A quick glance toward the sentries made him freeze. One man was turning in Rambo’s direction. Exposed, Rambo dived to the ground.

  But apparently not soon enough. As Rambo squirmed beneath the jeep at the end of the row, he saw the sentry’s boots approach it. They reached the vehicle’s front, pointing toward Rambo’s face, as if the guard were staring over the hood toward the space between the jeep and the gasoline storage tank.

  The boots shifted toward the side of the jeep. Despite the swirling haze of dust, Rambo saw the boots with terrible clarity. They were only a yard from his face. They looked huge.

  At once Rambo heard the guard’s puzzled voice. “I thought you were dead.”

  Dear God, he spotted Andreyev.

  “Where have you been?” the guard asked with greater puzzlement, his voice partly muffled by the wind. “How did you survive the battle? How did you get back here?”

  The guard’s boots moved along the jeep and rounded its back to reach Andreyev.

  Would the guard see Mousa? Was Mousa well hidden?

  Heart pounding, Rambo crawled from beneath the jeep, keeping its bulk between him and the guard. He risked a cautious glance over the top and saw that the second guard had turned to watch the first guard walk troubled toward Andreyev.

  “After we lost, I managed to escape,” Andreyev said. “I returned this evening.” He forced a laugh. “It was quite a walk.”

  “No one told me you’d come back,” the guard said, confused. “Surely word would have spread.”

  The guard reached Andreyev. The other guard started over.

  “I’ve been with Colonel Zaysan, making my report.” In a blur, Andreyev slammed his rifle butt into the soldier’s face.

  The other guard straightened and raised his weapon. An arrow from Rambo’s bow shattered his temple.

  Rambo swung to aim his bow at the guard beside Andreyev. He didn’t need to shoot. Andreyev had already slammed the guard again and knocked him unconscious or worse.

  Rambo hurried over. Mousa crawled from between the treads of an armored personnel carrier. They dragged the bodies to the carrier and shoved them underneath. In a rush, Rambo set a charge for eleven minutes and squeezed it behind the gasoline storage tank.

  He ran to the door that led to the cells below. Andreyev opened it. Peering anxiously toward brightly lit stairs, they started down.

  8

  Hearing far-off screams, Rambo tensed. The screams were so high-pitched that they seemed to come from a boy, not a man. Although distant, they had terrible force. Whatever obscenity was being done to him, it must be excruciating, Rambo thought.

  His impulse was to hurry toward the wails, but caution slowed him. Andreyev again went ahead, showing himself at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Andreyev?” a man’s voice asked in surprise.

  Andreyev stepped forward, out of Rambo’s sight. “The rebels captured me. I escaped. I just got back to the fort. I have important information. I know where the rebels are hiding.”

  “The rebels? The colonel will want to see you!”

  “I’m looking for him. He’s not in his quarters. A guard said he might be down here.”

  Far off, the boy continued screaming.

  “Yes,” the voice said. “The colonel is here.” Keys jangled. A chair scraped. Footsteps clattered. “I’ll hurry and tell him—”

  The gruff voice made a sudden gagging sound.

  Rambo rushed to the bottom of the stairs and turned to see Andreyev using the guard’s club to choke the man from behind.

  The guard thrashed, went limp, and slumped to the floor. Andreyev didn’t release the club until the guard stopped quivering.

  Rambo grabbed the guard’s ring of keys. Mousa helped Andreyev drag the corpse into what seemed a supply room. The guard had been stationed at a desk, behind which a closed metal door had a small barred window that revealed a corridor lined with cells.

  The screams echoed shrilly along the corridor.

  Rambo timed a charge for nine minutes and placed it in a drawer of the desk.

  He heard an engine’s muffled roar.

  “What’s that?” he whispered.

  Andreyev pointed toward another corridor. “The generator room.”

  “Show me.”

  They reached a door that vibrated from the noise of the motor behind it. Andreyev stepped inside, glanced around as if he belonged there, and gestured for Rambo and Mousa to enter.

  A huge kerosene-powered generator made a deafening roar. The floor shook.

