Wallace had trotted quietly but quickly back to the highway, where she would recover their truck and set up their first diversion. She would rig the truck with C4, per Porter’s instructions, and guide it to the gate so that it would explode at exactly one hour after her departure. With luck, it would take out a few stunned guards and create a tremendous commotion that would draw to it many others. Wallace would also use her AK to polish off a few more and draw their fire. They would kill a few of the jihadists from the blast, but the blast and gunfire would be more of a diversion than anything else.
Porter would use the remaining brick of C4 on the dock. At the one-hour mark, he’d set one of the two boats aflame, while setting free the second boat as his means of escape. No one would be looking his way because of the gate blast. The fire would then draw many more to it, like moths to a candle flame. When the maximum casualties could be expected—seven minutes by their estimate—the timer would go off and the dock would detonate. And though they planned to kill as many of them as possible, the main purpose for this explosion was to provide further diversion.
With some added luck, these two diversions would give Frank the ability to sneak in and gather Lexi and her brother from the buildings and escape into the woods. Finally, if everything went according to plan, Porter would meet up with Wallace, Frank, and the kids in the other boat downstream and they would all motor away.
That was the plan.
Realistically, there were way too many parts that had to come off perfectly for his plan to succeed and all of them to escape. But maybe for once, they’d have a little luck. They needed some. In the process, if they could kill enough of Abdul’s men to hurt their end game, it would be a bonus. They knew they weren’t likely going to stop them. Their primary goals were to get Frank’s godchildren out and bruise their enemy.
Until they had more sufficient forces, that would have to do.
Frank glumly waited, pushing aside any thoughts of failure. He glanced at his watch for perhaps the twentieth time in the fifty-seven minutes that had passed since Wallace and Porter had left. The first explosion by Wallace should go off any minute. He had long ago seen Porter's signal that he was ready.
The waiting for a plan’s execution was always excruciating.
This one was almost unbearable.
The door of the women's dwelling creaked open and Lexi, dressed in a different outfit, along with other women popped out and walked to the south, in the wrong direction.
Not only were they walking away from Frank, they were walking toward the dock. If they passed by within fifty feet of the dock when Porter blew it, Lexi and all the other women would likely be killed from the shrapnel alone.
“Shit!” he breathed.
Frank wrung his hands, contemplating his next counter-move, praying the group of women would walk faster. Then his fears grew dire.
Once Lexi and the group of women were exactly opposite the dock, they turned east, and started walking to the dock—headed right for the explosion point. And if they didn’t change course soon, there wouldn’t be enough time to leave the area before the explosion. Porter had orders, and like a good soldier, Frank expected him to carry them out.
Frank deliberated over his watch once more. As of right now, Wallace was late.
Looking up to the dock, he could see small wisps of smoke taking form on the closest boat. It had started. Soon a fire would be raging, and then the explosion, and … Lexi and these women would all be kill—
A head-banging explosion rocked the ground underneath him, coming from the area where the front gate would be. Most in the camp at first ducked or hit the ground, but then many of the men started running toward the front of the property.
The women split into two groups: one group ran fully onto the dock and the other back toward the building they had come from. Lexi was leading the first group onto the dock.
Shit-shit-shit.
Frank sprang up and raced as fast as his one-and-a-half legs would carry him toward Lexi and the dock. Although he carried his rifle at the ready, he wasn't intending to shoot, not yet. He yelled toward the dock. “Porter, don't blow it!”
The boat was already aflame; Lexi and the others reacted, and halted their run along the dock, deeper over the river. However, they were now standing right where the blast’s focal point would be.
Frank shot off two rounds, not at anyone, but in the general direction of where Porter would be, hoping to get his attention and scare the women away from the dock. He yelled again, “Don't blow it!” And then to himself he puffed, “Please, for God's sake, don't blow it.”
Several shots sounded in the distance. They were directed at Frank, but he ignored them, steamrolling forward. Almost there.
Lexi’s wide eyes followed the yelling man with a limp, firing a rifle and running toward them. She ducked down when he fired a few more shots toward them.
Frank realized Lexi was moving to lie flat on the dock rather than scattering, as he had hoped. He bellowed his warning to Porter once more. Finally, from under the dock, Frank saw a thumb stick up out of the water. He wouldn't blow it.
Frank slowed just a bit, and then realized it was now or never: he’d try to grab Lexi. He was only fifty yards away when he felt a powerful blow rock his shoulder, knocking him off balance. Unable to right himself, his momentum tumbled him onto a grassy area, almost striking one of the picnic benches. As he hit ground, his shoulder exploded with pain.
He'd been shot.
He completely failed his godchildren, Porter, Wallace, and his country.
He rolled over onto his back, just as two shadows gathered right over him. One lifted his rifle and aimed it at Frank's head, his finger finding the trigger.
“Wait! Don't shoot him!” yelled a female voice, and the man averted his rifle. The other shadow flipped his rifle around and swung the heavy wood butt at Frank's head, connecting full force.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, Frank was knocked out cold.
