Unholy Code

Chapter 33

Bullets rip through the front walls of Fayah’s house, shattering windows and shredding sheetrock. Spirals of white dust swirl in the air above Lana and Emma as they dive to the entryway floor.

Cairo drops beside them, as though trained to belly down when the ammo starts to fly.

The shooting stops abruptly after tearing a line of holes across ten feet of wall and windows.

Lana springs to her feet with one of the M16s she grabbed from upstairs. “Stay down,” she orders her daughter and dog, peering through one of three small squares of glass in the upper part of the door.

She sees nothing but trees and thick brush. Lana has no doubt that Fayah’s allies want to reclaim the house and their reputation as fighters: the ceiling cams showed a woman thwart their gruesome plan to chainsaw Emma and Lana to death.

The Russian woman and the border collie scale the stairs. So much has transpired in so few seconds. She sees Fayah’s armory of rifles and Glocks.

“Who are you?” Lana asks, keeping her eyes on the area in front of the house.

“Ludmila Migunov.” She grabs an M16.

“You know how to use that?” Lana asks.

“Russian army five years. Private security U.S., pro football. Do you?” she asks, checking her magazine.

Before Lana can respond, she spots two men sprinting toward the door. She smashes a pane with the butt of her rifle and cuts them down as they barrel within twenty feet of it.

“Answer is yes,” Ludmila says, patting Lana’s shoulder.

Lana keeps looking for the enemy, wondering how many more are out there. Without looking back, she asks Ludmila why she’s there.

But the Russian’s already sprinting with the M16 and her dog to the far side of the great room that runs the length of the house and opens to the kitchen. The vantage point gives her views of the side and back of the bungalow.

“Husband Bones Jackson,” she calls out. “Met on goodwill tour, Russia. Horvat bastard to him. I come back to kill him. Day late, dollar short. But hate these bastards, too. Kill father in Kabul. Who they killing now?” she asks as shooting resumes, but farther from the house. She looks out a window and answers her own question: “Helicopter.”

Lana sees the chopper now. No, two choppers. They’re taking fire from the woods about one hundred feet away. The birds fly almost directly overhead. The house shudders from the backwash and loud whup-whup-whup of the rotors.

“Killer Egg. Delta Force,” Ludmila calls out.

“Killer what?” The choppers wheel toward the lake.

“MH-6 helicopter. Good news.”

It appears to be stupendously good news to Lana — on both birds heavily armed soldiers sit on platforms on each side of the cabin.

What a relief.

Or would have been if a heat-seeking missile didn’t rip out of the woods that very second and blow up the one in the lead, incinerating it in a microsecond. The other chopper starts evasive maneuvers. Too late. A second missile takes it out. Two fireballs drop below trees far from the house.

Lana hopes they fell into the lake, which might spare lives.

She nudges Emma with her foot. “I want you in the basement. They’ve got missiles. It’s all concrete down there. Take a gun.”

“I don’t know how to use that kind,” Em says, standing slowly.

She’s fired revolvers at a gun range with her mother, but not semi-automatics. They were next in her weapons training, which had been upended by the swiftly escalating violence of recent events.

Lana glances, sees it’s clear, and grabs a Glock. She racks it, inserting a round into the chamber, and hands it to her daughter. “It’s all ready. Remember, two hands, point and shoot. Go!”

Emma scampers toward the cellar door, watched closely by Cairo. Lana hopes Em can handle being around the remains of the bloodbath down there. Better than dying up here.

Em freezes at the sight of Fayah’s chainsawed chest. The blade is still buried in her body. She hears more shooting and forces herself to go down the last few steps.

The door slams behind her. She figures that’s her mother’s doing. All Em’s really worried about is the woman who tried to cut her in half for all the world to see.

She looks down at her captor again.

What if she’s still alive?

Em tells herself that’s not possible. Rationally, she knows this is true, but her skin feels like it’s crinkling from her groin to her upper back, as if she’s made of tinfoil. The brute fear also shallows her breath.

She tries to step around the blood. That’s hard, it’s everywhere. And then it’s impossible — because the lights go out.

