The Siege Read Online Free Page B

and raw. He didn’t even feel them. Tears were rolling down his face. He was pleading with a God he’d never known to spare his life. The big bad leader of men… the heartless bastard who was so willing to take the lives of innocents without so much as batting an eye, was now reduced to a quivering vessel of jelly.
         And he wanted his mama.
         “So, why are the men who are digging brighter and more visible than the men who are laying there? Is that because they’re working and sweating?”
         “Exactly. They’re putting out way more body heat because they’re exerting thems elves. The other men are at rest or already dead. They’re not physically active, so their bodies are putting out very little heat. Heat is the only thing the cameras key on in this mode.”
         “So how do you tell if the ones on the floor are dead or just sitting there?”
         At that moment, one of the men on the floor stumbled to his feet and started feeling his way toward the back of the tunnel.
         “Well, I’m pretty sure that one is still alive.”
         He turned to Hannah and grinned.
         “No shit, Sherlock. Seriously, how do we know that the other four aren’t dead?”
         “Well, truth is, we don’t, until we see them move. What we’ll do is watch them over the next few hours. If they never move, and if their heat signature starts to dim, then we’ll be able to assume they’re probably dead. When their heat signature disappears completely, and we can’t see them at all, then we’ll know for sure.
         “The ultimate goal is for all of their heat signatures to fade away to black. That’ll mean all of them are dead.”
         Mark turned again to look at Hannah, and saw a look of concern on her face.
         “What’s the matter, honey?”
         She hesitated.
         Then she said, “Mark, I don’t feel right about this at all. I know those are bad men in there. I know they tried to hurt us, and they shot Sami. But they’re human beings. What kind of animals are we if we just stand here and watch them die a slow and miserable death?”
         John spoke up.
         “I know how you feel, Hannah. But the sad fact is that those men have no morals or empathy. They shot my daughter, and they could just have easily have shot you or your son.
         “The fact that they chased us over here means that they weren’t content to just take over our compound. They could have settled for that, but they chose not to. And God only knows what they wanted when they decided to pursue us, but I can venture a guess.
         “My guess is that they were going to kill most of us and use the rest for their pleasure or convenience.”
         “How so?”
         “Hannah, I was a policeman for a lot of years. I’ve seen the evil that men like that are capable of. You are a beautiful woman. So is my Sami. I cannot bear to think what would happen to the two of you if you were taken alive by that bunch. It’s my hunch that you’d spend the rest of your lives being brutalized, passed from one barbarian to the next, until they just wore you out. Then they’d dispose of you like last week’s garbage.”
         “But…”
         “Let me finish. You need to hear this. We’re assuming that these men came from that prison in Eden. If that’s the case, then they were locked up for a reason. There are some bad sons of bitches in our prison systems, Hannah. Some of them did some very ugly things to get put there. And not all of them like women. Sadly, many of them prefer young girls, like your nieces.”
         He put emphasis on his last sentence.
         “Or little boys, like your Markie.”
         Hannah teared up at the thought . She was convinced. But she still didn’t like the idea of watching helpless men die.
         Mark took over again.
         “There’s another reason too, honey. These men were bad before. They’re