by Angel Vane
“The offer from ASF still stands. Their team could fly you there in a little over an hour,” Sunny said. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”
“Thanks Sunny.”
“Anytime Montgomery.”
Chapter Forty
The wide steel double doors opened toward Julian, revealing the inner sanctum of the ASF ComCentral. Stepping inside, Julian heard the rants and screams of a man in obvious emotional pain. Several agents stood rigid near the door, rooted to their positions, eyes locked on the man stalking back and forth.
Julian glanced over at Sunny, who gave him a quizzical look back.
Pushing past one of the agents, Julian stepped inside and watched the man berating another agent. A man he recognized.
Caleb Olivier.
What the hell was Mena’s father doing here? Why wasn’t he at the hospital in Wajir?
Julian spotted Mena’s mother, Dee, sitting in a chair near a computer monitor across the room. Her face splotchy and red as tears dripped off the end of her nose. She was the spitting image of her only child with the same mesmerizing brown eyes and stunning smile. Her skin was several shades lighter than Mena’s and most would mistake her for Mena’s older sister rather than her mother.
“You are incompetent and you are liars!” Caleb screamed at Agent Betts, standing stoic near a row of monitors displaying changing screens of arid desert lands. Caleb stalked over to another agent standing near the path to Reggie’s office. He pointed his finger at the man’s face as he continued, “That poor woman’s family is still clueless about what happened to their child. Dee and I have wasted hours praying over a woman who isn’t our daughter! You think ‘I’m sorry’ is good enough for the hell you’ve put us through?”
“Sir, we have alerted Chief Agent Kamau and he is on his way back to headquarters to speak to you about this situation. Can I ask you to please calm down and have a seat while we wait for him to return?” Agent Betts asked.
“Calm down? Have a seat? You didn’t lose my luggage. You lost my daughter!” Caleb screamed, as he turned slowly, staring daggers at each agent he made eye contact with. “Why are you just sitting around here? Get out there and find Mena!”
“Mr. Olivier. We must wait until Chief Agent Kamau returns to be briefed on these developments before we proceed to reinstitute the search for Mena,” Agent Betts tried to explain.
“Reinstitute the search?” Sunny whispered.
Julian’s mind was reeling.
The woman at the hospital wasn’t Mena.
She was still out there. But where?
“What the hell happened?” Julian asked. He stepped around the agents and walked over to Agent Betts.
Caleb paused mid-sentence and turned to glare at Julian. “It’s about damn time you got here! That woman going through all those surgeries at the hospital is not Mena. She’s not my daughter. The nurse came over about four hours after we’d arrived acting real nervous, explaining that Mena had lost so much blood and they were running low on her blood type.”
Dee stood from her chair and walked over to stand between Agent Betts, Julian, Sunny, and Caleb, then said, “Julian, they wanted us to give blood and of course we were willing to, but then the nurse said that Mena’s blood type was so rare, O negative, and the hospital didn’t have much of that blood left in inventory.”
“Mena’s not O negative. She’s A like me,” Julian said, frowning.
“Like me and her mother! That’s how we knew that poor woman was not our daughter!” Caleb exploded.
“What if we don’t find her because everybody stopped looking? What if we never find her?” Dee asked, her words soft and haunted by the fears she likely never wanted to express.
“What happened?” Julian asked Agent Betts.
“None of this is making any sense. How did the mix-up occur?” Sunny asked.
“Don’t say another word,” Reggie’s voice boomed as he stormed into the room, flanked by four other agents. Reggie waved a hand, sending the four agents through the room to regain order and issue new directions to the team.
Walking over to Dee and Caleb, Reggie said, “I’ve been apprised of the mistaken identity of the female patient at the Wajir hospital. I cannot express to you how awful I feel about the stress you’ve endured today, thinking that Mena was in such a horrible condition. Please accept my deepest regrets and rest assured that my team will be re-evaluating our efforts to find your daughter.”
