Brute Force Read Online Free PDF Page B

Marine.
    Snow-covered peaks tore at the belly of the sky like fangs. Many of the world’s 8,000-meter giants surrounded the valley. The Gasherbrums, Broad Peak, and K2—the Mountain of Mountains—rose up around them, reminding the three tiny dots that were pursuers and pursued of how insignificant they truly were. It was no wonder this place was called the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods.
    Quinn scanned the boulders ahead of the stumbling jihadist, searching for the hidden threats he knew were there. “See one, think two” was a philosophy that had kept him alive on countless occasions. There were few secrets in the tactical world anymore. The Internet was rife with training videos and war-fighting manuals that drew the veil of secrecy from even the most sacred of strategies. Posting a rear guard was far from a complicated procedure. Even a conscripted goatherd would remember to leave someone to watch his back trail. There was a high probability that the kill squad had left someone behind—and that someone was likely lurking in the shadows ahead, just waiting for Quinn and Thibodaux to enter his sight picture.
    Hours of physical training left both Quinn and Thibodaux in excellent condition. They’d been living at the base camp long enough for their bodies to acclimatize, but prolonged jogging at 12,000 feet pushed them to their limits and slowed them to little more than a steady shuffle.
    The valley narrowed ahead before spreading out along the river in a wide gravel bar, forming a little pass that made for a perfect choke point on their route. Going downhill, Quinn was able to keep the target in sight, but boulders the size of garage doors littered the riverbank, providing countless places for an ambush. Quinn took his eyes off the dangers ahead long enough to shoot a glance at Thibodaux. They were in the shadows, but the big man squinted his good eye as if he were staring into the sun. Like Quinn, he was watching Khalifa for some sort of reaction.
    Quinn raised his fist the moment he saw the fleeing target’s head snap to the right. Something—or someone—in the rocks had caught his attention.
    Puffs of dirt and debris rose from the ground and surrounding rocks a half second later, sending Quinn and Thibodaux diving for the cover of a car-sized boulder. The staccato crack of gunfire echoed across valley walls.
    His back against the rough stone, Jacques held the rifle flat to his chest. “Sound’s bouncing all over these mountains,” he said. “Hard to get a fix on ’em.”
    Quinn said nothing. He’d drawn his revolver the moment he’d seen the fleeing jihadi perk up. He wished for a rifle of his own, but posing as a cook made carrying a long gun impractical, so he made do with a rusty Colt revolver he’d traded for in Karachi. It came with half a box of relatively new .45 ACP ammo and two metal half-moon clips that held the rounds in the cylinder. Without his customary Kimber 10mm and a second Glock or Beretta, Quinn felt nearly naked with the six-shooter.
    Thibodaux closed his good eye, listening intently as he pinpointed a shooter’s location, a hundred meters ahead in the boulders along the river. He swung the SCAR and pulled the trigger, silencing the would-be assassin with a well-placed shot. One down, a second shooter began to walk a series of bullets across the trail.
    Thibodaux looked down at the Colt in Quinn’s hand and grimaced. “Tell you what, Chair Force, how about you let me do the heavy lifting on this one. I’m not convinced that blunderbuss won’t blow up in your hand and kill us both.”
    “How many rounds you have?” Quinn asked, nodding to the SCAR.
    The Marine patted the magazine that jutted from the rifle’s action. “Seven here,” he said. “And another mag of twenty in my pocket. But, I don’t reckon there are more than two or three bad guys up there.”
    The whap of rotors combined with the high metallic whine of aircraft engines drowned out the sound of gunfire. A