Striking Distance (2 page)

She hated the feel of his old man’s hands on her. She hated the sour odor of his skin, his breath, the coarseness of his beard. He was always rough with her, even when she lay still and didn’t fight.

Stay away. Stay away. Stay away.

She drifted off, only to jerk awake at the sound of a man’s voice.

His door opened, closed, soft footfalls sounding in the hallway as Nibaal made her way back to the room she shared with her four children.

She exhaled, certain she’d been spared for the night, her body relaxing, sleep stealing over her at last.

Screams.

She sat bolt upright on a rush of adrenaline and grabbed her burka, drawing it over her head just as the door to her room crashed open.

A dark shape filled the doorway.

A man with a weapon.

He aimed it at her, a red dot dancing over her chest.

Too terrified even to scream, she shrank back against the wall, her heart hammering, her mouth dry, fear making her mind go blank.

A light blinded her.

He aimed his weapon at the corners as if he expected someone to be hiding in the room, then shouted in heavily accented Arabic. “Come with me!”

She
wanted
to do as he’d asked. She didn’t want to be shot and killed. But fear kept her grounded to the spot, her breath coming in terrified pants.

“Clear! All clear! Got another female here, senior chief.” He crossed the room in two big strides. “Bring her to the courtyard. Roger that.”

The sound of his American English made her breath catch.

“Come.” The man spoke more softly this time, motioning for her to get to her feet and come with him.

As if in a dream, she rose, her heart beating erratically in her chest, his uniform and his American accent awakening something nameless and terrifying inside her.

He nudged her ahead of him, his weapon still raised. “Go!”

Her legs seemed to be made of water as she walked down the stairs, across the main room, and out into the frigid night, where the other women stood in their veils huddled together with their children, all of them crying, some praying aloud.

“Hanan!” One of them reached for her, called to her in Arabic.
Zainab.
“Hanan, sister, come here to us!”

She felt a rush of warmth to hear Zainab call her “sister,” something comforting in Zainab’s concern for her. The older woman’s fingers dug into her arms as she drew her roughly into the cluster of women, pushing her to the center, where other hands reached out, grabbed her, held her.

And then she saw.

There, in the center of the courtyard, lay Abu Nayef.

All but naked, he lay facedown in the dirt, his wrists bound together behind his back, a tall uniformed man standing guard over him.

A dead man lay on his side not far from Abu Nayef, his eyes open, part of his head missing, a spray of blood and brains on the wall behind him.

Her stomach seemed to fall to the ground, vague memories of another day, images of blood and dead men flashing through her mind. She looked away and swallowed hard, fighting to keep down her supper.

“They are going to kill us all!” Nibaal sobbed.

“Is this true?” Angeza whispered in frightened Pashtun.

She shook her head, whispered back. “They won’t hurt us.”

She couldn’t say why she was so sure about this, but she was.

Armed men in heavy uniforms seemed to be everywhere—on the rooftop, in the courtyard, inside the house. Their faces were covered in black paint, making them look like shadows in the darkness. They seemed to be searching for something.

“Where are your tears, Hanan?” Zainab pinched her. “Do you see what has become of our husband? Do you see what these Americans have done to him?”

Americans.

The nameless terror inside her grew stronger.

But she couldn’t bring herself to weep, not for Abu Nayef. She loathed him. Instead, she listened to every word the men in uniform said to one another.

“Hey, JG, we’ve got a dozen terrified women and kids here. Are they going to be safe when you blow those caves?” asked the tall one standing over Abu Nayef, speaking into a slender mic near his painted lips. “Roger that.”

“Hey, senior chief, we got nine hard drives, four cell phones, a handful of flash drives, and a box full of CDs, along with some files.”

“Bag ’em,” the tall one said. “Boss, we’re good to begin our exfil. Yo, boys, it’s time to go!”

Americans.

Chills shivered up her spine.

“What is that? Do you hear that?” Zainab looked up.

It was the thrum and whir of distant helicopters.

She looked up through the mesh of her burka at the starless sky, saw nothing, the night having taken on an air of unreality.

One of the women—Safiya—started to sob, clutching the crying baby to her chest. “They’re taking him away! What will become of us?”

