“Yes, it was.”

  She turned her head and looked sideways at him. “You won’t let anything happen to me, will you?”

  “I’ll keep you safe, that’s a promise.”

  A few moments later, “I love you, John-Wesley.”

  He smiled. “Me, too, Grace.”

  The drive back to New Orleans was uneventful. The rain continued to fall in sheets, and there was little traffic on the back roads. Five miles from their destination, they abandoned the truck in an old quarry and torched it. There were several other wrecks littering the area, and he doubted it would attract any attention from the law when the burned-out paintwork had rusted and corroded.

  They hiked cross-country for almost two hours, and it was almost an anticlimax when they arrived outside Daniel Poesy’s farmhouse, Grace’s home. The place was empty, and after several weeks of abandonment, all traces of the murder had disappeared. The front door was locked, but Grace found a key under a loose stone, and they went inside. Ryder fired up the oil central heating and warned her against showing any lights.

  “They could come past on a routine patrol. If they see a light, they’ll know we’re back.”

  She’d taken off her clothes and wrapped herself in towels and blankets.

  “I won’t show any lights. My father’s room is the first one at the top of the staircase. You’d better change into something dry while I rustle up some food.”

  “He won’t, er, mind?”

  Her gaze was somber. “Not anymore.”

  The house warmed quickly, and he borrowed a shirt, pants, and sweater from Daniel’s bedroom. When he went downstairs, she’d warmed up a beef stew, and they spooned it down with mugs of hot coffee. When he’d wiped his plate clean, he felt like a million dollars. But he was tired, more than he’d ever known.

  “Grace, I’m sorry. I can’t stay awake. You mind if I take the couch?”

  “I’ll find you a blanket.”

  He was asleep before she brought the blanket and covered him. Then she went to her room and tried to sleep. Instead, she wept. For her father, her Uncle Joe, and the bad things that had turned a good young man, John-Wesley Ryder, into a killer. By the middle of the night exhaustion took over, and she slept. Ryder woke several times, but it was just the wind, and the constant heavy rain to remind folks of the raw power of nature. Even so, he looked out the window to check. The yard was clear, but it could have been Dubois.

  When he finally woke, it was daylight. The noise that disturbed him was an engine, and it was getting nearer. He went to the window to take a look. The rain was still beating down, the countryside shrouded in mist, and visibility little more than a hundred yards. The car stopped some distance away, half-hidden in the mist. A figure climbed out, and with a shock, he recognized Dubois walking toward the farm, cradling a pump action shotgun.

  There was no time to waste, and he raced upstairs and pushed into Grace’s bedroom. He shook her by the shoulder, and her eyes flared open.

  “What is it?”

  “He’s here. Dubois.”

  Her body convulsed with terror. “We have to run!”

  “No! It ends here, Grace. We’re not running. Not anymore.”

  Her face was white. “He’ll kill us both. John-Wesley, I’m afraid.”

  “He won’t kill anyone.” Somehow, he managed to sound more confident than he felt, “Get dressed and find somewhere to hide.”

  “But…”

  “Leave this to me.”

  He turned on his heel and hurried back down the staircase. Next to the couch where he’d slept, he picked up the webbing harness with the three fighting knives attached, strapped them on, and went back to the window. Dubois was halfway to the house, and their only chance was to take him by surprise. The guy could keep his distance and pump out cartridges until he’d torn him and Grace into shreds. Unless he didn’t know they were in there, and this was just a routine check.

  The voice boomed out through the mist. “You in the house! Come on out, or I’ll come in shooting.”

  How did he know we’re in here?

  It came to him in a flash, the central heating boiler would have sent out steam from the vent, making it obvious the place was occupied. He knew they were there, and he knew Ryder could throw a knife with devastating accuracy. He’d be wary and wouldn’t allow him to get close.

  How can I save Grace from bloody slaughter at the hands of the cop?

  When he came up with the idea, it was an idea born of desperation. He raced into the kitchen, grabbed a long carving knife, and peered through the window again. The Lieutenant had halted twenty yards from the house. He’d have figured at that distance he was safe from the deadly fighting knives.