  Rambo verified that the room was empty and placed a charge timed for eight minutes into a space beneath the generator.

  His knapsack now was empty. He hid it beneath trash in a barrel. As he left the generator room and hurried with Mousa and Andreyev back to the guard station, Rambo had several unnerving thoughts.

  What if Trautman’s not down here? Suppose he was moved since Andreyev left the fort. He might have been transferred to another part of the compound. Or he might have been flown to Kabul. Or…

  He didn’t want to consider the possibility.

  Trautman might have been killed.

  No.

  Rambo shook his head fiercely. No. I can’t be too late to save him.

  He reached the door to the cellblock and tested several keys on the guard’s ring until one of them fit into the lock. Metal scraped when he turned the key. The lock resisted, then budged.

  The door had a handle instead of a knob. Rambo pulled, and the door inched open. Staying low, out of sight behind it, he let Andreyev go ahead.

  The screams that echoed along the corridor reached a peak of agony.

  9

  Abruptly the screams stopped. Their echo lingered, then stopped as well. The corridor became disturbingly silent.

  Except for Andreyev’s bootsteps on the floor. The guard down the corridor had already turned in his direction, made curious by the key scraping in the lock and the door coming open.

  Andreyev held an envelope that he’d grabbed from the desk. He thrust it forward as if bringing an urgent message. The guard left his post, coming to get the message.

  After ten steps, the guard hesitated, his features contorted with puzzlement when he recognized Andreyev. He opened his mouth, but never had the chance to speak. Andreyev dived to the floor. The guard squinted down at his bizarre behavior and didn’t have time to react to Rambo’s sudden appearance in the open door at the end of the hallway.

  Rambo fired his bow. Streaking at a speed of two hundred and fifty feet per second, the arrow struck the guard, knocking him backward. The tip of the arrow projecting from his skull made a scraping sound on the concrete floor.

  Again the corridor was silent. Rambo left Mousa to watch the stairs from the courtyard and snuck toward Andreyev. The Soviet dragged the guard past the open door of an empty cell. Rambo joined him. Out of sight from the corridor, they heard voices from a cell farther down.

  “Colonel, the boy is dead,” a husky voice said in Russian. “The acid ate into his heart.”

  “Then we’ll get another child.”

  The raspy voice spoke in English, but the accent was Russian, and Rambo didn’t understand why the man didn’t use his native language.

  “That’s what happens when criminals don’t confess,” the raspy voice continued in English. “They die needlessly. Indeed, in another way, this boy did not have to die. If the American had merely told me what I wished to know, I wouldn’t have been forced to question this child. It’s the American’s fault, not mine.”

  “Bastard!” a voice screamed in English from a nearer cell.

  The voice made Rambo’s heart stop. He inhaled. Overwhelming excitement swelled his chest.

  The voice was unmistakable. Even shaky, fraught with pain, and hoarse with rage, it couldn’t possibly belong to anyone else.

  The colonel was still alive. He continued to rage, heaping obscenity upon obscenity until his voice cracked, and he gasped in pain.

  “Our guest speaks well enough when he wants to,” the raspy voice said in English. “A pity he didn’t do it sooner. If I interrogate another prisoner, someone even younger, would our guest extend us the courtesy of a conversation?”

  The corridor again became silent.

  The silence was broken. “I don’t know where the rebels are hiding!” Trautman shouted.

  “We will soon determine that. And in the meantime, perhaps the next child we question will know.”

  For the past thirty seconds, Rambo had been in motion. Clutching the key he’d used to open the hallway door, he inserted it into the open door of the cell in which he hid, hoping to learn something.

  The key budged the lock. Its scrape was muffled by the voices from the other cells.

  The key must fit all the locks, he told himself.

  He peered from the doorway, saw no one, and shifted as silently as he could past the door to Trautman’s cell toward the open door adjacent to it.

  He had no way of knowing how many people were in that room. He’d heard two voices, but what if there were other men inside as well, too many for Rambo to shoot before one of them shot him?

  And the noise. He couldn’t risk alerting the fortress by shooting.