Out of the dark sky appeared three helicopters, black against the black night, each with one rotor in back, another in front. One lowered itself to perch against the cliffs above, men in black uniforms rising like ghosts from the ground and climbing aboard, weapons in their hands. Another landed at the base of the cliffs. Still another landed inside the compound, its giant rotors blowing dust everywhere.

The house had been surrounded, and they hadn’t even known it.

One of the men began shouting to the women in bad Arabic, telling them to take shelter inside the house for their own protection, warning them that the caves in the cliffs had been set with explosives and were going to blow up.

She found herself caught up in a panicked tide of blue and black as women clad in burkas and abayas pushed her toward the house, Zainab’s fingers holding fast to her arm, digging deep into her flesh. She looked over her shoulder to see the tall one standing guard while two of his men lifted Abu Nayef by his elbows and dragged him toward the waiting helicopter and up its rear ramp.

They were leaving.

The Americans were leaving.

There was a buzzing in her brain, her pulse pounding so hard it all but drowned out the sound of the helicopters, that nameless fear gathering momentum, rushing against her like a wave, the terror in her mind coalescing into a single, heart-stopping thought.

Ana amrekiah.

I’m an American, too.

“Ana amrekiah.”
She didn’t realize she’d stopped walking or spoken aloud until Zainab jerked her arm.

“Shut your mouth, or I will cut out your tongue!”

Strong hands shoved her toward the house, making her stumble. She looked back, saw the tall man watching them, and she realized he was waiting to board the helicopter until the others were safely back inside. Then he, too, would disappear up that ramp.

As the women reached the door, he took two steps back, then turned away from them, speaking words she couldn’t hear into his microphone.

The Americans were leaving—without her.

Dizzy with terror, she jerked away from the other women. “Wait! I’m an American, too!”

But her words were blown away by the roar of the helicopter’s rotors.

* * *

WAIT! I’M AN
American, too!

Javier caught the words over the drone of the helos, but it took them a moment to register. Had that come from beneath one of the burkas?

“Senior chief, watch out! You got one running up behind you!” Ross ran down the ramp, dropped to one knee, aimed his weapon.

Javier pivoted, weapon ready, and saw the tallest of the women running toward him, the red dot from Ross’s laser sight dancing on her covered forehead.

“Hold your fire!” Javier aimed his M4 at her. “Stop! Get down!”

But she had already fallen to her knees, turquoise blue cloth billowing around her, her breath coming in terrified sobs. She cried out again, her accent American. “H-help me! I’m . . . I’m an American, too!”

He started toward her, just as one of the other women broke out of the group, this one holding a knife in her hand. She shouted something in Arabic and ran not toward Javier, but toward the woman on the ground, her intent clear.

Without hesitation, Javier raised his M4 and dropped her with a double tap, her knife falling to the dirt.

The other women, now clustered together in the doorway, screamed.

JG’s voice sounded in his ear. “Senior chief, what the hell’s going on?”

“I think we’ve got a hostage.” He strode quickly to the terrified woman, grabbed a fistful of blue burka, and ripped it aside, exposing her completely.

For a moment all he could do was stare, his gaze taking in the tears and bruises on her cheeks, her swollen lip and thin face, her threadbare nightgown, the shock and terror in her eyes.

Laura!

And then his training kicked in. “This is now an AMCIT recovery. I say again: This is now an AMCIT recovery. Do you copy?”

Ross and Zimmerman ran down the helo’s ramp and took up defensive positions, ready to take out anyone who threatened Javier or Laura.

“We hear you lima charlie, senior chief,” the Boss answered from the third helo several hundred feet in the air above them. “Get her, and let’s go. We’ve got enemy QRF pushing our position from the east. You need to get airborne
now
!”

The second Chinook was already nosing its way downwind. Slow and cumbersome at liftoff, the helos made great targets for the Soviet-era RPGs that AQ combatants loved to fire at them. If the pilots couldn’t get them in the air and up to speed before the enemy got within firing range . . .

