Zack's Zest: A SEALs of Honor World Novel (Heroes for Hire Book 24)

by Dale Mayer

  “I see.”

  “But I know that Bullard and Levi work together a lot,” Bonaparte added grimly. “Is it just the two of us?”

  “Yes,” Zack said.

  “I thought this was supposed to be a four-man team?”

  Zack shook his head. “Not unless two more guys shake free from their ops and can help us out here. Plus there is the travel delay to consider. So consider us on our own for this one.”

  The vehicle jerked to the side quickly, sending Zack lurching against him. “I see your driving hasn’t improved,” he said with a laugh. Bonaparte’s driving was akin to a race car let loose on the autobahn. And that included zigzagging through the traffic to get where he was going, completely ignoring any road signs, of which there were very few anyway.

  “If people would just get out of my way,” Bonaparte said, unfazed, “life would be a lot easier.”

  “I don’t think that’s how the traffic works,” Zack retorted.

  “Well, it should,” he said. “It would all work much easier that way.”

  Zack chuckled. “Says you. The rest of the people probably think you are a crazy idiot they should shoot.”

  Bonaparte shrugged and moved between two other vehicles across two lanes, simultaneously hitting an exit at top speed. The thing was, he was such a skilled driver that at no time did Zack feel like his life was in danger. But he could imagine how everybody else on the road felt.

  Zack pulled up the file on Zadie, but it had just a few more details, not a whole lot. “She’s never been married and has no children,” he commented.

  “No, her political activist aspirations kept her single apparently.”

  “Or she just didn’t like the political aspirations of the men around her.”

  “Same thing.” Bonaparte looked at him. “What about you? You never married?”

  “Nope,” Zack said with delight. “Still single.”

  “What about kids?”

  His heart twitched at that; then he shook his head. “No, no children either.”

  “I’ve got the two, as you know,” Bonaparte said, “but the wife has them, and she already remarried.”

  “What about you?” Zack asked, looking at the big man in surprise. “Visiting rights?”

  “I get them on holidays,” he said, giving his partner a fat grin, “and, boy, do we like to holiday.”

  “I can imagine. So something like Levi’s place might be good for you now.”

  “Yes, and I’ll take off all my holidays so I can be with the kids.”

  “That sounds pretty cool,” he said. “How old are they now?”

  “Eight and six,” Bonaparte said with a nod of satisfaction. “The perfect age to start doing things together. They want to learn how to surf next summer.”

  “It’s a good age for them to learn too.” Zack felt momentary twinges, as he realized that he had nobody to teach or to spend holidays with doing things like that. Nobody to even share the world. He shook his head. “You are very lucky.”

  “In many ways, yes,” Bonaparte said. “The wife and I are at least amicable.”

  “Yet you don’t call her your ex?”

  “Mostly for the kids’ sake,” he said. “We tried the first-name thing. The kids didn’t like that either.”

  “Dictated by the children, huh?”

  Bonaparte gave a big shrug and said, “You do what you got to do to keep the peace.” He took another hard right and sent the car careening in the opposite direction.

  “We are not being followed or anything, are we?”

  “Nope,” Bonaparte said. “But I had enough time to beat that light, so I took it.”

  “Right,” Zack said, settling back into his seat. “I see little new in this updated file. Basically nobody knows anything.”

  “Well, there is an interesting part to that though. Her passport wasn’t cleared leaving through any customs checkpoint. So she didn’t leave the country by air or train or bus.”

  “Doesn’t mean she didn’t drive or walk across the border,” he said. “She could have taken a boat, and wasn’t she used to traveling that way anyway?”

  “The boat is in England,” he said.

  “Right, but we have to figure this out. Was she kidnapped, and, if so, by whom and why?”

  “The biggest one being the why,” he said. “We are almost there.”

  Zack peered into the night, the darkness slowly taking over. “The perfect time for an ambush.”

  “Or a perfect time for surveillance,” Bonaparte said in his suspicious tone of voice. “And that’s exactly what we are up to,” he said.

  *

  Zadie rolled over once again and huddled tighter. Her arms, her knees, her hands curled up in the tightest ball as possible. Zadie stared at the tiny room she was in and wondered how the hell her life had come to this. But then, every person who found themselves in prison unexpectedly must feel the same way.

  Day four of captivity and still on the property where her parents were being held—or at least she assumed she was, but she didn’t know for sure—blew her away. She’d been out for a walk, trying to set up her plans to escape the sudden house arrest she found herself under. Only to be grabbed when she hit the trees. She’d deliberately gone along that route, checking the guards’ timing. Just when she had seen a chance to escape the guards, someone else had nabbed her.

  So it wasn’t the house arrest guards who had taken her. It wasn’t the same people who were holding her parents that had grabbed her. And wasn’t that just something? Of course Turkey was in a political turmoil, what with all the factions fighting one another to take over as the ruling body. Even without all that going on, her father had made a lot of enemies. She was barely on talking terms with her father at all, but, for her mother, Zadie would do a lot.

