The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

“No. You’re our only option.”

“But Petrie—”

“Unfortunately, we already tried him,” Golov said. He nodded at the Indian, who went over to the desk chair and spun it around.

Until that point, Munier had held out hope that there would be some way out of this, that he could come up with a solution. But now he knew he had no choice but to do what they said.

It wasn’t Maxim Antonovich that had been hiding in the chair, as he’d thought. Staring back at him were the unseeing eyes of Georges Petrie, his tanned forehead marred by a bullet hole.

THREE

ALGERIA

As he descended, Juan could see more clearly the rock outcroppings that jutted from the giant sand dunes at irregular intervals and he hoped that none of the dune buggies had made a hard landing on any of them. Since there were nine men and only three seats on each buggy, a bent frame or broken axle would leave at least three of them stranded in one of the harshest environments on the planet.

Juan knew who would draw the short straws, if it came to that. Nazari wouldn’t hesitate to leave them behind, especially since he seemed to have his own way out of Algeria if he planned to kill Juan, Eddie, and Linc.

Juan floated down right next to his team, but the untrained Egyptians had landed all over the place in heaps.

With his chute cast aside, Juan climbed the nearest dune to survey the location. The sun was scorching. His headscarf kept a little of the heat at bay, and he was happy to have the latest lightweight ballistic fabric sewn into his clothes instead of the Kevlar body armor that soldiers lugged around.

“There are the Scorpions,” he said, pointing at the desert patrol vehicles that had landed in a line in the adjacent dune valley. “Get ours detached from the chutes and pallet.”

“What about you?” Eddie asked.

Juan saw Nazari closing on two other Egyptians to their left. One of the men was lying on the ground, writhing in pain.

“I’m going to see what happened to him. Come pick me up when you get the Scorpion ready.”

Juan walked carefully down the slope to keep from starting a mini-avalanche. The loose, fine-grained sand made for slow going, and driving over it would be tricky.

He reached the injured man at the same time as Nazari. He was one of the inexperienced jumpers. His face was contorted in agony.

The man attending to him turned to Nazari and said, “His lower leg is broken. He landed on that rock and his leg buckled.” He nodded to an outcropping beside them, although the unnatural angle of the man’s shin made the explanation unnecessary.

Juan felt a familiar twinge at seeing the gruesome injury. He had lost his own leg below the knee in a battle with a Chinese gunboat. He’d grown accustomed to the prosthetic limb he wore, so much so that Nazari would never suspect he wasn’t a two-legged man, but the phantom pain of the missing leg never fully subsided.

Juan bent down to examine the damage. Then he looked at Nazari. “Both the tibia and fibula have snapped. We’ll have to set it and then fashion a splint. He won’t be able to walk on it, so he’ll either need help or we’ll have to get him some kind of crutch.”

“You’re sure?” Nazari asked.

“I’m not a doctor, but I’ve seen this kind of injury before.”

Nazari nodded. Without another word, he drew his pistol and put two rounds into the man’s head.

Juan leaped to his feet and stared at Nazari and the 9mm SIG Sauer in his hand.

“We don’t have time for all that,” Nazari said calmly. “He would just be a hindrance.”

The other man jumped up, and it seemed as if he were about to make a big mistake by taking a step toward Nazari.

“He’s now a martyr,” Nazari said to his soldier. “As we all eventually will be. We couldn’t take him with us, and leaving him here to die of thirst would be cruel. Get our Scorpion prepared to go. As I said, we don’t have much time.”

The soldier stepped back, took one last look at his comrade, and ran toward the buggies.

“He doesn’t understand like you and I do,” Nazari said to Juan. “I can see it in you. We’re both alike.”

Juan nearly shuddered at the thought. “How is that?”