“DuPont, our security specialist, has one.” The Italian nodded. His eyes were glued to the uniformed men picking their way across the rock-strewn glacier toward camp.
Hands still on her knees, the woman looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, her voice pleading. “Where is he?”
“I wish I knew,” Moretti said.
The woman sank to the ground. Moretti reached down and helped her back to her feet as nine frowning men strode into camp. Three of them were swathed in blood — the beheaders. The Italian sighed. He would indeed die on K2, but it would not be the mountain that killed him.
The apparent leader of the group, a man with a Fidel Castro cap, ordered all the climbers to form a line in front of the cook tent. A thick man with a fearsome black beard that was long enough to be shoved sideways in the morning breeze, he introduced himself simply as Khan. As if bragging about his intentions, he explained that his men were members of Junood ul-Hifsa, the jihadists who’d claimed responsibility for the cleansing at Nanga Parbat and the recent beheadings of two infidels posted online. The Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS — to intelligence officials these were all different and unique terrorist groups, but from the viewpoint of a neck with a knife to it, one militant Islamist was the same as any other.
The Ukrainian climber vomited when he heard the news. A murmured hush ran through the line. Moretti couldn’t help but think how much they all looked like the receiving end of a firing squad.
Khan seemed particularly interested in the woman they’d chased into camp, running her name together as “Lucyjarrett” when he spoke to her. It was only then that Moretti recognized her as a reporter he often saw on the American news. A media luminary, Jarrett would make a fine trophy head for a bunch of attention-seeking terrorists to display on an Internet video.
“How fortunate to find you here, Lucyjarrett,” Khan said. He reached to stroke the trembling brunette’s hair where it was pasted with sweat and tears to her pallid cheek. The action bordered on tender, but the cruel edge in the man’s voice made Moretti sick to his stomach.
“The US media speaks much evil of sacred things!” Khan drew back his hand as if he’d touched something filthy. “It is a blasphemy, worse than murder or fornication!”
Eyes clenched shut and trembling to the point that she looked as if she would collapse, Jarrett gave a frantic shake of her head. “You’ve never heard that talk from me.”
“Shut your mouth!” Khan spat. He threw a glance over his shoulder. A bony man to his right let a Kalashnikov rifle fall against the sling around his neck and took a small camcorder from his military jacket. He spread his legs as if to brace himself while he powered up the camera, then nodded when he was ready.
Khan’s lips curled into a half grin. “Perhaps you have not uttered the words, but you will pay for the sin.”
Two of the militants moved along the line, securing everyone’s hands in front of them with plastic zip ties. Moretti considered struggling, but thought better of it when one of them seemed to read his mind and prodded him in the ribs with the barrel of his gun.
Stepping forward, Khan grabbed Jarrett by the hair and yanked her head backwards, exposing her neck. Moretti gathered himself to lunge. He couldn’t let them murder her without doing something. They were all dead anyway.
But before he moved, the Moroccan cook wagged his head in blatant disgust at the far end of the line. He said a few words in Arabic, and then began to speak in perfect English, absent the affected pidgin he’d always used to communicate with Moretti.
“This is cowardice!” the Moroccan said, speaking clearly and loud enough to cause Khan to pause. “She is unarmed and a guest in this country. As such she is subject to your hospitality.”
Khan’s chest heaved at the insult. His face darkened behind the beard. “I had thought to let you live if you were a good Sunni,” he said through clenched teeth. “But you will die alongside the American whore and her friends.” He smiled at the ashen woman as he drew a curved blade from his belt. “Your death will be slow and painful, so that others may—”
Moretti watched as the Moroccan cook ignored Khan’s diatribe and gave a slow and exaggerated nod.
The Italian flinched as the militant leader’s head snapped back from some unseen force, breaking like a melon struck with a hammer. With little left to hold it in place, the Castro cap fell to the ground. Something moist sprayed Moretti in the face. A moment later, the crack of a distant rifle echoed off the glaciers.
Chapter 1
Pericula ludus
(Danger is my pleasure)
Jericho Quinn began to move an instant before the 150-grain bullet thumped into Khan’s head. Standing at the far end of the line of prisoners, he knew Thibodaux would pull the trigger at his signal. Quinn also knew the round from the big Marine’s FN SCAR 17 would travel fast enough that there would be no apparent gap between Khan’s death and the death of the young jihadist who stood across from him.
Quinn was a dark man. He’d never been one to carry extra pounds, but months of living as a fugitive had left him with deep hollows in his cheeks and a hungry look. At thirty-six, the first flecks of gray had invaded a full black beard and the temples of his shaggy hair. The copper complexion of his Apache grandmother and his fluency in Arabic made it easy for him to pass himself off as a Moroccan. In reality, he was an agent with the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations or OSI. At least he had been before he’d become a fugitive.
The young jihadist across from Quinn flinched at the sudden thud of the bullet that plowed through his commander’s skull.
Hands bound, Quinn stepped forward, sweeping his foot inside the kid’s left knee and grafting downward. This sudden pressure bent the leg and forced the jihadist into the beginnings of a spin. Hands together, Quinn grabbed the rifle, trapping the young militant’s fingers and snaking his own thumb into the trigger guard as he twisted the weapon in a tight arc. The hapless kid continued to spin until his back was to his compatriots, making him a convenient human shield.
Quinn stepped in as the jihadist fell, bringing the short Kalashnikov up, firing as the muzzle moved across his opponent’s chest, stitching him with at least three rounds. Flinching from the impact and the concussion of the muzzle blast just inches from his ear, the young man abandoned his grip on the rifle and tried to push away. Quinn let him fall, engaging the line of remaining terrorists with short bursts from the Kalashnikov.
Jacques Thibodaux, the United States Marine Corps gunnery sergeant posing as a Belgian security specialist, worked methodically from a hide in the rocks above camp. Issued to Marines in the Special Operations Command, the FN SCAR was a Belgian design, so it made sense that a Belgian soldier of fortune would have such a rifle. Thibodaux took out the leader and two others while Quinn saw to the rest. Roughly four seconds after Thibodaux’s first round had entered Khan’s head just beneath his nose, seven other terrorists lay dead on the glacier. The last surviving attacker, a twentysomething youth with a great swath of blood on his chest from the recent beheading, abandoned his weapon and fled, careening down the boulder-strewn glacier as fast as his legs could carry him. He was not much older than the boy bleeding to death at Quinn’s feet, but with a much fuller beard. Quinn recognized the fleeing man as Abu Khalifa, a Pakistani Taliban wanted in connection with the murder of thirty-three primary school children during a school massacre the month before. The young militant zigzagged on the loose gravel in an effort to keep from getting shot. It was a useless effort. If Marines were anything, they were expert riflemen. Had Thibodaux wanted to take him, Khalifa would have only died with sore ankles.