  Not until he absolutely was forced to. Not until he got Trautman out of his cell and did everything he could to escape.

  Four minutes from now, the charges would begin exploding. Then the noise of gunshots wouldn’t matter. There’d be plenty of shooting after that, he had no doubt.

  But for now he needed to subdue these men silently.

  He stopped beside the open cell from which the voices came.

  “Bring another prisoner,” the raspy voice said in English. “A girl this time. If she doesn’t confess, her death too,will be on our guest’s conscience.”

  Hearing heavy bootsteps approach the door, Rambo thrust into motion. Pivoting into the entrance, he slammed the door, and shoved the key inside the lock. His arm strained to resist a soldier’s massive pressure tugging from the other side.

  Rambo twisted the key. The lock slid home.

  In the cell, voices shouted.

  Shut up! Rambo thought. He raised his knife to thrust it through the bars toward the massive soldier tugging at the door. At once he realized that even if he killed this soldier he wouldn’t be able to silence another man—unseen—who shouted for help.

  Rambo sheathed his knife and reached in his arrow pouch, removing a tip for one of his arrows. It had a cone shape. It wouldn’t make a noise when it hit. But it would incapacitate whoever was in there.

  Fists hammered against the inside of the door. The shouts became louder.

  Rambo threw the cone-shaped tip between bars in the door. The tear-gas container struck the opposite wall of the cell and shattered. White vapor blossomed, spreading to every corner of the cell.

  Men coughed and retched as the vapor swirled. Rambo threw a second tear-gas tip, and the vapor thickened. The hand that tugged at a bar in the window let go. The coughing became more extreme.

  But at least the men weren’t shouting. At least the fort wouldn’t hear their protests.

  Grasping the key, Rambo lunged to the cell beside him. Fingers shaking, he managed to guide their thrust toward the lock. He twisted the key and pulled the door open.

  He nearly wept at the sight of Trautman, whose face was bruised and swollen almost beyond recognition. The stench-ridden cell was pooled with blood.

  “Oh, Jesus, Colonel.”

  “Rambo?” Trautman blinked up in confusion, as if afraid he’d lost his mind and was having a vision.

  “You’re getting out of here, sir.”

  “How the hell—?”

  “No, out of hell. On your feet, sir.” Rambo raised him, supported him, and urged him out of the cell.

  “But John, how—?”

  “Move, sir. Don’t talk.”

  10

  A welter of dismaying emotions flooded through Trautman with sickening force. After the glaring spotlights in his cell, the normal lights in the corridor seemed extremely pale. Shadows swirled. He saw everything as a blur.

  But he had no doubt that it was Rambo who’d charged into his cell and lifted him, who now was helping him stumble along the corridor.

  How—?

  Rambo stopped periodically, doing something that Trautman didn’t understand.

  He gradually figured it out. Rambo was unlocking other cells, freeing other prisoners.

  But among the double-focused Afghans running along the corridor, Trautman strained to steady his vision on a man who made him cringe. The man had blond hair. He wore a Soviet uniform. The soldiers found us.

  Trautman tried to push away, but Rambo held Trautman tighter, making him hurry closer to the soldier.

  “No! They’ll kill us, John!”

  Trautman’s turmoil worsened as Rambo spoke hurriedly in Russian to the soldier, who answered.

  “John, who . . . ?” Trautman’s mind swirled.

  11

  Rambo tightened his hold on the colonel and made him move faster. They reached the end of the corridor, went through an open door, and stopped while Mousa blurted instructions to the rebel prisoners.

  “The charges are set to explode in two minutes. Move,” Rambo said.

  The door at the top of the stairs swung open. A soldier closed it, came halfway down, and stared at Rambo, Trautman, and the Afghans. With widening eyes, he turned to run.

  “Mousa, don’t shoot,” Rambo warned. With one arm supporting Trautman, he couldn’t aim his bow slung over his shoulder. He grabbed his knife with his free hand and threw.

  The long curved blade struck the soldier’s back.

  As he fell, Mousa scrambled toward him, pressed a hand across his mouth, and muffled his dying moans.

