Her hands slipped and she nearly fell back when her feet finally escaped the barrier. She scrambled upright, because if she let herself relax even for a moment, she might never muster the will to get up, get out. Flee.
Triumph surged, hot and wild in her veins. But as she lurched to her feet—or rather attempted to do so—her triumph left her sagging like a deflated balloon. Pain lanced down her spine, all the way down to her feet and then back up again, racing toward the base of her skull, where it seemed to ricochet. For several long seconds her head drew spasmodically from the pain shooting up her neck, almost as though she were having a seizure. She breathed through the pain until at last it subsided to a manageable level and the rigidity finally left her neck so she was able to move once more.
She shook like a leaf. The effort to stand, something so easy and taken for granted before, had sapped her strength and left her huddled on the floor as limp as a dishrag.
No. Not now. Damn it. She had not spent the entire night freeing herself from the wreckage of the clinic only to lie there and await her fate at the hands of men who were so evil that she couldn’t comprehend such a capacity for hatred and violence. No. They would not get their hands on her. She’d take her own life before ever allowing her fate to be decided by monsters. And she wasn’t ready to die yet. She had a lot of life left to live. This was only a minor—okay, a major—bump in the road.
Everyone had them. Maybe not everyone faced gun-wielding, rocket-launcher-carrying crazed maniacs who used explosives as naturally as others breathed and whose mode of transportation was tanks, but she’d survived relatively unscathed. Physically. She’d carry the mental scars from this day for the rest of her life. She had no doubt.
This time she tested her strength very carefully, pushing herself up with her hands, bending her uninjured knee down to the floor to give her lift, but she was careful to angle her hurt knee out so that it bore no weight and didn’t press into the floor. Getting up with two hands and only one leg wasn’t the fastest mode of travel, but it would get the job done. She was prepared this time and not acting like a hasty fool out to get herself killed by running madly from the destroyed structure that had been home to her for the last year.
She didn’t allow herself to feel sorrow as she scanned the area, putting only as much pressure on the left foot bearing her swollen knee as was necessary to limp forward and make slow progress through the devastation. She had to have the necessary tools to survive on her own. In a foreign land with no American military presence, no American embassy, no refuge or sanctuary and no way to get back home unless she could somehow get word to her family.
She couldn’t look at the broken, bloodied bodies she knew were there but thankfully were hard to make out in the dark. She had to be smart, a passive observer, and look for things that would help her escape. Not just from this building and the men who’d attacked without provocation. But the entire country.
Somehow she had to find her way down the long, winding, arduous path home.
CHAPTER 3
“YOU want me and my men to do what?” Hancock asked mildly, not betraying his feeling of What the fuck.
Guy Hancock, or Hancock as he was generally known, although not many knew his given name, faced Russell Bristow, his incredulity over Bristow’s stupidity not showing, but there nonetheless.