Page 93 of Trapped

Chapter Seventeen

Cash wasn’t exactly back there. He was tramped forward through a kind of twilight country where the landscape was a series of indistinct blobs. Where was he? Afghanistan? West Virginia? Thailand? No, not West Virginia. The team was there. He couldn’t remember all their names—except one. Jonah Raider. Jonah was with him, and he had Cash’s back. At least Cash hoped so.

He tried to sort through the names of the places where he might be.

Thailand wasn’t real. It had never been real. Those were memories Dr. Montgomery had fed him. He knew that much.

The thought of the doctor made him wary, and he glanced over his shoulder. But there was nothing behind him but more indistinct shapes. And when he faced forward again, he saw light ahead of him.

The closer he got, the more he was certain it was Afghanistan, and the more his chest tightened with determination.

“Good,” Jonah said.

“This is good?” he countered.

“Yeah, you’re sorting through the false memories. And you know which one is the real deal.”

He knew that was true. But he still didn’t want to go back to Afghanistan to find out what was so bad that he’d scrubbed his recollection of the events.

He was glad of Jonah’s presence next to him.

Somehow Cash knew he was almost where he needed to be. Except that he seemed to be standing behind a translucent curtain. Beyond it he could see the brown hill he remembered.

He stepped toward them, and then a shadow crossed his path. It resolved itself into a man—Dr. Montgomery.

“Stay out,” the doctor ordered.

Confusion swirled in his mind. “You want me to go back there. That’s what the bunker was all about.”

“You can’t go until I say you can. Not until I’m beside you—recording your experiences.”

Anger surged, and Cash answered with a curse. “The hell with you.”

He felt Montgomery grabbing at the back of his shirt, trying to keep him in the twilight. But Jonah was there.

“Get the fuck out of his mind,” he ordered.

“Yeah, get the fuck away from me,” Cash echoed.

He yanked himself free, and suddenly he was through the curtain, walking toward the village. And he wasn’t alone. Jonah was there. And Shredder was beside him and Hall. And the other men who were part of the rescue operation.

Rescue operation! Yeah, that’s what it was. He remembered that now.

They’d come in by helo, landing twenty miles from their intended destination to keep the mission secret. And they were wearing native garb, not their usual combat outfits.

This was an important covert operation, and Colonel Luntz didn’t want anyone getting wind of their presence in the area.

The Colonel had sent them here to pick up Jamal Al Feisal, an Al Qaeda defector with valuable information.

Sweat trickled down the back of Cash’s neck and out of his hair. He wiped his brow on his sleeve and looked to his left.

“You think somebody’s following us?” Jonah asked.

Hall was the one who answered. “Naw. It’s your nerves jumping,” He always had been overconfident.

“Yeah, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s someone out there.”

He reached in his pocket and pulled out the map they’d been given. There was supposed to be a village just ahead. But he didn’t see the damn place.

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