Chapter 19

Charlie came to as Mansour pushed through the last of the dense stand of pines into the canyon. The first sensation he was aware of was the pain on the left side of his face, followed immediately by the impression that he was moving, and finally by the realization that he was being carried, flung over Mansour's back like a sack. Branches grabbed and scratched at him and he began to struggle. Mansour responded by immediately flinging him down hard on his back, forcing the air out of his lungs, and grabbed him under the arms, clamping a hand over his mouth.

Charlie gasped for breath under the dirty hand, feeling new pain in his jaw at the pressure, and struggled desperately, kicking and writhing. He grabbed at Mansour's arms, but the man's grip was like iron, and he pulled Charlie forward inexorably into the canyon. He stopped suddenly, twisting Charlie and forcing him to the ground, and as Charlie was turned, he caught a glimpse of someone tied to a tree, and a towel on the ground, sickeningly familiar, littered with tools.

He ended up face down with Mansour's knee in his back, his hands pulled roughly behind him. Mansour was taping them together, he realized, and he writhed with new effort and cried out in panic. Mansour's hand immediately shot out and closed around his windpipe, choking off the cry and his air supply. He started to see stars, then the pressure released, and in the next instant he felt dirty hands come around his head, forcing duct tape over his mouth as he gasped for air, winding the tape around his head for good measure. His feet were still free, and he used them for leverage, thrashing and kicking, and landed a sharp blow to Mansour's shin.

Mansour emitted a feral sound, something between a muffled shriek and a growl, and kicked Charlie savagely in return. The first blow caught him in his unprotected abdomen, and air left him in a rush. It was followed by several others, the blows hitting his legs, his torso, his back. Mansour was swearing at him, snarling something about him running off. Charlie finally stopped struggling as the heavy boot landed a blow to his back, catching him in the kidney, and he gasped in agony, suddenly incapacitated by pain.

He felt Mansour taping his ankles together, as he lay on his side, overcome, his chest heaving; his face toward the towel. Rough hands pulled off his boots and socks; then heard Mansour rise and begin pacing behind him, and he lay still. Maybe if he acted as if was unconscious, Mansour would leave him alone. He shut his eyes, gut clenched against the pain generated by the beating he had received, trying to level his breathing. He heard Mansour's footsteps receding, back toward the way they had come, and he drew a deep shuddering breath, relieved for a moment; but the relief was dwarfed by the terror that rose in him as full awareness of his predicament sunk in.

He realized that one of two things must have happened. The first was that Mansour had somehow gotten to Ian, and incapacitated him, or worse. This didn't seem likely; there had been no sounds of struggle, and the idea that any single person could better Ian in combat seemed unbelievable at best, but it was a possibility. If Mansour had taken Charlie against Ian's will, and Ian was still alive, he never would have allowed Mansour to get this far.

The second was one that so horrified Charlie that he didn't even want to consider it – that this entire trip was planned with him as bait – that Ian had set him up and had left him to Mansour on purpose, and by his agreement, so had his brother. That absolutely couldn't be, he told himself, fighting against despair, knowing that neither of the two options were good. If the first was true, and Mansour had taken Ian out, he was facing a horrible death. If the second option was true, he realized slowly, with sickening certainty, if he had been betrayed by his own brother, he would welcome that death, in any form.

The only thing he could believe, he told himself, as he began shivering uncontrollably, was that Ian was dead. He could not; he refused to go to his death thinking that his brother had allowed this to happen. It couldn't be. All of the times he had been taken advantage of in the past, as if he was not so much a person as a math textbook, rose in his memory, eating like demons at his resolve, and he stifled a sob. He bit it off as he heard footsteps behind him, and tried to control the shaking that wracked his body.

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Edgerton crept back around the trail, retracing his steps, fighting the unfamiliar sensation of fear. He stopped suddenly as he heard a scrape of a foot on gravel. One of the pine thickets that dotted the cliff face was just ahead, and he slipped into it, melting into the branches. The owner of the foot came into view and his heart dropped as he saw who it was. When they came abreast of him he called out the name of the agent in front.

"Granger."

Colby spun toward the voice, Megan and David after him, reaching for their service weapons. Edgerton stepped out carefully from the trees, and they stopped, re-holstering their pistols, their faces guarded.

"Where are they?" asked Megan quietly.

Edgerton didn't reply. It seemed suddenly impossible to utter the words. Getting hold of himself with an effort, he spoke, his calm voice and expressionless eyes masking the fear and anxiety that gripped him. "I don't know."

"You don't know!" exploded David. He took a menacing step forward, stopping only as he felt Megan's arm on his. Colby stared at Edgerton in disbelief. The man was a legend, and Colby had always regarded him in awe. His fall from grace was utter and complete in Colby's eyes, and he regarded Edgerton with shock and contempt.

