by James Hunt
Angela had wanted leverage. They found that with David Ramsey, a British opportunist who was working with ISIS for his own reasons. With Ramsey at gunpoint, Angela and Chief Special Agent Burke—of the CIA—were supposed to move their way through the terrorist compound and rescue her daughters without firing a shot. That was the idea. And it had nearly worked.
What began as a tense standoff, however, soon descended into a violent firefight resulting in fourteen dead ISIS militants. It was a miracle that both she and Burke had survived. The same couldn’t be said for Ramsey. His body was riddled with bullets, his head blasted open by Angela’s shotgun. He was gone.
She didn’t mean to pull the trigger, but she had no choice but to shoot back. Everything had happened so fast, Angela had little time to react. She did what came naturally. She defended herself. Most of the casualties came as a result of Burke’s heavy firepower. He mowed nearly half the militants down like weeds in a barrage of heavy-duty gunfire. Angela took care of the rest with her M4 rifle. Following the carnage and haze of gunfire, all that mattered to Angela was that her two daughters, Chassity and Lisa, were found unharmed. Their unseen emotional scars, however, were apparent in their vacant stares.
Just when Angela believed the worst to be over, Burke discovered documents left behind by Asgar during his hasty escape. Typed in Arabic font, the papers revealed a series of planned strikes against America. To Angela, the words were illegible. Burke, however, could read and speak Arabic—something she hadn’t known before.
He sifted quickly through other papers lying on a cluttered fold-out desk, coming across one of particular interest, showing a series of diagrams. The blueprint exteriors looked like some kind of electrical plant. It was, Burke explained, the Dallas nuclear power plant, one of two plants in the entire state of Texas. Other documents, just as disturbing, contained a list of other targets throughout the state: outdoor festival venues, shopping malls, movie theaters, and other high-value civilian targets. But most chilling off all was Asgar’s justification for the planned attacks.
“Listen to this,” Burke said, reading from another page.
Angela turned back to the doorway, eager to leave. “My daughters are waiting. We have to get out of here.”
“Just a moment,” Burke said, his eyes still on the page.
Angela heard a faint creaking outside the room and held the M4 rifle up. “Take that with you, and let’s go,” she said. Burke’s car keys rested in her pocket, and she half contemplated storming out of the hideout and leaving with or without him.
Burke held up a restraining hand and began to translate the scrawling Arabic text. “It is our duty to rid the world of as many nonbelievers as we can. Apostates. Infidels. Adulterers. Liars and thieves. They are instruments of evil, meant to steal our souls from us and deny us paradise.”
Angela shuffled, agitated. She looked around for anything else of interest before storming out. There was a mattress in the corner with layers of blankets on it. A nightstand with a teapot. She also noticed a prayer rug, some robes hanging on a hook, and a stack of books about four feet high.
The room smelled of baked bread and tea. And as empty as the room was, she could still feel Asgar’s unmistakable presence throughout. Burke continued with a few more lines in which Asgar made calls for a “twenty-first-century cleansing” of their enemies.
“The ramblings of a fanatic,” Angela responded dismissively.
“Will you listen to this?” Burke said, voice raised and eyes looking up at her. He then continued. “Mohammad commands us to slay them for our own survival. There is no coexistence, only survival against those who would deny us a paradise among Allah and His prophets. For this, we are not killers, but redeemers. Redeemers of our own way. A way that is under the assault of corruption by those who are our enemies.” He stopped and grabbed the rest of the documents on the table, prepared to take them all. “Do you know what this means?”
Angela said nothing. Of course she knew what it meant. Terrorists justified their killing however they could. Murder, in some form or the other, had been justified since the beginning of mankind.
Burke offered his take as Angela inched toward the door. “They are on a mission to kill as many people as they can. Hell, it’s their duty!”
“Is that news to you?” Angela asked.
“No,” Burke said, reaching for the M4 in her hands. “But we now know that they have every intention of carrying out these attacks.” He took the rifle and tried to hand the documents to Angela.
“What are you doing?” she asked with suspicion.
Burke ejected the magazine from the rifle, grabbed a full one from his vest, and slapped it in. He then pulled the charging handle back, chambering a round. His eyes were stern and uncompromising. “Take these documents, get your daughters, and get the hell out of here.”
Angela shook her head. “I plan to, but how are we going to stop these attacks?”
Burke looked around. Both he and Angela suspected that there was a secret escape entrance somewhere in the room, but neither had been unable to find it. “You get yourself to safety first. Then call the border chief and tell him what we found.”
“But I can’t read any of this,” she said, waving the papers.
“I just told you what they said.”
Angela huffed in frustration. First he held her up by calling her into the room, now he was asking her to leave anyway. “I can’t do this without you,” she said. “There’s no point in leaving you now.”
Burke held his rifle up in a dismissive manner. “I’ve got scores to settle. Need to search this place top to bottom,” he said. “I find anything, I’ll call and let you know.”
It seemed clear that Burke had made up his mind. Her daughters were waiting, and she no longer had any time to stall. She turned and looked Burke directly in the eyes. “If you find Asgar, you better kill him.”
