Page 2 of Edinburgh Escape
Minutes, hours, days later... Cal couldn’t be sure how long he’d been out. Voices pulled him back to awareness. Blinking his eyes open did nothing to clear the darkness. Pain knifed through his temple. When he tried to move, more pain stabbed his thigh.
Someone was yelling, his voice slightly muffled by what Cal could only figure were walls. His hands moved beside him, touching hard-packed dirt. Where was he? What had happened? Where was his team?
He pushed against the dirt, trying to sit up.
The pounding in his head increased. He lay back again until it eased and then tried again. This time, he was able to push himself into a sitting position, the pain in his thigh aggravated with any movement.
He ran his hand over the thigh, his fingers coming into contact with something that felt like a shaft of splintered wood, jutting out of his leg. Just touching it sent waves of agony radiating across his nerves. Without thinking, he gripped the splintered edges and yanked it from his leg.
He clenched his jaw to keep from crying out as a jolt of pain ripped through his leg and blood spurted out of the wound.
Cal pressed his hand against his thigh to staunch the flow, the pressure easing the waves of pain if only for a moment. Releasing the pressure, he shrugged out of his tattered jacket and yanked his T-shirt over his head, briefly wondering what had happened to his armor-plated vest. Probably gone with his boots.
He tore the shirt into strips, wadded up a portion and pressed it against the wound on his leg, then snugly tied the other strips around it. All was accomplished in the dark, while he listened to the continuous shouts in another language somewhere outside the structure where he was being held.
Cal tensed when he heard words he understood, from a voice he recognized.
“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” Though weaker than Cal was used to hearing, he knew that voice. His chest tightened.
Smudge had been a huge fan of old black-and-white western movies. He’d perfected an imitation of John Wayne’s drawl and used it with that exact phrase to end arguments or when he had nothing else to say.
“You will tell us what we want to know,” a heavily accented voice commanded.
Crackling sounded much like that of electricity arcing.
An anguished grunt pierced Cal’s heart. They were torturing Smudge.
Cal tried to get to his feet. As soon as he put pressure on his injured leg, he fell back to the dirt floor. Not only did he have a puncture wound, but his ankle also wouldn’t support him, shooting more pain up his leg.
But he couldn’t do nothing. Not when his teammate was being tortured. Half-scooting, half-dragging himself across the dirt, he felt his way around the dark chamber, bumping into stone walls until he located what felt like a wooden door. He ran his hands over the surface, hoping to find a knob or handle. There was none, and no way he could open the door from inside.
Desperate to help Smudge, he pounded his fist against the solid wooden panel. “Leave him alone!” Cal yelled, knowing how futile his words would be, but hoping they might take him instead of Smudge. If he could just get out of the cell he was in, he might have a chance of saving his friend, his teammate, his brother.
Something hard hit the door, the force of the blow reverberating against Cal’s hand. “Shut up!” a man yelled. Then he said something in what sounded like Arabic.
Moments later, another man yelled. “I told you, I don’t know anything.”
Rook. He was alive. The newest and youngest member of the SAS team. Baptism by fire on his first deployment. Was he to be the next one tortured?
“You will tell us what we want to know,” the accented man demanded. “Or we will cut off your comrade’s fingers one at a time.”
“I don’t know anything,” Rook cried.
Words were spoken in Arabic.
A sharp whomp sounded, followed by a strangled grunt.
“Jesus!” Rook cried out. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I just follow orders.”
“What were your orders?”
“Cover my team. That’s all I knew.”
Another Arabic order.
“Wait!” Rook yelled. “It’s true. My only job was to cover my team. They didn’t tell me why we were there. I don’t know why.”
Whomp!
