by Ladew, Lisa
12 hours later
Westwood Harbor
Sara walked quietly into the kitchen of Jerry’s house and stopped next to the big stainless steel fridge, anxiety eating at her insides. Her decision was made, but it was the part coming next that scared her. She wasn’t seeking approval, not really. The call had been made, the President had given her the green light, and plans were in the works. She was doing this.
When she thought about her past, her background as a killing machine for the now defunct (because of massive corruption and secrecy) DCIA, the only clear choice was the one she was making. Isn’t this what she’d been doing for years now? Liberating people? Killing those who would seek to keep them oppressed? And since she was 1/4 Egyptian and could speak Farsi and Arabic - it was like this was the ultimate job she’d actually been trained for since birth.
Maybe what she was really seeking was support. And that was something she had never looked for before. She’d always made her decisions and carried them out with very little assistance or support from anyone. But now she was in a relationship with Jerry. And Jerry was close friends with these four people. And these four people were related to the man she was going to save. Brother or brother-in-law. She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Relationships complicated things.
Her eyes fixed on Jerry who had his gaze locked intently on Hawk, who was talking. Jerry was the only one she really cared about. If he didn’t support her she didn’t know what she would do. Would it be a relationship-breaker already? She fervently prayed it wasn’t. Because it wasn’t like she was just going to stay home and be a housewife now. That wasn’t her. Well, at least not until they had babies. Her hands curled around her belly again. Babies. She had a chance to have babies and she was contemplating this crazy mission? What was wrong with her? Not contemplating, the inner voice she liked to call Miss-All-Business spoke up. Planning. You are planning this mission. You were practically born for this mission, and you are the only one who has a chance to save those two people. She nodded at her inner dialogue. She knew she was right, and she knew this was right. Now to convince everyone else.
She focused on Hawk’s words. “But you know what happened three months ago. If the Marines go in to get him, he’s going to wind up with his head cut off!”
Vivian put her head in her hands at this. Hawk winced and rubbed her shoulders, but he didn’t apologize or take it back. He was right and Vivian knew it. Sara checked every face at the table and they all knew it. They had all seen what happened on TV. Three months ago this new Islamic extremist group, the NIB - or Northern Islamic Brotherhood, had surfaced, sending challenges to the President directly via Al Jazeera TV. No one took them seriously, until some of them managed to take four American soldiers hostage, one of them a female. A small group of Marines found the soldiers and raided the encampment they were in. As the Marines surrounded the encampment and went in with the intention of rescuing the soldiers, the extremists had simply killed each of the soldiers, then stood and fought the Marines, knowing full well they wouldn’t win. But the NIB had considered it a victory anyway, even though they had lost a large contingent of men. They were now taken seriously, and the blow to the American morale had been huge. Staggering. Americans started to march at home, demanding all troops be pulled out of the Middle East. The President’s approval rating slipped below 40%. And four American soldiers were gone forever.
And now this same group of extremists had Emma and Vivian’s brother.
She took a deep breath. Hawk had made it easy for her. They were looking for an answer and she was going to give it to them.
She walked to the table. Jerry stood up and offered her his chair. She took it with an appreciative smile. He kissed her cheek and rubbed her shoulders. Not because she was tight, but because he hadn’t stopped touching her for weeks now. She said a little prayer that he would understand.
“Hawk’s right,” she said, getting straight to the point. “And that’s why I am going to go in instead.”
The tension level in the room doubled. Jerry’s hands tightened on her shoulders. Emma’s mouth dropped open. Vivian took her head out of her hands and gaped at her. Craig crossed his arms and leaned back with a skeptical look on his face, and Hawk just stared, like he didn’t understand what she had just said.
“You’re going in? What do you mean, you are going in?” Emma asked.
“I fly out this afternoon. I’m going to free your brother.”
“By yourself?” Emma said, her voice raising an octave.
