Cabrillo appreciated that the guy took a moment to think through his answer. “No, sir. Ah’m sorry, but Ah’ve been through the meat grinder since they grabbed me. Nothing’s broken, but a whole lot’s sprained.” He lifted his shirt to show a sea of dark bruises across his chest and stomach to go with the shiner around his left eye. “Ah can do maybe five miles over flat ground, but in these mountains Ah won’t make it one.”
“Why are you asking?” Linda wanted to know.
“The canyon up ahead could be a death trap if I’m right about the Predator. I’m thinking about ditching the bus and going back to our original plan.”
It would be asking too much of Linc to carry the guy out, though Juan knew the big man would give it one hell of a try. He considered making the trek in stages, but the longer they remained in the region, the greater the risk of being discovered by the countless roving Taliban patrols.
“Chairman, we’ve got a problem,” Eddie said suddenly. “I see headlights approaching.”
Cabrillo cursed under his breath. Thinking it made it happen. The only people out on the roads at night were the Talibs or their al-Qaeda allies.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Play it cool. Maybe they’ll leave us alone.”
The twin beams of light lancing out from the darkness bounced along about a half mile farther down the road. Then they swung broadside to the lumbering bus and went still. The approaching driver had angled their vehicle into a roadblock.
The good luck they’d had escaping the village had run out.
“Now what?”
“Give me a sec,” Juan replied in that same cool tone Eddie had used earlier. “What kind of vehicle do they have?”
“By the time I’ll be able to tell it’ll be too late,” Seng replied.
“Good point,” Juan said grimly. Though Juan spoke Arabic like a Riyadh native, he doubted he would be able to bluff their way past a checkpoint, not with an ethnic Chinese, a black guy, a blond one, an Indonesian kid, and the all-American girl next door.
“Go around them, and pray there isn’t a minefield next to the road. Guns at the ready.”
“Mr. Chairman,” the stranger said. “My shooting finger’s just fine.”
Juan paced forward and handed him his FN Five-seveN. “What’s your name?”
“Lawless,” he said. “MacD Lawless. Ah was a Ranger before turning to the private sector.”
“MacD?”
“Short for MacDougal. My middle name, which is only marginally better than my first.”
“Which is?”
The guy was handsome, and when he smiled he looked like a recruiting poster or a Calvin Klein model. “Ah’ll tell you when I know you better.”
“Deal,” Juan said, peering out through the windshield.
In the feeble glow cast by the bus’s headlamps he could see it was a dark pickup truck that had pulled across to block the single lane. Three men stood in front of it, their heads sheathed in turbans, their weapons trained on the bus. Two more fighters were in the open bed, one hunched over a heavy machine gun, the other ready to feed it a belt of ammunition that he cradled like an infant.
“They get us with that chatter gun,” Linc warned, “and it’s all over but the crying.”
“Looks like these guys didn’t get the memo about this being Tommy Taliban’s Magical Mystery Tour bus,” MacD quipped. Cabrillo’s measure of the man went up a notch. Anyone who could make bad jokes before combat was okay by him.
“I’m going to break left,” Eddie said, “to put the pickup’s cab between us and that old Russian PKB.”
Juan had already known which way Eddie was going to turn because it made the most tactical sense, so he was already hunkered under a window on the right side of the bus, his rifle barrel just showing above the pitted chrome sill. His mouth had gone metallic as a fresh burst of adrenaline shot into his system.
3
TWENTY YARDS TO GO. EDDIE HAD SLOWED A LITTLE, TO show he was about to comply with the men manning the roadblock, but he kept coming. None of the men arrayed before him looked overly concerned yet, but when they did, one of the soldiers put his hand in the air in a universal gesture to indicate they should pull over.