by James Hunt
Angela jerked on the shotgun, urging Ramsey to continue. “Tell them if they drop their weapons, they won’t get hurt!”
Ramsey held his hands up and brought them down slowly, speaking in Arabic. Both men seemed to get the picture but were still hesitant to render themselves defenseless.
Without further hesitation, Burke fired a shot into each man’s arm. Their AK-47s fell as they stumbled back and hit the ground, crying out in pain.
Angela whipped her head around with a scowl in Burke’s direction as the guards cried out in pain.
“They’ll live,” Burke said, rushing forward.
He advanced quickly as both men sat up, holding their bloody arms in pain. He pulled out a long strip of duct tape and went to work, wrapping the men’s arms, legs, and mouths.
Ramsey watched in wonder, still with his hands slightly in the air.
“Any cameras in this room?” Angela asked him.
He looked up and around. “Not that I know of.”
“Are you sure?” she asked with a shove of the barrel.
“Yes!” he said with a shiver. “And please stop doing that.”
In response, Angela simply told him to move.
Burke had just finished subduing the guards as Angela and Ramsey walked past him. “Don’t forget your machine gun,” she said tauntingly but concerned that this was Burke’s small, but second careless misstep. Putting the thought aside, she concentrated on her own balancing act, with a shotgun in one hand and an M4 slung around her shoulders and hanging in front of her chest.
Burke ran back, grabbed the M240, and caught up with them as they continued down the darkened tunnel. Turning around, Burke could see the two guards rolling on the ground, their muffled cries fading.
As they advanced, things went quiet and they didn’t see anyone else. Their early-morning raid seemed to have given them an advantage, but Angela knew that was about to change. She hadn’t slept in days and was running on pure adrenaline. Strangely enough, she felt more alert than ever before.
They soon reached the end of the tunnel and approached a second door. The air was damp and stale and their surroundings barely visible in the low light. Once they breached the second door, she knew that there’d be no room for errors. The slightest mistake would cost them their lives—and the lives of her daughters, she imagined. They were outnumbered. Angela knew that. But numbers weren’t everything. They had to use their heads. Angela’s solitary hope was that the terrorists wanted to avoid a bloodbath every bit as much as she did.
For the first time since their arrival, it dawned on her that an underground compound was not the likeliest of drone targets. Had Burke been lying to her from the beginning? She cast her suspicions aside to concentrate on the mission at hand.
Ramsey took a deep breath and pressed another large red button. A mechanical lock sounded, and a guard, short and stocky, with an ISIS headband and baggy clothes, opened the door and froze when he saw Ramsey, recognizing him but highly confused. Then everything changed in an instant.
Ten feet past the guard, three other men were huddled at a table in casual discussion, passing around a cigarette. Their rifles lay before them, clearly within their grasp. As Ramsey entered the room, they froze and looked at him with deep suspicion.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” Ramsey said.
The men noticed that something was off—his appearance, the bathrobe—and immediately grabbed their rifles from the table. Both Angela and Burke were slightly exposed, with Ramsey acting as their human shield. It would be only a matter of time. The short unarmed guard jumped out of Ramsey’s way and backed against the wall, eyes wide in fear.
Angela pushed the shotgun into Ramsey’s neck.
“Don’t shoot!” Ramsey told the men. “It’s okay!”
Disregarding him, all three men grabbed their AK-47s and raised them, shouting in Arabic.
Angela spoke in Ramsey’s ear with urgency. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Ramsey held out both his arms, urging restraint. “Listen to me, you fools! If anything happens to me, you’ll pay a great price. Let us through, or we will all die!”
The men kept their weapons pointed at the intruders, not prepared to relinquish them so easily. Burke shifted position behind Angela, trying to get a good look at his potential targets. The M240 weighed heavily in his hands, and he was more prepared to use it than ever.
“Who are these people?” one of the men in the circle shouted. He had dark, widened eyes and a scraggly beard that hid his neck. “Who have you brought here?”
