Page 1 of Edinburgh Escape (Brotherhood Protectors International #5)

Prologue

“Take point, Rook,” Callum McCall whispered into his headset. “Nae need tae barge in like a bull.”

“I’m not barging,” Rook responded, moving forward on silent feet, one building corner at a time, his green heat signature visible through Cal’s night vision goggles.

As the newest man on the British SAS team, Rook was smart, light on his feet and as green as Nessie’s toenails.

The boy, in his early twenties, had only just completed the rigorous SAS training.

This mission to Syria was his first assignment.

Fortunately, he was eager and willing to take direction from the more experienced members of their team.

Rook took his position at the corner of a building and knelt, aiming his rifle forward to provide cover for Taff.

The team’s Welshman, smaller, wiry and fast, pushed forward, leapfrogging past Rook to the next corner.

Cal held his rifle close to his chest and pushed away from the side of the building.

With Rook and Taff covering their forward movement, Smudge, Yeti and Bazza joined Cal, heading for the center of the small township.

The intel they’d been given indicated a particularly heinous ISIS leader was holed up in an old Greek Orthodox church at the town center. All they had to do was get in, get the leader and get back out. Easy, right?

Cal’s lips twisted wryly. It was the easy assignments that proved to be anything but easy. One more street up and one over from Taff’s position would be the targeted structure.

Cal motioned for the others to continue forward. Bazza took point, followed by Yeti. When Smudge neared the last corner, blending into the shadows, Cal hurried to catch up to him.

Dusk had long since given way to night, with the first stars blinking to life in the heavens above, barely visible between the rooftops.

So far, they had met with no resistance. Not a single sentry stood guard along the streets or the roads leading in or out of the little town.

Cal’s gut knotted. It didn’t feel right. If there were an ISIS leader somewhere in the town, they’d have guards monitoring roads leading in and out. They’d have people on the rooftops, armed and ready to shoot.

Instead, they’d made it all the way into the little town without any skirmishes.

Once he stood beside Smudge, Cal glanced around the corner of the building and frowned.

No one moved. No guards at the door. No civilians moving around.

It wasn’t midnight yet. All night operations in small Syrian towns that Cal had been involved in had had at least one civilian roaming around in the late hours.

And any operation they’d been involved in, that revolved around terrorist cells or enemy strongholds, had sentries.

There was no way they could walk right into a building and capture an ISIS leader with nobody challenging them.

“I’m going forward,” Smudge said.

That sense of foreboding deep in Cal’s gut increased tenfold. “No, let me,” Cal said.

Smudge shook his head. “I’ve got this if you’ve got my six.” Before Cal could argue with his teammate, Smudge slipped into the shadows of the building and darted across the street toward the building intel had identified.

Cal knelt at the corner, his M4A1 rifle pressed into his shoulder, his night vision goggles in place, searching for the green heat signatures of the enemy. Smudge was the only heat signature Cal picked up.

His teammate made it across the open space and pressed his back against the building they would eventually have to enter.

Taff slid in behind Cal. “I’ve got you covered.”

Cal nodded, rose, looked both directions and toward the rooftops before running across the road. Smudge eased around the side of the building.

Soon, Yeti and Bazza joined Cal and Smudge at the building. Taff and Rook would remain nearby, providing coverage and early warning should enemy forces move in while the rest of the team breached the building, located and extracted their target.

Smudge appeared at the opposite corner of the structure from Cal. “The front is the only entrance,” he whispered into Cal’s headset. “I’m going in.” Keeping to the shadows as much as possible, Smudge eased toward the front entrance.

From the opposite side, Cal moved toward the door, arriving at the same time as Smudge.

Cal reached for the doorknob. It twisted easily in his hand. As he pulled the door toward himself, Taff’s voice sounded in his ear.

“Holy shit! Rook! Behind you! It’s a trap! Abort!”

Before Cal could react, the world exploded around him. The door he’d just opened slammed into him, knocking him flat on his back. The entire front of the building crashed down on him, crushing the air from his lungs and making his world go black.

Minutes, hours, days later... Cal couldn’t be sure how long he’d been out. Voices pulled him back to awareness. Blinking his eyes open did nothing to clear the darkness. Pain knifed through his temple. When he tried to move, more pain stabbed his thigh.

Someone was yelling, his voice slightly muffled by what Cal could only figure were walls. His hands moved beside him, touching hard-packed dirt. Where was he? What had happened? Where was his team?

He pushed against the dirt, trying to sit up.

The pounding in his head increased. He lay back again until it eased and then tried again. This time, he was able to push himself into a sitting position, the pain in his thigh aggravated with any movement.

He ran his hand over the thigh, his fingers coming into contact with something that felt like a shaft of splintered wood, jutting out of his leg. Just touching it sent waves of agony radiating across his nerves. Without thinking, he gripped the splintered edges and yanked it from his leg.

He clenched his jaw to keep from crying out as a jolt of pain ripped through his leg and blood spurted out of the wound.

Cal pressed his hand against his thigh to staunch the flow, the pressure easing the waves of pain if only for a moment.

Releasing the pressure, he shrugged out of his tattered jacket and yanked his T-shirt over his head, briefly wondering what had happened to his armor-plated vest. Probably gone with his boots.

He tore the shirt into strips, wadded up a portion and pressed it against the wound on his leg, then snugly tied the other strips around it. All was accomplished in the dark, while he listened to the continuous shouts in another language somewhere outside the structure where he was being held.

Cal tensed when he heard words he understood, from a voice he recognized.

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.” Though weaker than Cal was used to hearing, he knew that voice. His chest tightened.

Smudge had been a huge fan of old black-and-white western movies. He’d perfected an imitation of John Wayne’s drawl and used it with that exact phrase to end arguments or when he had nothing else to say.

