Conor held a finger up in a Eureka gesture. “You know, I think I saw some gardening tools hanging on the wall over there. Some of those pruning shears and maybe a pair of loppers.”
“Pruning shears,” Shani said with a cruel smile, scissoring her fingers together.
“I’ll get them for you,” Conor offered.
While Conor went to retrieve the gardening tools, Shani leaned over and whispered to Omar. “You can stop this from happening. You can keep what dignity you have left. I just need to know if there are more compounds like this. I need to know where the other cells are holed up.”
Omar’s face was smudged with soot and blood, streaked with tears. He began sobbing quietly, his defiance melting.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Omar, but I will. Do you know who I work for?”
Omar shook his head.
“Can you guess?”
“Israeli,” he muttered.
She nodded. “That’s right. I’m Mossad. Does that tell you anything?”
Omar whipped his head around to face her. “It tells me you are a cruel bitch who deserved what was about to happen to you in that house. I’m only sorry I didn’t get to see it.”
Shani spread Omar’s ankles and pinned them down to the floor with her boots. He tried to struggle, to pull them free of the painful position, but had little fight left in him.
“I don’t know what’s taking my friend so long,” she said. “I guess I’ll have to go ahead without him.”
She dropped, pinning his ankles beneath her knees. She was reaching for Omar’s loose testicle when Conor shouted to her.
“We have company!”
Shani was on her feet in an instant, snatching her Tavor from the pile of gear behind her. She joined Conor, where he peered through the cracked door into the compound. “I wondered what was taking you so long.”
“I heard four-wheelers so I waited for them. I think it’s your women. The cleaning crew is back and this time they brought reinforcements.” Conor stepped out of the way to allow Shani a glance.
“I bet there are twenty people out there,” Shani said, “and they’re all armed.”
“What’s our play here? Any suggestions?”
“I think we talk to them,” Shani said. “They need to know the basics of what happened here. They’re entitled to the supplies Mumin stockpiled.”
“What about Mumin’s family? I have to let them out at some point.”
Shani shrugged. “I say we leave that to these folks. Let them work it out. You mind staying with the prisoner?”
“Good enough,” Conor said. “I’ll have your back.”
Shani allowed her Tavor to hang from her neck and pushed open the storage building door. She stepped out, her hands raised above her head. She called to the group steadily walking across the property in a wide line.
“Agnes!”
28
They didn’t hear her at first.
“Agnes!” she called again.
This time they heard her. At least half the crowd swiveled in Shani’s direction, bringing rifles to bear on the lone woman.
“Relax,” Shani said. “I need to speak to Agnes.”
It took Agnes a moment to understand that Shani, in all her tactical gear, was the same woman who’d been with her inside the house. The same woman she’d come back to rescue. She closed the distance between her and Shani, her face a mixture of relief and confusion.
“How did you get out?” Agnes asked. She gestured toward her companions. “I figured you were dead already, but we were going to try and help you.”
Shani smiled as she lowered her hands. “I appreciate that very much, but I had a friend on the outside. Those men are dead.”
Agnes looked incredulous. “All of them?”
“Well, we have one still alive and we’re taking him with us.”
“Where?”
“Listen, I know this is going to sound crazy but these men were terrorists,” Shani explained. “They’re part of the group responsible for the attacks on the US. The ones that caused all this. We’re taking the survivor with us so we can try to find the rest of them.”
Agnes went wide-eyed as she struggled to process that information. “The men we were cleaning for? They were part of it? I knew there was something wrong with them. The whole thing never made sense.”
“Mumin, the owner, built this place to provide shelter to some of the terrorists after the attacks. Now that we know this, we think there might be other camps like this around the country.”
“I’m glad they’re dead but the food they provided was very helpful. That will be missed. Things will get a lot tougher.”
“I tell you what,” Shani said. “You go over there and explain to your people what I told you. Bring them back here. I need to go inside and take care of something. When I come back out, I’ll have a man with me. He works with me so don’t be frightened.”
Agnes did as she was asked and Shani retreated inside the building. She found Conor standing over the prisoner.
“I’m going to turn these supplies over to those people,” Shani said. “I don’t want them to have to be subjected to the sight of George’s body, though. I’m going to find something to cover him up with.”
“There’s a stack of tarps on a shelf over there,” Conor said, pointing to a rack on the far side of the room.
She gave Omar a look. “Cut him loose from the cage and see if you can get his pants up. Nobody wants to see that.”
“I’ll trade with you,” Conor suggested, making a disgusted look in Omar’s direction.
Shani hurried off. “Sorry, already on my way.”
Conor whipped out his knife and sliced through the thick plastic tie binding Omar to the cage around the weapons locker. He sheathed his knife, tugged Omar to his feet, then spun the man until he was facing away from him.
“I’m not doing this with your dangly bits swinging in me face,” Conor mumbled.
He dropped and yanked Omar’s pants up around his waist. The man grunted and flinched. “Careful!”
“Fuck that. You need that loose marble tucked in you’re going to have to do it yourself.”
