by Paul A. Rice
Backing away from the door, I whispered: ‘There’s definitely someone down there, but there’s no easy way in…’
Looking at the door, and seeing how narrow it was, I said, ‘The stairs are probably really tight so we’ll be in close proximity, just don’t shoot me up the arse!’
‘No dramas, mate – let’s just do it,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll boot door open and you go in low, take the right side and stay down once you’re on the stairs. I’ll stay up and take the left, Okay?’
‘Roger that,’ I said, checking to make sure my weapon was ready. ‘Any funny stuff, then just let ‘em have the good news!’
‘Okay, ready when you are,’ Rory said, his eyes glinting like black coals. ‘Let’s do it!’
I stood back and watched as he nodded his head, slowly giving the countdown. One, two, three! Raising his thigh, Rory drove the sole of his boot against the flat surface of the door. It was a hell of a kick and such was the force that the whole door simply flew off its hinges, which turned out to be very fortunate for us, and very unfortunate for the man climbing the stairs on the other side.
As soon as the door flew off, I was in there like a man possessed, ducking low and keeping to the right, just as we’d planned. The first thing I saw was the flying door smashing into the chest and face of a bearded man who was halfway up the stairs, the man had a long line of fingernail-marks cut into his face. He stumbled backwards, crying out in surprise and pain. The next thing I saw was the barrel of his AK, flailing around as he tried to gain a foothold on the stairs. The door bounced of his face and went clattering down the steps. He looked up, trying to bring his weapon to bear.
I shot him in the face. The guy twisted to his right, plummeting down to the bottom of the stairs, brains and blood flying all over the place. The noise of my shots was horrendous, smashing into our ears within the confines of the narrow stairwell.
I still heard Rory’s voice, though.
‘Keep down, enemy left!’ he shouted.
I stayed low, watching as my partner drilled two shots into the head another man, one who’d made the fatal mistake of sticking his wide-eyed face around the corner, just as we were in the middle of our assault upon his position. His head exploded, shit flying everywhere, and he dropped where he’d been standing, weapon clattering off the concrete floor.
I leapt down the stairs, weapon in the shoulder, and took up a kneeling position on one of the corpses at the bottom. The other body was slumped on my right, shattered head still dripping its contents onto the floor by my foot.
I waited, listening intently for any sounds of movement.
There was nothing, only the ringing in my ears. I peered around the corner, eyes scanning the darkness. There was a single room in the cellar, it was large and had a mesh-covered window set into the far wall. Orange sunlight filtered weakly through the dust covered pane. There were no other men in the room, not any that were still standing.
The only thing I saw was a crumpled heap against the far wall, but whoever, or whatever it may have been, didn’t seem to be moving.
‘Room clear,’ I said, feeling Rory brush past me as soon as I spoke.
I covered him as he slid along the outside wall, scanning the whole room with his eyes and muzzle as he went from corner to corner. In twenty-seconds we were satisfied that the place was clear, except for the pile of blankets in the corner.
‘Check that out,’ I said, gesticulating with my rifle barrel.
Rory moved across and gingerly poked the pile with his AK, raising his weapon in alarm as we heard a soft whimper.
‘Shit!’ he said, stepping backwards. ‘There’s someone under there!’
Gathering himself, Rory reached forwards, quickly yanking on the thick blanket. His actions pulled a flap of the heavy cloth to one side. The first thing I saw was a cascade of blonde hair, it just flopped out from the folds of cloth, to be followed by an arm, a very long, perfectly-formed arm.
It was Andi’s arm.
‘Oh… Christ!’ I said.
Getting to my feet, I quickly stepped over to where she lay. Dumping my weapon, I pulled the blanket apart and tried to see what was going on. Rory must have gone and found the light switch, because, after a slight buzzing noise, a flickering bulb came on above my head, its dim glow adding to the hazy sunlight, which filtered through the small window.
