Hostage (42 page)

‘Who the hell
are
you?’
snarled the terrorist leader, as Connor choked in his vice-like grip.

Struggling to free himself, Connor
spluttered, ‘Alicia’s … buddy.’

The leader shook his head. ‘No,
you’re trouble,’ he replied, raising his dagger and aiming the sharpened tip
at Connor’s heart. ‘Too much trouble to keep alive.’

For all Connor’s protection of Alicia,
it was now she who came to
his
rescue. As the dagger arced down, Alicia
launched herself at the terrorist leader.

‘Leave him alone!’ she cried,
landing on his back.

Clinging on for all she was worth, she
clawed at his face with her long fingernails, gouging at both his eyes. The leader
roared in fury and pain. Releasing Connor, he snatched at the wildcat on his back. He
grabbed hold of an arm and flung her off. Alicia flew through the air, struck the
opposite wall and landed in a dazed heap, blood trickling from a gash on her
forehead.

Seized by a bloodlust, the leader turned on
her. Deep red score-marks lined his face and one eye was a bloody pulp.

‘You’ll pay for that,’ he
yelled, brandishing his dagger. ‘I’ll cut
your
face to
pieces!’

‘NO! UNCLE MALIK, DON’T!’
protested Hazim as he ran from the kitchen and stepped between them. ‘She’s
just a girl.’

‘She’s an infidel,’ spat
the terrorist leader, glaring at his
nephew through his one good eye.
‘Now out of my way or I’ll go through you to her.’

Connor could see Hazim was trembling with
fear, but he held his ground.

Malik appeared to back down. Then with the
speed of a striking cobra he drove the dagger into Hazim’s gut. Hazim gasped in
shock, his eyes bulging, his whole body shuddering.

‘I’ve always questioned whether
you had the
stomach
for this mission,’ smirked Malik as he drove the
blade up to the jewelled hilt and twisted. Hazim screamed, his blood now spilling on to
the floor.

Connor seized his moment and rushed over to
Alicia. She was still stunned from the blow against the wall. Ignoring the pain in his
shoulder, he half-carried her into the kitchen, praying they’d find a back
door.

‘Bahir, get after them! And where the
hell’s Kedar?’ Malik shouted from the hallway. ‘They’re
escaping!’

Connor’s gamble paid off. On the other
side of the kitchen was an exit leading on to a wooden veranda. Flinging open the door,
Connor and Alicia ran out into a large garden bordered by a high brick wall. A shimmer
of moonlight revealed a small shed next to the wall and the silhouettes of tall trees
beyond.

‘This way,’ he said as Alicia,
recovering from her attack, found her feet again.

They fled into a warm starlit night, the
darkness quickly enveloping them. From the kitchen, Malik’s voice barked,
‘Get the guns! Search the garden.’

Feet thundered on to the wooden veranda just
as Connor and Alicia reached the shed.

‘Which way did they go?’ said a
voice, urgent and angry.

Connor noticed a woodpile stacked beside the
shed. Gritting his teeth against the burning fire in his shoulder, he pushed Alicia up.
He could feel his top had become slick with his own blood. They clambered on to the
shed’s roof, from where they could just reach the top of the garden wall.

‘Over there!’ came a shout.

Connor was caught in the beam of a
flashlight. There was a gunshot and a bullet ricocheted inches from his head. He and
Alicia flung themselves over the wall, hung on to the tile-capped lip, then dropped down
to the other side. The distance was further than either of them had anticipated and they
both crumpled to the rocky ground. Alicia let out a cry.

‘I’ve … twisted my ankle,’
she grimaced, nursing her foot.

This was the last thing they needed. But
Connor wasn’t going to fail in his duty now. He put an arm under Alicia’s
shoulder and hauled her to her feet. There was a slim chance the trees might conceal
their escape. Hurrying as fast as her ankle and the terrain would allow, they beat a
path through the undergrowth and weaved between the trees.

As they fled, Connor pulled his phone from
his pocket. Still no signal.

Then he noticed the ‘Insert SIM
Card’ icon flashing at the bottom of the screen.

Cursing, Connor was about to discard the
phone when
his phone jogged the screen and Amir’s SOS app
appeared. In his rush to escape, he’d forgotten all about it. Connor launched the
app and pressed Send.

