No Woman Left Behind (17 page)

That was actually a positive development because that meant by necessity, the riddle would have to be born of our shared experience. That narrowed the field of possibility and variables considerably. Now would be the time to put my photographic memory into play.

I started reviewing our contact from the moment I’d first seen Broodryk’s face on the computer screen at the high school. The riddle answer came to me faster than I expected.

I opened my eyes. “I have it.”

“Hallelujah,” Hands said with enthusiasm. “Tell him and let’s get a move on.”

Abdou shook his head. “No. She does not tell me. She has to enter the letters on a box. It is the code to open it and retrieve the information you seek.”

Hands frowned. “Where’s this box?”

“No. I will not tell you yet. You must first give me the information on the Kwabano. It was the deal.”

Hands looked like he was about to argue, but I held up a hand. “Fine. I’ll go first. I’ll pull up the information on the Kwabano on my laptop and show it to you, so you can be assured I have it. You’ll then give me the box. When I’m convinced I have what I need, I’ll write down the coordinates for you, so you don’t have to rely on your memory, which can become impaired under extreme duress. When we are both satisfied we have the information we need, we will leave so you can resume your regularly scheduled life. Okay?”

Abdou thought for a moment and then nodded. “That is fair. I will not trick you.”

“Right back at you. We don’t have a beef with you.”

I’m not sure he got the colloquial phrase, but he didn’t protest when I unzipped my backpack, pulled out the laptop and sat on the floor as I booted it up. I pulled up the information he had requested and turned the screen toward him.

“Here you go. These are the most recent coordinates we could find on the militia leader who kidnapped the members of your village.” I tapped the keyboard, pulling up a satellite image of the first coordinate. “I think you should start here. The leader of the Kwabano was spotted in this village just over twenty-four hours ago. Satellite images also indicate a large number of children in this location, too.”

I swallowed, sickened by the thought that young boys and girls had been kidnapped and used as pawns in some kind of local power struggle.

“I sincerely hope you find them and get them back. This kind of thing, kidnapping and hurting children, makes me sick. I wish you the very best.”

He looked surprised, then nodded. “Thank you. We were desperate, which is why I agreed to do this.”

“I understand completely. It’s okay. Good luck, and I mean that. Now it’s your turn. Where’s the box?”

“I must retrieve it from under my bed.”

Hands moved closer, pressing his gun against Abdou’s neck. “Nice and easy.”

Abdou and Hands shuffled to his bed and reached underneath. He felt around and pulled out a small rectangular box. He held it up and I took it from him.

I put the box on the table and examined it. The top had a small screen and a keypad. It was live and blinking, so it was probably working off of a battery.

“You must not try and take the box from my house.” Abdou spoke softly. “He says it will explode. You must open it while in the house in order to deactivate it and obtain the information inside.”

“What if I plug in a wrong answer?”

“I do not know.”

I glanced over at Hands. “What do you want me to do?”

“You know the answer to that riddle?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Yes. I’m going with a 96.4 percentage rate of certainty that the answer is Phantomonics.”

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s a music pirating software used mostly by teens that Elvis planted in the school’s computer system during Broodryk’s terrorist operation. It didn’t stop him, but it pissed him off. He needed a student to shut it down, so I volunteered. By doing that, it permitted me a front row seat at the show and the opportunity to put a crimp in his plan.”

“Which you did.”

“Yes.”

“Well, stop him again. Do it.”

Nodding, I leaned over the keypad and typed in the letters. My finger trembled as it hovered over the enter button. “Okay, here we go.”

I held my breath as I pressed the button. There was a beep and the box popped open. A flash drive was nestled inside.

I grabbed the flash drive. “It worked.”

“Good.” I could hear the relief in Hands’s voice. “Bravo One, package secure.”

I quickly plugged the flash drive in to the laptop and data scrolled across my screen. I downloaded the information and then pulled the flash drive out, giving it to Hands. After that I asked Abdou to get me a piece of paper. He handed me an old piece of newspaper on which I jotted the coordinates he needed.