Andi lay wrapped in the blanket; I gently prised it away from her, scrunching up a corner so that I could prop her head up slightly. Staring down at her face, I knew that she’d been badly injured; her skin was deathly pale, lips almost green in the weird light of the cellar.
I suppose that I should have immediately started doing some first-aid on her, but time just seemed to stop. My brain was going through the motions of what I should be doing, but my body didn’t seem to be able to move. I felt like I’d been frozen, seconds seemed like hours.
I think I heard Rory saying something, but couldn’t quite seem to make any sense of his words, they seemed to be coming from the inside of a tunnel – I couldn’t make sense of anything. I heard the sound of feet running on the cellar stairs, they could have been going up or coming down, but I did nothing. If someone had burst into that room with an atomic bomb, I don’t think I could have cared less.
It was a good job that Rory was there.
I heard him shouting, but it was still as though he was a long way off. ‘Raouf, Raouf! Get Jake’s pack from the car – hurry, we’re downstairs, in the cellar!’ His voice faded away, back into the tunnel.
‘Andi,’ I said, leaning up close to her ear.
‘Andi, are you awake?’
She whined, softly, like a sleeping child.
‘Andi, stay with me – don’t go to sleep, Andi!’ I shook her gently.
She opened her eyes, focussing onto the ceiling above.
‘Andi, it’s me, Jake!’ I said, speaking more loudly this time.
‘Jake, is that you? My Jake… where’ve you been?’ she whispered.
‘Yeah, it’s me, we’ve been looking everywhere for you – sorry I’m late. Listen to me…’ I said, leaning close to her face, ‘…where does it hurt, what’s happened, can you show me?’
Andi grimaced and tried to lick her lips, there was blood in her mouth and smeared across her chin. Her eyes widened and, making a supreme effort, she managed to focus them on my face.
‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said, looking into my eyes. ‘I knew you would come, and now you’re here, thank you…’
Her voice was so faint now that I had to put my ear right up to her mouth. Her breath fluttered against my skin. It was hot and smelled of blood, metallic and salty. I felt her moving under the blanket. Pulling the cloth to one side, I grasped her hand tightly in my own.
Her fingers were like ice as she tried to squeeze my hand.
She breathed out deeply, moaning softly as she did so.
‘They tried to… to take me,’ she whispered. ‘But I wouldn’t let them!’ Her hand tightened as she opened her eyes fully. ‘They had no chance; I don’t ever put out on the first date…’ She tried to grin, baring her teeth, bloodied gums standing in stark contrast to her pallid features.
‘Where are you injured?’ I asked, my eyes searching her face,
With a sigh, Andi said, ‘It’s my stomach, something doesn’t feel right, I’m gurgling inside…’
‘Shsshh, try not to get excited,’ I said. ‘Here, let me look at you.’
Her hand tightened on mine and she murmured something intelligible. I eased my hand away and pulled the blanket down, exposing her chest and stomach. Andi’s jeans were torn open and had been pulled down around her thighs. She wore a pair of blue panties and they were still in place. Half of me was relieved to see that, but the thoughts easily fell into second place behind the anguish of seeing the heart-shaped wound on her lower abdomen.
It was a stab wound, and it was a bad one.
The tops of her jeans and underwear were soaked in blood, and even tho
ugh I could see that the bleeding had stopped, I knew that whatever damage had been done, lay deep inside her stomach.
‘I need to pull your legs up a bit, that’ll make you more comfortable’ I said, gathering her legs in my arms.
‘Andi, hold on, I’m just going to move your legs.’
Her hand tightened. ‘Leave the legs,’ she said.
Breathing out, she whispered: ‘I feel funny, I can’t seem to… I’m, oh…’ She shuddered, turning so limp that I thought she’d passed out.
‘Andi, Andi… wake up!’ I said, urgently shaking her arm.
Andi moved her head. She looked at me, her skin like marble.
‘Just hold me, please… just hold me, Jake,’ she said, softly.
Doing as she asked, I lifted her up, one arm behind her back and one around her waist to the front. Kneeling next to Andi, I cradled her in my arms with our faces just inches apart. Her head lolled backwards, so I moved my hand, holding her head upright and supporting her back with my forearm.
