INVISIBLE DUTY (INVISIBLE RECRUITS) (4 page)

It took everything I had to look up, but I did. There st
ood the Tuareg tribesman, only a few feet away, one hand raised, a single finger stabbing toward me.

“Your magic is strong, but not strong enough,” he said in a rough, gravelly voice that rolled across my skin.

A threat? Crumpled into a knot of misery I didn’t think so. More like a statement of fact.

Then he glanced beyond me, back toward the huts and shook his head, as if disappointed. Or resigned. “You and your friends have cost me. No matter. You shall pay.”

He pivoted as if planning to walk away. Had I dodged the bullet?

I struggled to find words but none would come
, not when breathing cost so much.

He spoke over his shoulder as if I wasn’t worth enough of his attention to speak to me directly. “I will leave my comrade to finish you off.
He enjoys pain.”

He touched two fingers to his blue turbaned head as if a salute, laughed with a sound that crept down my spine, and then started whirling. Only it wasn’t him, it was a cloud of dark, blue smoke.

Like a controlled wildfire the smoke gathered speed in a funnel shape and lifted skyward. I tracked it until it disappeared.

Only then did the pain slacken.

Thank the Great Spirits. At last I knew what he was. But before I could do anything except suck in a deep breath a low guttural sound near me reminded me I wasn’t done yet.

The Duna.

Turning, I saw him, freed from my containment spell though still on the ground. He was now fully human and his stare promised payment.

CHAPTER FOUR

Some days you just couldn’t get a break. Looked like this was one of them.

With a cry from deep inside
, desperation had me launching myself toward the Duna. There was no magic left in me so that option was out. Now it was just down and dirty hand-to-hand fighting, human-to-human, hoping I could give Jaylene and the others enough time to find Stone before the Duna used his magic against me.

Guess Hyena-Guy didn’t expect an attack as my shoulder hit him broadside while he was trying to
stagger to his feet.

Using elbows and knees to thrust and block, my goal was to drive him back, occupy him anyway I could. We rolled along the red dust ground, my hands in his hair, slamming his head against the ground ever
y chance I could as he did the same to me.

The Duna stank; hot, hairy, rotting smells. My knee smacked his nose, the sound of it crunching as I head butted him
, snapping his jaws. The gross hard-boiled egg feel of his eyes as I jabbed thumbs into them made me want to wretch.

He was big, pissed, and possessed both the strength of an ape and the cunning of the hyena
even in his human form. I was damn lucky he wasn’t using his magic against me, but then maybe he was just toying. Or I was keeping him busy enough scrambling not to reach for his dark abilities.

He managed one knee to my stomach
that not only threw me backward but knocked the wind out of me as he twisted to his knees and stood.

My time had run out as his gaze cleaved me, wiping one hand across his bloody mouth he started speaking.

Hearing his chanting even I scrambled to my own feet, I knew I had only moments left before his magic sidelined me.

The two of us faced off across from one another, breath chugging, skin plastered with sweat and red dust, his magic guttural words already wrapping around me.

This wasn’t how I wanted to die.

I countered with a quick protection spell.

Air, earth, water, all three, I summon thee.

Elements of earth, smite my enemy.

Elements of air, surround us and protect us.

Elements of water, rise between us.

Darkness banish. Lightness flare forth. Thee I call. Thee I seek.

Come forth. Come forth. So mote it be!

It worked.

Hot diggety dog!
His magic was stalemated. At least for a small breath of time. No telling how long I could hold the spell as I could feel the drain from deep inside.

His ground-dragging arms reached for me, straining for a headlock, first and last step before snapping my neck. On auto-pilot I swam my arms up, up,
up between his, pushed outward just enough to free one hand. An old trick my brothers taught me my first trip away from home. Now I spread my fingers like a skewed fan and dug them forward, straight toward his orange-red eyes. Pow, they connected.

His head snapped back.

Hallelujah!

I followed the small gain with a hard trust of my open palm to his chin, packing the punch of my arm bone to crack his head even further back
. Goal was to unbalance him. He wavered. Not much, but I didn’t need a lot.

I followed through with the one kick my brothers taught me undid anything with a penis
—the groin kick.

And damn if it didn’t work. The Duna crumpled, knees biting the dirt, his shoulders slumped forward. I grabbed his head, smashed it forward and slammed it into my knee. Thunk!

The man caved.

Hot
tamales, I did it!

I hustled to truss him up like a rodeo calf, only tighter, with plastic ties I had in one of my cargo pants pockets, arms and legs behind him. If he was as whipped as I felt I might have bought myself enough time to get back to the hut and our supplies for something stronger to hold him.

