Page 39 of Lethal Pursuit

“Your Defense Secretary is a very brave man,” he said, loud enough for Jackson to hear him, “but now we have run out of time. Since he refuses to give us the statement even under torture, it seems I must try a different approach. I’ve decided we’ll play a little game. One I learned from my infidel father’s people.”

Her mind whirred too fast to make sense of that chilling statement, but her gaze locked on his right hand as he brought it to his waist and patted something at his belt. In the glint of the flashlight, she recognized the shape. An old revolver. She recognized it as Russian.

Her mind rewound his words and rapidly replayed them, trying to decipher what he meant. A game he’d learned from the Russians? What the hell did that mean?

He began unlocking her cage door, and finally the pieces suddenly fit together into a single, terrifying realization.

The crazyhijo de putathought he was going to make them play Russian roulette.

Any bravery she’d managed to build back up drained out of her in a terrified riptide. She scrambled back against the rear of her cage, baring her teeth in helpless defiance as he reached in for her.

She reared away when he grabbed her right upper arm and started dragging her forward. Maya dug in her feet and snarled, swallowing down the jagged scream rising up her throat. He yanked. She lashed out with her boots, enduring the knifelike agony in her ribs and wrist to catch him in the gut. But there was nowhere to go and her satisfaction was short-lived. He hauled her out with one fist, yanking his head back just in time to avoid the back of her head when she flung it at his chin.

His quiet chuckle brushed against the back of her neck as he brought her flush against his body. It felt like he was made of pure steel, and she didn’t have a prayer against him with her hands and feet bound. He propelled her in front of him almost effortlessly, her struggles futile.No. No!

Something inside her snapped.

“No más,no más!” Her frantic scream shattered the darkness, the terror suffocating, dragging her down and stealing her breath. She panicked, fought for air.

“Maya!” She heard Jackson’s desperate shout, couldn’t find the breath she needed to answer.

Khalid muscled her down the corridor past Jackson’s cell, and she caught only a glimpse of the naked fear on his face before she was dragged past him toward her death.

THIRTEEN

CAM TRUDGED INTOhis barracks in the PJ area of the SPEC OPS compound at Bagram and dropped the remainder of his gear beside his bunk. It was the middle of the night and even though he was exhausted after being out on an op for the past thirty-two hours, he knew he’d never be able to sleep. Not now.

“Hey. What’s the word?”

He turned to find Ryan Wentworth coming through the doorway. Went was dressed in full kit and his face was cammied up, ready to head out on his own mission. “No joy,” Cam said. “We were close though.” Like, less than an hour close to Jackson and the others. “Must have just missed them.”

That was the most frustrating part. The fire pits in the militant’s camp had still been warm, their cooking utensils left behind in their haste to escape. They couldn’t have gone far, yet despite the CSAR team’s best efforts and high-tech equipment, they’d managed to elude them. How the hell had they done it?

“Fuck, that sucks,” Went muttered.

“Yeah.” It weighed heavy on Cam’s shoulders. He’d already lost one of his best friends over here, at the end of last summer. He’d been part of the honor guard at the ramp ceremony and had accompanied Ty’s body home stateside. Cam never wanted to have to do that again, let alone with the guy he’d worked beside for the better part of a year now. Jackson was one of the best guys Cam had ever met. Wentworth too, despite his penchant for being a pain in the ass. “You guys heading out soon?”

“Mission brief in twenty minutes. You going out again tonight?”

“I asked my commander to let us have another go, but he shot me down until at least tomorrow night. The way things are going, it looks like I’ll be part of the rescue but not part of the search.” Hewished like hell it could be otherwise.

“One of us will find them,” Ryan said, the “us” referring to one of the American units either en route or already out looking in the area where intelligence had pinpointed the prisoners’ supposed location.

Cam knew a unit would eventually find them. He just prayed they found them before the bastards who’d taken them started killing the prisoners to gain fame and political status. “Hope you have better luck hunting than we did. Thatcher’s sisters have been emailing me every few hours since they were informed last night that he’s missing.” And he couldn’t tell them a goddamn thing, due to OPSEC and a lot of other reasons. Best he could do was reassure them the American military was doing everything possible to bring Jackson back safely.

Ryan leaned against the door frame, arms crossed over his chest. “Sucks all around, man. I know they’re a tight family.”

Cam nodded. He was beat and in need of some rack time but he still planned to call Dev. He just needed to hear her voice, even though he couldn’t tell her what was going on. She’d have heard something on the news by now and know something was up. She also understood that most of the time he couldn’t tell her anything. It was a big part of the reason he’d fallen for her so hard.

“Command’s got everyone out looking for them,” Ryan said. “They won’t stay hidden for long.”

Yeah, but running clandestine ops across the Pakistani border was a giant pain in the ass for all involved. All they needed now was for the Pakistani government to find out and throw up a bunch of political red tape to slow their progress. And if that happened, the captors would have plenty of time to vanish out there in no-man’s-land. With every hour the prisoners went undetected, the chance of that happening increased exponentially.

“Bring ’em all home,” he said to Ryan.

“Do our best. Later, man,” he replied, turning away from the doorway.

Flopping back on his bunk, Cam rubbed a hand over his gritty eyes and pulled out the sat phone he’d borrowed to call Devon. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said when she answered.

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