  And her mother’s health seemed to be failing, from little slips her mother had said about doctors and such. Sounded as if her mother needed medical attention, and she was unlikely to get the necessary care while she was under guard herself. If her parents had been left in exile, that’s one thing, but for the new government regime to keep them prisoner was something else entirely.

  The new leader was also likely to prosecute her dad for crimes committed while he’d been in office. She didn’t know if he was innocent; she doubted it. Still, it was the perfect action of the new government to ensure that the old one couldn’t come back into power.

  She shivered some more, knowing that her body was burning through every meager calorie her captors supplied, just to stay warm. She had already been lean, having practiced martial arts for a long time. Too bad she hadn’t kept it up.

  She thought about her kidnapping, wondering if she could have done anything to prevent it. But they had used the element of surprise to drug her and to take her down.

  An odd smell still remained on her skin and her breath, which her stomach hadn’t liked either. She had upchucked as soon as she’d initially woken up in her cell. Thankfully she made it to a bucket close by, but days later she still wasn’t doing well. And, while she slept that first night, her captors had removed the bucket. Which just meant that more drugs were in her system than she was aware of because she hadn’t woken up much since being jailed. Maybe the drugs themselves were part of the reason why she was so cold too.

  Outside her cell she heard voices. She noted one window high up, with bars on the inside. Her door was solid with no windows or slits at all. She already knew that it would be useless to cry out, and the voices were from those who had no care for her. She didn’t even know why she was being held.

  When a key clinked in the lock to the door, she forced herself to sit up, hugging her knees against her chest. She saw the tray come in first, and she hated the fact that she was so eager to get the food that she could forget everything else. But when two people came in, one in a white overcoat, she frowned. “Are you here to give me more drugs or something to stop me from freezing?” she said thickly, her tongue swollen and hard to
operate.

  The doctor immediately walked over and checked her vitals. “She is really sick,” he said to his companion. “She must have reacted to the drugs you gave her.”

  The other man shrugged. “So what? It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters,” the doctor said. “If she dies on us, you will not get what you want either.”

  “I’m not sure we should have taken her anyway,” her guard said. “Would have been better if we’d taken her parents.”

  “Nobody cares about the parents either,” the doctor said. “This is another foolish venture of your brother’s.” At that, the guard glared at him. But the doctor shrugged and added, “You know I’m right.”

  “He wants to get our father out of jail,” the guard said. “You can’t fault us for that.”

  “By imprisoning another woman?” The doctor shook his head. “Especially this one. She is nothing but trouble. All you have to do is a Google search to see that!”

  The analysis of her life up ’til now came down to those few short words. Nothing but trouble. “Is that all you think of me?” she asked. “I spent my life fighting injustice. And now I’m in the heart of it all.”

  “And yet your father is the most corrupt,” her guard snapped.

  She stared up at him. “I haven’t had anything to do with my father in many, many years. He was only president of the country for four years and leader of his party for two before that,” she said. “I haven’t lived at home for twelve, if not fourteen years by now,” she snapped back. “Are all children to blame for the sins of the father?”

  “That’s what it says in the Bible,” the doctor said smoothly. He finished his tests and turned to the guard. “She needs something to warm her up. The drugs are having a terrible effect on her. She needs blankets, and she needs more clothing. Put that food down and go get her something,” he ordered.

  The guard glared at him.

  “She is too sick to even fight me off. Go.”

  At that, the guard reluctantly lowered the tray to the floor and turned, but he locked them in as he left.

  She stared at the doctor. “Thanks for that much, at least,” she said, her teeth chattering.

  He looked at her, frowning. “I meant what I said. You are no good to us dead.”

  “Apparently I’m no good to you alive either,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t understand why they would even kidnap me.”

  “Prisoner exchange,” he said. “But I don’t think they chose their prisoner very well.”

  She stared at that. “Who is running the show?” she asked. “And how long before I find out if it’s a deal or not?”

  “I can’t tell you,” he said. “You might as well settle in for the ride. It will be a long one.”

  He straightened when the door opened, and the guard walked back in, carrying a stack of blankets. He threw them at her. A large oversize hoodie was on top of it all. She immediately snatched that and pulled it over her head, tucking her knees up underneath. “I don’t suppose you brought any socks, did you?” And she pointed to her feet, turning blue.

  He grumbled and disappeared but came back a little later with what appeared to be men’s socks. They had holes in them, but she took them. “Thank you,” she said gratefully, as she put them on. They came almost up to her knees. But it covered her feet, and that was what was important.

  With the hoodie on, the socks, and the blanket wrapped around her, she just might survive. The doctor and the guard left. She leaned over to look at the tray they brought in. It appeared to be soup, a sandwich, and a cup of something. And now she didn’t have to worry about the food being drugged, what with her negative reaction to them. She was damn grateful to have the food. All she had to do was figure out how to get the hell out of here. She pulled out her phone and checked it, but she still had no bars to send a message. Probably why they let her keep her phone. They knew she could never use it.

  Making as little movement as possible so she’d keep the blankets in place and the heat wrapped around her as much as she could, she pulled the tray onto her knees and settled back to enjoy her first meal in a long time.

