Six

by Charles W. Sasser

  “Sui!” Aabid barked. “They cannot command a virgin’s price if they look like pulped mango.”

  Heartbroken, little Esther called out the cell window for her friends. “Kemi! Abike!”

  A guard hurled a tin can at her. She ducked and wheeled about, slashing her right forearm on the rough rebar. After a moment, she quietly returned to stare out the window. Her delicate features trembled with emotion and her arm bled as the flatbed roared away with the two children crying pitifully.

  Aabid’s day was not over. A military leader was an important man whose duties never ended. He had accounted for the huffy teacher, sent two of the remaining captive females off to market, and now turned his attention back to the SEAL. He stalked to the edge of the forest where Taggart was bound to the tree. Chido and Quayum tailed him like a pair of faithful mastiffs prepared to do his bidding, whatever it entailed.

  Rip slumped forward against his ropes. He had watched Na’omi’s little students being hauled off into sex slavery and his heart steamed with rage and hatred. Aabid forced his head up with the tip of his deadly blade.

  “Come with me, Navy SEAL.”

  Chido cut Rip free from the tree. Two other guards helped drag and usher him into the village where Quayum produced a black Boko Haram battle flag and displayed it on the outer wall of a hut. Hands still tied behind his back, Rip found himself roughly shoved up against the hut next to the flag. Aabid covered the lower half of his own face with a black head rag and stepped up beside Rip, brandishing his scimitar and assuming a fierce pose.

  Chido took the role of videographer. He aimed his cellphone at the disparate pair—captor and captive—and began to record. Aabid made his statement in English. It was a statement that in various forms had become all too familiar in the Islamic world.

  “Look, America. Your crusader warriors are weak. They believe in false gods. We will fight to death until only the Quran rules the world. You will see our strength. You will feel the steel of our blades.”

  Aabid jerked Rip’s head back against the wall so that the American stood full-face to the cellphone camera. Rip braced himself when he felt the knife’s sharp point nick the exposed skin at his throat so that blood flowed.

  “If we do not get ten million dollars in one week,” Aabid threatened into the camera, “we will cut his head off.”

  Chido ceased recording. Aabid and two guards drove Rip to the ground and shoved his face into the dirt.

  “You will finance a thousand guns,” the warlord hissed in Taggart’s ear. “And with those guns we will kill ten thousand more infidels.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Abandoned Village, Nigeria

  Bound and helpless and beaten, Rip Taggart’s mind seemed to shut down on him. For a period as he lay on the ground after Aabid and his men drove his face into the dirt, his mind simply blanked out the present reality and substituted for it a reconstructed one. It wasn’t as though he consciously chose a particular different time. In his mental and physical condition, he was close to being incapable of consciously making such a choice. Instead, that different time came up as though on its own volition, and he let his memory explore it while he remained helpless in the dirt of that filthy little African kraal.

  He was much younger then and in the training pool of SEAL Command at NAS Oceania. He wore fins and a short-sleeved wet suit with INSTRUCTOR stenciled across the chest. Two other instructors treaded water with him in the middle of the Olympic-size pool while four SEAL Team Six trainees wearing tan shorts and no shirts swam the pool underwater, testing the limits of their endurance. Two of the trainees—Joseph Graves back before he was “Bear” and a young-looking Alex Caulder—were shooters for Taggart’s Foxtrot Team.

  Rip pulled down his dive mask and snorkeled the surface, keeping pace with his underwater charges as, holding their breath, they swam for the far end of the pool. Caulder the “surfer boy” appeared more graceful and at ease in the water, reaching out with long, smooth strokes. Graves, on the other hand, depended upon grit and pure determination, as with everything else he did.

  Caulder touched the wall first and shot to the surface. He exhaled forcefully when his head broke free.

  Graves was running out of lung and beginning to flounder. But the man never gave up. He kept reaching, reaching for the wall. He went limp in the water an instant after he touched the finish line. His mouth slacked open and emitted a storm of bubbles. His eyes rolled back in his head. Taggart dived immediately and swam the distraught swimmer to the surface. One of the other instructors helped him haul the big man out of the pool.

