Chapter Seven.

Tarafashir Robin came back almost immediately.

"It's just me," he said, and it was good that he did, because when Sam heard the key in the lock, he'd immediately ratcheted up his personal defcon level.

"We've got a problem," Robin then said, going over to the carry-on bag and pulling out Alyssa's baby-carrying frontpack. He tossed Sam's larger model over, too, then adjusted the straps of Lys's to make it big enough to fit him, no doubt so that he could carry Mikey hands-free. "We've got to get out of here. Those sirens were a warning about a terrorist attack at the airport. And over at the American Emba.s.sy. There's a hostage situation there, too."

Sam curbed the urge to vomit at Robin's news as he slipped on the baby-pack, and picked up his phone. Still no bars.

"Cell towers are down," Robin reported. "At least in this part of town. And this hotel doesn't have a landline."

"Gina, wake up." Sam went into the other bedroom, where Max's wife was curled around Emma.

The little girl's eyes opened first, so Sam held his hand out to her, his mind racing. They had to leave, but where would they go? He didn't know this part of the city, his GPS wouldn't work with the towers down, he didn't have a weapon, he needed a weapon, there were men with weapons no doubt standing guard outside the airport, which wasn't that far from here. Whatever they had was his for the taking. All he had to do was find a guard or a pair of guards who were isolated from the others. Disarming them and arming himself would be as easy as plucking Uzis from the idiot tree.

Except, Jesus he felt sick.

Sam forced himself to focus on the task at hand. "Em. Come on, hon, I need you to get up and use the bathroom, then I'm going to help you put on your clothes, okay, sweetheart?"

Emma looked down at Gina who was still sound asleep, then up at Sam again before she nodded and solemnly took Sam's hand.

"Good girl," Sam said as he helped her up. "Need help in there?"

Emma shook her head no, pushing the bathroom door closed behind her.

Gina stirred then, looking up first at him and then over at Robin, who'd come to the doorway, packing a sleepy Mikey into the baby carrier he was now wearing.

"What ...?" she said.

"There's been a terrorist attack," Robin said again. He turned to Sam, even as he found several bottles of water. He handed one to Gina before giving the baby a sip from the other. "I was asking the desk clerk about the sirens, and at first he said it was nothing, but there was a TV on, and the news came on and even though it wasn't in English, I could see that there was a problem at the airport, so he told me about it and about the hostage situation at the Emba.s.sy, too, but I knew that if I hadn't seen it on TV, he wouldn't've told me. And I also knew-I just knew-that if I hadn't played it cool and just been like, Wow, thanks for the info, I guess we won't go to the airport tomorrow after all, we'll just sleep in and wait for the problem to be resolved, the entire gang of 'em would've jumped me and tied me up and ..." He took a deep breath. "We've got to leave-now-and not through that lobby. Because when I turned back to the stairs, one of the women said, Have a good evening, Mr. Robin, sir."

"Shhh-yoot," Sam said, as Gina scrambled into the bathroom, pushing past Emma, who was listening, of course, her eyes wide.

"Yeah," Robin agreed as he handed Emma's still-damp jeans to Sam. "They recognized me. Hey, bunny-girl, let Sam help you get these on, okay?"

"Come here, Em." Sam crouched down next to the little girl. Her life was in his still-trembling hands, and she was looking at him as if she knew it. "We're going to be okay," he told her, told Robin, too. "There's a back stairway, out into the alley." It was possible that it was being guarded, but even if it was, Sam could handle the guards.

Even sick as a dog, he could do this with his eyes closed.

Meanwhile Robin continued, "The people who own this hotel probably have no connection to the terrorists, not politically or religiously, but a guy who pimps out children is gonna see this-me being here-as just another way to make a quick buck. I'm pretty sure he already sent someone over to the airport to try to sell me to the bad guys as the most recognizable hostage in all of Tarafashir. Most recognizable on CNN, that is. Of course, once they realize they have Max Bhagat's wife and kids ..."

That was going to be a goatf.u.c.k of a whole different color.

"That's not going to happen," Sam said. Once out of this building, they were going to have to get out of the city, too. There were caves in the nearby mountains where they could hide indefinitely. Except, forty miles was "nearby" only to a former SEAL. There was no way Gina was going to manage a four-mile hike, let alone forty miles on foot.

