by Elle James
In his seventies, Reverend Townsend got around well for his age. He worked hard and never complained. The villagers loved him and treated the white-haired old man and his wife like family.
Standing in Alex’s makeshift schoolroom, he appeared to have aged ten years. “By the time I left the village, every man, woman and child had gone. They ran into the hills. We have to get these children out of the orphanage as quickly as possible. Take them into the hills.”
Alex waved to her assistant, Fariji, the tall young man who’d been more than happy to help her with her lessons and, in the process, was learning to read himself. “Help me get the children out.”
“Yes, Miss Alex.” He had the older kids hold hands with the younger ones and led them out the door.
Alex herded the rest of the children toward the door. “Leave your books,” she said. “Older children, help the younger ones.”
The children bottlenecked at the door, where the reverend hurried them through. Once they were all outside, he faced the children. “Follow Miss Alex and Fariji,” he said. “Stay with them.”
Alex turned to the reverend. “Where do I go in the hills?”
“Anywhere, just hide. Some of the older children play in the hills. Let them lead you.” He turned to stare into the distance, where the road led into the village.
Alex didn’t like that the reverend wasn’t coming with them. “What about you and Mrs. Townsend?”
“Martha refused to leave the sick baby.” He looked back at her. “Go. We are in God’s hands.”
Maybe so, but the ISIS terrorists didn’t believe in the reverend’s God. They believed in killing all foreigners and many of their own people in their efforts to control the entire region. “Reverend, let me help you bring Martha out of the village.”
He shook his head. “She won’t abandon the mother and child she has been helping for the past few days. They can’t be moved.”
“Have you considered the fact that you and your wife staying with them might give the terrorists more reason to not only kill you and your wife, but also the woman and her baby?”
He nodded and repeated, “We are in God’s hands.” He nodded at the children running toward the hills. “Go with them. They need someone to ensure their survival.”
Torn between saving the children and saving her mentor, father figure and friend, Alex hesitated.
“You can’t help everyone,” the reverend said. “Martha and I have lived long, productive lives. No regrets. You and the children have not.” He waved her toward the children. “Go. Live.”
Alex hugged the reverend. “I’ll go, but once the children are safe, I’m coming back for you and Martha.”
He patted her back. “Only if it’s safe.”
An explosion rocked the ground and was followed by the sound of gunfire.
Her pulse hammering in her veins, Alex hurried after Fariji and the children running through the village streets toward the hills.
She counted heads, satisfied she had all of her little charges. Some of them clustered around her, while others ran ahead. One little girl tripped and fell.
Alex scooped her up and set her on her feet, barely slowing. She clutched the child’s hand and kept moving.
More gunfire sounded behind her. She didn’t look back. She had one goal: to get the children to safety. Only then would she think about what was going on in the village.
At the far end of the community, they neared the base of the bluffs rising high over their heads.
A shiver of fear rippled through Alex. She had never hiked in the hills because she was afraid she wouldn’t find her way back out. Now she was purposely heading into unknown territory—with children. For a moment, she hesitated.
Then another explosion shook the earth beneath her feet. She glanced over her shoulder. A plume of dusty fire and smoke rose up into the air near the road leading into the village.
She didn’t need any more motivation. Bullets were bad; bombs were even worse. “Hurry!” she yelled.
The youngest children had slowed, their little legs tired from running through the village.
Alex despaired. How could she get all of them up the steep slopes? And if they did make it, where would she hide them?
She’d heard from some of the elders that there were caves in the hills. In the past, when their village had been invaded, the people had fled to the hills and hidden in the caves until the attackers moved on.
Alex lifted one of the smallest girls and settled her on her back. She started up the hill, holding the hand of a little boy, small for his seven years. She tried not to think about what was happening down in the village.
If the threat was the ISIS faction, the reverend and his wife were in grave danger. Alex’s heart squeezed tightly in her chest. The elderly couple were incredibly kind and selfless. They didn’t deserve to be tortured or killed.
Ahead, Alex caught glimpses of other villagers, climbing the rugged path upward. She felt better knowing they were heading in the right direction. Hopefully, the men terrorizing the village wouldn’t take the time or make the effort to climb into the hills to capture villagers and orphans. What would it buy them?
However, Alex, being an American and female, might be a more attractive bargaining chip. Or she’d make for better film footage on propaganda videos. She had to keep out of sight of the ISIS terrorists.
Once they could no longer see the village, Alex breathed a little more freely. Not that they were out of danger, but if they couldn’t see the village, the attackers couldn’t see them.
Ahead and to the north rose stony bluffs, shadowed by the angle of the sun hitting the ridge to the south.
Alex paused to catch her breath and study the bluff. Had she seen movement? She blinked and stared again at a dark patch in the rocky edifice.
