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Luke bent to scoop Sally into his arms and hand her out the window to Coop, when the bedroom door burst open. Ahmed filled the opening, an Uzi submachine gun pointed at them.
“Well, well. If it isn’t Navy SEAL Luke Harding.” Ahmed’s emphasis on SEAL caught Luke’s attention.
He set Sally on her feet and pushed her behind him. “Ahmed, you lousy maggot. I thought you were dead. I’m disappointed you’re not. This is between you and me. Let’s take it outside.”
“You and I can settle our differences right here.” Ahmed worked the lever on the top of the Uzi, chambering a round. He pulled the trigger, and a short burst of automatic gunfire strafed the wall beneath the window where Luke had seen Coop last.
Sally grasped Luke’s shoulders and pressed closer to his back, her body trembling. He placed his hand on her hip directly behind him to reassure her.
“That should keep your friends away for a while.” As Ahmed turned back toward Luke, he smiled. Eerie, detached, crazy—the light that shone from the man’s eyes chilled every fiber of Luke’s being. He had to keep Ahmed talking until Coop and the others could regroup. It was Sally’s only chance.
“You had it in for us the whole time because Ian and I were Americans. Why? It was your choice to turn your back on your country. You let them fill you with hate for your own people.”
As though he hadn’t heard, Ahmed stared at Luke. “You and your Navy SEALs always thought you were stronger…faster…better than me, didn’t you? Even after I proved your friend Ian was weak, you still didn’t get it.”
Again, the almost unnoticeable emphasis on the wordsNavy SEALsinterested Luke. “Didn’t get what?”
“I was like you—proudly American—until…” His words faded, and he glanced around as though he feared someone else might have heard his confession. When his gaze returned to Luke’s, anger burned there again. “The American military—the SEALs you value so highly—discharged me after my brother and I had successfully completed most of our training.”
The statement jolted Luke to his core. What is he saying? He signed on to be a SEAL?
Ahmed paced one way and then the other, always keeping the Uzi trained on Luke. “Do you know why? Not because I wasn’t good enough or strong enough. Not because I wasn’t the best sniper—I was. Even better than my own brother. No. They seized upon my only imperfection. Can you guess what it was?”
“Your humility?” Luke regretted his flip remark as soon as he’d said it, but it was too late.
Again, Ahmed seemed not to hear. “A fucking broken bone in my wrist when I was a boy. It healed and never bothered me again. But it wasn’tperfect, and that break decreased my range of motion by three fucking percent…which made me not good enough for the almighty SEALs. That I could perform any exercise quicker and better than the rest didn’t matter.”
“So, you took a medical discharge rather than stay in the regular Navy? Hell, I’d have done the same thing. But that doesn’t explain why you became a terrorist. That’s a pretty big leap.” Luke kept his gaze on the man’s trigger finger. He and Sally would have only milliseconds to react when Ahmed tired of talking.
“Eight months later, my brother was killed in a training exercise. A Humvee he was driving, with four other trainees onboard, overturned. The others were thrown out, but my brother was trapped behind the steering wheel. The Humvee went over an embankment and burst into flames. If I’d been there, I could have saved him.”
Luke shook his head, a vague memory of the incident on the news niggling at his brain. “What makes you think you could have done more than the men who were there?”
“Obviously, they didn’t try hard enough. Every one of you is going to pay for that.” Ahmed’s voice held the rage that clearly seethed beneath the surface, and he tightened his grip on the gun.
“So, that’s it, huh? That’s why you became a traitor, became a terrorist and killed Ian? To make the SEALs—any SEAL—pay for the accidental death of your brother?” Didn’t sound like the actions of a rational man. It was just a hunch, but he’d bet Ahmed had lost touch with reality when his brother died. Why else would the traitor come thousands of miles to hunt Luke down again? That made his first guess right—Ahmed was crazy. And Luke had learned to trust his hunches.
“You’ve oversimplified it, but yes. And now it’s your turn. Then I’ll take care of your friends outside. I knew Sally would bring you close enough to spring the trap. I had every intention of trading her for you…but now, I can’t bear to part with her either—for totally different reasons, of course. But I’m not a monster. I’ll give you a moment to say good-bye.” Ahmed relaxed his grip on the Uzi and glanced toward the door behind him.
Yep. Crazy and overconfident. The latter will be his downfall.
Luke understood all too well that if Ahmed pulled that trigger, there’d be enough lead flying in this room to kill everything in sight.Not acceptable. He leaned toward Sally, who’d turned a ghostly shade of pale since Ahmed walked in. “Out the window, now.”
He didn’t wait to see if she followed his instruction. Clawing for traction, he burst into a full run. Getting to Ahmed before he fired was the only thing that would save them.
A malicious grin broke over Ahmed’s face as he braced his feet and tracked Luke’s progress with the barrel of the gun. Behind the madman, a shadow caught Luke’s eye. A man with a rifle stood in the doorway.
Luke leaped sideways out of the way, rolling as he landed, and slid up against the wall, praying Sally had done what he said. A high-caliber rifle shot echoed in the room. Ahmed jerked as though a puppeteer controlled his movements. A burst of submachine gunfire riddled the ceiling with bullet holes. Ahmed couldn’t hold on to the weapon any longer. He dropped it and crumpled to the floor, blood pooling under him from the rifle fire that entered his back and blew out through his chest. Ahmed was still breathing, gasping for air.
A glance toward the window told Luke what he desperately needed to know—Sally was out of harm’s way.
Three more shadows materialized, flanking Daniel, weapons in hand. Daniel stepped all the way into the room and strode toward Ahmed until he looked in to his face. “My brother was a good man. The best. You and your scum killed him. Now, you die.” He placed the barrel of the rifle against Ahmed’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twenty-two
Sally jolted awake, the sound of gunfire ringing in her ears. Immediately, she leaned into the warm caress of the man curled around her on the bed. It’d been ten days since terrorists tried to kill them on American soil. She was the one having nightmares now, but Luke was always there to assure her it was only a dream. The doctor had said, along with her many cuts and scrapes, she had a mild case of PTSD, and he predicted it would fade as her memory of the incident did. The kicker was, Luke had been sleeping like a baby. She’d take that trade any day.
Luke stirred behind her, his arm over her torso drawing her closer. “You okay, babe?”
