The SEAL edged forward, holding his knife held low. Disaster struck when he stumbled and tripped over the prone body of the girl. The Arab struck, fast as an angry cobra. It seemed like all he had to do was plunge the knife into the sprawling, defenseless American. The blade stabbed down, but Ryder was quicker. He lashed out with his boot, caught the other man’s arm, and kicked the blow aside. In the same movement, he twisted his body into an impossible angle and lunged upward. His KA-BAR went into the Arab’s crotch, and a shrill screech of pain echoed around the hillside. Blood spurted, and the Arab tried to push his opponent away with one hand. With the other, he attempted to repair the terrible, emasculating wound.

  Ryder put his boot on the man’s chest and shoved. He toppled over, whimpering in mortal agony. Moments later, he gasped his last agonized breath and was still. John-Wesley helped the girl to her feet and led her over to a flat rock to recover from her shock. Then he returned to the scene of carnage and started to clean up. The bodies went over the side of the cliff, and he gave the donkeys a hard smack on the rump to send them skittering off into Turkey. A few shuffles of his feet over the dusty gravel, and the blood had disappeared. The girl waited, watching him, saying nothing, as the evidence of her nightmare gradually disappeared. Like it had never happened. When he was done, Ryder spoke a few words to her and guided her up the hillside.

  Nolan came out into the open, and he made no secret of his fury. “What the hell are you doing, Ryder? I told you to say here, and you run down there and start a fight. You may as well put an announcement on the internet, ‘Here’s our location.’ Tell the world.”

  A pause. “I couldn’t leave her. You saw what they were doing.”

  “Dammit, Ryder, it wasn’t our business.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “What you’re planning to do with her? We’re trying to conduct a clandestine operation in the middle of nowhere.”

  “She can stay with us in the hide.”

  “You cannot be serious!”

  His sallow face was set stubborn. “Look at her; she can’t go anywhere the way she is.”

  He has a point. The girl’s robe is torn and covered in splashes of blood, her face still frozen in terror. Even so…

  “It’s not about her, Ryder. It’s about the mission. There’s too much at stake. You know you shouldn’t have done it.”

  He just stared straight back at him. So stubborn, he’d make a mule look easygoing. “I couldn’t leave her. Couldn’t.”

  He helped her down into the hole and followed her inside. After a few moments, Nolan sighed, gave in to the inevitable, and clambered after them. He pulled the camouflage over their heads and regarded the track below them. Still nothing. So far, he didn’t think Ryder’s action had compromised the mission, even though he’d compromised his career. Finished it for good. He looked at the girl.

  “You speak any English?”

  “A little.” She pronounced it ‘ay leetle.’

  “Do you know what we’re doing here?”

  “This is Syria, so I know you are here to kill a man. It is normal.”

  Here to kill a man in cold blood, and it happens every day. What a place!

  “Okay, listen up. You can stay here, but you keep absolutely still and quiet. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who were those three men?” He nodded down the hill.

  “They bought me, and they were taking me to Turkey. To sell me to a whorehouse.”

  “Bought you?”

  “Yes, from the people who took me prisoner. They are called ISIS.”

  “ISIS, right.”

  “They occupy my hometown, and most of the surrounding area. Women have no choice but to do as they say. They are not nice people.”

  Not nice, that’s an interesting way to describe them. How about ruthless, blood-crazed butchers?

  “Miss, I’m glad you’re okay. Just stay quiet, that’s the rule.”

  “I understand.”

  “What’s your name?”

  Ryder supplied the answer. “It’s Rana, Boss.”

  “Rana, okay. Ryder, about the other thing, we’ll talk about it when we get back. I warned you.”

  He nodded without replying, but the expression in his eyes was easy to read. He knew he was finished.