Then I shoved his gun in my waistband before staggering back to the first guy I'd taken out and who was still down. His rope belt made tying him up easy, plus he seemed all human which meant he wouldn’t be freeing himself like the Duna could. A quick recon of the area showed me the last two men were in too many pieces to worry about.

I
’d just turned when I heard it. The Duna, trussed like a hairy turkey, was jabbering. The words made no sense but the power crawling up my skin did.

Double damn. His mouth. I hadn’t disarmed it.

Some all-powerful witch I was if I screwed up the basics.

Now it was too late. Staggering forward, my legs suddenly limp, fear freezing my blood though the sun boiled overhead, the Duna’s voice increased in intensity. A thousand fire ants crawled from inside my brain, out my ears, and down my arms.

I screamed; a clawing, desperate shout for all the good it did. No one could hear. No one could get to me in time. Nothing anyone could do anyway—the ants weren’t real. But they sure felt real.

Slamming my hands over my ears helped muffle the voice even as I dropped to my knees, rocking forward till my head brushed the dirt.

Make it stop. Make it stop. Sweet Goddess, make it stop.

Maybe it was calling the Goddess’ name, or maybe it was the arrogance of the Duna, but either way his voice paused. That split second was all I needed.

My fingers clutched at my waist, where I’d tucked his Ruger. Hands sweating, I whipped out the weapon and reared back on my knees. My arms were so shaky I needed a double-handed grip just to hang on to the weapon.

He sneered, his body
fully shifted, he snarled through hyena lips. “Girlie girl, I the stronger, the more powerful.”

“Don’t bet on it bastard.” I raised the gun but his smarmy look only increased, as did his shifting, his hyena head elongating, his ape bottom half darkening, breaking through the ties.

He spat on the ground. “You less than—”

I pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Think again ass
hole,” I whispered, staggering to my knees, then my feet and walking over to what was left of the Duna. “I might be less than nothing but you’re dead.”

Later I’d deal with the horror, with the bile rising in my stomach and coating my throat. Death up close left no illusions. There’d be nightmares for months as a result of the last ten minutes but now was still action time. All else was on hold.

Once on the relatively safe road, I double-timed it back to the compound, reaching it just as the chopper took off, Mandy and Jaylene covering their faces from the back-blow of dust. No sign of Vaughn.

One look at their faces warned me they had bad news.

"Stone?" I asked past parched lips.

"Doesn't look good
.” Mandy was the one who answered, the Latino lilt to her words not covering the fear beneath them. Jaylene looked too sickened to do anything but shake her head.

"But he's not dead?" Please, please tell me he’s still alive. Alive meant hope.

"Not yet."

Thank heavens.

I shivered even as the hot African sun pooled sweat along my lower back. "And Gahutu?"

"Dead. One Hutu might make it, in part because he’s a shifter. He’s in the chopper, well-secured in case he changes." Mandy looked after the retreating machine. "Vaughn's heading toward Kenya."

Rwanda medical conditions were legendary. One doctor for every thirty-thousand people. Stone stood a better chance winning the New York lottery twice in a row than getting decent medical help in-country.

"Anybody know what happened?" I asked, already gagging on the coppery smell of death wafting from the hut. Too bad I couldn’t have killed the Duna Sorcerer twice. Or even three times.

"We don't have all the details." Mandy looked around her. "The shifter admitted, after a little persuasion, that the witch doctor found out Gahutu was part Tutsi. Stone stepped in to save the boy. It went downhill fast."

It sounded like Stone. He was a bad-assed instructor, but the kind of man you wanted guarding your back in a tight spot.

"And the others?"

"Falling out of thieves." Mandy shrugged. “Someone figured if Stone was willing to broker a sizeable deal, they should have a larger piece of the cut.”

"It's a bloody massacre in there." Jaylene stepped away. "Makes gang fights in Chicago look like school kids pissing at one another."

If the sight sickened street-savvy Jaylene, who'd seen more of the dark side of life up-close and pers
onal than the rest of the team—excepting Stone—then I wanted no part of it.

But I hadn't signed on only for the wins. "We going to bury them?" I asked, steeling myself for the answer.

"Not us." Mandy tapped her commset. "We've got orders to move out. They don't want Americans anywhere near this site. A UNESCO crew with local Rwandan officials is on its way."

Finally, some good news. Except . . .

“Does that mean we’re through?” I asked, adrenaline still roaring through me, looking for a target, knowing one was still running free.

