That left Na’omi or Esther. Rip watched the teacher sleeping. Her lips moved as though she were dreaming. Rip hoped it was a pleasant dream. She deserved that much after all she had gone through.
The back door that led into the abandoned goat pen suddenly opened. Like a thief bent on mischief, Chido slipped in with the outside night and stood a moment with his eyes reflecting fire from the lantern. He was bare from the waist up, wearing only a pair of dirty khaki shorts cinched with a wide belt that held his holstered revolver. His eyes were narrowed and reddened, his muscles sheening with sweat, his red tongue darting out like a lizard’s to lick thick lips. By all appearances he was high on khat or mango brew.
Anthracite eyes swept the caged females, who awoke with a start as though sensing a predator. Whimpering in terror, the little girls scurried away from the approaching guard until their backs were against the far wall. Even Na’omi shrank from the big man when he unlocked the rebar cage and stalked inside.
His eyes settled on Esther, his desire not for the grown woman but for the child. Head lowered, wearing lechery in an oily half-grin, he headed directly for the little girl. She crab-walked backward with him in looming pursuit. Escape was futile in the cramped confines. He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her to her feet. He leered and slobbered with lust as he ran his big hand up her short skirt and started with her toward the rebar gate.
There was nothing Rip could do except simmer. Na’omi, however, searched desperately about for a weapon. Finding nothing available, she stepped between Chido and the rebar gate and put on a brave face. A quick glance at Rip and a slight nod let him know she was ready to cooperate in his plan to distract the guard.
“Chido?” she whispered in a husky voice. Her hands ran seductively down her breasts and across her plaid skirt to make it conform to her body. She stuck out her hip and casually made sure she had plenty of shapely leg showing below the hem of her short school uniform skirt. Her voice trembled. “Away from the girls. Outside.”
Chido hesitated, conflicted between the unwilling child and the voluptuous woman who clearly wanted him. Or so he thought in his drug-clouded mind. The child would have been easier for him to overcome and keep silent in order not to alert Aabid—but if the woman lusted for him—!
He shoved Esther aside and to the floor and turned his full attention to Na’omi, advancing on her like a wild animal in rut. Rip could only watch the drama play out while rage boiled like bitter bile in his gut along with anticipation that this would work.
Na’omi kept her eyes locked into Rip’s, making sure he had the message, while Chido shoved her out the cage and toward the goat pen in back. The girl had pluck up to her eyes.
In Chido’s out-of-control lust to get the teacher to himself, he neglected to lock the back door on the way out. It remained slightly ajar. Rip caught Esther’s attention and whispered fiercely, “Esther! Untie me. Hurry!”
Without hesitation, the little girl sprang to her feet and rushed to the bars that divided the hut. The gap in the rebar allowed her to reach through to work on the ropes.
“Hurry, Esther!” Rip urged.
She stuck her head through the gap and gnawed frantically on the ropes with her sharp little teeth.
Out back, Chido ushered Na’omi across the darkened goat pen and heaved her facedown across a pile of straw covered by a scrap of canvas. Overcome with animal passion, he unbuckled his shorts and dropped them around his ankles before he wrenched Na’omi’s skirt and underwear down over her hips to expose her nakedness. Big hands clutching her hips, he mounted her from behind and, grunting and panting, entered her and began pumping furiously.
Na’omi gritted her teeth to withstand the brutal assault, but did not resist him. Rip had to have time. In the distance against the horizon she noticed refinery vents glowing against the night.
The guard was so consumed in his crime that he remained completely unaware of a dark and vengeful wraith stalking him from behind. Strong arms snaked around his neck and yanked him off the teacher. In the same movement, Taggart torqued Chido’s head to the side, then snapped it in the opposite direction, breaking the neck with an audible pop. Chido slid to the ground, dead. Rip quickly relieved his body of the pistol holstered to the khaki shorts around his ankles.
“Get back inside,” he instructed Na’omi. “I’ll be back.”
“Take us with you?” she pleaded.
“No. I’ll bring help. Go inside.”
