One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [156]
When the last man hit the ground, the crew chief dropped the rope, allowing it to fall harmlessly to earth. The helicopter banked and flew out of sight.
I stood up, manacled hands in the air, saying, “You got them all.”
The lead man turned, smoothly training his weapon on me. There was no overt threat in the gesture. The weapon simply moved as naturally as if the man were pointing.
I stared, mute at first, before words finally found me.
“Holy shit, Knuckles?”
93
Knuckles was trying very hard to remain serious, but he couldn’t stop a giant grin from creeping over his face.
“Hello, Pike. Seems like I’m always bailing you out of trouble.”
I was grinning like a schoolboy, too, but I didn’t give a shit. “Hey, Knuckles. It’s really good to see you.”
Knuckles came over while the rest of the men fanned out, clearing the immediate area and searching the dead men and vehicles.
I stuck both of my cuffed hands out for a handshake, which Knuckles ignored. Instead he gave me a powerful embrace.
He held my shoulders. “It’s really good to see you too. Alive, I mean.”
“Man, you ain’t lying. Ten more seconds and you’d be scraping us off the street.”
“Who’s the babe?”
Jennifer scowled, but I knew Knuckles was just kidding, trying to figure out what was going on.
“This is Jennifer Cahill, my partner in crime.”
Knuckles smiled warmly, disarming her anger, and shook her hand.
I asked, “How in the hell did you get here so quick? I tripped my beacon less than an hour ago.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “It caused us to shit our pants. We were alerted by Kurt a day and a half ago. We’re over in Tunis, doing ‘Oil Exploration.’ ”
Knuckles raised his hands, making quotation marks.
“We were told simply to get our ass to Tuzla with the total package and link up with you. We got to Sarajevo this morning from Italy, refueled, and were heading in to Tuzla when your beacon went off. We homed in on it and saw the gunfight going on down here. The beacon wasn’t precise enough to tell us who was who on the ground, so we paged you.”
I couldn’t believe how close we had come to dying. I’ve used up my luck for the rest of my life. Or maybe it wasn’t luck.
One of the men came up with the keys to the handcuffs on my wrists. I gave him an embrace as well, like it was old home week. I waved in the direction the chopper had left.
“What’s up with the helo? That’s new.”
Knuckles grinned. “Yeah, we got that since you left. It’s a Bell 427. State of the art. You know the motto of the Taskforce—‘Money’s no object.’ Anyway, we were tracking your favorite guy over in Tunis and about to pull the trigger when we got the redirect to here.”
He paused, looking around at the battle site they had just entered.
“Enough about my story. What in the hell is going on here? Who are these guys?”
“I have no idea about the assholes here, but there’s a terrorist in Tuzla that needs to be killed. We gotta get moving.”
One of the men hollered at Knuckles, standing over the driver Jennifer had beaten into submission. He was awake and scared.
“Hey,” I said, “I forgot about him. I guess there is someone who can tell us what’s going on.”
I pulled Jennifer out of earshot of the other men.
“Listen, I need you to get into the car across the street. Sit in the back and close the doors.”
She looked at me warily. “Why? What are you going to do?”
“Well, I’m not asking you to leave because I’m going to make him take his clothes off.”
“Pike ... are you sure? I don’t think this is