  The afternoon drifted past, and still Prince Abdullah didn’t show. Nolan was conscious of the girl, her proximity in the hide, the spicy smell of her skin. Occasionally, she’d move position and her robe rustled, and Ryder glanced at her. Without the veil she was pretty, a gamin face, clear, olive skin. About twenty-five years old, slightly built, so she didn’t take up too much room in the hide.

  Just as the light started to fade, they came, a party of fifteen men, all on foot. Nolan assumed they’d got a ride to the border and elected to walk across, safer that way, less likely to attract attention, unless a SEAL sniper was waiting to put a bullet in you. It was impossible to make out the target in the huddled mass of marching men, even though he squinted through the scope until his eyes were sore. They all looked the same. Robes, turbans, dark faces, beards. Prince Abdullah could have been any one of them. They reached the spot where Ryder had fought and killed the three Arabs, and Nolan held his breath. They’d stopped.

  Something had alerted them. Some noise maybe, or a bloodstain overlooked when Ryder cleared the evidence. They talked amongst themselves for several minutes, peered at the terrain, and then split into three groups of five. They were suspicious, and they began to poke around the area. The light faded even more, and one of them brought out a flashlight and shone it around. He shouted something to his pals and hurried over to inspect what the light had revealed. Nolan saw it then and knew they were blown. Footprints in the dust, Rana’s footprints, and they led right up to their position. It may as well have been a street sign with a huge arrow pointing directly at the hide. Someone shouted, a man pointed, and then they started up the hill.

  “Ryder!” he murmured, “We’re leaving.”

  “I see ‘em. Jesus Christ!”

  “Jesus won’t help us, not if we don’t get out of here.” He looked at Rana, whose face was again a mask of terror, “You’ll have to run.”

  “Will they try to kill us?”

  “Not if we move fast enough. Give her a hand up.”

  Nolan scrambled out, Ryder pushed the girl up to join him, and he followed them out. They jogged away from the Arabs, but before they could move out of sight, a chorus of shouts echoed over the hillside. A rifle fired, and bullets parted the air above their heads.

  “Run!”

  It became a lung-bursting, shambling, stumbling race up the steep slope, gasping for oxygen in the thin mountain air. Heading toward the distant peak a thousand meters above, there was little cover. At times, they were fully exposed, and in clear sight of their pursuers. They frequently had to duck away from sheets of automatic fire tearing up the ground. One burst caught Nolan in the upper left arm, a bullet that traveled all the way through and exited the other side. He wrapped a dressing around it, ignoring the hot, stabbing pain as he fastened it tight. Pain he could live with, but not a blood trail to lead the enemy right to them. They’d climbed almost five hundred meters when the light faded.

  He kept them moving for another hour before he reckoned they’d lost them, and he called a halt. They were exhausted, and the girl looked wiped out.

  “We’ll rest here for a bit. Ryder, use the starlight scope to check behind us.” He regarded the girl. “Ma’am, stay out of sight behind these rocks, and keep quiet.”

  “Are they still coming?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  He slumped down, retied the dressing, and took a minute to reevaluate. They’d missed the target. The big question was where would Abdullah go next? Back into Syria, or keep going toward Turkey, and an important meeting with the Mullah? It had to be Turkey, to initiate the money transfer that would start the unprecedented attack on the West.

  The Arabs would assume they’d driven away whoever had been waiting in ambush for them. Probably thought they were PKK, Kurdish freedom fighters, or a Syrian rebel group. Either of which would have given up. The last thing they’d think was their attackers were still coming after them. So they stood a chance.

  Ryder joined him and glanced at the girl, who’d dropped off to sleep. “It’s all quiet. We’re clear of any pursuit. No one is following.”

  He nodded. “We’ll rest up here for a bit, make certain they’ve gone, and then we’ll follow them.”

  “You think we can still pull this off?”

  “There’s a chance. Remember, Will Bryce and Vince Merano are waiting on the border. I’ll apprise them of the situation, and with any luck, they’ll manage to hit them when they try to cross. As long as they don’t choose a different route.” He sighed with frustration, “The ambush site was our best bet; everything else depends on luck. Something that’s in short supply.”