  “Redline! Redline!” Taggart called out.

  Other swimmers waiting to enter the pool faced away when they heard the alarm. If they couldn’t help, it was bad form to watch a trainee in trouble. Although weak from exertion and low on oxygen in his bloodstream, Caulder crawled on hands and knees to Graves’s side. The man had gone unconscious.

  Rip felt for a pulse. It was weak and thready. He wasted no time in getting CPR started. He knuckled Graves’s sternum to kick-start his heart and then began CPR at a ratio of thirty chest compressions to two artificial ventilations with his mouth sealed over Graves’s mouth and nose. He kept at it, pounding the man’s chest, blowing into his lungs.

  At first there was no response. Nothing … Nothing. Rip had never lost a man yet.

  Graves coughed suddenly, a welcome comeback. His teeth began grinding as he revived, enduring that ritual death and rebirth that every SEAL experienced at some point. Although still gasping, Caulder flipped over onto his back and pumped his fists in the air in a little victory celebration.

  “Hoo-yah, Instructor Taggart! Pays to be a winner!” he cheered.

  Rip glared at him. “It’s not about winning, shitbird. It’s about testing your limits. It’s about mind over body.”

  Graves turned over on his side and vomited up water.

  Taggart felt himself yanked to his feet and back to the reality of a shit pile created by Boko Haram in parts of Africa. Chido and Quayum, one on each elbow of his bound arms, dragged him across the village square to the accompanying taunts and jeers of loitering BH fighters, many of whom were buzzing and mean from the use of khat. The narcotic weed made them especially dangerous by sweeping them into a La La Land where Allah spoke to them personally and ordered them to go out and kill! Kill! Kill! Have fun.

  The two men filling up their barrels with fuel from the big oil tank kept hidden inside a hut struck a chord with Taggart, a tactical nerve memory of his having seen an oil refinery somewhere in the vicinity of the village on the way in. He recalled that African oil companies sometimes built villages for their employees, villages that were then abandoned if the refineries cut back production or shut down.

  Aabid’s stooges dragged Rip into the detention hut where McAlwain remained listless and staring out from his corner, and where Nick and Hakeem barely acknowledged his return. Esther and her two remaining friends, Abiye and Kamka, watched through terrified eyes as Chido and Quayum lashed the tall American to a pole that had been added to the hut’s décor while he was away.

  “Terry needs a doctor,” Nick the PR man managed after the guards left.

  “Quiet,” Taggart snapped, listening as the diesel pickup’s engine kicked over.

  “It’s just a truck,” Nick protested.

  “Quiet!”

  He mentally clocked the direction in which the vehicle departed the village. His head turned to follow the receding rumble of the engine. It headed west, back toward Lagos and Na’omi’s school near Edo Village where they had all been kidnapped.

  “A truck with fuel cans and an oil tank in the village,” Taggart explained when the sound of the departing vehicle merged with the normal sounds of the forest. “There’s a refinery somewhere nearby. They’ll have private guards. Communications.”

  Terry McAlwain momentarily recovered awareness and began to wail. “I’m going to die here.”

  “You’re not going to die, okay
?” Rip reassured him. “Focus on your breathing, Terry. Focus on your breathing.”

  False hope was better than no hope. Taggart’s knees gave way and he sagged from the post to which he was tethered. That different time he experienced outside on the ground while he was nearly unconscious, before Chido and Quayum brought him back here, had salvaged something out of his memory and planted it in his mind for him to mull over now. It’s about testing your limits. It’s about mind over body.

  Chapter Forty

  Virginia Beach

  Bear Graves and his team had so far received no feedback about the courier they snatched off the Damascus II. Graves seemed to be right in assuming Buhari wouldn’t talk once they fed him into the system. He’d end up living the Jihadist Life of Riley in Guantanamo. In the meantime, nobody knew what had happened to Rip Taggart, whether he was even still alive or not. The waiting for some word, for something to happen, wore hard on team members.