Ludmila tosses Lana a phone as shots tear into the house again. Cairo flattens on the floor. Glass shatters in the kitchen. Lana looks up, drops the device and fires toward the back door three times. A bearded body crashes into a counter and onto the floor.

Lana sprints forward and looks over a half-wall divide into the kitchen. The man’s hand grasps his abdomen. She sees a wire and shoots him twice in the head, yelling to Ludmila, “Suicide vests.”

Black smoke billows into the sky more than 150 yards away from the crash of one of the choppers; the other must have fallen into the lake. She retrieves the phone and backs up till she can keep an eye on the front of the house. Then she keys in a code for a Department of Defense command center. It’s so secret she’s never known where it’s located or even if it’s ground-based.

“Identify yourself,” a man says.

Lana reels off a digital code, then a series of letters in Alpha-Bravo- Charley style before reporting the Delta Force choppers down at Hayden Lake. “Heat-seekers hit them.”

“We have it on satellite.”

“We need help. We’ve got two adults and a seventeen-year-old. We don’t know how many we’re facing.”

“Our count is eighteen. You have some dead inside, correct?”

“Yes. But eighteen more? Can’t you get us help? We’re way outgunned. One of them had a vest.” Shots ring out in front of the house and behind it. “You hear that?” Lana yells as Ludmila takes cover behind a blue enamel wood stove and forces the border collie into the down position.

“We’ve alerted the county sheriff and local police. The chief is on his way.”

“Please tell me you’re deploying forces from Fairchild Air Force Base.” Lana recalls her planned testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the mistake of relying too heavily on local law enforcement during national emergencies. Then a national emergency — a terrorist attack on the Capitol — claimed scores of lives and shut down the hearing.

“Negative. We sent you everything we have… ”

Which isn’t much these days.

“… and now we need you to deploy at the first opportunity to see if there are any survivors on those MH-6s.”

“Seriously? You want us to go out there? They were coming to rescue us.”

“And they were downed by enemy fire. Ms. Elkins, you’ve had more combat experience in the past two years than anyone I could possibly send your way. I repeat, can you deploy for any survivors? We have no one else available.”

“We’ll see.” Lana ends the call. Ludmila’s staring at her.

“They’re sending the local police chief and Deputy Dawg.” The cartoon reference means nothing to the Russian. “And they want us to see if there are any survivors.”

The back door flies open. Ludmila is targeted by at least two more men bursting into the house. Maybe three. It’s hard for Lana to keep count as she upends a coffee table, using it to shield her advance.

Ludmila hits one man, who pitches forward as Lana wings a second. He drops his AK-47. She abandons the table and runs to the short wall once more. Peering over the top, she sees him grabbing his shot-up arm and nails him twice with the Glock.

“Just two?” she shouts to Ludmila, who shrugs and shakes her head.

We gotta know. But Ludmila’s view has been hampered by the stove she’s keeping between her and the men trying to take back the house.

An explosive blows open the front door about fifteen feet behind Lana. She pivots and sees a rifle poke through the smoke and dust. Before Lana can shoot, the Russian delivers a burst from her M16 that knocks the attacker back out the opening. The border collie cowers behind her.

Six down, fifteen more to go. But Lana knows a single heat-seeker could blow up the whole place.

She hears a siren growing louder and races to the gap where the door stood until seconds ago. She spots a Hayden Lake Police SUV and two pickup trucks with heavily armed men in the beds covering their flanks. The three vehicles brake about a hundred feet away, no doubt to give the chief a chance to assess the situation before drawing his men any closer. But blasts of gunfire behind the vehicles force all of them to speed toward the house.

The SUV’s rear window explodes and a bullet exits the center of the windshield, narrowly missing Lana’s arm.

She throws herself behind the doorframe as the vehicles skid to a stop feet away. The armed men jump over the body of the jihadi Ludmila just killed and dash inside. Using the doorframe for cover, the chief pumps a shotgun and fires at the first hostile who’s foolish enough to pursue them at close range. The man falls to the gravel drive with a gaping stomach wound.

