Rennie nodded and was off and running the two hundred yards to the stable, sub-gun in hand. She ran fast, feeling her adrenaline ramping higher. Moving through the pa.s.sageway of the stable, she crouched at the far opening. The road, dusty and deeply rutted in places, was about ten feet from the stable door.
All was clear. As she crossed the road, the ma.s.s of men at the staging area to her left came into view. She couldn"t see Armin, but could hear him. She knew he could stop at any moment.
The door to the armory was padlocked. The building was about thirty-six feet square and she fleetingly wondered what was in it. Hopefully only light bombs, grenades, IEDsthe usual.
What sort of h.e.l.l would she unleash by blowing it up? The armory was raised about two feet on wooden stilts, the best way to keep water out of a poorly constructed building.
Rennie dropped to the ground and scooted under the structure. Gingerly, she pulled the M2 from her pocket and placed it about ten feet in. Crawling back to the edge, she flinched as she heard a volley of gunfire. She hunkered down and peered out, ready to fire, but the men were only firing their weapons into the air, consumed by Armin.
Darting from beneath the armory, she crossed the road and pounded through the short pa.s.sageway of the stable. At its opening on the other side she stopped and checked the wood line. She couldn"t see Hannah and hoped she hadn"t panicked and run already. All clear, she ran for the woods. This is it. If she could make it to the woods, they just might have a chance. She reduced her pace as she came into view of the staging area, figuring a slowly moving figure wouldn"t be as noticeable. Pa.s.sing through the green curtain of the wood line, she found Hannah no longer p.r.o.ne, but up on her hands and knees, alert and waiting for her.
"It"s done."
Relief pa.s.sed over Hannah"s features. Rennie looked at her watch. She held up four fingers to Hannah. Four minutes until detonation. Rennie handed the sub-gun to her and crouched to the sniper rifle. Looking through the scope, she could see Armin still in position. She lay flat, her legs spread wide. The weather hadn"t changed, the conditions were still perfect. She wanted to wait until the last possible second before making her shot. That would give them their best chance. Could she do this? Complete the mission and bring Hannah Marcus home? It seemed almost absurd.
Two minutes.
Rennie lay perfectly still, her finger on the trigger, ready for the pull the moment the M2 detonated. Not a sliver of doubt crept into her brain which was jumping on adrenaline. That would come later. Now she was ready.
Thirty seconds.
Her mind cleared. So intent, she was almost completely unaware of her body in its uncomfortable position, tenuously gripping the incline. Her breath was shallow, just enough to sustain her without affecting her position. She was aware only of the crosshatch at the end of the scope and that tender, vulnerable spot on Armin"s head. Then she heard the explosion. In the first instant, in that first fraction of a second, before Armin had time to react, she pulled the trigger. She never heard the bullet leave the muzzle, but she saw his head snap violently before he dropped to the ground. Lifting her head from the scope, Rennie saw a few men rush to Armin"s inert body, but most had already turned away from him, focused on the blast in the armory.
Before the second explosion erupted, the domino effect from the munitions in the building, Rennie turned to tell Hannah to run but she had already started down the steep slope, arms akimbo, the MP5 in one hand. Rennie scrambled after her, tearing down the slope, dancing over jutting rocks. It felt good to move, to break the deep tension of the last few hours. Rennie quickly gained on Hannah. Then she was by her, snagging the sub-gun and taking her hand.
Careening down the slope, Hannah Marcus found herself falling. Not to the groundRennie Vogel had too firm a grip on her to allow that to happenno, she was falling into a place in her mind she couldn"t seem to extricate herself from, mired in a swamp of quashed emotions. How could she have kept it together so long through her captivity, only to fall apart now, when it mattered so much? The survivor in her struggled against it. She thought she had managed it, she had always managed everything, but it all came backher parents, her capture, Fareed. She put her hand to her mouth, feeling her face transform into a mask of pain. The trees and rocks and vines, flying past her, grew cloudy and then drowned under the salty wave of her tears. Throughout her entire life, from the beginning, to this which felt like the end, she had kept the pain compartmentalized, shelved where it belonged, and now it all came crashing down.
She remembered Fareed unlocking the padlock on the Dutch door of her stable. She had had a moment of fear, having spent a lifetime learning from her parents to never trust anyone. But then she saw his face reading her ambivalence and she relaxed.
Only in her world could the most interesting man she had met in years be her captor. And an Islamic militant. Just her luck.
