Edge Of Truth

“What is this?” He swept an arm around, blinking moisture into his eyes. This, meaning: What the hell was this place, what the hell was he doing here and who the hell was she? He patted his pockets. Empty. No holster, no pistol, no knife, no tac vest, no utility belt. No helmet—had he been wearing one?

“You’re Australian?”

“You’re American.” He swore as his brain caught up. “You’re that missing journalist.”

So this was what deep shit looked like. He shut his eyes tight and pinched the top of his nose. The dressing pulled at his scalp. Think. His unit got ambushed, right? The last memory his brain could locate was of running through a village—goats scattering ahead of them, Angelito shouting commands, the thuck-thuck-thuck of enemy fire. They dropped back behind a concrete hut. Levanne went down, in the open. Flynn dashed out to help him. Then, a crunch—hot pain in his skull, bullets zipping around, fabric smothering his face. No, no helmet—just his useless beret. He’d been chucked onto a truck bed or something, fighting to breathe, retching on a chemical smell.

He gagged at the thought. He’d been captured—by al-Thawra, seeing as he was with the reporter. What was her name—Newell, right? Tess Newell. A big deal in the States—her kidnapping had been all over CNN. She didn’t look it now, with blond hair pulled back and dirt smearing her face. Pain twisted behind his eyes. He winced, which made it worse. What’d happened to Angelito and the others? So much for their routine patrol.

“I have painkillers.” She limped past him and unzipped a bag. “Only over-the-counter stuff, but it might take the edge off. Here.”

He took the offered trays and popped out four, for starters. She zipped away her first-aid kit and passed him a fresh water bottle from a plastic-wrapped stash in the corner. He slugged back the pills.

“You fixed me up,” he said, pointing to his head. As she nodded, a memory filtered in. More like a feeling—of relief, of knowing he was looked after, of surrendering the fight to stay awake, to stay alive. Hell, how far had he lowered his guard?

“You know where this place is?” he said. “What this place is?”

“A compound of some sort, somewhere remote.”

He swallowed another mouthful of water. “Narrows it down.” Remote described 95 percent of the Horn of Africa—assuming they were still in Africa. They could have crossed over to the Middle East. Hell, they could be in the Bahamas. “You were sedated when they brought you here?”

“Yes... So you’re Australian?”

“French,” he corrected, automatically.

“You don’t sound French.”

“Eees zees betterrrr, mademoiselle?” Dickhead. Nine years of faking a French accent whenever he spoke English to strangers, and he chooses a hotshot journalist to slip up to? “I was taught English by an Australian. It comes out in the accent sometimes.” Not a lie. He’d learned English from a whole town of Australians—the shit heap where he’d grown up.

“Wow, that’s a strong influence. So you’re—what?—French Army?”

He patted the Tricolore on his left arm. She squinted, her gaze drifting up to the legion patch. With luck she wouldn’t know what it meant.

“‘Légion Étrangère,’” she read awkwardly. “You’re Foreign Legion.”

Bloody hell.

“But aren’t their soldiers foreign—hence the name?”

“Not all,” he said quickly. Several Frenchmen in his company had masqueraded as Canadians or Belgians to get a new identity, but he wasn’t about to tell a journalist that. “Anyway, I’m a lieutenant—officers are drawn from regular army.” Usually. They’d made an exception for him and Angelito. He went to shove his fingers through his hair, but hit the bandage and stopped, clenching his teeth. “Too many questions, lady. What is this—60 Minutes?”

She started. “Sorry—habit.” Her tone softened. “I’ve had a while longer to get my head around this.”

And there was that feeling again. It was her voice—quiet and husky. That voice had filtered through the haze last night like some angel’s prayer. At his fuzziest he’d wondered how a reprobate like him had made the cut for heaven. Lucky he hadn’t been able to see her—he’d have immediately sold his soul to the nearest deity, even if her clothes looked like they’d been washed in mud. The stench of mouse piss should have been a giveaway that this was nowhere close to heaven.

He checked his watch. Nearly 0800. Late. Angelito would be going apeshit—if he was alive. He’d better bloody be alive. Tu n’abandonnes jamais ni tes morts, ni tes blessés. You never abandon your dead, your wounded. Angelito would have risked everything to save Flynn—they all would have.

She tilted her head. “Have we met? There’s something about you...”

No. Anything but that. “Believe me, I’d remember. I just have one of those faces, that’s all...” Deflect, soldier. “Have they hurt you?” No obvious injuries, but he couldn’t see jack in this hole.

