Six

by Charles W. Sasser

  “Now the kid is looking at us the same way we looked at Rip,” he noted. “Can you believe that?”

  Bear took his time to answer, giving Caulder the opportunity to swallow his nostalgia. Finally, Bear spoke: “Good thing we got it all figured out.”

  The two SEALs turned to each other and burst into laughter. Laughing felt good, lightened things up.

  But then the laughter died and their eyes wandered out past the team room to a time when the team felt whole and together and Rip Taggart led.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Abandoned Village, Nigeria

  The African sun rose over the abandoned jungle village where ISIS-affiliated Boko Haram had brought their hostages to hold for ransom, or, as in the case of the girls, to “marry” or sell. Rip Taggart’s ribs and chest felt somewhat better. When he opened his eyes he saw McAlwain, Nick, and Hakeem still curled up asleep on the cell’s dirt floor. Na’omi stood at her window peering out. A shaft of golden sunshine poured over her slim body and illuminated her face so that it glowed like that of a brown-skinned Madonna on a church wall. He hadn’t noticed before how truly attractive this young woman was. She possessed an inner beauty, which she retained despite the violence and deprivations they had endured since her capture. It seemed to mesmerize him while he watched. There was a quietness about her and in their morning together.

  There was also sadness in her expression, a longing, perhaps regret, but there was no sign of the soul-destroying fear that had overcome Nick the reluctant PR man. She felt Taggart’s eyes on her. She turned her head and looked square into his eyes before she returned to her girls, sleeping in their uniform plaid skirts and blouses that had once been white.

  Suddenly, a commotion and a rush ensued outside. A voice shouted, “Everyone out!”

  The door flew open. The broad-shouldered, long-limbed leader of this pack of predators, the one called Aabid, burst into the detention hut brandishing a thin-bladed curved sword and a savage demeanor, like he might be pissed off at the world every second of every day.

  The three guards who washed in on his wake had that same look. Taggart recognized the demon-giant with the crossbow, Quayum, and the other big man who resembled heavyweight boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. Chido. The third was a skinny teenager who appeared both deprived and depraved. All were garbed out in military-type cammies and bush hats. Taking their cue from Aabid, they commenced throwing their weight about, yanking McAlwain, Nick, and Hakeem awake and bum-rushing them to the open door and out into the hands of other tormentors.

  “Out! Out! Everyone out!”

  “What’s happening?” Na’omi demanded, putting on a brave front for the benefit of her terrified students, who bunched together wailing at the tops of their lungs.

  “Ina zaka kaimu?” she added in Hausa. Where are you taking us?

  The guards ignored her. Laughing and pinching and touching, they seemed to be enjoying snatching up the little females and hustling them out through the open door. Na’omi struggled to hold her girls together in a group so she might better control and protect them. Everything moved fast and violently with a great deal of laughing and jeering by the assembled Boko Haram warriors. Na’omi found herself cast bodily into a pile of legs and arms with her girls outside in the village square. The frightened students clustered around their teacher, eyes wide and white-rimmed, tears running, while their ragtag captors closed in on them, ogling and taking dibs on who got who.

  Inside the hut, Taggart remained lying on the dirt floor, ignoring shouted commands to get up and get out. Fuck ’em. He refused to award these bastards the respect of even acknowledging their presence. They could kill him—but so what? A man died only once; and Taggart wasn’t about to die on his knees begging for his life. They might kill him on his back, or on his feet or belly. But not on his knees. He begged no man. Besides, he was ready to die.

  A pair of mud-splattered shoes, like Farmer Jones’s clodhoppers, planted themselves in front of his face.

  “Stand up!” Aabid ordered.

  Rip refused to move.

  Quayum and the Sugar Ray lookalike fell upon him like wild dogs. Kicking and pummeling him, shouting invective, they dragged him out of the hut by his feet and deposited him in the midst of Aabid’s soldiers like raw meat thrown into a cage of starving hyenas.

  Enough of this shit. The bastards could kill him, but not like this. He threw off his nearest abusers and sprang to his feet, prepared to go down fighting. Before he had a chance to account for himself, a club struck a swift blow to his head from behind. He crumpled to the ground, stunned. The soldiers cheered.

