Somewhere—in the room?—an assault rifle hammers out a string of bullets. The grenade goes off. The gun goes silent. Felice moves up, passing Rohan as he scrambles back to his feet. She is first into the room, pivoting with her weapon. She yells, “Face down on the floor!” and fires a single shot.
Rohan moves in behind her. The three men are down. It takes only a minute for the pair to secure their prisoners, binding wrists and ankles with zip ties. When it’s done, Rohan flips each man over so he’s facing up. “Hey,” he says, crouching over the last one. “We know this guy.”
On the video, a young man glares in defiance. His face is sharp-featured, shadowed by a sparse beard and neat, black brows. His right ear is slagged scar tissue, a scar that continues down his neck to his shoulder, disappearing under a white nightshirt. Gleaming in his deep-set dark eyes is a promise of murder. The system identifies him as Hussam’s nineteen-year-old brother, Rihab. A young filmmaker, according to rumor, who specializes in execution videos.
“Should we take him with us?” Rohan wants to know.
“Another time,” Lincoln says. “We’ve got no authority to take him now.”
Rihab’s glare becomes a grimace of frustrated rage as Rohan leans closer. “First one’s free, pal,” Rohan warns him from behind the anonymity of his mask and visor. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to meet again.”
One Chance
Miles isn’t surprised when gunfire erupts downstairs. He’s been expecting some kind of operation ever since he saw the mosquito drone, but, “Shit,” he whispers to himself. “Why did they wait until Noël was dead?”
Then he’s up, military training taking over. There isn’t enough light in the stinking little room to see, but he’s memorized the place, the positions of his companions. “Ryan, you up?”
“Right next to you.”
Miles feels a hand on his shoulder. Ryan is alert and ready to act; he saw the mosquito drone too.
“Get in the corner,” Miles says, giving him a gentle shove. “Face the wall. Cover your head.”
“What the hell is going on?” Dano demands in his thick Brazilian accent.
“We’re hoping it’s a rescue.”
“What rescue? What do you mean? How do you know it’s a rescue?”
Miles hears doors open. Shouts, footsteps. Decides against debate. Groping in the dark, he finds Dano, grabs the front of his shirt—“Get over here”—hauls him into the corner. “Get down. Cover your head. Protect your eyes.”
He huddles with Ryan and Dano. Flinches as a flurry of shots erupts. A loud bang. Running footsteps. New voices. American voices.
Dano tries to get up. Miles won’t let him.
“Stay back from the door!” someone shouts. A woman’s practiced command voice. “We’re getting you out of here but we have to blow the lock. In five!”
“We’re ready!” Miles shouts.
“Might want to cover your ears,” the woman suggests.
The gunfire downstairs has ceased. Distant shouts and a car alarm’s faraway bleat mingle with the heartbeat thump of her retreating footsteps.
Boom!
Miles winces, feeling like he’s been punched in both ears. Then he’s up again, hauling Dano with him, knowing Ryan will follow. He still can’t see a damn thing. He gropes for the door anyway, finds it ajar, pulls it wider. A tiny red light flicks on in the hall outside. It casts shape into the world, defines the hallway, but it does no more than suggest the presence of a camouflaged figure behind the light. She is a conception, a sketch of a soldier drawn to confuse the eye. Definition exists only in her gloved hands, the screen of her MARC visor, and in the solid mass of the Kieffer-Obermark resting in the crook of her arm.
True, looking back at him, finds herself caught in a moment of weird dissociation. Her visor shows her a light-amplified view of this stranger, Miles Dushane. He’s dressed in a shapeless tunic and stained trousers, face gaunt, beard tangled, his hair dirty and disheveled. She does not know him, has never met him before. And yet between one heartbeat and the next it feels to her as if both time and space are folding around him, bringing forward a more familiar presence.
Haven’t I dreamed this? she asks herself. Of opening this locked door?
Yes. And though it is Miles Dushane who looks back at her from beyond the doorway, she sees through him into a parallel past, to another prisoner, a young man not so different from him, also slated for brutal execution.
Her heart beats again. Time restarts. The past falls away. It is forever beyond reach, and still, a connection remains. It leaves a pressure behind her eyes, a tightness in her chest as she resolves that what happened before will not happen again. Not this time. Miles is not her son, but he is someone’s child, a good man from all that she’s heard, and it consoles her to be here tonight, to ensure that he, at least, survives.
She speaks in a voice purposely brusque, businesslike, no reflection at all of that space between heartbeats. “What’s your condition?” she asks. “Any significant injuries? Broken bones? Anything that will prevent you from getting down the stairs?”
Miles too uses brusque words, but his voice is husky with emotion. “No,” he tells her. “We’re all ambulatory.” He watches the red light move closer. It takes him a few seconds to realize she is holding it out to him. He accepts it by instinct.
“Step out here,” she instructs him. “You first. The others to follow one at a time. I need to pat you down.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He does as she says, stepping into the hall. Only then does he notice a second soldier, a big man waiting halfway down the hall, keeping close watch on the proceedings, ready to bring his weapon into play. Beyond him, four men are on the floor, bound and therefore presumably alive. Miles holds his arms out. The woman runs her hands over him, quickly, professionally, stooping to check his legs and crotch.
Behind him, in the stinking cell, Dano protests. “I don’t understand. Who is this woman? How do we know we can trust her?”
Miles answers with an impatience verging on anger. “I know she’s not fucking Hussam and that’s good enough for me.”
“You’re clear,” the soldier tells him. “Who’s next? Let’s move.”
“Go on, Dano,” Ryan growls from the dark. “Or get the fuck out of my way.”
Dano stumbles into sight, off balance like he’s been pushed. Miles catches his arm, pulls him into the hallway, and tells him, “Stand still.”
He stands frozen, staring at the men on the floor while the soldier pats him down. She finds nothing, turns to Ryan, and repeats the procedure.
“All right,” she says when she’s done. “My name is True Brighton. I’m here with an American PMC called Requisite Operations. If you cooperate and move fast, we will get you out of here. But it’s all or nothing. There won’t be a second chance. If you want to live, follow Jameson.” She gestures at the second soldier. “Move out.”
She doesn’t seek their agreement. She doesn’t need it. This is their one chance at freedom. Ryan understands that. When Jameson starts down the hall, Ryan totters after him, unsteady for lack of exercise but determined. Miles keeps his grip on Dano’s arm and follows.
But Dano still isn’t sure. Shock and confusion piled on top of months of stress have left him adrift, focused on the wrong things, on things he can’t control. After two steps he plants his feet and demands, “What about Fatima? Fatima Atwan? Dr. Atwan is my colleague. She is a prisoner too. We can’t leave her behind.”
Miles doesn’t have an answer. This isn’t his operation. For all he knows, Fatima is dead. “Right now, Dano, you need to shut up and do as you’re told. I swear if you slow me down I will leave you behind.”