Edge Of Truth

“You’re Australian?”

“You’re American.” He swore as his brain caught up. “You’re that missing journalist.”

So this was what deep shit looked like. He shut his eyes tight and pinched the top of his nose. The dressing pulled at his scalp. Think. His unit got ambushed, right? The last memory his brain could locate was of running through a village—goats scattering ahead of them, Angelito shouting commands, the thuck-thuck-thuck of enemy fire. They dropped back behind a concrete hut. Levanne went down, in the open. Flynn dashed out to help him. Then, a crunch—hot pain in his skull, bullets zipping around, fabric smothering his face. No, no helmet—just his useless beret. He’d been chucked onto a truck bed or something, fighting to breathe, retching on a chemical smell.

He gagged at the thought. He’d been captured—by al-Thawra, seeing as he was with the reporter. What was her name—Newell, right? Tess Newell. A big deal in the States—her kidnapping had been all over CNN. She didn’t look it now, with blond hair pulled back and dirt smearing her face. Pain twisted behind his eyes. He winced, which made it worse. What’d happened to Angelito and the others? So much for their routine patrol.

“I have painkillers.” She limped past him and unzipped a bag. “Only over-the-counter stuff, but it might take the edge off. Here.”

He took the offered trays and popped out four, for starters. She zipped away her first-aid kit and passed him a fresh water bottle from a plastic-wrapped stash in the corner. He slugged back the pills.

“You fixed me up,” he said, pointing to his head. As she nodded, a memory filtered in. More like a feeling—of relief, of knowing he was looked after, of surrendering the fight to stay awake, to stay alive. Hell, how far had he lowered his guard?

“You know where this place is?” he said. “What this place is?”

“A compound of some sort, somewhere remote.”

He swallowed another mouthful of water. “Narrows it down.” Remote described 95 percent of the Horn of Africa—assuming they were still in Africa. They could have crossed over to the Middle East. Hell, they could be in the Bahamas. “You were sedated when they brought you here?”

“Yes... So you’re Australian?”

“French,” he corrected, automatically.

“You don’t sound French.”

“Eees zees betterrrr, mademoiselle?” Dickhead. Nine years of faking a French accent whenever he spoke English to strangers, and he chooses a hotshot journalist to slip up to? “I was taught English by an Australian. It comes out in the accent sometimes.” Not a lie. He’d learned English from a whole town of Australians—the shit heap where he’d grown up.

“Wow, that’s a strong influence. So you’re—what?—French Army?”

He patted the Tricolore on his left arm. She squinted, her gaze drifting up to the legion patch. With luck she wouldn’t know what it meant.

“‘Légion Étrangère,’” she read awkwardly. “You’re Foreign Legion.”

Bloody hell.

“But aren’t their soldiers foreign—hence the name?”

“Not all,” he said quickly. Several Frenchmen in his company had masqueraded as Canadians or Belgians to get a new identity, but he wasn’t about to tell a journalist that. “Anyway, I’m a lieutenant—officers are drawn from regular army.” Usually. They’d made an exception for him and Angelito. He went to shove his fingers through his hair, but hit the bandage and stopped, clenching his teeth. “Too many questions, lady. What is this—60 Minutes?”

She started. “Sorry—habit.” Her tone softened. “I’ve had a while longer to get my head around this.”

And there was that feeling again. It was her voice—quiet and husky. That voice had filtered through the haze last night like some angel’s prayer. At his fuzziest he’d wondered how a reprobate like him had made the cut for heaven. Lucky he hadn’t been able to see her—he’d have immediately sold his soul to the nearest deity, even if her clothes looked like they’d been washed in mud. The stench of mouse piss should have been a giveaway that this was nowhere close to heaven.

He checked his watch. Nearly 0800. Late. Angelito would be going apeshit—if he was alive. He’d better bloody be alive. Tu n’abandonnes jamais ni tes morts, ni tes blessés. You never abandon your dead, your wounded. Angelito would have risked everything to save Flynn—they all would have.

She tilted her head. “Have we met? There’s something about you...”

No. Anything but that. “Believe me, I’d remember. I just have one of those faces, that’s all...” Deflect, soldier. “Have they hurt you?” No obvious injuries, but he couldn’t see jack in this hole.

“Nothing too bad. Hamid wants me looking pretty for the execution.”

