Chapter Sixteen
NATE
Fear had never really been my thing. I just didn’t get afraid like other people did. I had moments when I was on high alert and certainly I had been in situations that were dangerous, but I had confidence that the skills I had could get me out of those situations. It didn’t hurt that I also had confidence in the men I worked with.
Baller, Rake, and Sandbag were the nicknames of the three men I usually deployed with. They called me Nitro instead of Nate. We trusted each other and knew that each of us brought a high level of skill to the table and would protect the other. We were all former military and knew how to handle ourselves in a war zone.
Working with men you trusted made it easier to be in dangerous conditions. There was no second-guessing each other. We all knew that when we decided on who did each job, it would get done the best possible way. I never had to worry if my guys were going to put their best effort forward and they never had to worry about me. That was the hallmark of a true team.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Baller greeted me as I arrived at our staging location in Damascus.
“That damn cat needs to stop bringing trash in the house,” I shot back at him.
We shook hands, and I moved on to shake hands with Rake and Sandbag as well. They had all the maps and intel spread out on a table and we went right into planning the mission. Before we could execute any sort of rescue, we had to make sure to get everything else into place so our plan would work.
“Let’s be careful with these maps; they are really old and everything could have changed,” I added as we routed the convoy we would take from the business location to the airport.
“How old are the maps?” Rake asked.
I pointed to the date in the corner that read 1953.
“Shit, how the hell are we supposed to use this shit? It’s unreal. Like they want us to get our asses handed to us over here.”
Rake was right to be pissed off. We had deployed to so many locations without the right equipment; we were all sick of it. Our lives weren’t the only ones at stake. If we didn’t get the right supplies, it was going to make it much harder for us to rescue the people. There’s nothing worse than showing up to rescue people and ending up getting them killed because we weren’t prepared. We had all dealt with that at least once on previous deployments and none of us wanted to deal with it again.
“I know, man. But it’s all we got. Oh, and the blueprint of the business is wrong, too. There’s an addition off of here that houses the families. It’s four stories tall and leads into the alley,” I added, almost afraid of what Rake might say next.
“Wait, how do you know all of this? Do you have a better blueprint?” Sandbag questioned.
“My girlfriend was here with her family as a teenager. She walked me through the building changes. I think we will be all right once we get in there. It might be a little harder to get the families out though; it will just depend on if the rebels show up right away or not.”
“He said girlfriend.” Rake made a shocked face.
“Yeah, I heard that as well. Must be a pretty fucking amazing woman if you are willing to call her that,” Sandbag added.
“Come on, guys, we aren’t here to talk about my love life.” I tried to change the subject.
“Nitro has a girlfriend,” Rake joked.
When I finished talking, I looked up at the guys and all three of them had grins on their faces. They looked absolutely ridiculous. I knew they wanted to keep talking about my girlfriend, but that wasn’t really my style. I did like referring to Ana as my girlfriend, though, and I was excited to talk to her about it when I returned home.
“Girlfriend?” Baller asked as if he just then started to pay attention to us.
“Yes, girlfriend. Is that so unbelievable?”
“Actually, it is,” Rake added. “What kind of woman would date you?”
All three of them broke into laughter. We all loved to bust each other’s chops about how the single life was treating us. It was difficult to have a family and children when you deployed to dangerous situations all the time. But all three of the other guys had managed to have some sort of long-term relationship in the time I had known them. I was the only one who had been perpetually single and never once had I had a girlfriend that I would speak of to them.
“Okay, okay, let’s get back to work.” I tried to redirect them.
“So, is she Syrian? What’s she look like? How did you two hook up?”
I rolled my eyes at Rake as he asked his questions, but I knew I had to tell them a little something or they weren’t going to leave me alone about it.
“She’s actually from Liechtenstein: petite, blonde, and very sweet.”
“Does she have a nice rack?” Baller asked.
“I’m done with this. Let’s move on. We have at least two days of planning before we can execute this. What kind of weapons do we have available?”
“Right there.”
Rake pointed to a small pile of handguns that were lying on the counter. Next to the guns were two boxes of ammo. About enough gun power for us to break into a bakery and steal some bread.
It was the norm for us, and we always managed to wrangle up some additional firearms. Working as freelancers was much better than working through the military; we didn’t have to abide by the same rules as them when it came to buying guns and ammunition. We were free to purchase and acquire our guns in whatever way we saw fit.
