jeeps, he and Buck weaving as they were pushed across the large lawn. Zorro’s gut clenched, and his warrior instincts kicked in hard. The man crossing the lawn wasn’t Filipino…he was Ziad Bannout, and Zorro’s blood ran cold because Ziad was presumably dead, but he would know the man who had waged war on American military bases throughout Europe and the Mediterranean. He had murdered a convoy of Marines, and that was only part of what he had done. The assignment to kill himhad gone to the Tier 1 boys. They would be pissed when they found out they probably killed a very good double.

The nuclear triggers weren’t going to the NPA, and these men weren’t part of that organization. They were Bannout recruits, and this butcher was just steps away from nuclear weapons.

Zorro didn’t eyeball him as they passed, showed no recognition, just tried to put a blank look on his face. It was lucky that Buck couldn’t see him, because in his dazed mental state, he wasn’t sure what he would reveal.

They were taken behind the mansion, past patios with opulent furnishings, and Zen-like troughs full of water. They reached an iron door, and Zorro took a hard breath, looking up at the sun. He suspected he wasn’t going to see it for a while. Buck collapsed, and one of Bannout’s men shouldered him into a fireman’s carry.

They descended two flights of stone stairs to a concrete floor with banks of square, metal meshed cells. They cut his bonds and shoved him into the damp, filthy enclosure, and levered Buck inside to drop him. Zorro lunged forward, catching the big man against his body, protecting his head as he crashed onto Zorro’s torso with a heaviness that told him Buck was unconscious. Agony exploded in the region of his bullet wound, and the last two of his ribs, telling him that they were cracked for sure. For a moment, he writhed in excruciating misery as he worked to catch his breath against the terrible throbbing pain.

He had every reason to hope, especially to alert TOC that one of the most notorious terrorists on the planet was angling for the very nuclear triggers they had stumbled across on that op in Thailand. His team was coming for him. He was going to believe that Buck got through. He and Buck would survive. They had to or millions would suffer.

This really was themotherfuckinglodeof all goat fucks.

After he recovered,he released her, and Helen got dressed in the laundered clothes she’d been wearing when she was kidnapped, including her sturdy boots. He pulled his sidearm out of the holster, screwed on the suppressor, and set it into her hands.

“Head shots,” he said, and she nodded, her eyes bleak but determined. He hated like hell that he had to set this burden on her, but they were up against heavy odds, and he needed to know that she could defend herself if she had to. He hoped she didn’t have to.

She nodded. “I won’t let you down,” she whispered.

He opened the door, and it hit him immediately, that smell, metallic, cloying, and unmistakable—blood.

“Stay behind me, and out of sight,” he said, his voice low and fierce.

He stepped out of the room, his automatic weapon up, and he surged forward into the main room, Helen was close behind him. She crowded at his back, her weapon pointing at the floor like a pro. Buck had taught her well. A quick glance made him swear softly. Lando was on the floor, his eyes open and staring, his throat slashed.

His housemaid was standing in the middle of the room, her cascade of black hair now a ruthless topknot on her head, a handgun pointing at him. Her delicate features and compact body were sleek and feminine, but there was nothing womanly about her; that nurturing spirit was gone.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I know exactly who I am, but you’renotGraham Butler, although you are the spitting image of him. It’s uncanny,” shesaid, that subservient look gone, replaced with one that told him she was as dangerous as she looked.

“How do you know that?” he asked, calling her bluff.

She smirked and her eyes roamed over him. “Graham never had a body like yours on his best day.” Her eyes roamed over him again full of admiration. “He was too damn lazy, and he had a scar just at the edge of his lower back. One I gave him.” She stared at him in speculation. “You’re not CIA…military…Delta?”

He snorted.

“Ah, the legendary Navy SEAL.”

Fuck. He was blown. He glanced down at Lando, inclining his head. “Why take him out?”

In a dispassionate voice, she said, her stare brittle and cold, “I’m here for the same reason you are.” She tried waving off any caution he might have, but he didn’t lower his weapon. “We’re currently on the same side. I’m here for the triggers.”

“So, you know where they are?”

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