You could escape and tell the authorities about him. They could come and rescue him.
Yes, if he wasn’t already dead by then.
Don’t worry about it now. You have to get out of your cell first.
If she got through this, she was going to live her life to the fullest. She was going to go dancing and date and spend more time with her I-Team friends. She was going to take art classes and learn how to ski. She was going to learn to make beignets just like her Tante Evangeline had made them.
Ifshe got through this.
She paused again to rest, her shoulders and neck aching, a thin layer of dust coating her skin, her teeth, her throat. “Zach? Can you hear me?”
Silence.
She went back to scraping.
NATALIE LOST ALL sense of time after that, though it seemed to her it must be after midnight. Loud music drifted across the courtyard together with the sound of men’s and women’s laughter. The Zetas had gone to town for some prostitutes—those poor women!—and were having a party.
She had managed to remove one small brick so far and was close to removing another, when the steel of her cuffs hit something hard. At first she thought it was the iron of the latch. Her pulse picking up, she ran her fingers over it, only to realize it had a different texture than the adobe—and was much harder.
Concrete.
Her stomach fell, and she sagged against the wall, fighting back a cry.
No! Please no!
As much as she didn’t want to believe it, she knew it was true. When they’d installed the doors, they’d reinforced the wall with concrete because the original mortar was so weak. The latch, the hinges—they were probably all reinforced with concrete.
It’s okay, girl. It’s okay. It just means you have to take out more bricks.
She would have to remove all the bricks around the concrete, too. Which meant it would take much longer—perhaps longer than she had.
Fighting hopelessness and panic, she scraped furiously. Then she felt something catch, and her left elbow flew back, hitting the wall behind her. It wasn’t until she reached over with her right hand to rub her funny bone that she realized her left wrist was free.
ZACH LAY WITH his face in the dirt, thirsty and weak from blood loss, the pain in his back excruciating, the sat phone broken. But that didn’t matter. He’d completed the call. Support was on its way—probably a chopper full of pissed-off SEALs and Army Night Stalkers.
The guys would be okay. He might not get out alive, but his element would.
From down in the valley came the sound of three M4s and one HK MP5 firing.
Give ’em hell, boys.
Blood loss making him desperately thirsty, Zach raised his head, prayed to God his pack was within reach—and then he saw. His body went cold.
Oh, Christ, no!
At least eighty enemy combatants snaked down the mountainside across from him, headed straight for the valley, all of them armed. They would come up behind his team and catch the men by surprise. The guys would be caught in a cross fire by an enemy that outnumbered them and had the high ground.
By the time support arrived, it would be too late—for all of them.
He reached for his rifle, determined to send as many Taliban fighters to hell as he could, only to find his hands chained behind his back. He couldn’t move.
Then Brian’s wife, Debbie, walked up to him, dressed in black, tears streaming down her face, baby in her arms. “You should have died, not my husband. Not my husband!”
From the valley below came an explosion of gunfire and the cries of dying men.
“Zach? Can you hear me?”
Zach gasped, opened his eyes, and saw nothing, the taste of blood and horror in his mouth. Cold, dirty stone pressed against his skin, his left side aching.