I handed it to him. “We’re good now. Thank you.”

I knelt and returned my laptop to the pack, hoisting it on my back. I retrieved my helmet and secured it under my arm.

“Time for this party to be over,” Hands said. “Alpha Three, how are things out there?”

“Quiet,” Hulk replied. “Cobra 1 has been notified and has begun the tactical descent on schedule.”

“Bravo Team, any sight of the MAM?”

“Negative. We lost him.”

“Shit.”

“I bet it was part of the plan,” I offered. “Broodryk gave me a simple, but time-consuming code and riddle to stretch out our operation. He had to make it easy enough for me to solve fairly quickly, but long enough to give him precious minutes to do whatever he is planning to complicate our exit strategy. I would venture a supposition that Broodryk did that so Pentz could have time to reposition if we were able to interfere with his initial line of fire, which we were. Seeing as how our planned escape via an exit within this hut is no longer viable, we’re going to have to go back out the front door, where I believe Pentz is all lined up and ready to play target practice.”

The room fell silent with all the men staring at me, including Abdou.

Hands spoke into his helmet. “Bravo Team, we have a problem.”

“Alpha Team, report.”

“Time to move to Plan B. Intended egress is a no go. Our assumption that this structure has an interior door to the meeting house is incorrect. We have to go back out through the door we came in. We’re going to be sitting ducks. Check those two-story buildings for him. He’d want the height.”

“Already checked, Alpha One. No visual and no thermal signatures sighted there.”

“Damn. We don’t have time to wait. Drop the smoke grenades near all of the tall buildings and we’ll move.”

“Negative. We’re out of smoke. Flash grenades only.”

Hands shifted the gun and grimaced. “Great. When they go off, everyone within ten miles of the village will wake up and all hell will break loose. Time until Cobra 1 arrives?”

“Four minutes.”

I looked between Hands and Wills. We had four minutes to live...if we were lucky.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“The villagers will kill you if they find you here,” Abdou said. “They are not friendly to Americans and we are quite well armed. Even more so now that we are prepared to launch an attack to get our children back.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Hands motioned for Abdou to sit at the kitchen table, then quickly cuffed his hands behind his back. “We’re out of time, people. We’ve got to move no matter what.”

“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Isn’t Bravo Team going to use the flash grenades?”

“Yes, but their effectiveness at a distance is limited. Worse, just one of those babies will wake up the entire town. This all goes south really fast as soon as we wake everyone up. If Pentz isn’t in close enough proximity to a grenade to be temporarily blinded, he’ll still be able to shoot us. If we don’t know where he is, we can’t target him effectively. But we’ll give it an educated guess and set off random grenades, hoping for the best.”

Hoping for the best didn’t seem like a militarily sound maneuver, but we were running out of time.

My brain raced. “Pentz would use a laser designator on his night scope to shoot, right?”

Hands frowned. “Yes.”

“Can we use that to pinpoint his location?”

“Maybe, but only if we could watch how the target pip moves on a rotating subject. Even then it would only provide a general location. It wouldn’t pinpoint him exactly.”

“But close enough for a flash grenade to be effective, right?”

“Possibly. What are you getting at, Keys?”

“I just want to make sure I understand properly. So, in order to get a decent fix on Pentz we have to get him to lock on to a slowly moving target for long enough to estimate his position.”

“Negative. He won’t linger on any target because once he has it, he shoots.”

“Then we have to give him a target he won’t kill.”

“What target?”

“Me.”

His eyes narrowed. “Oh, hell no.”

“Why not? It makes perfect sense. I go out there without my helmet so there’s no mistaking it’s me. If it’s Pentz, he won’t shoot right away. You know he won’t. He
has
to make sure it’s not me. I’m not a sniper, but I believe his instinct will be to lock on to the first thing out that door. He won’t expect it to be me. Tell me I’m not right. Then all you have to do is estimate his position, relay it to Bravo and they can position the drone to set off the flash grenades to cover your exit.”

