“Oh, God,” she breathed. “Yes . . . yes, I will.” Alexa stretched her neck, looking to his left. “Can’t we tell someone?”
“I did. I radioed the sergeant who’s heading up that squad of Marines. He feels it, too.”
Hearing the frustration in her tone, Gage watched the boughs of the evergreens move slightly beneath the breeze coming off the slopes of the mountains. “Do you feel anything?”
Alexa closed her eyes, trying to keep her heart from pounding. They were at seventy-five hundred feet, and she was used to sea level. She opened her eyes and said, “No . . . I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“That’s all right.” Gage knew she was highly distracted, like everyone else except the Marines. He was the opposite: laser-focused.
Gage looked to his right and saw the Marines spreading out, always wary of IEDs planted below the surface of the snow from the night before. Sergeant Brian Jameson was a five-year Iraq War vet, and he’d spent two years in this sorry-ass country after that. So he knew the lay of the land, and Gage had confidence in him and his leadership. He, too, was on guard. His facial expression showed that he was clearly pissed at the two doctors who nixed getting their medical teams into the safety behind the walls of the village.
“That’s okay,” he murmured, trying not to sound so hard and gruff.
“What do you think is in there?” Alexa asked, pointing toward the wadi.
Gage quickly gripped her hand, bringing it down to his side. “First rule of warfare, don’t point out the enemy. Okay?”
His voice was bemused, but she wasn’t laughing.
“This is serious, Gage?”
“Very.” He got on his lapel radio, talking to Jameson in a low tone that no one could hear except the man at the other end.
“This was supposed to be a safe place,” Alexa muttered, worried, her gloved hand on the back of Gage’s Kevlar vest. She felt the urgency bristling within him and now saw him for the warrior he was—and that was nothing like the Marine she’d met last week. This was another side of him, and right now, it made Alexa feel safer in a very unstable situation.
Snorting, Gage muttered, “There is no safe place anywhere in this godforsaken country, Alexa. You should know that by now. You’ve bombed and strafed the hell out of it.”
Raising an eyebrow, she sighed. “The air war is very different from the ground war.”
“Tell me about it.” Gage lowered his voice, turning toward her for a moment. “Do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Take off your dog tags. Give them to me.”
Shocked, she stared at him. “But . . . why?”
“Because if you are captured and they find those tags on you, it won’t be pleasant. They hate women in the military worse than they do the men.”
Gulping, Alexa saw he was dead serious.
“Turn your back opposite that wadi and take them off. Slip them into my hand as quietly as possible. The enemy has binoculars like we do. They’ll be looking for that chain around everyone’s neck. They like to target military personnel first, and then NGO civilians like that cluster around the chief and his wife.”
Shaken, Alexa did as he asked, pushing them into his awaiting hand. Her heart pulsed with adrenaline. “What should we do?”
“I’d like to call in some Apaches with their infrared on board, but Sergeant Jameson said none are available. We’re sitting ducks out here, and I don’t like it one bit.”
“Should we go inside the village, then? It has a high, thick wall.”
Gage couldn’t keep the derision out of his low tone. “No. The medical doctors made the decision to stay out here even though Sergeant Jameson told them to get everyone inside the walls.”
“What can we do?” Alexa tried to steady her voice. When she was in the heavily armored cockpit of her A-10, she felt protected. Even if she made low, slow passes to strafe and destroy Taliban trying to overrun an American position, she still felt safe.
Here? She felt like a target was on her back. Gage was placing himself between her and the world around them, shielding her. A fierce sense of gratitude rose in her chest.
She wasn’t wearing a protective vest. In fact, her only weapon was a .45 pistol in a holster on her right hip. Alexa hadn’t been expecting this at all.
She heard a hollow thunk from the area around the wadi.
“Incoming!” Gage suddenly yelled into his radio, alerting the other Marines. Instantly, he turned, savagely shoving Alexa down onto the muddy soil and dropping, trying to cover her. It was an RPG, fired from a launcher by their enemy.
