The bus had the acceleration of an anemic snail, so as they slowly pulled from the square they were open to more gunfire from hidden alleys and behind stone walls. One burst raked across the row of windows, blowing out the glass and raining shards on the people inside. That particular assault inexplicably cut off, but more bullets pinged against the roof and sparked off the engine cover.

And then they were free, pulling past the mosque where the gray-bearded imam regarded them stoically as they roared by. Juan continued to watch out the rear window to see if anyone was chasing them. Several fighters were out on the main street, their rifles raised over their heads as if they’d won a great victory.

Let ’em think what they want, Juan thought as he slumped onto one of the hard bench seats. The padding had long since vanished, and he could feel a metal support beam digging into his flesh. That little bit of discomfort reminded him of the greater problem they might still be facing. The bus belonged to a senior Taliban officer, someone Cabrillo was now certain he recognized but couldn’t name. The odds were good that he was under observation by the U.S. military. While the powers that be might not understand what had just happened back in the village, if they wanted this guy dead, now was the time to unleash the drone’s missile.

He scooted back to the shattered rear window and watched the sky. Eddie saw him in the cracked mirror over the driver’s seat and called out, “Anything back there?”

“Not on the ground, but I thought I heard a Predator when we were waiting to go in, and, if my hunch is right, this bus has a big old target on its roof.”

For the first couple miles out of the town, the road followed the valley floor, with wide, open crop fields on either side. But from studying topographical maps before the mission, Juan knew it would enter a steeper grade and snake through about a dozen hairpin turns. To the left of the road was the canyon wall while to the right the landscape fell away in a frighteningly steep grade. Once on that section of dirt tract, they would have no maneuverability whatsoever.

If he was calling the shots back at Creech, he’d wait until they were halfway down and then put the Hellfire up their tailpipe. With that in mind, he shouted over the beat of the knocking engine, “Hey, soldier?”

“Me?” the blond man asked.

“I know everyone else’s name on the bus, so yeah. Are you in any condition to hoof it for about fifteen miles?”

Cabrillo appreciated that the guy took a moment to think through his answer. “No, sir. Ah’m sorry, but Ah’ve been through the meat grinder since they grabbed me. Nothing’s broken, but a whole lot’s sprained.” He lifted his shirt to show a sea of dark bruises across his chest and stomach to go with the shiner around his left eye. “Ah can do maybe five miles over flat ground, but in these mountains Ah won’t make it one.”

“Why are you asking?” Linda wanted to know.

“The canyon up ahead could be a death trap if I’m right about the Predator. I’m thinking about ditching the bus and going back to our original plan.”

It would be asking too much of Linc to carry the guy out, though Juan knew the big man would give it one hell of a try. He considered making the trek in stages, but the longer they remained in the region, the greater the risk of being discovered by the countless roving Taliban patrols.

“Chairman, we’ve got a problem,” Eddie said suddenly. “I see headlights approaching.”

Cabrillo cursed under his breath. Thinking it made it happen. The only people out on the roads at night were the Talibs or their al-Qaeda allies.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Play it cool. Maybe they’ll leave us alone.”

The twin beams of light lancing out from the darkness bounced along about a half mile farther down the road. Then they swung broadside to the lumbering bus and went still. The approaching driver had angled their vehicle into a roadblock.

The good luck they’d had escaping the village had run out.

“Now what?”

“Give me a sec,” Juan replied in that same cool tone Eddie had used earlier. “What kind of vehicle do they have?”

“By the time I’ll be able to tell it’ll be too late,” Seng replied.

“Good point,” Juan said grimly. Though Juan spoke Arabic like a Riyadh native, he doubted he would be able to bluff their way past a checkpoint, not with an ethnic Chinese, a black guy, a blond one, an Indonesian kid, and the all-American girl next door.

“Go around them, and pray there isn’t a minefield next to the road. Guns at the ready.”

“Mr. Chairman,” the stranger said. “My shooting finger’s just fine.”

Juan paced forward and handed him his FN Five-seveN. “What’s your name?”

“Lawless,” he said. “MacD Lawless. Ah was a Ranger before turning to the private sector.”

“MacD?”

“Short for MacDougal. My middle name, which is only marginally better than my first.”

“Which is?”

The guy was handsome, and when he smiled he looked like a recruiting poster or a Calvin Klein model. “Ah’ll tell you when I know you better.”

“Deal,” Juan said, peering out through the windshield.

In the feeble glow cast by the bus’s headlamps he could see it was a dark pickup truck that had pulled across to block the single lane. Three men stood in front of it, their heads sheathed in turbans, their weapons trained on the bus. Two more fighters were in the open bed, one hunched over a heavy machine gun, the other ready to feed it a belt of ammunition that he cradled like an infant.

“They get us with that chatter gun,” Linc warned, “and it’s all over but the crying.”

“Looks like these guys didn’t get the memo about this being Tommy Taliban’s Magical Mystery Tour bus,” MacD quipped. Cabrillo’s measure of the man went up a notch. Anyone who could make bad jokes before combat was okay by him.

“I’m going to break left,” Eddie said, “to put the pickup’s cab between us and that old Russian PKB.”

Juan had already known which way Eddie was going to turn because it made the most tactical sense, so he was already hunkered under a window on the right side of the bus, his rifle barrel just showing above the pitted chrome sill. His mouth had gone metallic as a fresh burst of adrenaline shot into his system.

TWENTY YARDS TO GO. EDDIE HAD SLOWED A LITTLE, TO show he was about to comply with the men manning the roadblock, but he kept coming. None of the men arrayed before him looked overly concerned yet, but when they did, one of the soldiers put his hand in the air in a universal gesture to indicate they should pull over.

That was Seng’s cue. He mashed the accelerator and gently heeled the bus over onto the narrow gravel verge. Loose dirt hissed under the heavy vehicle, and a tall plume of dust rose in its wake.

The Taliban paused for less than a second at this affront to its authority. Gunfire erupted from the checkpoint. The heavy engine block absorbed round after round while the windshield starred and spiderwebbed in a dozen places before collapsing entirely. Eddie’s face was soon streaming blood from glass that had nicked his skin.

The Corporation team gave as good as they got, hosing the pickup from bumper to bumper. Had the ride over the uneven terrain been smoother, they might have had better luck picking individual targets, but from a moving vehicle at this tight range it was all spray and pray.

The interior of the bus became a fine haze of gunpowder residue and pulverized glass. At near-point-blank range the two sides exchanged murderous gunfire. The man behind the pintle-mounted machine gun went down when Linc fired off nearly a full clip at him, though miraculously the ammo loader went unscathed. The three men on the ground had dropped flat, and their view was cut off by the underside of their own truck as the bus rattled past them.