With Omar now decent, Conor sat him back down on the ground. Shani returned with a tarp and Conor helped her spread it over George’s body. When they were done, Shani faced Omar.
“You don’t say a word to these people,” she warned. “You don’t want to know what I was preparing to do when they showed up. You open your mouth and you’ll find out, though. I guarantee the memory will stick with you for the rest of your miserable life.”
Omar looked sick but nodded.
Shani hurried to the roll-up door, unlocked it, and sent the door upward on its track. She was met by the expressionless faces of some of the cleaning women and the confused, armed men that accompanied them. Shani stood in the doorway and addressed the group.
“The man who owned this property built it solely as a place to hide some of the terrorists after the attack on the US. He helped plan those attacks and now he’s dead. All of the men who lived here are dead except for one. This building contains food and supplies for a year or more. I think you all are entitled to it after the way you were treated by these men.”
Some of the men in Agnes’s group were moving around, positioning themselves to better see into the recesses of the building.
“Is all that food?” one of the men asked.
Shani shook her head. “There’s every type of thing a person might need to help them survive. Farm supplies, food, medical, and even weapons.”
At the mention of weapons, Conor spoke up from the recesses of the building. “Any of you men good with weapons?” He walked to the front of the building, splitting his attention between the group of people and his prisoner in the interior of the building.
“I served in Iraq,” another man said.
“You remember how to assemble your rifle?”
“Hell yeah.”
Conor pointed to a barrel
of motor fluid. “I disabled all of these weapons so they couldn’t be used to fight against us. I sank firing pins, pistol barrels, and rifle bolts into that barrel. You’ll have to fish them out and clean them but they should be fine. There’s a ton of ammo and I don’t think any of these weapons have ever been used before. They still have the tags on them.”
The man nodded eagerly. “Roger that, boss. I got it.”
“There is one matter we need to deal with before we go and I’m going to leave it up to you people to decide how you handle it,” Shani said. “Mumin’s wife, girlfriend, and all his children are locked in the downstairs bathroom of his house. The house is solar powered and would hold several folks. It has heat and running water. You all could move into it if you wanted. Something has to be done with those women and children though, and we’re leaving that up to you. Can you figure that out?”
Agnes nodded and exchanged a glance with her companions. “We’ll have to speak on it but maybe we’ll trade houses with them. They can spend the winter cutting wood to heat their house. They can trap and fish for food like some of us have to do. In exchange, we let them remain on the reservation.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Shani said. “They have a bit of an entitled attitude. You might have to physically throw them out of the house.”
Agnes smiled. “That’s not a problem. I think we can manage.”
Shani went forward and hugged Agnes. “Thank you so much for coming back for me. I don’t know what to say. I didn’t expect it.”
Agnes shrugged. “I’d had all I could take from those nasty men. We told our husbands everything and they insisted on coming back with us.”
The sound of approaching rotor blades made Shani step back and scan the sky. The group at the entrance to the storage building looked uneasy.
“It’s okay,” Shani said. “That’s our ride home. You guys got this?”
Agnes nodded.
Shani moved away from the group and pulled a smoke grenade from her gear. She pulled the pin and heaved it into the open field nearest them. While she waited for the chopper to zero in on the smoke, she ran back into the storage building for her pack.
Conor had Omar on his feet and was pulling on his pack. Shani hurriedly dug into the recesses of her gear and came out with a crumpled ball of black fabric. She slipped the hood over Omar’s head.
“Didn’t think of bringing one of those,” Conor said. “I never take prisoners.”
“That’s because I’m intelligence. You’re brute force. Whole different department.”
Conor had no rebuttal to that. Shani slung her pack onto her shoulders. She and Conor put Omar between them and headed for the door. The women and their husbands shot Omar curious glances. The limping, hooded finger was like something out of the evening news.
“All yours,” Shani said to Agnes.
“Oh yeah,” Conor said, reaching into his pocket and extracting a key. “This goes to the storage building.” He tossed the key to Agnes and she pocketed it.
The chopper came into view and hovered overhead. Conor turned Omar loose and used his arms to direct the chopper. When it touched down, the rear door slid open and the trio headed for it. Shani and Conor spun Omar around. The crew latched onto him and dragged him aboard. The crew pulled their packs in next and then the two operators boarded.
Omar was laid out on a stretcher. The crew chief gestured to the headsets hanging on hooks. Shani and Conor slipped them on.
“We have a medic,” the crew chief said. “Do you want us to treat your prisoner?”
“Negative,” Shani replied. “We’ll provide our own medical when our transport picks us up at your base.”
“Roger that,” the crew chief replied.
Conor and Shani cleared their rifles, reinserting full mags, but not chambering rounds. Shani used the straps on Omar’s litter to fasten him down, then made sure his hood was firmly in place.
“I’m glad there’s no fucking boat to deal with this time,” Conor said.
“Someone else will retrieve the boat,” Shani said. “There’s a locator in it.”
“Good thing. I’m not a SEAL.”
Shani studied him. “No, you’re more like a manatee or a walrus, I’d think.”
Some of the crew chuckled. Conor sneered but didn’t respond. He was too tired for challenging verbal exchanges.