“No, I have CIA and Army support. In fact, the CIA operative who was supposed to be in charge seems thrilled that I am taking over. He didn’t sound very sure of his ability to get him out alive.”
“And you are sure you can get him out alive?” Emma asked.
Sara nodded. “Very sure.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jerry said, his hands leaving her shoulder. He pulled a chair right next to her, his mouth pained and his eyes fearful. “You are going to the Middle East and you, yourself, are going to go into this tent and free him?”
This is going badly already, Sara thought. But she didn’t know what to do about it. She nodded. She pleaded with him with her eyes. Please understand.
“Why you?!” Jerry cried, standing so quickly his chair fell over backwards. He didn’t wait for an answer, but paced his kitchen with his hand on his head.
“Because I am his best hope. His best chance at survival. Because they won’t be expecting a woman. Because I speak Farsi and Arabic. Because I know the customs. Because this is what I do,” she said simply.
Craig broke in. “They won’t be expecting a woman is right, but they will know something is wrong as soon as they see you. They don’t have any women out there in the desert at all, do they?”
Sara watched Jerry who was still pacing. He wasn’t looking at her. Hadn’t looked at her since she made her announcement. She didn’t know what to do, so she did nothing. She answered Craig’s question, but her eyes never left Jerry.
“We know where they are. They are at a camp in the Sinai Peninsula in the middle of the desert. Our government has been watching this camp with drones for months, trying to determine its purpose. It has supply runs and even some sort of maid service. Women go in and out daily.”
Jerry stopped pacing and returned to the chair, his face composed but sad. Sara’s heart broke a little that she made him look like that. He still didn’t look at her. Instead he stared at the lines on the table.
Hawk sat forward now. “What do you mean, we know where they are? Only Sergeant Taylor has been taken hostage right?”
Sara finally looked up from Jerry. She settled for taking his hand. She looked straight at Hawk and shook her head. “No. It’s him and a woman. A reporter. That’s how they were found so quickly. The woman carries a tiny GPS tracker on her body. Lots of reporters over there do these days apparently, for just this kind of thing. It was switched on 12 hours ago and her news station got the information to the government a few hours ago. Otherwise they would probably still be looking for them.”
Jerry looked up quickly, his eyes burning into Sara’s. “I’m going.”
She nodded and smiled, relief making her feel almost lightheaded. “You can go. But only as support. You’ll have to stay at the Army base we will be staged at when I go in.”
He nodded, his eyes unreadable.
Vivian looked around the table at each of them in turn. “Are you all crazy?” She asked, her face twisted. Her eyes finally settled on Sara. “Sara, we can’t ask you to do this for us. It’s too much.”
Sara nodded. She had expected this. “Vivian, I’m not doing it for you. Not like you think. I’m doing it for Sergeant Taylor. And for Daniela Clarkson - she’s the reporter. And for the entire country. And for me.” Jerry squeezed her hand. She smiled. He understood.
Craig lifted his chin. “I’m going too.”
Sara looked at Craig, then at Emma. This she didn’t expect and wasn’t sure what
to say.
Emma looked back. “Me too.” She took Craig’s hand.
Sara nodded slightly. She knew the president would let her take as much support as she wanted. All she had to do was say the word. She looked questioningly at Hawk. He looked at Vivian. She smiled faintly and took his hand, then took her sister’s next to her. “We’re in,” Hawk told her.
Sara raised her eyebrows. Six for Kuwait then. She got up to make the phone call.
Chapter 11
Somewhere in the desert
JT jerked awake, his whole body discordantly singing in agony. He lifted his head, feeling like it weighed 100 pounds. He rolled his shoulder and tried to get the feeling to come back into his upper back and neck. As it came, it burned. Sleeping sitting up, with your hands tied behind you and your chin resting on your chest is some pretty bad torture, he thought. How long have we been here, trying to sleep this way? he wondered. There was no way to tell with no rising and falling of light, but he had tried to count off the minutes in the back of his mind while he was awake. And if he slept three hours just now, which is what he guessed, based on how his head feels, then he puts it at three days. Three days with no food and only the smallest amount of water. Just enough to keep them alive.