  “No! No!” It sounded like Na’omi.

  Terry McAlwain, the oil exec, watched Taggart’s encounter without expression. He seemed to have gone overnight from middle age to old age. He kept silent and suitably contrite as terrorists danced around their captives, flashing knives and pointing guns while they laughed uproariously and made crude jokes. He calculated nonresistance to be his best and perhaps only option to save himself and the others.

  Hakeem sat on the ground with his head lowered into his arms to shut out the world. Nick had already given up. He crawled inside himself and curled up in his favorite fetal position while he wept uncontrollably. All he could think about was the British-born ISIS fighter the press had dubbed “the Executioner.” This sadist whacked off victims’ heads for the benefit of TV and social media. Nick had convinced himself the same fate awaited him.

  Aabid stood over Taggart’s semiconscious form and threw up his hands for order. His troops immediately quieted down. Through the haze that enveloped his senses, Rip managed to make out the cruel eyes and hard lines in the terrorist leader’s face as Aabid bent over him.

  “Navy SEAL?” he demanded in heavily-accented English.

  Rip struggled to find a voice. “No.”

  Na’omi, the girls, and the others would all be in peril if their captors knew who he was.

  McAlwain demonstrated some grit in his craw when he called out in an attempt to negotiate, “Sir? Please, sir … Whatever you want …”

  Rip heard a smack as Chido slapped the older man across the face and prepared to administer a sound beating. Aabid’s hand shot up—Wait! He motioned for Chido to bring McAlwain to him.

  “Perhaps I should be talking to you,” Aabid said in a voice that sounded almost reasonable. “Terry McAlwain?”

  Obviously, the terrorists knew exactly who they had seized. This hostage snatch had not been at random; it was carefully planned. What Aabid was doing now, Taggart realized, was putting on a show for the amusement of his troops. As with the beheading of captives for the camera, this was all a primitive demonstration of power and authority and intimidation.

  McAlwain thought he saw an opportunity. “Uh, yes. Yes,” he pursued. “So you’ve spoken to SyncoPetro? They’ll pay you. Did they tell you that? Whatever you want, they’ll give it to you. They will …”

  His voice thinned out into desperation. “But … But we’re not wild animals. You can’t keep us here like this. We’re hungry, and—”

  An evil smile crossed Aabid’s broad face. He jerked a thumb toward Chido. “Let Chido see.”

  McAlwain looked puzzled. “See what?”

  “Your hands.”

  “Why?”

  “I want him to see how hard you work.”

  Rip was starting to recover his senses. He saw Aabid quietly draw the scimitar sword from his belt. The cold smile spread across the terrorist’s face without touching his eyes. What this was all about, Rip knew, was dominance.

  “Don’t do it, Terry,” Taggart warned.

  Aabid glared at Rip. “Show Chido,” he said to McAlwain.

  Baffled, McAlwain reluctantly extended both hands toward Chido, palms down. Chido cradled them in his. The oil executive’s soft white hands made a startling contrast to the scarred and calloused hands of the African.

  “Kumboram du ra wafila du ra’am?” Chido requested of Aabid. You want the right or th
e left?

  Aabid turned his smile on the white man. It became reassuring and almost tender. “He says your hands are soft. Like a baby’s.”

  Rip saw it coming. “No!” He scrambled to his feet. Two guards held him back.

  Sunlight caught the sudden flash of Aabid’s scimitar as it descended and lopped off McAlwain’s right hand at the wrist. The severed hand trailing an exhaust mist of blood flew through the air and landed in the dust, where its dying nerves caused it to twitch like a stricken bird. Boko Haram went apeshit at the thrill of it, their roaring approval countered by terrified screams from the schoolgirls.

  Blood pulsated from McAlwain’s stump. He fell to his knees, staring at his wound in horror and disbelief. His face turned gray in the realization of what had happened.

  Aabid calmly turned to Rip. “What do you do now?”

  He nodded at the guards, who released the tough-looking American and stepped aside. Taggart’s old SEAL survival instincts kicked into gear. He rushed to McAlwain’s side and knelt on the ground with him. He yanked his belt free and pulled it tight around the oil man’s arm just above the amputation. Before he had time to cinch it down, however, guards grabbed him and pulled him away.

