“This is gonna be rich,” the New Yorker said.
“Are we going to stop?” Lana asked.
“Like I said before,” Travis replied, “that’s the one thing we do not do at a time like this.”
As he finished speaking, the first blasts of gunfire hit the van.
Candace sat roasting in a cage made from rusty rebar. Tent fabric was draped over the top and three sides, providing shade, but the heat was unrelenting. At least 130 degrees. She was sure they were covering the cage to hide her from aerial surveillance.
It looked like a Bedouin camp, now that most of the mujahedeen had left. There were two tents, the Humvee in which she’d been driven, which was also covered up, and three camels, presumably for verisimilitude.
She guessed U.S. intelligence knew by now that she had been taken. She couldn’t imagine that her captors had resisted putting up video of Al Juhani’s murder and her abduction. Bragging rights counted for much in that violent realm.
Candace looked at the sky, praying for a drone, even if it meant her own death. What scared her more than dying was what awaited her in the closest tent. She’d seen them carry in two car batteries with wires and alligator clips, plus a toolbox and camp stove. Simple instruments of savagery.
She was so scared she felt sick, but she also felt for her parents. Tim killed in Afghanistan, and their only other child about to be murdered in Yemen.
One of the jihadists opened the tent flap and stared at her. They didn’t bother guarding her. They didn’t have to. The rebar was unyielding, and even if she got out, where could she go? Nothing but endless miles of open desert surrounded them. No one who cared would hear her screams.
Now the man by the tent nodded and smiled. She turned away, knowing that he was already taking pleasure in her pain.
Emma felt the blade slide across her skin, right to the tip, and drop away. He didn’t dig in deep, just enough to make her bleed and scare her almost senseless. Hamza shoved her onto a seat in front of him. She saw a narrow red streak on the knife, right along the razory edge. As if that weren’t enough scary enough, the Islamist grabbed her and wiped the blood off on her skinny jeans. Then he pointed the knife to the suicide bomber in the back of the bus.
She turned and looked obediently.
“They know about you,” Hamza yelled back to him.
Even without looking, Emma knew Hamza was smiling.
“They know you are a special man for special times.”
She didn’t notice the helicopter suddenly veer away, but the leader did. He shouted in Arabic and flashed the blade in the air.
“Yes, a special bomb for a special time.”
Emma made the mistake of looking back at him. He lifted her chin with the tip of the blade.
“You will have a lot of company in hell.”
Lana ducked as the police blocking the intersection continued to shoot at the van. None of the SEALs took cover.
“They’re not going to do any damage by hitting us from the front,” Travis said.
She inched back up, ashen-faced. The commander went on:
“U.S. taxpayers can afford a bulletproof windshield and metal plating all around. It might not look like much, but it’s got a lot of ponies under the hood and an extra-large fuel tank.”
A big bump interrupted him as the four-wheel-drive van jumped up onto a sprawling home’s front yard.
The navigator in the shotgun seat shouted instructions that took them across a lush lawn and down the side of what looked like a mansion, then into a service alley. The sound of sirens rose behind them. But their luck — or skill — ran out seconds later: The service alley was blocked by a police car, and a big Hummer was rolling toward them from behind.
“What the hell?” Lana said.
“My thoughts exactly,” Travis replied. But he didn’t sound overly concerned.
The driver put the old Delica van into reverse, spinning tires so hard and fast that black smoke rose on both sides of them.
He twisted his upper body around so he was staring straight back. Lana followed his intense gaze. The van, which appeared as crushable as a Coke can, and the Hummer, which did not, were speeding right at each other in an alley that allowed no passage.
She grabbed the seat belt, but once again the New Yorker stilled her hand.
When they were less than twenty feet apart — a breath from a vicious collision — the SEAL at the wheel cut hard to the left, so fast that as the backward-racing van cornered sharply into another service alley, it rose up on the left wheels, and this time she knew they were going over.
Indeed, they were. But as the Hummer’s brakes screeched — and its momentum forced the hulking vehicle past the alley claimed by the careening Delica — the left side of the van bounced off a stone wall, which banged the right side against the narrow alley’s other wall.
With a few more vicious wobbles, the driver righted the van and kept the now-battered vehicle in reverse, tires still smoking.
He backed onto a street and jammed it into drive as a chopper headed toward them, swooping so low that the SEAL had to brake.
“Bye-bye, sweetheart,” the driver said, jumping out.
Lana thought he was talking to her, but he meant the van. Travis hauled her out, and the five of them ran to the hovering gunship, run by a U.S. military crew. Cars all around them came to screeching stops. Men jumped out — but only to stare in astonishment. Once more, Lana was pushed on board.
With her legs still hanging out, the chopper rose so rapidly and turned so sharply that she would have fallen hundreds of feet if the New Yorker hadn’t had both of her arms firmly in hand.
She looked over her shoulder, shuddering at the fall she would have taken, stomach rolling for all kinds of reasons.
“Don’t worry, darlin’,” the New Yorker said, launching into an old Springsteen song with a big smile, “ ‘I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency.’” Now he was joined in by the whole SEAL team: “ ‘I came for you, for you, I came for you, but your life was one long emergency.’”
Lennon helped Ruhi don a white head scarf, much like his own, with a black band around the crown. Then he escorted him, along with three similarly attired officers, into an underground garage.
The five of them piled into a Ford Expedition. Lennon placed him in the middle row between himself and a taciturn man. “Think about getting some sleep, or you may enjoy watching the endless Arabian Desert fly by.”
“How far are you taking me?”
“All the way, Ruhi. Don’t you know that by now? We’re with you all the way.”
“My people are sure going to suspect something,” he said.
Lennon shook his head. “No, your people have been pleading for your release, begging lower-level staff at the palace to intervene. We knew the game they were playing, not wanting to let on how important you were to them. We’ve let them know that you are back in business. American arrogance will assume that your release came from the power of their persuasion, and we will not disavow that. They can have their little victory — for now. We will hand you over to your American minders in Sana.”
“And you’re not worried about Al Qaeda.”
“I would like them to try something. Believe me, I would.”
Ruhi took an obvious look around, taking inventory of the “troops.” Four of them, plus himself.
“It is always the enemy you do not see that you should worry about,” Lennon said. “And if you are Al Qaeda looking to stop us, that is what you should be thinking about. Your minders let your Candace down. They gave her poor cover and one operative. We do not underestimate our enemy, but perhaps that is because we live much closer to him than you do.”