by Claire Adams
“Ana, in the front with Rake. Get all the women and children into your SUV. Roane, I’ll ride with you and we will go first to clear the way for the women.”
“Yes, Sir,” Roane replied.
“This way,” Ana said as she motioned for the women and children to get into the second SUV.
They all climbed in, and Ana ran around to the front and got in. I had my eye on her the whole time and motioned for the men to get into the first SUV. If there were rebels out there, it would be best that the men and I engaged them so the women could take a different route and get to the airport. I wasn’t going to take any chances with the women and children, or with Ana.
“Go, go, go,” I said to Sandbag as we pulled out.
There was a sense of relief that we had everyone loaded into the SUVs and there hadn’t been any noise from the house across the street. The time of night probably helped, but then again, the people in the house could have been hiding out like we were. There was no way to tell.
Our SUVs moved slowly through the streets trying not to make too much noise. Ideally I wouldn’t have had them both moving at the same time, but we needed to get everyone to the airport and there hadn’t been any signs of rebels, so I thought it was the best move.
The dark, night air was thick with anticipation as we turned one corner and found a car sitting in the middle of the street. It wasn’t unusual to find a car abounded in the street when it had stopped working, but it was unusual to find a car that was totally blocking the road in both directions.
“Baller, any intel on this parked car two blocks away from office?” I said into the radio.
“No intel. Can you take a side street?”
“Rake, take the street to the right of us, we will have to back up and go that way.”
“Copy that, Nitro; we are turning now. Will wait for you around next corner.”
“Copy that; be there shortly.”
I looked back and watched as Rake’s SUV turned down the road behind us. Sandbag started to maneuver our SUV and then we heard shot ring out.
“Ambush!” I yelled into the radio. “Get them out of here, Rake.”
Then I heard several shot from behind us. There was gunfire coming from every direction, and I didn’t know if they were just shooting at us, or if they had eyes on Rake and Ana’s SUV and were shooting at them as well.
“Sandbag, I need you to get us out of here,” I yelled as he pressed the gas pedal and pushed the car that was in the middle of the street out of our way.
“Copy that, boss, we are pushing our way through.”
“Rake, get everyone to the airport; we will meet you there. We’ll draw their fire,” I said into the radio.
By this point, the men in the SUV with me had their windows down and were returning fire in the direction of where we thought the rebels had been hiding. It was dark out still and we couldn’t exactly tell which floor of the building they had been on, but we could tell which building it was.
With three of us returning fire, we hoped that a few of the rebels had been hit. Taking out rebels didn’t really matter to us though; all we cared about was getting everyone to the airport safely and without incident.
Unfortunately, we had already had an incident, now we just had to worry about getting everyone to the airport safely. I could see all the guys in my SUV were good and didn’t appear to have any injuries.
“Rake, did you guys get out of there all right? Over.”
The silence on the other was deafening. I messed with the radio channels and tried it again. Rake just needed to say he was on his way to the airport. That’s all I needed to know.
“Rake, come in. Are you in route? Over.”
“What the hell is going on?” Baller asked over the radio. “Answer, Rake; we need to confirm your direction.”
Again, there was no answer. We couldn’t hear any interference. There was no faint sound of him trying to say something and we just couldn’t hear him. We heard absolutely nothing. Sandbag and I both looked at each other and knew we would have to go back. We couldn’t leave the women and children there to fend for themselves if something had happened to Rake. There was no other option; we had to help them.
Chapter Twenty-One
ANA
There were five rounds of fire that rang out after we turned down the alternate road. I instantly looked out the window to see where the shots had been fired from, but I couldn’t tell. The children in the back seat initially yelled out, but the women calmed them quickly and as I turned to Rake I saw that we were in a whole hell of a lot of trouble.
“Rake, let’s get out of here,” I said before I realized the extent of his injuries.
He was totally unresponsive, and I saw the single gunshot hole that was in the driver’s side window. Then I saw the blood pouring out of Rake’s left temple. My heart sank at the realization that I was alone with an SUV full of vulnerable women and we were in the middle of a firefight.
I could still hear shots ringing out where Nate’s SUV was at and I knew I had to get our vehicle out of there while the rebels were distracted. I didn’t know what I was doing, but all I could think about was what Nate might be telling me to do if he was there.
Oh, how I wished Nate was in our vehicle with us. But then I realized if he had been in the SUV driving, then he would be the one who was dead instead of Rake. There would be no more wishing things were different; I didn’t have time for that. I didn’t have time for anything except to get us out of that area.
I slid onto Rake’s lap and pressed the vehicle into drive while I floored the gas. The SUV smoked and made a lot of noise, but it drove so I kept us moving as far away from the gunfight as I could get us.
“Hang on, ladies,” I yelled out as we took a couple turns going at least fifty miles per hour.