  “I know you’re in there! Come on out. You have one minute. After that, I start shooting. Grace Poesy and John-Wesley Ryder, if you surrender, I’ll take you back to New Orleans, and we can straighten this all out.”

  Liar! The moment we show ourselves he’ll open fire. Probably say it was self-defense, and that we tried to attack him, so he had no choice. The man’s a liar, a rapist, and a murderer.

  It took him a few seconds to prepare. When he opened the door, he held a knife in his hand, clearly visible. Dubois pointed the shotgun at him, and his teeth bared a savage smile of triumph.

  “About time, Ryder. Put the knife down. Where’s the girl?”

  He didn’t put the knife down. “She’s gone.”

  He sneered. “I don’t think so, pal. She upstairs, you been screwing her?”

  He struggled to control his anger. “I told you, she’s not here.”

  The cop shrugged. “I reckon I’ll check for myself.” His voice hardened, “I told you to drop the knife. I won’t say it again.”

  Ryder gave it a few seconds and opened his hand. The big knife fell to the ground, and Dubois nodded. “That’s the sensible thing to do. Now tell the girl to come out with her hands up.”

  “I told you, she’s not here.”

  He sighed. “You want to play it the hard way? Okay, I can do that, too.” He aimed the shotgun at a bedroom window and pulled the trigger. It went off with a shattering roar, and the glass disintegrated. Inside, Grace screamed.

  “I thought so,” he chuckled. He raised his voice and shouted, “Grace Poesy, come out here. Don’t make me come in shooting. You wouldn’t like that.”

  Ryder raised his hands in the open position to show he was no threat. “Lieutenant, it’s me you want. Take me and leave her alone.”

  He sneered. “Not in a million years. You’re both coming with me, dead or alive. Your choice, kid.”

  Something about Ryder’s calm demeanor bothered the cop, and his eyes swept the webbing fastened to his body. Two knives still sheathed, and a third knife lying where he’d dropped it. He relaxed. “Time’s up. What’s it going to be?”

  The cop hadn’t noticed the knife he’d tossed on the ground was a carving knife from the kitchen. The Fairbairn–Sykes was tucked in the waistband of his pants, behind his back and covered by his shirt. Reaching it would take him a precious second, in which time Dubois could gun him down. But he had no other choice. He tensed; the cop was about to fill him with buckshot. It was in his eyes, the bloodlust, and the greedy anticipation. After, he’d storm into the house, and Grace would be next. He flexed his fingers, ready to make a grab for the knife.

  I’ll throw and aim for the heart. The cop is close enough. I can do it.

  Then the door opened, and Grace stepped outside. It all happened in slow motion. He would relive that moment for months and years afterward, wondering what he could have done differently. Dubois smiled and brought up the shotgun.

  “No!” Ryder shouted.

  It was like trying to fight a storm. She took another step. He pulled the trigger, and she went backward, tossed by the brutal blast. The buckshot tore open her belly, and she fell in a splatter of blood and tissue. Ryder’s hand grabbed for the knife, and as Dubois swung the Remington around, he threw the Fairbairn. It was still in the air when he reached down, snatched up the second blade, the KA-BAR, and threw. Dubois shuddered with two heavy fighting knives stuck in his chest, and he dropped the shotgun. He could only watch in terror as Ryder picked up the third knife, the Applegate–Fairbairn, paused for a fraction of a second to take aim, and sent it on its way.

  The detective staggered with the blade embedded in his throat. He pawed at the knives, trying to rip them out as his lifeblood trickled away in a wet puddle. Ryder kicked the gun, and a moment later, Dubois gasped his last breath.

  He raced to where Grace had fallen. She would have died before she knew what hit her. The rain still beat down, and his tears mingled with her blood. He knelt beside her body, racked with sobs of despair, and he couldn’t move away. He stayed there all day, kneeling beside her in the pouring rain until night began to fall, and at last he moved. His first task, to dig a grave and bury the girl he’d loved and protected. And ultimately failed to protect when it mattered the most. After he’d shoveled the last of the earth over the grave, he stood over it, repeating the prayers his father had beaten into him.