Alexa screamed and slammed against the wall, her knees buried in mud, her hands covering her head. Gage landed hard on top of her, his arms gathering her beneath his wide, long body. She opened her mouth, knowing if an RPG was fired and it landed close, her lungs had to equalize with the pressure from the blast. If she didn’t, they would turn to jelly in an instant.
She heard Gage curse, and he embraced her, tucking her head against his chest. Oh, God!
An RPG landed just inside the front gate of the village, the resounding pressure waves from the blast tearing the gates off their hinges and sending them flying outward. A second RPG was launched, landing inside the village near the first one fired. Alexa felt the blasts like fists punching her body, and the sounds were so loud, it felt as if thunder had literally landed upon her as the ground shook all around her. It felt like an earthquake.
She heard Gage groan, and suddenly, he went limp above her, his arms loosening around her head and shoulders. No! Had he been hit? Alexa squirmed, her ears in such pain she couldn’t hear anything except the roar inside them.
“Gage!” she cried, trying to wriggle out from beneath him. He was so heavy! She wallowed in the mud and snow, trying to get out from under him to see what had happened.
But before Alexa could wriggle free, Gage was suddenly hauled off her. Her eyes widened as she looked upward. A man dressed in black Afghan clothing with a brown beard and hatred in his eyes stared down at her. He grinned savagely, reaching out and yanking Alexa to her feet.
Alexa got her first look at the aftermath of the attack and, to her horror, saw the chief and his wife lying at the entrance, unmoving, blood around their bodies. The young women of the medical teams had run screaming, utterly panicked, and there were men on horseback thundering after them. The male medical professionals with them had been shot. Chaos ensued.
Alexa yelped as the Taliban soldier slammed her against the wall, knocking the wind out of her. He grabbed her hands, quickly wrapping her wrists in tight ropes. Alexa fought, and he cursed in Urdu, the main language of Pakistan. He grabbed her .45 and tossed it away.
She heard screams and saw Taliban soldiers on horseback grabbing all of the female medical personnel. They each dismounted, jerking a woman to them, tying her hands, and then throwing her on their horse and mounting up behind them.
NO!
She was dragged past Gage, who lay unconscious on the ground. To her horror, she saw blood on the side of his temple. Oh, no! The blast had injured him! She dug in her boots, screaming and fighting back as the soldier dragged her toward his waiting horse, but he was wiry and much stronger than she was.
Alexa kicked out, trying to make him release her. He turned and raised his hand, as if to strike her, but she dodged his wide-open hand, falling to her knees on the ground. Behind her, she heard the other women’s shrieks and wails. Several riders galloped by, each with a woman in the saddle, her hands tied, the soldiers whipping their animals to go faster.
“Gage!” Alexa cried, scrambling to her feet. She dodged the soldier’s next slap, yanking him around. She wasn’t a small woman—maybe an inch shorter than her captor. Anger leaped to his eyes as he grabbed the reins of his horse with his other hand. The animal danced around, rolling its eyes in terror.
“Gage, help me!” she sobbed, hauling back.
The soldier suddenly released her, and Alexa fell to the ground as he came at her, sl
amming his boot down into her chest.
An ooofff of air ruptured from her lungs as he put all his weight upon her chest, glaring down at her. Alexa couldn’t move, the air knocked out of her. She tried to rise, but it was impossible to breathe.
The soldier was cursing angrily now, grabbing her by the hair, his fist wrapped solidly within it, and hauling her upright. The pain spread like hot needles across her scalp as she cried out, throwing her tied hands upward. Now he had full control of her. Pushing her to the horse, he forced her to mount. Once on it, he kept her head back against him, her throat exposed, putting her off balance. Kicking his bay horse, he whipped it around to leave.
Alexa nearly fell off, but the soldier had a strong hold on her hair and wrenched her upright as the horse galloped down the length of the wall. Tears jammed into her eyes, and all she could do was reach for the horse’s mane and try to hold on. What was happening? Where were the other Marines? There were gunshots being fired all around the wall at different points. Her hearing came and went.
