Read Online Thunderstrike in Syria by Nick Carter - Free Book Online Page B

all the gasping sounds a requiem to his final seconds of life. The second man fell against another terrorist, my bullet, hitting him at an angle, having gone through his lungs.
    The remaining Syrians closed in on me. Ducking the barrel of a machine gun swung at my head, I was about to put a 9mm hollow point into another of my attackers when a powerful hand grabbed my right wrist and an arm slid around my throat. I used the point of my left elbow to smash into the man's ribs. He howled and fell to one side, pulled his arm from my neck.
    As the man holding my right wrist twisted Wilhelmina away from me, I used my left hand to jab him in the hollow of the throat, at the same time kicking backward to flatten the stomach of a man trying to slam me between the shoulder blades with the barrel of his sub-gun.
    But I was fighting a losing battle. Again I was grabbed — both arms this time — and pulled in opposite directions.
    I had been in this sort of fix before and knew what the two Syrians were thinking: that there wasn't anything I could do. But with my legs and feet I could do plenty. I kicked up with my right leg and drove my foot underneath the chin of the man holding my right arm. A long, low sound of agony jumped from his throat and he went down, unconscious.
    The man holding my left arm thought that he was going to get help from a man darting at me to my right. They both got a surprise! With my left foot I stomped down as hard as I could on the right instep of the man hanging on to my arm, and felt his tarsus bone splinter. Immediately I delivered a pulverizing blow to the other man's abdomen. He gasped loudly, his eyes bugged out and he became as helpless as a newborn baby.
    All of a sudden, someone knocked my right leg out from under me, and I started to fall to the right. Before I could recover my balance, a fist slammed against the left side of my head and a man threw himself on my back and kicked my left leg out from under me. Helpless but still struggling, I went down, the weight of the man's body pinning me, sharp stones cutting into my face. Something smashed against the back of my head. Stars exploded inside my head and a black velvet curtain dropped over my brain.
* * *
    I had the horrible feeling that I was in a whirlpool and drowning! The nightmare then became reality and, as I regained consciousness, I realized that the «drowning» had been caused by water thrown into my face. The cobwebs vanished from my mind and I found that I was on my back, my wrists handcuffed behind me, staring up at a circle of hate-filled faces. Except Miriam's: Her expression was one of contempt and amusement.
    "It was a good try, Nick," she smirked. She tapped her cigarette, dropping ash in my face. "But as you Americans are fond of saying, 'you can't win them all. »
    "I really haven't lost this one yet," I shot back at her. "The game is still not over." I noticed that Hugo had been unstrapped from my arm. Without him and Wilhelmina, I felt almost naked. But not quite. I still had Pierre, my gas bomb.
    "It's over for you, Nick," Miriam said matter-of-factly. "You're a dead man, dear. It will be up to you how we kill you, either quickly or very slowly and painfully." She reached out and grabbed the forearm of a SLA sadist who had been about to kick me in the ribs. "Stop! We want to keep our guest in good health," she sneered, looking back down at me. "The stronger he is, the longer we'll be able to torture him."
    She nodded to two of the terrorists and they reached underneath my arms and jerked me to my feet.
    "Clever the way you lured me here," I said to her. "But it seems to me that you and your people went to a lot of trouble. The SLA could just as easily have grabbed me back in Damascus."
    "Yes, we could have," she said lazily, stepping away from me, "but we had no way of knowing if AXE or Hamosad had agents watching to see if you and I left the shop. We couldn't take the risk. You and I had to leave in the van. It was