The Unknown Element

by Vince Milam

  Moloch had lost half his scum. This presented only a minor problem. More scum could be recruited from the immediate area. He knew plenty of fanatics from competing armies felt their particular leaders insufficient in their zealotry.

  As the remnants of al Garal assembled before him, Moloch picked the wounded who had struggled back to camp after the previous night’s battle and had them form a line. They stood in various states of pain and debility. Furious, he swept an arm in their direction. To a man, they collapsed to the ground with raspy breath and blood oozing from beneath makeshift bandages. He pointed a long finger at one of the non-wounded leaders and commanded, “Do it!”

  The leader pulled a pistol from his waistband and walked the line of prostrate wounded, one of them his own brother, and delivered a headshot to each of them.

  The other fighters watched in silence. A brutal lesson, but they would acknowledge the necessity. Victory at all cost. Wounded men became a liability.

  Moloch now addressed his men. “I have a mission for you tonight. It will allow you to recover and refresh your courage.”

  The fighters nodded, waiting. Several crows shuffled and fought over a human head mounted on a nearby pile of rocks. Their squabbling caused the head to teeter and fall from its perch, rolling among the rubble to settle in the dust. No one paid any attention.

  “Apostates of the worst kind. Women of the Book.”

  The fighters looked at each other and smiled.

  “You will prove your manhood. You will prove your manhood many times with each one of these apostate women.”

  This brought cheers and acclamation from his men.

  “You will do so in their place of worship. Let their screams echo from the walls.”

  More shouts of approval. They knew of this place. The scum could take solace in the fact that no one would be shooting and killing them tonight.

  “You will burn this place of aberration to the ground. Throw their bodies on the fire.”

  AK-47 rifles rose, accompanied by shouts of approval.

  “Prepare yourselves. Attack in the deep of night, before the dawn. Purify that place! Purify this entire area! Purify the world!”

  Rifle shots and jubilant shouts mixed in a perverted harmony.

  This will be done. I will travel afterward, thought Moloch. My scum will rest and think of me fondly while I am away. He turned a slow complete circle and absorbed the mountains, hills, and plains surrounding him. It has been too long since we had such a place. Yes, it has been far too long.

  Chapter 34

  Nadine regained consciousness as she bounced in the bed of the pickup. The wet warmth of blood trickling down her scalp and the cotton bag over her head tugged, sticking to the wound. She groaned and tried to remove the bag. A rough boot slammed into her hand, causing her to yelp with pain. The pickup turned and came to a stop. Hard hands dragged her from the truck and she was hustled, stumbling, into an old stone farmhouse.

  They jerked the bag off her head followed by a hard slap across her face. Her knees buckled before she recovered and blinked in rapid succession to adjust to the low light. There were seven of them. The small one-room farmhouse showed signs of their extended inhabitance. Sleeping mats lay strewn about the floor, cooking pots and tins scattered on the ground near the corner fireplace, and a lone table occupied the center of the room. AK-47s stood propped against the walls.

  A small trapdoor stood open at another corner of the room as the men argued and yelled at each other. One of them slapped her again and shoved her toward the trapdoor. That was enough of that BS, so she pivoted and delivered a roundhouse slap to her assailant followed by a kick to the testicles. The man collapsed. Several of the men howled with laughter at the state of their compatriot, while the others knocked her to the ground and kicked her repeatedly toward the opening in the floor. The opening shone as a refuge; she crawled the last few feet to the hole and dropped in, because whatever was down there would beat the heck out of what was happening up here. Maybe these sons of bitches wouldn’t be so damn slap-happy if they had to go down there to get to her. She fell the four feet to the dirt floor. The trapdoor slammed shut.

  She lay in a small root cellar. A tiny window slit provided minimal light with the fading day. Nadine assessed her condition. The scalp wound bled again, but the kicks she’d absorbed had not broken anything. The small cellar wasn’t high enough to provide standing room, so she crawled over to the slit and looked out at desolate desert and distant hills. Night would arrive soon. She took in the position of the cellar relative to the house. Only the trapdoor lay directly under the house. The rest of the cellar had been dug beneath open ground.

