Hard Man to Kill (Dark Horse Guardian Series Book 4) (15 page)

Saleh stood shivering as Madi grabbed his arm and shoved him toward the boy’s dead body.  “Stop shaking.  Clean this up, like a man, if you want to be an Islamic jihadist.  You are weak like a woman.  Afraid of everything!”  Saleh watched as a gob of spit landed on the face of the boy as Madi moved past the lifeless body.  He could no longer stand there risking his own safety.  He knew he had to find the courage and stamina to do as he was told.

“Let Saleh Ali clean up the mess.”  Madi got into the white sedan and sped off but continued giving orders to Saleh on his phone. 

Saleh could hear Madi’s orders on the speaker. “Get the security feed.  The cameras must have captured some images we can use.” Madi was ranting wildly now and the men were jumping at his every command.  Upon closer examination one of the soldiers murmured in Urdu dialect, “The cameras did not record….anything…..they stopped working after 9 PM…” 

Madi screamed into the phone at Saleh, “Is that the time they were here?  The devils must have done something to the cameras.  “Randee ka bacha,” Saleh listened as Madi lost control.  Calling him a son of a whore didn’t matter.  Madi was his father even though he had killed his mother long ago.  He was bound to this man forever and would serve him.  He silently chastised himself for even being born.  His life was one of service to a madman.  

Since the day he was born, Saleh did as he was told, and this moment would be no different.  A jihadist with a black scarf wound around his face picked up the body of the boy and tossed him like a sack of rice into the back of the pick-up.  Saleh covered Yusef’s dead body with a blanket, attempting a modicum of dignity.  It should not have surprised him to watch his father put a bullet through his younger brother’s head.  It wasn’t the first relative he’d witnessed being shot.  But for a moment he questioned everything his father did.  He joined the men in the bed of the pick-up truck.  Sitting above the wheel well, Saleh’s eyes traveled over these men his father admired so much.  Killers.  Executioners.  These were
real
men, his father would say.  And, somehow Saleh had to find a way to measure up.  The only way would be to find the man his father wanted dead:  Lieutenant Ben Keegan. 

Abdul and Yusef had Keegan right there with a gun aimed at him, yet they hesitated a split second before pulling the trigger.  Why?  He chastised himself over and over for allowing Yusef to be used in this manner.  He was too young.  The truck sped toward the compound.  If he didn’t dispose of Yusef’s body immediately, he knew he would be in for further punishment.  What just happened was only the public humiliation.  There would be much worse to come later when they were alone. 

The truck stopped and the men jumped off, scrambling to a tent to eat and be cared for by the women.  For a moment, Saleh stayed in the back with Yusef’s lifeless body.  Flies now buzzing around, he slid into the driver’s seat after grabbing a shovel and continued driving to the dirt road in the valley.  It was a remote place but appropriate for a quiet burial.  At least no one would disturb Yusef in death, he thought.  In some ways, Saleh thought Yusef was the lucky one.  He was gone now to wherever the human spirit goes after death.  His short life had been violent and void of love.  Saleh wondered what love even was.  He had heard about it, but the only love he had experienced was brief with his mother as a very young child and with his half-brother, Yusef, when they played.  He could barely remember those times, now. Tears slid down his face as he dug his younger brother’s grave. 

As he lowered Yusef’s wrapped body into the grave he had dug, he felt a hand around his throat from behind.  Two men had appeared out of nowhere with blackened faces.  A bag was slipped over his head.  He was bound and dragged a long distance.  He felt a doorway open and heard it close.  The Americans were speaking to one another.  When the blue-eyed man took the bag off and looked at Saleh’s face he quickly pulled his phone up and scrolled through photos. 

“Bingo!’ he heard the man say as he smiled.  Saleh had never heard that word before, even though he’d been schooled in English.  The blue-eyed man was smiling.

~ Ben ~

“If my eyes are not deceiving me, we’ve got one of Salib Madi’s men here.” Ben smiled at Bettencourt, Elvis, Tom and Gus.  “He should be a goldmine of information.”  Ben detected the wild-eyed panic in Saleh’s eyes and searched him thoroughly while his hands were bound.  Then he and Elvis quickly tied him to a chair and began asking questions. 