Sam mentally moved on to Plan B: Find a place to hide here in town.

Step one: Find someplace with a working landline, so he could call Lawrence Decker over at Troubleshooters Incorporated. Deck would call in backup, as well as an extraction team. It would be expensive, but Sam didn't give a s.h.i.t.

"We gonna go?" Emma asked him as she bravely put one chubby little leg and then another into her pants, wincing only slightly. "S'cold."

"Yeah, I bet it feels good since it's so hot in here, huh?" Sam said.

She looked at him, like, That was stupid, it feels icky and you know it, but instead asked, "Mama an' Mikey an' Ash an' Unca Wobin gonna come, too?"

"Yes, they are," Sam said as he adjusted the elastic band around her tiny waist. "We're all gonna go together, but we have to be really quiet, okay?"

She nodded, looking up at her little brother, who was fussing in earnest now in Robin's frontpack. "Mikey wants Mama." She looked over toward the bathroom, where Gina had emerged. "Mama, Mikey wants you."

"I should feed him," Gina said staunchly, even though she needed to lean against the doorjamb. "I can feed him while we go." She looked at Robin. "That way you can carry Emma."

"I can carry both of them," Robin said.

"But you can't feed Mikey," Gina argued.

"All we need is to get stopped by the police because you're breast-feeding in public," Robin said. "Besides, you're probably dehydrated-"

Sam let them duke it out as he went into the other room. He put all the water he could carry into the pockets of his cargo pants and made sure he took his phone charger, too. Still, what he wouldn't give for a weapon, any weapon ...

He scooped the power bars, powdered milk, and Cheerios from his bag into one of the pillowcases from the bed, making it all easier to carry. Everything else, they'd have to leave behind.

On second thought, he added several disposable diapers.

He then tied the pillowcase to his belt, and lifted a sleeping Ash from the bed. "Time to go."

In the other room, Gina had wrapped one of the white sheets around herself, completely concealing Mikey. She'd draped part of it over her head as well, to cover her hair.

"Mama's a monk," Emma said as Sam stared.

"Yes, she is, isn't she?" he said, and put Ash down on the bed.

"'Cept she don' have a shiny head."

"That's okay, baby," Robin called quietly from the bathroom. "I'm giving myself a shiny head."

And indeed, Robin was in the bathroom, already a step ahead of Sam, using the ridiculous disposable razor from the hotel's overnight-pack to shave the hair from his head.

"I cut my hair all the time to play a role," Robin said to Sam as he looked into the mirror and attempted to manipulate the razor.

Sam reached to take it from him. "It'll be easier and faster, if I ..."

"Thanks." Robin sat down on the closed toilet. "I'm thinking this is probably the most important role of my life. It'll grow back. It grows fast. I'd suggest you do it, too, and Gina, even, but I don't think we have the time. But let's definitely take the razors, in case we land somewhere with running water."

"You'll walk in front," Sam instructed. "Hood back. We'll keep ours up. Stay in the shadows. Like you said, it's all illusion and this one will work." It would have to.

Sweat dripped down Robin's face. "Hurry, man."

"I'm going as fast as I can," Sam said. "I don't want to cut you."

"Should we try to seek sanctuary at a monastery?" Robin asked.

"That's an option," Sam told him. "But our main goal is to find someplace where we can hack into the phone line-the landline. And FYI, I'm going to need you to carry both Ash and-"

"f.u.c.k! s.h.i.t, turn away, turn away!"

Sam stepped back as Robin stood up, turned around, lifted the toilet seat and, yes. Robin joined the ranks of the extremely ill.

It was too much, too close, too real, too awful, and Sam joined in for the chorus, leaning over the sink. But his contribution was little more than dry heaves, since there was nothing left for his body to expel.

Still, his eyes watered, and his hands shook, and his body strained.

Robin finally flushed. "Sorry. G.o.d, I'm so sorry."

"We all knew it was just a matter of time." Sam turned on the water for him.

Robin only briefly splashed his face before returning to sit. "Hurry. Please."