~~~
The term that came to Porter’s mind was “FUBAR.” As in this mission was FUBAR’d.
He was shocked into inaction, and could only watch everything unfold in front of him. He was a tech and radio guy, listing Basic as his only entry to the Plus Column of his Hand-To-Hand Combat résumé. He just couldn’t think of how or even if he could provide any help with the major down. He was sure that he’d be no help if he were captured, too. So, Porter did the one thing he knew he could do best. Hold his breath.
In high school the breast stroke was his specialty. He was pretty decent at it and won quite a few swim meets, even going to State. But what he really did well was hold his breath. He could swim over one hundred meters in their high school pool, underwater. He figured he needed to clear one fifty to make it to the next bank of trees without being seen. The water was murky, but the current was in his favor. He was pretty sure he could make it.
Under the cover of the dock, he took four long breaths, before holding it and going under.
Because there were no lane markers, nor walls to judge distances, he could only go by his internal count and how long he could hold out before he needed air.
During his high school days, when he came to seventy-five meters, his lungs would expand enough because of the amount of C02 building up that he’d have to expel some air. At one hundred, he’d be struggling to stay under and could maybe punch it a few more yards, maybe getting to one-twenty or one-thirty. And although that was in a pool, he didn’t have to slow his stroke to turn at the wall and it was never a life or death situation, like now.
It only felt like fifty meters and he was already struggling to stay under, maybe sixty seconds total. He pushed harder, but he had only a few seconds left.
Then something snagged him.
It felt like he was being yanked, and he almost came to a complete stop. He yanked back, but was caught in some growth or unseen debris. He tried to rise out of the water but he couldn’t.
His foot was st
uck and he was out of air.
Chapter 34
July 8th
Lexi and Travis
Lexi’s life was over; at least it felt that way.
Her days from here on would consist of walking parts of the camp with the other women (who never spoke to her), reading her Quran (she would be tested on this twice a day), and praying five times per day. Finally, there was the constant reminder of her future as she watched Abdul’s other two wives wait for their appointed times to be raped—her words, not theirs. Sarti and Samantha said to each other and the other women that it was their duty and acted as if they were fine with it. But anyone could see it in their eyes; this wasn’t the truth. And in days or weeks, this would be what Lexi had to look forward to. Then, it would be her time to be married to her uncle and be raped at his whim. How had this life of hers come to change so drastically in so little time?
Perhaps if she had opened her eyes long ago, she would have seen all the machinery of her life and the lives of those around her working its way in this direction. But she couldn’t have noticed anything outside of herself. Her eyes were cast inward for so long, waking every day in the anxious pursuit of living a miserable self-centered existence she called her life.
Had she opened her eyes, she might have recognized that she was a Muslim.
She guessed that’s what she must have always been; she was born a Muslim, and her family had come from Islamic roots. Yet they “weren’t really practicing their faith,” her mother would tell her. And so they rarely followed any Muslim traditions: the only one she could remember was not eating bacon. She still didn’t understand that one.
No one had any idea of this in her meager circle of high school and college friends. They acted like, and for all intents and purposes were, a secular family. And after the attack on 9/11, their family kept this part of their lives hidden, at first fearful of repercussions and then later, just forgetting the pillars of Islam. It was fascinating now, but truly scary, to see what Abdul and his followers believed it meant to be a Muslim.
Women had no rights, and as far as she could tell, they were property. They taught that the modesty and purity of their women were paramount, but that felt like just another way to maintain their superiority and control over them. They said they respected and honored their women, when in fact they treated them not much better than the lowly dogs they hated.
Sometime after her mother died, Lexi remembered taking a feigned interest in the events unfolding overseas on their television. But she never felt any connection to the victims, much less the perpetrators who willfully killed women and children in those faraway places, all in the name of Islam. None of that concerned her, as Lexi, in her own way, wore a veil that wouldn’t let anything in that might upset the balance of her own sheltered life. It would seem her aunt and uncle and, in a way, her father had enabled her behavior.
If only she’d known.
She certainly had no idea of her father’s secret life: that he was fighting a war in the US and who knows where else, against these terrorists. It struck her hard, the understanding of why he had left her and Travis with their aunt and uncle: it was to keep them safe from Abdul, her father’s brother.
She didn’t hold any of this against Travis. He had little choice, like her. She finally remembered when Travis went to the Madrassa, noticing the change in him right away after he had started fourth grade. For a while, when she paid any attention to him, it was like he was living two lives: his science, which he loved, and this twisted version of Islam, that he was forced to follow. It was no wonder why Lexi and her brother had become so distant from each other and the world around them. And to rub salt into his wounds, she concerned herself with her own skin, all the while Travis was just trying to survive.
And what was further astonishing to her was that first her parents and then her aunt and uncle had kept Abe’s existence hidden all this time.
Lexi shook her head and huffed her frustration quietly while pacing behind the women.