With his eyes now scanning the front area, the short, barrel-chested chief asks, “Why didn’t you answer my call? We almost got killed out there.”

“I didn’t get any call. Been a little busy here.”

“They out back, too?” he asks, looking at her for the first time.

“All over,” she replies. “They took down two choppers. Fourteen of them left, we think. Is the county sheriff coming?”

“He’s thirty minutes out. We’ve got my posse here.” He eyes the men.

So does Lana. Some have got to be in their sixties. “Do you guys have any experience? This is war.”

The chief points to the older gents. “They’re Vietnam combat vets. Those guys,” he indicates the other five, “are from Operation Iraqi Freedom. They’ve got more medals for bravery than you’ve got bullets, so maybe some gratitude’s in order.”

“Sorry, I didn’t realize that.”

“Who’s she?” the chief asks, glancing at Ludmila.

“Russian army vet. She’s real good.” Ludmila nods at him. “Command wants us to go out and look for Delta Force survivors.”

“I know. They briefed me. And ISIS and Al Qaeda want this house back for a webcast so they can slaughter you guys online, right?”

“Exactly.”

“These guys are gonna be some mighty disappointed monsters. Can you handle that search and rescue?”

“I’ve got my daughter hiding downstairs. I’m not leaving her.”

“We can hold this place,” the chief says. “Guaranteed. If you and the Russian are willing to go after the downed soldiers, Will here can go with you.” He glances at a tall, light-haired man. “He knows these woods like the back of his hand.”

Lana studies the men before her. They look loaded for bear. Not weekend warriors. Real protection for Emma, thank God.

“You up for this?” Lana asks Will.

“I’m ready,” the younger man replies.

“I’ll leave one of my guys with your kid,” the chief says. “And the rest of us will set up a perimeter here. They’re not taking this place or your daughter. This is America. This ain’t Mosul.”

Lana hates to leave Emma, but the chief’s posse is already fanning out like a steel curtain around the house. And if any of the soldiers or pilots on those choppers survived… well, she knows what it’s like to be taken captive — and two years ago she also knew what it meant to be saved by heroes in helicopters.

It’s payback time, she tells herself.

In so many ways.

Minutes ago, during the most recent spate of shooting, Emma heard heavy footsteps overhead. She hears more now and someone pounding into the house. Then, almost as quickly, there are other footfalls and a grotesque moan that makes her stiffen. Somebody falls to the floor right above her.

In seconds, a jihadi with a gun and bloody knife slips through the cellar door, spilling enough daylight to let her to know she’s facing a killer all on her own.

Was it also long enough for him to notice her crouched in the corner? She doesn’t think so. Emma definitely can’t see him in the dark. She can’t even hear him. Since he came down the stairs he hasn’t made a sound. She’s trying to be super quiet, too, but worries even breathing will give her away. She starts taking short breaths, but can’t stop shaking as she holds the gun. Maybe he can hear that. Maybe he’s right there. She stares at the darkness in front and to the sides of her.

“I see you,” he says softly.

How?

But she doesn’t doubt him. And he sounds close.

You’ve got a gun, she reminds herself over and over. But he’s moving closer. He just took a step and made a squishy sound. Blood. Gotta be. She tenses. She’s wildly tempted to shoot, but holds her fire. If he doesn’t know where she is, she’d be giving herself away.

There… she hears him again.

Oh, God. Does she ever.

He’s coming closer.

Lana, Ludmila, and Will run to the woodpile. Pine scents riddle the air. So does smoke. The drought-stricken forest is burning up ahead. At least one of those fiery choppers must have crashed into the trees.

Will peers over the thick stack. “There’s a deer trail over to the right,” he says. “We might even get around most of the smoke heading that way. We got us a little onshore breeze that comes up in the afternoons around here. It’s going to push the smoke and fire this way. Away from wherever those birds crashed.”

Lana looks around. Smoke’s plenty thick where they are. Up ahead it’s so dense it looks clotted.

Will leads them to the trail. Lana has to choke down the urge to cough. Ludmila’s doing the same. But the smoke also gives them cover. Taking the good with the bad.

