"I think we’re clear," Amber announced, "We should concentrate on getting up to the fortress and find that bomb."

  He stared back at her. “You know why we came?”

  “Of course I know, for the nuke, for Marine Sergeant Borowski, and to put a bullet in a maniac. Preferably lots of bullets.”

  He still couldn’t get over his astonishment. “How did you get here? Where did you spring from?"

  "I came in with a smugger train, horses, mules, that kind of shit. Beasts.”

  “Horse and mules?”

  “No, the men who rode them.”

  "Impressive. You said something about watching the Afghans. Has the Admiral uncovered something we should worry about?"

  "Kamal is clean, no question. It was the other one, Javed Khan. We uncovered data that links him to insurgent organizations, including Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Lashkar-e-Taiba."

  "Javed is dead. Someone shot him on the mountaintop."

  She nodded. "I know. I was there. The problem is we don't know who shot him. Is it possible it could have been Kamal?"

  "I can't believe he’d shoot his twin?”

  “Who knows? Life is cheap in this region, but it does seem unlikely. I guess he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Whatever the reasons, we need to put it behind us and get into the fortress.”

  “I agree, but hold on, you said out there that Kamal had been captured. What happened?”

  “I knew it was one of your men, but not that it was Kamal. He came out of the café on his own. They ambushed him and dragged him away.”

  “It’s likely they’ve taken him to the fortress, so we need to get up there ASAP.”

  “I can help. I’m fluent in Urdu, the local language.” She gestured at the burqa, “Besides, I look like a local, which is more than you men do in those crazy Mickey Mouse getups.”

  He chuckled. “It was the best we could do on short notice. We were supposed to be going on leave when they hit us with this one.”

  Will Bryce interrupted, "We planned on taking over a supply train, but now they’ve captured Kamal that could be out the window. You reckon he’ll talk?”

  “Everyone talks,” he said, “The sixty-four dollar question is how long he’ll hold out. I reckon we have until tomorrow morning. They’ll interrogate him through the night, and at some stage he's sure to break, so we have the rest of the day and part of the night. When he does break, and tells them we’re here, all bets are off.”

  “I agree,” Will said, “but we need to hijack that donkey convoy and start moving up that mountain. It’s time to get inside the fortress. We may even come across Kamal and get him out.”

  Nolan regarded Amber Chase for several seconds. "You said you speak the language?"

  “Fluently."

  "Then we’ll get started. One more thing, if it’s impossible to spring Kamal,” he fingered the stock of his AKM rifle; “There’s always an alternative. Better than leaving him alive with those animals.”

  He sneaked a look outside, and the men hunting them had gone. They stepped out into the snow, and Nolan led the way back to the main street. The snow lay thicker on the ground, and more was falling. Captain Chase, her burqa back in place, walked several paces behind the four SEALs, as befitted a woman in a primitive, medieval Islamic society. Now they needed to find the open sesame for the fortress. They lounged against a wall of a house, waiting, and saw what they needed. A line of donkeys, loaded with wooden crates and hessian sacks. Supplies for the fortress. The beasts went past, and Nolan nodded to his men.

  They stepped out into the street. The road curved sharply to avoid a sheer drop over a cliff. The donkeys slowed, and Nolan quickened his pace. He reached the man at the front of the train, who barked a question at him in Urdu. He was clearly suspicious. Nolan confirmed his suspicions when he banged the butt of the Sig Sauer on the man's head, and he went down in the snow. Behind him, the others were lowering the two other Pakistanis unconscious to the snow.

  They dragged the bodies to the side of the track and covered them with layers of snow. They'd be freezing cold, probably blue when they awoke, but they’d at least be alive. By which time Nolan's squad would be inside the fortress, or they’d be dead. After the shooting started, there’d be no point in concealing their arrival. He beckoned Amber Chase to join him.

  “Walk with me, and when we reach the main gate, you’ll have to distract the guards. We'll do the rest."

  Her head turned toward him, and her voice was hard. "I'll do the rest."