  “Tighten it down!” he called out to Na’omi.

  “I give the orders,” Aabid snarled and caught Rip with a sucker punch to the solar plexus that knocked him to the ground, gasping for air.

  Undaunted, brave Na’omi rushed forward to continue first aid. Her fingers trembled so badly she had trouble grasping the makeshift tourniquet and pulling it tight.

  “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast,” Taggart croaked from on his hands and knees as he coughed and sucked air.

  Nodding reflexively, Na’omi forced her mind and hands to slow down and work together. Seeing his boss in distress, Nick managed to discover some backbone. Whimpering pitifully, he ripped off part of his shirt and helped bandage Terry’s stump with the rags. Na’omi cinched in the tourniquet and glanced up to see Rip once more in trouble.

  Aabid delivered a vicious kick to Taggart’s head that split open his brow and sent him sprawling onto his back. Aabid stood spread-legged above him brandishing his wicked knife.

  “You are Navy SEAL. Special Forces.”

  Rip fought to shake off the blow and catch his breath, his mind whirling in confusing circles. “He needs antibiotics, clean dressings—”

  Aabid’s muddy clodhopper came down on Taggart’s middle. His ribs popped like dead boughs snapping. Excruciating pain exploded through his chest, once again robbing him of breath. He curled up on the ground, hugging himself, attempting to find more air, to live long enough to kill this evil barbarian—

  Aabid’s minions closed in, braying like dogs at the smell of blood, eager to get in their licks before the prey died.

  “Navy SEAL!” Aabid persisted.

  Through a red haze, Rip made out the traumatized faces of Na’omi’s little girls. “… girls need … girls need …”

  Another kick to the jaw carried enough jolt to almost knock his head off his shoulders. His ears drummed hollow. The world of reality seemed to be receding.

  “… they need clothes …”

  Aabid dropped to his knees and thrust his face close to Rip’s. “Navy SEAL!”

  Rip coughed up blood. “… girls … hot food …”

  “Navy SEAL!”

  Motherfucker! Taggart forced his eyes to focus. They glinted with hate and rage. If he died, he would die as he had lived—as a SEAL. What difference did it make now? Aabid knew who and what he was. What Aabid wanted was not an answer. What he wanted was torture and dominance.

  “Yeah!” he exploded in sudden defiance. “Yeah! Navy motherfucking SEAL, motherfucker!”

  He spat blood in Aabid’s face. He smiled at the terrorist as he braced himself for the coup de grâce.

  Instead, incomprehensively, Aabid allowed blood-laced spittle to ooze down his cheek and drip off his chin while he answered Taggart’s smile with one of his own. It spread across his lower face, slow and humorless, the epitome of evil. He rocked back on his heels.

  “The girls, they will get what they need,” he promised. “My men will give it to them.”

  He was enjoying this. His sadistic smile grew as he made a point of letting Rip follow the course of his eyes as they settled on Na’omi where she still worked on McAlwain.

  “Her,” he taunted, his voice thickening. “Her. She is going to be just for me.”

  Taggart hadn’t much left physically, but he marshaled what he had and lunged for Aabid’s throat. If this sonofabitch touched her! Aabid was ready. He laughed and brought the heel of his knife down hard against Rip’s forehead.

  Everything exploded in bright colors as Rip’s world faded into darkness.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Abandoned Village, Nigeria

  Rain scrubbed the air clean and then stopped before noon. Sunshine in golden bars broke through the low ceiling and gleamed off the village’s tar paper and tin roofs. For a brief time the rain washed away the ugliness and the world seemed fresh again. The surrounding forest smelled crisp and green, and birds were singing.

  A frantic cry erupted from a tumble-down grass hut at the edge of the village where the forest began.

  “No … No! Please …”

  A cloud scooted across the face of the sun. The day darkened, as though God had hidden his face and turned his back on man’s wickedness.

  Outside the hut from which came the woman’s plaintive cries, two young Boko Haram fighters leaned against the wall with their rifles while they smoked and listened to the woman being raped inside. Earlier, they sought shelter from rain showers underneath the roof overhang while they kept watch. Now, they moved into the sunshine. One was a skinny teenager of no more than sixteen years, perhaps younger. The older one laughed and made crude remarks about what was going on inside, but the younger one, whose name was Felix, averted his eyes and said nothing.

