Chapter Eighteen
NATE
“I’ll do some intel on the location tonight, and then if all goes well, we could go gather them tomorrow. How’s that sound?” I asked the guys.
“Good to me. I’ve found a couple SUVs we can borrow from the Red Crescent. We have the weapons now. I think we need to get out there and see what that block looks like. It’s only three blocks south of here; you can easily check it out tonight,” Baller said.
“Nitro, there’s a call for you,” Sandbag said as he turned the laptop around and I saw my brother Chase’s face on the Skype call.
It was very unusual that Chase would contact me while I was on a job. There had only been a couple of instances where he had done so and they had all been related to our father becoming sick. Then I thought about Jordan and her pregnancy and hoped it wasn’t something to do with that. She wasn’t far enough along to have the baby. I couldn’t take any more bad news from home though.
“Chase? What’s up? Is Jordan all right? Dad?” I asked.
“Yes, everyone here is all right. But I got a call from Ana,” Chase said as he quietly looked around his house. “I don’t want Jordan to hear.”
“What? Ana called you? What’s going on? I heard she left my boss’s house and was going to prove herself or something like that. Where is she?”
“I don’t know where she is for sure, but she said she would meet you at the office building and that there are fifty people not twenty.”
“What?” I screamed as I stood up and again knocked my chair over.
All three guys were around me in a moment to see what was going on. I couldn’t believe my ears; Chase couldn’t possibly mean that Ana was there in Syria. How the hell could she have gotten there? Better yet, how could she have gotten into the office building with the employees? I must have misheard him. There just wasn’t a way that Ana could have managed to get herself all the way over there and into an office building that we still hadn’t managed to get intel on.
“I’m just the messenger,” Chase said in response to the shock on my face. “She sounded like she was doing well. That’s all I know.”
“Fuck, shit, goddamn it,” I swore. “Thanks, Chase. I’ll let you know when I hear more. You do the same, please.”
“Will do.”
As I hung up, I couldn’t fathom how on earth little, scared Ana could have gotten herself to Syria. Furthermore, I couldn’t figure out why she would have come. She had been safe at Blankenship’s house, I was going to be back there shortly, she had nothing to worry about. My mind was all twisted with the idea that Ana was actually there; I felt like it had to be some sort of a trap.
Maybe the rebels had intercepted my call with my boss and knew I was worried about Ana. Maybe Stephano had something to do with it? Something wasn’t right, that was all I knew. A normal twenty-something-year-old woman who just got out of a drug and trauma treatment program didn’t fly herself to the middle of a war zone.
“So, what’s up?” Rake asked.
“I’m not sure. I feel like it’s some sort of trap. My brother just called and said my girlfriend called him and told him she would meet me at the office building and there are fifty people not twenty.”
“At the office building here?” Rake asked.
“I have no idea. That’s all she said. It seems like she would have been talking about the building here. We had talked about the number of people I expected and she knows the building.”
“How the hell could a woman just fly to Syria and waltz right into the building we are trying to rescue people from? You’re right, I think it’s a set up,” Baller added.
“I’m going to head over there now and see if I notice anything. Just going to gather some intel. I’ll be back by sun up.”
“Nitro, if it’s a trap, they could be leading you there just to capture you. There’s no way your girl is here. None,” Rake said with concern in his voice.
“I know it’s a trap, but we need the intel anyways, and it’s better to gather it tonight so we know what we are facing anyways. I won’t get captured, I promise,” I said with a laugh.
We all knew that no one got captured on purpose. There was just one small thing that messed you up and the enemy had you pinned into a corner. Even the best of soldiers could get captured, and I knew I wasn’t immune to it.
“Let’s make a plan in case there really are fifty people. How many can we get into each vehicle?” Rake said as he moved right back into mission mode.
“I think we could get at least fifteen into each SUV if there are children,” Sandbag said. “If we had four vehicles total, we could make it work. But I don’t see us getting four vehicles through the streets all at once. We’d have to stagger the rescue.”
“Yeah, I agree. Maybe load up one vehicle at a time. I’m going to take my walkie, and if for some reason I feel like tonight’s good, one of you be ready to get over there and gather people.”
“I’ll be ready,” Rake replied.
“All right, let me get over there right away before the night gets going. Perhaps all the rebels will still be eating their meals for the evening.” I laughed.
I wasn’t really joking though. My experience in war zones was that the first few hours of night and the first few hours before sunrise were the best opportunities to make things happen. It was still dark out, but only the dedicated rebels would be out at those hours.
I gathered my pack and said my goodbyes before I made my way out our backdoor and down to the street. It was a rather quiet night and we hadn’t heard much gunfire at all since we had arrived. But that was how war zones worked. There would be a few days of wild firefights and then even the rebels had to rest and get some nourishment.
I very quickly realized that the map I had memorized wasn’t useful at all. There were many more streets throughout the area we were in, and more housing as well. But I managed to get myself to the block I needed to be at just as I saw what looked like a woman carrying a large bag on her back and some sort of packages on each side of her. It was too dark to know who it was and the woman had her head covered in a black scarf. I hid inside an abandoned building while she crossed the street and then hurried to the alley where she walked behind the Resolve Oil building.
The woman knocked on the door three times and then waited for a moment and knocked again before someone opened and let her in. I still had no idea who the person was, but at least I now knew that there were people in the building still.