They draw closer to the fire as they move along the meandering trail, and hear the eerie crackle of flames shooting up towering firs fast as squirrels. The boughs are brilliantly red, spilling cones that look like splashes of fire as they fall. On the ground, they spark the brittle underbrush. Heat wafts over them.

Lana can’t see how any of the Delta Force operators could have possibly survived. First, both of those choppers were blasted into fireballs. Second, they crashed. Third, the jihadis would have been on them like hyenas.

Skirting the fire line, they spot the first helicopter’s roasting carcass and take cover behind a closely knit stand of trees. Lana guesses the second incinerated bird went down over the lake. She’s about to tell Ludmila and Will her three reasons for turning around when they spot a soldier with blackened skin, shirt all but burned off his back. He’s stumbling in their general direction, his eyes on the ground.

What Lana and her cohorts don’t see are the eyes looking down on the soldier, staring from a camouflaged deer blind in an ancient oak.

Tahir Hijazi commands the coalition of ISIS and Al Qaeda jihadis from the tree’s thick limbs. He ordered a small tactical squad to try to take back the house quickly. They failed. Now Tahir guides the rest methodically. He advances them with the cold calculating precision of a man deeply versed in killing, much as he’s orchestrated this entire operation, with help from Fayah, for many months now.

He watches the badly scorched American soldier stumble away. He’ll die, Tahir thinks, either from the burns or the bullets of the jihadis, and will never know the real nature of the historic ISIS and Al Qaeda reconciliation that will soon become known to everyone. Its shocking culmination will be on full display here in the heart of America. Undercover for more than twenty years, he’s been providing information and disinformation, depending on the time, place, and people. He’s been playing the perilous role of a double agent, always looking for threats from every conceivable direction. But also delivering deadly blows when others least expect them.

That was what he expected to do today, because Tahir has played the game consummately well. He’s carefully enticed the world’s top jihadi operatives into a grand ambush by the Americans. A deadly sting operation worthy of his long career.

A few years ago he accepted that he couldn’t keep playing the double agent forever. His CIA handler insisted he’d be killed if he didn’t relocate to the U.S. So precisely when the cyberwars began in earnest, Tahir arrived in Bethesda — a suburb home to so many spies and government officials. Both he and his handler believed having him in the town would play well with the men Tahir was duping in Al Qaeda and then ISIS. And it had.

Tahir hatched a plan to cripple the monstrous forces heaping shame on Islam with their ceaseless slaughter of innocents: He would lure them to America with the promise of chainsawing to death Lana Elkins, the U.S.’s most celebrated cyberwarrior, along with her daughter. They leapt at the opportunity, knowing Steel Fist’s execution would trigger a violent backlash against American Muslims that could drive many into the ranks of radical Islamists. Moreover, every move would be captured on camera to inspire jihadis worldwide.

How could they resist such powerful bait from a trusted confidante and proven killer?

He planned each step down to Emma’s abduction by Fayah, an old comrade.

But the Americans underestimated the firepower and skill of jihadists, as they had so many times before. As soon as the choppers were shot out of the sky, Tahir knew his own plans had also gone down in flames and that nothing could stop the jihadis he’d cultivated for so long. The forces that were to ambush his presumed allies were dead.

Now, against his every wish, he must command a military operation to murder the very people he wanted to save. The irony is as horrid as it is unavoidable — if he is to continue working as the U.S.’s most valuable agent in the radical Islamist underground. Only his CIA handler, the director of the agency, the President, and the very highest echelon of the intelligence community have ever been aware of the role he’s played, or how critically positioned he’s been for so many years. “Need to know” hasn’t been applied so strictly to anyone since the height of the Cold War.

He looks down from the deer blind in disgust, watching a fighter from Jordan level his rifle on the soldier. But the Jordanian lifts his eyes from his rifle sight. Tahir sees why: two women and a man are rushing to aid the wounded American. The jihadi is doing what Tahir has done many times: waiting until the four come together so he can gun them down all at once.

The smoke forces Tahir to use binoculars. A dark-haired woman is in the lead. She’s now less than twenty feet from the burned man. Tahir focuses on her. Lana Elkins… just as he suspected.

