Protecting Caroline (SEAL of Protection Book 1)

by Susan Stoker

  He finally spun toward the laptop and clicked the mouse that would start the awful video again.

  “Tell me what happened!” The man beating her screamed. At her silence he continued screeching at her. “How did you know the ice was drugged? I know it was you. Those dumb ass SEALs don’t have the smarts to know their head from their ass. I know it wasn’t them. What tipped you off? How did they get the jump on my men?”

  The SEALs could see the man getting more and more agitated as he continued to ask Caroline questions and she refused to answer. At one point Wolf heard Cookie say under his breath, “Jesus, just tell him sweetheart. God, just tell him what he wants to know. ”

  She didn’t.

  Abe paced behind the men. He couldn’t watch anymore. Those bastards. How could they do that to a woman? To their Ice? Why didn’t she just tell him and save herself some agony?

  They watched as the man yelling at Caroline stopped asking her what she’d done and looked up toward the camera. Then he lost it, ranting at the SEALs, at how they all thought they were God’s gift to the world and thought they were invincible.

  The man continued to berate and hit at Caroline, but they heard a disembodied voice come from behind the camera. They hadn’t realized someone else was in the room. They could only see the three men taking turns beating Caroline. “How does it feel watching my interrogation? I’m finding it quite…entertaining.” The chuckle that followed the flat statement was horrifying. It suddenly became clear.

  “That’s the traitor,” Benny said, hate clear in his tone. “That’s the bastard that’s behind everything.”

  Before anyone else could say anything, the camera was jostled and the team realized the mysterious traitor was now holding the camera.

  The SEALs all watched as the unknown man carried the camera close to Caroline. He zoomed in on her face, speaking directly to the SEALs the entire time.

  “How does it feel to watch them beat her? How does it feel to see the blood falling from her skull, knowing I ordered it?” He zoomed in on her wrists. “Look at how she’s struggled trying to get away from me. The zip ties are cutting off her circulation. See how her fingers are turning blue?”

  He laughed then—an evil nasty laugh that sliced through Wolf and his team.

  The man stood back so they had a wide angle view of Caroline in the chair. They all saw the other men come up on either side of her.

  “Jesus no,” Wolf moaned. He couldn’t take this anymore. He turned away from the computer screen. They were going to kill her and he couldn’t watch. He wouldn’t stop the video again, but he’d be damned if he watched his love die. Then, changing his mind he abruptly turned back to the screen. No, he wanted to watch. He needed the motivation to keep him going after she was gone. He needed a reason to find every one of the men, and every one of the terrorists in their organization and make them pay.

  The team watched as one of the men struck out and knocked her over, still tied to the chair. She fell hard on her side. All the men could hear her grunt as her head bounced off the hard floor as she landed.

  The man in charge just laughed in the background

  “That was awesome. I’m surprised her head didn’t split open.” The camera came close to Caroline’s face again. The disembodied voice sounded again. “You want to tell me what I want to know yet, babe?” he taunted her.

  “I’ll tell you,” Caroline mumbled while bloody saliva dripped from her battered and torn lips.

  Abe moaned, actually moaned. “No, Jesus, don’t.” None of them knew if it was better if she kept her mouth shut or if she told this demented man what he thought he needed to know. Who knew what he’d do after she told him how she knew the ice was drugged.

  Wolf leaned toward the screen as if he could will the man behind the camera to make a mistake, to step in front of the video camera just once. All he needed was one split second. Tex would do his magic and have a photo to them in no time if that happened. He saw Caroline spit some blood out of her mouth and try to lift her head off the ground. She still lay on her side, suspended in the chair she was tied to.

  She sounded horrible. Her words were slurred and she mumbled her words. “You want to know what happened, asshole?”