Hands took a slow step toward me, holding out a hand. I could see he was calculating how to grab me before I bolted. Right now, nothing stood between the door and me. In my peripheral vision, I saw Wills start to inch sideways.

“I appreciate the thought, but we can’t risk you, Keys.” His voice was soft and soothing. “We don’t know for certain he won’t shoot you. We, on the other hand, get paid to take these risks all the time. We’ve survived much worse. Look, it’s only one guy with a rifle.”

It wasn’t just
any
guy or
any
sniper. Next to Hands, Abri Pentz was one of the most decorated snipers in the world. He wouldn’t miss and we all knew it.

I set my jaw. “You’re right, Hands. I don’t know for sure he won’t shoot me. However, I
do
know he’ll shoot you or any of the other guys, and he
won’t
miss. We don’t have time to take this to a committee.”

Before either of them could stop me, I dashed for the door, yanking it open and stepping outside. I tensed as Keys and Wills shouted something, but I couldn’t make it out.

Then I saw it. The red dot on my chest.

I turned sideways so I was half-looking into the house where Hands and Wills had screeched to a stop just inside the doorway, their arms flung out as if they could still catch me. Hands saw the red dot, too. I watched the recognition flash across his face.

Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion. I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for a shot that didn’t happen. Slowly, I held my arms out and turned in the direction I thought Pentz might be. Summoning a bravado I didn’t feel, I made a deep bow. I sure hoped Hands, Hulk and the entire Bravo Team were paying attention and figuring out exactly where Pentz was located.

After what I hoped was sufficient time, but was probably less than ten seconds, I turned and scampered around the house toward the safety of the far side of the garage. The back of my neck itched. I worried Pentz might change his mind and blow my head off just to spite me, but the shot never came.

Loud chatter sounded from the helmet under my arm, so just before I reached the edge of the garage, I stopped and raised it near my ear so I could hear what was going on. I had no time to put it on properly and fuss with the night vision goggles.

“Three, two, one. Go!”

The rapid bursts of two flash grenades in the distance startled me, followed a second later by the concussive thump. Moments after that Hulk, Wills and Hands came barreling around the building in full sprint, not even bothering to crouch. I stood frozen watching them. Hands stumbled once, but miraculously regained his footing and kept running.

I watched, mesmerized by the action, until I jolted back to reality. Hulk thundered directly toward me, sweeping me under his arm without breaking stride, and hauled me around the garage.

Pausing momentarily to regroup and plan our next actions, I pressed back against the wall next to Hands.

I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I could hear the anger in his voice. “I would so kill you if it wasn’t my mission to protect you. What the hell were you doing?”

“Hopefully saving us.”

“Damn it. You didn’t follow orders.”

“Not this time. I followed logic.”

He growled and then held up a hand, quieting me. “Bravo Team. Give me a status report on the MAM, Cobra 1 and the locals.”

“This is Bravo One. MAM is hightailing it out of the village to the south. I suspect he doesn’t want to be mistaken for one of us. He also appears to be suffering from a loss of his night vision, as he just raced into some barbed wire surrounding a corral. Ouch, that’s got to hurt. Okay...hello. We have locals with guns emerging from the tents south of the corrals and signs of activity in the village itself as well. The bangs got their attention. ETA on Cobra 1 is sixty seconds. I would suggest you hurry. They won’t want to wait around long.”

I’d started to put my helmet back on when Hands grabbed my arm and rasped, “We don’t have time for that now. Just follow me.”

He took off, practically dragging me with him. I staggered along off balance, holding my helmet beneath my other arm. Though I had complained about wearing the night vision goggles, I realized how much of an advantage they provided in the dark. Fortunately, given Hands’s support, I was able to remain upright.

As we approached the positions that Bravo Team had established, I heard the thunderous whopping of the dual rotors of the Osprey landing. I could also hear the crackle of what must be small arms fire, though I couldn’t tell if it was friendly fire or from the village. It didn’t sound nearby, so I suspected the latter. My helmet was a cacophony of noise, and I could understand none of it.