  Buddha Ortiz utilized downtime working his injured knee back into shape. Wearing his jogging duds—squadron shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, wet and stained with sweat, and, of course, his knee brace—he slowed from a jog to a shuffle to accommodate his limp as he finished a run. The Ortiz house in Cedar Crest lay in sight at the end of the block when his cell phone buzzed. He knew by the dedicated sound what it was before he glanced at the screen: 999999!

  The first thought that came to mind was Rip. Call it hope. He forced a longer stride when he spotted Jackie leaving home and heading to her minivan parked in front of his beat-up Ford Fusion. He sighed when he recognized her professional working attire and briefcase.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, although he already knew.

  She kept walking. “Work. I have a conference. I told you.”

  He wiped perspiration and kept pace. “I got recalled to Command,” he told her.

  He glanced at his watch. Time was burning.

  “I’ll be back at nine,” she replied. “There’s pork and rice in the fridge.”

  Ortiz tried again. “Jackie! I’ve been ordered to Command.”

  “I heard you.”

  This wasn’t going well. She opened the driver’s door to the family minivan. He grabbed the door and blocked her getting into the car. She stepped aside and waited for him to back off. Ricky Jr. came around the side of the house tossing a baseball into the air and catching it. He noticed his parents and moved out of sight behind the mulberry tree.

  “I might be airborne by nine,” Ricky pointed out, trying to get through to his wife.

  “Then you better figure it out.” There was no give in this woman when she set her mind on something.

  “What about the kids?” he demanded.

  “We need the money, Ricky.”

  “Where’s Anabel?”

  She had been leaving the house with a girlfriend when he set off on his run. He waved at her, but she neglected to return it.

  “She’s not answering her texts,” Jackie said.

  “Jackie!” For God’s sake, he was trying to reason with her and not lose his temper. “I almost missed the last op. If I’m late again they’ll boot me from the squadron.”

  She dug in, unrelenting. “At least you’ll be out.”

  “Yeah. But not that way. If I separate it’ll be on my terms. With honor.”

  “So, now it’s if?”

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way between a husband and wife, between a man and his family. They squared off, assessing each other’s resolve.

  “You have to stay home, Jackie.”

  He saw her stiffen. Tears of frustration brimmed her dark eyes. She turned abruptly and walked away toward the house, her heels clacking angrily on the walkway. He followed, putting his arms around her.

  “Mi vida … Mi corazon …”

  She shook him off like she was a time bomb on a short fuse. “Not today, Ricardo Ortiz,” she said, stressing each word.

  “Jackie, I’m sorry—”

  “You promised,” she flared, wheeling about to confront him. “Ricky, you promised!”

  Over her shoulder he caught sight of R.J. staring at them from the mulberry tree. Jackie’s eyes followed his. R.J. looked so small and scared against the side of the house. Ortiz extended a hand toward him. The boy turned and bolted into the backyard and out of sight.

  “Oh, shit! … R.J.?”

  An awful silence filled the growing gap between husband and wife, between father and children. His cell buzzed again.

  “Just go,” Jackie said in exasperation. She seemed to collapse inside. “Just go, okay?”

  He attempted to kiss her good-bye. She turned away and planted herself against him.

  “Jackie?”

  She stood rigid and refused to look at him. He gave up and headed at a trot into the house to change clothes and retrieve his car keys. “Madre de Dios.”

  Jackie turned and rushed toward the backyard, calling out their son’s name. “R.J.! R.J.?”

  Chapter Forty-One

  SEAL Command, Virginia Beach

  Commander Atkins’s White Squadron operators filed toward the Intel Briefing Room from various locations around the SEAL Six base, heading like a migrating herd from the Kill House, airfield, shooting range, training pool, beach, and boathouses. It was apparent something big was going down.

  “So what’s the gouge today?” Fishbait Khan asked as he, Buckley, and Chase joined the migration. Their first thought was that it had to be about Rip, but they refused to speculate further. They had been disappointed before.

