by Mark Donovan
As he reached over to bring the girl towards him, he thought once again of Doctor Henson. As the young girl complied with Aref’s touch he wondered to himself how he would enjoy Henson’s wife before killing her. He smiled for a brief second, the young girl interpreting the gesture as an act of appreciation towards her. Doctor Henson would also pay the ultimate price for his deeds, but not before he first saw the defiling and death of his own wife. As he looked into the young girl’s flawless honey colored skinned face, a feeling of excitement welled up into his body. Not so much for the beautiful girl he held in his arms, but for the knowledge that he would soon greet his close friend Ahmad and his captive Ms. Dana Cogswell.
Chapter 25 (April 17, Sunday 5:00am, Southeastern Serbia)
Dana’s tongue felt like sandpaper in her mouth as she was suddenly woken up. The car had bounced violently before coming to an abrupt stop, shaking her out of her shallow sleep. For a moment she did not know where she was. She tried to sit up. The pain and immobility in her tied wrists, however, quickly reminded her of her situation. Still a prisoner of two terrorists in the backseat of a vehicle. While prone on her back she looked out the car’s windows and saw that the sky was dark. Though, there was a tint of bluish purple in the sky. It must be near dawn she thought to herself. She heard her two captors talking to one another, but could not understand what they were saying. The sound of their voices brought her mind back into full clarity.
She was thirsty and hungry but she pushed those concerns aside as her mind kicked into high gear. This could be her opportunity to escape. Slowly she slid her hand down the side of her leg underneath the blanket that still rested on top of her. As her hand brushed over her ankle she felt the bulge of the ice scraper underneath her pant leg. It was still there, tucked firmly into her sock. She could feel her heart rate beginning to accelerate. It was now or never, she said to herself.
“Spencer, I need to go again,” said Dana with a tone of desperation in her voice.
The two men stopped talking to one another and turned back to see her shimmying herself up into a sitting position in the back seat of the car. Both men wore the look of fatigue on their faces from driving all night. As she sat up she saw from the dim early morning light that they were pulled off the side of a road with a thick tree line on either side.
“Let her piss herself,” said Abdul in English to Ahmad as he looked at Dana with disgust. “She’s nothing but the swine of Satan. Let her lie in her own waste.”
As she stared coldly back at Abdul, Dana wondered to herself what kind of person could maintain a continuous and constant level of hatred. It must be exhausting to be so miserable and filled with so much venom. She answered her own question as she turned her gaze to Spencer. A very sick and twisted person.
Spencer was staring at her with a vacuous look, as if he was considering Abdul’s recommendation, the exhaustion clearly evident in his expression.
She looked into Spencer’s eyes and pleaded to him, “Spencer, my bladder is full. I really need to go now.”
“Abdul, take her out in the woods and let her relieve herself. We pulled over for you to allow you to empty your bladder anyways. I do not disagree with your assessment of her, but we still have a long ride ahead of us through the desert and we do not need to make this trip any more unbearable than it already is.”
Abdul huffed as he resigned himself to Ahmad’s order. He pushed the front passenger door open hard and practically threw himself out of the car. After slamming his door closed he yanked the back passenger door open and seized Dana by the hair on her head.
“Get out of the car bitch.” Abdul dragged her off the backseat of the Mercedes and onto the gravel shoulder of the road, Dana screaming in pain as he did so.
“Do not harm her Abdul or you will pay with your life,” Ahmad yelled threateningly at Abdul.
Ahmad stepped out of the car partially to signal a physical warning to Abdul, but mainly to stretch his own legs. He also needed to relieve his own bladder, but he would do so by the side of the road. The road had been absent of any traffic for the past five minutes, but he wanted to keep a close eye on the car and its contents.
Dana picked herself up off the ground, the palm of her hands now scraped and bloodied from landing hard on them when she fell onto the gravel shoulder. Abdul yanked her by her tied wrists, the tie wraps again cutting deeply into her skin. She felt fresh warm blood begin to trickle down her wrists again and merge with the blood already dampening her palms from the fall.
