by Cindy Dees
It felt as if her bonds were weakening a little. Pulling hard against her ropes to hold them taut, she sawed even more feverishly against the edge of the bed frame. She felt the bits of rust catching and pulling at the rope’s fibers. Was that a little wiggle that hadn’t been there before?
All of a sudden, her straining hands popped free. She’d done it.
Bending down, she quickly picked loose the knots holding her ankles to the chair legs. Cautious of landing on her face this time, she stood up carefully, using the back of the chair for support.
Exquisite agony raced through her body as blood returned to limbs, her joints took their first, creaky movements in over a day, and muscles randomly cramped.
She made it over to the front door and gave it a tug. It was solidly locked. Which was kind of ridiculous, given how flimsy the rest of the cabin was. She took quick stock of the supplies at hand.
First, she tore the cloth back off the recliner. It was roughly a three-foot square piece of heavy upholstery fabric. She laid it on the floor and piled on it the pieces of rope that had bound her, several handfuls of stuffing from the chair seat, a couple of the bed springs from the cot, and a piece of flat metal the length of her forearm from the cot that lay on the floor.
Thinking fast, she raced into the bathroom, broke the mirror with her elbow, and scooped up several shards of the broken glass. They would make for good signaling devices or makeshift blades. Using the discarded water bottle from earlier, she drank as much of the nasty sink water as she could and prayed it wasn’t laced with deadly bacteria. Then she filled the bottle full and added that to her stash.
She picked up the metal chair she’d been tied to, and tossed it through the bathroom window. Then, working quickly, she tied the cloth into a bundle around her finds, threw it outside, and climbed out after it. Using her bare hands, she paused long enough to rip off a long sliver of the wooden siding. It was just about the right length and heft for a walking stick.
Slipping her arm through the makeshift sling, she headed out in the same direction the sun had set. Her reasoning was that if she walked to the west long enough, she would eventually run into the coastal cities of California. Assuming the kidnappers hadn’t been able to drive more than a few hours inland, she was no more than a hundred or so miles from the coast. It was a working theory at least, and better than just wandering aimlessly out here.
She remembered Griffin’s survival lectures back at Camp Jarvis. Move at night in hot environments. It saved strength and water and made a person harder to see when they were on the move.
Speaking of which, she gathered a handful of dried grass and used it to brush away her footprints as she moved away from the house. She made a point of hopping from rock to rock for a good hundred feet or so and then resumed sweeping her footsteps. It wasn’t the all-out sprint away from her prison that she wanted to do, but Griffin had stressed the importance of hiding one’s tracks over speed.
When the shack was no more than a speck behind her, though, she did take off running. Again, she had to restrain her impulse to flee madly, forcing herself into a steady, ground-eating jog she could sustain for hours.
Huh. After that all-night run with a heavy rucksack, jogging out here like this with nothing but a light cloth bundle slung across her body felt pretty darned good. Her muscles were far from recovered from Hell Week, and the enforced stillness of the chair and dehydration hadn’t helped with the kinks, but as she moved and her blood flowed more freely, the worst of the discomfort subsided. When she stopped to rest, she would do some yoga stretches to work out the residual stiffness.
She figured she could cover around four miles per hour jogging and maybe three miles per hour when she had to slow for rough terrain. Give it thirty hours of hard travel to get to civilization. She wouldn’t be able to do that continuously because of daylight and daytime heat. Say, four days of travel to be conservative.
She would need to find water and shelter before it got too hot each day. And she had to assume her captors would come after her, so stealth was called for. To that end, as she jogged, she stuck handfuls of dead grass in her hair and waistband.
Near morning, she got lucky and ran right into a small seep, landing on her behind as her boot skidded out from under her in slick mud.
Digging with her hands, she created a little hollow and watched eagerly as it slowly filled with muddy water. If she let it sit in her bottle for a while, the worst of the sediment would settle, and she could drink through a piece of the cloth over the bottle mouth to further filter the water.
She carefully filled her bottle with water and waited impatiently for the water to clear. As soon as she could see through it, she chugged it down and filled the bottle again. She was losing precious travel time, but water was the most critical resource for her survival.
I’m coming home, Griffin. Just be patient. Although knowing him, he would be anything but patient over her disappearance. She doubted Grundy would ’fess up to dumping her in the pit, so until someone got around to coming back to fish her out, nobody would have known she was kidnapped—unless this was, in fact, part of her training. Which she seriously doubted at this point.
She was no expert on geography, but she guessed she was somewhere in the Mojave Desert. And in all the preparation she’d done for BUD/S, all the discussions Griffin had with her, never had she run across a single reference to hauling BUD/S candidates out into this bleak wasteland and dumping them.
When her belly ached from drinking water, she filled the bottle one last time, did her best to obscure her tracks in the mud and continued on. She could only pray her captors underestimated her fitness and stamina. It was one of the SEALs’ secrets to success, and she hoped it worked doubly for her as a woman.
The sun rose at her back as she wound through a series of washes and gullies. She tried to keep heading generally west, but the canyons wound all over creation. Eventually, she started the long climb up a rough rock outcropping.
