by Rachel Grant
Hugo ran for the restaurant and disappeared inside.
The man grabbed her wrists and wrenched her arms behind her back, turning her as he did so. In the street, Ripley fought one militant and Holloway another. The Americans were fit, while the militants had none of their strength, training, or health. In moments, they each had their man in a headlock.
“Let her go!” Ripley shouted as he increased the pressure on his captive’s throat.
Escaping now would only endanger Hugo again. She had to see this nightmare through, or the boy would suffer. “No, Ripley. Go to the base. Tell them what happened. Tell them I chose this. It’s not your fault. It’s one hundred percent mine. I can’t let them hurt Hugo.”
The Green Beret’s face pinched. “I can’t do that, Morgan.” The man he held collapsed. Unconscious or dead, she didn’t know.
The man holding her didn’t seem to care. He gripped Morgan tighter and stepped backward down the street.
“If they don’t take me now,” Morgan said, pleading with Ripley, “they’ll come back for Hugo. I can’t live with that. Can you?”
Hugo wasn’t a child of war, taking up arms against US soldiers. She’d brought this nightmare to him.
But there was another reason for her to do this. “They’ll take me to Desta,” she said firmly.
Ripley knew about the tracker. After the fiasco with Pax, she figured the head of her security team should know all the security measures that had been taken and had told him. To hell with O’Leary’s insistence on secrecy.
You’ll get the location of Desta’s base. The words were a silent chant. She willed Ripley to accept that as reason to let her go. To keep Hugo safe.
Ripley’s jaw tightened. He released the unconscious militant. The man dropped, landing prone on the pavement.
“Go back to the base,” she said as a cargo van came careening down the small side street. It skidded to a halt next to her and the gunman. “Tell them they’re taking me to Desta!” she shouted.
Ripley gave a sharp nod, his nostrils flaring. His body seemed to puff outward, like an animal preparing to attack, but he did nothing to stop her from being shoved into the back of the van.
Ripley was going to catch hell for this, and it wasn’t his fault at all. Worse, Pax, caveman that he was, would lose it.
She was shoved face-first to the floor of the van, a knee pressed to the small of her back. They took her holster and gun, then tied her hands with old, thick twine. She could see a small section of street through the open rear doors, which flapped as the van turned the corner. The last thing she glimpsed of her quiet neighborhood was the lone box of crayons on the pavement.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Her abductors were in a hurry to get away, and after she was tied, they didn’t bother searching her beyond taking her wallet and keys. The man looped the rope on her wrists through a metal tie-down mounted on the side of the van in the cargo hold. Once she’d been secured, he yanked the rear doors closed and settled down across from her, pointing her own gun at her face.
She’d expected him to conduct a more thorough search, but maybe he’d decided to wait and do the full strip search away from the city. They’d have to untie her for the search and would need to be certain the Humvee wasn’t following.
She still had her cell phone in her bra, and it was on. While they were in the city, it was pinging cell towers, and the phone’s internal GPS was active, which was good because it was far too early to trigger the tracker in her arm now. The four-hour window meant it could stop transmitting before she reached her final destination. Odds were Desta’s lair was in Ethiopia. She had to wait.
But what if she was wrong? What if they weren’t taking her to Desta? What if they were taking her to one of the markets where they sold young girls into sex slavery? She’d read in horror how they stripped the girls—some who hadn’t even reached puberty—and stood them nude upon auction blocks.
She lay in the back of the truck as it tore through city streets, trying to keep a grip on her fear. Reminding herself she’d done the right thing in protecting Hugo.
But if they didn’t take her to Desta’s base, then her sacrifice could gain the US military nothing.
As the minutes ticked by, her plan to go meekly to her kidnapper’s destination so they could pinpoint Etefu Desta seemed…impossible. She had to fight. Because the possibilities that awaited her were nightmarish.