“Walk in front of me,” ordered Abdul as he pulled on the tie wraps again.
Dana walked into the woods with Abdul following a few feet behind her. Dana’s mind raced on how she would surprise attack him. Though he was not a large man, she estimated he was less than six feet tall and around one hundred and sixty pounds, he was strong and fast. After walking about twenty paces into the woods Dana stopped and began to turn towards Abdul, suggesting they were deep enough in for her to relieve herself. Before she could say anything Abdul pushed her in the back and said, “Move.”
Dana continued to walk deeper into the woods, each step ratcheting up her anxiety level. After what seemed to be at least another hundred paces into the woods, and what Dana guessed was well out of earshot of Spencer, Abdul ordered her to stop. She turned to face him to suggest that he give her a moment of privacy. However, as she turned towards him she saw that he was removing his pants. He had a lascivious sneer on his face that made his intentions chillingly clear. Dana’s heart began to race, but time and her body seemed to slow to a stop as she saw Abdul move toward her.
“No,” she mouthed silently into the twilight morning air, as Abdul jumped on top of her and slammed her onto the hard ground, his hand covering her mouth.
Abdul ripped at her shirt savagely with one hand while he continued to cover her mouth with the other. Dana’s hands, tied in front of her, were pinned tightly between their two bodies. She used her legs, torso and head to attempt to fend him off, but it was of little use. He was simply too strong. Seconds later he had ripped her shirt and bra completely off, her bare back lying against the cold, wet, hard forest ground.
He lifted his upper body off of her slightly to get to her pants. As he did, Dana moved her bound hands out from between their bodies and simultaneously savagely bit at his hand that continued to cover her mouth and nearly suffocate her. As he ripped at the belt buckle around her waistline, his fingers on the hand that covered her mouth separated for a fraction of a second. It was just long enough for Dana to gnash her teeth down on his index finger. She bit down with all of her strength, the jaw muscles in her mouth flexing taught as a vice. Suddenly, Abdul let out a blood curdling scream. Dana had bit the finger down to the bone and tore it from its socket.
Enraged and in intense pain Abdul reached out with his good hand and placed it around Dana’s neck. As he did so, she spit his finger from her mouth and brought her knees up to her waist. She could feel Abdul’s fingers closing tightly around her throat, choking off her windpipe. She could feel herself suffocating and knew she only had seconds to act if she was to live. While Abdul’s fingers continued to close tighter around her neck, she reached down with her bound hands and pulled the acrylic ice scraper out from under her right pant leg. She wrapped her hands and fingers around the ice scraper tightly and looked up again into Abdul’s face. Again she saw the intense hatred in his eyes as he continued to choke her. Black spots started to form in front of her eyes as the last of the oxygen in her body was depleted. Her strength fading fast, she raised her hands upwards and to her right side, the ice scraper held firmly in between her bound hands. With one final look into the crazed eyes of her attacker, she slammed the front corner edge of the ice scrapper into the side of Abdul’s neck with all of her remaining strength.
Dana must have hit Abdul’s jugular vein as blood began to gush immediately from his neck. But even with the mortal blow, Abdul did not release his grip on her throat, at least not at first. Slowly though,
Dana felt Abdul’s strength begin to wane as blood continued to spurt from his neck. A few seconds later he simply collapsed on top of her. She felt his fingers completely relax around her throat as the final flickers of his life faded from his body.
Dana, gasping for air and in shock, wormed herself out from underneath Abdul’s dead body. She rolled several feet from his corpse and lay still for a few seconds on the ground as she inhaled fresh air into her lungs and attempted to recover from the horror.
Chapter 26 (April 17, Sunday 5:10am, Over Serbia/Bulgaria Border)
Flying at nine thousand five hundred feet above the Serbia/Bulgaria border the dawn air was smooth and the sky clear of any clouds. To the east, the sky had a purplish orange hue to it as a new day was soon to be on the horizon. If it had been any other flight Dave would have fully enjoyed the morning twilight beauty. The trip to Sofia, Bulgaria, however, had turned out to take much longer than planned.
