“Yes, sir.” Leroux worked his tablet, a layout of the main floor appearing, showing over a dozen rooms, half highlighted in red. “The ones in red we’ve been able to determine are enemy occupied. They empty out at night, the people during the day again having free rein.”
“And the others?”
“That’s where it gets tricky. We’ve got a couple of vacant rooms that seem to be rarely if ever used”—he tapped his screen and two rooms went red—“one with a large number of targets that we believe are the women brought there from the aborted auction, though that number has been dropping.” He paused for a moment as he struggled with this bit of intel, there only one reason those girls were no longer there.
“How many are left?”
“About a dozen.”
“But Alia could have been one of those who left, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you think she’s still there. Why?”
“Because of this.” A few more taps and four rooms were highlighted, targets inside visible. “All four of these rooms usually only have one person in them.” He highlighted a room and the image zoomed in, real-time Doppler Radar footage displayed.
Morrison’s eyes narrowed as he stepped closer to the display. “What am I looking at?”
“We believe there’s a man in this bed, and the second target is one of the girls, taken from the room with the girls from the auction. She has been there almost the entire time, even when he’s taken out to one of the other rooms, where we think he’s being tortured.”
“Poor bastard.”
“Yeah. There’s two other rooms that seem to have a single individual in them, the radar signature large enough to indicate a male, and they too are taken to the same room as the other guy, we assume to be tortured.”
Morrison pointed. “And this other room?”
Leroux zoomed in, a single signature in the corner. “This, we believe, is Alia Monroe.”
Morrison’s eyebrows jumped and he looked back at Leroux. “Why?”
“The radar signature indicates she’s either female or a very small male. She’s been alone almost the entire time, never taken to be tortured, receives regular visits from the hostiles, bringing what appears to be food and water. She’s taken twice a day to what we’ve determined is a bathroom, and never interacts with the other girls.”
“So she’s being treated like a VIP.”
“Exactly.”
Morrison cursed. “That’s thin. Rice paper thin. You want me to send a Delta team to rescue a rainbow colored blob on the screen that may just be some tiny guy who’s just getting the VIP treatment before he goes and blows himself up in the name of Allah?” He shook his head. “I’m going to need a lot more than this before I send more men off to die.”
Leroux risked a smile. “Well, there is my famous gut.”
Morrison shook his head, chuckling. “I think Washington’s going to need a little more than that, this time.”
“Well, I do have one more thing.”
Morrison gave him a look. “You’re holding out on me?”
“I always save the best for last.” Leroux motioned toward the screen. “Watch this.” He replayed footage from earlier in the day, narrating as it played out. “The subject we believe is Alia Monroe is pacing back and forth, does something, what, we’re not sure, sits on the bed, someone rushes into the room, followed by several more, then after a while, they all leave, and the subject remains in the bed. About an hour later”—he fast-forwarded the footage—“the female subject from the other room where the man who was being tortured was held, is taken to the room, and watch this!”
Morrison stared at the display as the new arrival raced across the room, the two radar signatures merging into one. “Jesus, they’re hugging!”
“Exactly. Now, there’s no way one of the sex slaves would hug some man, nor would she hug some stranger. These two knew each other, yet they were never together in the room where the sex slaves are being held.”
Morrison’s jaw was still hanging open as he watched the video. “So they knew each other from before.”
“Exactly.”
“But what makes you think one of them is Alia?”
“Because of this.” Another image appeared, one of a girl staring up at the sky. “This is Mary Todd. She arrived with the sex slaves after the auction. She would have been put into that communal room. We know she arrived in the region a little over a week ago, which means there’s no way she’s had any interaction with Alia to this point. We also know that Mary is friends with Alia. I believe that Mary Todd and Alia Monroe just had a surprise reunion in that room.”
Morrison stared at the replay showing what could be Mary Todd rushing to hug her friend, Alia Monroe, shaking his head. He turned to Leroux, his eyes wider than normal, his mouth still agape. “My God, Chris, I think you’re right!”
68 |
Somewhere over the Aegean Sea
“And the Pentagon approved this?”
Dawson nodded at Niner’s question, shouted over the loud roar of the C-5 Galaxy ferrying them to Turkey. “Yup, the President personally requested we attempt the rescue.”
Niner threw his head back in his seat. “Man, what did we ever do to deserve him?”
“Save his life twice?”
Atlas leaned forward, holding a tablet showing the layout of the target building. “Okay, so we get in, that never seems to be the problem. What I want to know is, how the hell do we get out?”
“Two A-10s and an AC-130 will be providing cover fire from above, along with half a dozen Apaches and a Black Hawk that will be used to extract us when we’re clear of the city.”
Spock pointed at the tablet. “You do realize this is the heart of ISIS—their capital. They’ve got an awful lot of firepower there.”
“Which is why such heavy firepower has been authorized. We’re going to hit the area with everything we’ve got, enter, retrieve the target, evac south with overwhelming covering fire from the A-10s and AC-130, joined by the Apaches at the rendezvous point. We’ll be extracted by the Black Hawk and be back in Turkey before Niner can flash his tits.”