JT rolled his chest muscles as best as he could, trying to get some strength into them. He tested his ropes again for the hundredth time to see if he could free himself. He knows he has to get them out of here, and quickly, before just being here kills one of them, or permanently damages them. It can’t be good for their bodies to be stuck in one position for three days. His ropes are still tight. His muscles are weakening. He can tell. Panic bursts into his head in the form of scary thoughts and an adrenaline rush. He beat it away with strong mental fingers. He has practice with this. He is good at it.
JT listened closely to the room. He heard nothing in the room they are in, which he knows has stone walls and a canvas roof, like a giant tent dropped over a busted-out stone building. Beyond his walls, he heard activity, motion. People talking, laughing, banging metal against wood, possibly eating, maybe making things. Lots of activity. So it is daytime. He can’t see light at all with the black hood over his face.
His black hood was only taken off once. About an hour after they got here. At the coffee shop in Kuwait, they were taken out the back to waiting cars. JT in one, the woman in the other. The hateful black hood was shoved onto his head and he was forced to the floor, his pockets emptied immediately. He was frisked and his hands were tied behind his back. The knife in his boot was found. He mourned the loss of it. He would fight with his hands and his teeth if he got the chance though.
The men in the cars with him had talked and laughed in Arabic, occasionally kicking him or resting their feet on him. They spoke Arabic, and he only understood one out of every three or four words, and none of them seemed to mean anything to him.
After an hour’s car ride they got on an airplane, JT still hooded. At this point he had no idea if the woman was still with them or where they were going or why. The airplane seemed to be a small jet. These terrorists were well-funded for sure.
After a four hour plane ride, they landed. As the door was cracked the hot smell of the desert found JT’s nostrils, even through his black hood. They were no longer in or near a city. JT filed all of this knowledge away. His mind tried to make judgments about how horrible this new development was, but he didn’t let it. He had desert survival training. If they could escape, he could get them out of the desert. And his plan certainly was to escape. It had been from the moment the insane man in the coffee shop had herded them towards the counter.
From the airplane he was shoved into the back of a vehicle. An open bay truck it seemed. They rode for two hours. To this place. Wherever this place was. He was tied to a hard chair. A burst of activity in the area around him held his attention. But he couldn’t make out what was happening.
Finally, a single man spoke, his voice unnaturally loud and pointed, like he was speaking for an audience. JT picked out a few words. His own name. Guantanamo Bay. The Arabic words for America, prisoners, kill, stop, and release.
And then his hood was taken off. He blinked as the room swam into focus. He took in everything as quickly as he could. He knew the hood was going back on at any moment. A TV camera. The insane man from the cafe. The walls and ceiling. Men everywhere with guns and knives, all of them pointed at him. And the woman. She was still hooded, but he recognized her, approximately five feet away from him, tied to a chair just as he was.
The insane man pointed at him, then took a knife from a man behind him and drew it across JT’s cheek. JT stared at him, hate in his eyes. The pain in his face screamed, but he refused to scream himself. The insane man seemed disgusted and barked an order. Another man thrust his hood back on his head.
And that was three days ago. Since then, the hood had been rolled up, but not removed, on three occasions. He was almost certain it was a woman doing it. It was too gentle to be a man. The hood was rolled up to his nose and a cool ladle held to his lips. He drank greedily each time, wanting to keep his strength. The ladle had been refilled 4 times, but when the person had tried to refill it a 5th, a man had yelled something guttural in Arabic. The ladle had not come again and the hood had been rolled down. He heard the act repeated to his right.