  Loud arguments continued above. As the men moved about, dust motes fell from the trapdoor and drifted through the cellar. She used her teeth to rip the tail of her shirt and pull free a small piece of the cloth as she huddled in fear, pain, and rising panic. Her hand shook as she applied the torn cloth to her head wound.

  This is bad, this is bad, this is really bad, and if you’re paying attention, God, this would be a good time to reach down and pluck me the hell out of here. This is so bad and the cavalry won’t be showing up anytime soon, unless Cole somehow saw what happened, but it happened so fast that that isn’t likely. God, work some magic because I need it bad.

  The arguments got louder and the movements on the floor above became more strident. The trapdoor was flung open and two men dropped into the small space, hunched over, and grabbed her. She fought back with kicks and punches, and bit one of them so hard it drew blood. More howls of laughter came from above as the sounds of battle drifted from the cellar. Two more men, chuckling, dropped into the space and together they lifted her writhing body from the hole.

  Bent forward over the table with one man squatting on her upper body, pinning her arms, she continued to fight. Another man ripped her jeans and underwear to her knees, hampered by her kicks and twisting torso. More laughter ensued.

  The man squatting on her back maneuvered to pull her arms back, pinning them with one hand while he took a handful of hair and pressed her head into the tabletop. Her mind raced as never before. Her breathing was hard and fast, her eyes wild. One of them sat in a corner, focused on a laptop. He paid no mind to the events around him, muttering and shaking the computer with disgust.

  “I can fix it!” she screamed at him.

  He looked at her as one of the others dropped his filthy undergarments within eyeshot and then moved behind her. Oh man, oh man, oh man, she thought, struggling to maintain eye contact with laptop guy. Please speak some English, you son of a bitch, because you’re it and otherwise this only gets worse and worse and worse.

  “I can fix it!” she screamed at him again.

  The man with the computer yelled harsh commands at his fellow jihadists. One or two argued back, but this man was apparently their leader and he barked at them in return. The room became quiet.

  “You fix?” asked the leader as he held the laptop and shook it.

  “Yes! I fix!”

  The leader barked more commands and the others released her. She pulled up her clothing and spit at the man who had sat on her. He slapped her hard while several of the others laughed again, adding a running commentary. The leader yelled at them to be silent.

  The shoulder bag lay on the floor, her cell phone next to it, crushed by a boot heel. The electronic tablet sat on top of the leather bag, possibly undamaged, and that could be her lifesaver, although these animals weren’t likely to give her much of a chance unless she could show progress on his laptop.

  “I need that. To fix,” she said to the leader and pointed back and forth between his laptop and her tablet. “I need. To fix.”

  He nodded and she grabbed the tablet and started it. It booted operational. She slid down the wall near the leader and held a hand for his laptop. He handed it to her and leaned along the wall to watch her activities, pulling an old Russian-made pistol and jabbing it into her bruised ribs.

  “
Fix,” he said.

  Chapter 35

  He saw nothing to chase, no cries for help, no immediate activity to help Nadine. He shook with frustration.

  “It is I, it is I!” cried Francois. “Gluttony. A sin. It is I and my gluttony. Forgive me, mon ami! Forgive me!”

  “Shut up, Francois,” said Cole as he scanned the village and the horizon. “Please. Just shut up.” That lone old pickup had been the only movement, and who the hell knew if it had anything to do with her disappearance?

  The light faded and the first gunshots of the night echoed from the surrounding hills. Nadine would hear the same, if she still lived—a thought he pushed back into the recesses. He had to do something. Think! Think, you idiot. Help her. Work the problem, he thought.

  He fished the cell phone from his pocket and checked the signal. Check had told them that the tap water may not flow or a town’s electricity would quit with regularity, but the independently solar-powered cell towers usually kept communications open.

  He had three bars. Nadine’s phone rang once and switched to voice mail. That wasn’t good. He scanned the contact list, hands shaking. At the bottom of the list Wilczek’s number appeared.