Every instinct Rip had honed over the years in this cruel business cried out for him to run. Only by escaping and returning with help did the others have a chance. Tonight’s mission required speed and stealth. He had to do this one alone, without the encumbrance of a half-dead man with an amputated hand, a coward, three little girls, and a woman.
Esther appeared next to him in the moonlight, staring down at the dead body. Chido must have also neglected to relock the rebar cage. Rip sighed and switched his eyes back and forth between Na’omi and the brave, frightened little girl. It occurred to him that there was no predicting what Aabid might do if he discovered his ten-million-dollar SEAL missing before Rip returned with help. He would most certainly execute McAlwain and Nick. Na’omi and the girls were in danger of it themselves.
Mission came first. Always. That message was drilled into the head and heart of every SpecOps trooper. No exceptions. It was a commandment Rip lived by throughout his professional career.
He looked into the little girl’s eyes pleading with him not to be left at the mercy of men who enslaved, sold, raped, and murdered children. He looked at Na’omi. She returned his look calmly, dispassionately, but underneath that cool front he realized that she still did not trust him.
His argument against himself was breaking down. There had to be exceptions. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t leave them behind. He would have to chance all of them escaping—or none of them.
Minutes later, the prison hut sat empty at midnight. Taggart, Na’omi, three little girls, Nick the PR man, and the injured SyncoPetro exec sneaked out the back of the hut and fled through the darkened forest toward the glow of the refinery in the sky above the horizon. Rip led the way at the fastest pace that would still accommodate the slowest among them, which was McAlwain. Sooner or later someone was bound to miss Chido and discover him with his broken neck and the captives missing. That would set off a desperate race between hunters and the hunted.
Nick stayed with McAlwain to assist him.. The little girls slipped along silently in their wake. Na’omi brought up the rear of the procession to make sure no one faltered or wandered away.
“You’re crazy!” Nick hissed at Rip. “They’ll kill us”
“They’ll kill you,” Rip corrected with open contempt. He had lost all regard for the man. “Me, I’m worth ten million dollars. The girls and Na’omi, they’re all worth more than you. Stay if you want. But if you stay, you die.”
Chapter Fifty-One
Virginia Beach
The geeks and spooks still hadn’t come up with anything from Ebo Buhari. It appeared the raid on Damascus II to capture the courier had been a pointless risk. All Bear Graves and his team could do now was wait for Intel to come up with a fresh lead on Taggart’s whereabouts before it was too late.
Alex Caulder kicked back in his equipment cage, sandaled feet slung over the arm of an easy chair with the stuffing dribbling out, like it might be about ready to be moved into his beachfront bungalow as redecoration. He was reading the morning Virginian-Pilot. The paper led with an above-the-fold head: AMERICAN SEAL HERO TAGGART STILL IN CAPTIVITY.
Caulder had to admit that he missed the hard-nosed sonofabitch. He could be difficult and stubborn at times. But what you could say about him was that he knew his business, always got the job done, and he took care of his men.
Looking back, Caulder thought Rip’s breaking point must have come that night of the team party on the pier behind the Beachcomber Bar & Grill that Rip’s wife Gloria owned and operated. This was after the team�
�s failed mission into Kunar Province to nab or kill Hatim al-Muttaqi. Buckley was still the team’s FNG with responsibility for the obscene blow-up doll.
Taggart lolled on the concrete pier with Graves, Caulder, Ortiz, Fishbait, and Buckley. Empty beer bottles—dead soldiers—lined the pier railing above Taggart’s head. He guzzled the last suds from another bottle and arranged it in the row with the others. Caulder tossed him a replacement from the cooler. He had been in the water and his hair still dripped.
Electric lightbulbs provided illumination for the pier and bounced off the incoming breakers. Several fishing rods were propped across a reserve cooler at the open forward edge of the pier, their lines stretching and releasing with the surf. No one paid any attention to them. The objective of the party was to drink, not fish.
“So?” Rip drawled to Bear Graves, his voice slurred from over-imbibing. “Lena’s home praying to the porcelain goddess?”
Buckley looked concerned. “She sick, Bear?”