As the morning began to heat up, she considered shelter. About halfway down the west face of the ridge, she spotted what she’d been looking for: a large boulder with a deep hollow carved out of the dirt at its base. Approaching the den with caution, she used her stick to clear the space from any resident snakes before crawling in. She had to evict a couple of scorpions and then built piles of rocks at each end of the opening and draped her piece of cloth over them, covering the opening.
There was just enough room for her to curl up in a loose ball. Using her arm for a pillow, she closed her eyes and dozed lightly. Her sleep was fitful, no doubt because she kept half an ear alert for anyone who might approach her hiding place.
The space heated up until it felt like an oven, and she finally caved in and turned back the corner of the cloth to let in a little fresh air. It was still oven-hot. But at least she was free and enduring this heat on her own terms, not tied to some damned chair, waiting passively like a lamb for the slaughter.
Where are you, Griffin? Are you looking for me?
She had to believe he was searching for her by now. If she heard any aircraft pass over, she had the mirror shard to signal it. Until then, she dared not leave any trail signs for Griffin in case her captors were hunting her.
Surely, they would. If they’d gone to all the trouble of kidnapping her, they must have some definite reason for doing so.
Yet again, she wondered who her kidnappers were and what their beef with her was. But it was a mystery.
Her last thought as she drifted to sleep was I’m coming, Griffin. I’ll run all the way to you if I have to.
* * *
“Phone call just came in to the Training Center main switchboard!” a communications tech called out over the general noise. The ops center went silent instantly.
“Who is it?” Duquesne barked.
“Recorded message. Electronically altered voice.”
&nb
sp; “Play it on speaker,” the admiral ordered.
Griffin listened tensely to the deep, inhuman drone of an electronically generated voice saying, “We have Tate. We want Griffin Caldwell. We’ll make a trade.”
Every stare in the room snapped to him, and he stared back. What the hell did these jokers want with him?
The voice was still speaking. “…one hour, you will call the following phone number and receive further instructions.” A phone number was recited.
The call ended and a dial tone replaced the odd metallic voice.
Duquesne demanded, “Caldwell, who the hell was that, what the hell do they want with you, and how in the hell did they know you’re here?”
Cal moved to stand beside him in front of the admiral as Griffin answered, “I have no idea who that was or what’s going on.”
“Enemies?” Duquesne asked.
Griffin frowned. “I’ve been an operator a long time. I can’t even begin to list the people I’ve pissed off.”
“Anyone recently?” Duquesne bit out.
Cal interrupted. “Your office, sir?”
Duquesne nodded and headed for an office attached to the communications center. Its owner wasn’t present, and Duquesne appropriated the desk, sitting down in its chair. Griffin closed the door behind Cal as Duquesne asked, “What’s up?”
Cal said grimly, “Are you positive that this isn’t some sort of response by rogue SEALs to the presence of a woman at BUD/S, sir?”
Thunder landed on Duquesne’s brow, and he rumbled, “It had better not be. I run a tight ship around here, and my instructors wouldn’t dare pull a stunt like that. Consider that line of reasoning off the table.”
Griffin had to agree with the admiral. Most of the instructors had adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward Sherri. He spoke up. “It sounds like Lieutenant Tate is merely a means to an end. That end being me.”
Cal responded, “Yes, but who knows that you and Sherri Tate are connected?”
All three men stared at each other in silence for a moment.
Duquesne said, “Maybe the kidnappers took whatever trainee they happened to catch. Any warm body they could trade for Caldwell.”
Kettering retorted, “Possible, but not probable. I’m inclined to believe her kidnapping was not random.”
Griffin pressed his lips together until he felt them forming a thin, white line. Did he dare tell them that he and Sherri were much more than mere instructor and student to each other? It would blow his career to kingdom come. But if it would help save her—
He opened his mouth to speak, but Cal cut him off, saying, “A few months ago, part of Griffin’s team was in on the Haddad fiasco.”
“The mission that went all to hell in Kirdu province?” Duquesne responded.
Griffin’s gut tightened in grief as Cal answered grimly, “Yeah. That one. Any chance this is related to that?”
Griffin thought out loud. “Abu Haddad knows who the Reapers are. After all, we’ve made the bastard’s life miserable for the past decade. We’ve chased him from one end of Afghanistan to the other end of Pakistan and back. But how would he know who I am specifically? By name? He has no way of knowing I’m the platoon leader, let alone where to find me.”
Griffin and Cal stared at each other for a long moment, turning over that puzzle in their noggins. Which was why Griffin saw the exact instant the thought that had just burst into his brain burst into Cal’s.
“Kenny,” Griffin breathed.
Was it possible? Was Ken Singleton still alive? Had his Reaper brother been captured by Haddad and not killed after all?
“Son of a bitch,” Cal muttered.
“Somebody talk to me,” Duquesne snapped, looking back and forth between the two of them.
Cal explained quickly, and Duquesne burst out, “So you think Singleton survived and under duress has given up Grif’s name as the platoon leader of the Reapers?”
“I sincerely hope so,” Cal answered fervently.