Ahead of her were Taliban on horseback, racing down the valley. They raced past the wadi they’d been hiding in and swiftly left it behind. Gage had been right! She cried out, the pain so bad that she was crying, unable to make her captor release her hair.
They galloped out of sight of the village, and to Alexa’s shock, she saw three white Toyota Hilux pickups waiting around the bend. There were other Taliban soldiers with AK-47s standing by the beds, their faces grim, their fingers on the triggers of their rifles. She was stunned and didn’t know what to think. Soon enough, the horses and soldiers ahead of her were stopping by each pickup. They each dumped the woman they’d captured into the bed of a truck, and another soldier in the bed shoved the women down on their hands and knees. They were slapped, kicked, and threatened with being shot if they didn’t remain down on the bed. By the time Alexa arrived, she was the fifth woman in the lead truck. The soldier released her hair, bringing his horse up alongside the bed. With a shove, the soldier pushed her off the horse, and she crashed into the truck with a cry of pain.
The other four women were already hunkered down on hands and knees, cowed and terrified. Alexa heard a snarl as struggled to get up. Blackbeard leaned down, yanking her by her shoulder, spinning her onto her knees. Savagely, he shoved his hand down on the back of her neck, forcing Alexa’s face into the cold metal of the bed. He kept her there, leaning down, snarling in Urdu. Alexa knew it meant “Stay down!” and she did, sobbing for breath, her scalp aching with unrelenting pain. She heard shouts and the movement of horses but didn’t dare look up. Gage! He’d been hurt. Was he dead? No! NO!
The pickups were fired up, and soon they were racing through the snow, heading somewhere. Alexa and the others were bounced around, still forced to keep their heads down and remain crouched on their knees. The two soldiers with them would jam their muddy boots into their backs if they tried to lift their heads.
Alexa quickly learned to stay where she was. Her mind spun—she was shocked by the ferocity of the attack. The jolting and bumping tossed them around on the floor of the bed, and every time a woman’s head came up as she was wrenched against the panel of the truck, a soldier would kick at her, forcing her head down on the floor of the truck.
Alexa heard the women crying sometimes, her hearing coming and going. She couldn’t reach out to them, but their bodies were jammed against one another as the trucks roared and climbed out of the valley. She had no idea where they were, but they seemed to be moving up a slope. The wheels were spinning, mud flying everywhere. Oh, God, where were they taking them? And what were they going to do with them? Alexa bit down on her lower lip, tasting blood. Gage had looked as if he were dead! Dead!
Her heart shredded, and she couldn’t stop a little cry of grief. His face had been leached white, with blood running freely down his cheek.
The world closed in on Alexa. She was slid around and bumped by the truck racing along a flatter area of the road. Fear consumed her. Her mind spun with the fact that she’d heard of Afghan women and little girls and boys being kidnapped by the Taliban and then sold in Pakistan to sick sexual monsters who would pay for a sex toy or slave to do their bidding. Trying not to heave, her stomach wanting to revolt, Alexa curled into a fetal knot.
She reminded herself that she was a military officer—the only one in this group of women. A momentary relief sped through her, and she was eternally grateful that Gage had told her to remove her dog tags. The Taliban would not know who she was because she carried no identification on her. She didn’t know about the civilian women, however. Alexa’s mind rolled from shock to grief and then her will to survive kicked in. Above all, she could not allow them to know who she really was. As she was bounced around in the bed, the ropes tight, cutting off circulation to her hands, Alexa focused now on creating a name and story about herself. Luckily, she’d never met these other women, and they didn’t know who she was. She certainly wasn’t about to let on that she was an Air Force officer.
She shut her eyes tightly, her knees bloodied, scraped, and bruised by the truck’s racing at high speed, sloughing over the road, almost sliding sideways at times. Alexa knew that if anyone had been left alive in that Marine contingent, they would be calling Bagram for help. They would get Apaches up. This village was only twenty miles from the base, a hop, skip, and a jump for those combat helicopters.