"I'm going to need you to carry both Ash and Emma at first," Sam said, as if there'd been no interruption as he swiftly finished the job and used a towel to wipe the remaining hair from Robin's head and shoulders. "While I make sure there're no guards in the back alley, and dispatch them if there are. Can you-"

Robin didn't hesitate despite his shaking hands and watering eyes. "I can. I will. Whatever you need."

Out in the room, Gina and Emma had managed to gather the other sheets from the beds, and Sam and Robin now wrapped themselves in white, too.

"If I tell you to do something," Sam said, kissing Ash's sweet-smelling little head before handing him over to Robin, who put him into Alyssa's frontpack, "you do it. Is that clear?" He looked from Robin to Gina to Emma, including the little girl.

She nodded as Sam picked her up and handed her to Robin, who was sweating, but still managed to smile at Sam. "Let's do this thing."

Chapter Eight.

Afghanistan "Best way to help," Alec MacInnough told Jules and Max and Alyssa, "is to not get killed. It'll be over before-" He laughed as Commander Lew Koehl came through the door. "Looks like it's already over."

"We got 'em," Koehl said, actually cracking a very satisfied smile.

Max was not as happy. "How long have you known about this?"

"Long enough," Koehl said, "for you to be p.i.s.sed. I'd be p.i.s.sed if I were you."

"You put my team into danger."

"That's not why I'd be p.i.s.sed," Koehl countered. "You were never in danger. And even if you were, what? You'd rather we'd sent a USO tour in your place? Your coming out here was necessary. It was business as usual. I'd be p.i.s.sed about the fact that some of our allies are not in truth our allies. The information we share gets shared in turn with the very same people who want to kill our soldiers. That's why I'd be p.i.s.sed. Because we have to pretend to be friends with those who side with our enemies. In order for our diplomats to keep up the charade, you couldn't know. You had to be in the dark."

Max was silent.

"I'm okay with being bait under these particular circ.u.mstances," Jules said.

"The good news," Koehl told Max, "is that the President never intended to visit a FOB as part of his trip. That was misinformation."

"Oh, thank G.o.d for that," Alyssa said.

"So what just happened here?" Max asked. "A team of your SEALs inserted ... how?"

"HALO jump," Koehl said, which Jules knew stood for High Alt.i.tude Low Opening. And that meant that a team of SEALs had jumped out of a plane way, way high up in the sky, up where they'd needed oxygen masks and tanks to keep from suffocating. And after leaving the plane, they'd gone into freefall for a ridiculously long amount of time, only to open their parachutes relatively close to the ground, under all radar, where they could coast to a landing, undetected.

They'd then, no doubt, dug in despite the bad weather, forming a perimeter around the forward operating base, and waiting for the bad guys to show up with the newly purchased rocket launcher.

At which point, the SEALs crushed them like the amateurs that they were.

Mission accomplished.

"Let's get the generator back on line," Max said. "We need Internet access to-"

"I'm sorry, sir," Koehl said, "that's going to take awhile. We had to let them get close enough to take out our SAT towers. And one of their snipers took a very lucky shot at the main generator, and ... We'll need to wait for the weather to clear before we can switch that out with the backup generator."

Max looked from Alyssa to Jules, and Jules knew that Max was thinking about Gina and his kids, stuck in besieged Tarafashir with Sam and Ash and Robin.

"Sam's the best," Jules reminded him. "And Robin's with him."

This was what it was like to be a.s.signed to one of these remote outposts. Every now and then, in fact, probably more often than not, they'd lose contact with the outside world, and every person stationed here would have absolutely no idea how their loved ones were faring.

And yet they'd put their heads down and do their jobs without complaining.

It was humbling. And inspiring.

"How can we help now?" Jules asked both Koehl and MacInnough. "I imagine guard duty is going to be stepped up over the next few days. And as long as we're here, we're available to a.s.sist."

Chapter Nine.

Tarafashir "Give me Emma and cover Ash's eyes," Sam gruffly told Robin, who immediately knew that whatever had happened out in that alley, it wasn't going to be pretty.

"Don't look," Sam told Emma as he covered her head with the sheet that Gina had been holding for him while he made sure their path to freedom was clear.

It was now.

Robin was aware of the figure of a man lying face down in a greasy puddle of ...