“Last chance!” Ramsey said, voice trembling. “All they want are the girls. Let us pass, and this will all be over.”
Angela pushed him forward as he continued pleading desperately with the men to lay down their weapons. Further past them, she saw a long corridor with several closed doors on both sides. As if alerted somehow to their presence, several armed men charged out into the corridor, rushing from the shadows like a barreling locomotive. With a plan already in mind, and not taking any chances, the men hastily dispersed and took separate positions behind a series of crates.
Ramsey inched closer toward the huddled men at the table as they reluctantly lowered their weapons. “Put them at your feet and keep your hands up!” he shouted.
As they passed the initial guards, Burke kept a careful eye on them, with his machine gun raised.
Looking forward over Ramsay’s shoulder, Angela could see the armed men awaiting them down the darkened corridor—ten or so ISIS fighters in defensive positions.
“We are going to the girls’ room now,” Ramsey shouted out as a warning. “Open the door and let us take them.”
“Have you lost your mind?” one of the men shouted from behind a crate not ten feet ahead of them. “Asgar will kill you for this!”
“If you fail to do what they want, they will kill me and as many of you that they can. We have no choice!” Ramsey said.
“Treacherous dog!” a voice shouted from the darkness.
Ramsey continued forward nervously, afraid of being in the middle of a potential shootout. “Please, listen to me. All they want are the children.”
“Unlock the door before we light this place up!” Angela added, hoping the threat, if anything, would bewilder the ISIS fighters into compliance. She was, after all, painfully outnumbered.
“There’s more of us,” she continued, pushing Ramsey along as his trembling hands remained in the air. “Tell them!”
“That’s right,” Ramsey said. “An entire team of…”
“Bounty hunters,” she said in his ear.
“Bounty hunters, yes! Twenty of them, ready to storm in here and get these girls by force if need be.”
“Bullshit!” another man shouted from behind a crate.
Angela stopped Ramsey at the third door on their left, a few feet from where the hiding fighters awaited them, weapons drawn atop crates and their fingers on the triggers.
“Is this the room?” she asked.
Ramsey paused, trying to remember. “Yes. I think. That is, if they haven’t moved them.”
“Is it the room or not!” she shouted, with another shove of the barrel.
“I need the key!” Ramsey called out. “Someone give me the key, or this crazy woman is going to shoot us all!” No one moved. Ramsey’s legs shook as he grabbed the door handle—white knuckled—and pulled. The thick door wouldn’t budge, and Ramsey’s temper exploded.
“The key, damn it,” he shouted as sweat poured down his face. “If I die, Asgar’s London connection goes with me. And that’s for starters!” He paused, staring in desperation into the darkness.
From the end of the corridor, an old man in a white robe halfway approached, holding a ring of keys. “I have the keys here. What do you want?”
“I need you to open the door,” Ramsey said.
One of young fighters with a thin goatee and black bandana around his head suddenly stood up from behind the crate and blocked the man. “What are you doing
? Where do you think you’re going?”
The old man stared back, showing no signs of intimidation. “I’m on watch tonight, and if Mr. Graves wants to get in there, I’m required to oblige.”
“Where is Salah?” Ramsey said. His tone indicated it as more of a query than hope that he would actually run into the man.
The old man shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Shut up!” the younger fighter said, waving his rifle in front of the old man’s face. “Hand me those keys now, and go back to your room.
“No,” the old man said, lifting his white-bearded chin. “Those girls have brought trouble, and they shouldn’t be here. It’s not worth all this when we have more important things to be concerned about. Salah would agree with me.”
Angela stood behind Ramsey, frozen and surprised to hear a reasonable voice among such men. She leaned against the door and listened for the faintest sound of her daughters on the other side.
The old man boldly nudged the young fighter aside and continued to shuffle down the hall with the keys in hand. The young fighter looked to the others in disbelief—stunned that no one else was stopping him.
“Do something, you fools!”
But no one seemed to know what to do. Many of them had just been rousted out of bed and were overwhelmed by the scenario unfolding before their startled eyes.