  At the man’s affirmative grunt, she continued, “Well fuck you. You and your army of gullible terrorists can get back on whatever party boat you sailed here on and go to hell!” She’d looked right at the camera while saying it, not at the man standing next to her, not into the eyes of the man holding the camera. It was as if she looked right into the eyes of each of the SEAL team members as she’d spoken. There was silence in the room for a moment, then the man behind the camera nonchalantly commented, “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Your bitch isn’t very bright is she, Wolf? We’ll be in touch.” And the video went dark.

  Wolf tried to hold it together. He was losing it. They had nothing. Nothing. He growled and kicked at a stool. It went flying across the room.

  In the silence of the room Abe unexpectantly urged, “Play that last part again.”

  Wolf turned to him incredulously. “You want to watch that shit again? What the fuck, Abe?”

  Abe wasn’t listening. He reached over Wolf, ignoring his incredulous question and grabbed the mouse, not waiting for him to do what he’d asked. They watched Caroline being kicked and watched her stare eerily at the camera again and heard her recorded voice say, “Well fuck you. You and your army of gullible terrorists can get back on whatever party boat you sailed here on and go to hell!”

  Abe played it again. Then again. Wolf was about to beat the hell out of his teammate. He couldn’t watch it one more time without losing his shit. He couldn’t hear her slurred words full of pain. He felt like his heart was breaking.

  Abe turned to his teammates. “Did you catch that?”

  “Hell yeah,” Dude said urgently. “It’s not a lot to go on, but it’s a start.”

  Wolf shook his head and stared at his teammates. What was he missing? What had Dude and Abe caught that he’d missed? As much as he didn’t want to see Caroline’s battered and bruised face or hear her tortured voice one more time, he had to hear it for himself.

  “Well fuck you. You and your army of gullible terrorists can get back on whatever party boat you sailed here on and go to hell!”

  Suddenly he got it. Caroline was giving them clues. Gulls and party boats….she had to be somewhere near the ocean. She’d looked right at them and willed them to understand. It wasn’t a lot to go on, as Norfolk was an ocean port, but the party boat remark had to mean something. Caroline knew the difference between the Navy ships, the container ships, and pleasure boats. They’d even had a conversation when they’d toured the base about the difference between a ship and a boat. She’d teased him about not wanting his manly SEAL ship to be called a boat. Her wording to them couldn’t have been coincidence.

  The men all got up from the table. Cookie was already on the phone with their commander, and Abe was on the phone with Tex. They’d find her, they had to.

  Wolf thought of his woman. He loved her. Caroline was his everything. She was amazing and if he lost her he didn’t know what he’d do. She could be dead right now, they could’ve killed her after they shut off the video, but he didn’t think so.

  Wolf thought again about how the guy behind the camera called him by his name. He knew him, or at least knew of him. They had to figure out who he was and fast. Right now Caroline was his main concern, but Wolf knew they had to stop the leak as a matter of National Security. The man would want to keep Caroline alive to taunt him. Wolf didn’t know how he knew that, but if they hadn’t killed her on the video, she was still alive. They were going to use her somehow; they just had to get to her before that happened.

  “Hang on, Ice. We’re coming for you.” Wolf hoped his fervent words somehow made it through the cosmos into her heart.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Caroline didn’t open her eyes when she heard the men return to the room. They hadn’t bothered putti
ng her upright after turning off the video camera earlier, so all she could do was lie on the floor and concentrate on breathing.

  She didn’t think she could take much more of the attacks. She was having trouble breathing; she thought she most likely had a broken or cracked rib or two from the last beating she’d received. She wondered if Matthew and the others had gotten her message. She didn’t think it was all that clever or helpful, but maybe they could figure it out.

  While she’d been waiting for the men to come back and start beating on her again, she’d realized the sounds she was hearing outside weren’t sounds like she heard on the Naval docks when Matthew had taken her there. She also didn’t hear anything like she’d seen at the shipping yard. So she could only conclude she was at some smaller dock. That’s why she’d made she’d said ‘boat’ and not ‘ship.’ She knew Matthew would understand, she’d joked with him about living on a boat and he’d made sure to correct her. He’d been on a ship, not a boat. It was a long shot, but she had to try to give them something.

