After the man was taken, Katzen had used the ROC to listen to everything which transpired in the cave. The man had been speaking in Arabic to the commander, so Katzen had no idea what had passed between them. His two guards understood, of course. Their smug expressions told him that, though they said nothing. When Katzen stole a low-tech look out the front window of the van and saw the prisoner being led out, he had no doubt that the man was going to be executed. He might have been a spy. Or perhaps he’d been a scout for Striker.
Katzen took a nervous breath. The air-conditioner had been cut down to conserve fuel. He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief. He’d risked his life for seals and bears, for dolphins and spotted owls. He wasn’t about to stay in the van and let this happen.
“I need some air,” Katzen said suddenly.
“Work,” the man on his right commanded.
“I need to breathe, dammit!”,she said. “What do you think I’m going to do? Run away? You know how to follow me on this”—he pointed to the monitor—“and where the hell would I go anyway?”
The man on his left pursed his lips. “Only for a moment,” he said. “There isn’t much time.”
“Fine,” Katzen said. “Whatever you say.”
The” Kurd grabbed the back of Katzen’s collar in his list. He tightened it to a knot and yanked him up. He put his .38 to Katzen’s head. “Come,” he said, and walked his captive to the closed door of the van.
They started down the two steps, the Kurd pushing Katzen ahead. Katzen opened the door. As he did, he drew on the survival training which had taught him how to use stairs to his advantage. He crouched. For a moment, the gun was pointing at the empty air above him. Making sure he was low and centered, Katzen reached across his chest with his left arm. He grabbed the arm fabric of the jacket his captor was wearing. Then he tugged the fabric toward his shoulder, dipped his shoulder down, and pulled the Kurd over.
The man tumbled head-first over Katzen. He landed on the ground, on his back, and Katzen leapt toward him. The Kurd was already getting up when Katzen landed on him. Katzen’s head was facing the Kurd’s feet, the gun hand to his right. He turned, raised his fist, and pounded the side hard on the man’s wrist. The fingers opened reflexively. Katzen grabbed the .38.
The American took a moment to turn and look for the two men and their prisoner. They had stopped down the road, about twenty yards behind the van. One of the men had turned to look at him.
“Yu af!” he cried. “Stop!”
Katzen heard the other Kurd in the van running toward the doorway. Katzen regarded the Kurd on the ground. He’d come out here to save a life, not to take one. But if he didn’t do something his own life would be lost. Still facing the Kurd’s feet, Katzen raised the .38 and put a slug through the man’s right foot.
As the Kurd shrieked, Katzen glanced toward the two executioners. The one who’d looked back at the van turned his pistol toward Katzen. The moment he did so the prisoner twisted like a top to his right, literally rolling his neck off the barrel of the other man’s gun. Simultaneously, he cocked his right arm like a chicken wing and raised the elbow head-high. As he turned he rolled the elbow behind him, using it to push the gun aside. For a moment, neither weapon was trained on the captive. The prisoner kept turning until he was at the side of his would-be executioners, facing him. As the gunman turned to retarget the prisoner, the captive lifted his hands so they were on either side of the gunman’s wrist—palms turned to one another as though he were about to clap. Then the palms flashed toward the gunman’s forearm, one slightly closer to his elbow than the other. When they came together they kept moving, snapping the man’s wrist between them. Katzen could hear it break. The gun fell. The captive bent to retrieve it.
All of that happened in an instant, and it was all Katzen saw. Behind him he could hear the Kurd in his heavy desert boots clomping down the steps of the ROC. There were shouts coming from the cave to his left. In a moment they’d have him pinned in a three-way cross fire. There was only one avenue open to him: straight ahead, toward the edge of the dirt road. There was a drop on the other side, he didn’t know how far, but a fall could be more forgiving than a rain of bullets. He opted to take it. Hopping off the writhing Kurd, Katzen dropped to his side, rolled several yards, and went over the ledge.
He never seemed to hit the steep slope so much as roll alongside it. Branches cracked as he went down and rocks punched him as he rolled over them. He held tight to the gun and covered his face with that arm as he tried to stop his fall with the other. He heard several gunshots, muted by distance and by the sound of sliding dirt and splitting twigs. But he didn’t think that anyone was firing at him. The shots were too far away to be coming from the ledge.
Katzen stopped with a jolt. He’d landed on his back in the crook of a tree growing sideways from the slope. It not only punched the air from him, it felt like it broke a rib. He lay there for just a moment as he drew a slow, painful breath. There were more shots, and Katzen squinted up at the solid blue sky. As he did, someone looked down at him. It was the man who had stayed behind in the van. After a moment, the face was joined by a gun.
Katzen still had the gun he’d taken. His arm was dangling beside him, and when he tried to raise it pain ripped across his chest. His arm shuddered as he tried to lift it again. He let it drop back down.
Panting, Katzen waited for the bullet to strike. But before the man could fire, his head seemed to bounce to the right. It bounced again, and this time it also turned around. The head drooped, the gun fell, and then another head appeared. This time it was the man who had been marched from the cave. He motioned for Katzen to stay where he was.
“As if I can go anywhere,” Katzen said to himself.
The man swung over the ledge, sat with his legs stretched before him, and followed them down as if he were on a slide. He held his arms in front of him and jerked them up and down for balance. There was a gun in each. As he neared the tree, he put his feet sole-down and slowed to a stop. Crawling under it for protection, he set the guns down, placed Katzen’s .38 beside them, and helped the injured American off the tree. Katzen put his hands under his body and tried to brace himself. He sucked air through his teeth as each move caused fresh pain.
“I’m sorry,” said the newcomer. “I wanted to get you under the tree for cover.”
“It’s okay,” Katzen said as he eased to the ground. “Thanks.”
“No,” said Falah. “My thanks to you. Because of the distraction you caused, I was able to deal with the men who were going to kill me. I also managed to finish the men who had you.”
Katzen felt a flash of sadness. Because he’d left the van, four men were dead instead of one. It was a quantitative judgment, nothing more. But it was still a weight on his soul.
“There are more men inside,” Katzen said. “Maybe twenty Kurds and six of my own people.”
“I know,” said the man. “My name is Falah and I’m with—”
“No!” Katzen interrupted. “The machine’s still recording audio up there. They don’t know how to replay it, but there’s no guarantee we’ll get it back.”
Falah nodded.
Katzen struggled onto one elbow. “My name’s Phil,” he said “Were you scouting this location for anyone?”
He nodded again. He pointed to Katzen and saluted.
My troops, Katzen thought. Striker. That must have been who he was trying to radio.
“I see,” Katzen said. “What where they supposed to do if they didn’t hear anything from…”
Katzen fell silent as his companion suddenly pushed him back. Then Falah lay flat beside him. Katzen heard it now too: boots crunching on the dirt. He turned his face around so he could look up the slope. A semi-automatic weapon was poked over the side. As Falah huddled close beside Katzen under the tree, the gun was fired. Bullets tore into the tree as well as the earth around them. It continued for only a second, though it seemed much longer.