  He went through them all, excerpts from the Old and New Testaments, and when dawn arrived, he stopped, knowing he had other tasks to perform. First, he dragged Dubois’ body to the unmarked cruiser, stuffed it into the trunk, and drove out to the car graveyard in the old quarry. He abandoned the vehicle and set it alight. Then he started walking. Back at the Poesy farm, he scattered gasoline inside the house and tossed in a lighted match. Despite the soaking wet timbers, the accelerant caused the entire house to become a sea of flames inside a few minutes.

  The rain still fell in sheets, and he felt it was a punishment from God for his failure to protect the girl he’d known and loved for such a short time. It was then he made the decision to go somewhere that wasn’t so wet. California sounded good, so he started walking.

  Chapter Five

  Nolan heard him out as he explained how the retired Navy Chief Frank Callahan got together with his FBI son to clear his name. The condition was he joined the Navy. When he’d finished speaking, Ryder bowed his head and wept. He left him to his misery and went out to patrol the ground around them, just in case the hostiles had crept up on them during the night. And a chance for Ryder to recover without feeling embarrassed. Although he wasn’t on his own. The girl, Rana, stayed close to him, with a hand on his arm to give him comfort.

  He found the region clear of any movement, no human presence, and he returned to John-Wesley and the girl.

  “They’ve gone in the direction of Turkey. We’ll follow and see if we can squeeze them between us and Will.”

  Ryder looked up with bleary, reddened eyes. “Yeah, sure. Sorry about that, Boss. I guess that’s another reason for you to RTU me.”

  He didn’t answer at first. John-Wesley had loved that girl with a passion that drove him to repeatedly put his life on the line to try to protect her. Ultimately, he’d failed. It explained a lot, especially the reason he found difficulty making relationships with females. Put simply, he felt the need to care for them. To protect them from murderous scum like the cop, Dubois, and shelter them from bad things. Not that it excused his behavior in disobeying orders, but it explained a lot.

  He wasn’t a bad man, at least, not morally. Neither was he a bad SEAL. Just that Nolan needed more than an operator who wasn’t bad. He needed one who could follow the system of command, able to take orders, and act on those orders. If he didn’t, sooner or later he’d leave his comrades wide open to whatever the enemy threw at them. He didn’t know how to reply to Ryder, so he put it off.

  “We’ll talk about it later. We’ll need to move fast if we’re going to catch up with Abdullah, but what about the girl? I don't know if she could keep up.”

  “I’ll manage.” She’d been listening, and her face wore a tough, determined expression. The kind of expression that said she’d sprint through hell if it meant getting away from the Arabs. He set a hard pace. They had a lot of ground to cover. It was treacherous going until the sun peeped over the horizon. Then they could see the obstacles on the track, and he began to jog; careful to avoid the potholes, loose rock, and in places, a steep drop where the route passed perilously close to the edge. Where a man could plunge hundreds of meters to his death if he wasn’t careful.

  He allowed a break every hour. Two or three minutes to take a sip of water and rest weary legs. Each time they rested, the girl slumped, exhausted, as if she’d never get back up. But she rose with them and jogged on. He wondered what the effort was costing her. They were all soaked with sweat, tortured muscles, aching bodies racked with pain. There was no other way to catch up with Prince Abdullah, to stop him reaching his meeting with the Mullah. And then to make the money transfer that would set the suicide bombers on their deadly missions.

  By midday, they’d closed to within a few kilometers of Will Bryce’s blocking point.

  If we don’t come up on them soon, we’ve lost them.

  As he had that thought, the satcom buzzed, and he answered.

  “This is Bravo One. Go ahead.”

  “This is Two, what’s your situation?”

  He made a quick calculation. “About six klicks south of you. Any sign of the target?”

  “Oh, yeah. I called to warn you. The bastard knew we were here. How he knew I don’t know. It must have been some wandering goatherd saw us and tipped him off. Unless he has a drone in the sky.”

