Page 3 of Edinburgh Escape
“Mother fu—” Smudge’s curse ended in a grunt of pain. “He doesn’t know anything. He’s just a kid. We wouldn’t tell him anything until he proved himself. You know why we came. Obviously, someone told you we were coming. What more do you expect to get out of us?”
“The truth,” his captor demanded. “Who gave you the order to come? Who did you come to find? Why shouldn’t we kill you? You’re nothing but infidels.”
“And you’re lying, murdering bastards,” Smudge said. “You think you’re fighting for Allah and that your sacrifices will buy you a place in heaven with forty virgins? Ha! They’ll be forty male virgins and it won’t be heaven, it’ll be hell?—”
A loud smacking sound cut off Smudge’s words.
Cal slammed his fist against the door again. “Leave them alone!” he yelled. He traced the edges of the door with his fingertips, praying he could pry it loose by sheer force of will.
Someone said something sharply in Arabic.
Moments later, footsteps sounded outside the door behind which Cal lay. He pushed backward and to the side, wincing as he jolted his leg. He reached for the jacket he’d shrugged out of, twisted it into a long rope-like shape and positioned himself just inside the cell, lying on the floor with his back to the door.
The door creaked open. Dim light spread in a wedge across the floor and Cal.
A guard stepped into the cell and kicked Cal in the back.
Cal rolled onto his back, flung the jacket around the man’s leg and yanked hard, sending him backward. He landed hard on his back.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t come alone. A second man entered the cell and backhanded Cal with a meaty fist.
The force of the blow made Cal’s head spin.
Before he could regain clarity, the man he’d knocked on his ass scrambled to his feet. The two men came at Cal.
When they reached for him, he swung his fist, connecting with one man’s jaw.
The other guy backhanded him again.
Cal’s head snapped to the side.
The man he’d punched in the jaw pounced on him, straddling his torso, his hands closing around Cal’s throat.
When Cal tried to hit the guy, the other guard captured his hands and pinned them over his head.
The tighter the hands squeezed around Cal’s throat, the darker the room became.
He must have blacked out. When his eyes opened, he was sitting in a chair, his arms secured behind his back, his legs strapped to the chair legs.
Smudge sat opposite him, slumped over, his face battered, his eyes swollen almost shut and blood dripping from the stumps where two of his fingers had been.
Bile rose up Cal’s throat. His leg ached, but not nearly as much as the muscle at the center of his chest. He was out of the cell and powerless to do anything to help Smudge.
A moan drew Cal’s attention to his side.
Rook stood between two other men. Or rather, he hung between the men, each holding him up by his arms. Bruises marred his cheeks, one eye was swollen shut and his lip bled. He lifted his head as if it weighed too much to keep up. “I didn’t say...anything.” His head lolled forward.
Cal jerked his hands against the ties that bound him.
A bearded man, dressed all in black with a black turban wrapped around his head, stood beside Smudge, his gaze fixed on Cal. “Tell us who you and your team are, where you’re from, who gave you the order to trespass in our country,” the man’s lips twisted into a sneer, “and the names of your firstborn sons or your friend dies.”
Cal recognized the man from the photo they’d been shown at the briefing. This was the ISIS leader they’d been sent to kill. He was known for his ruthlessness. He’d captured a squad of American soldiers who’d been sent into a small town to deliver food and medical supplies. One by one, he’d executed them and then dragged their bodies through the streets of that town as a warning to the citizens that this would be their fate if they allowed other Americans to sully their streets.
“Don’t tell him anything,” Smudge said, his voice rattling like gravel in a tin can. “Not a goddamn thing.”
Cal stared at his friend, then shifted his gaze to the man demanding information. “Go screw yourself.”
The terrorist’s eyes narrowed. He pulled a curved dagger from a sheath at his waist, grabbed a handful of Smudge’s hair and yanked his head back.
