Nike's Wings

by Valerie Douglas

  She ran as if her life depended on it, knowing it did.

  Movement caught Ty’s eye. He saw Callie sprint from the door of Santiago’s quarters, barefoot, running fast and hard, putting all her of heart into it.

  Her eyes were wide, desperate. She wore some thin little dress, not the shirt and jeans he’d seen her wear. A part of him raged in fury, guessing what had happened to her while he’d been gone. Her bare feet seemed to fly over the packed dirt. Her face was bruised and there were more marks on her arms and legs.

  One of the guards ran to intercept her.

  The helos were down. Buck and their people hustled Reeves and Gallegos inside.

  Callie spun away from the guard, a quick pirouette.

  Ty shot the man as the rest of the guards opened fire.

  She darted and dodged past another.

  “C’mon, Callie,” he shouted, encouraging her even as he went to meet her.

  At the sound of his voice she turned her head, spotted him and changed course. She didn’t slow at all.

  The little skirt fluttered around her shapely legs.

  A bullet hammered into Ty’s vested chest, driving him back, but the next punched into his unprotected thigh. He went down, rolling, as pain exploded through him.

  Callie saw it and screamed his name. Their eyes met.

  Time was running out.

  Buck turned at the sound of the scream to see Ty down and young Callie Martin racing toward him.

  “Jefferson, Kwiz, cover Ty,” Buck shouted to the others.

  He started to run to Ty, determined to get his partner out.

  Some part of Ty knew Callie was too far away, knew she’d never make it in time, and now with a bullet in his leg he couldn’t reach her to help her.

  There were his men, the crews on the helos and the primary targets were on board. He had a responsibility to them, too. He was torn. Somehow, though, he couldn’t stop trying. He couldn’t leave her, couldn’t leave sweet young Callie Martin behind. He couldn’t and wouldn’t.

  A burst of bullets dug into the ground ahead of her and she shied away, throwing an arm up in front of her face to protect it from the flying dirt.

  Callie saw Santiago’s guards converging on Ty and the helicopter on the ground as the other circled above them. The men inside fired at those on the ground. Mr. Reeves and Mr. Gallegos were being strapped into seats inside the one that had landed.

  More than anything, though, she saw Ty.

  An arm hooked around her waist.

  Turning her head, to her shock she found Santiago behind her, his mouth a snarl, his eyes furious. There was also triumph in them at having caught her.

  Her lessons from Jeremy in self-defense a thousand years before came back to her. Furious, despairing, she twisted to slam the base of her hand up into Santiago’s nose as hard as she could, all the anger, hate and fear of the past few months gathered in that one blow.

  Santiago roared and released her. He staggered back and clapped his hands to his now gushing nose.

  Instantly, she spun and ran toward the helicopters.

  Even as she did she knew the truth, the reality of it… Those few moments when Santiago had grabbed her had been enough, or too much. They had tipped the odds against her and against rescue.

  She wouldn’t make it.

  The helicopters had to go or everyone on them would be captured or killed. She cried out in denial, but she couldn’t deny the reality of what she saw.

  They endangered themselves by staying, by trying to save her. There would be no hope of rescue after that…for her or for them. Santiago would kill them all.

  For her, there was no hope, not any more.

  But there was for Mr. Reeves, Mr. Gallegos. And Ty.

  In desperation, she changed course.

  Looking up Ty met Callie’s big green eyes, wide with determination and fear…and he saw the sudden sure knowledge in them.

  “Callie…!” Ty shouted. “NO!”

  The last Ty saw of her was the moment she threw her hands up in front of her face to plunge into the jungle…

  Suddenly Buck was there, dragging him toward the chopper.

  “You can’t save her, Ty. No one can,” Buck shouted. “Not now. We have to get Reeves and Gallegos out. We have to go. We’ll come back if we can, we’ll find her.”

  Leave no one behind. It was in Ty’s blood and his bone - a part of his time as an Army Ranger, his years with the Agency…

  The jungle swallowed her up.

