by I Beacham
Table of Contents
Synopsis
By the Author
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Soul Survivor
Internationally acclaimed American journalist Josephine “Joey” Barry is considered one of the most iconic correspondents of her time, having reported on major crises from many of the world’s hotspots. But everything crumbles when rebel insurgents near the Syrian border attack and kill her team, forcing her to hide. Rescued but traumatized, she finds she can no longer cope with who she once was, breaking down on national television during a live political debate.
Sent to England to try to get her mojo back, her path crosses the Reverend Samantha “Sam” Savage, a charismatic vicar with an appetite for compassion and motor biking. Non-believer Joey is drawn to her, not knowing Sam is struggling with her own demons. Can their love grow through such adversity?
Soul Survivor
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Soul Survivor
© 2017 By I. Beacham. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-883-2
This Electronic book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, NY 12185
First Edition: April 2017
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Cindy Cresap
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])
By the Author
Sanctuary
The Rarest Rose
Salvation
Soul Survivor
Acknowledgments
Huge thanks as always to Cindy Cresap, my editor. Her editorial brilliance improves my books tenfold.
Dedication
To RZ—Thank you for all your help and enthusiasm.
A friend indeed.
Chapter One
Northern Syria near the Iraq border
Josephine Barry tucked her long hair behind an ear, breathed deeply, and composed herself. She looked into the camera.
“I’m standing in the small town of Balshir on the disputed boundary between El Sharai and Kabali. Behind me in the distance, you can see smoke from what was once a thriving town where cotton was farmed and where for centuries, Muslim and Christian lived together in peace. The rebel forces moved in months ago, and that town is now in ruins. There are rumors of daily brutality where rebels go from home to home butchering those inside. Their bloodthirsty fighters show no mercy to those who resist their reign of terror. Options are limited. Die fighting, be forced into brutal slavery, or be radicalized.
“Here in Balshir, so far untouched by this regional devastation, its people are nervous. Many are fleeing, believing there’s a high probability that the rebels will strike here next. This is a town where no one feels safe, and everyone is afraid. You can smell the fear. It’s contagious. Those left are the ones who can’t leave because they are ill or not strong enough.” Joey paused. “And they wait.”
Kurt Youngman waved a hand across his throat to signal cut.
“That’s wrapped, Joey. Light’s fading. I think we’re done for today.”
Joey, the chief news correspondent for RSB Broadcasts, relaxed.
“I’m done with this place, Kurt,” she said. “Tomorrow can’t come soon enough to get out of here.”
The two of them walked off the balcony, back into the gray unattractive concrete block building.
Inside were a set of rooms that had been home for several days while Joey reported from this part of the war zone. It didn’t give much privacy to the four of them—Kurt and Mitch Jacobson, her two-man production team; and then Mohammad al-Salit, “Mo,” their guide and interpreter. But they coped.
“I hate this fucking heat,” Mitch said, kneeling as he put away equipment.
Kurt agreed. “When we hit base, I’m heading straight for the showers.”
It was the smell of the town that got to Joey. Its stench pervaded everywhere and locked onto the back of her throat making her cough. It was a sour odor that made her want to hold her nose and not breathe deeply. Totally the opposite of what she needed to do in this heat. Maybe a drink would help.
“You guys want tea? Whose turn to make it?”
“Yours,” Kurt and Mitch answered in unison.
She smiled. She knew the answer anyway but always tried her luck. Kurt knew too.
“Listen, Warrior Queen. All you do is stand around and talk to the camera. Don’t forget the real workers here. We make you look awesome for the American public. It isn’t easy.”
“No milk for me. I hate that powdered shit.” Mitch looked up at her with his usual lopsided grin, his face encased in a mop of blond hair. He looked like a teenager, but wasn’t. He had seven-year-old twin girls and a wife who doted on him.
Joey acquiesced and tipped her chin forward. “It’s lucky I love you guys.” As she turned to head for what was loosely termed the kitchen, Mo spoke.
“I go to the truck and get more water.”
You couldn’t drink the water here. It was contaminated. If you did, it gave you diarrhea, turned you dizzy, and made you sick.
Joey peered into the kitchen across the narrow passage that separated the room. There was still enough water in the plastic urn.
“Forget it, Mo. There’s enough to see us through until tomorrow.”
But Mo was already standing and making his way toward the door that led to the stone staircase and down one flight to the ground floor and building exit. “I get it anyway.”
He was gone.