Jimmy grimaced. “Ugh, thanks for that.”
Dawson shrugged. “Questions?”
Atlas raised a finger. “Yeah. What if it’s not her?”
A smile spread across Dawson’s face. “Then we still get to kill a whole whack of the guys responsible for Red.”
Atlas nodded, leaning back in his seat, content. “Sounds good to me.”
69 |
ISIS Held Territory Al-Raqqah, Syria
Mary Todd followed Marwan back to the room where Pete was being held. She had been with Alia for what felt like hours, though with no way of telling time, she couldn’t be certain it wasn’t mere minutes. But the experience had been cathartic. After her idea of a suicide pact, or assisted suicide pact—she wasn’t sure what to call it—they had turned to talking about home. There was even laughter, riotous laughter, resulting in the door opening and her removal from the room.
I guess they thought I convinced her not to kill herself.
She smiled.
Boy, are they wrong.
Yet now she was having doubts. Their continued conversation of home had her once again thinking of her parents, of her brother, of her friends.
Of her future.
She had been an idiot. Converting to an insane religion to join in an even more insane cause. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember why she had done it.
Faruk!
That was why. She had received a friend request last year after she had begun her examination of Islam, and like all requests, she had accepted it, he friends with Alia and Nala already. It was what you did. She with the most friends, wins. In fact, 90% or more of her friends on social media were complete strangers, yet she found them fascinating. Reading posts, seeing photos of daily life from around the planet, was thrilling. It was an escape her family had never been able to afford, the furthest they h
ad traveled was Disneyworld when she was a kid, before Dad lost his job at the auto plant. And now with college loans up to her eyeballs, she’d be working off that debt for the foreseeable future.
Life would be a struggle, probably stuck in her parent’s apartment until she was thirty, working some minimum wage job because her degree wouldn’t give her any experience—yet another way the older generation stuck it to millennials. Her father had been hired out of high school, worked his way up, making a great salary with great benefits from the age of eighteen.
Not anymore.
Those days were gone. Which was what had attracted her to Islam. It wasn’t just the handsome young man who had befriended her, it was that it offered a simpler life, one she wouldn’t be expected to thrive at, to excel at, to compete in. One where she could stay at home and cook, clean, and take care of the kids, without feeling pressured or shamed into living up to her potential as a modern woman.
Though today, right now, she yearned for the high-stress, complex life of modern society, where she didn’t worry about whether she’d be beaten or raped at any given moment, and where she wasn’t surrounded by sadists, hell-bent on world domination then destruction.
Yes, she was having serious doubts about her agreement with Alia made minutes ago.
The door to Pete’s room opened and she gasped, the poor man once again covered in blood. She rushed to his side then glanced at the nearly bare table. “I need four pitchers of water, two plates of food, bandages, dressings, the works.”
Marwan stared at her for a moment then shouted orders, her requested items arriving within minutes. He jabbed a finger at Pete. “He dies, you die.” Then he pointed down the hall toward Alia’s room. “And if she dies, you die.”
Mary frowned but nodded. “Well, maybe if you stopped torturing him, he wouldn’t die.”
Marwan surged forward, yelling something she didn’t understand, then cuffed the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. Her face stung, her ears rang, and tears rushed down her cheeks as she pushed away from him with her feet, hitting the wall. He leaned toward her, a finger in her face. “Remember your place, woman!” He spun on his heel and marched out of the room, the door slamming shut behind him, the latch sealing them in with a clang.
“Are you okay?”
She flinched, her head spinning toward the forgotten Pete, lying on the bed. She jumped to her feet and grabbed a pitcher of water, filling a large bowl, then took a handful of dressings and a sponge. She sat on the edge of the bed, soaking the sponge.
“You didn’t answer me.”
“Sorry. Y-yes, I’m okay.” But it was a lie. She was shaking like a leaf, terrified, that one moment of abuse enough to galvanize her desire to end things, recommitting to her agreement with Alia.
“You need to be careful with them. Never get the idea you have any power over them. You’re a woman. They’ll kill you in a heartbeat. Someone here owns you. You’ve become a captive of war according to Islamic tradition. Whoever owns you can do whatever he wants to you except a very few specific things. They actually have a manual for everything they can and can’t do to women like you.”
She shuddered. “I never thought I’d be someone’s slave.” She washed his face, his nose broken and bleeding. “I always thought slavery was a thing of the past. Something my ancestors went through.” She ran her fingers through his short hair, feeling for any wounds. “I actually always thought it was kind of ridiculous that people my age still blamed white people for their problems. Even my great-grandfather wasn’t a slave.”
“Well, slavery in the United States may have been abolished over a century ago, but it’s alive and well in this part of the world. ISIS has taken over three thousand women and girls—little girls—as sex slaves. Some estimates have it as high as twenty-five thousand. They sell them, give them as rewards to those loyal to them, and sometimes use them as examples to others.”
She washed his chest, thankfully nothing major revealed so far. “How do you know so much about this?”
“I’m a reporter, remember?”