  Cries continued to emerge from the hut. “Oh, God! Please don’t … No!”

  Nearby, at the edge of the forest, the sounds of terror and agony finally penetrated the haze of pain that cloaked Rip Taggart’s awareness. His eyes shone dull and slack from the beatings he had endured since his capture at the hands of the warlord Aabid and his men. They were swollen almost shut, so that what he saw of his environment was blurred and through mere slits. His hands were bound together with rope, the slack of which secured him in a sitting position to a tree.

  As his head began to clear from his more recent abuses, he recognized Na’omi’s agonizing pleas coming from the hut. He also suspected Aabid had had him tied here on purpose so that he would hear and be tortured by her suffering and could see the hovel where she was being assaulted.

  He tested his bindings, tried to break free. Finally accepting that it was hopeless, he dropped his chin onto his chest and tried to block out Na’omi’s screams.

  On the other side of the village past the square, inside the detention cell huts, little Esther, only twelve years old, also endured the torment of what was occurring to her beloved teacher. She stood at the cracked-glass of the barred window gazing helplessly in the direction of her teacher’s agony. Behind her, the four classmates abducted with her huddled together in a corner and tried to make themselves smaller as a group and thereby invisible. They were living the nightmare of what they knew happened to women and girls who fell into the hands of Boko Haram.

  Nick on the other side of the rebar in the men’s sector of the cage sobbed openly at the awful sounds of Na’omi’s distress. He clapped his hands over his ears, but it didn’t help.

  Terry McAlwain seemed oblivious to suffering other than his own. He occupied his separate corner of the jail, clutching the stump of his arm. Taggart’s belt remained as a tourniquet. Blood seeped and crusted the scraps of clothing that Na’omi and Nick had utilized as bandages. He sat unmoving, staring into space, threatened by shock and blood loss.

  Taggart at his tr
ee heard the engine rumble of a truck entering the village. He lifted his head as an old flatbed truck with a faded-green cab pulled into the village and stopped at the square in front of the detention hut. The occupants of a second truck, a French-made diesel pickup that had pulled in earlier, were hand-pumping fuel from a large tank concealed inside a hut into several grimy barrels in the bed of the pickup. Rip automatically noted the action and location for future reference.

  Na’omi’s cries ceased as Aabid exited the hut to meet the incoming flatbed. He made a show of buttoning his cammie trousers where Taggart would be sure to observe. He looked smug and self-satisfied. Taggart glared at him. Sooner or later, with the right opportunity, he would kill the sadistic bastard. Chido and Quayum rushed up to return the boss’s scimitar to him.

  “Lene kungwane, Felix. Nyi ‘a ferodejejin,” Aabid said in Kunari to Felix, the skinny teenage soldier, who snapped to attention with his rifle. Go become a man, Felix. She is ready for you.

  Felix looked shy and scared. He shook his head. Recognizing an opportunity, the older boy soldier with Felix pushed his way eagerly into the hut. This time, only the sound of weeping seeped from the building.

  Chido and Quayum, the latter now armed with his crossbow, followed Aabid to the flatbed truck in front of the detention hut. After speaking to the truck’s three occupants and indicating they should wait outside, Aabid and his seconds entered the hut and approached the rebar behind which Esther and her classmates huddled. The traumatized young girls scampered in terror as far away from their keepers as they could get. Aabid looked them over like a buyer at a goat sale. Nodding to himself, he pointed out two of them.

  “Shia. Kuru shia,” he decided. Her. And her.

  They would bring good money in the sex and “wife” trade.

  Chido, Quayum, and a third guard unwired the makeshift rebar door and stormed inside the cage to cut out the two selected candidates. The first was perhaps ten or eleven years old. The other was a year or so older. The girls shrieked and struggled, but to no avail. The guards snatched them by their hair and arms, dragged them outside to the flatbed truck, and tossed them onto it, where one of the three truck occupants lashed them to the vehicle’s low side railings. The distraught little creatures wailed in mortal dread. The merchant slapped them about to hush them.