Page 76 of Whisper

“Qafz! Qafz!” Jump! Jump!

Two men scurried across the roof, heading for the edge. David, Jackson, and Kris stepped over the broken body in the courtyard and followed the sounds. Behind the house, the closest neighbors were nine feet away, across a sewage-filled alley. An improbable jump, but not impossible. Not with adrenaline coursing through the men’s veins.

They heard feet slapping against concrete, gaining speed. Heard a man approach the edge. Saw him leap.

David and Jackson fired together, two shots. Both tore through the jumper. Shrieking, he fell to the ground, bones in his legs cracking on impact. He wailed, screams loud enough to wake the dead, knives that sliced through Kris’s eardrums.

Using the distraction to cover his attempt, the last man jumped right after his friend.

Kris saw him. He raised his weapon. Fired.

His shots caught the jumper in his hip and his stomach. He lurched, tumbled, and fell, slamming into the top of the privacy fence before sliding to the ground.

Inside the house, the frantic shouts from the FBI had subsided. Kris heard boots running up and down the stairs, heard calls of “Clear” from within. Heard more boots on the roof, and shouts of “Police!”

“Friendlies!” David bellowed. “Friendlies, down below!”

“We heard gunshots. What do have?” One of the FBI agents poked his head over the roof’s edge. He blanched when he saw the first man from the roof spread in a wet mess across the courtyard.

“Three jumpers. All down.” David and Jackson had formed a loose perimeter, keeping all three bodies in sight.

Kris called up, “Zahawi in there?”

“No. Is he one of them?”

“We’re checking.” Kris and Dan ignored the first body. There wasn’t anything left to ID. He didn’t have the right coloring for Abu Zahawi, either. The man who’d tumbled was Pakistani. Zahawi was Palestinian, fair skinned and slender according to the passport photo they were working with.

The second jumper was still shrieking. Blood pooled beneath one of his broken legs. White bone stuck out of his torn pants. Strips of skin clung to the jagged ends of his shattered femur. Dan shined a light into his face.

“Not him.” Kris waved to David. “This one needs a medic. He’s going to bleed out.”

As David kneeled next to the broken-legged man and opened his medkit, they moved on to the third jumper. Heavyset with a round belly, thick legs, and wild, springy hair, almost to his shoulders, he was clean-shaven, almost as smooth as Kris. Blood smeared across him, from the shots in his belly and his impact with the fence, his slide to the ground. Pools of ruby liquid formed beneath him, soaking the dirt. His eyes were closed, and he didn’t move. Still, they kept their distance.

“This can’t be him.” Dan frowned.

“His jawline looks similar…” Kris reached for the man, turned his head left and right. The man groaned. “I think it’s him. I think it’s Zahawi.”

“How do we know for sure?”

Kris turned the man’s head to the side again and held it still. “Take a picture of his ear. Everyone’s ear is unique. Just like a fingerprint.”

Dan arched an eyebrow at him, but snapped the photo. Kris pulled out his field laptop from his backpack and plugged in the camera. Downloaded the image, and sent it via satellite link to Islamabad. “We’ll know in a minute.”

Sirens blasted across Faisalabad, Pakistani police coming out in force. Rickshaw ambulances followed behind the police. David, through with putting a tourniquet on the broken-legged man, jogged over to Kris. “I thought this one was dead.”

“Not yet.” Kris grabbed his medical kit from his backpack and pulled out a wad of field dressings and gauze bandages. He pressed them into the man’s bullet wounds, over his stomach and his thigh. Blood saturated the dressings, soaking through almost instantly. “We need to keep him alive. This is Zahawi. I’m certain of it.”

His sat phone rang. Dan reached for it. David grabbed it first. “Hello?”

“Where’s Caldera?” George barked.

“Holding pressure on a wounded al-Qaeda man.”

“If it’s the same man whose ear he just sent, then he’d better do everything he can to keep him breathing.Thatis Abu Zahawi. And we need him. Alive.”

“We need a doctor!”

Kris ran backward into the Faisalabad Emergency Department, carrying Zahawi’s legs. David carried his arms, tried to support his shoulders, and Dan ran beside them, holding soaked gauze over Zahawi’s gunshot wounds. Ryan, Jackson, and a dozen police officers followed, all shouting for a doctor.