“Well, shit, Baller, go get us some more,” I said as I pulled out a stack of hundred dollar bills.
Baller had a long beard and spoke Arabic; he could pass as a local if he had to. And anyone selling guns for cash wasn’t going to care all that much who they were selling them too. The black market for guns in any war zone was where we always went to get our weapons before a job. It was sad, but we had to do it that way in order to be prepared.
One thing I knew for sure: when I started my company, I wasn’t going to let any guy head out on a job without having proper firepower. It could be the difference between living and dying, and I wasn’t going to risk any of my men’s lives.
Planning my own company had never been a goal for me until I started going out on jobs and being put in situations that were totally out of control. I certainly could see why people hired a security firm when they had to do business in dangerous areas, but no one seemed to do research on the firms before they hired them. My firm I worked for at the moment was one of the best in the industry, yet we still had the same problems.
If I could solve those problems and make the jobs safer for both the agents and the clients, I knew I could skyrocket into the top spot in the field. Agents talked to each other, and as soon as the word got out that I was properly supplying them for their jobs, I knew I wouldn’t have a problem at all getting guys to work for me.
When the good agents came to me, so would the good clients. Most clients were dedicated to the firms they were using because they knew them. No one liked change all that much, but if their favorite agent worked for me, I was pretty sure the clients would want to follow them over as well.
Baller, Rake, and Sandbag didn’t know about my plans to start my own firm, but I suspected they would want to come over and work with me. They were loyal employees though, so I might not be able to steal them away until Blankenship closed shop, but that was all right with me. I would much rather have loyal men on my team than money hungry guys who would jump ship at the first increase in pay.
Rake and Sandbag got to work mapping out the route we could use, and I started calling around to find a couple SUVs. We only had two small trucks so far, and that wouldn’t be nearly good enough if we had six families to rescue. I hadn’t gotten clear intel on the number of women and children that were in the building, but we estimated a total of 18 to 24 people that we would need to get out of there. We had to have at least three large vans or SUVs to make the trip.
“Do we have contact with the guys inside the building yet?” I asked as I went through my mental checklist.
“No, they have been sending emails to their main office, but we are pretty sure those got cut off last week. Haven’t heard from them since then,” Rake said.
“So, we don’t even know if they are alive?” I exclaimed as I stood up and knocked over my chair in the process.
“No, we don’t know.”
“Goddamn it.”
That was the kind of shit we dealt with on every job we had been on. We were about to secure thousands of dollars’ worth of guns and equipment to go rescue people who may or may not even be there. It was insane and I hated it. I didn’t like putting myself at risk or my friends at risk, all for no reason. The whole job could have been done very quickly and relatively safely if we had been properly equipped when we arrived.
We could have limited the risk by being prepared and having good intel, but instead we doubled the risk to ourselves and the client’s employees who were stuck in the building. It was horrible and insane, yet it was what we had to deal with. We certainly weren’t going to leave those people to die in that building. It had already taken us weeks to get to the point that we were actually there in Syria; we weren’t going to leave them.
My sleep schedule was all off, and I worked throughout the night before making a video call to Mr. Blankenship to finalize the details of our operation. He answered the call almost immediately, and I knew something was wrong. His face was glum and he avoided eye contact as he started to speak.
“Nate, you made it there safely? Everything is in order?”
“What’s the matter?” I asked bluntly.
I wasn’t in the mood to play any games and I didn’t need his small talk. Of course I made it there safely; I was on the video call with him. And of course everything was not in order, it never was, and he knew that.
My first thought was that he had received intel on more rebels in the area than we had planned for. It certainly wouldn’t be the best possible option, but we would deal with it if that’s what was going on.
It wasn’t all that unusual that we would find out the intelligence information was totally wrong. It was actually really laughable how much went wrong with our jobs and that I was still alive. I chalked it up to training and being able to make the best out of every situation, but there was probably a lot of luck in it as well.
“Ana snuck out last night. She left a note saying she was going to find her inner hero.”
“What!” I screamed and woke up all three of the guys. “What do you mean she snuck out?”
“She asked my wife to walk the dog and she left. She just left. I’m sorry.”
My heart pounded hard as I tried to figure out what the hell was going on. Why on earth would Ana leave the safety of that room and go find her inner hero? She was safe there. No one would have found her. There was no reason for her to leave. I was absolutely livid that she had left and even more angry that Blankenship had allowed her to leave. I slammed the computer closed and started to pace the room.