  Chapter 2

  After Zadie finished eating, she put the tray on the floor and crawled up on the bed, pulling as many blankets as she could over the top of her head. She laid here, waiting. Afterward she pulled out her phone and started to write. She wrote down her experience since the beginning of her kidnapping. She took several photos to describe anything and everything that she could. She really wanted photos of her guard and the doctor. Somehow she had to take those when they weren’t looking.

  Just then the windowless door opened again, and the guard came back. She had her phone off to the side, hidden under the folds of the blanket, so he couldn’t see it. Angling it as well as she could, she continued to snap photos, hoping that he didn’t notice as he bent down, picked up the tray, and walked out without saying a word. Quickly she pulled the phone back up and studied the pics that she took. A couple good ones were here but only one shot of his profile, and one showed his face slightly in shadows. But then she clicked on the last one and smiled.

  “There you are,” she whispered. Knowing that she still had no way to get the messages out to anyone, she opened up emails and quickly prepared as many of the emails as she could with the photos attached, explaining her circumstances.

  Regardless, she knew that, if she escaped, or if her phone ever connected with cell service, someone would get her messages. Stuck as she was down in this dark basement, chances were it wouldn’t happen until they moved her, which meant she also had to keep her phone hidden. She sure didn’t want to remind them that she had her cell.

  She thought about that for a long moment and then tucked the phone inside her sock, under her pants leg. With her socks pulled up over the bottom of that leg, she hoped her phone would remain with her.

  Not ideal but it was something. She lay quiet, grateful to be warm, when she heard the voices again. Frowning, she slipped out of bed and made her way to the door, wishing she knew exactly what her captors were up to. She strained at the words. A bit of English and a bit of Ukrainian she thought, or a Turkish dialect she didn’t know. However, most she could understand.

  “How long are we keeping her?”

  “I don’t know what the plan is,” her guardsman said, recognizing his voice.

  “I think it’s foolish,” said someone else, a woman.

  “That’s enough out of you,” her guard snapped.

  They spoke in hushed tones after that, but the argument raged on. Zadie wondered if she could use that to her advantage. Maybe find an opportunity to cause further disharmony between her captors.

  She needed a chance to get a message to someone. A window in the wall revealed some light outside, but the window was superhigh up, and her bed was chained against the wall. So she couldn’t twist the bed frame, lift it, or turn it in any way to give her a boost up there. And, as long as people were outside her door, if she could move the bed, they would definitely hear her.

  Sighing, she looked at the bars on the window and the glass behind it. She had to try. Would she have another chance to escape? She made a running leap to jump up the wall and to grab at the bars with her hands. Surprisingly she caught them. As her body slammed into the cement, she shuddered at the pain.

  She managed to pull herself up. As such, she rested ever-so-slightly on the wide windowsill. The wall was made out of thick concrete, enough so that she could rest her body weight upon the ledge. She studied outside, noting the windows were at ground level. So she was in a basement. Although a window was here, the glass itself she could get through but not with these bars on the inside, which was why they had locked her in here, she assumed.

  She studied the grounds outside, wondering if she truly was in the same place as her parents. It looked similar, but that wasn’t any guarantee. She could be at any one of the neighboring estates as well. Hell, she could be in a neighboring country.

&n
bsp; Finally unable to hang on any longer, she awkwardly dropped to the floor.

  With her knee scraped and her body more bruised than she expected, she slowly limped her way back to the bed, where she pulled up the blankets around her. She curled up on the tin cot as the door opened suddenly. She startled in surprise and stared up to see a woman glaring at her. “Who are you?” Zadie asked quietly.

  The woman motioned with her hand to be quiet. “I don’t want you here,” she snapped. “I don’t think you should be here.”

  “Then let me go,” Zadie said.

  The woman shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

  “Then I can’t help you,” Zadie said, the cold and fatigue hitting her again. Just that effort of looking out the window had exhausted her. “I’m hurt. I’m sick, and I’ll die on you in here.”

  “And that might be the best.” The woman nodded.

  Zadie stared at her. “Are you so heartless?”

  “No,” she said, “but I’m a survivor. This is a foolish venture.”

  “Do you love him?” Zadie asked with insight.

  The woman just glared at her.

  Zadie nodded. “Yes, you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t do this.”

  “Not this one,” she said. “His brother is my husband.”

  “And I’m sorry then. That means your father-in-law is the one in jail. Is he Turkish too?”

  Surprise lit the dark depths of the other woman’s gaze. “Yes. You know about that?”

  “I understand that’s why your brother-in-law is doing this,” she said, “but I don’t know why holding me makes any difference.”

  “Not only won’t it make a difference,” she said, “it shouldn’t make a difference. His father is bad news.”

  “So why does he want him free?”

  “He doesn’t believe that he is bad news,” she replied sadly.

  “Then help me get loose,” Zadie retorted. “Let me go. Otherwise that monster will be free too.”

  “I can’t let you go,” the woman responded. “He would know who helped you.”