We ran past a Bravo Team SEAL hunkered down in a firing position just as the Osprey landed. To my surprise, Hands didn’t take me directly to the aircraft, but left me near a tree.

He released me and pointed me at the aircraft. He leaned in close and shouted. “Wait here for fifteen seconds and then hightail it to the plane. I’m going to do a sweep to make sure the area is clear of anyone wanting to pick us off as we board. Charlie Team will get you on board.”

“Okay,” I shouted back.

“So, count to fifteen and run like hell for the plane, Keys. Oh, and close your eyes on the way.”

“What?” I shouted after him as he disappeared into the darkness. “What was the last part?”

He didn’t answer, so I assumed he didn’t hear me over the rotors. I bent over, bracing myself with one hand against the tree, trying to catch my breath. I had a stitch in my side and it hurt. I pressed my hand against my side and started counting. Suddenly gunfire erupted around me and I crouched down. Fifteen seconds had passed, but I wasn’t sure if it was safe to run. I was considering my options when the world around me erupted in light and concussion, throwing me a good distance sideways and to my knees.

Holy flash grenade. Bravo Team must have set up a perimeter of flash grenades around the landing site to keep the locals away. I’d probably been steps away from one of them. Why hadn’t I just dashed for the plane? Hands was really going to kill me now. I was
so
not going to be voted into the SEALs’ Hall of Fame anytime soon.

Now I had no idea where I was or in which direction I faced. I couldn’t see a thing and my ears were ringing. I was really going to regret not having put my helmet back on. Oh, God, speaking of my helmet—where was it? It had to have been knocked from grasp when I fell following the blast.

I felt around on the ground for it. No luck. I stopped, trying not to panic. No sense worrying about my helmet now. I had to get on that plane. Though I still couldn’t see well, I got to my feet, hoping someone would see me and lead me to the plane. Just as I rose, there was a burst of gunfire nearby and someone shouted,
“Down!”

I dropped to the ground again, hugging the dirt and deciding I would never, ever complain again about how cold they always keep the server rooms.

The shooting was getting closer. Fortunately I was beginning to regain limited vision. A SEAL shouted, “We’ve got hostiles all over the place. Fall back, now!”

Feet thudded to my right.

“Wait!” I screamed, but I wasn’t sure anyone heard me over the rotor noise. The Osprey’s rotors increased speed, spinning up.

Oh, God. They were leaving.

Without me!

I decided to risk the small arms fire and stood. Although barely able to see, I staggered toward the sound of the aircraft, hoping those who might be shooting at me couldn’t see much better.

The engines revved louder and I vaguely saw the large mass start to lift. Staggering toward the airplane and waving my arms, I thought I heard the engines change again. Just as I was trying to decide if it were my imagination or not, I tripped over something and fell face-first to the ground, getting sand and dirt in my mouth and eyes.

I was now spitting sand and crying uncontrollably. Not a great way to meet whatever fate the villagers had in store for me.

As I crawled to my knees, a strong hand slid under my elbow, helping me up. “Alpha Star?”

It was a calm, assured and very American voice.

“Who are you?” I could barely see a dark shape.

“A member of the Charlie Team. I’ve got you. We need to leave now. The plane is holding for you.”

“Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you so much. I thought you were going to leave without me.”

“We almost did. I was doing a final area check as we were lifting off when Hands started shouting you were missing. Then I saw you stand up and run for the plane. With all the small arms fire, when I saw you fall, I thought you’d been shot. Had my worst moment of the mission right then. If I’d have lost you, Hands would have chewed my ass to the end of time. Not a good thing to lose the asset.”

I was so thankful the best I could choke out was, “You came back. Oh, God, I thought you were going to leave me.”

“No, ma’am. Not on this mission. Or any mission, for that matter. It’s the SEALs’ code. No man—or woman—left behind.”