“You know that’s the only way it’s going down,” he said.
He looked like some kind of black-ops soldier in his dark tactical gear and skull cap. It was a startling difference from the suit and tie he appeared in when they first met. Then again, Angela looked different as well. Her blond ponytail had streaks of faded red blood—Ramsey’s blood. Gone was her Border Patrol uniform. Replaced by a black T-shirt and jeans, covered in bits of dried blood as well. Her Beretta side pistol would be enough for the escape of her and the girls.
She had known Burke for only a few days, but felt a connection with him. They had both experienced unimaginable losses. For Angela, the loss of her husband Doug at the hands of terrorists. For Burke, his wife and two sons—murdered by Al Qaeda in an act of vengeance. Lisa and Chassity were all Angela had left, and she wasn’t going to spend one more second apart from them.
“Good luck,” she said, walking toward the door. “And you better find me.”
“Sure thing,” Burke said, scanning the room carefully with his back turned to her. He was on a new mission now. A new hunt. As a former CIA assassin, the hunt was still in his blood. Angela didn’t bother asking him how he was going to find her without a car. She knew him to be a resourceful man, and that was enough. She ran down the hall past the carnage, fallen bodies mutilated beyond recognition—and found her daughters right where she had told them to wait, huddled in the confines of their former holding cell.
Angela ran inside and threw her arms around the girls as they cried with relief. Their embrace could have lasted forever as far as she was concerned. She pulled them close as their arms wrapped around her from both sides. As tears streamed down Angela’s cheeks, she assured them that she was back for good. It was bad enough having to leave them for the few minutes Burke had called her away. She looked down, smelling the scent of their light-brown hair and kissed the tops of their heads.
“Okay,” she said, pulling herself together. “Let’s go, girls.”
She tried to move, but both Chassity and Lisa had attached themselves to her and looked unwilling to let go. The poss
ibility of ISIS militants still within the compound had her on edge. There were still the two guards Burke had tied up at the first entrance—part of her initial plan to avoid a shootout. In a way, she realized that the outcome was set from the beginning. There was no avoiding it. Death was all the terrorists seemed to know and understand. At least that’s what she was starting to believe.
“Come on,” she said, rising.
Chassity, her eldest, released her grip and looked up. “They told us that Dad was dead. Is that true?”
Lisa kept her face buried into her mother’s waist, crying with a muffled whimper. Angela patted her head and gently tried to pry her away. She couldn’t possibly carry the children out of there and protect them at the same time. Plus, the documents in her hand were invaluable. Burke had said the power plant attack was inevitable. Only hours away. And with Asgar’s escape, she was certain the attack would be initialized even sooner than planned.
“Let’s go,” she said, taking Lisa’s hand.
“Mom?” Chassity asked again. “What happened to Dad?” She wasn’t going to let the question go.
Angela opened her mouth to speak, when a faint barrage of gunfire broke out down the corridor near Asgar’s room. She stuffed the documents in the waistband of her black jeans and squeezed both girls’ hands, hurrying to the door.
“What’s that?” Lisa said in a small, panicked voice. Angela could feel the girl’s hand shaking in her own. It broke her heart to see her daughters in so much distress.
She tried to remain calm on the outside as her heart raced in frantic, rhythmic beats.
“It’s okay. Just keep your heads down.”
The shooting stopped for a moment and then resumed in quick three-round bursts. Angela had one thought: Get the hell out of there and never turn back.
She led the frightened girls out of their dank holding cell and immediately turned to the right, where the corridor led to the compound’s exterior exit. Three bullet-riddled bodies lay to the side; guards Burke had dispatched earlier.
“Look down, sweeties. I’ll guide you,” Angela said, maintaining a hurried pace.
She did her best to suppress the urge to run, and couldn’t have anyway, with her daughters both holding her hands. They had to move as one. There was no other way.
Angela caught Chassity glancing at the bodies, while Lisa’s eyes remained tightly shut in fear. They made it past to the first door, where empty bullet shells littered the concrete ground. Angela released Chassity’s hand and made a quick move for the handle. Fortunately, it was still unlocked.
“I tried my best not to be afraid,” Chassity said with a sullen, serious expression Angela had never seen before. “When we were locked in that room. I didn’t want to show them fear.”
Angela brought her close with a quick hug. “You did great, honey. You both did.”
She opened the door and guided them through. The gunfire had stopped, and for that she was relieved, but the possibility of Burke’s being killed gripped her with fear. It was impossible to think that anyone could take Burke out. The man seemed invincible, but still ...
Angela hurried along, daughters in tow, down the long, narrow tunnel, when two men came into view, bound by their wrists and ankles. Chassity stopped dead in her tracks as Lisa froze with fear. The men looked up, twisting in agony. Their faces were drenched with sweat, and their muffled pleas were unintelligible due to the duct tape over their mouths.
“Come on,” Angela said to her daughters. “It’s okay. Let’s keep going.”
She moved ahead as they reluctantly followed. The men’s arms were wounded and bloodied from Burke’s silencer pistol. Their desperate pleas intensified as Angela passed them—eyes forward and trying her best to maintain momentum. Chassity and Lisa looked away, holding their mother’s hand tightly. The final door was in view. And from there, a brief climb out of the landfill-sized crater filled with junk cars, oddly placed there as though they were a part of the natural landscape.