  The three were tagged out in cammies and carrying helmets. They had been at the Kill House all morning going through building-clearance drills.

  “Spooks’re here,” Buck noticed, nodding toward a pair of government cars in the parking lot. “So whatever it is, it’s going to suck.”

  He suddenly stopped and turned on Chase with a grin. “Equipment check!” he cried.

  Chase rolled his eyes—Now? Nonetheless, he dutifully produced the deflated head of the blow-up doll assigned to his care from the “christening.”

  “You give him a name yet, Ghetto?” Buck asked, indicating the deflated head.

  “Buckley,” Chase replied, deadpan. “I call him Buckley.”

  Buck gave him a pretend scowl of disapproval, but he had to chuckle.

  “Ghetto?” Fishbait ran Chase’s new nickname over his tongue. “That the best you could come up with, Buck? Ghetto?”

  “Sure beats Fishbait,” Chase said.

  They all laughed, bantering, comfortable with themselves and each other.

  “They thought I was an Eskimo,” Fishbait explained.

  He might have been Eskimo with his swarthy skin and black chin whiskers. Except he was too tall, and his nose was too big and his head too long.

  “You’re from Alaska?” Chase guessed as the three SEALs entered the crowded briefing area.

  “Nah,” Khan said. “Afghanistan.”

  They made their way to where Bear, Caulder, and Ortiz had saved them seats. They were settling in with a few friendly verbal pokes at each other when Lieutenant Camille Fung, the Intel officer, and White Squadron Commander Atkins strode briskly into the room. The room went quiet. Only Bear broke protocol to ask the one question that was on everyone’s mind.

  “What’s the news on Rip?”

  “Settle down,” Commander Atkins said. “Dubai first.”

  He stood to one side while the down-to-business female officer clicked a remote to bring up a picture of a bombed-out luxury hotel on the high-def TV set. It must have been one hell of an explosion that brought it down. Only the hollow-windowed hull of the skyscraper remained stacked in a pile of smoking rubble. The camera zoomed in on a distinctive Jihadi black-and-green flag flying in the devastation. It was identical to the one left at the scene of the American embassy bombing in Tanzania.

  Lieutenant Fung identified the scene. “The film festival in Dubai. The death toll is now two hundred and ten. The flag design appears to be
from the Umayyad Caliphate. All signs indicate this is the new Jihadi group that carried out the Tanzania embassy attack. The explosives match. So does the MO. We have indications that six men took an open water racer to Karachi afterward. Nothing actionable. But whoever it is just moved way up the target deck.”

  “What about Rip?” Graves repeated impatiently during the question-and-answer period that followed.

  “Anything come out of the courier?” Ortiz added.

  As far as the team knew, the spooks still had Buhari under wraps, interrogating him and waiting for the politics in Washington to play out. Bear’s solution all along had been to waterboard the bastard.

  “We’re working on it,” Fung replied. “SIGINT and ELINT have narrowed down the area where we think Boko Haram took the hostages. Low level voice intercept points to this region.”

  A detailed map of southeastern Nigeria appeared on the big screen. Fung tapped her pointer on a location east of Lagos. Bear and his team exchanged knowing looks. How near they may have been to Rip without realizing it when they raided Damascus II and seized Buhari.

  “There are some small refineries in the area,” Lieutenant Fung continued, “which is a new zone of BH activity. We have twenty-four-hour ISR coverage there now.”

  “Show them the video,” Commander Atkins suggested.

  A video on HDTV brought up a scene of Rip and a broad-shouldered African in a loose black tunic with a black scarf over his head and lower face. The wall of an abandoned hut behind them displayed a Jihadi flag. The African turned to the camera and jerked Rip’s head up to reveal his full face. Taggart appeared to have gone through hell. He was unshaved. His eyes were swollen. Cuts and bruises all over his face oozed infection. Senior Chief Graves and his team stared helplessly at the image, their rage growing.