  He tried and failed to push back his anger. “Ryder, you fucked up bad this time.”

  “Sorry, Boss, I just couldn’t…”

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it. You disobeyed a direct order. Your actions screwed up an operation that’s taken our people months to put together.”

  “Yeah, well, I…”

  He cut him off. He’d made his decision, so there was no going back. The man was a menace to his fellow SEALs, and he’d endangered an operation for the last time.

  “You’re out. When we get back, consider yourself RTU’d.”

  “Lt, no! I didn’t have a choice. The SEALs are my life. “

  “Too bad, you nearly got us all killed, and we lost the target. It’s the last time, John-Wesley.”

  Ryder didn’t reply, just looked away, kicked at a stone, and hunkered down on the rocky ground. Nolan fired up the encrypted satellite radio and made the call. Will answered right away.

  “This is Bravo Two.”

  “Will, this is Bravo One. What’s your situation?”

  “Nothing doing. You?”

  “He got past us. We almost had the bastard, but they smelled a rat and started shooting. We barely managed to get clear. Abdullah is still alive.”

  “The hell you say. Jesus Christ, how did they manage to see you?”

  That’s between me and Ryder.

  “One of those things. Will, he should be moving toward you, a group of about fifteen men. We’ll wait a couple of hours to make sure they’re well clear, and then we’ll follow. Always assuming he goes where we think he’ll go.”

  “If he doesn’t?”

  “We’ll talk about that when it happens. Stay sharp.”

  “You, too. Bryce out.”

  Nolan looked at Ryder and felt the need to at least give him a chance to explain himself before he ruined his career. What lay beneath the impassive yet frightening exterior of the cold Louisianan killer? There was one way to find out, and they weren’t going anywhere, not for a couple of hours. He decided to find out what made him tick. What motive made him put his precious career on the line for an unknown girl?

  “John-Wesley.” He kept his voice to a low murmur.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me why you did it.”

  “How do you mean, Boss?”

  “Why go after those men with just a knife in your hand to save the girl? You knew what was at stake.”

  “It’s a long story. I...” He stopped then, as if he didn’t want to go on.

  “I guess it is.” Nolan decided he wanted to hear the story. The man was unique, and as his unit commander, he should give him a chance to tell it. Maybe he could give him a clean sheet when he moved on to his next posting, one that didn’t include the U.S. Navy SEALs, “Ryder, you’re the best man with a knife I’ve ever seen. Where did you learn? Not from your preacher father, I’d guess.”

  He smiled. “No. It was someone else.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It all started with a girl.”

  Now why does that not surprise me?

  “A girl. And?”

  He shrugged. “It was just one of those things.”

  “We need to give them time to get clear before we follow, so let’s hear it.”

  He looked haunted, as if Nolan’s question had touched on a memory he’d prefer left in the past. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Start from the beginning.”

  For long minutes his eyes were far away. In another time, and another place. Finally, he started to speak, “It was in New Orleans.”

  They were in the cold, dark mountains of Northern Syria. Yet his words transported them to New Orleans, to the Big Easy, a city of old culture, of jazz, and voodoo. And on occasion, murder. “That’s where I killed a man.”

  Chapter Two

  John-Wesley Ryder was sixteen when he killed his first man. He'd left home several weeks before, after taking one beating too many from his preacher father. Not for misbehavior, but for failure to recite a chosen passage from the Scriptures, word for word, no mistakes. He tried. He worked so hard to get it right his head ached, but it was no use. He still made mistakes.

  “You’re a worthless sinner!” Ryder Senior thundered, as he recited endless passages from the Scriptures. Accompanied by the strokes of his riding crop, slashing onto Ryder’s back, “If you truly believed, God would help you remember.”