She wore an emergency paracord bracelet around her wrist. It looked like a friendship bracelet with thicker string and had a cutting edge on the fastener. A small survival tool she always wore in the field, but which she’d never needed.
Tied as she was, her guard couldn’t see her hands. He faced her, but his cold, hard eyes stared off into the distance, and her hands were behind her back. She scooted slightly so her back pressed to the side of the van, where she was attached to the tie-down. She twisted the bracelet so the edge met the rope that bound her. Slowly, silently, she sawed with that tiny blade.
Small movements, invisible with the bouncing of the van, but that meant it would take a long time to cut through the layers of rope. How long before they stopped and searched her?
Would the search happen in town, or would they wait until the city was long behind them and her cell phone no longer of use?
All she could do was saw. It wasn’t as if she had anything to lose by trying. She was in deep shit whether they discovered her escape attempt or not.
The van bounced, and the cutting edge slipped and nicked her skin. The ropes became slick with blood, but she kept sawing. This pain was nothing compared to what awaited her.
The motion evened out, and she wondered if they’d reached the edge of the city. She sawed with renewed effort, risking alerting the guard. They would pull over and search her soon. She was sure of it.
The last fiber snapped, and the tight rope went slack. Keeping to small movements, she unhooked the paracord bracelet. She would use the cutting edge as a weapon.
A very tiny weapon, versus the much more lethal gun the guard held in a slack grip, but she had surprise on her side.
The driver of the vehicle said something to her guard in Arabic. Only two men—the driver and the guard—were in the van. The other two were back in the city with Ripley and Holloway. They’d be interrogated on the base and could provide information on where she was being taken. And she still had her cell phone. They were tracking her.
Ripley would have called the base. Blackhawks could be searching for her even now. The van would be easy to spot on the open road.
The vehicle made a left turn, then a right. It lurched after hitting a pothole at speed. The driver yelled something to the guard. He said something sharp back. Then she heard the driver talking to someone—not the guard—in a muted voice. A cell phone?
That meant they were still in range.
The van slowed to a stop.
She met the gaze of her guard, backing up against the side of the van, letting him see her very real fear. He spoke to her in Arabic, but she had no clue what he said except it was likely derogatory.
He gestured for her to sit up. She hooked a finger through the tie-down loop so she wouldn’t accidently reveal she was untied as she changed position. The man pulled out a knife. She sucked in a sharp, terrified breath and told herself it was probably to cut her binding.
But possibly he meant to use it to cut off her clothes. It might be time for the strip search.
Just a strip search.
The knife is for the rope and my clothes. Nothing more. Maybe if she repeated those words enough, they would become true.
The driver had stopped talking into the phone. In the silence that followed, his door opened, then slammed closed. She had maybe ten seconds until he reached the rear double doors.
She waited until her guard was practically upon her—out of reach of a head butt, which he might anticipate, but not out of reach of her arms. With the cutting edge between her fingers, she swung out her right han
d and used the appropriately named knife-strike blow, aiming for his eye, followed by a hammer fist with her left.
The man screamed and lunged with the knife, even as he covered his wounded eye. Blinded by pain and the cut, there was no force in his strike and she easily claimed his knife for her own. He raised the gun, and she slashed with the blade, opening his neck.
She had no time to take in the horror as he made a gurgling sound and blood spurted from his neck, spraying her. She grabbed her gun.
It took only the length of a heartbeat to realize the driver hadn’t opened the rear door because it was locked from the inside. Her guard had secured it when he closed the doors, but the driver had left the keys in the ignition.
She bolted for the front of the van, desperate to get to the driver’s seat before he returned. She scrambled for the lock as the door wrenched open. She stumbled forward, momentum carrying her through the opening. The driver grabbed her by her braid, letting out an incomprehensible yell of rage as he yanked her forward and swung her around. The gun slipped from her bloody fingers, but she still had the knife.