They could stop these men from stealing these women and potentially stealing their lives. Alexa uttered a little cry as she again pictured Gage lying unconscious or dead on the muddy ground. He had been so vital, so full of life, so protective of her seconds before. And he’d shielded her with his own body and taken the blows and the pressure concussion from those RPGs that had been fired. He’d saved her life, at a very heavy price. If he wasn’t dead, he was seriously injured. Now, teetering between sheer panic and steely calm, Alexa knew she had to be brave in a way she’d never been before.
Yes, she’d taken SERE—survival, evasion, resistance, and escape—training for two weeks. Yes, she’d been tortured and had seen other pilots flying combat aircraft tortured in the school, to show them what they could expect. And it wasn’t going to be pretty, Alexa knew. What if the Taliban had captured all these women to rape them? To keep them as sex slaves for themselves, rather than selling them in Pakistan? Either way, it was a horrible nightmare. These soldiers stank of goat, of not washing for weeks, their sour smell made her stomach clench.
What else could they do with them? She had no idea. The worst possible scenario was to be tortured to death or waterboarded. She had experienced it at SERE to find out what it was like, and like everyone else, she’d failed, thinking she was dying and screaming and passing out from the experience.
Perhaps these men would behead them, a curved scimitar slicing her throat open from one ear to another. Or the women might be put on video and shown to the world. The Taliban was capable of all these things. Alexa knew what was coming, and however she looked at it, all these women, including herself, had been herded up, forced by men who hated them into these trucks, and there was a plan behind all this.
They were wanted for something. Anxiety sheared through her. Alexa felt death stalking them all.
The air icy-cold, the wind rushing past her, Alexa began shaking, her teeth chattering. She had on a heavy down parka, but the other women wore nothing nearly this warm. Yet her hands were now numb, her face as well, and she knew hypothermia was setting in. Where were they taking them?
Alexa suspected the other women were faring far worse than she. Sometimes, when her hearing came back, she heard some of them weeping, but she knew that tears wouldn’t get them out of this. Alexa knew she was going to have to be strong—stronger than she’d ever been in her entire life.
She wasn’t sure that help would come or that they’d be rescued. There had been no drone overhead for them.
Now she understood Gage’s unhappiness about the fact that there had been no Apache escort available to fly with the
CH-47 helicopter. If they had, their infrared sensing equipment would have immediately spotted the hidden Taliban in that wadi. And then they’d have fired their Hellfire missiles or used their .50 caliber Gatling gun to destroy them before they could attack their group. They had been left wide open to attack. And it had happened. That colonel at ops was going to regret his decision, which had put all of them in harm’s way. She hoped he was brought up on charges and lost his rank and status.
CHAPTER 8
Tal Culver groaned in protest, rolling over in bed away from Wyatt Lockwood to answer the red security phone on her nightstand.
“Tal here,” she mumbled, pushing off the warm covers, sitting up. She wiped at her drowsy eyes, trying to wake up, and felt Wyatt stir. When she looked up through the window, the January night was clear, the stars sparkling above, the trees below coated with snow. Glancing at the clock it read 0300.
“Ma’am, Benson here. We just got a call from Bagram that your sister and seven other women were kidnapped from an Afghan village twenty miles north of the base.”
Terror slammed into Tal. She stood up, her heart hammering, but the Marine in her, the officer, kicked in. She waved at Wyatt, now awake and jerked her finger toward the light switch. “Tell me everything,” she demanded, her voice rough as she grabbed the pen and paper she always kept nearby.
Wyatt moved quickly, naked, flipping the switch so light could flood their bedroom. Tal punched a button on the security phone, putting it on speaker.
“. . . Captain Culver was on a charity mission to the village. According to Sergeant Gage Hunter, USMC, who was there, the Taliban hid in a nearby wadi and threw two RPGs to create chaos. Sergeant Hunter was your sister’s bodyguard for the day. He threw himself over her and protected her from the blast, which was dangerously close. He lost consciousness, and when he came to, he saw that the male medical doctors had been killed and the women had been rounded up. The villagers came forward to show the Marines, who were there to guard them, where the women had been taken.”
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