I didn’t know how much longer our vehicle was going to last, and I needed to get us as close to the airport as possible. We were probably ten miles away and it would be a very long and dangerous walk with the 17 women and teenage children I had in the vehicle. We made it about a mile away from the gunfight, but I had turned back and forth through the streets so I wasn’t really sure how far we had made it.
“Does anyone speak English?” I yelled out as the SUV started to smoke.
“I do,” a teenage girl yelled out from the back.
“Tell everyone to get ready to run. Stay together and we are going west.”
“Okay,” she said and then started to translate what I had said.
I reached to Rake’s side and grabbed his gun as I stopped the vehicle and everyone started to get out. I felt around his jacket and found a couple extra clips before I slid out of the SUV and motioned for the group to follow me. I didn’t know for sure where we were going, but I saw a faint light in the distance behind us that was the sun getting ready to rise, so at least I knew we were heading west.
We were in bad shape, there was no denying it. I had forgotten to grab the radio from the car and only had about twenty to thirty bullets between what was in the gun and in the extra magazines. None of the women or children were armed and the sun was coming up. The second the sun came up, we would be totally exposed and in desperate need of a place to hide out until help could arrive.
There was no way to know for sure if all the women and teenagers were behind us, but every time I looked back, there was still a large group of women behind me. There were a couple teenage boys who looked like they were bringing up the rear and I was pretty impressed with their willingness to help keep their mothers and sisters safe. Even boys as young as thirteen and fourteen were ready to fight to keep the women in their lives safe.
I had never had that in my life—well, not until I met Nate. Before Nate, I searched for a man who would love and protect me and I went with Stephano because I so desperately wanted that love. I knew that was how Stephano got women like me; he simply promised to love them and we were caught in his web of lies. But I wasn’t that little girl anymore, and as much as I
still wanted to have Nate in my life, I didn’t need him in order to feel like I was a full person. Every step I took on the run through Damascus was a step I took towards my own freedom and strength.
“It’s getting light out; we need to find shelter,” I said to Danita.
We stopped and I quickly started to check the buildings around us to see if any of the doors were unlocked. It was risky to just enter an unlocked home, but we didn’t have a choice. The rebels were going to get the word out that we got away and everyone was going to be looking for us soon. We couldn’t be out in the daylight or we would risk getting captured.
There was one thing I knew for sure about the rebels in Syria; they didn’t treat women captives very well at all. Before killing the women, they raped them and often made their children watch. The rebels would then kill the children and force their mothers to watch. Sometimes they wouldn’t even kill the mothers and instead let them live with the horror of watching their children be tortured and murdered.
I wasn’t going to let that happen to any of the women and children I had with me. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to make sure they were safe. I wasn’t trained in everything that Nate and his friends were, but I had dealt with Stephano for weeks and I wouldn’t allow the women in my care to be tortured like I had been.
“We have a phone,” Danita said as she brought a phone up to me from one of the teenaged boys. “It’s likely being monitored, though.”
“Thanks, now let’s get in here,” I said as I pushed open a door to an old apartment building.
Danita and the rest of the women and teenagers didn’t hesitate at all as they piled into the building. Once inside though, it was clear that the building was barely standing after it had been bombed. The stairs were gone and there was no way to get to the upper floors; staying on the lower level was obviously the most dangerous spot for us, but we had no other choice.
I started to gather furniture that was left in the house and pushed it up against the front door. Danita and a couple of the teenage boys helped me, and before long, we had a huge pile in front of the door and the front window to the building. If someone was going to try coming in through that door, it was going to take them a very long time, and hopefully would allow us enough time to escape.
I moved everyone into a room at the back of the building and sat them down while I took Danita and the boys to check out the rest of the building. We had to know what we were dealing with and where our weak points might be if we were going to use the place as our hideout for the day.
We walked around the main floor as the sun started to rise. There wasn’t much light able to sneak in through the windows, but it was enough for us to get the layout of the unit. We had a couple options to escape if needed and those would also need to be where we watched for any sort of movement. I had one of the teenage boys sit in what looked like a laundry room near the back because there was a door there. We pulled the wash sink in front of the door to slow any intruders and Danita helped me give him instructions on what to do if he heard someone. We had a couple other boys sit near windows and keep an eye out for anything suspicious.
My mind whirled with what I thought Nate would do in our situation. I constantly heard his voice in my head like he was guiding me in what to do. Then I thought about Nate and how he was probably going totally crazy trying to figure out where we were and rescue us. He would be going mad. I didn’t trust the cell phone I was given because I knew the families had been under surveillance, but I needed to get some help.
Then a thought crossed my mind that I couldn’t tolerate at all. Nate’s vehicle had been caught in the rebel’s shooting much more than our vehicle had been caught. How did I even know if Nate was alive? If Rake could be killed by a single bullet, it was totally plausible that Nate and the men in his SUV could have been killed by the dozens of bullet’s that had been flying their way.
“What’s the matter?” Danita asked me.