Her eyelids fluttered and then opened. She stared into my eyes, just like she had done before, in some other place, at some other time. I saw her eyes fill with tears, one escaping to trickle slowly down her pallid cheek.
‘Oh…’ she murmured, ‘I think, I… oh…’
Then, like a filament inside a light bulb, dimming when the power is cut, those blue eyes simply faded out.
Helplessly staring into them, I watched as Andi died.
It had only taken a period of time lasting no more than two-or-three minutes. And then that… as they say… was the end of that.
It was also the end of Andi.
I held her tightly, not wanting to leave her, not wanting to do anything except bring her back. I closed Andi’s eyelids with my thumb, the movement pushing another tear from her left eye. It slid down her cheek, stopping above her mouth to sit there, glistening in the cellar’s dim light. I stared at the tear, mesmerised by the irony of such a terrible sight.
Then the familiar feeling of anger and frustration returned to me.
My thoughts overrode all feelings of sorrow and grief. ‘Why? Why her? There are far more people in the world who deserved to die before she did – why Andi, why such a waste?’
The trouble being is that I knew exactly why she’d been killed.
‘People are fucking shit, that’s why!’ The knowledge didn’t help me one bit. I pushed the feelings and thoughts away, all of them, to sit in the awful silence of that ugly cellar with a, beautiful, dead woman in my arms. She, too, was awfully silent.
I heard Rory coming down the stairs. He rushed into the room with my daysack, slinging it onto the floor and unzipping the pouch where the medical kit lay. I watched him in silence, looking over Andi’s shoulder, strands of her blonde hair catching in my stubble. Rory must have been too occupied with the med-kit to notice my posture at first. Then, as he looked up and saw me kneeling there with Andi in my arms, not moving or speaking, Rory stopped messing about with the pack. Without a word, he slumped into a sitting position with his back against the wall.
That was it – game over.
The rest of that day passed me by in a blur of information and activity. All of the others were dead: Bill, Ricky and Farid. Bill having been killed out of sheer spite in the final moments before our assault on the villa began, whilst Ricky and Farid had been killed earlier that afternoon. Raouf’s men carried their bodies downstairs and laid them on the patio, covering the corpses with blankets. Then they went and fetched Andi, laying her gently down next to the men. She was wrapped in the same blanket that she had died in.
Rory and I sat on the steps next to their bodies, frantically calling people to give them the terrible news. It’s funny, but just when I really wanted those phones not to work, they decided to behave perfectly. Those calls were amongst the worst I’ve ever had to make.
Raouf’s men had captured one of the kidnappers alive and it wasn’t too long before they found out the whole story, which they passed on to Rory and me. Sitting on the steps of a dilapidated villa in a shitty part of Tripoli, our driver, whoever he may have really been, filled in the gaps. In stony silence, Rory and I sat and listened to the ghastly details…
***
The gang’s leader, who was now lying dead upstairs after having been shot whilst trying to escape, turned out to be the bearded rebel whom Andi and I had witnessed killing the injured black man in the compound. According to Raouf’s prisoner, on the day the rebels defeated Gadaffi’s forces at the compound, Gino had been filming the bearded man and his friends as they carried-out acts of barbarity against any and all members of Gadaffi’s forces they came across. Gino had been noticed doing this at the time but, due to the mass exodus of people, the perpetrators had been unable to apprehend him. Then, and upon seeing Andi and me watching whilst they executed the other guy, the gang had put two-and-two together. They knew that they would be in big trouble if the tapes or any witness statements ever found the light of day.
Then they got lucky – two days previous to the kidnapping of our crew, one of the gang had seen us, Andi, Gino and me, together in the market place. That was really bad news for them, seeing the cameraman and the two people who had witnessed their other atrocities at first-hand, working together, was a shock. They decided that collectively we knew too much. With us belonging to a large, western media organisation, it surely meant that we would soon be broadcasting a piece on them and on the horrific acts they’d carried out on the 23rd of August.
