Into the Night Read Free

like some kind of funky dance.
    And, as Muldoon had hoped, the decision and gestures became unanimous. They'd head to the safety of the cave. At a dead run. Last one in was a rotten egg.
    Two more bombs hit on either side of the trail. Yes, that's right. This was a full-scale attack. Run, you terrorist scum. Run for your lives.
    But they were bottlenecked until they reached that clearing ahead. They pushed and jostled and jockeyed for position, no love lost between ZZ's and Angry's men. It was just the kind of ugly chaos he'd been hoping for.
    With one last nod at Jenk, Muldoon slipped out from his hiding place and into the severely distracted crowd.
    He had his weapon held at ready as he kept the woolen scarf wrapped securely around most of his lower face. It wasn't a good idea to go for a walk in a crowd of Taliban-supporting terrorists with a clean-shaven chin, but there weren't a whole lot of options here.
    Muldoon shouldered his way through the crowd toward the prisoner, who was having a hard time keeping up while he had what virtually amounted to a bag over his head. Itchy and Scratchy had begun pushing the guy, united at last in their attempt to make him move faster. It was inevitable, but still, the timing was perfect—the reporter tripped over his long robe and fell smack on his burqa-covered face right at Muldoon's feet.
    It was a gift from heaven, and he didn't hesitate. He hoisted the squirming reporter up and over his shoulder as Itchy and Scratchy shouted at him.
    "Don't fight me," he muttered in French into the burqa's heavy folds. "I'm here to help you."
    The struggling didn't stop, so Muldoon just gripped the reporter more tightly and focused on the shouting. The two guards might have been speaking a dialect he didn't know, or maybe they were simply talking too fast. Either way, he didn't catch a single word.
    When in doubt, shout back. And shout louder.
    "Go," he screamed at them in Pashtu. "Run. Now!"
    But it wasn't until he started to run, too, that the shouters turned the volume down a notch. Although Scratchy, to his right, had a glare that was filled with suspicion.
    The good news was that the Frenchman couldn't have weighed more than 120 pounds. It would have been laughably easy to carry him if he weren't trying his best to get away. Something solid kept jamming painfully into Muldoon's back, just hard enough to keep him thoroughly pissed off. It seemed improbable that the terrorists had let this guy keep his camera, but he couldn't figure out what else it might be.
    "Stop," he finally ordered in French. The promise of help hadn't worked, so he tried the alternative. "Stop fighting, or I'll kill you right now."
    The reporter's immediate surrender was a relief, especially since the scarf around Muldoon's very American chin was starting to come undone.
    He tightened it back up and then there he was, in the clearing that he'd noticed when his team had first crept up the trail. But he was there earlier than he'd anticipated. And the next bomb—the most important one of them all; please God, don't let it kill his men—hadn't yet struck its target.
    So he tripped and went down onto one knee, much harder than he'd intended. He landed right on a rock, right on what must've been his knee's freaking funny bone. Oh, shit, it hurt like hell, with waves of pain that rolled through him, really ringing his chimes. Still, it did the trick of slowing him down.
    The reporter started struggling again, making it that much harder for him to get back to his feet.
    Scratchy was tugging at him, shouting again. Itchy was long gone.
    Muldoon didn't need to make a show of pulling himself painfully up and then—
    Ka-boom!
    It was the bomb that he'd been waiting for, and it hit so close the concussion knocked him back on his butt. And probably onto that same freaking rock that his knee had connected with. Son of a bitch.
    It rained dust and debris and, still clutching the reporter, he scrambled to his feet and ran for