She’s a gutsy woman. He’s disappointed she’ll have to die. But he hasn’t survived by making decisions based on sentiment. He’ll have to remain a double agent until he can set up ISIS and Al Qaeda again. He has no choice, not if the U.S. is to prevail in the long run.

He watches as Lana’s death begins to play out. He thinks of Emma and Sufyan, knowing his nephew will suffer terribly for the killings. They’ll kill Emma as they planned, and at some point Sufyan will see her execution by chainsaw.

Tahir tells himself to be resolute. This is war.

But he has seen Sufyan’s love for Emma. The boy spoke of it in Lana’s living room. He remembers Emma’s tears when she professed her deep feelings for his nephew. And he remembers his own words to them: “If you are ready to die for love, then you must be ready to kill for it.”

The Jordanian is sighting Lana and the others that very second. Three more jihadis come up behind him. They raise their rifles, too. They are silent predators, as quiet as the death the four rescuers will soon know.

Elkins reaches for the soldier. Her companions step behind her. The four are now close together.

Four shots ring out in fast succession. The lethality is devastatingly effective. All the bodies crumple to the ground. Whatever they found noble in their mission dies as Tahir watches, cheek still pressed to the stock of his rifle.

He’s shot the Jordanian and the three jihadis by the man’s side. A fifth now appears, staring at Tahir, eyes wide at what his commander has done. He’s already on his phone, surely alerting the others. Tahir has known this Al Qaeda fighter since they fled Afghanistan together. As the man darts toward a tree, Tahir shoots him, too, declaring his ultimate allegiance.

Tahir has killed for Sufyan, for the boy’s future. He has killed for love.

He sees Lana staring at him. She looks shocked. She staggers, like she’s dizzy for a second or two. But maybe she also sees that the deaths he’s delivered will not be enough. At best Lana and her cohorts have only the slightest chance of succeeding, as Tahir judges it highly unlikely the jihadis can be defeated by two women, two men, and a soldier who looks like he’s dying.

But Tahir knows nothing of the veterans who’ve established a perimeter around the house. What he would recognize now, if he could see them in their ball caps and hunters’ camo, is a fierceness he knows well: the strength that comes from making a firm and final decision to defend decency.

Lana watches Tahir race toward them, tells her companions to hold their fire as she kneels by the soldier, who’s collapsed to the ground.

“Pull him out of sight,” Tahir orders. “We can’t take him. We are outnumbered two to one.”

“No we’re not,” Will says. “I don’t know who you are—”

“He’s with us,” Lana interrupts.

“—but we’ve got six combat vets securing the house.”

“Not enough,” Tahir says. “It will be guerilla war in this forest.”

“Which is burning down,” Will responds. “We can drive them like animals right into the arms of my buddies out there.”

“The jihadis are all headed to the house, right?” Lana says to Tahir.

“That is correct.”

“Then we just have to make sure they can’t retreat. And they won’t know we’re behind them.”

Tahir nods, but Lana senses his uneasiness. She has worries of her own. “What about the heat-seekers? Will they use them on that place?”

“No, they want the victory on camera. They will die before giving that up.”

“That’s what I figured.” Web propaganda savvy, as always.

Will calls in the plan to the chief, who tells him they’ll be ready.

Lana and Tahir carry the soldier to the base of the tree with the deer blind.

She, Ludmila, Will, and Tahir circle back, making sure they’re well behind the invaders. Much of the forest is burning, but they glimpse men up ahead advancing along both edges of the fire line.

Lana and Ludmila trail the men on the right, keeping a good couple hundred feet between themselves and the jihadis. Will and Tahir track the men skirting the flames on the left. With all the fire and smoke, it looks like the gates of hell.

Emma hears shooting farther from the house. She feels horribly abandoned and scared out of her mind, but she can’t make a sound because the man is still down there with her in the dark.

Somewhere.

Minutes pass. An eternity for the terror she feels. She can’t hold the gun out any longer. Her arms throb from the weight, her stomach from fear.