Hannah"s tears felt warm on her cheeks. For a moment this woman who held her hand, nearly dragging her down the hillside, seemed the enemy. Fareed, however much goodness and refinement was in him, had made a terrible mistake. And he had paid for it. She would mourn him someday when she could make sense of it all, mourn him and absolve him of his sin of only being a man and not a hero. The tumultuous emotion gripping her began to subside. It had to. She had to forgive this woman, this Rennie Vogel, for killing what felt like her only friend in the world. Hannah squeezed Rennie"s hand then, in a need to reach out to her, to let go of the hatred that had bubbled up inside her since Rennie came through the door of her stall like a dark apparition. It was a strange moment for such an intimate gesture as they raced for their lives, and she figured it would go unnoticed, but she had to offer it for her own sake. Then she felt the pressure returned.
Her eyes clear of tears now, she looked at Rennie and wondered if she had noticed her breakdown. Rennie returned her gaze, eyebrows raised, questioning, and squeezed her hand again. Hannah nodded, indicating she was okay, not realizing until then that they had slowed their pace. Rennie, seeing she had pulled herself together, kicked it into gear, peeling forward.
Hannah willed herself to keep up.
Then she felt Rennie"s arm around her waist, holding her tight, she looked over and saw the woman caught up in the deep concentration of keeping them both aloft. The ground seemed to be skittering under their feet, a kaleidoscopic blur of green and brown in the moonlight. Hannah could hear gunfire in the distance. Were the soldiers shooting at them as they ran away?
She looked at Rennie again and caught her eye. Rennie, who seemed to realize that Hannah was coherent and running better on her own, let go of her waist and just held her by the hand.
Hannah could feel Rennie wanting to go faster and tried to increase her pace. The first inklings of freedom began to course through her, sending a sharp chill up her back and along her arms. Could they actually make it and escape the h.e.l.l they had found themselves in?
Then Hannah noticed a ma.s.sive log crossing their path about twenty yards away. They would need to slow considerably to scurry over it. She was exhausted and antic.i.p.ated the break in their demanding pace. But as the distance diminished, Rennie hadn"t slowed at all and then they were upon it and Rennie had Hannah around the waist again. She leapt as they reached the log, lifting Hannah with her. For a moment Hannah felt like they were flying, that they had somehow just taken off and would keep going higher and higher. A second later she felt her feet clip the log and they both fell hard to the ground, rolling over one another, their limbs in a tangle.
Hannah had a moment"s respite where the pain made her feel more alive than she had in years, but only a moment. In a second Rennie was up and pulling Hannah to her feet.
"Are you all right?" Rennie bent to examine Hannah"s legs, sc.r.a.ped but not bleeding. She looked upset with herself, perhaps for miscalculating Hannah"s abilities.
"I"m fine. Don"t worry."
Rennie nodded as she popped the magazine out of her sub-gun and then reinserted it to make sure it wasn"t damaged in the fall, scanning the woods at the same time, searching for any sign that soldiers had followed them.
Hannah leaned against the log, smooth and clean from enduring years in the elements. Rennie studied their surroundings.
"I"m trying to get my bearings. I hid a pack of supplies in a fallen tree. It should be somewhere close by. I think."
"You don"t have GPS?"
"It was damaged..." Rennie hesitated before completing her thought. "Before."
Hannah accepted this, but knew there was something else she wasn"t saying.
"We"re going to need to move more slowly for the time being, until we can find the tree. We"ll need the supplies. There"s water. Food. Ammunition."
"Do you think they"re coming after us?"
"I don"t know. Hopefully they are focusing on the road."
They walked quickly. Slow for Rennie seemed to be a little less than a run. But Hannah was thankful for any break in their pace. In her former life she had always been fit, but the year and a half in the stable had left her muscles weak and stringy. She had tried to exercise in her stall, doing push-ups and sit-ups, but her guard would come to the door and stare at her with a mixture of l.u.s.t and loathing until she finally gave up.
Rennie stopped and pointed to a huge fallen tree, still covered in leaves. It was ma.s.sive and lay perpendicular to the direction they were traveling. Handing Hannah her sub-gun again, she crawled into it, disappearing into a dense ma.s.s of leaves and branches as tall as Hannah.
Hannah looked at the sky, so clear and dark against the moon, and thought this was the first good day she could remember in a long, long time. Good in that she had a small hope that she would live a normal life once again. Then she heard the sharp crack of a branch breaking at a distance. Her head snapped up as she ducked behind the tree. Peeking over a thick branch, she saw a flash of red cloth about a hundred yards away in the direction of the camp. Not now, not when we"ve made it this far. Hannah squeezed through the leaves and branches, following Rennie into the lush green bower.
