Ali knew that Chuck would throw a small Raven drone into the air once they landed and the MH-47 took off. He’d sit with his laptop open, guiding it down the many goat trails below them, looking for enemy waiting to ambush them. He’d also fly it around the village, checking out where Taliban were hiding in the tree line. Once he’d located the enemy, Wyatt would make a plan, and he’d order the team ahead toward their destination.
“Hey, Montero.”
Her earpiece came alive and it startled her, her focus on Tinker and the satellite feed on his laptop. She looked up. It was Torres. Gulping, she rasped, “What?” He was so close, like a dark shadow coming across her, blotting out the moonlight that bathed the group. She saw the glitter in his eyes, the way his expression was set, and that ‘game face’ that everyone wore getting ready for combat.
“Will Sloan take good care of Mazzie?”
She swallowed her surprise, never having expected him to come back and speak to her again. “She’s the best. She’ll take great care of her until we can get back to base. Why?”
She saw a slight softening of his mouth. “Just wonderin’ was all.”
“Oh, sure.” Damn! She had a smart, flippant mouth on her and sometimes stuff came flying out of it that should never have seen the light of day—like right now. “Sorry,” she breathed quickly. “You didn’t deserve that.”
“That’s a first,” he murmured, looking over her head, watching the MH-47 trundling toward them.
“What is, Torres?”
“An apology from you. You’ve been here nearly four months now, and never said sorry to anyone.”
Her eyes narrowed and she glared up at him. “What? You go around with a notepad and mark down the times I do or say something? Is that it?” Now she was angry.
He held up his gloved hand. “Peace, Montero. I know you think I should take care of Mazzie, but that’s dead in the water. And I appreciate you’re doing it. Well, you and Sloan. Maybe you didn’t expect me to ask about the pup twice in a row. Right?”
She dragged in a breath and released it, avoiding the amusement in his eyes. “That’s why I apologized. You were sincere. I get that. I didn’t think you really cared enough to ask about Mazzie again after that first time.” Maybe Wyatt’s talk with him had worked. She could see he was trying and she had to try also.
She recognized he was being honest with her and she wasn’t going to sugar coat her part in this little dance dialogue they were having with one another. Black-ops people were exactly that: one could never assume one knew them unless they wanted to reveal themselves. And Torres had never revealed a thing to her, except for two days ago, when she forced him to give the pup a name. A name that meant something to him—something good.
Ram reached out, smoothing out the line of her CamelBak plastic tube that had arched too high across her shoulder. He got it to lie down, the mouthpiece anchored by Velcro just above her breast beneath the Kevlar vest. The act was intimate, or it felt like it to her. Torres had never been this genial toward her. In fact, he never even talked with her unless he had to on a radio transmission during an op. He’d avoided her like the plague since she’d arrived. But for some reason, she liked the guy, despite his sour disposition and grumpiness. And Sloan was right: Ram Torres was a perfect male specimen that any woman in her right mind would drool over, and then have lust-filled dreams about later.
Taking a step away from him, Ali studied his deeply shadowed face. Ram looked thoughtful, at ease, as if nothing were bothering him. “What’s going on, Torres?” she snapped.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t bullshit me. I know better.”
He laughed. He actually laughed! In response, she felt every nerve ending in her body react to the deep, warm sound, even though it was mostly drowned out by the blades turning on the Chinook as it got ready to take them on board. She gave him a searching look and said, “What’s so damned funny, Torres?”
He stopped laughing and gained control of himself. “You. You’re a feisty little thing. You always were.”
“Damn right I am.” She tapped her CamelBak water line on her shoulder. “This little attempt at being ‘nice’ to me is so out of the ordinary for you, so you’re right I’m questioning your motives.” She saw him try to rein in his amusement.