“Roger that.” Knowing the others were covering for him, Javier clipped his M4 into his tactical sling, lifted Laura into his arms, and turned toward the last helo, covering the ground in long, fast strides. Without a glance back, he ran up the ramp and settled Laura into his jump seat, Ross and Zimmerman pounding up the ramp behind him.

“All boots on board!” Zimmerman shouted.

“Ramp!”

“Ramp!” The shout was repeated as the cargo ramp was raised.

The helo rotors accelerated, seconds ticking by like hours as the big bird slowly left the ground, heading into the wind, the pilot fighting for translational lift. Javier listened as the pilot relayed their altitude, enemy QRF drawing ever closer.

A shell exploded not far from the helo’s tail, its blast wave making the helo lurch and drawing a gasp from Laura. Javier put a gloved hand on her shoulder, hoping to reassure her. “Sit tight.”

Too damned close.

The seconds ticked by, punctuated by two more explosions, each of them more distant than the last as the helo gained speed. Then came the deep rumble as JG detonated the explosives in the caves.

“We did it, senior chief!” Krasinski pointed at Javier. “Cobra strikes again!”

“We’re not done with the mission till we get back to home plate, Krasinski.” Heart beating hard, Javier leaned back against the webbing that lined the helo, grabbed it for balance, catching his breath, ratcheting down on the adrenaline, taking stock of his men, of the situation. Reeves had caught a round in the shoulder. Wilson, the platoon medic, had already treated it. Reeves would need surgery and PT, but he’d be fine. Apart from a few bruises and scrapes, no one else was wounded. Al-Nassar was battered but alive, his laptops, cell phones, disks, and drives bagged and tagged.

Delta Platoon had done what they’d been tasked to do on this mission—and they’d come away with something extra.

He let his gaze drop to Laura, felt a tangled rush of relief and rage. Clearly in shock, she sat there shivering in a white cotton nightgown that left little to the imagination, her face downcast, her long hair tangled. She was rail thin and pale, as if she had recently been ill or hadn’t eaten a good meal in months. There were fresh bruises on her face and her arms, proof that the other women had tried to restrain her.

All this time—eighteen goddamned months—she’d been here
alive
.

¡Carajo!

Al-Nassar’s group had claimed they’d executed her. They’d lied. Why?

He glanced at Al-Nassar, whose gaze was fixed on her, hatred mingling with something predatory in his eyes.

Lust.

The asshole had wanted her, had used her, had hurt her.

¡Mamabicho!

Cocksucker.

Like some trapped wild thing, Laura looked around at the helo full of men, her vulnerability tearing at Javier. He drew a blanket out of the webbing and wrapped it around her shoulders.

She hugged the blanket tightly around herself and looked up at him as if she weren’t quite certain he was real. “Th-thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He’d never told her he was a SEAL, and he was certain she didn’t recognize him beneath the uniform and camo face paint.

One by one, Javier’s men acknowledged her with polite nods.

“Ma’am.”

“We’re happy to have you on board, ma’am.”

“Welcome back, Ms. Nilsson.”

Then Al-Nassar began to speak, muttering something to her.

Her pale face went a shade whiter, fear in her wide eyes.

And something inside Javier snapped.

He smashed his fist into the bastard’s face—once, twice—the blow and the pain in his knuckles doing nothing to satisfy the burning anger inside him. Realizing what he’d done, he stepped back, fists clenched as he fought to rein himself in. “Wilson, gag and blindfold this motherfucker before I kill him.”

“You got it, senior chief.” Wilson grabbed a wad of gauze from his pack and shoved it into Al-Nassar’s mouth, tying it in place with more gauze.

Al-Nassar began to struggle, trying to pull his head away, blood trickling from his nose and a cut on his cheek.

Zimmerman stood and restrained him none too gently while Wilson tied a tourniquet over the bastard’s eyes. “You need to shut the fuck up and leave her alone, asshole. Got that? Yeah, I know you understood me. Went to Oxford, didn’t you? Paid the Brits back for your first-class education by trying to blow them up.”

Shaking with unspent anger, Javier looked down at Laura again. She probably thought they’d come to rescue her, when the truth was they hadn’t even known she was there. If she hadn’t shouted out for him, if she hadn’t run . . .