SOUTHERN PAKISTAN
He was at the rear of the stack, right hand holding the Beretta.
Harwich was in front along with Zarmani and Abdel, the FNG.
The weapon swung in his direction before he could react, clutched by the man Zarmani said could be trusted.
But the traitor’s head didn’t explode. It didn’t vanish behind a cloud of blood.
The gun continued pointing toward him, muzzle aimed at his face.
Before it went off.
Gorman jumped, hands shielding his face, cringing as he touched the left side of his forehead.
“Easy there, love.”
Slowly opening his eyes, his throat dry, his mouth pasty, he breathed deeply once, twice, and saw her face, backdropped by a sea of stars.
“Welcome back,” she added. “Thought I lost you back there.”
The throbbing behind his left eye nearly unbearable, Gorman managed to sit up, coming around, remembering the gunshots, the jump, and the cold river.
The boulder.
“What … where are we?”
“A few miles downriver, where you washed up. Dead.”
It took a moment for that to register.
“What do you mean, dead?”
“As in not breathing. No pulse. Stone cold. You know … dead? Gave me a bloody heart attack.”
Now he was awake, a hand on his chest, feeling his heart beating. He checked himself, flexing his arms and legs, not seeing or feeling evidence of anything broken except for the pounding headache and the soreness of his chest.
“Did you…”
“Took a little while … but you came back … though I had to get the water out of your lungs and then pound you quite a bit,” she replied, a finger on his chest. “You have big bones, love. I almost broke your sternum.”
“Jesus,” he said. “How long was I out this time?”
“Five hours, according to your watch.”
He stared at the Rolex, still ticking, and stood with difficulty, holding on to her, fighting the dizziness, inhaling deeply again as she embraced him.
“I take it we lost the bastards?” he said, returning the hug.
“Aye. But that’s not all we lost. Guns are gone. Washed away, along with everything else. And all I’ve got are these five very wet twenty-dollar bills I managed to tuck away for an emergency.”
“Tuck away? Where?”
“None of your bloody business, love,” she replied.
Gorman tried to laugh but his ribs hurt. He glanced over at the waters of the Hub River gurgling beyond the edge of the woods. They were much calmer down here than upstream.
Pointing at his throbbing forehead, he said, “Do I look … as bad as I feel?”
“Much worse, love.”
He laughed and immediately regretted it as the stabbing intensified, like someone driving a pencil through his left eye.
“But consider it an asset,” she added. “Makes our refugee story more believable.”
Looking to their left, she said, “There’s a road two kilometers that way. Heads up the mountains. Checked it out while you were sleeping. Looks safe.”
He nodded.
They had their clothes, some money, their training and wits—and not much else. It took them thirty minutes to reach the road around midnight, though it was so dark they almost missed it. The night sky was the only light they could see.
When the pickup truck came around the corner, it almost hit them, swerved, ran off the road, and came to a stop by a cluster of trees.
Maryam ran to the truck, seeing two men and a woman in the cab, and three children, two goats, and a chicken in the back.
In her native tongue she asked if all were okay. One of the men answered by aiming a weapon at her face.
She motioned to Gorman to stand back—not that he was in any shape to assist as he was feeling tired again and could barely stand up after trekking through the woods to get here.
Maryam offered the driver money for a ride, explaining her need to get to the border with her husband to join her family, who was waiting for them.
Fortunately for Gorman, the hundred dollars and the sincerity in Maryam’s voice did the trick.
Before he knew it, Gorman was lying down between her and a goat in the rear of the truck under the curious brown-eyed stare of two girls and a boy.
He noticed that the sky was full of stars as he rested his head on her lap while Maryam spoke to the kids, who seemed fascinated by them. But his mind was too tired to translate Urdu into English, so he just let that go, ignoring them, their voices fading in the background while the damn chicken jumped on his chest.
Seriously?
His tired vision tunneled on the two-legged farm creature. It was brown with some white on the tips of the ruffled feathers on its neck, and it clucked in a tight circle while Gorman thought he heard the kids and Maryam laughing in the very distant background. The chicken’s little brown head turned sideways to him and jerked back and forth, apparently checking him out while taking a shit right on his sternum.
The smell reached his nostrils, but that also faded away as he fell into a deep sleep the moment the truck steered back on the road.