He just hoped the phone had enough battery
life to do the job.

In the operations room of Buddyguard
Headquarters, the atmosphere was tense and agitated. Charley drummed her fingers on the
arm of her wheelchair. Marc sat with his head in his hands. Next to him, Ling rubbed her
eyes with exhaustion and took another sip of energy drink. Amir was pacing nervously up
and down, while Bugsy stared blankly at the monitor of his terminal, defeated by the
server source code.

‘The deadline’s past,’
said Amir, glancing up at the clock. ‘So why haven’t we heard anything
yet?’

‘No news is good news,’ offered
Bugsy.

‘But the terrorists were pretty
insistent on their deadline,’ said Ling.

‘Maybe the President struck a deal
with them?’ Marc suggested.

Charley sorrowfully shook her head.
‘We’d have heard from Colonel Black by now.’

They all lapsed back into anxious silence.
Charley began to bite her nails. She felt partly responsible for Connor’s fate.
She was the operations leader, after all. An ominous
thought passed
through her mind.
Perhaps bad karma’s following me since my last assignment as
an active buddyguard.
Nothing, it seemed, had gone right for her since that
fateful day. Connor had been a turning point in her life, or so she had hoped. But now
it appeared he would be yet another dead end. Literally.

A computer terminal began beeping
incessantly.

‘What’s that?’ asked
Ling.

Charley looked over at Amir and they blurted
out simultaneously, ‘SOS!’

Rushing to the terminal, Amir woke the
monitor and his jaw dropped in disbelief.

‘If this really
is
Connor,
then you’re not going to believe where they are …’

Charley sped over and stared at the screen
in equal astonishment.

‘Amir, relay the coordinates to
Colonel Black, right now!’

Connor and Alicia rushed headlong through the
undergrowth, branches and bushes tearing at their faces and clothes. The forest was inky
black, the moonlight struggling to penetrate the canopy above, and Connor could only
hazard a guess at the direction they were headed. But as long as it was away from the
terrorists he didn’t care. Behind, he could hear them crashing through the bushes
in hot pursuit. Alicia struggled on valiantly, but with her injured ankle, the
terrorists were gaining on them fast. Glancing back, Connor could see the lights of
their torches sweeping the area for them.

‘Leave me,’ she panted, leaning
against a tree trunk to catch her breath. ‘Go and get help.’

‘No,’ said Connor. ‘A
buddyguard
never
leaves their Principal. Nor does a friend.’

She managed a weak smile.
‘You’re one hard date to get rid of!’

Bearing more of her weight, Connor pressed
on despite his own injury. Alicia bit down on her lip as pain rocketed up her leg with
every step. The shouts of the terrorists grew
louder. Several bullets
whizzed past, shearing off chunks of bark and sending splinters into their path.
Hobbling down a slope, Connor and Alicia burst from the undergrowth and hit a tarmac
road. A car zoomed by, horn blaring, as it almost ran them over.

‘STOP!’ cried Connor, trying to
flag the vehicle down.

But the red tail lights disappeared rapidly
into the distance.

‘Did you see that?’ asked
Alicia, her eyes wide.

‘What?’

‘The license plate!’

‘No, but keep moving,’ Connor
insisted, trying to hurry Alicia across the road before the terrorists appeared. But she
continued to stare after the car. Then he too was brought to a sudden halt by a road
sign … in English:

Maryland

Downtown DC

‘Rock Creek Park?’ said Alicia,
reading the sign twice and still doubting her eyes. ‘We’re
still
in
Washington!’

Connor couldn’t believe it either. The
disorientation of their captivity, the terrorists’ robes, the constant use of
Arabic and the traditional style of food had all convinced him that they were being held
in the Middle East. As the truth dawned on him, Connor tried to recall the park’s
layout from his briefing notes. He knew it wasn’t a particularly wide park, a
couple of miles at the most, so they’d soon come to the city
suburbs. They just needed to keep off the road and out of sight until they could reach
help.

The sign clanged, loud and harsh, as a
bullet pierced a hole dead centre through the first ‘O’ of
‘Downtown’. Connor spun round to see Malik and his men scrambling down the
slope, guns levelled at them.