“What were you doing out there just now?” Ben began.  He noticed the young man’s black eyes were shuttered against him, averted, and he was trembling slightly. 

Elvis spoke for him, “He was burying a kid.” 

“Did you kill that young boy?” Ben asked.  He detected strong defiance in this young man’s eyes when they met his.  The question struck a chord.  Ben guessed his age to be twenty, maybe slightly younger. 

“No, I didn’t kill him.” Saleh answered, then his eyes moved to the floor. 

“Who’s the kid?” Ben continued, sensing this was a delicate subject.  But there was no answer from Saleh. 

“Your name, it’s Saleh Ali, we know who you are.” Ben informed him. 

“I’m not talking to you or anyone else,” Saleh reacted, eyes still glued to the floor.

“We can make you talk,” Ben countered, hoping for the defiant look to return and it did.

Saleh’s eyes met his, “You can’t make me do anything.”

Ben rummaged around in a rucksack and found a straightjacket.  “I think this will fit you perfectly.”  After allowing Saleh a moment to drink some water and urinate, the jacket was forced upon him and snugged up.  “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.  He’s going with us, but we need to cover him well.  A rag was stuffed into Saleh’s mouth and he was stowed in the back of the vehicle’s front seat, on the floor, then covered with another blanket. 

Ben laughed. “He looks like a mummy.”

The men exited the building and drove by the site of the burial that was not completed.  Elvis stopped for five minutes and shoveled the rest of the dirt onto the grave and hopped back into the truck as it remained idling.  “He’s buried.”

Before daylight they made their way back to Dera Ghazi Khan and the bunker beneath the cement factory.  Saleh was blindfolded and remained very quiet, Ben observed.  He wondered just how much this young man knew and began to develop a plan to interrogate him.  The young boy he was burying had some meaning to him, and he must have felt the truck stop and heard the shoveling sounds as they finished the grave properly.  This would be the starting point.  Ben would handle this young man differently than all the rest.  He knew there was a strong connection to Salib Madi, the major terrorist kingpin they were hunting.  But how could he get to him?

The men were getting settled while the day above ground began.  There was little sound in the bunker, except that of the trucks rumbling above and the continual grinding and growling of the cement making equipment.  Ben scrolled through the pictures on his phone one more time, looking at Madi then at Saleh.  There was a slight resemblance.  It was the eyes. 

~ Lara ~

Panic set in as she searched outside for the detectives charged with watching over her.  She sent them a text but no answer.  Her first instinct was to contact Rusty. 

His familiar voice answered on the first ring, “What’s up?” 

Lara whispered into the phone, “The detectives are nowhere to be seen.  I have an awful feeling, you know, hackles.” 

“Not a good sign.  Call the department?” Rusty asked. 

“No.  I haven’t yet.  Maybe it’s just my imagination.  The detectives might be purposefully out of sight.  But I sent a text to them and got no answer.  That made me think something might have happened.” 

“I’ll be there in a few minutes.  Leaving right now.” Rusty uttered and his phone went dead.

Lara ruminated for a moment.  If, in fact, something happened to the detectives, she had to call the head of the detective division.  She dialed the number and heard his curt voice. “Redman.”   

“It’s Mrs. Keegan.”

Redman answered, “Yes, ma’am.  How can I help you?”

“The detectives are nowhere to be seen.  I tried to contact them, but no answer.”

A loud noise outside interrupted her call.  Monique’s eyes met Lara’s for a second. 

“They’re here…get someone to help me,” Lara whispered into the phone and ended the call.  She grabbed her handgun off her hip.

She motioned to Monique to move into the middle guest room upstairs and told her to close the door.  “Get on the floor, behind the dresser and stay there, no matter what you hear.”  Lara slid open a drawer and pulled out another gun, handing it to Monique muzzle down.  “Take this.  It’s a Smith and Wesson revolver, it’s loaded.  Don’t point it at anyone unless you’re going to pull the trigger. If they make it past me, you kill them.  So, go upstairs and keep the barrel pointed away from you.  Got it?  I’m coming right up behind you and will set up in the window.” 