And while everyone in her life—her father for his reasons, and her aunt and uncle for theirs—hid Abe from her and Travis, Abdul killed her mother, causing her father to go away, controlled her brother, and plotted his Islamic-jihadist master plan to destroy her country.
She decided then and there that even if she died trying she would do her best to escape with Travis. She had no idea how long she had, and suspected it was a lot less than the “month” Abdul had announced, so she probably didn’t have much time for planning. She would be ever vigilant, and watch for when that right moment presented itself. Then she would escape, and grab Travis. Finally, if there was any way before she left, she would try to kill her uncle.
Lexi’s hand touched the outside of her garments, feeling the curve of her waistband, following it around to the firmness of her survival knife, clipped securely under her clothes, unseen. If anyone had paid attention to her at that moment, they would have caught a dark sneer appear on her face.
“Suhaimah?” called a voice in front of her. Startled, Lexi looked up and found Sarti sternly peering at her. Wife number one does not care for me at all.
“Yes?” Lexi answered in an impertinent tone.
“Describe for me Islam’s five pillars and how you will be sure to follow them.”
Lexi ignored her, her gaze instead being drawn to movement in the distance, by the radio shack. Abdul and Sal were walking to the prisoners’ building. Lexi started to wonder again about the crazy man running toward her yesterday, who was shot and then captured. She was still sure that there was something familiar about him. She just couldn’t place it.
“Suhaimah?” Sarti bellowed. She is always angry.
~~~
Frank knew his goose was cooked when he was caught. He didn’t mind the dying part; he just didn’t want to be beheaded.
When he first awoke, he had for just a moment hoped that he’d bleed to death from his shoulder and other wounds. All of him hurt and he was damned tired. But they patched him up well—although he wasn’t sure why, as he was destined for an execution later, from what he was told.
Once that flicker of weakness passed and he realized he wasn’t dead yet, he knew that as long as he drew breath, there was still a small chance, no matter how slight, he could break out and grab his godkids. He’d be doing this solo now, since he hadn’t heard sight or sound of Porter or Wallace. He assumed and hoped that they’d both gotten away. So, even though he was weary from fatigue and his many wounds, he had enough sense to grab what he needed, while they weren’t watching.
He was fully aware of the odd and painful predicament they had put him in, but he also understood why. They had placed him, naked, in a jail cell no bigger than a large dog kennel. He was forced, because of the size of his cell and his hands cuffed behind his back, into to a kneeling position. The cell’s inward spikes prevented him from resting up against his cage. The floor was carpeted with glass fragments, prevented him from finding a more comfortable position. And they left him in the dark.
Other than the initial glimpse when they placed him here, he could only surmise his surroundings by the pricks around and below him. He’d long ago lost feeling in his legs after the warm pooling of his blood around his knees had started to dry. In spite of this, he had a glint of hope that came from familiarity, and a plan.
Frank knew this routine of torture because he’d been through it once before. While he struggled to remain conscious and focused on his current task, the darkness behind his eyelids was filled with flashes of his other experience.
He knew he would be held here until he broke, and then he would be made to expose his friends, or his connection to Lexi and Travis, or whatever they wanted to get out of him. He wasn’t going to wait around for that to happen.
Before leaving Texas, Frank had already made a provision for breaking out of confinement, in the event that he was captured: he had glued two paperclips to his inner thigh. The glue was colored to look like loose skin or something worse, a
nd most men just didn’t check there in a strip search.
One of the many things he learned when he joined Special Ops was how to pick locks. He’d gotten quite good at it using just about anything with a point, but he was especially good with paperclips. One of his paperclips was bent like a pick rake and the other like a tension tool. With most locks, the process took a fair amount of time. Sometimes, he just got lucky—click—like now, when the locks were pretty easy to pick.
Frank slowly slid his free hand out of his cuffs, carefully bringing both of them around and rubbing the feeling back into his wrists and hands. They were sore, but manageable. The cage didn’t even have a lock on it—they must have assumed he wasn’t ever going to get that far.
The closure’s door was clasped with just a meager button. And now that popped open.
His plan was simple. He’d get out of this cage, unscrew the lightbulb above, and then cry out, begging for help. When they came running, he’d spring to action. If there was only one guard and the torturer, he’d be able to disable them using his skills.
He grabbed the top edge of the cage’s open doorway, intending to lift himself out, when he heard a noise outside his room.
They’re coming for round two, but I’m not ready yet.
He let go, quickly clicking the cage’s door closed.
There were footsteps and voices getting closer.
Frank palmed the two picks and carefully slipped his free hand back into the cuffs, clicking it only once so that it was closed, but still open enough that he could slide his hand out.
The room’s door opened, showering him with an almost unexpected splash of light, forcing him to squint.
Abdul Raheem Farook entered through the door, first just a dark form, and then his stern face came into focus. He flipped on the room’s single lightbulb, which shot more painful blindness to his eyes. He ignored the new sting.
Farook stood just inside the doorway, with two guards behind him.
“Mr. Cartwright. How are we feeling today?”
Highway: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale of Survival Page 20