From Germany he had flown over Austria, Hungary and Serbia. Or more accurately, he executed an extended touch and go into each country before continuing on with his flight. Due to the fact that he had not filed a flight plan and notified the proper authorities for each country he had planned to pass through when departing the small airfield in Germany, his flight had been interrupted several times. After crossing each country’s geographical border, and respective airspace, he had been forced to land at the nearest airfield and submit his passport and aircraft registration for official review. He also had to file a flight plan to continue on through the country’s airspace.
Dave glanced down at his left wrist and noted the time on his watch. He estimated he would be on the ground in Sofia within the hour. He also realized he had not spoken to Ron in over four hours. With stable air and clear skies he decided it was time to make another call to Ron.
Dave reached over to the right seat and hit the power switch to the portable General Dynamic’s PRC-155 radio. A few seconds later, after the radio had fully powered up, he punched in a series of numbers on the radio’s keypad and then reached for the microphone. As he waited for Ron to pick up, he thanked himself for asking Ron to ship him the radio before he left Yemen. The radio provided air to ground secured radio communications using the Mobile User Objective System (MOUS) Satellite Communications (SATCOM) system. It allowed him to effectively contact anyone in the world while he was on the ground or while flying in the air at nearly two hundred and fifty miles per hour.
Ron’s voice suddenly came over the radio’s speaker, the sound quality as good as if he was sitting right next to Dave in the cockpit.
“Dave, I’m glad you called,” said Ron in an anxious voice. “I have an update on Dana’s location and some new information on one of her possible captors that you are going to find disturbing.”
“Give me the update on Dana first.”
“At five o’clock local time in Serbia, she was about eighty kilometers north of the Bulgaria border. It appears they were stopped in a very rural area. I only powered up her phone for a minute, and in that time they had not moved.”
Dave glanced down at his watch again. He was about fifty kilometers north of the Sophia Airport. He made a couple of time, distant, speed calculations in his head. He should make it to Sophia ahead of them he concluded to himself, but with little time to spare. It really depended on how long they remained stopped in southwestern Serbia, a variable very hard to predict, but a time period that he assumed would be short.
“Okay, I should make it to Sophia before she does,” Dave commented. “So what is the new information about one of her captors?”
“I went back and analyzed all of the conversations on Dana and your cell phones for the past month and compared them with the two voice signatures of Dana’s captors. I also sent a copy of all the conversations to the CIA Communications Division so that they could analyze the voices against their database of known or suspected terrorists.”
“Were there any matches?” questioned Dave anxiously.
“Yes, and sort of,” responded Ron. “The CIA identified one of the voices. The primary male voice heard over Dana’s cell phone is a known low level Al Qaeda member with ties to Iran. His name is Abdul Mahdavi.”
“That explains the direction of their travel,” commented Dave.
“Agreed,” responded Ron. “However, it is the second male voice that was only briefly and faintly heard over Dana’s phone that is the most disturbing.”
“Go on,” interjected Dave with impatience obvious in his voice.
“The CIA was not able to find a match in its database with the second male voice. Nevertheless, the CIA and I independently determined that the second captor’s voice very closely matched that of a voice recorded on your cell phone a couple of times over the past month.”
The hair on the back of Dave’s neck prickled up with Ron’s last statement. Someone he knew, and quite possibly Dana knew, had kidnapped her. Someone that they had trusted as a friend or colleague.
“Who is it? Give me the name,” demanded Dave.
“Spencer Williams,” answered Ron. “With better than a seventy percent confidence level, the CIA and I believe one of Dana’s captors is Spencer.”
