they only had to get to the river—about a fifteen-minute walk downslope—and then they’d be floating downstream toward Kavak, and hopefully get there before anyone here knew they were gone—and hopefully before the crocs and piranhas knew they were there.
They would have more options if they were unshackled. So who had the keys to the padlocks? Maybe the guard, if there was one. Or whoever came to unlock the shackles and escort them to Mercer—or to someplace else.
Every problem has a solution, but some solutions cause more problems than the problem. Meaning, in this case, escape attempts could lead to a beating or a cut throat or worse if you killed someone during the attempt.
He said to Taylor, “Are you willing to try to escape, and are you ready to die trying?”
“Scott… let it go. Sleep on it.” She informed him, “You’re impulsive and you take too many unnecessary risks.”
“That’s not true.”
“Then how did we get here?”
“Bad luck.”
“No, we got here because you wanted to raid the Hen House, then you bullshitted Dombroski, then you chartered a plane to this fucked-up place, then you stole a boat—”
“All right. I’ve made a few bad decisions, but I followed the trail, and I discovered in a few days what Worley and his pal Ted and all their people haven’t found in a year of trying. I found Kyle Mercer.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks. Look, if we can keep alive long enough, we could possibly be rescued. Collins will call Dombroski—”
“Collins is missing in action.”
“You gave Dombroski our last grid coordinates, and if he doesn’t hear from us, he knows what to do.” He added, “I’ve backed us up, so now it’s only a matter of buying time.”
“All right. We’ll try to do that. I’ll… do what I can… what has to be done.”
“Stay alive, Maggie.”
She didn’t reply.
There remained the possibility that Worley and his friends—which probably included Taylor’s friend Trent—were also looking for them. He would have mentioned this, but she already knew that, and didn’t want to hear any more from him on the subject.
He said, “By sundown tomorrow, there’ll be a Delta team rappelling from helicopters into this camp.”
“The chances of that happening would be better if I’d brought the Garmin tracking device.”
Brodie didn’t know if she was reprimanding herself or him. “Think positive.”
“Here’s another thought for you, Scott—a few dozen Hellfire missiles landing in this camp.”
“The Army wants Mercer alive, so they’ll do a bin Laden–type raid.”
“If I was running the operation, I’d start with the Hellfire missiles, then send the Delta team in to put the blood and guts in pails and bring it back for DNA analysis.”
That was also what Brodie would do, though he hadn’t mentioned it. Taylor had seen enough in Afghanistan to understand how the military took out bad guys on their most wanted list: high explosives, followed by a mop-up operation when and where possible. They didn’t need Kyle Mercer’s body; they just needed his nose or his dick for a DNA match. Brodie hoped they’d also find some of him and Taylor after the Hellfires. Better yet, he hoped they wouldn’t blow up the camp if they suspected friendlies were alive there.
Well, there was no use speculating about what could happen tomorrow; they just needed to get through today. And escape was still an option. In fact, rescue fantasies aside, and reasoning with Kyle Mercer not being a very sure path to freedom, escape was the last option. And escape, which had the crucial element of surprise, was often easy. He’d done it in POW training six times. It was the evasion part where people got fucked up.
A shaft of sunlight came in through the bamboo and illuminated what looked like dried blood on the log. Brodie wondered who the unlucky gringo was—which made him think about Robert Crenshaw, who’d been tortured before having his throat cut. He didn’t know if it was Mercer who’d done that, but Brodie was sure that Mercer, who’d decapitated five Taliban on video, was capable of it. Brodie also thought about Carmen’s rapist who’d had his guts ripped out by Mercer. And then there was Operation Flagstaff and the dead of Mirabad and other Afghan villages, and it occurred to Brodie that Kyle Mercer had gone very wrong even before he deserted, and before he’d spent two years as a prisoner of the Taliban, who themselves indulged in psychotic behavior.