“You will tell us what we want to know,” a heavily accented voice commanded.

Crackling sounded much like that of electricity arcing.

An anguished grunt pierced Cal’s heart. They were torturing Smudge.

Cal tried to get to his feet. As soon as he put pressure on his injured leg, he fell back to the dirt floor. Not only did he have a puncture wound, but his ankle also wouldn’t support him, shooting more pain up his leg.

But he couldn’t do nothing. Not when his teammate was being tortured.

Half-scooting, half-dragging himself across the dirt, he felt his way around the dark chamber, bumping into stone walls until he located what felt like a wooden door.

He ran his hands over the surface, hoping to find a knob or handle.

There was none, and no way he could open the door from inside.

Desperate to help Smudge, he pounded his fist against the solid wooden panel.

“Leave him alone!” Cal yelled, knowing how futile his words would be, but hoping they might take him instead of Smudge.

If he could just get out of the cell he was in, he might have a chance of saving his friend, his teammate, his brother.

Something hard hit the door, the force of the blow reverberating against Cal’s hand. “Shut up!” a man yelled. Then he said something in what sounded like Arabic.

Moments later, another man yelled. “I told you, I don’t know anything.”

Rook. He was alive. The newest and youngest member of the SAS team. Baptism by fire on his first deployment. Was he to be the next one tortured?

“You will tell us what we want to know,” the accented man demanded. “Or we will cut off your comrade’s fingers one at a time.”

“I don’t know anything,” Rook cried.

Words were spoken in Arabic.

A sharp whomp sounded, followed by a strangled grunt.

“Jesus!” Rook cried out. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I just follow orders.”

“What were your orders?”

“Cover my team. That’s all I knew.”

Another Arabic order.

“Wait!” Rook yelled. “It’s true. My only job was to cover my team. They didn’t tell me why we were there. I don’t know why.”

Whomp!

“Mother fu—” Smudge’s curse ended in a grunt of pain. “He doesn’t know anything. He’s just a kid. We wouldn’t tell him anything until he proved himself. You know why we came. Obviously, someone told you we were coming. What more do you expect to get out of us?”

“The truth,” his captor demanded. “Who gave you the order to come? Who did you come to find? Why shouldn’t we kill you? You’re nothing but infidels.”

“And you’re lying, murdering bastards,” Smudge said. “You think you’re fighting for Allah and that your sacrifices will buy you a place in heaven with forty virgins? Ha! They’ll be forty male virgins and it won’t be heaven, it’ll be hell ? —”

A loud smacking sound cut off Smudge’s words.

Cal slammed his fist against the door again. “Leave them alone!” he yelled. He traced the edges of the door with his fingertips, praying he could pry it loose by sheer force of will.

Someone said something sharply in Arabic.

Moments later, footsteps sounded outside the door behind which Cal lay.

He pushed backward and to the side, wincing as he jolted his leg.

He reached for the jacket he’d shrugged out of, twisted it into a long rope-like shape and positioned himself just inside the cell, lying on the floor with his back to the door.

The door creaked open. Dim light spread in a wedge across the floor and Cal.

A guard stepped into the cell and kicked Cal in the back.

Cal rolled onto his back, flung the jacket around the man’s leg and yanked hard, sending him backward. He landed hard on his back.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t come alone. A second man entered the cell and backhanded Cal with a meaty fist.

The force of the blow made Cal’s head spin.

Before he could regain clarity, the man he’d knocked on his ass scrambled to his feet. The two men came at Cal.

When they reached for him, he swung his fist, connecting with one man’s jaw.

The other guy backhanded him again.

Cal’s head snapped to the side.

The man he’d punched in the jaw pounced on him, straddling his torso, his hands closing around Cal’s throat.

When Cal tried to hit the guy, the other guard captured his hands and pinned them over his head.

The tighter the hands squeezed around Cal’s throat, the darker the room became.

He must have blacked out. When his eyes opened, he was sitting in a chair, his arms secured behind his back, his legs strapped to the chair legs.

Smudge sat opposite him, slumped over, his face battered, his eyes swollen almost shut and blood dripping from the stumps where two of his fingers had been.

Bile rose up Cal’s throat. His leg ached, but not nearly as much as the muscle at the center of his chest. He was out of the cell and powerless to do anything to help Smudge.

A moan drew Cal’s attention to his side.

Rook stood between two other men. Or rather, he hung between the men, each holding him up by his arms. Bruises marred his cheeks, one eye was swollen shut and his lip bled. He lifted his head as if it weighed too much to keep up. “I didn’t say...anything.” His head lolled forward.

Cal jerked his hands against the ties that bound him.

A bearded man, dressed all in black with a black turban wrapped around his head, stood beside Smudge, his gaze fixed on Cal.

“Tell us who you and your team are, where you’re from, who gave you the order to trespass in our country,” the man’s lips twisted into a sneer, “and the names of your firstborn sons or your friend dies.”

Cal recognized the man from the photo they’d been shown at the briefing.

This was the ISIS leader they’d been sent to kill.

He was known for his ruthlessness. He’d captured a squad of American soldiers who’d been sent into a small town to deliver food and medical supplies.

One by one, he’d executed them and then dragged their bodies through the streets of that town as a warning to the citizens that this would be their fate if they allowed other Americans to sully their streets.

“Don’t tell him anything,” Smudge said, his voice rattling like gravel in a tin can. “Not a goddamn thing.”

Cal stared at his friend, then shifted his gaze to the man demanding information. “Go screw yourself.”

The terrorist’s eyes narrowed. He pulled a curved dagger from a sheath at his waist, grabbed a handful of Smudge’s hair and yanked his head back.

Cal threw himself forward, chair and all, falling into a silent, black void.

Falling...falling...in an endless downward spiral...