A village woman slipped from the patch and climbed downward to where Alex stood with her little band of orphaned children.
Another woman followed the first, and then another. Soon five women were on their way down the steep slope to where Alex and Fariji stood. Each gathered a small child and headed up to what Alex realized was a cave entrance.
Alex, burdened with the girl on her back, started up the path, urging the other children to climb or crawl up the slippery slope. By the time she reached the entrance, she was breathing hard.
She slipped the girl from her back and eased her to the stone floor of the cave.
More than a dozen women and children emerged from deep in the shadows, their eyes wide and wary. They gathered around Alex, all talking at once.
“Where are the others?” Alex asked in French.
“Scattered among the caves.” A woman called Rashida stepped forward. “There are many caves. This is only the first one.”
“They will find us here,” a younger woman said. “We must go deeper into the hills.”
“We can’t,” Rashida said. She tipped her head toward three older women sitting on the ground, their backs hunched, their eyes closed. “The old ones will not make it. It was all they could do to come this far.”
Alex’s heart went out to the old and young who couldn’t move as fast or endure another climb up steep hills.
“None of us will last long without food and water,” the other woman argued.
“We can’t go back down to the village.” An old woman called Mirembe glanced up from her position seated on the ground. “We would all be tortured or killed.”
Alex didn’t want to argue with the women when the reverend and his wife were down there with no one to help or hide them. With the children safe in the cave, Alex couldn’t stop thinking about the elderly missionaries. She drew in a deep breath and made up her mind. “I need you women to care for these children.”
Again, the women gathered around her.
“Where are you going?” Rashida asked.
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“Don’t leave us,” another woman pleaded.
“If you go back, you’ll be killed,” Mirembe predicted.
“I have to go back. Reverend Townsend and his wife stayed behind.”
Mirembe shook her head. “They are dead by now. They must be.”
A sharp pain pierced Alex’s heart. “I choose to think they are still alive. And I’m going down to see if there is anything I can do to help.” She glanced around at the women. “Will you care for these children?” she repeated with more force.
Rashida nodded. “We will look after them until your return.”
A tiny hand tugged at her pant leg. “Miss Alex, please don’t go.”
Alex glanced down at Kamaria, the little girl she’d carried up the hill. She had tears in her big brown eyes as she stared up at Alex.
Her chest tight, Alex dropped to one knee and hugged Kamaria. “I’ll be back,” she promised. “Until I return, I need you to help take care of your brothers and sisters.” She brushed a tear from the child’s cheek. “Can you do that for me?”
Kamaria nodded, another tear slipping down her cheek.
Alex straightened. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Fariji followed her to the cave entrance. “It is not safe for you to return to the village. I will go with you.”
“No.” Alex touched his arm. “Stay here and protect the women and children. They have no one else.”
The gentle young man nodded, his brow dipping low. “I will do what I can to help.”
And he always did. Fariji was one of the most loving, selfless men in the village.
Alex hugged him, and then she left the cave and slid down the gravelly slope to the base of the bluff. She figured returning to the village would be dangerous, but she couldn’t abandon the missionaries. If she could help, she would, even if it meant risking her own safety.
Chapter Two
Going down from the hills alone went a lot faster than climbing, carrying a child on her back and herding half a dozen more. Within minutes, Alex reached the edge of the village.
She hid behind the first wall she came to, pushed the scarf she wore down around her neck and listened, her heart beating so loudly against her eardrums, she could barely hear anything.
The gunfire had ceased, but men shouted. A woman screamed and vehicle engines rumbled.
The reverend’s wife had been in the home of a woman who’d given birth to a baby boy. The baby had been breech, complicating the birth. Both had survived, but were weak and unable to travel.
Mrs. Townsend had been caring for the two since the baby’s birth.
Alex dared to peek around the side of the hut. The narrow street between the dirt-brown mud-and-stick buildings appeared empty. She sucked in a deep breath and ran to the next structure.
A man shouted nearby. Footsteps pounded in the dirt, along with the rattle of metal against metal or plastic, like the rattle of a strap on a rifle.
Alex held her breath and waited.
Shouts grew closer. The sound of something smashing made Alex jump and nearly cry out.
She clapped a hand over her mouth and slipped farther back into the shadows.
Another man yelled, the noise coming from inside the building behind which Alex huddled.
Voices argued back and forth, and then...bang!
Knowing it was too late to change her mind about coming back to the village, Alex shrank into a dark corner and prayed the men in the hut didn’t come out and discover her there.
The home the reverend’s wife had been in was a couple huts over from where Alex hid. If she could get there without being seen, perhaps she could convince the missionaries to leave before the men found them.
Voices sounded again as the men exited the building and moved to the next.
Alex waited, fully expecting them to come around the corner and start shooting.
She froze and made herself as small as she could in the meager shadow.