Taggart shook his head. “Why are pretty people so stupid?” he marveled. “Bear’s gonna be a father, dumbass.”
Buckley did feel stupid then. He should have remembered—all of them should have remembered—the day they received their briefing for the mission against al-Muttaqi. When the alert came, Bear was in the team tent on Skype with Lena when she showed him the sonogram of their daughter, Sarah.
It didn’t matter now that team members knew, or should have known, about the pending birth. They were drinking and as a group heaped on Bear another round of robust congratulations in a variety of methods ranging from pounding him on the back to christening him with beer poured over his head. Bear looked a bit overwhelmed by the drunken hyperbole of it all. But, after all, they hadn’t had the opportunity in Afghanistan to celebrate the occasion. As usual with such team occasions, it was part commemoration and part raillery.
Caulder channeled his Dennis the Menace. “I tried talking him out of it.”
“There goes your sex life,” Buckley laughed.
The others gave him the look.
Buck backtracked. “What? What did I say?”
“Equipment check!” Caulder shouted.
Buck rolled his eyes but dutifully produced the blow-up doll from a case of Coors stashed nearby.
“You gave him a name yet?” Rip asked.
“We call him Mr. Wonderful. Tammi and I had a threesome with him the other night.”
“Careful with that,” Rip cautioned, adding a strange glance at his wife’s bar up on the sand. Its parking lot was nearly full of vehicles. “She might leave you for him. Women like men who don’t talk back.”
Inside the Beachcomber, Gloria Taggart was busy taking care of customers, a majority of whom were single navy men from the base, with only a scattering of women among them. Buddha’s wife Jackie and Buck’s wife Tammi homesteaded a booth at the wide window overlooking the SEAL team gathering on the pier.
Gloria was wearing tight jeans, red sneakers, and a sleeveless pullover blouse. She cleared bottles and glasses from a vacated table. A middle-aged, overweight male customer at the adjoining booth leered at her when she bent over. By his looks, he was probably a civilian dock worker at the base with a wife and passel of kids at home.
“Hey, sweetie,” he said. “How ’bout some nuts with my beer?”
Gloria slid a bowl of peanuts off her tray for him. His hand shot out and covered hers. She pulled free and playfully tapped him on the nose with her forefinger. “Look. But don’t touch, big boy.”
Her bartender Monte had another tray ready for her at the bar—shot glasses, lime slices, and a bottle of Jose Cuervo Silver tequila. She waved to Kelly Anne to take over the floor while she delivered the tray to Jackie Ortiz and Tammi Buckley and slid into the booth with them. They talked while she poured shots.
“It’s great news about Lena being pregnant,” Tammi said.
A neon Budweiser sign on the window blinked on and off. Gloria’s eyes wandered toward the pier. “Just in time for another deployment,” she pointed out.
Tammi sipped from her shot glass and sucked on a lime. “Buck doesn’t want kids yet,” she said.
“Ricky always wanted more,” Jackie volunteered. “He has five sisters. I guess I’m not a good Catholic girl. I love my kids, but I miss working.”
“Believe me,” Gloria contributed, “work’s overrated.”
The three SEAL wives lifted a toast.
“To Lena,” Gloria proposed.
“And Joe,” Jackie added.
“To Lena and Joe,” all chimed in unison, slamming down shots and reaching for limes.
“I’ve wondered, Gloria,” Tammi mused. “Why is it you and Rip never had kids?”
“Are you kidding me?” She swept a hand across the busy bar scene. “Owning this place is like having triplets. Besides—”
She nodded at the drinking fest under way on the pier below.
“Anyway, Rip’s already got his teenage boys. It’s always the team for him. It’s all dick jokes and bar hopping. I mean, when they’re not off …”
Her voice trailed off into what sounded like regret. She poured herself another round of tequila after checking to make sure Kelly Anne was handling things okay. Jackie looked concerned. There was something in Gloria’s demeanor that cued her friends that all might not be right.
“Everything okay?” Jackie checked. “With you and Rip, I mean?”