  Callie Martin was gone.

  Everyone was still and quiet in the radio room where the negotiations for the hostages had taken place. Ty, his leg bandaged and his mouth grim, stood silently on crutches. At the first crackle of the radio, Callie’s mother, Caroline, was escorted gently out. They didn’t want her to hear this. Ty had told her himself they hadn’t been able to reach Callie in time and she’d wept softly, seeing the truth of it in his eyes.

  In all likelihood, Callie was dead.

  Even Ty believed she was dead. Just the thought tore him to shreds.

  He hadn’t saved Callie and now he had to tell Caroline Martin that her daughter was gone.

  She’d lost both husband and child.

  Or so they’d thought, until the hostage negotiators received a radio message from the kidnappers as they packed their equipment up, requesting them to be available regarding one of the hostages.

  Ty understood in an instant.

  She hadn’t escaped. They’d caught her. Callie was alive, but they’d caught her once again.

  As resilient and resourceful as she was, she didn’t know the jungle. She’d never really had a chance, but a part of him wanted to hope, whatever he’d said to her mother. He couldn’t offer her false hope, but found he’d held it for himself.

  Hearing that request Ty knew it would be bad. Despite that sure knowledge, neither he nor Buck could or would walk away. They wouldn’t leave Callie alone with it, they would at least bear witness to what happened to her, to what she suffered and pay the price for their failure.

  There was still hope. Santiago might want to cut his losses, get something from the deal at the very least.

  Every time Ty closed his eyes, he remembered the feel of sweet Callie around him and her glorious smile when she’d felt him come inside her.

  His face tense, his head bowed, the hostage negotiator - a man named Greg Wallace - crossed his arms, his mouth tight and waited.

  As did they all.

  Knowing the circumstances, it was obvious Wallace knew what was coming, too.

  But they had to try. They had to hope. Something Santiago would count on.

  All of their expressions were tight.

  With a crackle, the radio came to life.

  “Is anyone there?” a male voice asked.

  His expression resigned, Wallace leaned forward to pick up the microphone. “We’re here.”

  “Good,” the voice said, male, the tone harsh, his accent thick. “Tell them who you are, little girl…”

  Silence, then the sounds of a scuffle.

  They heard a short cry of pain before another voice said, “My name is Callie Martin.”

  Ty closed his eyes at that soft familiar voice.

  “Tell the Americans,” the male voice said. “They shouldn’t have left her behind…”

  Both Ty and Buck recognized the voice. Santiago.

  For a moment the radio was silent…just crackles and pops of static…

  “No.” Callie’s voice.

  A voice said, “They should not have done this. Someone must pay the price.”

  Another pause, much longer…

  There were sounds…a struggle…

  Callie would fight them, Ty knew.

  Then came a high, thin, tremulous cry, a breathless wail that became a scream…

  It seemed to go on forever, Ty’s hand tightened on the crutch the doctors had given him. Bowing his head as he listened to her pain. That sound, he knew, would haunt his d
reams forever.

  The radio went silent.

  As long as they waited, they knew it was the last transmission. There were no others.

  It was over. Done.

  Even so, they took a team and went back against orders to try to find her, to get her out.

  Santiago’s camp was empty.

  There was no sign of pretty Callie, save for the jeans and white shirt she’d been wearing, found on the front porch of Santiago’s cottage.

  Left for them to find.

  Both were bloodstained.

  It was all too easy to imagine what she’d gone through, what she’d suffered.

  Ty looked around the compound and fought the grief, the sorrow…and the guilt.

  He should have brought her home.

  Chapter Four

  Behind the screening leaves of the jungle, Callie, bound and gagged, watched the little scene play out in the camp below, the rope around her throat tight in Santiago’s hands. Her heart ached, tears spilled down her cheeks as terror and pain raced through her. She watched Ty in the camp below, Buck with him, with a team of men spread out around them.

  They were wary, watchful as they fanned out.