“Son of a bitch—Hamid Nabil Hassan is here, in person?” Shit was getting worse. The man at the top of every terrorist watch list, here. “Is this al-Thawra’s headquarters? What country are we even in?” Think. His brain clunked over. “Intel has you being held in Somalia.”

“I wouldn’t trust it. But that’s possible.”

Something clattered—a key in a lock—and a door squealed. Footsteps thumped above. Metal clunked. She grabbed his wrist with a cold hand and pulled him clear of a square hatch cut into the boards overhead, a few inches above his six-three height. Lucky he hadn’t smacked his head on the roof when he’d leaped off the bed. Bed. Hell. Somehow he’d wound up curled up in bed with the Tess Newell—spooning the Tess Newell.

Above them men spoke—and a woman. He caught a breathy “eshi”—okay, in Amharic. So maybe this was Ethiopia? “It’s Hamid,” Tess hissed.

Flynn pulled her behind his back. She was half the size she looked on TV—he could hide two of her.

The hatch shifted, releasing square-cut blades of light. Someone grunted, and it lifted. They were in a dugout under a concrete-block building, by the look of it. An M16 barrel poked into the hole. “Do not move, soldier,” said a thickly accented voice. A rope ladder dropped down.

As the rifle eyed Flynn, two men in camo gear jumped through the hole, landing with knees bent and barrels aimed. One looked Middle Eastern, maybe Ethiopian. The other was darker skinned and taller—Somali? They fanned out as a figure descended the ladder, his shape masked by a robe. Tess sucked in a breath and stepped out from behind Flynn, drawing away one of the rifle barrels. Her face was set in the don’t-feed-me-bullshit expression he knew from TV. A mask, probably, but bravery usually was. If you weren’t scared shitless in a situation like this, you were a fool.

The robed man touched the floor, spun and pushed back his hood. Her hood. Holy shit. A column of dusty light revealed a woman—witch-thin and only a few inches shorter than Flynn. She was backlit, so he couldn’t get a fix on her face. Nothing in the intel had suggested a woman was high up in al-Thawra.

“Bonjour, soldat,” she said, stepping forward. “J’espère que tu as bien dormi?” She arched thin eyebrows toward Tess. She wasn’t a native French speaker but he couldn’t pick the accent. She was maybe fifty, tanned, a pale blue scarf tied around her hair. In France you’d call her une femme d’un certain âge. In Australia a MILF. Not what he’d expected.

“With the drugs you lot gave me, I didn’t have a choice but to sleep well.” He answered in English, for Tess’s benefit, with his adopted singsong Corsican accent. Tess would wonder what’d happened to his Australian twang, but she’d become threat number two. Until he figured out how much the terrorists knew about him, he was safer playing to expectation. “Who are you?”

The woman raked her gaze up his body as if checking out livestock. As she reached his face, her kohl-rimmed brown eyes lit with a challenge. “I am the one you know as Hamid Nabil Hassan. The most wanted man in the world.”

CHAPTER 2

Flynn ground his heels into the dirt. This was the man America had been hunting since the Los Angeles terror attacks? “You don’t look like a Hamid.”

She laughed, the sound dull and harsh in the thick air. “You don’t think a woman can be a powerful adversary?”

Oh, he knew all about how dangerous women were. “You’re American?” Bloody hell, their intelligence really...wasn’t. “You’re supposed to be Somali. And a man.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “In the twenty-first century we no longer need to be defined by lines on a map or the accident of our birth. I am a person of the world, as you are. I am defined by the things I can control, not those I can’t. Gender, age, lineage, provenance—these are outdated concepts.”

“You forgot to mention religion,” said Tess, sounding like she was clenching her teeth.

“Oh no,” the woman—Hamid—said, her heavy eyes drifting to the bearded soldier next to her. “Religion can still be very useful.”

She and Tess looked like they were about to shoot lasers out of their eyes at each other.

“Why am I here?” Flynn said.

Hamid didn’t take her eyes off Tess. “Because my captive here was lonely and I like to play matchmaker. She’s pretty, don’t you think? You are well suited.”

“My government will not pay a ransom for a lowly soldier.”

Hamid tilted her head, assessing him again. “I would pay a good deal of money for a man like you. But, yes, I’m counting on that.”

He fisted his hands against his thighs. “Then why?” Like he didn’t know what was about to happen.

“I requested a pretty French soldier and my men did not disappoint.”