“Here you go,” the old man said, approaching a grateful Ramsey. “I told Asgar before that these girls have no place here. Some of the men were looking to sell them. I say, good riddance…”
As the old man grew closer, two of the largest men Angela had ever seen entered the corridor with their rifles aimed.
“No one goes anywhere! Salah’s orders!” the brawny, bearded man on the left shouted out in an authoritative and booming voice.
Ramsey recoiled in fear. “Those are Bosra and Nabil, Asgar’s personal guards,” he said, head turned slightly toward Angela. “This is over. I knew it wouldn’t work. We’re completely fucked!”
Angela jabbed him with the shotgun. “Calm down. We’re sticking to the plan.” The old man with the keys was only feet away, extending them for Ramsey to take.
“Drop those keys!” Bosra shouted.
The old man waved him off and handed them over as Ramsey winced, expecting swift retaliation. At Bosra’s side, Nabil held his rifle up and fired, blasting a hole in the old man’s back.
The old man collapsed—eyes wide in shock—and fell into Ramsey, who then dropped the keys to the ground from his shaking hands. Ramsey looked up to see a barrage of rifles aimed at them from every point along the corridor.
Bosra and Nabil stood at the end, both their barrels leveled, with smug satisfaction plastered across their faces.
“None of you are getting out of here alive,” Bosra said. He paused for a moment, glaring at Ramsey with contempt. “You brought them here, you British scum. You dare put our great leader in danger?” He paused, nostrils flaring, as Nabil took one resolute step forward, moving in for the kill. “Traitor…”
“Fire!” Nabil shouted, holding one arm in the air.
A chain reaction followed, a cataclysmic symphony of chaos. Blasts erupted from both sides of the corridor, riddling Ramsey’s convulsing body with lead. Angela ducked low behind him, frantically trying to avoid the barrage of gunfire while using his propped-up body as a protective shield.
Her free hand clawed in the air for the dangling M4 around her neck as she struggled to hold Ramsey upright, with one hand gripping the shotgun. More gunfire rang out as several fighters began advancing from their previously concealed positions. Bosra and Nidal held their fire, to avoid shooting their own men, and remained in place as they anticipated with glee the impending carnage of the intruders.
Ramsey slumped back, torn to shreds, and Angela could barely hold him up any longer. Suddenly, she slipped on the blood pool and pulled the shotgun trigger by accident, blowing his head to pieces. After the deafening blast, his body collapsed from the neck down, leaving Angela completely exposed.
For a moment, she stood perfectly still and anchored to the ground, watching as a wave of fighters rushed toward her, faces consumed with bloodlust. In her eyes, their movements were deliberate and drawn out, as if everything were in slow motion, the presumptive calm before the storm.
Her hand released the shotgun, and she went for her M4 just as she heard a rattling blast from Burke’s machine gun mow down the men charging toward them.
Her face was covered in something warm and damp, which she guessed was Ramsey’s blood. Bits of skull and brain covered the door next to her. The keys were at her feet—she was so very close. A gunshot hit the wall behind her, and she sprang back into the moment.
She raised her M4 and began firing into the charging fighters just as Burke went the ground on his chest and blasted every last man in their path away. Bodies flew violently in the air like rag dolls as the 7.62mm shells tore them to pieces. Several other men ducked or ran for cover as Angela fired quick, steady shots into their heads or chests or whatever was exposed.
Burke fired relentlessly, balancing the bulky machine gun on an outstretched bi-pod affixed under its smoking barrel. He soon ran out of ammo, leaving a river of carnage in his path. After the deafening barrage of gunfire, the room went eerily silent. Bodies, still and lifeless, lay everywhere, with weapons at their sides.
Angela knelt in front of the girls’ door, unable to hear a thing. A dozen shells lay at her feet among chunks of Ramsey’s flesh. She was glad to be alive but sickened by how things had gone. Death filled the air behind the thin, hazy veil of gunpowder.