Lara knew her best shot would be from upstairs, and drew her Glock19 and waited, pressing her body against the wall for cover.  She listened as the men set off the security alarm.  The steel door made it difficult to gain entry so they broke a window and entered that way.  They had to know it would only be minutes before police would arrive. 

Lara could hear them as they walked from the kitchen through the dining room and into the living room.  The television was still on low, but she could hear their voices.  As she caught a glimpse of them moving beneath the staircase. She saw the face of Aaron Brown.  They had weapons visible. They were here to kill her.  They’d killed Officer Simpson.  She took a deep breath and let it out.  There would be no warning, as Rusty had taught her, just aim and pull the trigger. 

As the two men stepped onto the first stair, she peeked around the corner. They had guns drawn.  She would have to be fast to hit them both center mass, or it would be mayhem. 

Lara slid down the wall to shrink her target profile, then wheeled around in a crouch, gun raised.

The nice thing about stairs is that they created a perfect bottleneck. The area of maneuverability would be limited.  These jerks had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  Shooting down the stairs, blindly, she’d be almost certain to hit some part of someone. Shooting straight down the middle would almost guarantee a hit.

But, she wasn't blind firing.  At this distance, she could put two nice neat holes in Tim's head. Instead, she went for the more reliable shot in the center of his chest.  She pulled the trigger.

Tim's body met the impact of the bullets and staggered.  He took a step back down the stairs, and Aaron caught him before Tim could fall any further.

At that moment, with Tim bleeding profusely atop Aaron, Lara observed two things very clearly.

One, Tim held a MP5k-PDW submachinegun, a dangerous weapon for her to contend with.

Two, there was no blood on Tim's chest – he was wearing Kevlar.

Lara dove back behind the cover of the wall as Tim opened up with a stream of fully-automatic fire.  Thankfully, automatic fire was difficult to aim even if you
didn't
feel as though you'd been punched in the chest by sheet metal.

She heard the three-round burst fired on semi-automatic. That must have been Aaron.  She silently chastised herself for not taking the headshot when she had the opportunity. 

Then something surprising happened; they retreated. 

Lara wasn't going to have that.  She charged down the stairs, gun low and by her side, and took up a Weaver stance by the doorway. She shot at them as they hopped into a different vehicle, which looked like a Dodge Charger, and squealed tires out of the driveway.  She fired single, carefully placed rounds until her magazine ran dry.

“Damn it!” she yelled.

Ten minutes elapsed before several police cars, Rusty and his friend, Carter, converged on the scene.  “Good job, Mrs. Keegan.” The responding officers touched her shoulder.  “Are you all right, ma’am?” 

“Yes.  I’m fine.  What happened to the detectives guarding us?” Lara asked.  She could tell by Rusty’s demeanor the answer wasn’t going to be a good one. 

“We found them in the side yard. Dead, ma’am.  We’ll do ballistics and set up the crime scene for analysis, but it’s pretty obvious what happened here.  They killed the two detectives outside.  We believe they’re the same suspects in Officer Simpson’s death.  You’re a brave woman.” 

“Just pissed.”

“Copy that.”

The crime scene experts arrived, and Lara sat on a chair in the kitchen feeling numb. 

Rusty brought a weeping Monique out of the upstairs guest room.  Monique was shivering and repeated, “Lara, what happened to Lara?” 

“She is okay, it’s over.” Lara heard Rusty speaking calmly as he put his arm around Monique’s shoulder. “It’s all right now.”  Lara listened to his soothing voice, wishing she could be lulled into a sense of security right now, but knew better.

In the kitchen at Clearwater Farm, they walked through the details. 

She sensed that Rusty was on high alert as he spoke calmly, methodically, calculating the next move.  “If these two guys know where Ben lives, most likely there are others who have this information.   Pack a bag and drive up to Wisdom Lake for the next few days.  It’s cold outside and the Lake is frozen, but Alvin’s got it nice and toasty up there.”