She stepped forward, lifting her hand to the square patch sewn on the chest of his jacket and tracing her fingertips over its twin stripes. “And an officer. Even better.” She glanced at Tess. “The French lieutenant’s woman—it has a certain allure, right?” She hooked a finger under the thin red foulard looped around his shoulder and tugged it. “And what does this mean? This scarf?”

“It means it’s dusty out there.” He resisted the urge to swallow. If she didn’t know he was legion, she’d figure it out when she saw his patch. Once she knew how expendable he was to France he’d be worth less. And it wasn’t like Australia would give a damn.

Her fingers grazed his cheek. One movement and he could have his hands around the throat of the psycho who’d ordered the deaths of thousands of civilians.

“Yes. My men chose well. The world will be twice as incensed by the brutal execution of two beautiful people as they would by the deaths of regular people. Unfair, yes? You will look handsome indeed on television, next to your new friend. I think we will kill you first and make her watch. Maybe she will cry for you—people love that kind of thing.” She flipped her hand and slid the backs of her fingers down to his jaw, lowering her voice. “Did you make the first move last night, or did she? And was it as good as I was imagining?”

“You are Hamid?”

“It depends who’s asking, and what story fits your worldview.” She spoke just above a whisper. “To the Western world, yes, I am that shadow from their worst nightmares, the one who could invade their comfortable lives and blow them up any second.” She clicked her fingers, right next to his ear, the snap echoing off the walls. “Your supermarket, your cinema, your school. I can be anywhere, take any form. A former soldier driven mad by war. A frustrated immigrant whose dream of a new life never came true.” She rested her palm on his chest, her breath smelling of coffee and toothpaste. “If you are poor and powerless and from this side of the world, I am a rallying call, a raison d’être in an otherwise disenfranchised life. No, not a raison d’être. A reason for dying.” She smiled.

He made a point of eyeballing her. “You expect me to believe that a mob of jihadists would take orders from an American woman?”

She trailed her hand across to his shoulder, sliding a sideways look at the goon next to her. “You mean these people?” Her lashes were so thick with mascara he was surprised she could keep her eyes open. “Oh, they think I am Hamid’s jihadi bride, and if they play nice little jihadists I will introduce them to the oracle. I make them call me Mrs. Hamid. You see? Different things to different people. I am whatever you want me to be.” She stroked one side of his neck. “And what would you like me to be, Lieutenant?”

He swallowed, drawing her focus to his throat. She laughed. “I make you nervous. Don’t worry. I make everyone nervous.”

Flynn’s gaze flicked to the nearest weapon. If he tried to strangle “Hamid” he’d be dead before her heart stopped and she’d be revivable. Breaking her neck would be quicker and more permanent. He unclenched and clenched his fists. Taking out a mass murderer would be a fitting end to his life—and better to die with his secrets safe than have his face broadcast in one of al-Thawra’s snuff videos.

“But why are you telling me all this?” He made his words come out slow and halting, like he was settling into a long speech. “Aren’t you worried that—?”

He sprang to her midsentence, spun her and caught her in a headlock with his left arm. Shouts bounced around. One chance. As his right hand gripped her jaw and yanked sideways, pain slammed into his skull. The room twisted. His crown exploded with heat.

A force grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him backward, as Hamid scrambled away—gasping but alive, fuck it. The silhouette of a sidearm rose above him. The pricks had pistol-whipped his wound. He bit down on his cheeks, internalizing the pain pinballing through his head.

A female soldier leaped down in front of him, a reinforcement from above. Flynn pulled at his captor—captors, now, one pinning each shoulder. They bore down as he dragged them across the dirt toward Hamid. He tossed forward to flip them but the reinforcement launched a boot to his gut. His breath yelped out.

“Don’t touch his face,” spit Hamid as she repositioned her scarf and hood. “The rest of him is yours.”

The woman pulled out a cable tie and sprang round back of Flynn as the other goons pinned him. It clicked as it tightened around his wrists. Warm liquid dribbled down his forehead and into his eye. Blood. He blinked to clear it but a filmy smear remained, coloring the room red.

Damn sedative must have slowed him. No point fighting now. Better to concede and hope they didn’t take it out on the journalist. Light flashed in his face. A phone camera. Taking his picture for their press release? His vision swam in blues and reds.

At least with a dirty face, a bandaged head, an eye socket running with blood and a scruffy half beard he’d be unrecognizable from the teenager Australia remembered. A soldier shoved him to the floor face-first. Something smashed into his lower back. A knee? He inhaled through the pain. In his peripheral vision, the woman stepped back and leveled her rifle. One chance and he’d screwed it up.

