If the Ranger was at all winded from carrying CYCLONE, he didn’t show it. Saxton had been captured, beaten, and tossed in a makeshift outhouse, but he was still keeping up with Rapp while carrying one hundred and sixty pounds of deadweight over his shoulder. A long friendship with Coleman meant that Rapp was partial to SEALs, but Saxton was doing a great job representing his branch of service.
“You’re in luck,” Rapp said as his right hand found the gap he’d been expecting. “This is our stop.”
Rapp was about to turn the corner when something made him freeze.
The whisper of sandals scraping against stone.
“What—”
Rapp blindly reached behind him, grabbed a handful of Saxton’s shirt, and squeezed.
Hard.
The Ranger fell silent.
When it came to killing, few people had Rapp’s experience, but Saxton was probably no slouch. One did not rise to the rank of sergeant in the Ranger Regiment without mixing it up on the battlefield a time or two. Rapp stopped breathing and closed his eyes, straining to pierce the all-encompassing darkness. After almost thirty seconds of silence, he’d been on the brink of believing that he’d imagined the sound when he heard the dry rasp of leather on stone again. Rapp considered easing his AK-47 around the corner and spraying but didn’t. He had one magazine remaining and was probably facing multiple opponents.
Opponents who might also be equipped with thermal night-vision devices.
The correct play was to remain silent and let the approaching men grow closer. Hopefully he’d gain a better sense of how many militants he was facing. Engaging in a gunfight under these conditions was suicide. Rapp had just settled in to wait when Saxton grabbed his shoulder and squeezed.
Hard.
“Footsteps,” Saxton whispered. “Behind us.”
He didn’t bother asking if the Ranger was sure. Instead, Rapp pictured the cave complex and the death that was approaching from two directions. He remembered being surprised as he’d followed CYCLONE into the cave proper. Surprised at the scale of the passageways as well their number. In fact, if Rapp was where he thought he was, there was a second passage on the opposite side of the hallway. He knew this because he’d expected for some reason to take the branch to the right and had been surprised when the group had turned left.
“Stay with me,” Rapp said, his voice barely audible.
Saxton squeezed his shoulder and then grabbed the back of Rapp’s shirt.
Rapp ghosted across the passageway and away from the safety offered by the wall. He kept his right arm out in front of him, fingers questing through the darkness like a blind man. The exercise brought to mind a spacewalker who had come untethered from his safety line. The wall he’d just left was his touchstone.
Without it, Rapp was adrift in a sea of black.
After several steps in which his outstretched fingertips touched nothing but air, Rapp began to worry. Like a pilot who inadvertently punches into a cloud bank and becomes disorientated, Rapp was concerned that he might be traveling parallel to the far wall instead of perpendicular. Resisting the urge to plunge blindly into the abyss, Rapp put one foot in front of the other while attempting to strike a balance between quick movement and running headlong into the unknown.
As if things weren’t interesting enough, the now-unmistakable sound of footfalls echoed from just up ahead. If Rapp didn’t find the passageway soon, he and Saxton would likely have what military tacticians charitably termed a meeting engagement with the approaching fighters. With no desire to repeat the battles of Gettysburg or Little Bighorn, Rapp lengthened his stride and stretched his right arm to its full extension.
His fingertips brushed stone.
A murmur of hushed voices now accompanied the footfalls to his right. The approaching guards were almost on top of him.
Saxton poked him in the kidney.
The men approaching from the opposite corridor had to be drawing nearer too.
For a heartbeat Rapp stood still, trying again to picture the intersection he’d briefly seen. His recollection was that the adjacent passageway was to his right, but with no way to chart his progress, he wasn’t sure. If Rapp was wrong, he and Saxton would be pinned between the wall and one or both approaching groups of gunmen. Rapp had the urge to move left, but he was also left-handed. During moments of stress, people instinctively defaulted to their dominant side, which was why lost hikers often wandered in circles.
Now was the time to trust his memory, not his instincts.
Shifting the rifle from one hand to the other, Rapp touched the wall with his left hand and began to walk right. Five strides later, he felt a breeze emanating from the second passageway an instant before his fingers located a gap in the stone. Rapp took a giant stride into the new corridor and pulled the Ranger behind him.
“Stay here,” Rapp hissed.
“Where the hell else you think I’m gonna go?” Saxton said.
Ignoring the panting Ranger, Rapp squatted. Leaning his rifle against the wall, Rapp felt across the floor with both hands until he found what he was seeking.
A rock.
Hiding in the corridor wasn’t going to be enough. With two groups of armed men prowling the darkness, and at least one of them probably equipped with night observation devices, Rapp needed to even the odds.
Edging closer to the corner, Rapp pressed himself flat against the rough stone wall.
The footfalls grew louder, but Rapp waited. He had to time this perfectly. Too soon and he’d miss his mark. Too late and he’d be discovered. Rapp counted to ten, and then threw the rock down the hall to this right. He’d slung the stone sidearm like he was skipping a rock across a pond in the hopes of getting as many collisions from the throw as possible.
It worked.
The murmurs Rapp had heard earlier crescendoed into whispers.
Then gunshots.
Rapp scampered back down the passageway, chased into the darkness by the reports of multiple AK-47s firing on fully automatic. Either his adrenaline-fueled movement had caused Rapp to misjudge the distance he covered or Saxton had disobeyed his earlier admonishment to remain still.
Rapp crashed headlong into the Ranger.
To the stout soldier’s credit, Saxton didn’t fall, but he did stagger.