She tries mightily to make her ears hear more than they’ve ever heard before. But of course they can’t. Neither can she understand how he can possibly move without giving himself away. Then she startles when she hears him only a couple of feet to the side. She fires impulsively before realizing he’s tricked her by tossing a tool or…

Or a what, Em? she says to herself. A head?

She feels sick. Now he knows exactly where she is.

He throws something else. It lands right in front of her. She doesn’t fall for that stunt again. But this time it’s no trick. He grabs the gun and twists it away from her.

“I’ve got you,” he says merrily with an American accent. One of the country’s homegrown horrors. “I had to kill some old creep up there to get to you, and now it’s your turn.”

He forces her to the concrete, jamming his knee into her chest until her ribs feel like they’ll crack. Then he pulls out a penlight and points it at her face, blinding her. “Let’s finish what Golden Voice started.”

He drags Emma across the floor and begins cuffing her to the posts. She screams herself hoarse and tries to fight him off. He pistol-whips her so fast she’s paralyzed with pain and, bereft of hope, gives up because they really are alone in the house. Em’s sure of it now. Her mother would have saved her somehow.

Now that she’s spread-eagled on the floor, he pulls the chainsaw out of Fayah’s chest and starts it. “Still works.” He waves it in front of Emma’s face before letting it idle. “But first, I’m checking the breaker box. Gotta get those cameras working.”

She watches him rest the chainsaw inches from her head and rush up the stairs, where he pauses to look out. Before disappearing from view, he calls out to her, “It’s just you and me.”

Not quite.

A moment later Cairo stands at the top of the stairs. Emma sees him backlit, his nose in the air, sniffing.

“Come, please come,” she calls to him.

The old dog descends slowly and ambles over to her. He sniffs her cuffs, as he had her Mom’s. “Yes, do it,” Em says to him, having no idea what kind of command makes a dog free you. Maybe no command. Maybe instinct for his master.

Em would never learn the answer because the jihadi returns, throwing on the lights. The camera directly above her responds to movement, pointing down at Emma. She tells Cairo to sit. The dog settles on his haunches.

As the young man approaches, she begs him not to hurt Cairo. “He’s my dog. He’s really old. Just leave him alone, please.” Her plea is genuine, and she doesn’t have to force the tears, but she’s trying to pull off a trick of her own.

“Your pet, huh?” he says, smiling.

“Yes,” she sobs. “He’s old and sick. Just leave him alone.”

The guy walks closer. Cairo glances at him, but remains sitting as commanded.

“Good dog, eh?” He smiles, petting Cairo’s head.

The dog remains still.

“So you won’t hurt him, then?” Em says, crying.

“No, why would I do that?”

The man crouches down, one hand on Emma’s breast, the other resting on Cairo’s shoulder. He’s petting both. “Matter of fact, I’ll give him a new home ‘cause he’s gonna need one, right, boy?” His hand moves back to Cairo’s head, which he strokes affectionately.

“Don’t ever hurt him, whatever you do.”

“Of course not, but I’m gonna have to hurt you. You’ve got it coming. Him, never,” he adds with a glance at Cairo.

Em’s trying desperately to remember the command for attack. Kill? Get him? She and her dad learned all that with the trainer when they brought Jojo home. She thought it would be the same with Cairo but she can’t remember.

Em’s about to try “Kill!” when the man pulls Cairo close to cuddle.

With a grisly growl, the old Malinois rips into his face, tearing off beard and cheek down to his jaw, then seizes the bastard’s neck and pins him to the floor.

Cairo has one of his own commands: never ever try to cuddle with me.

He’s growling with a mouthful of neck, fangs deep in the man’s flesh.

He shakes his prey as he might a big fat rat, and looks at Emma, who sees the man reaching for his gun.

“Kill him!” she screams.

A second later, certainly no more, there is only a gaping red hole where the man’s throat was.

Jugular severed, he bleeds out quickly.

Cairo starts to work on one of Emma’s wrist cuffs.

Lana moves as quietly as she can to the right of the charred, smoldering forest. Ludmila is by her side. The flames move forward on the strength of the onshore breeze.

She and Ludmila have one objective: keep the jihadis in front of them so the chief and his posse can ambush every last one of them.