A queer feeling came over Joey. Mo was a lovely man, warm and friendly, who was always showing them photos of his wife and three teenage daughters. He had been their guide before and pulled them out of trouble several times when they’d come across anti-Western locals. But Joey knew she wasn’t imagining it. These last few days he had been quiet. Too quiet.
She stepped back into the room. “What’s wrong with Mo?”
“Dunno,” Mitch said. The way he looked at her, she knew he’d noticed it too.
“He left a bit sharpish,” Kurt added.
She nodded. “You don’t think it was that banter we had the other night?”
“What?” Mitch asked.
“Where you guys were joshing me about all the women I’ve dated. He did go quiet.”
“You think?” Mitch pushed fingers through his hair.
She shrugged. “I don’t know…maybe he finds it offensive. His culture’s moral code is different from ours.”
“Nah,” Kurt said. “I don’t think so. Mo’s pretty progressive.”
“Maybe, but let’s curb those chats just in case.”
Both guys nodded.
She walked back toward the kitchen, crossing the ripped, faded linoleum as she moved across to the far wall where a basic stove and a sink were located. The sink sat on a poorly constructed wooden cabinet, its doors uneven, and the off-white paint peeling away. There was little else in the room except a table and four chairs that didn’t match.
Joey grimaced. She hadn’t said much, but she couldn’t wait to leave this town either. They’d been here too long the minute they arrived. Everything about it was wrong. Most of its people had left, and it felt like a ghost town, or worse, a place waiting for something nasty to happen. These last few days she’d been on constant edge—as had the others.
She started pouring the water out of the urn and into a saucepan. They didn’t even have the luxury of a kettle.
Joey did not finish her task.
The flash came first, then the explosion, its force slamming her hard against the metal edges of the sink, forcing her head down where it hit the faucets.
The smell of sulfur and an intense wave of heat had already assaulted her as she reclaimed her senses. She turned to look back toward the room she’d just left and where her colleagues were. All she could see was devastation—a room on fire, heavy smoke, debris. Joey could barely make out a gaping hole in the wall where the balcony had been. As she struggled to move back toward them, she heard gunfire and the unmistakable sound of AK-47 assault rifles. The sound grew louder. Whoever was behind the rifles, they were coming up the stone stairs toward her.
With a calculating calm Joey didn’t recognize, she speed-checked the kitchen for a place to hide. There was none, except the cabinet under the sink. Not bothering to think if she could fit inside it, she threw herself in, cramming her long body into the unyielding small space. She pulled the doors shut.
She heard the shouting of the gunmen, their harsh words that made no sense to her, a language too alien. But she understood their intent. They were searching. She heard them discharging their weapons again. Bile rose in her stomach as she realized what they were firing at.
Her team.
Her colleagues.
Her friends.
The shouting grew louder, and she heard something heavy falling to the ground. Masonry? Then she knew they were in the kitchen. She froze, ordering every bodily function in her to cease. In her mind she became invisible—a speck of dust, a cobweb unseen as they searched.
She heard two voices, still shouting and on an adrenaline high. They were dragging something heavy. There was a smashing of glass and then laughter, its sound repellant and unnatural.
The tone of the voices changed and grew questioning. Shuffling footsteps moved toward her hiding place and stopped. Then with a rustle of movement, Joey saw a cabinet door open. She shut her eyes tight knowing what was to happen.
But it didn’t.
The gunfire that followed came from the street below.
Someone shouted up, his voice commanding, guttural, and intolerant.
Orders.
Whoever was in the kitchen, they left abruptly. If they had opened the cabinet one second earlier, she would be dead now. But they hadn’t, and for the moment, Joey was alive.
*
Joey didn’t move from her hiding space. A toxic mixture of fear and common sense born of survival kept her there.
Gunfire surrounded her. She listened to the screaming in the streets below.
She heard gunmen in the stairwell and on the floors above her, their feet like rats scuttling. They were going from room to room, as she had reported earlier.
Several times, she thought they were in the room next to her, rifling for anything that survived the attack. She doubted anything had. They had either used a rocket or a grenade launcher. Nothing much ever survived either of those. She’d seen a weapon rocket launcher in the hands of a child some months back. It required little skill, and the enemy allowed their young to experience “the thrill.”
She waited for them to come and search the kitchen, but they never did.
The cabinet became her unlikely friend. It protected and cocooned her, and had already saved her life. Joey would not abandon it. Not yet. Not until she knew she had a chance to escape and live. She had been in dreadful situations before and survived. She still had an old scar where a bullet had ricocheted off a wall and hit her in the arm. So she would wait.