Turning to Sunny, Reggie said, “In my office. Now.”
Julian watched as Sunny bristled under the direct command.
Dee looked away, swiping a tear as it fell from her eyes.
Caleb glanced at Dee and his features softened as he looped his arm in hers. Pointing a finger at Julian, he said, “Don’t you let them go looking for our daughter without you. These fools couldn’t find their nose on their face. You and your team saved Wangari Irungu and you are the only one I trust to get out there and actually bring my daughter back home!”
Dee’s hopeful eyes looked up at Julian. Eyes so similar to Mena’s staring back at him.
“Trust me, with or without Reggie’s team, I will find Mena,” Julian said. “Why don’t the two of you go wait in the conference room and I’ll let you know as soon as we have a plan.”
Dee and Caleb agreed, then followed Agent Betts out of the room and down the hallway toward the conference room.
Sunny pulled Julian toward Reggie’s office. “Something is off. Reggie’s likely going to stall, claiming classified intelligence for his information. But we need to get something, anything to start our own search for Mena. I’ve already texted Enzo. He and Glaze are back at TIDES trying to reconstruct everything we know and analyze where Mena could be.”
Stepping into Reggie’s office, Julian closed the door behind him and walked to the chairs in front of Reggie’s desk.
Reggie stiffened, his hands clenching into fists as he leaned against the towering bookcases lining the wall.
“How did your guys miss this?” Sunny asked. “Do you know how much time has been wasted because your team failed to do a proper ID?”
“Why is he in here? Shouldn’t you go and console Mena’s parents while Sunny and I strategize?” Reggie asked, looking over Julian at Sunny.
“He loves Mena! He deserves to be in here more than I do,” Sunny said.
“When did you start caring about a man loving a woman?” Reggie asked, shaking his head in disgust. “It’s bad enough the Irungus are wielding their power and forcing my team of highly trained special operatives to deal with your little band of military rejects, but now you are parading your ex-lover in my face? He’s making a fool of you, getting you to help him find the woman he really wants to be with. News flash—it’s not you.”
Julian stood and walked over to Reggie.
“You don’t know the first fucking thing about my relationship with Sunny. You don’t know the things we’ve been through, the pain we’ve shared and the losses we’ve endured. I’m not going to sit here while you disrespect her. We are here for one reason. To find Mena. So act like a big boy and put your emotions to the side, okay,” Julian said.
The force of the blow to his face stunned Julian, the ache emanating across his left jaw. The metallic taste of blood on the tip of his tongue. Another one-two punch slamming into Julian’s gut sent him stumbling across the desk. Reggie connected with two more blows to his head, sending lights popping behind his eyes.
“Stop it!” Sunny screamed, rushing over to the desk. “We don’t have time for this!”
Julian pushed Reggie off him and rolled onto the floor, sucking in breaths. He turned back to Reggie. “Feel better now? Feel like a man?”
Reggie stalked behind his desk and slumped into his chair, anger wafting from him.
Sunny leaned over and helped Julian stand.
“Are you okay?”
“Trust me, I’ve gotten my ass kicked worse than this and you know it,” Julian said.
Sunny gave h
im a small smile, no doubt remembering the beat down Julian had suffered when their secret had come out all those long years ago.
“I’m going to say this one time, Reggie, and then you need to get past this. The problems in our relationship have nothing to do with Julian. He isn’t the reason why I can’t marry you. Now can we get back to what’s important here?” Sunny asked.
“ASF has been unable to recover the files on the ODPP server that incriminated Kipsang Rono. It’s like they never existed. Now Tubeec is walking around with the only copy of that evidence and President Thairu has ordered that we find it,” Reggie said.
Julian’s blood boiled. He banged his fists against Reggie’s desk. “What does this have to do with Mena?”
“It means that I don’t have enough resources to track Tubeec Hirad and try to find your girlfriend. The President has made our directive clear. I believe Tubeec may have Mena and if that is the case, we will rescue her when we capture him.”