  The CIA operative answered on the first ring and waited for a voice on the other end.

  “She’s gone,” said Cole. “Missing.”

  The sound of a can’s pop-top came over the line, then Wilczek said, “Tell me, exactly, what that means. Do not, I repeat, do not leave out any details.”

  Cole told him what had happened.

  “Go back to the convent. Now,” said Wilczek. “It will be dark soon. Get your ass back there. It’s where she will go if she escapes.”

  “Why her?” asked Cole. “Why did someone take her? I don’t get it.”

  “Move, dumbass. I don’t have time to give you an operational brief of the area. Go to the convent. Tell the nuns. Ask them to make local calls to everyone they know. Rome put a satellite phone system in there. Meanwhile, I’ll make calls. I’m on it.”

  Wilczek hung up and left Cole with a dead line. “Let’s go. Back to the sisters,” said Cole. Francois, grim—faced , nodded. They jogged back toward the convent as Francois muttered French to himself the entire time.

  Cole and Francois entered the convent and assembled the sisters. Cole explained what had happened. The sisters crossed themselves and prayed, hands clasped at their chests, rosaries dangling. Francois interjected in French to emphasize salient points. Sister Rahel glared at Francois and made a point of asking him if he’d found the village meal adequate. Cole and Francois begged them to make local calls to merchants, friends—just call. Sister Rahel did not hesitate, speaking emphatic Arabic to the people who answered the phone.

  The replies to Sister Rahel had a common theme—no knowledge of the kidnapping, at least none people would share. Odds were that Check would get the same treatment. Nadine had disappeared.

  Chapter 36

  She found the problem with the laptop within sixty seconds—a corrupted secure socket layer preventing connectivity with the cell signal. She muttered and sighed as if it were the most difficult problem one could have with a computer. The leader watched her like a hawk as she worked the keyboard.

  “I need some light,” she said to him. “Light.”

  He grunted and instructed one of the men to light a lamp and set it on the floor in front of them. The feeble light flickered, causing their shadows to dance against the wall. Nadine turned to her tablet, briefly locked eyes with the leader, and accessed an old Windows program. She reduced the application to a blue-screen series of DOS command lines. It appeared complex and to the man with a gun pressed against her side just the kind of thing he’d expect a computer expert to do, unless he fell to the level of his fighters, in which case she was screwed.

  She ran the tablet’s GPS in the background and worked the DOS commands, followed by working the keyboard of the leader’s laptop—switching back and forth to give the impression of great, focused effort. The GPS worked. Thank God. Hindered by poor satellite reception inside the walls, it struggled to capture their location, but they sat beneath a large open window and given enough time for the algorithms to work, she could pinpoint their location to within a few yards.

  While the GPS acquired satellite positioning data on the tablet, she programmed the leader’s laptop to time-out at random intervals and cut the cell signal. She repaired the corrupted secure socket layer and showed the leader his computer now searched for and acquired a signal. The idiot smiled approvingly. Then the signal would vanish, triggered by her random time-out command. She made sure to exhibit great frustration and returned to the tablet as if to check something that might help the laptop.

  Positioning coordinates confirmed, she checked her location relative to the convent. It stood less than two miles to the north. Fingers flew as she kept the blue DOS screen visible to disguise the instant message to Wilczek. The message delivered a simple “HELP.” She attached the GPS coordinates of the farmhouse to the message and waited. The leader’s laptop again acquired a cell signal. The leader’s smile changed to a grunt of discontent as the signal failed again at random intervals. Nadine appeared frustrated and she, too, grunted with disgust.

  Wilczek responded instantly, indicated by a command line popping up on the tablet’s screen signaling an incoming message. She retrieved it from the hidden background, still showing a blue screen.

  “I HEARD. WILL SEND CALVARY.”

  “NO TIME. TAKE IT OUT.” She knew this facade could only be maintained for a short time. At some point the leader would get frustrated and he’d turn her back over to the others for their enjoyment. Screw that noise.