“Wyatt just ordered me to team up with you on this op. So I guess we’re both gonna try to trust one another whether we like it or not.” He gestured toward her shoulder. “We’ve never been assigned to each other on an op until now. I was giving your equipment a once-over, making sure everything was okay when I saw the line was too high. It could have gotten snagged on a piece of brush, or a tree, and caused noise. Partners look out for each other and that means checking out the equipment they’re wearing, too.”
She frowned, not quite believing what she was hearing. “Wyatt ordered us to team up?” That blew her away. She quickly checked him and his pack out, not wanting him to think she didn’t have his back—because she always did.
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Go ask him if you want. “He lifted his chin, looking over the dark assemblage toward where Lockwood was standing and still shouting into his sat phone. “Except I don’t think right now is a good time to ask him, do you?”
Turning, Ali saw that Lockwood was in full planning mode, and was definitely not to be interrupted. Twisting around, she growled, “No, it’s not the best time.”
“Well,” he said, rocking back on the heels of his combat boots, a rather genial look on his grease painted face, “I guess we’re just gonna have to learn to get along. Aren’t we, mi amiga?”
Her eyes widened. That was the first time Torres had ever spoken to her in Spanish. “Se gana la amistad, friendship is earned,” Ali replied softly.
Ram gave her a thoughtful stare. “Sí, un paso a paso, one step at a time.”
Just then, Ali heard Wyatt over her earpiece. “Balls to the wall, team. Saddle up!”
CHAPTER 4
Ali was sitting with half the team on one side of the shuddering MH-47, a reddish light on the inside of the fuselage cast throughout the interior of the cabin. She could feel the vibration of the twin engines whirling above her, as well as ripples moving up through her boots from the metal deck. They had a hundred miles to fly, a long way for a mission. They all wore earphones to cut out the ear-destroying noise. Ram sat opposite her, across the aluminum deck, his face unreadable, just like the rest of the group. It was show time.
She saw Wyatt up in the stairwell leading up to the cockpit where the two pilots were located. He was on one of the SEAL communication radio frequencies, continuing to coordinate the mission with SEAL HQ at Bagram. He turned around, making a sharp gesture toward her, and instantly she was on her feet.
When she reached Wyatt, he indicated by a jab at his earpiece for her to turn their radio to a private channel.
“What’s up?” she asked, wondering if it had anything to do with her encounter with Ram.
But it was far more important.
“I’ve got Aarmaan, the chief of that village, on the sat phone. He’s upset as hell and he’s speakin’ Pashto a mile a minute and I can’t understand a word he’s saying.”
“What’s the frequency?” she asked.
Wyatt gave it to her and she traded places with him at the entrance to the cockpit.
“Aarmaan, it’s Ali,” she greeted him in Pashto. “What were you trying to tell Wyatt?”
“Oh! Allah help us. Ali, the Taliban broke through our wall! They’ve gone house-to-house, stealing our young girls and boys. Oh!” he wailed, his voice cracking with terror. “They’ve stolen them! They came to rob us of our children, and to sell them as sex slaves in Pakistan! You must help us! You must!”
Her heart broke as she heard his sobs and tightened her hand around the radio, trying to get a grip on her own feelings. She forced herself to stay calm. Panic wouldn’t help anyone, and she knew that people made bad decisions when they lost cont
rol. “When did it happen?”
“When I called Sahib Wyatt the first time, there were six Taliban looking for a way to get into our village. We watched them, afraid they would try to break in! We didn’t know how many others were waiting out in the trees, but after a couple of hours, they drove up with a big truck and parked it outside our wall. Then, they blew a hole into the wall with an IED and ran into our village with AK-47s! They started breaking open the doors on all our homes, searching for children between ten and twelve years old! They stole fifteen of our children, Ali! We are terrified for them! We had no way to fight these men! They threatened to kill us if we tried to stop them or follow the truck. That was an hour ago.”
“And did you see which direction they took?” Her mind was recalling the topography of that small valley high in the mountains. They were fifty miles away from the Pakistan border, and she would bet her life the men were driving as fast as they could over one of few, but tortuous mountain roads, trying to reach the border before the Americans could launch a rescue mission to stop them.