“And what if she isn’t?” Julian asked.
Reggie shrugged. “We have a bigger threat to deal with. Finding Mena is no longer a priority for the ASF.”
Chapter Forty-One
“Motherfucking bastard! How the hell did you ever fuck around with him for so long?” Enzo pushed away from the table and stalked to the corner of the conference room inside TIDES HQ.
Julian and Sunny had finished debriefing the team about restarting the search for Mena after the ASF botched the rescue mission, misidentifying another woman found near Wajir as the love of Julian’s life.
“My love life, or lack thereof, is irrelevant right now,” Sunny said, slipping into the leather chair at the head of the conference room table.
Julian stood near the door, his mind calculating the best way to make up the valuable time they’d lost. Glaze and Enzo flanked Sunny, while Zale, Simon, and Taye sat towards the opposite end. There were two empty seats.
“Where’s Hakeem and Shiloh?” Julian asked. They would need the entire team searching for Mena.
Taye said, “Hakeem left for the Ukraine a couple of days ago. He’s leading the security detail for a delivery of art to some Ukranian businessman.” He raised his fingers in air quotes on the last word. “Not sure when he’s due back.”
“Shiloh is wrapping up a personal trip in South Africa, but won’t be back until tomorrow night,” Zale said.
“Going to hurt not having Hakeem and Shiloh here, but we’ll have to make do without them,” Sunny said, a look of concern crossing her face. “What’s the chatter on Tubeec’s latest mayhem?”
“Not surprising, he’s already spread the word about his attack on the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ databases and servers, destroying critical evidence against several criminals awaiting trials. No direct mention of the evidence against Rono that was destroyed, but he was most likely responsible for that, too. It’s all over the dark web and spreading like wildfire through the militant groups in East Africa,” Glaze explained.
Simon added, “We also have good intel that suggests Tubeec is still in the area of northeastern Kenya or southern Ethiopia. He’s staying close for some reason, which helps us narrow the search.”
“Any word on Mena?” Julian asked, stepping toward the dark wood table. He pressed his palms on the surface, willing himself to stay calm. Mena needed him at his best, gathering information, paying attention to every detail, so he could find her and bring her home.
“Radio silent on that one, which is odd,” Glaze said. “Tubeec is not one to hide his exploits. If he was trying to make an example out of Mena, we’d know by now.”
“What could that mean?” Simon asked.
“Fuck if I know. Tubeec is crazy as shit and unpredictable,” Enzo said.
“Sunny,” Julian said, a heavy knot weighting in his stomach. “What does it mean?”
The TIDES team stared at Julian, confusion crossing their faces, then turned to look at their leader.
Sunny ran her fingers through her dark curly hair, gripping the tresses tightly in her hands as she leaned back in the chair. Her expression worried Julian.
“Good news and bad,” Sunny said, after several seconds.
“Start with the good. We need that,” Taye said.
“We don’t know what happened to Mena Nix because Tubeec doesn’t want us to. He’s keeping her … alive, for some reason.”
“Well, that gives me something to work with,” Glaze said, reaching to the console resting in the center of the table. He tapped on the screen, and the screensaver dancing across the monitors lining the room disappeared. “I’ll start with the satellite imagery we have from the time when Julian and Mena were ambushed at the house in Giriftu. From there, I can triangulate the most likely routes taken.”
“Yeah, but taken to where?” Enzo blurted out. “How the hell are we supposed to know where that crazy fuck would take Mena?”
“Remote rebel compounds and rural airstrips,” Julian said. “Find the most obscure ones near Wajir County. Tubeec needs to hide again and this time, he’ll be sure to pick a location that’s even harder to be discovered.”
“I’ll pull up the drone photos Sunny took of northeastern Kenya. We can cycle through those to see if there are places with the infrastructure that his team would need to hideout,” Zale said.
Taye, Zale, Simon, and Glaze turned their attention to developing a search and rescue strategy for the team.