0.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
Rennie found the pack still in its hiding place. It hadn"t been disturbed. The way the tree had fallen, branches splayed, it had created a niche within, large enough for two or three people to lay comfortably. A perfect place to camp for the night. She and Hannah could sleep there completely hidden from sight. But they were too close to Armin"s outpost. She heard a rustle of leaves and saw Hannah crawling into the s.p.a.ce. She looked frightened and Rennie knew something was wrong.
"They"re here." She was pointing back toward the camp.
"How many?"
Hannah shook her head. "Maybe five or six, I don"t know."
Rennie shoved the pack to her. "Inside is extra ammunition, clips. And a 9mm pistol. Look for a silencer and screw it onto the pistol. Bring them to me after I get into position."
She took the sub-gun from Hannah, moving the selector to full-automatic mode, and crawled on her belly until she could see through the foliage. They had good cover, branches tight around them, but little means of escape if they weren"t able to maintain the upper hand. She couldn"t see them yet, but she could hear them. They were talking, seemed to be arguing. And getting closer every second.
Rennie considered her options. Five or six men if Hannah was right. She hoped to G.o.d there weren"t more. The sub-gun held thirty rounds. She was in good position and would be able to take the first shots unnoticed. The gun was silenced but would make some sound. Depending on when they came into view, she would either take precision shots in bursts of two or just unload on them.
Then Hannah was next to her, crawling in close at her right side. Rennie felt the warmth of her body and was glad she wasn"t alone. Hannah placed three fresh magazines next to Rennie at her elbow. She held the 9mm, silencer in place. Rennie took it from her, checked the a.s.sembly, switched off the safety and handed it back. She leaned into her, her lips grazing the lobe of Hannah"s ear.
"Seventeen shots. Wait until they are all in view and I begin firing before you even think about pulling the trigger. If they are spread out, shoot from the right. I"ll take the left."
Rennie drew away from her. Hannah nodded her a.s.sent. She looked frightened but together.
Rennie leaned against her again. "You can do this." A stray thought flitted through her brain, an inappropriate thought.
With the heat from Hannah"s body soaking into her own, the soft, delicate skin under her lips, and the thought of death permeating every pore of her body, Rennie thought of kissing Hannah Marcus, then and there, as they lay on the ground, ready to engage in battle.
But she turned away quickly, her body attuned to the matter at hand. The men"s voices were very near. Though it was almost pitch-dark within their leafy nest, the bright moon overhead gave her uncanny visibility. The woods had taken on a ghostly hue, the leaves and rocks seemed to glow in the moonlight. Then she saw the first glimpse of them. A head there, and then an arm, moving through the trees. The voices were louder and they were arguing with more vehemence. This was good. Anything that distracted them as they came into view would be to her benefit.
Even though her body cried out to pull the trigger and feel the gun engage, she waited. She needed to see them, all of them.
To know how many there were.
Suddenly, they were all in view. Six men, all in uniform, all carrying Kalashnikovs, that st.u.r.dy old Russian machine gun.
Onehe looked the oldest and was probably the leader of the grouphad a shiny medal pinned to his chest. He was arguing with a man who looked to be about twenty. She could see their faces and except for the two engaged in discussion, the rest were young, certainly teenagers. One, at the far right, looked to be no more than thirteen. He had an alertness about him the others lacked, caught up in the conversation of the two men. The boy continually scanned his surroundings, his small features molded into a mask of adult concentration. Then his gaze locked onto the tree, his eyes seeming to look straight into Rennie"s own. He couldn"t have possibly identified their position, but it unnerved Rennie. She nodded at Hannah and prayed the woman was a good shot.
With the selector of the sub-gun set for two bullets to fly with each trigger pull, she put her bead on the men at the left.
She was so ready. Her finger on the trigger, the retractable stock tight against her shoulder, she leaned in, allowing the weight of the weapon to sit comfortably in her left hand. As soon as she pulled the trigger and heard the familiar ffft, ffft of the MP5 and felt its slight buck, Rennie settled into the moment. In controlled bursts she hit the two men at the far left. They went down fast, clutching at their wounds, dark stains spreading on their uniforms.
The rest of the party looked confused at first, not having heard the shots. Then the realization of what they had stumbled into fell over their features and the silence of the night exploded into chaos as the men dove to the ground and began shooting.