  He felt her eyes boring into his through the mesh. Beneath the enveloping disguise, she was no rookie. He nodded. "We’ll play it any way you like. Just get us inside.”

  The donkeys plodded slowly up the steep track toward the fortress. The journey was treacherous, slipping and sliding in the snow. The fall was still heavy, and at times the icy layer covered the exact route of the track. A split second’s loss of concentration, and a man could step in the wrong place and tumble to his death, almost a thousand meters below. He made certain to stay focused and not to lose concentration.

  They reached the gate, and two surly Pakistanis confronted them. They gabbled something in Urdu, and Nolan looked blank. Captain Chase went forward and spoke to them in urgent, soothing tones. She reached out, and her hands touched them on the hand, and on the face. He realized she was flirting with them, her voice murmuring in a low, husky, and sultry sound. They looked at each other, nodded once, and disappeared inside. The gates slammed shut, leaving the SEALs outside. Waiting, wondering. Ten minutes later, the gates opened again, by which time they were covered in snow and shivering with the icy cold. Amber Chase stood in front of them, and her burqa had disappeared. In its place she wore much the same clothes as them. Leggings, long shirt, and filthy sheepskin coat belted over the top. She beckoned him.

  "You can come in. It's clear."

  He stared back at her. "What about the guards?"

  She shrugged. "I got the impression they wanted a climax, so I gave them the climax of their lives. Sadly for them, it will also be the last. Get in here fast, before someone comes along."

  They walked through the gates, still leading the donkeys. Once inside, they left them free to roam, and Nolan walked out into the main courtyard. A score of men were milling around, some clearing snow, others carrying wooden crates unloaded from a previous supply train. None of them was close, and he made the decision to split his forces.

  "Will, take Vince and go looking for the nuke. Captain Chase, John-Wesley, we’ll take a look around for Sammy Borowski."

  Will nodded. “Sooner or later, they'll know we’ve arrived, and the shit will hit the fan."

  "In which case, we'd better be ready. We’re all carrying small quantities of explosives and remote detonators. Start planting them wherever they'll be the most useful, and we’ll detonate when we leave, before we leave if we need to.”

  Will wasn’t done. "And the nuke? How do you plan to carry it out? We can't detonate it. If we do that in this place, we all die. Try taking it out, and they’ll shred us with machine gun fire before we reach the village. A pickup by helicopter is the only way out. Thing is, if we’re going out that way, we need to fix it up now. Call it in."

  He was emphatic. "Not possible. Politics, Will, you know the orders. This is Pakistani airspace, and if we tried to sneak a nuke out to Afghanistan in one of our helicopters, they'd declare war. Nuclear war."

  Will shuddered. "Yeah, best not go that route. Any other ideas?"

  They were all staring at him now. Problem was, he didn’t have an answer.

  "I'm still thinking about it. Move out, and when you do locate the nuke, don't let it out of your sight. Don't let the bastards get near it, no matter the cost."

  "We did that before," Vince said, his voice bitter, “And what happened? They let them steal it from us.”

  "That was now. This time we’ll do it better. Let's go."

  Several doors gave access to the rooms from the inner walls of the courtyard. Bryce and Merano took the right to find their way down to the basement. It was the obvious place to conduct their search. Nolan walked with Amber at his side, and Ryder behind to locate the fake Mullah, the brave Marine, Sammy Borowski.

  He'd been a prisoner for several days and may have information to help them. Secondly, he deserved a fighting chance to escape the deathtrap he found himself in, execution at the hands of the Islamists, or death by slow, radioactive poisoning. Not much to choose between either.

  They went through the first open doorway into a wide, dark corridor. A stone staircase lay in front of them, and it had to give access to the upper rooms. Which also meant the rampart that stretched all around the fortress, at the top of the walls. A man was hurrying down the stairs, and his face registered suspicion. He opened his mouth and barked a question in Urdu. Amber spoke to him in the same language, trying to allay his suspicions. He shouted several more phrases at Nolan, listened to her for a second, scowled, walked on, and stopped.