  His hatred increased, but his father was a big, powerful man, and he was unable to defend himself. So he ran. Ryder left the cozy little house next to his father’s church with nothing more than a cheap sports bag. It contained most everything he owned, a clean shirt, pants and underwear, and his valued bible. He wandered the streets of New Orleans, tired and hungry, and after three cold and uncomfortable nights, reached Bourbon Street. A wizened old black man was playing saxophone outside a bar, and to Ryder’s ears, he sounded good. He’d heard songs on the radio recorded by a dead guy who went by the name of Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker. He wondered if this could be him, some kind of reincarnation. Voodoo could do that, he was certain. He’d seen plenty of strange things, watching when his father thought he was asleep.

  The sax player sized him up straightaway. Probably he'd seen plenty of runaways in the past, and this time he took pity on him the half-starved kid, red-eyed from lack of sleep.

  "You looking for a job, kid?"

  He mumbled a reply, not sure what to say, or what the guy wanted from him.

  In return, the musician gave him a sincere smile. "Pal, it's nothing screwy, but you look like you're in need of a hot meal and somewhere to lay your head. I know for sure the owner of this bar needs a busboy. Why don't you go inside and talk to him?"

  He made up his mind in seconds. It wasn’t difficult when you were out of luck, out of choices, and cold and hungry. He thanked him and went inside.

  "What's it gonna be?"

  The guy was huge, with forearms the size of hams, and a face that looked like it had been in a collision with a bus. He afterward found out Gus Brennan had been a pro boxer. His career had tracked a downhill path, and after his nose got broken for the fifteenth time, he looked for alternative work. Brennan scraped together the last of his money and bought the bar. The name on the shingle outside was ‘Punch Drunk.’ Fortunately for Gus, he’d eased up on the booze before that phrase came to describe him.

  "Excuse me?”

  The voice was a hoarse growl, as if he had gravel stuck in his throat, “I said whaddaya want? This here’s a bar, either buy a drink or get out.”

  He was about to say he was too young to drink alcohol, but common sense stilled his tongue. “Oh, sure. Sir, I'm looking for a job. A guy outside said you needed a busboy."

  The man sized him up and didn't dislike what he saw. "Room and board plus five dollars an hour. You work six days a week, hours are from when we open until when we close."

  "What hours are those?"

  "Whatever I say. Take it or leave it, pal."

  "I'll take it."

  He worked hard for two weeks. The room they gave him, the size of a broom closet, was in a ramshackle timber house several streets away. But it was a place to sleep. More important, no one forced him to recite the Scriptures. He was almost happy.

  The shit hit the fan at the end of the third week. It was a Saturday night, and he was walking home from the bar at two a.m. The girl appeared from nowhere and almost fell into his arms.

  "Help me. Please help me get away!"

  She was distraught, covered in blood, and her blouse in tatters.

  He hovered close to her, not sure what to do. "What happened, Miss, what kind of trouble are you in?"

  Her eyes screamed her pain and distress. "This guy attacked me. I was late getting home and walking along the street. He came out of nowhere, tried to…” She faltered, but went on, “You can see what he did."

  She showed him her torn blouse, and he tried to avert his eyes from the ample breasts straining a bra that was struggling to support them. "I thought he would kill me."

  "I’ll get you to a hospital. They’ll fix you up."

  She shook her head. "No hospital, all I want to do is get home."

  "Well, sure, but you have to report this to the cops. This guy could be dangerous. It’s okay. I'll come with you. The precinct isn’t far."

  They walked along the deserted backstreets in silence. Already he could feel his anger growing, thinking of the abuse he'd suffered at the hands of his preacher father. Now this girl, both vulnerable and pretty, had suffered a different kind of abuse. No matter what happened, he'd stay with her while she filed a report, and then escort her home.

  They entered the precinct and approached the desk. The sergeant gave them a quick glance, and then resumed writing in a book. They waited a full five minutes until the girl’s sobbing caught his attention.