Edgerton stared back, for all appearances unmoved. "I'm backtracking. The trail opens up ahead; you can see for over a mile. They didn't get that far. They had to have stepped off the trail somewhere along these cliffs. We need to go back and search every bit of cover. I have an idea where we may have missed them."

Megan's face was cold and grim. "And that would be?"

Edgerton jerked his head toward the pine thicket behind him. "Charlie mentioned coming out of the canyon through a thick section of pine trees. I think one of these thickets is hiding the entrance to the canyon. I've been probing each one as I've come back up the trail." The agents' eyes shifted to the thicket as if they expected Mansour to materialize from it.

Edgerton turned toward it, pushing through the branches, disappearing into them toward the cliff face behind. The rest of them looked at each other, and were preparing to follow him in, when he reappeared. "This one isn't it; there isn't an opening in the rock," he said. He pushed past them onto the trail, his steps brisk. "We need to get moving. We don't have much time."

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Charlie lay with his eyes shut; trying to be still, but the tremors apparently had given him away. He felt hands gripping his arms, turning him roughly on his back. He opened his eyes almost against his will. Mansour was glaring at him, his eyes dancing with terrifying insanity, muttering to himself. He straddled Charlie, pushing him to the ground with his arms pinned painfully behind him. Beyond Mansour Charlie could see a man tied to a tree, the same tree that Charlie had been tied to a few days earlier. The man's face was also duct-taped, but his eyes were open, and he was looking at Charlie with horror, laced with pity.

Charlie's gaze was wrenched back to Mansour as he caught the glint of a knife in his peripheral vision. Mansour pulled open his jacket and gripped his shirt, slicing it open at the front, and ran his hands over Charlie's stitched and healing cuts, his face darkening in anger. He exploded suddenly, dropping the knife and pounding Charlie's rib cage with his fists, one blow following another.

"You cannot hide the marking!" he raged, delivering another vicious blow, this one generating a sickening crack. Charlie's chest heaved as he tried unsuccessfully to bring in air, and Mansour grabbed suddenly at a section of stitches, ripping them apart with his fingers. Charlie gasped, air rushing painfully into his lungs, as Mansour picked up the knife. Holding Charlie by the neck to keep him still, he traced over the original cuts with the blade, slicing through stitches and healing skin. A moan, muffled by the tape, escaped Charlie, and he closed his eyes in terror and pain.

Mansour grunted in satisfaction as he finished, and his voice changed, picking up the slurring drawl he had used earlier. "Decided to come home, did you, boy? Where in the hell were you, anyway? You think you ken jist run around fer hours at a time, without a by-yer-leave? I'll show you, you lil' sonofabitch. This'll keep you from runnin'."

As he talked he turned around, still straddling Charlie, but facing his feet, with his weight lower down, immobilizing Charlie's legs. Charlie thrashed, desperately twisting his torso, but his legs were firmly pinned. Mansour paused for a moment. He needed to tie off the legs and feet, but no - he had done that already.

His sick mind twisted with confusion. He was growing impatient; the urge to cut overwhelming him. Forget the wires. Cut. He would cut the damn boy's toe off. He grasped Charlie's right foot, brought the knife to the base of his small toe, and shifting his grip, bore down with the blade. Charlie screamed; a horrible sound made no less terrible by the gag, as the blade went through the skin and into bone.

"Mansour!" Edgerton's voice cracked through the forest.

Mansour's head jerked up, and he reacted almost immediately, scrambling backwards, lifting Charlie and pulling him against his chest, still clutching the bloody knife. Charlie's eyes fell on Edgerton, and in spite of the haze of pain, he realized what it meant. Edgerton was alive. Charlie's eyes widened and his heart plunged as the knowledge hit him; he had been set up. 'It can't be true,' he thought wildly, but the denial faded as he saw Colby, and then Megan and David, advancing with their weapons leveled. He gasped, sickened. 'They were all in on it,' he thought, horrified, and he slumped in despair against Mansour, his eyes staring blankly, deadened by defeat.

"Drop the knife, Mansour!" commanded Edgerton. His eyes flicked to Charlie, who was covered in blood and appeared to be in shock.

Mansour screamed back at them, twisting and writhing anxiously behind Charlie. "You can't take him! He is marked! Can't you see that he is marked?" His last words sprayed out with spittle, almost unintelligible, and ended in an inhuman howl.

Raising his knife, he began striking at Charlie's right thigh, plunging the knife repeatedly, madly, as if he intended to hack off Charlie's leg. Charlie felt the pain as if from a distance, watching the knife dispassionately; the sensation was nothing in the face of the despair that gripped his heart like a vise. In his frenzy, Mansour's grip on Charlie slipped, and Charlie slid lower against his body, giving Edgerton a clear shot. As Mansour raised the knife again, Edgerton's rifle cracked, and a neat hole appeared in Mansour's forehead. His jaw slacked, and the knife fell from his nerveless hand, point first, landing in Charlie's abdomen; handle quivering. Mansour fell backwards, his eyes open, staring, and finally still.