Hannah was firing next to her. She could feel Hannah"s thigh, hard with tension and pressing against her own. Rennie saw her hit a man at the right. Hannah had pa.s.sed over the young boy. The remaining menthree down, three to gowere all returning fire, but wildly, still unsure exactly where the shots were coming from.
One unloaded his clip in auto-mode in a few seconds and was frantically searching his pockets for more ammunition, rolling from side to side as he lay on the ground. The other two, the leader and the small boy, were more conservative, firing single shots and trying to get some cover. Rennie knew a few bullets had come near, maybe even so near that they were lucky to be alive. She took aim at the leader and fired, hitting him in the hand. He screamed and dropped his weapon. Rennie moved to fire on him again and felt the horrible vacant pull of her trigger.
Empty.
Drop the magazine. Reload.
The leader recovered his weapon and was taking shots again.
He and the boy had located their position and bullets were suddenly everywhere around them. They bit into the ground in front of them throwing up sprays of dirt. They slammed into the thick limbs, leaves raining down on them. The man, who finally found a full magazine, rolled over in pain. Hannah had caught him in the shoulder. He tried to move back, using his dead comrades for cover, firing all the while. Rennie swung the muzzle of the sub-gun to the right, fired and caught him just below the eye, quickly finishing Hannah"s work.
Two of the men, the first two Rennie had hit, had fallen on top of one another, creating a small barrier that the leader was using for cover. Rennie was having trouble hitting him. Then he surprised her. Standing, exposed, the man yelled to the small boy, waving his hand and telling him to run. He had just stepped over the bodies of the men he was hiding behind when Rennie"s bullets found their home in his chest. He lived long enough to know the boy had not heeded him.
The boy, who Hannah had spared, continued firing on them, his shots amazingly accurate. Rennie could see his small face behind the huge weapon and it gave her pause. Then, she felt a sharp sting on her left arm. Before she could think, before she could take stock of the damage he had inflicted, blind rage seared through her brain. She flipped the selector on the sub-gun all the way down to full-auto mode as she arced the barrel to the right.
She squeezed the trigger even before she reached him. The full force of the bullets caught him in a terrible line along his torso, lifting his small frame off his feet and throwing him violently backward. Rennie saw the familiar Nike logo on the bottom of his shoes as he hit the ground.
Silence.
G.o.d help me.
Rennie fired a few more rounds into the motionless bodies.
They didn"t flinch. All dead. She turned to Hannah whose face was set and dripping with perspiration. The woman set her weapon on the ground and her hand began to shake wildly.
"Is it over?"
"Yes." Rennie suddenly felt buoyant, surging with the knowledge that they were still alive. She put her hand on the back of Hannah"s neck. "You were amazing."
"Oh my G.o.d! You"re bleeding!"
Rennie looked down at her arm as the pain reached her brain.
An intense burning traveled down her arm and up to her neck.
Blood was seeping slowly from the wound.
"s.h.i.t."
Okay. The blood has already slowed. That"s good. It can"t be very deep.
"Do you have a first-aid kit?" Hannah looked panicked.
"The pack." A lump had lodged in Rennie"s throat. Anxiety.
It made it difficult to talk. "Lower pocket. And there should be a flashlight."
Hannah opened the kit and laid it in front of Rennie, looking at her helplessly. This brought Rennie back. You can"t rely on this woman she"s been through too much.
"There should be a sterile cleaning pad. Find that and then look for a pressure bandage. Also, water. I"ll need water."
Rennie hated to use their small supply of water, but she had to clean her wound. Infection would be the end of her.
With Hannah holding the flashlight, Rennie poured water over the red gash. The blood, dark and glossy, thinned under the water and became pink as it cleared the cut and she could see that the wound wasn"t very deep, only a few millimeters. Nothing important had been compromised.
Thank G.o.d.
Rennie applied the cleaning pad, the antiseptic ramping up the pain. She wanted to scream and pound her fists against the ground, furious at being injured. But it could have been much, much worse. Though the wound was still bleeding, it continued to slow. The pressure bandage would take care of the rest.
"How"s the pain?" Hannah said, calmer now.
"Could be worse."
"Are any of these pills for pain?" Hannah said, searching through the medical kit.
"Yes, but I want to keep my wits about me."
Hannah nodded.
"I heard them talking," she said as Rennie dealt with the pack, stowing the medical kit and the extra ammunition.