  She couldn’t think straight anymore. They hadn’t given her anything to eat or drink. Her mouth was beyond dry and she’d kill for a drink of water. She supposed it was too much bother to feed people you were going to kill. She figured if Matthew and his team didn’t find her really soon, it wasn’t going to matter anyway.

  She felt two men pick up the chair she was strapped to and set it upright again. Caroline sagged against the ropes binding her to the chair. Ouch. She felt the ropes being loosened and she almost fell back onto the floor. Her wrists were still zip-tied to the armrests so she wasn’t going anywhere. She didn’t try to move, she couldn’t anymore. She was all out of fight. She pried her swollen eyes apart and looked at the man crouched in front of her. It was the dirty smelly one that had first threatened her with rape. The polished man in the three piece suit wasn’t anywhere she could see.

  “Not so arrogant now are you, bitch?” he spat, then continued as if they were having a real conversation. “It really is a pity you know. My men really wanted to take their turn with you, but they aren’t interested anymore. They wanted to see if you were as much of a spitfire while being taken from behind as you would be when they raped you on your back.”

  Caroline didn’t even flinch. Nothing this man could say to her would faze her anymore. She knew he probably wasn’t kidding, but all she cared about was how he was going to kill her. She knew it’d be unpleasant and she was trying to brace herself for any possibility. She tuned him out thinking about whether having her throat slashed open would hurt.

  The man continued to talk while one of his men shoved a pair of scissors under one zip tie on her wrist to cut it off. Caroline gasped at the pain that tore through her, but she refused to cry out. She knew they were being extra brutal with her just to see if they could get her to beg them. She tried to pay attention to the smelly man as the other zip tie was cut off cruelly.

  “It’s too bad you wouldn’t cooperate with us. We’ll still succeed without you. I’ll figure out what tipped you off. I’m done with this. He’s done with you. I’ll be sure to tell your boyfriend how pathetic you were. We’re going to go for a little boat ride…I’ll give you one more chance…”

  When she looked away from him, refusing to consider telling him anything, he grunted and stood up. He motioned to one of his men and he came forward, leaned down and hauled her over his shoulder. Caroline screamed out in pain. Agony shot through her body. The ribs she’d thought might be broken, she now knew were. The pain shooting up from her ribs was almost unbearable. She gasped, it was the worst pain she’d ever felt in her entire life. She wished she could pass out.

  She’d watched television in the past and felt sorry for women who’d been beaten by their boyfriends or husbands, but she’d never really thought about the pain they went through. She’d seen their black eyes and heard them say how much it hurt, but until you experienced it first-hand there was no way to describe the feeling.

  Caroline wished with all her heart Matthew was here. She knew it was irrational and impossible, but she wanted him. She’d never been the type of person to rely on a man, but God, she’d do anything for him to hold her and tell her everything would be all right. He’d know what to do.

  She would’ve cried if she had it in her, but all she could do was try to hold on to the man who was carrying her and try to breathe shallow careful breaths. With her luck he’d drop her just to laugh at her reaction. She shut her eyes. God, would this ever end?

  * * *

  Wolf watched the warehouse closely. They’d lucked out. Tex had sent out word to be on the lookout for suspicious activity to his vast network of military members, private investigators, cops, and hackers. After only half an hour, one of his contacts had mentioned there’d been some activity at a warehouse near where his boat was docked in the old section of Norfolk. There was a large marina nearby that had boats that cost up to a million dollars right alongside small fishing vessels.

  Tex had taken that lead and followed up with it himself, finding cell phone pings and other electronic activity coming from the area. He’d hacked into a security camera on the dock and had confirmed that at least one of the men that had been beating Caroline on the video was in the area.

  Wolf’s team headed out there immediately, set up a perimeter, and watched for a while. They saw two of the men from the video enter the building. This was it. Wolf wanted to race in and snatch Caroline away from the lunatics, but he knew he couldn’t. He had to let this play out. He’d actually put Abe in charge of the mission because he knew there was no way he could be objective. This was Caroline, his Ice, they were going to rescue.