A loud bang erupted nearby, as if someone had slammed a door.
The men in the street said something, and then more footsteps pounded against the dirt street, moving away from Alex’s hiding place.
She let go of the breath she’d been holding. After another moment or two, she rose and eased to the corner. The street was clear.
Someone shouted from a couple houses over.
If she was going to move, she had to do it before the men returned.
Alex ran across the street, skirted another hut and checked around the next corner.
It, too, was clear.
She started across the street, heard a cry and nearly froze. Realizing she couldn’t make it around the next home in time, she dived through a door and squatted inside, trying to control her breathing in order to hear the enemy’s approach.
Footsteps clattered along the path outside the hut. Then they stopped.
For a long moment, Alex heard nothing. She waited a little longer and then eased toward the door.
Before she reached it, an arm wrapped around her middle and a hand clamped over her mouth, stifling a scream rising up her throat.
She struggled to free herself, but the arm holding her tightened, trapping her arms against her side and her back against a hard wall of a chest. “Shh,” he whispered against her ear, his breath heated and minty. Not what Alex would have expected from an enemy rebel.
“Check in that building,” someone said in French outside.
Alex froze. Though she was unsure of her captor, the men outside had been shooting. She’d make her escape from the man holding her after the other men passed in the street. Until then, she held still against the warm, hard surface of a hulking, big man with arms like steel vises. As she waited, she listened for the sound of movement outside the building.
Someone called out next to the door, “I have this one, you check the next.”
The door jiggled.
The hand over her mouth dropped to her arm and she was shoved backward, behind the man.
If she wanted, she could escape him. But to what?
She couldn’t go back out into the street and risk being captured by the rebels storming the village. She’d be better off taking her chances with her unknown captor in the dark interior of the hut.
The door swung inward.
Alex was shoved behind the opening door as a beam of sunlight slashed across the floor.
A man in black clothing stepped into the building, pushing the door wider with the rifle he held in his hands.
As the light beam fanned out, it chased away the darkness of the rest of the room. In the gray light out of the sunshine’s wedge, Alex studied her captor.
He wore a desert-camouflage military uniform and a helmet, and carried a wicked-looking rifle of the type the Special Forces units carried. She searched for some indication of whose team he played for. Was he American, French or—God forbid—one of the paid mercenaries so often found in conflicts where they didn’t belong? He wasn’t from Niger. The skin she could see was too light. Granted, it appeared tanned, but not the rich darkness of the native Niger people.
The man who’d pushed open the door stepped inside the room, his weapon raised. Then he fired several bullets.
Alex flinched and shrank back into the corner. If the shooter turned any farther in their direction, he’d hit her captor.
The rebel turned slowly.
Alex’s captor leaped forward, slamming the butt of his weapon into the side of the shooter’s head. The weapon dropped from his hands and fell to the floor. Before the man could react, the military guy pulled a knife and slit the shooter’s throat. Her captor bent to retrieve the other man’s weapon. With equally efficient movements, he removed the bolt, slid it into his pocket and laid the remainder of the rifle on the ground next to the dead man.
Then her
captor turned to her and held out his hand. “We have to move.”
She remained frozen in her position crouched on the floor of the hut, her heart beating so fast she could barely breathe to keep up with her need for oxygen.
His hand shot out, palm up. “Now!”
Alex stared at the big, calloused hand that had just dispatched a rebel fighter with such ease and efficiency of movement. Would he do the same to her?
Shouts outside the open door of the hut shook Alex out of her stunned silence.
Her captor dropped his arm, eased up to the door and glanced out. Without turning, he spoke softly, “If you want to live, come with me now.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Introductions later. Run now!” He hooked her arm, jerked her up off the floor and rushed her to the doorway.
After a quick pause, he dragged her out into the street and back toward the hills.
They’d gone past several huts when Alex remembered why she’d returned to the village in the first place. She dug her heels into the dirt and ripped her arm out of his grasp.
He wheeled around, his gaze shooting in all directions. “Why are you stopping?”
“I came to help Reverend Townsend and his wife,” she said.
His lips pressed into a thin line. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead. We have to get out of the village, before they find that man’s body.”
“I didn’t kill him,” she pointed out. “You did.”
“It was him or us.” The man grabbed her arm and pulled her off the street and into the shadow of one of the huts. “Now isn’t the time to argue. The terrorists outnumber us twenty to one. And they won’t hesitate to shoot first. If they take prisoners, they won’t be kind to them.”
“Exactly my point. The reverend and his wife stayed behind with a new mother and her baby. I can’t leave them to the terrorists.”
“You will do them no good if these ISIS bad guys capture you, as well. The best we can do is get out of here, notify someone with more firepower than we have and let them launch a rescue mission.”
“Why should I go with you? I don’t even know if you’re one of the good guys.”