I paused for a moment as I tried to decide if I should involve her in my thought process. She was a young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen years of age, but I saw in her eyes that she had probably dealt with much more than most girls of her age had. I knew just by looking into her dark brown eyes that she had seen sadness.
“I don’t know what to do. We need to get to the airport, but it’s at least eight miles away. The rebels will be looking through all these houses for us. I’m not sure how long we can stay here.”
Danita shook her head in agreement and we both sat in the corner as we tried to think up a plan that might work for us. There weren’t many options, besides just running for the airport. But I knew there had to be a better way of making our escape without risking the women and teenagers’ lives. I was caught in thought as I tried to think about what Nate might do.
“You need sleep,” Danita said as she looked at me. “Sleep for one hour and the answer will come to you.”
I chuckled at how confident she was that I would come up with the answer to our problems by simply taking a nap. Although, I didn’t think it would be possible to actually sleep when we were in the middle of such turmoil, I did like the idea of closing my eyes and thinking about Nate and his men and how they might get out of the situations.
“I’ll rest my eyes for a moment, but you get me if anything is going on outside.”
“Yes,” Danita said as she squeezed next to me.
I was sandwiched between Danita and a corner post from the wall as I closed my eyes. Not to sleep, but only to think through our options and hopefully come up with a brilliant idea that would save us.
My eyes had only been closed for a moment when I felt Nate’s lips pressing against mine. I knew I was dreaming, but I didn’t care; his lips felt like a lifeline for me and I needed them desperately. I felt his lips move down my neck and gently wrap around my nipple as he pulled it tightly into his mouth. Oh, it felt so good. I loved the feeling of his lips on every part of my body.
The moment Nate that lifted me up out of the dark corner of Stephano’s home was the moment my entire life changed. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but our encounter had been the catalyst to so much more.
Nate was a tough guy, and he didn’t show his emotions readily, but even in my dreams I felt like I knew he cared for me. The way his eyes searched mine was a powerful statement about who he was and his intentions with me. At first, Nate barely looked me in the eyes and always seemed afraid that he might hurt me in some way. But as we started to work out and he started to teach me defense techniques and attack techniques, I saw a change in the way his eyes looked into mine.
As my confidence grew, so did Nate’s confidence in understanding that I could handle any mistakes that happened. As I dreamed about Nate’s naked lips playing with my body, I felt empowered by his feelings for me. He didn’t love lightly. For Nate to care about me like he did meant that he had put a lot of lot into it, and his emotions were overwhelming.
My body reacted to the touch of his on me. Sleep triggered an emotional and physical connection I had with Nate that I wasn’t willing to admit to when I was awake. I longed for him, my body urged him to do whatever would please me and then do it again, over and over again. I couldn’t get enough of his touch, and even in my dreams I wanted him to thrust into me again and again. I didn’t just want to feel pleasure one time, I wanted to feel it for the rest of my life.
That was a weird thought to think about spending the rest of my life with someone. I really hadn’t thought I would ever consider something like that again after everything that went down with Stephano. But the truth was I couldn’t imagine my life with anyone else but Nate. I couldn’t imagine sitting around in a stuffy apartment as my boyfriend went off to a job he hated. No, that wasn’t the life I wanted. Instead, I wanted to live a passionate and exciting life with Nate. I wanted to learn his business and come on assignments with him.
It occurred to me that all the thoughts and feelings I was having about Nate meant that I loved him. Love wasn’t
something that I came to lightly and wouldn’t have been the word I would have used if I had been fully awake. While awake, I used my defense mechanisms to keep me from admitting that I cared so much about Nate. I didn’t want to feel that vulnerable again and by saying I loved someone, it automatically meant that I was putting my power in their hands.
But love didn’t have to mean giving up your power; I was slowly learning that with Nate in my life. Because of Nate, I saw that love could actually mean you were gaining power and becoming even stronger because of your bond with the other person. I was stronger when I was around Nate and it wasn’t because his strength gave me power. No, my strength around him came because of his willingness to love my flaws.
Nate obviously knew most of my flaws because of our time together, and he still cared for me. Not many men could show that kind of affection for a woman even after she accused him of attacking her when she was disoriented, as I had done. Or if she had tried to strangle him during a training moment like I had done. Nope, I was convinced that there weren’t many men who would still want to be around me, and fewer yet who would look me in the eyes and have the feelings that I saw in Nate’s eyes.
Suddenly, my own heart felt very full with worry at the idea of Nate and the rebels. In my sleep-deprived state, I had gone right to thinking of all the wonderful times between Nate and I and I had avoided the negative thoughts that something could have happened to him. I wasn’t prepared to think about that at all. I had finally found the man I could spend my life with, there was no way I was letting him go.
“Miss…Miss…” I heard a voice say as I was pulled out of my sleepy state.
“Yes,” I said, instantly alert to my surroundings and the possible dangers that were all around us.
“There is a phone; across the street is a store. It will have a phone; is there someone you should call?” Danita said.
