Breaking Away (Delta Force Strong #3) - Elle James Page 0,29

anyone tries to stop us, I will destroy you.”

As he passed through the door, the Taliban leader called out in Pashto.

With one hand on Ahktar’s shoulder, the other on the AK-47, finger resting on the trigger, Mac followed the man out into the open.

Several Taliban soldiers stood in a semicircle around the building, all holding weapons, mostly AK-47s and a few M4A1 rifles like the ones issued to the US military.

“That’s my rifle,” Blade said through gritted teeth.

“We don’t have time to sort out what belongs to who.” Mac poked the barrel of his weapon at Ahktar’s hip. “Tell them to lay down their weapons in front of my men.” Mac felt the longer they jerked around with Ahktar and his men, the farther away Kylie would be taken.

If Ahktar had told him the truth of her being taken away by his superior.

Dread gnawed at his gut. Though he didn’t trust Ahktar to tell the truth, he also didn’t doubt that someone had taken Kylie. Instinct told him she wasn’t there. If she had been, Ahktar wouldn’t have appeared so smug about Kylie being used as an example to warn other journalists.

Which meant he had no idea where Kylie was being taken.

Chapter 9

Kylie stood to one side and waited for the door to open, her boot in her hands…ready.

The door opened outward.

A burly-looking guard dressed in black stepped inside, his bushy dark eyebrows forming a V over his nose. He glanced back over his shoulder, saying something in what sounded like Pashto.

Because he was looking back, he didn’t see the boot coming at him.

Kylie aimed for the nose, swinging hard and in an upward motion, hoping to break it and drive the cartilage up into his head, making his eyes water so that he couldn’t see her.

The crunch of the boot hitting his nose indicated she’d struck gold.

The man cried out, blood spurted and he grabbed his face, cursing in his language.

Another man lunged through the door.

Kylie didn’t have time to cock her arm for a second swing. She had to rely on the skills she’d acquired in the Krav Maga course she’d taken for over a year while stateside.

She slammed her palm into the second guard’s face, hitting him in the nose, hoping to accomplish much the same scenario as she had with the boot. Only this man’s nose didn’t break. He grabbed her arm and slung her around, clamping his elbow over her throat.

Kylie stomped on his instep, rammed her elbow into his gut, grabbed the arm around her throat and bent double.

In that final move, she flipped the man over her head. He landed flat on his back, the wind temporarily knocked from his lungs.

She didn’t have time to think. Kylie dove for the door, swung it closed and locked it from the outside.

The men inside shouted loud enough that others would hear and come to see what all the fuss was about.

Kylie didn’t plan on being there when they arrived. She ran around the mud and stick hut to the rear and raced past a line of similar huts.

“Mac,” she whispered loudly as she passed each one. “Blade? Josh?”

No one answered.

She stopped in front of the hut beside the one she’d escaped and lifted the lever that locked the door in place. She pulled it open and peered into the dark interior. “Mac?”

Rustling sounded and a man wearing ragged clothing crawled toward the opening.

Kylie jumped backward, horrified at his appearance.

His face had been badly beaten. His eyes were bruised and swollen. Dried blood caked beneath his nose.

He said something in Pashto.

Kylie shook her head. “I don’t understand.” She couldn’t wait long. The two men yelling in the hut behind her were bound to draw unwanted attention to her plight.

“Help me,” the man spoke in English.

Although she needed to keep moving, she couldn’t leave the man. Kylie bent to help him to his feet.

He struggled but managed to straighten then bowed slightly. “I am Musa.”

“Kylie,” she said curtly, shooting a glance over her shoulder. “I have to go. I have to find my friends,” Kylie said.

“You are American,” Musa said.

She nodded. “I am. I was with three other Americans. Do you know where they are?”

He shook his head. “I heard Ahktar’s men talk about them. They were dropped off five kilometers south of here to be killed.”

Kylie’s stomach roiled. “No. I have to get to them. They can’t die.” Not after she’d reconnected with Mac, not after all those wasted years she could have been with him.