So they watched us, saw how we operated, and then hatched their little plan. They called Bill and gave him some information about chemical weapons, knowing full-well that a hungry news team would jump at the chance of such a lead – especially since the story of Tripoli’s liberation was now going off the boil. Gadaffi and his whereabouts were the story, but he had disappeared, so the offer of a major piece of information on weapons of mass destruction, proved to be irresistible.
Once the crew arrived in the square they had been met by the gang’s leader, apparently it had gone badly from the off. Andi quickly realising that the man was spinning them a line of bullshit. There had been a scuffle and guns were drawn. Ricky had been beaten unconscious right there in the square outside the café.
The crew had been loaded into vehicles and driven away to the villa. Ever-the-fox, Gino had seized his opportunity when the car he was in developed a flat tyre. As soon as he got the opportunity, he leapt from the vehicle and ran off, camera in hand. The gang had given chase but Gino had been too slippery for them, disappearing into the maze of side-streets and alleyways.
As soon they had their prisoners safely incarcerated in the house, the gang had forced Bill to call Gino on his mobile. Once connected to him, the gang had ensured that the cameraman knew, in no uncertain terms, what would happen to the others if he didn’t surrender the tape to them immediately.
Apparently, Gino declined their offer and so the gang had dragged Ricky, semi-conscious as he was, over to the phone and killed him on the spot, right in front of Andi and Bill. Then, and just so Gino really got the message, they had also shot the crew’s driver, Farid, leaving his and Rick’s bodies to lie bleeding on the floor in-front of Bill and Andi.
Their horrendous acts had seemingly no effect upon Gino, Raoul told us that the prisoner, and all of his, now-deceased partners-in-crime, had been shocked by the cameraman’s decision. They had been banking on some soft, western journalist capitulating immediately. Gino’s actions put them in a very dangerous situation, not only had they been seen doing unspeakable things, but they were now also kidnappers and murderers. Unbeknownst to them, because our team had failed to call in, and the subsequent actions of Rory, Raouf and me, any plans the men may have harboured about escaping, were quickly foiled. Raoul’s men were soon on the scene, blocking the road outside the house and having a minor gun-battle with the gang – leaving one man killed and two injured in the process.
Then we, the cavalry, had arrived and the rest w
as history.
The only men who didn’t come out were the two who had taken Andi into the cellar after their leader had said they could do what they wanted with her… Although, it seems that they didn’t quite get things all their own way. By the prisoner’s account, Andi had put up a terrific fight, kicking, screaming and raising all kinds of hell. So much so that one of her attackers had come back upstairs to retrieve his knife…
***
Raouf’s tale ended there. He looked at me, saying: ‘I’m so very sorry for you, Mr Jake. This was not of your doing; no-one could have saved them from this…’
‘No-one except Gino,’ I hissed. ‘He should have given them the fucking film!’ I turned to look at Raouf, staring angrily at him.
‘Maybe so,’ he said, calmly. ‘But I think the crew were finished from the very beginning, I don’t think will they let them go...’
I sat in silence, clenching and unclenching my teeth. Raouf gave me a cigarette, which I took even though I’d already smoked dozens of the damned things in the last hour.
Bending down to accept the flame of his out held lighter, I exhaled loudly and looked at him through the smoke.
‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I said, idly.
Then, and for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, someone told me that there were a lot of things that I, dumb-old Jake Collins, didn’t know about them…
I stared at him once more. I was sick of these games.
‘Who are you?’ I asked Raouf, angrily.
‘Me?’ he said, innocently.
‘Yes, fucking you!’ I snapped. ‘Who else do you think I’m talking to, for Christ’s sake?’
Raouf stared at me and just for one second I saw the light of Arab craziness, starting to flicker in the depths of his eyes. I’d seen that stuff many times before. It always lay just beneath the surface with these guys. Ancient bloodlines and culture can never be washed away, no matter how much oil and blood are used.