  They made it halfway to the top when Ryder murmured, “He didn’t buy it, Boss. He’s coming after us.”

  They heard his footsteps returning and his warning shout to someone out of sight. Seconds later, two men joined him. They started to run up the staircase, and Nolan signaled for them to wait around the corner of the landing. They’d have to take them out; otherwise they’d pursue them for answers. When they didn’t get them, the shooting would start. Ryder waited on the other side of the passage. He stayed with Amber. His eyes widened as she drew a weapon from under her coat, a compact Israeli Uzi. She smiled at his surprise.

  “What did you think I’d bring with me, my makeup bag?”

  “Of course not.” He smiled inwardly. Truth was the thought had crossed his mind, “They’re almost here, quiet.”

  He cocked the AKM. She readied her Uzi and stood back a fraction to give herself a clear field of fire. He regretted what they were about to do. Alert the entire fortress they were under attack, but they had no choice. The men rushing up the staircase weren’t coming for a friendly chat.

  A pity, but that’s the way the cards fall. They were bound to tumble to us sooner or later. I guess it’s sooner.

  The hostiles reached the top. In a second they’d round the corner and spot them. He stepped out, rifle leveled. Ryder was beside him, and they cut loose with the AKs. The weapon was heavy, cumbersome, and very noisy, but it did the business, and the Pakistanis went down. Two tumbled back down the staircase, their bodies riddled with bullets. The third had escaped the worse of their fusillade, with just a single bullet in the belly. He writhed on the stone floor, screaming in pain and terror. Until Captain Chase stepped forward, put the muzzle of her Uzi to his head, and pulled the trigger. A two-shot tap, and the writhing stopped.

  He nodded in approval, although her cold dispatch of the wounded man surprised him. Shouts echoed around the lower corridors. An alarm siren began to wail its eerie warning. Boots clattered on stone as men rushed toward them. He pointed to a further flight of steps that led up to a higher level and sprinted up them. They followed, rounding a ninety-degree bend, and they flattened against the wall. Voices shouted in rage at the men they’d just killed, but so far they weren’t coming after them.

  He guessed they hadn’t cottoned on they’d gone higher and assumed they’d fled further along the corridor. Whatever the reasoning, it got them off the hook for a few precious moments. A quick glance confirmed their options were limited to two. Either go forward or go back.

  He pointed ahead. “That way, let’s go.”

  He took the point, walking quietly, and they were alone. No sound of pursuit, no shots hissing past them. They reached the end of the passage, and it opened into a gallery built above a huge room. Probably it once served as a meeting room or even a ballroom in the old days of the British Raj. Before Islam took an iron grip on the minds and lives of the region. A man wearing the remains of a tattered brown robe was strapped to a chair, and he was in a bad way. Groaning in agony as his tormentor continually slammed a fist into his belly, a fist clutching a heavy iron knuckleduster. It wasn’t difficult to understand the reason for the groans.

  They’d found Marine Sergeant Sammy Borowski. Aka Mullah Khalid Bakhtari, or what was left of him. His head was covered in blood, and it wasn’t hard to imagine the state of his body beneath the robe. He saw four other men leaning against the wall close to the massive entrance doors, which were closed. Their assault rifles were slung on their backs, and they were smiling broadly. Enjoying the spectacle of the torture, relishing the suffering of the man they assumed was the peace-loving Mullah. Savoring the unending, brutal attack designed to maim and injure, to leave a man craving death as a relief from the torment of life. He looked at Ryder.

  "We’re going down there. I want you and Amber to cover those men standing by the doors. Don’t let them escape. I'll take the two in the center. One of them looks like Firooz, their head honcho. I don't recognize the other guy, the one with his face covered. Amber, do you know who he is?”

  “No idea, but he’s begging for a bullet for what he’s doing to Sammy. The sadistic bastard has to be one of their main troublemakers.”

  “It’ll give me a deal of pleasure to put that bullet into his brain. Make sure we hit all of them before they get away. If one of them gets out through that door, they’ll bring the entire fortress down around our heads. Get in close and kill all of them.”