Sobbing, barely able to speak, his voice wobbling badly, Aarmaan replied, “They took the only road in and out of our valley. We did follow them. The fathers quickly took to the hills above the road and watched them go down the mountain slope very slowly. When they got to the bottom of it, they were in another valley, heading east, toward the border, I’m sure.”
“Can you tell me about how many men attacked your village?”
“At least eight men. There were two who stayed in the cab of the Pakistani military truck, but the other six ran in and grabbed our precious sons and daughters from us.”
“Did they hurt the children?”
“No . . . no, they just grabbed them ran out through that hole in our village wall and put our children in the back of the truck.”
“Into the back of the truck? You’re sure?”
“Y-yes. And then one of the fathers saw six Taliban get in the rear of it with our screaming, crying children. Then, they pulled a huge flap down over the opening so he could no longer see anything and drove off.”
“How many boys?”
“Five. The rest are our precious little daughters.”
“Any smaller vehicles along with the truck?”
“No. Please, can you help us? My people are crying in grief and shock over their children being stolen. They know what is going to happen to them. They are wailing with despair.”
“We’re on our way, Aarmaan. You’ve given us good information. Now, we’ll go to the maps and the satellite and try to locate that truck. I’ll be back in touch with you and keep you in the loop.”
“You must! You must! Even your dear little favorite, ten-year-old Husna, was taken!”
Ali kept her voice calm, but inside she was a whirlpool of emotions. Husna was indeed very dear to her, almost like a daughter. She saw Wyatt come and stand nearby as she spoke, his expression heavy with concern. “Thank you for telling me that. We’re going to do everything we can to bring all your children back to your village.”
She signed off and handed the radio to the copilot. Turning, she donned her headset again and dialed to the private line to speak only with Wyatt. In as few words as possible, she told him everything. His gray eyes grew hard when she finished.
“Come with me. We need to fire up the Toughbook with the communications guys. We need a mission reset, pronto. I’m going to get Tinker over with us and the three of us will try to locate that truck via satellite.”
Giving him a brief nod, she followed him down to the aluminum deck, placing her feet wide apart to keep from losing her balance and falling as the helo shuddered and shook. They took three empty nylon seats toward the rear of the helo and sat down. She saw Ram give her a questioning look, but he said nothing and neither did she. He remained sitting with the rest of the team.
Husna! That a beautiful green-eyed, red-haired child! Ali fought thoughts of the reality that might become the child, trying to not let it deluge her. From the first time they’d met, the girl doted on Ali. She had lost her mother in childbirth and was being raised by her maiden aunt, a woman who seemed unable to show her love. Once Ali recognized this, she gave the woman money to ensure that she would keep Husna. Often, orphaned children met a horrible fate because families living in near-starvation in these villages could rarely afford to feed an extra mouth. She might have been exiled from the village, to die of starvation or exposure to the elements out beyond the walls of the village in frigid weather.
“Husna” meant ‘beauty,’ and Ali could see why the Taliban would grab her. She was a beautiful child and would go for a high price as a virgin if her team couldn’t stop that truck from leaving Afghan territory. Her stomach recoiled, but she forced back her visceral reaction to those dark thoughts, focusing instead on the changed mission.
Ali had trouble concentrating as she watched the laptop come alive with images as an Air Force satellite passed over the area. Ali knew all the children of that village because Wyatt brought his team there every few weeks.
Its strategic placement made it important to the SEALs. The enemy created many nearby “ratlines,” new trails made by the Taliban to bring weapons, armory items, shells, IEDs, and bomb-making materials into Afghanistan. The village elders would tell Wyatt and his team where they were so they could be found quickly and destroyed. Any village who worked with Americans became the enemy of the Taliban. These courageous people were risking their own lives to help the SEALs.