  Not dead. Thank God. With the wound in his leg, she’d been afraid he was.

  Now with Santiago’s armed men all around her and those in the old camp unknowing, she wanted to pray, wanted to beg, Please don’t kill them. She knew she couldn’t. Not out loud.

  Santiago might just kill them for spite.

  Her throat was locked.

  She knew there was no point in praying for herself. If Santiago had been going to kill her, he’d have done it already. He had other plans. She refused to consider what those plans were.

  A rough voice whispered in her ear.

  “Mine, chica,” Santiago said, softly. “You are mine. They think you’re dead. You’re truly mine, now. Someday they will see you again, chica, and they will know that. And I will have my revenge.”

  No. Never.

  Ty. Callie’s heart ached.

  She’d tried to escape, used everything she’d learned from the other kids on the streets - the stuff her parents hadn’t known about, the times she’d snuck out of the house to hang with the local kids. The street moves, free-running, parkour. Using everything and anything to keep from going back, to keep from falling into Santiago’s hands again, remembering with a shudder the nights since Ty had left.

  It felt as if her skin was covered with slime each time she thought of Santiago’s hands on her…and how when the assault was over she’d curled up around the memory of Ty. His hands, his touch.

  Her attempt at freedom had almost worked.

  Then something had hit her just above her hip with shocking force. The sound of the distant rifle had cracked just at the end of it. The impact had thrown her off balance. She’d fallen…and that had been the end of her flight. The pain had been shocking, she’d been weak and sick, shivering, as they herded and half-carried her back to Santiago’s camp.

  For a moment, looking into Santiago’s black eyes, seeing his swollen nose, she’d been sure she would die right there, right at that moment. It felt as if her heart stopped. She’d waited breathlessly for him to pull the trigger and put a bullet through her head.

  He hadn’t. Instead he’d waved her away, a look on his face she didn’t recognize or understand.

  They’d patched her up roughly and left her locked in the room she’d shared briefly with Ty.

  No one had used it since. It had given her some small comfort to be in it, but she’d been sick, in pain, and there was nothing for that except to curl up in the rough woolen blanket.

  Around her she’d heard the sounds of Santiago’s people packing the camp, rushing as angry or frightened voices shouted orders.

  Then they’d dragged her out of the cottage and into the jungle.

  It was walk or die and she knew it, so she walked. She would survive, somehow, for her father, for Jeremy who had died trying to keep her alive and now for Ty, for his kindness, his gentleness. In her mind’s eye she saw the bullet hit him, watched him fall as he’d tried to save her. She’d prayed he wasn’t dead, too. Her heart hammered. She didn’t believe in God, but she believed in Ty Connor.

  He’d returned as he’d promised. He’d tried to reach her; it just hadn’t been possible.

  The pain above her hip left her feeling sick and weak nearly constantly, but the bleeding gradually stopped, and the bullet didn’t seem to have hit any major arteries.

  She’d thought that pain had been terrible. Then had come the radio call.

  At first, she’d almost begun to hope a little that Santiago would ransom her when he’d told her to tell them who she was. Then she saw the vicious look in his eyes. That hope had died. She felt sick. She’d fought not to give him what he wanted, but he’d studied medicine. He’d told her once he knew ways and places to inflict pain beyond what most humans could tolerate. Pain on a level that was unimaginable. As she’d learned.

  Now she knew Ty wasn’t dead, but he thought she was. There would be no rescue, this time.

  That hope died as well.

  She watched him and knew by the way he stood, by the way he moved that he grieved for her as he walked to the shack they’d shared. He’d come back, he and Buck. They’d come back for her. Just for her.

  Watching him, watching them, she swore she would survive. Her father had died for her. Jeremy had, too. Ty had been kind. He’d been shot trying to rescue her. Even from so far away, she could tell he mourned. She would survive, she would find a way to stay alive, and she would escape Santiago…somehow. Santiago wouldn’t win.

