Murphy, lying on my right, whispers, “We’ve definitely got the right spot.”
I agree. A black helicopter mounted with large machine guns hidden under a camouflage canopy is a dead giveaway for a bad-guy lair. Add to that a chain-link fence topped with razor wire enclosing the perimeter of what appears to be only a quiet alpine meadow, security cameras mounted on trees, and a hatch work of infrared sensor beams slicing through the dark. We’ve got our work cut out for us.
With a toggle on my rifle, I switch my night vision to thermal. “Hello there,” I say softly, spotting a warm body in the trees about two hundred meters out. A sentry.
“He’s got two buddies,” says Kasey at the same time I locate them, another fifty meters south. They’re all armed with rifles, spread out in a loose formation around a boulder, which I believe is an ingress point to the caves below. The guards don’t appear to be on high alert. One of them is taking a piss. Another is crouched under the low, spreading boughs of a tree, smoking a cigarette. This is good news. They’re not expecting company, which means we haven’t tripped any silent alarms on our way in.
We lie in silence for another twenty minutes, observing them.
It’s the Marine nicknamed Big Swingin’ Dick who finally speaks, for the first time since we set out. All he says is one word, spoken in a deep, rumbling voice like the low roll of thunder.
“Dibs.”
I whisper, “Happy hunting, soldier.”
The quiet spit of his suppressed weapon startles a nearby bird, sending it into shrieking flight. The guards have two bullets in each of their brains in the time it takes me to count to three. They go down, the bird flies away, and then the quiet of the forest is momentarily broken as six men rise to their feet and begin a crouched forward descent through the trees.
Thirty-Eight
Tabby
One of the main principles of Krav Maga is to strike aggressively at the weak spots of an opponent’s body in order to quickly neutralize a threat. And one of the most vulnerable spots on the human body is the throat. Even light pressure applied to the trachea causes severe pain. A more aggressive strike can crush the windpipe, resulting in death by suffocation as no air can be drawn upward from the lungs.
The blow I land on S?ren’s trachea is extremely aggressive.
He stumbles back, clutching his throat, making a hideous gagging sound I find very satisfying.
But because he’s not technically neutralized, he’s still a threat. And so—because I’ve been well trained—I’m forced to go after another one of the body’s most vulnerable areas.
The feet.
Conveniently, his are bare.
I stride forward, grip him by the elbow, and, as hard as I can, drive my heel down onto the arch of his foot. I feel bone splintering, which is accompanied by the unmistakable sound of bone splintering.
S?ren drops like a stone.
He curls into the fetal position on the floor, clawing at his throat and gasping for air, his eyes bulging, unable to scream because of the sad state of his trachea.
He doesn’t look so elegant anymore.
I lean over him and say, “If your trachea is crushed, you’ll suffocate within one or two minutes. If it’s badly damaged but not completely crushed, there’s a likelihood of severe edema, in which case you’ve got about seven minutes before your windpipe swells shut. Either way, it doesn’t look good.
“Now I could just let you die. I planned on that, which you already guessed. However, your point was well taken. The one about if I murdered you, I’d be just like you, I mean. And so what I propose is this. You let me know where you’ve taken Juanita, and I will give you a pen. With this pen, properly applied, you’ll be able conduct an emergency tracheotomy on yourself.
“It’ll be messy. It probably won’t work. But if you get lucky, you can stab yourself in just the right spot on your neck and use the hollow part of the pen as a breathing tube, allowing you to live long enough for the authorities to arrive. And if you don’t get lucky, I can rest easy in the knowledge that I gave you a fighting chance, and you died because you were just too lame to save yourself. What d’you say?”
S?ren’s lips are turning an interesting shade of blue. He flails an arm at me, but I lean back, cross my arms over my chest, and shake my head. “I think you’re wasting valuable time here, but hey, it’s your life.”
His eyes are watering. He nods frantically, pointing at his desk. At the drawer beneath the keyboard.
I open it and find a pad of white paper and two mechanical pencils. “You and your pencils, S?ren. Seriously, who uses pencils anymore?”
He rolls to his knees, tries to find his balance, can’t. He falls over, collapsing to his side. He jabs his finger in the air repeatedly.