“Nothing too bad. Hamid wants me looking pretty for the execution.”

“Son of a bitch—Hamid Nabil Hassan is here, in person?” Shit was getting worse. The man at the top of every terrorist watch list, here. “Is this al-Thawra’s headquarters? What country are we even in?” Think. His brain clunked over. “Intel has you being held in Somalia.”

“I wouldn’t trust it. But that’s possible.”

Something clattered—a key in a lock—and a door squealed. Footsteps thumped above. Metal clunked. She grabbed his wrist with a cold hand and pulled him clear of a square hatch cut into the boards overhead, a few inches above his six-three height. Lucky he hadn’t smacked his head on the roof when he’d leaped off the bed. Bed. Hell. Somehow he’d wound up curled up in bed with the Tess Newell—spooning the Tess Newell.

Above them men spoke—and a woman. He caught a breathy “eshi”—okay, in Amharic. So maybe this was Ethiopia? “It’s Hamid,” Tess hissed.

Flynn pulled her behind his back. She was half the size she looked on TV—he could hide two of her.

The hatch shifted, releasing square-cut blades of light. Someone grunted, and it lifted. They were in a dugout under a concrete-block building, by the look of it. An M16 barrel poked into the hole. “Do not move, soldier,” said a thickly accented voice. A rope ladder dropped down.

As the rifle eyed Flynn, two men in camo gear jumped through the hole, landing with knees bent and barrels aimed. One looked Middle Eastern, maybe Ethiopian. The other was darker skinned and taller—Somali? They fanned out as a figure descended the ladder, his shape masked by a robe. Tess sucked in a breath and stepped out from behind Flynn, drawing away one of the rifle barrels. Her face was set in the don’t-feed-me-bullshit expression he knew from TV. A mask, probably, but bravery usually was. If you weren’t scared shitless in a situation like this, you were a fool.

The robed man touched the floor, spun and pushed back his hood. Her hood. Holy shit. A column of dusty light revealed a woman—witch-thin and only a few inches shorter than Flynn. She was backlit, so he couldn’t get a fix on her face. Nothing in the intel had suggested a woman was high up in al-Thawra.

“Bonjour, soldat,” she said, stepping forward. “J’espère que tu as bien dormi?” She arched thin eyebrows toward Tess. She wasn’t a native French speaker but he couldn’t pick the accent. She was maybe fifty, tanned, a pale blue scarf tied around her hair. In France you’d call her une femme d’un certain âge. In Australia a MILF. Not what he’d expected.

“With the drugs you lot gave me, I didn’t have a choice but to sleep well.” He answered in English, for Tess’s benefit, with his adopted singsong Corsican accent. Tess would wonder what’d happened to his Australian twang, but she’d become threat number two. Until he figured out how much the terrorists knew about him, he was safer playing to expectation. “Who are you?”

The woman raked her gaze up his body as if checking out livestock. As she reached his face, her kohl-rimmed brown eyes lit with a challenge. “I am the one you know as Hamid Nabil Hassan. The most wanted man in the world.”

CHAPTER 2 (#ufeb3a2a7-b9b2-5ca6-b5fc-c04c535bd1d9)

Flynn ground his heels into the dirt. This was the man America had been hunting since the Los Angeles terror attacks? “You don’t look like a Hamid.”

She laughed, the sound dull and harsh in the thick air. “You don’t think a woman can be a powerful adversary?”

Oh, he knew all about how dangerous women were. “You’re American?” Bloody hell, their intelligence really...wasn’t. “You’re supposed to be Somali. And a man.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “In the twenty-first century we no longer need to be defined by lines on a map or the accident of our birth. I am a person of the world, as you are. I am defined by the things I can control, not those I can’t. Gender, age, lineage, provenance—these are outdated concepts.”

“You forgot to mention religion,” said Tess, sounding like she was clenching her teeth.

“Oh no,” the woman—Hamid—said, her heavy eyes drifting to the bearded soldier next to her. “Religion can still be very useful.”

She and Tess looked like they were about to shoot lasers out of their eyes at each other.

“Why am I here?” Flynn said.

Hamid didn’t take her eyes off Tess. “Because my captive here was lonely and I like to play matchmaker. She’s pretty, don’t you think? You are well suited.”

“My government will not pay a ransom for a lowly soldier.”

Hamid tilted her head, assessing him again. “I would pay a good deal of money for a man like you. But, yes, I’m counting on that.”