“Wait a minute. What’s the bad news, Sunny?” Enzo asked, pacing back and forth. He was the least tech-savvy, making him useless for this part of the work, but he was the best on the ground, hand-to-hand combat, member of the team.
“Tubeec lost a lot of men because of us. He’s probably paid al-Harakat to provide extra protection to his team from another surprise attack. We were outnumbered before, but now the difference is going to be staggering,” Sunny said.
“We’ll have to work smarter, not harder.” Julian walked over to Sunny and leaned against the edge of the table next to her. His hand dropped next to hers, touching it slightly. “Is there anything else?”
“The reason Tubeec could be keeping Mena alive might be personal,” Sunny said, her voice barely above a whisper. “He may have grown fond of her and wants her to stick around.”
Sunny had never told him the details of what she’d gone through that year Tubeec had her. But Julian had heard about what happened to women Tubeec staked his claim on. His obsessive determination to capture a woman, and force her to be his mistress, lasted until he grew bored or found another woman to obsess over.
Being Tubeec’s forced concubine would inflict a pain he wasn’t sure Mena could ever overcome. He would not let that happen to her.
Julian would kill Tubeec Hirad first.
“I need to get her away from him,” Julian said, a sickening dread washing over him.
An hour later, Julian huddled around the monitors with the TIDES team and analyzed the likely routes taken by Tubeec’s men. Four glowing red circles emerged on the map, all within northeast Kenya.
“Four possible locations where they could be hiding,” Glaze said, then pointed at two of them. “Based on everything we know about Tubeec and factoring in his penchant for unpredictable and wild whims, I’m fairly certain these two are the most likely locations where Mena is being kept. I’m waiting on more recent satellite images to confirm recent movements in the area.
Julian pointed at another monitor. “To get in and out of any of these locations, he has to use either this airstrip near Wajir or this one in Mandera, near the Ethiopia and Somalia border. The only other airstrip that could be used is the Irungu Family private strip next to the horticultural center they’re building on the outskirts of El Wak,” Julian said.
“He’d attract too much attention trying to use that one. Timothy Irungu’s team would know immediately if there was a breach at their private airstrip, alerting everyone of his location,” Zale said.
“I confirmed no unusual activity at those two
airstrips. I’m waiting on a call back from the security team at the Irungu horticultural construction site to determine if they’ve noticed anything out of the ordinary out there,” Taye said.
Staring at the map, Julian calculated the distance between the four locations as over 250 miles. There was no way they could cover all that terrain quickly. Time was not on their side.
“We’ve got to split up,” Julian said. “There’s no way we can cover that distance in time.”
Sunny agreed. “We won’t have to. Timothy Irungu has handed over his entire security team to work with us and Wangari has wired more money than we’d ever need to fund our search.”
“When did that happen?” Julian asked, impressed with how quickly Wangari and her father had stepped in to help after ASF turned their backs on looking for Mena.
“Just a few minutes ago. I called them and they were more than happy and willing to help. Wangari wants nothing more than for Mena to be found and brought home safely, like she was,” Sunny explained.
“So, we can narrow down the most likely locations and cover those ourselves. The Irungu security teams can cover the two other areas Zale found and fan out to search the surrounding areas between all the locations,” Julian said.
“I’ll work on getting a contractor to join me, Zale, and Simon to cover Giriftu, where the ambush occurred,” Sunny said.
“Taye, Enzo, Glaze and I will head out now, and investigate the area near Takaba,” Julian said.
“Timothy Irungu offered up his private airstrip in El Wak as our muster point after we’ve finished searching. It’s the midpoint of all four spots. Communication is key, so let’s all stay connected with regular updates and activated trackers, got it,” Sunny said.
“We don’t have enough shit to do this right. Sunny, you gotta call Paul Defloria. Get his ass up and ready to hand over the equipment we need before we head to the hangar,” Enzo said.
