Sean felt a pang of disappointment. It was instantly replaced by a sense of relief. Probably better that his friend wasn’t around.
Fitz turned and disappeared out the door, leaving Sean and Emily alone in the hallway.
“I guess I’ll take this one,” Sean said. He jerked his thumb at the closest door.
“Fine by me. Sleep tight.”
After spending a few minutes getting ready, Sean climbed into the modest bed and pulled the sheets over him. In spite of no air conditioning, the room’s temperature was in the upper 60s.
Butterflies crept up in his stomach. He’d only been with Axis a short time. And this was his first real field mission. There’d been one other that involved doing some recon work, but it had been a fairly safe scenario.
This one was different. He’d be shot at. And he would have to use lethal force.
Surprisingly, neither of those things bothered him. His nerves were more from excitement.
The possibility of dying wasn’t something that Sean spent a lot of time worrying about. Ever since the death of his girlfriend in a tragic motorcycle accident, he’d almost tempted the grim reaper on a regular basis. The guilt inside him may have had something to do with that. He’d survived the crash. She hadn’t. And Sean would have to live with that for the rest of his life.
While the accident hadn’t been his fault, he was still riddled with guilt. The car that struck them ran a red light. Both Sean and his passenger were thrown across the intersection. Miraculously, he was nearly unharmed. But she struck a pole and was killed almost instantly.
The visions of that fateful evening clouded his mind most nights before he fell asleep. It should have been me. That same thought ran through his head over and over again before eventually exhaustion took over. Even out in the middle of Nowhere, Tanzania, he couldn’t avoid it.
Fortunately, he had a job to do. And what he did for Axis was something that required total focus. Lose that at any second, and he would be dead. Sean didn’t want to die. He didn’t have some sick vision of going out in a blaze of glory. His guilt, however, pushed him to his limits. In a way, it made him a better agent.
He closed his eyes and redirected his thoughts to the mission and what he had to do. The layout of Toli’s compound appeared in his mind: the buildings, the fence, the gate, the guard towers. It was a veritable fortress — built to keep out a substantial attack. The warlord’s anticipation of large-scale assault would be to Sean and Emily’s advantage. Although if the strike team was indeed captured or killed, Toli would likely be on full alert and ready for anything. Sean and Emily would have to be careful. Otherwise, they could end up in the same boat as the special ops unit. Or worse.
6
Cold, dirty water splashed across Fletch’s face, rousing him from his sleep. If one could call it that.
He and his men had been given little more than thin, flimsy blankets to sleep on. The basement was cold, damp, and more than a few times in the night he’d heard things crawling on the concrete. Rats? Insects? He didn’t know. Part of him didn’t want to.
Between the awful conditions and the gripping hunger in his belly, slumber was hard to come by. Every time he’d dozed off, something would wake him up only minutes later.
It was a barrage on the senses.
Any normal human would have broken after the first twenty-four hours. Fletch and his men, however, were anything but normal. The SEAL training was the most rigorous in the world for a reason.
As he lay on his side on the hard floor, Fletch remembered back to that training. He recalled wondering what kind of hellish situation would call for them to be able to tolerate such conditions. Now he understood.
Of course it had always been a possibility.
With every mission, their risk was always the greatest. The SEALs often operated behind the curtain, so to speak. The operations they carried out put them in tremendous danger — and usually with no reinforcements to come to their aid should the need arise. Every man on the team knew that. And they didn’t just accept it; they embraced it.
Now that resolve was being tested.
They’d been beaten severely. Tevin had been electrocuted. Fletch knew that was coming for him soon, too. As savage as Toli and his soldiers were, they had a firm grasp on just how far they could push the limits of the human body.
He looked up at the face of the young soldier who’d thrown the water on him.
The soldier was just a boy. Couldn’t have been more than fourteen years of age. The kid was holding a rusty tin bucket and staring blankly at Fletch with vapid, zombie-like eyes — as if his soul had been sucked from his body leaving nothing but a hollow skin-robot.
The noise of the water splashing roused the other three from their tenuous slumber. They sat up but didn’t dare stand. Four guards plus the kid with the bucket were in the room, all of them armed with Kalashnikovs leveled at the Americans’ heads.
Toli stepped into the room from the glowing yellow light of the staircase.
Fletch wondered if he was going to say something clichéd. Most guys like Toli were still watching 1980s American television.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” Toli said.
Yep, Fletch thought.
The warlord went on. “You don’t look as if you slept well last night. Are the accommodations not to your liking?” He looked around the room and held his hands up high as if showing off a palace.
“We slept fine. Which one of us are you going to torture today, Toli?”
“Always straight to the point. I have heard Americans are this way. Always in a hurry. But I will answer your question.” He pivoted to the left and took one step. He wiped his nose with his index finger and continued. “I was going to conduct a test tonight. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anyone to use as a test subject.”
“Sounds like a personal problem,” Fletch spat.
Toli raised a finger in the air. “Ah, it was. Until you showed up on my doorstep. You see, my test was going to be done on animals since we are a bit shorthanded on volunteers.”
Mueller jumped into the conversation. “What? You don’t force your child soldiers to be guinea pigs, you sick freak?”
Toli’s head twitched to the side, but he remained calm. “Sadly, I need them for something else. I’d considered going into one of the villages and taking a few people to serve as my test subjects. That was my plan until you arrived. Then a solution to my problem presented itself.” He spun and faced the four Americans again. “You’re all in peak physical condition, in the prime of your lives. If my weapons work on you four, they will work on everyone.”
“You’re a madman,” Tevin chimed in.
Fletch shook his head. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“And why is that?” Toli pried his prisoner with his eyes, searching for the answer. “Is there another group of you coming? Perhaps we should test our weapons on them as well.”
Fletch chuckled. “Now I know you’re bluffing. You’ll kill us all, yourself included, if you use those things within a five-mile radius. Maybe ten if the wind is blowing right.”
It was Toli’s turn to laugh. He looked up at the cracked ceiling as he bellowed. When he finally stopped, his face took on a sinister appearance. “You misunderstand me, American. If there are, in fact, reinforcements on their way, we will be long gone by the time they arrive.”
Fletch searched him for the truth. He couldn’t find a lie anywhere on the man’s face. Then it hit him. “You have this place rigged.”
“Very good. Of course, I will leave a few of my men here to give the appearance that the place is still occupied. I’ll use the youngest ones. They’re not extremely adept at fighting yet anyway. Better to sacrifice them, as you suggested.”