“You okay?” Burke shouted to her, retrieving the shotgun on the ground. His voice was distant and muffled from the faint ringing in her ears. She counted a dozen bodies down in the corridors, torn to pieces and wildly contorted. However, Bosra and Nidal were nowhere to be seen.
Burke grabbed her arm. Her head jerked to the side, pale with shock. “Hey!” he said, kneeling next to her. His gloved hand brought the barrel of her M4 down as he gently took the weapon away and placed a set of car keys in her hand.
“Listen to me,” he continued, speaking clearly and loudly, with his eyes intense and focused. “I’m going to clear the rest of this place. You find your daughters and get the hell out of here as fast as you can. Start here,” he said, pointing to the bloody door next to them.
Nodding, she placed the keys in her pocket. Burke hurried off, crouched low to the ground and cradling the M4. She stood up with the old man’s key ring and tried the first key, turning it just in time to see Nabil jump out from behind a nearby crate and fire.
She was struck by a dizzying white flash of the bullet hitting the cement wall, inches from her eye. As she flew to the ground for cover, Burke gunned Nabil down with several precise shots into his chest. He stepped over Nabil and kept going, entering the shadows beyond Angela’s range.
She carefully stood back up and tried the next key. Suddenly, more shots rang out, and she saw Burke tumble to the side, falling on his back. She froze, clenching the door handle and pulling with all her might. Bosra entered from the shadows, rifle aimed and advancing forward like a machine.
Burke swooped up and fired a multitude of shots, sending Basra fleeing back into the darkness in a panic.
“I’m all right!” he shouted to Angela. “Got me in the vest.”
She exhaled with an overwhelming sense of relief and went back to the door. “Be careful!” she shouted.
He waved back, charging down the corridor in hot pursuit. As Angela’s hands went back to sifting through the key ring for the right fit, she thought of the two people on earth that she wanted dead more than anyone—Salah Asgar and the person who killed her husband. It was sad to think that she hadn’t a face or a name. For all she knew, her husband’s killer lay among the mutilated dead.
The first bolt suddenly unlocked, making her heart surge with hope. She went down the line of dead bolts, using the same key, and unlocked them all. She t
hen swung the door open and shouted into the dark cell, wanting nothing more than to see her daughters’ faces and know that the relentlessly violent journey she and Burke had taken had been worth it.
“Chassity! Lisa!”
She walked inside and looked ahead, squinting into the dark. She found two young girls huddled in the corner with their heads down and hands covering their ears. Their dirty, tear-ridden faces turned toward her in unison, and they opened their eyes. She could hardly breathe.
Chassity’s face went from timid to ecstatic in an instant, as she was the first to recognize Angela. She jumped up and pulled Lisa to her feet as they studied their mother, dumbfounded.
“Mom?” Lisa said.
Angela approached them with a joyful smile across her face and tears falling from her eyes like raindrops. She crouched down lower and spread her arms wide.
“Come on, girls,” she said. “We’re going home.”
They flew at Angela and nearly took her to the ground as they leaped into her arms and felt Angela clutch them to her, one on each side. She squeezed them tightly, smelling their hair and crying with joy.
“I missed you so much,” Angela said. “Oh thank God.” They trembled in her arms as they buried their faces into her side, and only their faint cries of happiness could be heard. They had been through hell, but they were going home. And that was all that mattered. Angela’s head suddenly rose in a panic, nearly forgetting the place they were in.
“Okay, listen to me,” she said quietly as she stroked their heads. “We need to get out of this place right now. Stick close to me, and we’ll be home soon.”
Chassity looked up and into Angela’s eyes with understanding. Lisa still shook uncontrollably.
“We’re going to be fine,” Angela said.
“Agent Gannon!” Burke’s voice suddenly shouted from far outside the room.
She turned her head as fear gripped heart. His voice sounded urgent… afraid, even. She held her girls tight and told them they had to go. As she led them out the door, Burke called to her again.
“It’s okay. The coast is clear. Come down here. You have to see this!”