  Rambo hurried with Trautman toward the top of the stairs. He retrieved his knife from the dead soldier’s back, then inched the door open and peered toward the swirl of sand in the courtyard. Wind shrieked across the storm-obscured parapets. He didn’t see any guards.

  The charges. He checked his watch. We’ve got just ninety seconds to get out of here.

  He guided Trautman into the courtyard and shifted through shadows along the north wall. The row of jeeps, trucks, and armored personnel carriers stretched along the opposite side. Beneath the vehicles, timers counted toward the instant when voltage would surge from batteries toward detonators.

  Move!

  He held Trautman tighter, urging him harder. Andreyev hurried behind him. Mousa rushed to follow with the Afghans.

  The stairwell to the parapet loomed closer. Twenty feet. Ten. Just as Rambo led Trautman into it, he heard a shout from the courtyard and spun.

  A soldier in an open doorway had seen them. Yelling, the soldier grabbed a rifle from inside a room and aimed.

  There wasn’t a choice. Mousa shot him.

  Startled by the shot, more soldiers appeared in doorways. They overcame their surprise and lunged for weapons.

  Mousa kept shooting. As bullets chipped walls and soldiers fell, the Afghan prisoners ran up the stairs. A siren wailed. Soldiers returned Mousa’s fire.

  Rambo dragged Trautman up the stairwell until they couldn’t be seen from the courtyard. Mousa and Andreyev strafed the courtyard and ran up the steps. Rambo set Trautman down, unslung his M-203, and risked showing himself to scurry back down the stairs and aim the grenade launcher.

  The charges wouldn’t go off for another thirty seconds. He needed to distract the soldiers. Sighting toward the fuel tank beyond the row of vehicles, he shot. The grenade’s explosion burst the tank and set off the charge wedged behind it. A swelling fireball slammed everything within twenty feet. Soldiers fell, burning, screaming. The jeep near the blast caught fire and blew apart also.

  Bullets tore chunks of stone from the stairs. Rambo ran up, out of sight from the courtyard again, and grabbed Trautman. Higher, he heard shots on the parapet. Soldiers from the sentry box, he decided. He heard a burst from an M-16. That would be Mousa. Then the louder clatter of an AK-47. That might be a soldier or Andreyev, no way to tell. The shots on the parapet stopped. But those from the courtyard persisted. A soldier charged into sight at the bottom of the stairs, about to fire upward when his body heaved from the force of a flaming blast behind him.

  The charges were going off.

  In the courtyard, another blast was followed by another and another. Wind-driven flames reflected brilliantly up the stairwell. Concussions shoved Rambo off-balance. He fought to remain standing and tugged Trautman up the stairs.

  More shots crackled on the parapet. Soldiers from the searchlight box on the middle of the wall must have joined the fight. Other soldiers must be rushing from the sentry boxes at the other corners of the parapet.

  The searchlight box. The sentry box. Rambo realized the charges he’d placed against them hadn’t gone off yet. Mousa, Andreyev, and the Afghans might be blown apart. He and Trautman might be blown apart if they reached the parapet too soon.

  Bullets ricocheted up the stairwell. In the courtyard, another vehicle exploded. Recoiling from the noise and heat, Rambo suddenly felt a fist of air strike his back. The simultaneous blast from the top of the stairs must have been the sentry post exploding. Flames whooshed past the top of the stairs, then flickered from the force of the wind.

  Rambo tugged Trautman higher. He helped him step over jagged wreckage and reached the howling sandstorm just as the searchlight box at the middle of the parapet burst apart in a roar of flames. He and Trautman lurched back, almost toppling down the stairwell.

  Soldiers charged up the stairs.

  Rambo aimed with his free hand and fired. The grenade’s blast hurled the soldiers down the stairs.

  “Mousa!” Rambo shouted. “Andreyev!”

  Had they gotten off the parapet in time? Had the charges he’d set up here killed them?

  In the courtyard, an armored personnel carrier exploded. In the northern bowels of the fort, two muffled blasts shook walls. Every light in the fort went off, its generator destroyed. But the mass of flames in the courtyard revealed the confusion of soldiers down there.