He pointed his gun at her, but she kicked out. Twenty-five years of training meant her muscles knew exactly what to do, even if her brain wasn’t keeping up. The gun flew from his hand. She punched with her left as she brought the knife around. He blocked the punch but didn’t see the blade coming. It sank into his chest, and he fell to the ground.
She’d hit him center mass. Pax would be proud.
She collapsed and scooted backward, breathing heavily. Her entire body shook.
She twisted to the side and vomited, then staggered to her feet, lurching toward the van and the empty driver’s seat. She climbed inside and pulled the door closed, then locked it and buckled her seat belt out of habit.
She turned the key. She’d get the hell out of here. Drive back to the base. She’d be safe.
A weak noise emitted from the engine, but it didn’t turn over. She pumped the gas and twisted the key again. Again it made a sound of struggle, but no purr. No rev.
The third time it wouldn’t even gasp for life. Just the click of the key, then nothing.
Shit. They’d pulled over not to search her, but because the van had broken down. The damn pothole.
She grabbed her phone from her bra and hit the last number dialed.
Pax answered immediately. “Morgan?” His voice was urgent, hoarse.
“I killed them, Pax. They’re dead. But I’m stuck. The van won’t start. I don’t even know where I am.”
“We’re locking in on the cell phone GPS now. A team of SEALs has been mobilized. They’ll be in the air in seconds.”
She burst into tears.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“Stay with me, Morgan.” Pax’s voice came out smooth and even, betraying no hint of the tremors that quaked inside. At least, he hoped that was the case. “Tell me what you see. They’re trying to patch my phone into the command center so everyone at SOCOM will be able to hear you.”
On the other end of the line, Morgan took a deep, hiccupping breath. “I think we’re on the western edge of the city. The driver pulled the van over, and I thought it was so they could search me, but now the van won’t start. He took a pothole really hard. It must have damaged something.”
Like everything else at Camp Citron, SOCOM was housed in a temporary structure. Kit built, the command center was a hybrid between a tent and prefab construction but was filled with technology that belied the humble exterior. All around Pax, members of a Special Forces B-Team scrambled to extract every bit of data they could from Morgan’s phone and relayed that data to the SEAL team that was piling into a Blackhawk as they spoke.
“Is there anyone around on the street?” he asked.
“No. The area is wide open. There’s a series of old, run-down houses about a hundred yards behind me. Ahead is open road that winds through the desert. I’m surprised I have cell coverage.”
Next to him, his XO and one of the SEAL team commanders discussed whether or not she should leave the van and take shelter in one of the houses. To Morgan, he said, “Can you make a run for one of the houses?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t have my gun. It’s on the ground by the driver. But I can grab it if I leave the van.”
The back wall of SOCOM HQ was covered in monitors. One showed an aerial map of the location where Morgan had been grabbed with lines indicating possible routes the van had taken. Another monitor showed the cell towers that had been pinged, while a third showed a tech’s efforts to zero in on the phone GPS location. Finally, the faint red blip, which had been darting all over the map, solidified, indicating a lock on her location. As she’d guessed, she was on the western perimeter of the city.
Satellite images zoomed in. These were static images, not yet from a live satellite feed. Now that he had the location, the tech was working to bring a live camera online, even as he transmitted her GPS coordinates to the Blackhawk that had just lifted off.
On the third monitor, Captain Oswald pointed to a row of houses near the red dot that represented Morgan. “These must be the houses. What’s the intel on this area?” he asked another tech.
“So far all I have is that it’s an Afar neighborhood. Possibly abandoned after an attack by Issa militants some months ago. That edge of town is rough.”
“Stay in the van,” Pax said to Morgan. He needed to keep her talking. They needed more information. The SEALs would be going in blind. They needed to know about every potential threat to themselves and to Morgan. “You said you killed your abductors. You’re certain?”
“Yes. I got a knife from the guard in the back and cut his carotid.” Her voice was steady, with only the slightest waver on the last word. “He’s definitely dead.”