I should have stuck on the call long enough to give him a piece of my mind, but I didn’t even want to waste my breath. He was probably happy to be rid of her. Either way, I would email him and give him some directions on how to track her down and put him to work while I finished my job in Damascus.
Baller, Rake, and Sandbag just watched me as I paced, each of them afraid to ask me what was going on. They knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t have answered them. I didn’t show emotion when we were on jobs and I certainly didn’t show emotion when it came to phone calls with the boss. There was clearly something going on and the guys were going to patiently wait for me to tell them the details.
I closed my eyes to think about where Ana would go. At first, I thought she was going to go back to Jordan’s house and maybe I should call Chase. But I was pretty sure he was being watched and I didn’t want to risk that. I had no idea where she was or where she was going, and I felt utterly helpless.
She said she was going to find her inner hero. That could mean so many different things and I couldn’t think straight enough to figure it out. My gut was saying that she was going to go after Stephano. Ana wasn’t ready for that kind of fight, I was sure of it. She had just enough training to get herself into a whole heap of trouble, and not enough training to actually win a fight.
I was thousands of miles away and I couldn’t do a damn thing about keeping Ana safe now. After a few minutes, I sat down and put my head in my hands. I was scared. I had never actually felt fear like I did in that moment. The fear came from the inability to control the environment or ensure that Ana would be safe. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t make her stay in that room. I couldn’t magically find her and keep her safe. For the first time that I could remember, I felt helpless, and it was a horrible feeling. It was worse than fighting an enemy with bigger guns than you. It was worse than trying to escape rebels who wanted you to die.
“Man, what’s up?” Baller asked finally.
“My girl; there’s some really shitty people after her. I stashed her at Blankenship’s house and he said she left. She just took off.”
“Kidnapped?” Rake asked.
“No, she left a note and planned it out. I think she is going to try and find the guys who were after her. I tried to teach her how to defend herself and she has this idea that she could kill someone if they attacked her. It’s my fault. I taught her just enough for her to feel confident.”
“Well, let’s get shit done here so you can get home,” Sandbag said as he pulled a chair up to the table.
I liked how he thought. There was no time for pity and no time for me to worry about Ana. I had to finish the job in front of me before I could go home, so that was what I was going to do. I was going to get the job done and get out of Syria as fast as humanly possible.
It was going to be hard as hell to concentrate on the job while I was worrying about Ana though. She could be anywhere and I had no information at all. I hated having bad intel on the road, and I definitely hated it when it came to someone I cared about. There was no possible way I was going to just sit back and not do anything.
I sent off an email to a friend of mine who worked for the State Department. I gave him Ana’s information and asked to be notified if she used her passport to travel at all or if they had any other information about her. I was lucky to have friends in places like the State Department and I didn’t use them often. So, when I asked for a favor, they were always more than willing to help me out.
“How do you guys feel about getting our intel done today and making this happen tomorrow?” I asked.
“Let’s do it.”
“Sure.”
“I’m game.”
That was why I loved those guys so much. They didn’t see a problem at all with making things happen faster than we normally did them. They were ready to roll with the punches and get shit done so we could get home and I could find Ana.
I just had to hope that she would be able to keep herself safe enough until I got home. I didn’t know what on earth she was planning to do, but whatever it was, I would get my ass home and help her with it.
If she wanted to take Stephano out, she should have told me. I would have sent someone to get it done. That wasn’t the kind of job you did yourself and there were a lot of things to keep in mind if you were going to actually murder a person.
Murder had never really been my thing. Sure, I had killed people while on a job. But the people I killed were always trying to kill me in the moment. I had never hunted someone down for the purpose of killing them. It seemed an antiquated way of getting revenge when there were so many more creative ways you could get a person killed.
The truth was we didn’t know if the people in that cabin were with Stephano or not. We had no information as to why they had pictures of Ana. For all I knew, they could have been stalking her because she was beautiful. The person who took those photos could have been an 80-year-old man who liked hot, young blondes. I didn’t feel like I had nearly enough information to go out and kill Stephano. Although the fact that he tricked Ana into coming to America and kept her captive should have been enough.
“Let’s get this job done,” I said to the guys as we all gathered around the table.
There was no more wasting any time. We all had a few hours of sleep and were going to hammer out the final details so we could get the job completed and get home. I wouldn’t risk my guys’ lives over whatever was going on with Ana, though. The job in front of us was dangerous, complex, and time sensitive. We needed to get every aspect just right if we were going to be successful.