  Someday she would escape to tell Ty that she hadn’t died. That she’d survived. She would stay alive, somehow…

  “Now your training begins, chica,” Santiago said. “First, you must and will learn discipline.”

  With a jerk of the rope, he pulled her away. She staggered after him.

  As always, it was just a little disorienting for Ty to return to Langley, Virginia. The trip through and around Washington was always a little bizarre after the dichotomy of Latin America, where poverty and opulence sometimes stood cheek to cheek. The cookie-cutter suburbs seemed oddly surreal, too open after the jungle, too stark without the trees, not green enough. There was too much noise, it was too different from what he’d known.

  Strangely, it wasn’t a relief to be home. Ty was in the States so rarely these days that sometimes he felt disconnected from his own country and the people in it.

  His apartment certainly didn’t feel like home. It was a place he slept in when he was here, nothing more.

  Neither he nor Buck spoke much. It wasn’t necessary.

  They walked into the Section Chief’s office together.

  “Congratulations, Ty, on getting Reese and Gallegos out.” The section Chief, Jeff Patridge, was a big bluff, red-faced man with thick dark hair. He gestured them to chairs. “It was a good job. Pity about the girl, though. That was a shame. Anyway…”

  Pity about the girl, Patridge said… Ty’s gut churned.

  A sudden image of Callie, her body arching beneath his, her smile glorious and her pretty green eyes aglow, came to Ty’s mind, and with it a sudden burst of black rage and terrible grief.

  Not that he let any of it show. She was dead. He could do nothing more for Callie Martin.

  It was done and couldn’t be undone. He still had to go on. Somehow.

  Guilt weighed on him.

  “What about Santiago?”

  Shaking his head, Patridge said, “What about him? He’s not a priority any more. It’s all about terrorism now.”

  “Are they crazy?” Ty asked incredulously. “If they can get kilos of coke in, then why not a suitcase nuke? These people aren’t friends of ours. They’re in it for the money. Hell, some of them would do it just for the fun of it. Just to stick it to the Americans.”

  With a sigh, Patridge said, “Preaching to the choir, buddy, preaching to the ch
oir. We’ve tried and a few others have suggested it. Truth is the administration only cares about Afghanistan and terrorists. I’m reassigning you and Buck to the Mideast to track down some of the terrorist cells there. Take a few days of R and R. We’ll have your cover identities set up by then.”

  It was also clear that Patridge didn’t care. Policy was policy. It was his job to follow it.

  “Without controls, they’ll just run amok,” Ty said. “Remember before when we had the Colombians? The Mexicans are growing in power.”

  With a sigh and a shrug, Patridge said, “Terrorism, Ty. Concentrate. You’re a good agent. Go be a good agent. You’re on a fast track, buddy. Don’t fuck it up.”

  Ty saw Buck glance at him, but his partner kept his concerns to himself.

  Callie Martin was dead.

  “Come on, Ty, my man,” Buck said, as they left Martin’s office, “I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Chapter Five

  It was surreal. Her life had become this strange nightmare. The whip was in Callie’s hands now, although there were days she barely remembered what her own name was anymore. They all called her Chica - girl - now. She was beaten if she answered to anything else. Part of Santiago’s discipline. Her back still stung from the last whipping.

  This was the next lesson.

  Once, the person she’d been before she was Chica had been a voracious reader. A phrase that girl had read in a book stayed with her, echoed in her mind constantly. Fear is the mind-killer, the little death that brings total obliteration. She wouldn’t be obliterated. She would face her fear. She would give them what they wanted. She would bury what she’d once been deep inside, but she wouldn’t lose it. She wouldn’t lose herself.

  They had her body and her obedience - for the moment.

  One by one she’d tucked away the memories of her previous life. Home, family, Ty, the man she’d known so briefly. They were her secrets.

  She kept her mind empty, tried not to think too much, to absorb too much, but she couldn’t do this…

  So she became Chica. She had to. Chica had no past and no future. Chica simply was.

  I will face my fear, she told herself.