Pax closed his eyes as he imagined the shock of what she’d had to do, utterly thankful she didn’t hesitate, but horrified by the scars she’d bear. This wasn’t her world. “And the driver?” he asked, hating that he had to delve further, that he wasn’t there to hold her as she relayed the story.
“I stabbed him in the heart. I can see him through the window. He’s not moving, not breathing.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Is Hugo safe?”
“Yes. His family is being moved. They’ll be protected until Desta is neutralized.”
“Thank you. Tell everyone there I said thank you.” Her sob played in stereo over the speakers as his phone was finally synced with the command console.
“You’re on speaker, Morgan,” he said. “Everyone can hear you now.”
“Thank you,” she repeated. She cleared her throat. “Is my”—her voice broke on a hiccup—“dad there?”
“Not yet. He was on a ship in the Gulf when Ripley called. He’s on a copter now. Should be here any minute.”
“Tell him I’m sorry,” she said. “Just…sorry.”
“You’ll tell him.” He studied the map showing the Blackhawk. “The SEALs are five minutes out. You’ll be back at Camp Citron in no time.”
He held his breath against the words he couldn’t say. He couldn’t tell her that he’d been fighting a losing battle against falling in love with her from the day they met. That all his crazy, caveman possessiveness was because his heart had known—even when his head was too damn stupid to catch on—she was his and there was no going back to his solitary, single-minded existence.
He wanted to give her everything he’d been holding back. But this was so very public, and he’d be locked out of the op to take out Desta if he made it obvious how personal the mission would be for him. Hell, odds were he’d be locked out anyway, but he wasn’t about to make it an easy decision for his XO. He wanted to kill Desta with his bare hands. He’d been a guerilla fighter for years, but he’d never felt bloodlust for a particular human enemy before. Until today, it had been about protecting his country against faceless enemies.
This was protecting his woman.
His throat was full of all the words he couldn’t say. He gripped the p
hone, and one slipped out. “Mine,” he said in a low whisper.
She made a noise that sounded like a choked sob. “I killed them, Pax.”
“You had to.”
“I know…” She cleared her throat. “It’s not Ripley’s fault. I had to protect Hugo.”
Adrenaline pulsed through him. Morgan was taken. The words kept hammering through his brain. He’d failed her. She’d fought and killed two abductors. She was miles away. In danger. His body shook with the need to go after her.
He hadn’t prevented this. Hadn’t protected her. He could have told his XO his concerns about allowing her to return to her apartment. He could have ensured Captain Oswald would deny her request. He could have stopped this from happening.
Morgan was taken.
Morgan gasped, then said, “Is that Ripley in the Humvee?”
Pax looked over at his XO, then glanced at the screen that showed the neighborhood where Morgan had been abducted. Ripley had been searching for the van and had been directed to patrol the north end of the city. He was miles away from Morgan’s position.
Sickening dread filled his belly.
He met the gaze of his XO. The man’s horrified expression likely mirrored Pax’s.
Into the phone, he said, “No! We don’t have any Humvees in the area.” Shit. Desta had a Humvee?
Morgan let out a strangled gasp. “The damn van won’t start!” There was thumping in the background as she let out a sob. “No. Dammit, no!”
He guessed she was hitting the steering wheel in frustration. “Stay with me, babe,” Pax urged. “SEALs are on their way.”
“I’m going for the gun.” Her voice sounded distant, as if she’d dropped the phone.
“No! Stay in the van. Hide in the back.” Shit. She was dead if she stayed. But going for the gun…
He wanted to puke.
The phone went silent. He guessed she’d left it in the van as she grabbed the gun.
A spray of gunfire was projected in stereo for every man in the room to hear. Had Morgan grabbed a machine gun from one of the dead militants? Had Ripley seen machine guns in their arsenal? He couldn’t remember. He could barely even think as he waited to hear her voice, waiting for her to say she’d fired the gun, that he hadn’t just heard someone shooting at her.