Gloria shrugged. Normally, she was not a woman to wear her feelings. “We’re fine. When he’s here. I mean, when he’s really here and his mind isn’t six thousand miles away. By the time he starts to, you know … to settle, it’s off on another deployment.”
Jackie and Tammi understood all too well. Forced separations were the toughest part of being married to SpecOps.
Gloria drew a deep breath. “I’ve been with him … I don’t know, maybe fifteen months in the past five years.”
“Yeah,” Tammi commiserated. “There’s always that.”
An edge of hardness and resentment tinged Gloria’s voice as her eyes narrowed and she looked out the window toward the pier. “What’s the point?” she burst out, as though from some turmoil festering inside that she could no longer contain. “Nothing they do makes a difference. We’ll still be fighting this shitty war another ten years from now. How many sleepless nights do we have to endure? How many times have we all thought our men were …”
She couldn’t say it. She dropped her chin onto her chest. “When is it going to end?”
Jackie and Tammi exchanged looks. With a long-suffering sigh, Jackie Ortiz lifted her shot glass to the window. “To our men,” she saluted. “To safe returns.”
In the meantime down on the pier, Rip finished one of the dick jokes of which his wife in the bar so heartily disapproved. “—and the camel says to the elephant, ‘Hey, you’re the one with the dick on your face.’”
During the ribald laughter that followed, Rip reached for another bottle of beer lined up for ready access on top of the cooler. He fumbled the effort, knocking it off to roll down the pier as though it were attempting to escape. That triggered a reaction in the senior chief. He sprang to his feet and viciously drop-kicked the bottle off the pier and into the surf. He froze in position, scowling out across the dark ocean, panting and grinding his teeth as though about to lose control. His teammates lapsed into uncertain silence. Buddha Ortiz slowly rose to his feet and approached his team leader.
“You okay, Rip?”
Taggart blinked rapidly and turned a blank face toward Buddha. It seemed the lights were on but nobody was home. Rip blinked again.
“I need another beer,” he decided.
He turned and started to the other end of the pier next to the fishing rods arrayed over the other cooler. For a long time he stood motionless merely gazing out to sea.
“Man … He’s on the edge,” Caulder observed.
Bear Graves was quick to come to his friend’s defense. “What are you talking about?”
“His strings are vibrating.”
“Worry about yourself, Caulder.”
“I’m just saying …”
Ortiz cut him off. “He’ll be fine.” But could he be sure of that after what happened in Kunar Province?
Rip remained alone standing on the pier after the rest of the team left. He drained off another beer. With unsteady hands, he painstakingly aligned the bottle on the railing at the forefront of a rank of other empties. He studied them. They were like so many warriors ranked in formation.
Slowly, deliberately, he reached out a forefinger and toppled the last bottle in line off the railing. It shattered and threw glass across the concrete.
He pushed off the second one in line. Gloria approached walking down the pier. “Rip? It’s closing time.”
He toppled a third bottle.
“Rip?”
Rip’s reply sounded hollow and haunted. “The rules say, no booze …”
Gloria looked puzzled. She watched him tip another bottle off the railing. Broken amber glass reflected back light from the string of bulbs around the pier.
“But I let my men drink there,” he continued morosely. “I figure … I figure what’s it matter? What does anything matter? Live and let live. That’s what I say.”
His voice diminished into bitterness. “Live and let live …”
He shattered another bottle. A mere touch of the finger was all it took. It was that easy, and down it went to destruction. Gloria remained quietly watching, her mind retreating into a dark place. Rip stared into the outer blackness, and into the inner blackness of his own soul. They both knew their marriage was over.
Chapter Fifty-Two
SEAL Command, Virginia Beach
The geeks and spooks had finally done it, convinced Ebo Buhari, the courier seized at Lagos Harbor, to cough up what he knew about Rip Taggart and the other hostages kidnapped with him. White Squadron’s Commander Atkins and Lieutenant Fung assembled the SEALs in the staff briefing room to pass on the news. That it wasn’t considered a mission briefing informed Graves, Ortiz, Caulder, Buckley, Khan, and Chase in the front row that the intel extracted from Buhari wasn’t actionable. At least not yet.
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