Griffin followed the trail of logic. “If Kenny gave up my name, he may also have given up Lieutenant Tate’s name. Is it possible Haddad got one of his people close to the BUD/S program?”
Cal frowned. “We would spot one of Haddad’s zealots in a thorough background check.”
Good point. Griffin thought aloud. “What about a BUD/S instructor or trainee? Could Haddad’s people have blackmailed one or somehow compromised one?”
“Like who?” Duquesne demanded.
Griffin hated to name names or point fingers without solid evidence. But the face of Grundy did flash in his mind’s eye immediately. The police had already questioned the guy at length, of course, but he wanted to take a run at the guy himself. What were the odds Grundy wasn’t working alone? Had Abu Haddad gotten to the guy?
There would be time enough to sort that out after Sherri was found.
To that end, Griffin asked the admiral, “We’re making the trade, right? Me for Tate.”
“I don’t know about that,” Duquesne responded skeptically.
Griffin planted both his hands on the desk, not afraid to beg for Sherri’s life. “If this is Haddad’s people, they’ll kill her if they don’t get me. I’m a SEAL. I’ve had all the torture and interrogation training. Sher—Tate hasn’t had any. She’s not prepared to deal with bastards like Haddad.”
“She’s well on her way to being a SEAL,” Duquesne replied. “I think we can expect a certain amount of fortitude out of her. If nothing else, we know she has a strong survival drive.”
“That won’t be enough against Haddad,” Griffin argued. “They won’t hesitate to do the worst to Tate. You have to let me take her place.”
“They’ll have to give us proof of life before I’ll even consider it,” Duquesne declared. “I’m not losing two SEALs when I may already have to lose one.”
He thought of Sherri as a SEAL, huh? Under any other circumstances, Griffin would have been jubilant. But now he was freaking out over the thought of her tortured and dying, alone and terrified.
Griffin fought for control and spoke as evenly as he could. “I get where you’re coming from, sir. But I want to do this. I’m volunteering.”
“Why?”
He stared at the admiral. What the hell was he supposed to say? I love her, and I’ve secretly been in a relationship with her for months? He couldn’t admit that to Cal, let alone to the big boss.
Why Cal chose to dive in at that moment and rescue him, Griffin had no idea, but he was profoundly grateful.
Cal said, “Grif is my lead trainer in Operation Valkyrie. He worked with Tate and the other female trainees for months prior to bringing Tate out here to BUD/S. He knows her very well. We both feel responsible for her being at Coronado and for her being in this predicament. We owe her. She’s family.”
Duquesne was silenced by the invocation of family. At length, he said heavily, “If we were to make the trade, I would need a full battle plan for how we make the handoff and how we track and rescue both Caldwell and Tate.”
“Yes, sir,” Cal said briskly. “When we got the call, I asked a few guys to get to work on that very thing.”
“Who?” Griffin and Duquesne demanded together.
“Ray Peevy will be coordinating it,” Cal answered.
Thank God. With Ray’s capable hands on the wheel, he and Sherri might just make it home from this op alive.
Chapter 22
Sherri emerged cautiously from her little hole in the ground. Twilight made the sky the same dark blue as Griffin’s eyes, and she had to force back a sob at the thought.
She could do this. All she had to do was run back to him. If she’d survived Hell Week, she could survive this. Although immediately on the heels of Hell Week, a grueling desert trek without food, adequate water, and fitful dozing at best was a lot to ask of her body and mind.
Not that she had any choice. She sighed, packed up her meager gear, drank her water because she remembered Griffin saying the best place to carry water was inside your body, and headed out. She’d noted a bump on the horizon due west of her this morning, and she aimed for that silhouette now. When the stars came out, she would use the North Star to keep herself pointed west.
She stopped after an hour or so and dropped to one knee to stretch out a nasty Charley horse in her left calf. It felt like a dehydration cramp, but there wasn’t much she could do about it except grit her teeth and stretch until it passed.
As she straightened to continue on her way, she noticed a tiny blip in the distance, off to the north, that hadn’t been there before she stopped. The blip gradually turned into a tiny tube.
That’s the dust trail of a motorized vehicle.
Did she dare try to wave it down, or was it her captors out looking for her? Undecided, she stared at the gray puff as it grew larger. It dawned on her the vehicle was heading toward her.
Crap, crap, crap. She dropped to the ground, searching frantically for a hiding place. A bush, a rock, anything that would give her cover. Nada. She was out in the open and a sitting duck.
* * *
It had already been determined that the phone number in the message went to a burner phone, which would no doubt be destroyed the moment the call ended. Griffin’s instructions were to loiter on the line as long as he could so the tech guys could locate it. The kidnappers would surely move after the call, but it would give the SEALs a general starting point of where to hunt for Tate.
At a nod from a tech guy, Griffin made the call. The phone rang a half-dozen times, and then a voice, electronically distorted, said, “Griffin Caldwell is to come alone and unarmed to the following coordinates. He will exit the vehicle and head due north on foot until we approach him.”
The line went dead.
The people around Griffin swore. No way had that little burst of signal been traceable. Honestly, it was about what he’d expected. If the working theory was right and Haddad’s men had Sherri, they were professional Special Forces operators.
