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She looked like hell. The glassy eyes. The flushed skin. Even the way she was breathing. She was sick. Very sick.

The names of diseases common to this part of the world flashed through his head. Typhoid. Paratyphoid. MERS, short for Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. Who knew what she might have picked up? Her kidnappers had kept her cuffed in that fucking filthy shed…

He had to get her home, fast. And, goddammit, he…

His satphone buzzed. Dec scrambled through his gear, pulled out the phone, pushed a button, barked his name.

“Sanchez.”

“Sanchez. This is Rescue Base.”

Dec frowned. He didn’t recognize the voice.

“This is Colonel John Stuart. Do you recognize the name, Sanchez?”

Hell, yes, he recognized the name. Stuart had a reputation that went back to Operation Desert Storm. Now he served as liaison between Washington and a top secret committee with a bunch of letters for a name. Depending on who you listened to, he was either a tough, hard-nosed commander or a politically astute ass-kisser.

“Yessir, Colonel. I recognize it.”

“Satellite surveillance tells us you’re one climb and one descent from your objective. Correct?”

Dec nodded. The mountain, and then the coastal plain.

“Yessir. Correct.”

“We need you to speed things up, son. Intel reports that your primary opponent is maybe thirty minutes from your location.”

Dec nodded again. Amjad. The two men and the boy they’d passed hours before must have fingered them.

He looked at Annie. She was leaning back against the boulder. Her eyes were closed.

He rose and moved a few feet away. A gust of wind slapped at him; he looked up at the sky. Great. Amjad and the weather were both coming straight at them.

“Sanchez. Do you copy?”

“Copy, sir. But I have a problem.”

“You sure as shit do, son. Didn’t you understand me? They’re closing in on you.”

“No horses this time, I bet.”

“Horses? Ah. I understand. No. No horses. Those bozos were locals, wanting to get in on the fun. You’re facing maybe thirty, forty men, several vehicles—a few are American trucks, courtesy of some goddamn misguided committee’s dumb-ass foreign aid package five or six years ago.”

“Yessir.”

“Well, get your shit together and move. Your opponent won’t follow once you’re on the other side of that mountain. You’ll be in a sovereign state that’s friendly to us when Washington tells them to be friendly. Your opponent doesn’t have that kind of arrangement. He can’t afford to screw with them.”

Dec took a deep breath. “Sir. With all due respect, I can’t do what you’re asking.”

Stuart’s voice turned to ice. “What do you mean, you can’t?”

“This thing ahead of us is one huge motherfucking chunk of rock. Begging your pardon, Colonel, but that’s what it is. What isn’t smooth as a baby’s ass is basically nothing but a badly designed climbing wall.”

“So? You have hands and feet, Sanchez. Use them.”

“Not possible. Annie—the princess is sick, sir.”

“How sick? Is she injured?”