  The team had been on many rescue missions together in the past, and they’d most likely go on many more in the future, but they all understood at a gut level it was different this time. They were essentially rescuing one of their own. Ice belonged to Wolf; they all knew it and they all were one hundred percent devoted to getting her back alive. Not one of them was unaffected by watching her bravery on the tape.

  They’d been trained at how to deal with interrogation tactics and how to mitigate the effects of a beating. Hell, their time in basic training and BUD/S was more torture than most people would ever have to face. They’d had years of experience. Caroline had none, yet she’d taken what they’d done to her better than any civilian. She was innocent as anyone else they’d ever met. She was theirs. She was Ice.

  Abe had no problems with being in charge. Wolf knew that he, out of all the rest of his team, knew how much Caroline meant to him and how badly he wanted to get her back safely as well. Abe had seen her bravery in person. While Cookie, Dude, and Benny appreciated her bravery from watching the video and from what they’d heard from the others, they didn’t know her yet. While it wasn’t “just” a job to them, it was more personal for him and Abe.

  They knew they couldn’t just rush in. They had to wait and get the traitor behind the camera. That was the only way this would end and Caroline could be free to live her life. Wolf didn’t want to think of Caroline walking away from him, but he wanted her to be able to live free of fear. This whole incident might make her think twice about having anything to do with him. If he thought it was in her best interest, he’d even push her away. But he wanted to her to live. He needed her to live.

  He hadn’t thought much past getting back from his mission and seeing Caroline again, but everything that had happened in the short time they’d been back in the States had changed his outlook, especially now that he’d held her in his arms for a few nights. He didn’t want to let her go. He wouldn’t let her go if she showed even half the interest in him that he had for her.

  As the group watched the warehouse, two men exited with Caroline thrown over one of their shoulders. Wolf watched as she tried to prop herself up with her arms on the guy’s back, but she was having trouble. It took Abe’s hand on his arm for him to realize he’d been about to rush the men right then and there. It went against every protecti
ve bone in his body to allow the men to carry her further and further away from him and not do anything about it. He knew they had to find the man behind the attempted hijacking of the plane, but knowing almost wasn’t enough. They watched as the trio headed toward the boats lined up on the dock on the other side.

  Wolf and Abe moved around the building silently. Wolf trusted Benny was still in position. On a hunch, they’d set him up undercover. Hopefully the scumbags wouldn’t recognize him from the cabin. No one knew if the terrorists had actually seen the other members of the team or not, but they had to take the chance. Wolf figured even if they did see Benny, they wouldn’t recognize him the way he was disguised.

  Bennie’d dressed as a fisherman who was cleaning his fish near the dock. They wanted to get as much information as they could before they moved in. If the terrorists tried to move Caroline, they wanted Benny there to listen and see what he could find out. If they did transport her by water, they needed to know which boat she was on. There were too many boats for them to have to guess where she was. They all knew they wouldn’t get another chance to find her. This was it.

  They watched as the terrorists drew near to where Benny was.

  “She had too much to drink, huh?” Benny laughed, acting as if he’d had one too many beers that day while fishing.

  The man carrying Caroline made sure to keep her head away from Benny. He smacked her ass and said, “Yeah, something like that.” They didn’t stick around to chat, but kept walking, keeping their eye on Benny.

  Benny stood up as they passed him. He made no move to interfere with their movements, knowing he was out numbered, and essentially on a recon mission. After they passed he sat back down and pretended to go back to work on his fish again.

  Seeing the fisherman do nothing suspicious, the men turned around and walked briskly toward the dock.

  Caroline lifted her head to try to get the drunken fisherman to notice her. She had to make someone see that this wasn’t normal, that she was hurt; she had to get some message out. When she lifted her head, she saw the fisherman staring back at her. She didn’t want anyone else drawn into this, but she had to do something. She opened her mouth to say something; she didn’t know what, but something. But before she could get anything out, they started around a corner of the dock.