“We’ll take a more attractive photo once we get you cleaned up,” said Hamid, her voice ironed smooth. “Maybe I’ll shave you myself. And now, my other pretty one, you must write a note for me.”

With his cheek rammed into the dirt, Flynn watched Hamid tower over Tess. Tess lifted her gaze, defiant, her fists clutching her cargoes. Hamid snapped a command—in Amharic?—and something small pelted through the hole. A soldier passed it to Hamid. Baby wipes.

“Clean your hands first,” hissed Hamid, handing them to Tess. “You’re filthy and I don’t want the paper smudged.”

“A note?” said Tess, with a hint of challenge.

“To your producer. You will write exactly what I tell you.” Hamid’s robe swished as she lifted something from it. “Use this.”

“My notebook.” Tess said it like an accusation.

“Date it a week ago, exactly. Write, ‘Quan. There’s nothing in the story linking al-Thawra with Denniston Corporation. Hyland’s clean.’”

Tess scoffed, a tick from the back of her throat. “Let me guess. Quan will receive this after my death?”

“Write it or I’ll remove your hand and write it for you. And no tricks—I know your handwriting.”

Shaking her head, Tess pulled a pen out of the notebook’s spiral top and began writing.

“Good,” said Hamid, peering over her shoulder. “Now add, ‘I can’t trust using a phone, so I’m posting you this.’”

The pen rolled over the pad.

“Sign it with ‘Ciao’ and two small Xs. And now a T, with a full stop.”

Tess looked up, her forehead creased. “You’ve been reading my emails.”

“Do it.”

Biting her bottom lip, Tess returned to the note. When she was finished, Hamid snatched it, smiled and stomped on Tess’s right foot. Tess yelped. The pen skidded onto the dirt by Flynn’s nose. Hamid ground in her heel a couple of seconds before releasing. Tess crumpled to her knees, air scraping into her lungs. Jesus. Flynn bucked against his guards but all it got him was a smack on the head.

Hamid stepped back, sniffing. “Oh, and thanks to the information on your laptop, I’ve discovered the identity of your other whistle-blower. She will soon meet the same fate as the first. Nice and tidy.”

A cry squeaked out of Tess.

“It’s over.”

“Never,” Tess breathed, raising her chin. “If I found out the truth about al-Thawra, someone else will, too. They’ll take you down, along with Denniston and Senator Hyland.”

Wait—Senator Hyland? He was in on this? Shit, Flynn was even more dead.

“No. You have kindly revealed a crack in this organization and I am fixing it. I am going through your so-called evidence piece by piece to ensure there will be no more lapses.”

Tess pushed to her feet with a slight grunt. “You can’t win this.”

“I already have and your death will seal it. In a matter of days, the US and its allies will announce war on Somalia. Very soon, the senator will be president.”

“With you behind the scenes doing his dirty work.” If Tess was scared, she hid it well. Wrap it up, sunshine. This ain’t comfortable.

“You say that as if you think it is he who is in charge of me,” Hamid said, brushing a streak of dirt from her robe.

“He’s got you believing you hold the power here? You know that sucking people in and spitting them out is what he does best? You’re his pawn, as much as these people.”

“Oh, I am looking forward to the hour I get to spit you out.”

A swishing noise. Hamid was climbing the ladder. The pressure on Flynn’s lower back released. More scrambling marked one soldier’s departure, followed by another. The one remaining guy rubbed Flynn’s face in the dirt and let go.

Flynn inhaled dust, pain stabbing his chest. A cracked rib? The hatch clonked shut, sucking up the beam of light.

“I have nail scissors,” Tess said weakly, nodding to his bound hands. “You took me by surprise with that move on Hamid. I should have done something, tried to grab a gun, or...”

“You couldn’t have done anything. And for future reference, don’t try. I can look out for myself. You should, too.”

In a minute she’d snipped off the ties. He rolled onto his back with a groan and pressed his fingers into his ribs.

“It was worth a shot,” she said. “Broken?”

“Don’t think so.” Hope not. He hoisted himself onto his elbows, suppressing a wince, and wiped his eye clear with his jacket sleeve. “Your foot...”

Tess swept her leg around in front of her. Even in the gray light a scarlet bloodstain stood out, spreading over the toe of her sock, following the path of a darker stain like fresh lava over old. The sock was stuffed with something—a bandage?