No one had talked to him since that first day. There usually was a guard in the room. JT sometimes heard him snort or fart or clear his throat. Sometimes he heard something metal get placed on the ground. He had heard canvas rustle heavily several times and two men talk. That is when the guard changed, he thought. Sometimes, like right now, they did not seem to have a guard. He could hear nothing. Not even snoring. But would they really be left without a guard? He didn’t know. He reached his consciousness out to the right, trying to hear or feel the woman. He couldn’t.
She was so quiet. She hadn’t cried or even whimpered that he had heard. She hadn’t said a word. It confused him. He couldn’t imagine a woman that wouldn’t cry in a situation like this. It was such a horrible situation. Although he fiercely hoped they would, he truly doubted they would make it out alive. She had to be thinking the same thing. So why didn’t she plead for her life? Release tension by crying? At least ask what was going on? Possibilities ran through his mind. She was mute. She was in on it. She was in extreme shock. None of them seemed likely.
Maybe he should try to talk to her. Was it worth the risk? Maybe. Especially if they didn’t have a guard right now. Especially if they were to have a chance at escaping. If even the smallest chance presented itself, they had to do it. JT replayed the scene after the camera had turned off. The insane man had laughed, like the message was just a big joke. And then he had said something to another man in Arabic. They sounded very close to each other, like they were hugging or shaking hands. JT had picked out a few words and phrases in their conversation. Those words had been fools, believe it, dead in the ground, never. JT’s gut told him there was no plan to ever exchange them for Guantanamo prisoners. It screamed at him that if they were to live, they had to get out of here on their own. The chance of the U.S. Government finding them and being able to free them seemed so low it wasn’t even worth thinking about.
Like a fish hook in his brain, his thoughts keep trailing out to the woman. Is she there? Should he say something to her? I have to try, he thinks. But first …
“Guard!” JT said, but not loudly, only with a little urgency. He wanted to know if someone was in there with them. “Guard, I have to use the bathroom! Now - It’s an emergency!” Nothing. They’ve already been taken to the pit latrine, basically a hole in the ground with a board over it, 146 steps away. It is through a narrow corridor and he has to take several twisty turns to get to it. He has been led to it three times with the hood over his head. He can’t smell it in here, but he can in the corridor closest to it.
Still no response from the guard, if there was one. JT chewed on his lip under the hood. It seemed there was no guard. He decided
to chance it.
“Hey, are you there? I don’t really have to use the bathroom, I was trying to see if we have a guard,” JT said, his voice pitched low and his face pointing towards where he last saw her, shackled to her own chair.
“I’m here.” Her voice came back immediately. It was small, but calm.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Yes. Not really. I don’t know.”
JT almost laughed at her answer. He knew exactly how she felt.
“My name is JT.”
“Hi JT, I’m Dani, it’s horrible to meet you.”
That time he did laugh. He couldn’t help it. Dani had a sense of humor. He did notice her voice waver a bit this time though. His heart went out to her. This was a one hell of a cluster fuck they were rolled up in.
“We have to get out of here, do you have any ideas?” JT said. He had a few, but none of them were very good.
Dani stayed silent. JT was about to ask her again, when she finally spoke.
“The military will come get us. Maybe we should just try to hang in there.”
JT took a deep breath. Is that why she was so silent? Just hanging in there waiting for the cavalry to arrive? He didn’t want to bash her hopes, but he knew he needed to.
“I don’t think they are going to find us, at least not anytime soon.” He said gently. “I think we need to try to get out of here ourselves.”
“They know where we are. I know they do.” Her voice dropped even lower and he had to struggle to make out the words. “I have a GPS tracker in my shoe. I activated it when they put us in the cars at the cafe.”
JT tried to make sense of this. A GPS tracker? She had one small enough to fit in her shoe? And she activated it? He tried to remember what kind of shoes she was wearing and couldn’t. He tried to figure out why she would have a GPS tracker on her and couldn’t come up with anything there either. His mouth dropped open inside his hood. Just ask her! his mind shouted.
“Why do you have a GPS tracker in your shoe?”