29
In a little more than twenty minutes, they dropped onto a landing pad at Duluth Air National Guard Base and the crew killed the engines. The crew chief spoke into his headset, addressing someone Conor and Shani couldn’t hear. When the exchange was over, he said to them, “Your ride is still a couple of hours away. You’ll be transported to a secure hangar where you’ll be comfortable until they get here.”
Conor and Shani slid their black balaclavas up over the lower half of their faces. They waited with the rear door shut until an M35 cargo truck, its bed protected by a hooped canvas top, pulled alongside them. The crew chief slid open the chopper door and a man in an olive drab parka and aviator glasses hopped out of the passenger side of the truck. They noticed he wasn’t wearing a uniform of any kind as he approached. This was nothing new in Conor and Shani’s world. They’d worked with every kind of contractor, agent, operative, and combination imaginable. This was their world.
The man in the parka threw an arm up in greeting. “I’m your host for the next couple of hours. You can call me Bill. You just have the one detainee?”
“That’s affirmative,” Shani said.
“Then let’s get you guys, your gear, and your prisoner into the back of this truck. We’re transporting you to a secure hangar where you can wait out your stay with us.”
Bill let out a shrill whistle and two men hopped from the back of the cargo truck. They were also in civilian clothing and carried short AKs. They helped Conor slide Omar’s stretcher off the chopper, then slung their AKs around their backs while they hauled the stretcher to the rear of the truck.
Shani and Conor gathered their gear and piled into the rear of the truck. The two guards watched the prisoner and didn’t speak or make eye contact with the operatives. Bill piled in with them, then the truck moved out. After a short ride they arrived at the same hangar they’d briefly stayed at on their earlier visit.
When the truck stopped outside the rolling doors, Bill hopped out and slid them open. The driver pulled inside, then killed the engine while Bill closed the doors.
“This place is heated but it’s still cold as a well-digger’s ass,” Bill said. “I’m going to leave this truck here until your ride shows up. You can leave your detainee in there if you want. Do you need assistance with him?”
“I think we got it,” Shani replied.
Bill nodded. “Good enough. There’s a little kitchen over there with food, drinks, and coffee. Help yourself. There’s also restrooms and a shower if you are so inclined. If you don’t object, I’m going to put two men outside to keep anyone from wandering in on you. If you need one of them to watch your prisoner while you catch some shuteye, they’re authorized to do that. All you have to do is ask.”
“Thanks,” Conor said.
Bill responded with a token salute and retreated from the building, taking his men with him.
“You want to grab some sleep?” Conor asked. “I can keep watch.”
“I don’t think I could sleep.”
“Mind if I do?”
“Don’t mind a bit. Give me a few minutes to hit the head, grab some coffee, and a bite to eat.”
Conor kept an eye on Omar while Shani went about her business. She came back in a few minutes with a steaming cup of coffee and a microwaved frozen wrap of some sort.
“How the fuck am I supposed to sleep once I’ve smelled food?” Conor complained. “I can’t sleep over the sound of a dinner bell.”
“Get yourself something. There are several things in the freezer.”
Conor was back in a moment with a bottle of water and a frozen breakfast burrito. “It’s
not the fecking Bojangles but I guess it will do.”
Shani frowned. “What’s ‘the fecking Bojangles’?”
Conor smiled and looked fondly skyward. “It’s a fast food joint we had around the place I grew up. They sold these big old sweet teas that were nearly thick as syrup and all sorts of heavenly biscuits. I ate there a lot. Drank a lot of those teas, too.”
“Sounds vile.”
“It’s a big old cup of diabetes-inducing heaven. I miss it.”
“Go to sleep, Conor. You’re delirious.”
As soon as he swallowed the last bite of his burrito and drank the final sip of his water, he did just that.
30
Conor was sleeping soundly when Shani roused him. He was curled up on a well-worn couch, snoring away.
“Wake up, Conor. Our chopper is inbound. They’ll be setting down any minute.”
Conor let out a deep sigh. “I was having the most amazing dream.”
“Dare I ask?”
“I was in Las Vegas eating at one of those buffets. Every time I went back up there they had something new I wanted to try. I couldn’t stop eating.”
“You sure that was a dream? It sounds just like you.”
“Pretty sure it was a dream. The restaurant was a lot nicer than this hangar, and no offense against those grubby, blood-stained fatigues of yours, but the women were dressed a lot nicer. They had on those little bitty dresses with their double whoppers hanging out.”
Shani rolled her eyes. “Put your tongue back in your mouth and get your ass moving.” She walked away, slipping the balaclava back over her face.
Conor swung into a sitting position, stretched, and rubbed his eyes. Someone banged a fist on one of the hangar doors and they began rolling open. The temperature dropped immediately as all the heat was sucked into the frigid Minnesota air. Conor slipped his jacket on and went to join Shani at the truck, raising his mask as he walked.
Bill came back inside with the driver and two guards. “Your ride is setting down as we speak. Time to go.”
Northern Sun: Book Four in The Mad Mick Series Page 16
