James Lilliefors - Viral

Keep going. Keep moving .

He came back to where he had been: the cell with the decapitated heads. He didn’t look this time, instead turned to his right. Another closed cell door. He clicked on the flashlight and scanned the stone floor. Found a man. Sitting against the back cell wall. Torn clothes. A dirty face. But breathing. Looking back at him, probably only seeing the light. It was a face he hadn’t seen for years.

“Jonny,” he whispered, turning the light to the side.

Jon Mallory watched, half-sitting, half-lying on the concrete.

Charlie tried the keys. The first didn’t fit. The second didn’t fit. He tried a third and felt it slide in. He twisted to his right. The lock turned, its gears opening the door.

“Come on, Jonny!” he said. He helped lift up his brother and walked him out into the corridor. Felt Jon holding him. “Let’s get out of here.”

THEN HE HEARD the second explosion. The floor rumbled, and his legs buckled. Then another. Distant shouts in Arabic. More gunfire.

Charlie tried to find his brother’s eyes in the dark. “Are you all right, Jonny? Can you hear me?”

“Where are we?” Jon said.

“We’re in a prison in Mancala. But we’re getting out of here. Can you walk?”

“I think.”

“Try.”

“I am.”

Charlie retrieved one of the guards’ 9mm pistols from his waistband. “Here,” he said. “Take this. It’s ready to fire. Just in case.” He pressed the gun into his brother’s right hand, sensing that Jon had probably never held a gun before. Feeling a weight of guilt as he let go. What really mattered now was getting Jon out of here alive. Even if he didn’t make it himself. “All right?”

“All right.” Jon shuffled behind him toward the faint light at the front of the prison building, a hand on Charlie’s back.

“Keep going, Jonny. We’re getting you out of here, okay?”

Jon grunted affirmatively. At the end of the corridor, light showed through narrow slats in a tall iron gate. Daylight. The light he had seen from the other end . Charlie pushed through it, and they came into an oval-shaped entry chamber with another light source: a two-foot-wide circular hole in the ceiling, a halo of afternoon sky. He looked at his brother, saw his expressionless face, the eyes watching him like the eyes of an animal.

Charlie studied the walls in the dim light until he found it: a pair of metal entrance doors.

“Let me go ahead for a minute. I’ll come back for you. Okay?”

Jon closed and opened his eyes, a signal of assent. “Okay,” he said. Charlie walked toward the doors. One last barrier before the outside. He located a metal knob and twisted. In the next instant, his eyes were flooded with daylight. He waited to see or hear a rescue vehicle. Where were Nadra and Jason?

Silence. Warmer air. He was under a stone archway, leading to a red-dirt courtyard. He looked back, for Jon, who was in the shadows on the other side of the opened doorway.

Charlie stepped across the archway, his gun raised. Stopped. Still letting his eyes adjust. He took another two steps. Walked out of the shadow into the dirt of the courtyard. Then something slammed against the back of his head, and a hand smashed down on his wrist. No! His gun fell to the dirt; as Charlie grappled to recover it, a knee rammed into his groin.

A man was shouting at him in Arabic. Then Charlie felt the pistol on his temple. Arms pulling him upright. A searing pain in his groin. A man was standing behind him, holding Charlie tight. Using him as a shield. Together, they began to walk, away from the stone archway, out into the open yard.

For the first several steps, Charlie’s eyes were confused by the sunlight. Then he saw where he was: a dirt courtyard, surrounded by tall mud-brick walls. An arched entrance to the west. Two rusted military trucks sat on blocks along the northern corner of the wall, along with a 1980s Ford station wagon. And then he saw other shapes: men lying on the courtyard dirt. More than a dozen of them. And to his left there were others, near the western entrance to the prison yard. Carnage. All of them shot, dark stains of blood in the dirt. Charlie turned his head slightly to see who was holding the gun: a swarthy man, with thick hairy arms and cold glistening eyes.

Maybe fifty feet away sat a rectangular box-like armored transport vehicle. A truck he recognized, out of place here: a French-made Panhard VBL armored scout car, fitted with a machine gun and grenade launcher. The man was using Charlie as a human shield so he could make it to the vehicle without being shot. He had been waiting on the other side of the entranceway, for Charlie to emerge from the prison. Based on the way the man was walking—sideways, facing west—Jason and Nadra had to be near the western entrance to this courtyard.

The man stopped and fired once as they came even with the entrance arch, the 9mm explosion thundering in Charlie’s ears. Another armored vehicle was parked just beyond the archway, he saw. A small transport carrier, a two-man armored VAB, with a roof-mounted machine-gun turret. The shot smashed into the front of the transport vehicle, caroming off the Kevlar surface.

Then Charlie noticed the thin trail of exhaust rising from the left rear side of the VAB. Engine running. It must be a vehicle Wells or Nadra had captured. They were inside, trying to figure how to take out his captor without harming Mallory.

The man kept moving, maneuvering him in tiny steps across the courtyard. A commander of some sort, who had just lost dozens of his troops, Mallory guessed. One of Hassan’s commanders . Charlie felt the man’s sweaty arms slide against his, the gun barrel pressing his temple.

When the gunman reached the side door of the vehicle, he pivoted Charlie slightly, so they were facing the armored car, keeping the weapon on Charlie’s head. He knew that if he made any sudden movement, the man would fire a bullet through him. But he also knew that he’d probably do so, anyway.

He glanced back again, trying to recall why this man seemed familiar. The thick-boned set of his face, the cold eyes, the muscled forearms. And then Charlie glimpsed something else: another figure, moving in a tight, intent loop behind them. Running in a crouch. Charlie twisted his head toward the scout car, so that his captor would look that way, too. Another step. He heard a sharp exhalation of breath and looked. And that was when he saw it happen: the man’s head exploding from the rear, pink mist flying off the back of his skull.

The 9mm handgun fell and his captor went down, his eyes open, registering nothing.

Charles Mallory stepped back, staring at the dead man. And then at the man who had killed him.

Jon Mallory was standing five feet away, holding the gun at his side, looking at his brother. Showing no expression.

Charlie watched in disbelief.

Jon, breathing heavily, in and out, said nothing. Charlie reached out to grab his shoulders. He tried to give him a hug, something they’d never done before.

“Don’t,” Jon said, pushing him back. “My ribs.”

Charlie let go, his eyes tearing up. He put his hands on his brother’s arm and led him to cover behind the armored vehicle, waiting for whatever came next. A burst of gunfire, maybe. But there was only silence.

Then he heard another engine engage. Tires rolling over the dirt, toward them. Stopping. Door opening. Footsteps.

“It’s over,” Nadra said.

“How?” Charlie said, coming out. “Where are the others?”

“There aren’t any others. They’re all gone or dead. We scared off a couple dozen of them with the explosions. They retreated.”

Jon stood behind him, holding the gun.

Pumped up with adrenaline, Charlie could tell, but still expressionless.