Wyatt had cultivated a deep, respectful relationship with Aarmaan, a kind, loving man in his fifties, and a Sufi Muslim. Everyone, except the Taliban, revered him. The Sufis believed that love was the greatest healing emotion in the world and his villagers whispered that their leader was a saint sent by God to their village to care for all of them. She understood the tragic blow that was hammering the village right now. The families were so close to each other, and their children meant everything to them. She just couldn’t begin to imagine the distraught mothers who’d had their children torn away from them—and the wailing, the tears falling right now as the shock of the raid began to sink in. How helpless they must feel!
As she listened to Wyatt and Tinker go over the sat photos coming in, she opened one of the area maps to see where they might be able to stop the truck. It took twenty minutes before Wyatt came up with a plan. He dialed in his radio, calling all the team members over to a pallet that was strapped down in the center of the helo. Wide, thick nylon straps held it in place as the bird bumped along in the night sky. The team had placed all their gear nearby, beneath anchored netting, and stood expectantly around the huge pallet, waiting to hear what had happened.
Ali was standing to the left of Wyatt, Tinker to his right. They had their two laptops open so the group could see, in real time, a Pakistani military truck chugging down a steep mountain switchback, swaying from side to side.
She felt someone approach her and automatically looked up. It was Ram. She could see genuine worry in his eyes as he placed himself near her left shoulder, but far enough behind her so she didn’t feel threatened by his presence. She’d become distracted by his unexpected move and was surprised to feel the sense of protection that enfolded her. She swallowed hard, stifling her emotional reaction to the children’s kidnapping.
She also blocked out her reaction to Torres’ approach. Too much was going on right now to assimilate it all. Right now, her priority was rescuing those hapless, frightened children.
*
Ram remained in the background, listening intently to the new agenda. After Wyatt had gotten them all up to speed on the op, all the SEALs had comments and suggestions, including Ram. It took some back and forth for twenty minutes before the final plan was drawn up. Tinker had been able to get a photograph of the truck carrying the children. It was a typical, olive-green, a Unimog U5000. This workhorse truck was used to carry everything from human beings to weapons. It had a twenty-six-thousand-pound carrying capacity, and was used by the Pak
istani Army to move materials or troops. It would take time for it to snake through the switchbacks, slowing it to a crawl. The roads were in such poor condition they would have time to reach a certain area, stop, and rescue the children before the truck crossed the border.
With the plan in place, Wyatt took the new coordinates for where the MH-47 would deposit the team. Tinker and Chuck were hunched over their laptops, swiftly figuring out all the details for such a landing. First, the area would have to be cleared of any Taliban who might be potentially loitering in the area. The Unimog would be trundling down the dirt road in less than an hour and there were many crucial details to be swiftly worked out.
Ram knew that Wyatt had his hands full with this unexpected turn of events. Their mission had gone from expecting an attack by the Taliban on a village, to a rescue effort to get the abducted children back home to their distraught parents.
Once the decision was made, the helo changed course. The arrival time to their new landing spot was now twenty-five minutes away. He watched Ali sit down far away from the team, choosing the nylon seat at the end of the line. The reddish light filling the cabin revealed the anguish she was feeling when she thought no one was watching.
Girding himself, he began walking down the bay towards her. For some reason, he actually wanted to go to her. He knew there was nothing he could do to help her, but what the hell. And then he was there, the corner darkened, and he saw her lift her chin, staring up at him in surprise.
He switched to the private channel. “Feel like some company, or would you rather be alone?” For a moment, Ram swore he saw tears in her eyes, but just as quickly, they disappeared. It was the first time he’d seen her without her game face in place and it did odd things to him.
Ram waited patiently, letting her decide if he should stay or go. Why had he come down here? Was it because Wyatt had threatened him if he didn’t have her back? Or was it something else, deeper and far more mysterious that moved him to join her in this dark corner as she fought back tears.
Trapped (Delos Series Book 7) Page 6