Angela quickened her pace as her girls struggled to keep up. Once at the door, she pulled a large iron bar to the side, unlocking the door, and then opened it. It was early morning and the fresh air was immediately soothing. She led the girls outside as they squinted their eyes in the morning sun that lit one side of the crater.
The spectacle of old, rusty vehicles spread out like tombstones in a graveyard was very different from at night, or in the early morning when Angela had first arrived. It felt as though she had been submerged in the cavernous hideout for hours. But by her more realistic estimate, the harrowing rescue operation had taken little over thirty minutes.
She had her daughters now, and that was all that ever mattered. What they had done with Doug’s body, she may sadly never know. As she walked up the slope, hoisting Lisa against her shoulder, carrying her, the desire for vengeance seethed within her. They had killed her husband. Her soulmate. Her world. And though she and Burke had killed many of them, it wasn’t enough. Deep down inside, she worried that it would never be enough.
“Come on, guys. We’re almost there,” she said to the wary children, who both seemed in a state of shock. She kept her voice as calm and caring as possible, not wanting to push them beyond what they were capable of.
They reached the top of the crater with labored breaths. Angela set Lisa down and wiped the sweat from her own forehead. It all felt surreal. How could she even begin to tell her superiors at the Border Patrol what had happened? That was, if she even had a job left.
“Car’s that way,” she said, pointing to a black four-door parked behind some bushes. Chassity asked about her father again in an exhausted voice, and no matter how much Angela had prepared herself to tell them the truth, she didn’t feel ready.
“I’ll explain everything soon, honey,” she said. “First we need to find a safe place.”
***
After crossing the border into New Mexico, Angela found a motel in the small town of Las Cruces. She was eager to get her daughters showered and in bed. They also needed food. The time they had been apart was the longest two days of her life. Naturally, Chassity and Lisa just wanted to go home, and Angela was faced with trying to explain the best she could.
“It’s not safe right now. We’re just going to stay here for a little bit so you guys can get some rest.”
From the queen-sized bed, sitting in the middle of their green-carpeted room, Chassity reached over and hit the nightstand with her fist.
“I don’t want to stay here. I want to see Dad!”
Lisa hadn’t said much of anything during the hour-long drive. From her pillow, her eyes darted over to her sister with a look of fear. Angela stood at the end of the bed, shuffling on the carpet and reeling with the truth she had no choice but to reveal.
“I heard him!” Chassity continued. “He came to our door. He was trying to reach us.” Her words sounded hopeful. Yearning. And ultimately tragic.
Angela held back her tears as best she could, but her eyes watered nonetheless. Chassity stared at her with expectant, wide brown eyes.
“Your father…” Angela began. “He won’t be coming back.”
Chassity was quick to respond. “What do you mean, he won’t be coming back?”
The crushing blow of reality set in for Angela. She thought of the video and how, one way or the other, her daughters would someday learn and possibly see what happened.
“He was a brave man,” Angela continued. “And he loved you both very much.”
Lisa began crying as if just then realizing what Angela was saying.
Chassity, on the other hand, displayed nothing but rage. “Who were those people?” she shouted. “Why did they take us? What did we ever do to them?” But she could hold back no longer, and the tears began to flow and her voice quivered. “Oh no…” she said, as her head drooped and her eyes closed. “He’s dead. He’s really dead.”
Chassity cried along with Lisa. Angela rose from the bed and rushed over to them with her arms open. The girls c
limbed to her, hands gripping at her shirt as they cried into her shoulders. She rubbed their backs and murmured reassurances. Their long, knotted hair hung over their faces as they sobbed uncontrollably.
“There, there,” Angela said, feeling the dampness of their tears. “Everything is going to be okay. We’re together now, and that’s all that matters. We need to stay strong. Things will never be the same, but we have to try.” Her own words sounded distant and foreign to her, as though she were in a dream.
“He tried to save us,” Chassity said between sobs.
She brushed back Chassity’s hair and kissed her forehead. There was little comfort, she felt, she could bring them. As she sat with her daughters on the bed and held them, she felt the overwhelming duty of the task before her. There were still thousands, if not millions, of lives still at stake. She had yet to hear from Burke, and she feared calling the Border Patrol station. Yet, she had to do something.
Tough Decisions
With the girls both finally asleep, Angela crept outside their second-floor hotel room and stood on the balcony, cell phone in hand. It was already evening, and she was stricken with worry, despite her daughters’ miraculous rescue. She wondered about the supposed drone strikes on suspected sleeper-cell locations. Was it all a farce? Something Burke made up?
It wasn’t just his word she had taken. She had seen the presidential directive authorizing the strikes in her hands. If it were true, she knew just how lucky she was to get the girls out in time. However, the lingering question in her mind remained: did the government know about the underground compound? And if so, did Burke make it out in time?
Part of her felt bad for the two men she had left, slowly bleeding from their arm wounds, tied up and helpless, but that was the price for taking her daughters, she supposed.