But waiting came at a cost.
The heat was intolerable. There was a slit of light where the doors joined. It became her contact with the outside world. She knew when it was night and day. Only once did she dare to open the doors and peep out. Thirst demanded the action. The sun had shone directly in her face as she’d searched for the water urn, but it was gone. She saw the rubble and dust on the floor. If she moved, she would leave a trail. It wasn’t worth the risk.
So she stayed put and suffered the confined space for another day. She’d always liked being tall. Now she wished she wasn’t.
Then the cramp came and was unforgiving, but she could not scream. That was a death sentence, and she wasn’t ready to die yet. Not here. Not like this.
Joey slowly moved a hand down to her left leg to attempt to massage the cramp out. Her fingers found wetness. Perhaps the pain wasn’t cramp. Had the explosion hurt her? She moved her hand around the leg seeking the point of injury, but found none. Her fingers didn’t feel sticky either, not like the blood from her head where it had hit the faucets.
She moved her hand back to her face and smelled it. Then she licked her fingers. It was water. A few dark forages later, she found a small leak in a pipe. She wrapped a handkerchief around it to soak the liquid. She knew what she was drinking was contaminated and that it would make her ill, but she had no choice. It became her lifeline, and for now, the water sustained her.
Time dragged but passed. The light through the cabinet door grew dark again. She waited many hours until the chanting and sounds of evil outside ceased. Even rebels slept.
Joey slowly pushed one of the doors open, her plan to simply stick her legs out and get circulation moving. As she extended one leg and began stretching it, something caught her eye. She saw the shadow of a man standing in the corridor that separated the kitchen from the room where her team had been. He had his back to her and she could just make out a rifle slung over a shoulder. In infinite slow motion, she drew her leg back into the cabinet and carefully pulled the door shut.
She heard him cough, then spit. She listened to the sound of rubble and debris crunching under his feet as he entered the kitchen. He stopped in the center of the room where the floor creaked as it had for her many times. Joey wondered if he knew she was here. Was he about to pounce and shoot her dead, or worse, drag her into the street for a ceremonial beheading of an infidel? Would pictures of her slaughter hit social media and air worldwide as many others had? How would her parents cope? It was their fear.
Her heartbeat grew fast and irregular, and her mouth went dry. She felt her muscles tense. Her mind focused, and she prepared for attack. She might get a chance to grab the gun before he fired. Better to die that way.
She heard the scraping of a chair as he sat down and the unambiguous sound of a match being struck to light a cigarette. She caught its smell and waited, like a deer caught in headlights, for him to finish his down time.
When he was done, he stood, but instead of leaving the room, Joey heard him walk over to the sink. Her adrenaline rose higher and made her lightheaded. He was inches from her but made no move to reveal her hiding spot. Instead she heard a rustling sound and then all went quiet. What the hell was he doing?
Then water trickled into the sink and down the drain. The bastard insurgent was urinating. Seconds later, he left.
&nbs
p; Relief flooded Joey, but she couldn’t stem her tears.
Kurt had called her Warrior Queen.
Fear made the Warrior Queen wet herself.
*
The rebels seemed to have set up their HQ in the building. They were constantly in the stairwell, their comings and goings menacing. All day and late into the night, she would hear them talking, often ranting.
She continued to hide in her safe place, and another day passed where she wondered if she would ever stand up straight again.
It was the day after that when her situation worsened.
Her head hurt from where she’d hit it, and she was dizzy with the heat. Later, she threw up. Unable to do anything, she suffered the mess. Sweat ran down her face and her breathing became labored. Then the pains in her stomach started, and the diarrhea came.
Joey realized she’d lost count of what day it was, of how long she’d been under the sink. She began to drift into restless sleeps. If the insurgents didn’t kill her, the contaminated water might.
After one agitated sleep, she awoke with a start. She became aware of an eerie silence outside. For the longest time, she searched for sound, but there was nothing. No rifles firing, nobody shouting or screaming. Nothing.
For the third time, she dared to push the cabinet open and welcomed the fresher air that met her. No one stood in the shadows waiting for her. At first, she couldn’t move, her body was locked in position, but she pushed every ligament and tendon she had, forcing herself to crawl out of the space. It took time. Only when she was completely free of the cabinet did she try to stand, without success. So she pulled herself onto all fours and waited until she had sufficient strength to stand. When she could, the room spun, and she used a wall for support until the sensation passed.