  Nolan started down the staircase that led into the huge hall. The floor was stone, with an enormous rug that covered most of it, and in the center to the space, Sammy Borowski, his torturer in front of him. They made it to the bottom of the steps and started walking toward the center of the room. For precious seconds, the Pakistanis took little notice. They saw several armed fighters in a fortress teeming with such men. Perhaps on a routine patrol to answer the alarm siren and make sure the room was secure.

  They were intent on watching the show, the bloodthirsty torture, and in his head he counted off distances. They were thirty meters away. Twenty meters, a man shouted a warning, and it all went wrong. The torturer was slipping away, keeping the wooden chair with the semi-conscious Borowski between him and the SEALs. A Lashkar fighter by the door unslung his AK and cut loose. Another fighter moved like lightning, slipping out through the door before they could kill him. In a few minutes, he’d be back, and he’d bring scores of fighters. If they got through that door, they were screwed.

  Chapter Three

  Ryder and Chase let loose with controlled bursts of fire, and two hostiles went down. The other two were fast and slid out through the doors, slamming them shut. The man whose face was covered reacted just as fast. He kept Borowski between Nolan and himself, and he slipped out of a door previously unseen behind some curtains. He heard the door slam shut, and he’d lost him.

  Too bad, but we’ve located Borowski, and we have Omar Firooz, the Lashkar-e-Taiba Chief of Staff.

  He rushed to untie the straps that held Borowski to the chair, while Ryder and Chase held Firooz under the muzzles of their guns. The Marine was worse than he’d thought, his eyes closed, and robe thick with dried blood. The radiation had started to poison his body, and already gray shadows and blotches had appeared. He didn’t have long to live, if they didn’t get him out and find medical attention for the radiation poisoning. He bent down and put his mouth close his ear, "Sammy, do you hear me? We’ve come to get you out."

  "I am Mullah Khalid Bakhtari. I have come on a mission of peace."

  The man was all in, semi-conscious, and endlessly repeating the story they’d sent him in with.

  "Listen, Borowski, we’re Navy SEALs. We’re taking you home."

  One bloodshot eyes flicked open. "You’re American? SEALs, you’re not kidding me?"

  "That's correct. Look, I’m going to get you up, can you can walk?"

  He helped up. "I won't know until I try. Let me go. I'm not sure if I can use my legs. I need to try.”

  They'd tortured him badly. He relaxed his hold, and the Marine slumped. He took hold again.

  "That's okay. We'll help you."

  Amber was talking to Firooz. When she’d finished, she translated, "I asked him about the nuke. In rough terms, he told me to go fuck myself."

  "Is that right?" He approached the Lashkar leader and seized him by the throat. He looked at Amber. "Does he understand English?"

  "Our intelligence says he does, yes."

  “That’s good enough for me. Mister, you stole some property that belongs to the United States government. I want it back. Where is the warhead?”

  They could hear anguished shouting from outside the main doors, and they had very little time before they burst in. Probably scared of killing their leader in an exchange of gunfire, but sooner or later, they'd decide they had no option. Firooz knew it, too, and he smiled, showing his stained and blackened teeth poking out through the bushy beard.

  "You think I would tell you anything, American? Never! Infidels shall burn in hell for their denial of the words of the one true Prophet."

  Ryder pushed him aside and held the Lashkar leader with one hand bent behind his back in a hammerlock. Firooz grunted in agony, and they ignored him. “Boss, let me deal with this. He'll talk."

  He thought for a brief moment. John-Wesley had a single idea in mind. It would be quick, brutal, and bloody, and he didn't like it. Neither did he like the idea of the Islamic crazies detonating a nuclear warhead in a major population center, murdering tens of thousands of innocent people.

  He nodded his agreement. "You got it, but make it quick, we don’t have long. We may be able to buy a few minutes before they bust in, but no more.”

  Ryder smiled and dragged the Pakistani to the corner of the huge room. Nolan turned his back and looked at Amber.

  “Get back up that staircase and cover our exit. I’ll watch the main doors. If they break through, you know what to do."