“They ripped out your toenails.” The pricks. As torture went, it was old-fashioned but painful as hell, by all accounts. At least nails grew back—given the chance. “What did they torture you for?”

“A dossier of the evidence I have on them—they wanted to know whether there were copies and where they were.”

“Did you tell them?”

“Everything.” Her answer was strangely short.

“There’s some shit going down here, isn’t there?”

“Oh yeah.”

He caught her other leg and trailed his hand down to the foot. More blood, but dry. She pulled both feet away.

“Hamid’s a psychopath, in case you hadn’t worked that out,” she said.

“Hamid’s a woman.”

“You noticed. I’d better take a look at your head—I might have to close the wound again.”

“And an American. What’s with that?”

She pushed to her feet and unrolled his bandage. “Yep. Born and raised in Chicago. Ex-marines, ex-CIA. Her real name is Sara Hawthorn.”

“Sara. The most wanted man in the world is a hot Chicago cougar called Sara.”

“Hey, if she’s your type, you have problems.”

“A woman heading a jihad?”

“Al-Thawra is no jihadist group, despite what their thugs believe.”

“Really? They kind of give it away with all the ‘death to the infidels’ shit.”

“That’s what Hamid—Sara—wants people in the West to believe,” she said, her voice cut with bitterness. “Hell, it’s what we’re quick to believe, isn’t it? That we’re under attack from whacked-out extremists from the other side of the world? It’s harder to understand if the cracks are in your own country.”

“Now you’re sounding like her.”

Featherlight fingers drew through his scalp. He bit down on his cheeks.

“This doesn’t look too bad—the strips have held.” She knelt in front of him, her knees and legs splayed awkwardly. To protect her toes? With a finger under his chin, she raised his head so his eyes were level with her chest. What could he do but explore the hint of cleavage diving into her T-shirt? Sure, he could shut his eyes, but he was no monk, and hey, this could be his last happy moment.

He inhaled. Earthy and musky. He shouldn’t find that sexy, but...damn. He’d never been into women who reeked of perfume—or worse, tasted of it.

Crap, she was talking. Mind out of the cleavage, mate.

“...goons are mostly Muslim, answering the call to jihad, but they’re being fooled as much as anyone. It’s all a cover.” She bent slightly to get something from her bag, bringing her cleavage within millimeters of his nose.

Focus. “A cover for what?”

She snipped something—surgical tape?—and pressed it on his wound, shooting sparks through his skull. He forced himself to imagine what was under that T-shirt, seeing as he didn’t have a real anesthetic...

Man, he was screwed up.

Like he didn’t already know that.

“Long story.” She wound the bandage on, sat on the mattress and removed a wipe from the packet Hamid had left. She ran it across her forehead, leaving a pale streak.

“So you said. We have time.”

She scrubbed her cheeks like she wanted to erase them. “God, I hope you’re right.”

She studied the wipe, now the same dusty gray as the floor. How long had she been here—a week? In solitary, under threat of death, with a couple of rounds of interrogation and torture. Enough to send a commando berko but she seemed calm. Tougher than she looked, maybe. Or just good at hiding the damage.

Dirt—technically mud, now—was swirled over her face, mixed with scoured pink streaks. He itched to lean over and finish the job, so he could stare at something beautiful for a minute. He hadn’t seen much of that in a long time.

Not that he was about to hit on Tess Newell. Hell, no. Journalists cared about headlines, not people, no matter how much they pretended otherwise. He wouldn’t fall into that trap again, just in case these weren’t his last days.

“Hold still.” She leaned forward and smoothed a clean wipe over his forehead and around his eye. “So,” she said, sitting back and hugging her knees. “Interesting times to be a soldier. Where have you served?”

Changing the subject? “Classified.”

She sighed. “And here’s me thinking it might be nice to have someone to talk to.”

You want polite conversation, you got the wrong cell mate. He dragged his sorry arse along the floor and sat on the mattress cross-legged, a hair short of touching her. So the warm, pliant body he’d woken up pressed against was hers. He’d thought it was a soldier from his commando unit. Pity he hadn’t figured out the truth before he’d panicked and leaped up—or maybe just as well.

Ah, crap, her guilt trip was working—she looked genuinely bummed by his brush-off. He could give the woman some company without going into details. “You don’t last long in this business without seeing a bit of action. I’ve served in a lot of places. Too many. One dusty, pointless conflict after another.”