“Oh yeah.” She wrung out the sponge, the water in the bowl turning a darker pink. “Well, why don’t I hear about this on the news?”
Pete chuckled. “You watch the news?”
She paused. “Umm, no, I guess I don’t.”
“Read the newspaper?”
“They still make those?”
“Ha ha. You probably get most of your news from Facebook or something like that.”
She nodded, turning her attention to his arms. “Yeah, things my friends send me, trending stories, that kind of thing.”
“Exactly. Did you know that companies like that filter what you see to things that match your interests?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if you’ve never expressed an interest in slavery or terrorism or Syria, you’ll almost never see an article about those subjects. If you’re a Democrat, you’ll almost never see any positive stories about Republicans, and vice versa. If you believe in global warming, you’ll never see any articles refuting it. You live in a bubble of filtered news where you’re only presented with one side of the argument, and because of it, you think there is no other side to the story, or worse, no story at all. Those who make a point of keeping themselves informed, know what’s going on in the world, know both sides of the argument of the day, but unfortunately for this planet, those people seem few and far between now, no thanks to social media filters.”
She checked his fingers, the tape she had wrapped them in stained but intact.
He wiggled them, wincing slightly. “They didn’t mess with my hands today. I think that guy likes playing with electricity. It’s better than the pliers he was using the first day.”
A wave of sympathetic pain surged through her body. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this.”
He smiled at her. “Don’t worry, the electricity is kind of invigorating.” He winked. “Energizing, even.”
She giggled. “You’re terrible.” She stood, putting the soiled water back on the table. “Feel up to eating?”
He shook his head. “I’m not very hungry, but I better.”
“Good.” She propped him up then took a plate of the food and some water, sitting back on the edge of the bed. She fed him one forkful at a time, he still too weak to do it himself, his torture fresh. He was much more talkative, which was good, though he appeared physically worse today than when she first saw him, despite her efforts. If this torture kept up much longer, he’d be dead.
Then so would she.
And if that were to happen before she could enact their plan, Alia could be facing a life of torture and sexual abuse for years to come. She stared at Pete, imagining what it would be like to be with a man like him, to be in a normal, happy, American relationship.
You’re never going to know. Your life is over.
And it was.
There was no escaping here—her fate was sealed. She was facing a life of abuse and torture, with eventual death her only release. Why wait around for some impossible dream of seeing her parents again one day. She had to end it now, so they’d never get a chance to rape her, to torture her, or kill her in some horrifically painful way. They had the power, though she could take it back, if but for one brief moment.
She glanced over at the table of medical supplies, her eyes coming to rest on the scissors.
70 |
Cape Fear Valley Rehabilitation Center Fayetteville, North Carolina
Maggie Harris lay in her hospital bed, spent. She had put more effort into her physio today than she had in weeks, and though the progress was negligible, it wasn’t discouraging. She only had herself to blame for being so far behind. Wallowing in self-pity never helped anyone, and it certainly hadn’t helped her. Deacon had pushed her hard today, sensing her renewed will to fight.
Red’s death had put everything in perspective. Dawson could die any day. She had no idea how many days together they’d have, an
d there was no damned way she wanted to waste any more than she had to, lying in this bed, crippled and in pain. The specialists provided by the Actons had assured her she could make a full recovery if she put in the effort. Her mind was intact. She remembered everything except what had happened during her stroke. She could think clearly, pass all their mental acuity tests and anything else they challenged her brain with.
It was just the physical body that needed to be retrained. She had done it before, and she’d do it again. When her mother had fought breast cancer and won, she hadn’t sat back and let it take her the second time. She had fought again and once again won.
You’re going to beat this.
There was a knock at the door and she looked over, a shocked smile on her face as Red’s wife poked her head in. “Shirley! Come in!”
She stepped inside the room, closing the door behind her.
She looks tired. Broken.
“How are you doing?”
Shirley smiled weakly. “I’ve had better days.” She sat on the edge of the bed. “And you? How are you doing?”
Maggie smiled. “I’ve had better days too, but I’ll be fine. I guess what happened kind of put everything into perspective for me.”
Shirley’s face clouded over. She patted Maggie’s hand. “Well, at least something good came—” She stopped, unable to continue as her shoulders heaved and she stifled a cry.
Maggie pushed the button to raise the bed, then wrapped her arms around Shirley, the two of them sobbing together. “I’m so sorry this happened to you. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“I knew it could happen, but I just never thought it would. After ten years, why now? Why did it have to happen now?”
“There’s never a good time,” sniffed Maggie. “At least you know he didn’t suffer.”
Shirley pushed away gently, yanking a tissue from a box on the side table. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes dry with a second tissue. “That’s small comfort, but it is some. At least BD told me what happened. At least what he could.” She sniffed. “I was lucky, I guess. A lot of wives are never told the truth.” She sucked in a deep breath then let it out slowly, calming herself as Maggie retrieved a tissue. “What really bothers me is that I can’t tell my family what a great man he was, what a hero he was. They think a truck rolled over on him and crushed him to death. They think that’s why it was a closed casket funeral. Not because there was no body, but because he was a goddamned pancake!”
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