“We stopped the arms deal.” Mandy looked grim. “Caught the shifter and, if Stone lives, we might have something that will eventually help to put the bastards away for a good long time.” She looked hard at me. “Isn’t that enough?”

Hell, no!

“That’s it?” I asked, feeling like I’d been told just now that there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Or that my mother had abandoned my brothers and me, all over again.

“We’ve accomplished what we were tasked to do. Mission over.” Mandy bit off each word.

Jaylene stepped in to prevent more bloodshed.
Mandy was less than willing to cut me any slack. Good thing I had only broken her arm and not a leg. So it was Jaylene who asked, “We did catch the witch doctor, didn’t we?”

I shrugged, in part to ease the tension through my shoulders. “Yeah, caught, and killed. There going to be a problem with that?”

“Not from me,” Jaylene said. “After what I saw in that hut, the only good Sorcerer is a dead Sorcerer.”

“A dead Duna sorcerer,” I added.

Jaylene glanced at her hand, as if expecting the tell-tale heat to still be branding her finger. “I’ll be damned, so that’s what set off the rings.”

“No.”

That had her and Mandy both snapping their attention to me.

“What do you mean?”  Jaylene’s voice sounded a tinge on the shaky side.

"Blue guy, the Tuareg tribesman was a djinn as far as I could tell."

Mandy glared at me, fire in her gaze. "And what the hell is a da-whatever you said?"

“Da-jin though it’s spelled djinn.”

“I’m not wanting a spelling lesson here
, witchy-girl,” Mandy snapped.

“Fine.” Two can play short and snarky. “They say humans are made from clay and water. Angels are created from light. Djinn a
re created from smokeless fire.“

“Are we talking more of your fairy tales?” Jaylene’s voice told me she was only going to give me so much leeway before she walked away from this discussion.

“Djinns were one of the original beings, lower than angels, higher than humans on the great hierarchy scales, so they were given powers and abilities that make that Duna sorcerer chump change. Which means they’re a whole lot more powerful than the average sorcerer--and a whole lot more dangerous to humans.”

Jaylene looked toward the hut. “So was he the one behind Stone getting hurt?”

“I’m sure he was. The sorcerer was his henchman but the djinn was the real bad guy. If we don’t stop him, he’ll keep on killing, feeding his power thirst. These guys are a power vacuum and the only way to stop them is to kill them. This isn’t about an arms deal and some third-world agitation; this is about true evil unleashed unless we contain him.”

“You mean kill him?” Jaylene always did talk straight.

I nodded.

"He'll have to hold.
" Mandy said. “Kelly’s sending another chopper back to collect us. Ten minutes tops. We’re out of here.” 

“Without finishing the mission?” I asked, widening my stance in a way any Noziak would recognize as itching for a fight. “Didn’t you just hear what I said about the djinn? We walk away now and it’s like walking away from the chance to stop a Hitler, a Pol Pot, a Ghengis Khan
before
they became too powerful. Nip evil in the bud and you won’t live to regret it later.”

But nobody seemed to be listening to me. Certainly not Mandy. Then maybe she’d never had to live with regret. Never found herself awake in the early morning hours, listening to her own breathing, wondering if she could have done something different. Said something instead of what she had said. T
ook a different action.

Regret was a twin to remorse and second cousin to dark memories. No way was I going to look the other way if there was something,
anything
, I could do now.

Gahutu had died trying to stop what he’d thought were a few bad guys. How could I do less?

Ling Mai be hanged. Mandy be stuffed. This djinn dude was a time bomb waiting to explode and I couldn’t turn my back and ignore him.

“Let’s table the discussion until we get somewhere away from h
ere.” Jaylene said, turning to walk back toward where our gear had been abandoned.

I ran to catch up with her, not caring if the ostriches still in the area scattered
. "You okay?" I asked her, as she glanced at the hut over her shoulder.

"Get me away from here and I will be." She straightened her shoulders. Showing emotion was not in this woman's vocabulary
. But her voice was rock hard as she added, "If Stone dies it'll be another matter."

And if we didn’t stop the djinn? One more unresolved issue. But I bi
t my tongue and instead asked, "Vaughn holding together?"

"The woman’s an ice queen."

I didn't doubt it. When the chips were down Vaughn would pull through. It was why she was team leader. But even team leaders could get gutted.

"Time to vamoose," Mandy said. “Quit squawking and start double-timing it.”

Bite me,
chiquita
.

Instead of throwing fuel on the animosity fire I picked up my pace. "Let me grab my equipment." I headed stiff-legged to where I'd been on stake out. "And I'll be ready to leave."

More than ready.

But not ready to let a devil-blue djinn get away with what he’d done here.