  “DON’T BE A DUMBASS,” replied Wilczek.

  She lifted the leader’s laptop and connected to a signal again. They both grunted approval. Again the signal died. This couldn’t go on much longer. She shifted back to the tablet.

  “PLEASE. TELL ME WHEN. I’LL BE OK.”

  “SURE?”

  “YES! YES! YES!”

  “STANDBY ONE.”

  Nadine acted as if she had discovered something important on the tablet and moved back to the leader’s laptop. She removed the random time-out, reacquired a signal, and showed the leader. They both watched the bars on the signal icon and waited to see if it would lock in without failing.

  Check would be retrieving air assets on his laptop. She’d worked with these assets before. As high tech eagles on updrafts, unmanned Predator drones circled all over the Middle East. Loitering at high altitude for twelve hours at a stretch, their ground operators landed them at remote airfields to refuel and sent them off again. Each drone had two Hellfire missiles, capable of delivery with remarkable accuracy. Several Predators roamed the skies over northern Syria.

  It would take just a short while for Check to enter her coordinates, command the program to identify the closest asset, and provide a precise time for delivery of a missile.

  “DELIVERY 175 SECS IF NEEDED.”

  The leader seemed satisfied the laptop now worked. He put the pistol away and tried to take her tablet. She pulled it back, signaled “one more thing” and pointed again at his laptop. He agreed to a bit more time. Then the ignorant bastard would turn her over to his men before either killing her or holding her hostage, only to saw her head off on video. So again, screw all that noise and get ready for the ride of your lives, assholes.

  “DO IT! DO IT! DO IT!” she IM’d back.

  The drone would veer on a course change at high altitude and feed its Hellfire missile her exact location. She had less than three minutes to get small in that root cellar, and even that might not be enough, although it was without doubt better than the alternative.

  “DELIVERY ACTIVATED. GOD BLESS.”

  It might have been worth trying one more message to Check, asking him to let Cole know what was going on, but she knew Check would refuse; part of the deal was if she died in this effort his association with them would end then and there
. She got that, but it still sucked.

  She stood, looked at the leader who had pulled the tablet from her grip with finality, and pointed to the trapdoor. “Women problems. I need to go down there.”

  The lowlife moron didn’t understand, so she pointed at her crotch with both hands and said, “Problem. Big problem,” and pointed to the cellar opening again.

  The leader’s face twisted with disgust and he barked the situation to his men, all of whom also acquired looks of revulsion. They argued among themselves, pointing to Nadine, and gesturing madly.

  The Predator would be releasing the Hellfire missile right about now.

  One of the men grabbed her by the arm, yelling at another man who made a point of gesturing toward her crotch and with great emphasis stated his case. He released her arm and Nadine took the three steps to the opening and dropped in. She got on her hands and knees so they could shut the door. One of the men looked into the cellar, yelled something, and dropped the trapdoor. They argued again as she crawled to the corner furthest from the foundation of the farmhouse, curled into a ball, and counted down what she thought was the remaining thirty seconds. She pressed a fist against her heart as if to control its pounding, got to the count of thirty, and knotted her body even tighter. Her breathing came in short emphatic bursts as she waited, shaking.

  In a large, furious flash and thunderclap explosion, Nadine was bounced against the cellar ceiling and pinballed against the collapsing debris. Then all lay quiet.

  A jackal yelped from a nearby ravine and the low thunder of artillery sounded in the night. She could see stars. Rocks, dirt, and support timbers lay across her a few feet below ground level. She remained still, listening for the sound of men’s voices. Hearing none, she began moving gingerly, her hopes rising. With each small movement she assessed bodily damage, one appendage at a time. Nadine May worked through all her body parts, ascertained nothing was broken, and that by squirming to one side she could escape the hole. She did, and opened her eyes wide in the starlight to see remnants of stone and wooden timbers ringing a smoldering depression where the farmhouse had stood. Her adversaries had been disintegrated in the blast. Holy shit, Check. Holy shit.