Megan, Colby, and David rushed toward them, David checking Mansour quickly to be sure he was gone, as Megan and Colby knelt by Charlie, who was staring in stunned fascination at the knife in his gut. They freed his hands and feet, and turning from Mansour, David carefully peeled the duct tape from Charlie's face and head. Colby and David turned at once, both looking for the pack containing the aid kit, as Megan moved down toward Charlie's foot.

She turned in time to see Charlie, with a dazed expression, grasp the knife handle sticking out of his lower abdomen and pull. "Charlie, no!" she gasped, as he stared at the bloody knife blankly; then let it fall on the ground. He turned his head away from them, his hand dropping lifelessly at his side. She looked up at Colby, stunned, and he shook his head and grimaced. 'No sense telling Charlie that he shouldn't have done that,' he thought. 'We sure don't need to panic him; he already looks like he's heading for shock.'

Edgerton stepped over to the tree, cutting the rope binding the deputy, who immediately ripped the duct tape from his face, bent over, and vomited, leaning against the tree for support. "Jesus, God," he gasped, and turned, staring at Charlie and Mansour in horror. Edgerton left him by the tree and squatted down by the other agents.

Colby was the only one of them that had taken a pack, and he had stuffed the first aid kit in it at the last minute, but they didn't have a chance to replenish it yet, and there was little left in the way of bandages. Charlie's toe was hanging from his foot, blood pouring out of the wound, and Megan grabbed what little gauze there was and began carefully wrapping his foot, trying to hold the toe in place.

"I need more bandages," she said, looking at them in desperation, holding his foot. Blood was already seeping through the gauze, and Charlie's torso and thigh were saturated. She looked at him in dismay. 'So much blood,' she thought, fearfully. Colby ripped off his jacket, pulling off his sweatshirt and his T-shirt and started tearing the T-shirt into strips, and David followed suit.

Megan spoke soothingly to Charlie, trying to keep her own voice calm. "It's okay, Charlie, hang in there, we're going to take care of you." Charlie was oddly silent, his head turned away from them, his face barely registering pain, his eyes dull and lifeless, and his behavior sent a new pang of fear through her. 'It looks like he's given up,' she thought, as she wrapped strips of T-shirt around his foot.

Colby and David were doing their best to bind Charlie's thigh when Edgerton rose, his gaze fixed on something in the trees. He trotted off, and Colby followed him with his eyes, his face suspicious. Megan was looking helplessly at the blood coming from Charlie's abdomen, and David tossed her his sweatshirt; she folded it up as best she could and pressed on the wound. This finally got a reaction from Charlie; his eyes rolled and he groaned in pain. His breathing was becoming slightly labored, and Megan's eyes met Colby's in concern.

"You doing okay, there, Charlie?" she asked, trying to get a response from him. She got one, but not what she wanted; he looked at her silently for just a moment, his chest heaving and his face filled with pain and sadness; then turned his head away again.

Edgerton had spotted Mansour's campsite hidden back in the trees, and he returned from it dragging a tarp. Speaking sharply to the dazed deputy, he got the man on his feet and they started folding the tarp around two long branches, fashioning a stretcher. Finished, Edgerton rose and pulled out his radio, glancing at Charlie as he spoke. Megan heard him speak with relief; it meant he had managed to reach someone, and she heard his request for an ambulance.

David and Colby shrugged their jackets back on, and they lifted Charlie gently onto the stretcher. Edgerton had found a blanket along with the tarp; it was dirty, but they used it anyway, covering Charlie to help ward off shock. Edgerton faced them. "I'm staying here to wait for the forensics team," he said. The group stared back at him, distrust obvious on their faces. He ignored the look and continued. "Once you're out on the trail, head right. You're less than an hour from the trailhead." He regarded Charlie for a moment, his face impenetrable. "You'd better get going," he said quietly.

They headed off without a word. Colby and David carried the stretcher, and Megan walked behind, followed by the deputy, who took one last look at the sight over his shoulder, shuddering. They pushed through the pine thicket, Megan stepping beside the stretcher and using her hands to shield Charlie's face from the grasping branches, and they broke free onto the trail, heading for the trailhead.

Colby was at the rear of the stretcher, and he glanced down at Charlie, who had been nearly silent throughout the whole ordeal. What he saw in Charlie's eyes brought a frown of concern to his face. He had seen that look in the eyes of fallen comrades in Afghanistan; it was the look of horror, despair, and sad acceptance that said that they had given up, and Colby's gut clenched, remembering. Not one of them, once they had that look in their eyes, had made it.

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