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“Piece of cake,” she replied with a cocky grin. “We released the knockout gas, waited for it to take effect, and just waltzed in and grabbed the kid. I left a window open a crack so the gas will dissipate. They’ll wake up with monster headaches and no idea what happened to their young would-be martyr.”
“How many in the house?”
“Parents, two of their own children, plus Seti and his cousin.” A troubled look crossed Cabrillo’s face. Linda added, “I thought that was strange too. No guards, right? But the two Indonesians are here because they volunteered. No need to guard them at all.”
“Yeah,” Juan said slowly, “you’re probably right.”
“I’m ready,” Eddie announced from under the driver’s seat, an exposed nest of wires in his hand. All he needed to do was twist two leads together and the big diesel would rumble to life.
The engine noise was certain to attract attention, so once the bus was hot-wired, they had to get out of Dodge as fast as they could.
Setiawan was strapped into a seat using one of their combat harnesses. The prisoner, whose name they hadn’t bothered to ask, was in a row behind him. Linc and Linda had the first two seats, so Cabrillo took up a position in the back so he could cover their rear.
It was just then that all hell broke loose.
A shouted cry rose over the sleeping town from the direction of where they’d kept the captured soldier. One of the guards they’d knocked out had come to.
“Eddie, go!” Juan yelled. They had a minute, or less, before the tribesmen got organized.
Seng touched the two wires, creating a tiny arc of electricity, and then twisted them to keep the starter engaged. The engine shuddered but wouldn’t fire. It sounded like a washing machine with an unbalanced load. He feathered the gas pedal, trying to finesse the engine, but it still wouldn’t start. Before he flooded it, Eddie separated the wires, gave it a couple of heartbeats, and tried again.
The motor snarled and sputtered but refused to catch.
“Come on,” Eddie cajoled.
Cabrillo wasn’t paying the drama at the front of the bus any heed. His eyes were glued out the rear window, searching for signs of pursuit. A figure burst from a narrow alley between two houses. Juan had the REC7 to his shoulder and triggered a three-round burst. Glass cascaded to the floor of the bus in a shower of fine chips while the bullets chewed up the ground at the man’s feet. Three eruptions of dust stopped the man in his tracks, and he lost his balance and fell to the ground.
Juan noticed in passing that the man hadn’t taken the time to arm himself before rushing to investigate the engine noise. He could have shot him dead but instead let him scramble back undercover.
“Eddie?” Cabrillo shouted over his shoulder, certain that the echo of gunfire had awoken every jihadist in a half-mile radius.
“Just a sec,” Seng called back, though there was no sense of tension in his voice. That was Eddie—cool under any circumstances.
Cabrillo scanned the streets as best he could. He saw lamps being lit behind a few windows. The entire village was going to be coming after them in moments. Though the bus would make a pretty good defensive position, the team didn’t have the ammo for a protracted gun battle. If they didn’t get out in the next few seconds, they never would.
The engine fired, and Eddie didn’t give it time to warm up before wrestling it into gear and hitting the gas. The old bus lurched like a startled rhinoceros, kicking gravel from under its bald tires.
A pair of guards emerged from the same alley as the first man and cut loose wit
h their assault rifles, firing wildly from the hip in continuous bursts of unaimed fury. Not a single round hit the bus, but the fusillade kept Juan pinned to the floor, and the men had vanished around the corner by the time he was up and had a sight picture. He put three rounds downrange to keep them back.
The bus had the acceleration of an anemic snail, so as they slowly pulled from the square they were open to more gunfire from hidden alleys and behind stone walls. One burst raked across the row of windows, blowing out the glass and raining shards on the people inside. That particular assault inexplicably cut off, but more bullets pinged against the roof and sparked off the engine cover.
And then they were free, pulling past the mosque where the gray-bearded imam regarded them stoically as they roared by. Juan continued to watch out the rear window to see if anyone was chasing them. Several fighters were out on the main street, their rifles raised over their heads as if they’d won a great victory.
Let ’em think what they want, Juan thought as he slumped onto one of the hard bench seats. The padding had long since vanished, and he could feel a metal support beam digging into his flesh. That little bit of discomfort reminded him of the greater problem they might still be facing. The bus belonged to a senior Taliban officer, someone Cabrillo was now certain he recognized but couldn’t name. The odds were good that he was under observation by the U.S. military. While the powers that be might not understand what had just happened back in the village, if they wanted this guy dead, now was the time to unleash the drone’s missile.
He scooted back to the shattered rear window and watched the sky. Eddie saw him in the cracked mirror over the driver’s seat and called out, “Anything back there?”
“Not on the ground, but I thought I heard a Predator when we were waiting to go in, and, if my hunch is right, this bus has a big old target on its roof.”
For the first couple miles out of the town, the road followed the valley floor, with wide, open crop fields on either side. But from studying topographical maps before the mission, Juan knew it would enter a steeper grade and snake through about a dozen hairpin turns. To the left of the road was the canyon wall while to the right the landscape fell away in a frighteningly steep grade. Once on that section of dirt tract, they would have no maneuverability whatsoever.
If he was calling the shots back at Creech, he’d wait until they were halfway down and then put the Hellfire up their tailpipe. With that in mind, he shouted over the beat of the knocking engine, “Hey, soldier?”
“Me?” the blond man asked.
“I know everyone else’s name on the bus, so yeah. Are you in any condition to hoof it for about fifteen miles?”
