‘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:
Rock Creek Park – Beach Drive
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.
‘Stay right where you are!’ warned Malik.
Instinctively protecting Alicia, Connor propelled her towards the bushes on the other side of the road. Gunfire ripped through the night, bullets peppering the road at their feet. They dived for the cover of the trees, landing hard on the rocky ground. As they scrambled back up, Alicia’s ankle finally gave way beneath her and she screamed.
‘Come on!’ cried Connor, his adrenalin driving him on as he lifted her on to his shoulders and ran.
But in those fateful few seconds the terrorists had caught up and Connor found himself confronted by the barrel of Malik’s gun.
‘Make one false move and I’ll put a bullet through both of you,’ said Malik, his eye still bloody from where Alicia had clawed him.
Gently lowering Alicia to the ground, Connor stood in front of her – his body, her shield.
‘I admire your commitment to the girl,’ smirked Malik, revealing a row of yellowed teeth. ‘A boy willing to make the ultimate sacrifice … and so you will.’
The gunshot rang loud through the forest.