Each step Lana takes in the brittle undergrowth sounds like a thunderclap to her, even though the sharp crackle of burning trees and bushes overwhelms their footfalls.

There are at least six killers up ahead on their side of the fire.

Lana knows she’ll do anything to stop those madmen from slaughtering the vets and getting into that house. That cellar. Emma always foremost in mind.

Looking left, she glimpses Tahir and Will, the one so dark, the other fair. She remembers meeting Tahir for the first time, the anger she felt from him as palpable as molt. But Tahir’s love for Sufyan, and his nephew’s love for Emma, had turned the former jihadist around. The irony of love’s role in bringing them to this blood-ridden battleground is not lost on Lana.

Ahead of her, through shifting veils of smoke, she sees jihadis nearing Fayah’s backyard.

Ludmila, as tall as Lana, settles next to her and motions for her to kneel in the sparse cover. They both watch as the bearded men venture into the open.

When the posse’s first shots ring out, she and the Russian duck deeper into the unburned forest to their right, seeking shelter from the potential friendly fire.

Two jihadis are hit instantly. Four others race forward shooting and are also cut down. But the rearmost fighter retreats, running hard from the posse’s small-arms barrage. He barrels into the forest and hunkers down.

Lana and Ludmila watch him. They creep forward, staying low.

One of the men in the yard looks back at the sound of their shooting, but the next instant is killed himself.

Lana hears distant shots and sees that Tahir and Will on the far side of the fire are also cutting down jihadis. One of the men in front of them barrels toward the woodpile before detonating his suicide bomb. His cohorts, Lana guesses, must already have been hit. The woodpile, eight feet deep and six feet high, is singed and shakes violently. Most of it, though, remains standing.

The shooting stops, but Lana feels the tension still building. Who among the jihadis is simply wounded and now waiting with his hand on a button? And there’s the man hiding ahead of them in the trees.

They continue moving toward him, wary of another suicide vest, when he rises up with the rocket launcher, which must have been stashed behind a tree. Lana realizes the missile is the jihadis’ last resort. She and Ludmila open fire, cutting him down.

After moving closer, Ludmila shoots him in the head, taking no chances. The pair enter the clearing with extreme caution, every step feeling like a passage through a minefield, not of munitions but of men.

Ludmila puts a bullet into the brains of all six bodies. Lana didn’t have the stomach for systematically executing men who might be wounded, but she can’t deny that she’s grateful for Ludmila’s actions.

The posse has yet to step from behind the woodpile, but the police chief calls out to them: “Thirteen accounted for here, plus the seven back at the house. There’s still one out there.”

“No, he’s in here,” Emma calls from the house.

Lana can’t see her daughter, but warns her to stay inside.

“Cairo killed him,” Em goes on.

“Then that’s twenty-one, all of ’em,” the chief yells.

But it’s not over.

At that moment, Lana realizes the posse doesn’t know about Tahir.

They’ll mistake him for—

“We have an African man with us now,” she yells, interrupting her own thoughts. “He’s one of us.”

Her shouts issue just as Tahir steps from the brush and smoke to join Will, who’s keeping his distance from the fallen, but eyeing them carefully.

Tahir, like Ludmila, spares no sentiment. He shoots six of the enemy in the head, veering left for the seventh, a man lying crumpled on the ground. Tahir raises his rifle for the last time when the jihadi detonates his suicide vest.

Will, Ludmila, and Lana dive for the ground as a roaring pressure wave expands the air around them. She hears burning fragments whistle by her, every one of which can kill or maim.

“Ludmila?” she says the second she knows that she herself has been spared.

“Fine,” the Russian replies.

So is Will. But Tahir is not.

Lana runs to the bloodshed, hoping for a miracle. There is none. She freezes at the sight, eyes squeezing shut. All she can think about is the life-saving choice the Sudanese made minutes ago up in the deer blind. He didn’t have to kill the four jihadis. He could have let her die along with Will, Ludmila, and the soldier. But he bet that after so many years of his double life, he could take a final stand and try to give his family a stable future.

And perhaps he had.