  Nolan automatically looked up, and it was no surprise he saw nothing. The idea of Islamic terrorists having access to drones was not unrealistic, but they wouldn’t waste one just for making a fast crossing between Syria and Turkey. They wouldn’t do anything to attract the attention of the Turks or any of the Coalition air forces. It had to be the goatherd.

  “There’s no way it’s a drone. Someone spotted you. How does it change the ambush?”

  A pause. “It’s like this, Boss. They stopped at the edge of a wide plateau, and we’re on the other side. They have to start in our direction any time soon, even if they try to work around our position. The problem is we still don’t know which one is Abdullah, or even if he’s still with them. They’ll probably veer off before they get close, and we’ll miss him. It doesn’t look good.”

  “Understood. Here’s the deal. We’ll get to the plateau as fast as we can. Hold your position, don’t start shooting, and just keep them in sight until we get there. We’ll keep coming and meet up when we have visual contact.”

  He thought for a moment. “It would still be more straightforward to call in an airstrike. There has to be at least one friendly aircraft that can reach them in time. A single Hellfire missile, and they’re toast.”

  A sigh. “I wish. Problem is we can’t be certain he’s there. If they fire a missile onto their heads, how will we know if Abdullah was there? There’d just be a bundle of rags and bloody tissue. We can’t even use DNA analysis, like they did with Osama, because we don’t have samples of his DNA to compare. All we have is the ID photo they gave us, and to confirm the target, he has to be in one piece.”

  “Roger that. We’ll do it the hard way.”

  “Don’t we always?”

  He chuckled. “As soon as we have them in sight, I’ll give the signal, and you can start shooting. That should hold them, and we’ll pick them off while they’re still out in the open.”

  “It should work,” Bryce replied, “Except there’s a lot of them, and two of us. If they use the terrain, they could flank us, and we’re screwed.”

  In which case, Will and Vince die, Abdullah gets through, and God help us all.

  “We’ll be there.”

  We have to be.

  “Yeah. Just one thing, is Ryder still with you?”

  “That’s an affirmative.”

  “He’s big on this Bible thing. Ask him to say a prayer.”

  “Prayer? A prayer for what?”

  “A prayer that we get Abdullah, that’s he’s still with them. Because if he isn’t, I don’t want to think about what happens next.”

  “Me neither. Bravo One out.”

  They started to run. The jog had seemed hard before, carrying their weapons and equipment over ground so rough a goat would have had cause for complaint. It was as nothing compared to the faster pace; running, almost stumbling, muscles on fire, lungs raw and bursting, and only iron determination kept them going. If they weren’t in position before Abdullah’s party slipped away, there’d be a massacre in the four most crucial capital cities in the world. The West would be in turmoil. Governments could collapse. It couldn't be allowed to happen.

  “Faster!” he snarled at Ryder, who was helping the girl up from her latest fall. The pace was hitting her hard, and she was almost all in, “We’re on the clock, John-Wesley, and if the clock beats this, a lot of people are going to die.”

  “I hear you,” he grunted, “but she needed help. You want me to abandon her?”

  The right answer was, ‘Yes, leave her.’ But they weren’t barbarians, like the Islamists, so he gave the only answer he could give, “No.”

  Nolan ran on in front, and the breath seared into his lungs, his chest hurt, and his leg muscles were on fire. But still he ran, ignoring the pain, ignoring the agony of trying to breathe the thin, cold air. Ran because they had a race with death. And if they weren’t there in time, death would take the number one spot.

  After the first quarter of an hour, he stopped feeling the pain, and his mind went into a kind of dream state. He was thinking about anything and everything, his kids, the good times he’d had while the family were still together. The girls he’d known, the warmth and touch of their smooth skin, the smell of their bodies, and the excitement when they came together for precious nights of passion. Ryder had fallen a few meters behind, but the girl had recovered some of her strength, and wasn’t slowing him down so much. He wondered where she’d found her reserves of strength, but it wasn’t hard to work out. When the alternative is to die, people find reserves they never realized they had.