Dave sat in mind numbing shock, staring out into the vacant sky in front of him as Ron’s words sunk in. It could not be possible he thought to himself. Spencer was a longtime friend of both Dana and him. They had gone to college together. It was impossible, he said to himself again. But Ron and the CIA could not both be wrong. Ron was extremely thorough with his work and he would not have implicated Spencer if he did not feel confident in his assertion. The same was true of the CIA. And deep down, Dave knew he had sensed something different with Spencer when they had met for dinner in Germany a few weeks ago. At the time he could not put his finger on what the difference was. But as his mind now searched rapidly for answers he remembered what Dana had said to him after dinner that evening. That Spencer seemed somewhat “odd acting”.
As Dave considered her statement again, he realized he may not have paid full attention to Spencer’s behavioral nuances that evening. Possibly due to the fact that he was tired from the lecture he had given earlier at the conference. However, the more he reflected on what Dana had said about their dinner that evening, he did have to admit, that Spencer had acted quite strange. He had been somewhat distant and aloof towards them, realized Dave.
“Dave! Are you still there?” yelled Ron over the radio.
Ron’s voice broke his concentration. “Yes, yes, I am still here.”
“Spencer is apparently a very dangerous man,” said Ron. “How do you think you want to proceed knowing that an old friend of yours has kidnapped Dana?”
“There is no change of plans,” responded Dave with intensified resolve. “It does not matter who captured Dana. I need to rescue her and her captors will pay the ultimate price, no matter who they are, or were.”
“Are you sure about that?” questioned Ron. “Any hesitation could get you and Dana both killed when you confront Spencer. Do you really think you should be going it alone in light of this new information?”
“There will be no hesitation and I do not need any assistance. Any external help could put her further at risk. If Spencer has already been compromised, then most likely there are others in, or involved with the CIA, that are also bent. I should make it to Sophia, Bulgaria with just enough time to rent a vehicle and track them down on the road. I will call you when I land to get a final update on their location.”
“Okay, I will continue to monitor Dana’s progress and be prepared to give you an up to the minute update when you call again.”
Dave said goodbye to Ron and switched off the radio. Immediately his brain began to race again as he continued on his flight path to Sophia. The same question kept coming back to him. Why Spencer?
Chapter 27 (April 17, Sunday 5:15am, Southeastern Serbia)
Dana’s breathing began to return to normal. She was breathing shallower and less frequently. Also, the
pounding pulse rate she had felt in her head only a couple of moments earlier had begun to subside in intensity. She slowly rose to a sitting position on the cold wet ground and looked over at Abdul’s lifeless body lying only a few feet away from her, the ice scraper still half imbedded into his neck. A sudden stab of cold hit her in her chest as a gust of wind kicked up. She looked down at herself. She was still wearing her lightweight windbreaker, but it was open and her shirt hung from her shoulders in shreds. Her bra was missing altogether. She looked over in the direction of Abdul’s body and saw her bra lying beside him, covered in his blood. Also, protruding from underneath the bottom edge of his coat was a large hunting knife. It was sheathed and attached to his belt.
Dana stood up and zipped the windbreaker to cover herself and to protect her from the cold morning air. She then walked over to Abdul’s body, recovered the knife and stepped a few feet away from him. Kneeling down on the ground, with her hands still bound, she wedged the handle of the knife firmly between two large rocks, the blade standing nearly vertical and exposed. She slid her bound hands around the knife blade and began to move them up and down, the tie wraps rubbing against the razor sharp knife edge. The knife sliced through the plastic tie wraps in just a few swipes. Her hands freed from the tie wraps that had cut into her skin for nearly twenty-four hours, she began to massage her wrists to restore circulation to her hands. She was still in shock with what had just transpired and what she had done. Killed a man.
As she felt the flow of blood beginning to return to her aching hands she suddenly heard a fast rhythmic rustling of leaves, a sound of impending danger that interrupted the macabre scene. The noise immediately tore Dana from her post-attack stupor. It was the sound of footsteps approaching. She turned her head in the direction of the footsteps and simultaneously remembered the scream Abdul had made when she bit off his finger. Spencer must have heard him and came looking for them.