Luckily, the streets were rather calm for the evening and I was able to climb up the fire escape of a nearby building so I could look into the windows on each of the floors. The curtains were open on all of the bottom floors, but when I made it to the fourth floor, the curtains were pulled shut. There was a tiny sliver of an opening in one of the windows and I put on my heat sensing gear to see if I could locate the people inside the building.
Sure enough, there were many more than twenty people in the building, and many of them looked like children. My gut told me it was the perfect time to get some of them out.
“Rake, get over here, street is quiet and we have a house full. Copy.”
“Copy that, Nitro, watch for me in ten.”
“Ten-Four.”
I didn’t have any time to waste. It really didn’t matter who the woman was who had brought supplies into the building. We had a window to get some of the women and children out and we had to take it.
Quickly, I climbed down and knocked three times on the same door I had seen the woman knock on. Then I knocked again, just like she did. When the man opened the door, I didn’t give him any time to object before I pressed him up against the wall and took his weapon from him.
“I was hired by Resolve to get you guys out of here. We have a window of opportunity. I need two women and all the children who are under twelve or so.”
Surprisingly, the man didn’t fight me and appeared to understand what I was saying to him very well. He brought me up to the fourth floor and I listened as he talked to the group of people. I looked around to see if I saw Ana, but in the chaos I didn’t have time to look closely with all of the women.
After ten minutes, the man from the front door had two women standing in front of me with 18 small children. The older children were holding the hands of the younger children and a few of them were even carrying infants on their hips. Twenty people were a lot to fit into one SUV, but considering the size of the children, I didn’t think it would be an issue.
“Here they are,” the man said.
“Tell them we are taking them to the airport. They will wait for everyone there. It may be a couple of days, but they will have food. Can these women manage?” I asked.
The man didn’t even hesitate.
“Yes, they will be fine.”
“Okay, let’s get them downstairs.”
Rake pulled up in a black SUV without any headlights on, and we didn’t hesitate to load everyone into the vehicle. The adrenaline was pumping, but the children were amazing and none of them were crying at all, not even the infants.
They loaded onto each other’s laps, and within sixty seconds of arriving, Rake was pulling away from the building. It was a huge relief to get all the youngest children out of there. If we ended up having to run on foot, the children who were left could all make their way with us. As the car pulled away, though, I noticed some movement in the building across the street. I wasn’t positive about it, but I thought we had at least one person over there.
“Thank you,” the man said as he hugged me when we got back into the building.
“Don’t thank me yet. The rebels will get word that those children have arrived at the airport and we will have a much harder time getting out of here. Let’s go back upstairs and start planning.”
“I’m Roane,” the man said. “Should we prepare the rest of them?” he asked eagerly.
“No, look,” I said as I opened the window and showed him the activity in the building across the street.
As we glanced out the window, a person very quickly ducked behind the shades of a window in the building across the street. It could have been someone just hiding out over there, or it could have been a whole group of people that just didn’t notice us until the car had left, but either way, there was definitely someone across the street.
“You’re partner is here, should I bring you to her?” Roane asked. “You can make preparations and let us know.”
“Yes, bring me to her,” I said.
As we walked up to the fourth floor, Roane brought me over to a petite woman who was sitting in the corner with the other women and separating out some food into bowls. I saw her hands before anything else and knew it was her.
“There she is,” Roane said.
“Thank you,” I said before sitting next to the woman. “Howdy, partner.”
She turned toward me and smiled so wide I would have sworn we were sitting at my kitchen table back at home. Ana looked relaxed and at peace, yet she was sitting there with me in the middle of a friggin’ war zone.
“Nate,” she said as she reached under the table and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go in the other room. I don’t think I’m supposed to kiss you in public or something like that.”
I followed her into a small, makeshift bedroom that was at the other end of the floor. First I looked out the window to see if there was any movement. Then I turned around to give her a piece of my mind.
“You are insane. What the hell are you doing here? Do you want to die?”
Ana smiled at me and didn’t seem fazed at all by my anger. In fact, she seemed very amused by it.
“It appears I’m having some trouble with my logical decision making after my trauma.”
“Ana, this isn’t funny. I was lucky to get those children out of here, but we have been made and won’t be able to send another group tonight. And by morning, it’s likely this place will be surrounded. We could all die.”
“What do you need me to do?”
She looked at me as if she was planning on helping me or something, instead of understanding that having her there just made the whole operation much more difficult for me.
“You? I don’t want you to do anything. I can’t even talk to you. Stay out of my way and listen to the directions I give.”
“Nate, I know it’s a surprise to have me here, but I can obviously take care of myself. I can help.”
“Fucking hell, Ana, why are you here? I don’t get it. Did you miss me that much?”
Suddenly, her face turned from sweet and nice to something totally different. She was angry with me.
“I came to help, you jerk. I know this place. I know this building and I was tired of being afraid, so I came to help. I was being hunted by Stephano and I’d rather be here and help.”
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I said as I pulled her close. “I fucking hate it. You should be at home. But damn, I’m really fucking turned on to see you here.”
“I got my ass to this building and brought food and water for them. You have to admit that took some skills. I mean, I even beat you here.”
“You are amazing and we will talk more about that in a minute. Let me take care of a few things.”
I felt my body reacting to Ana and I was about two seconds away from throwing her onto one of the cots and having my way with her. But I had to make sure the building was secured first.
It took me about thirty minutes to get all the men stationed at better locations around the building and get the rest of the women and children into the safe room. Then I radioed Rake to get an update on how the drop off went with the Red Crescent.
“Packages were delivered and are doing well. A Timothy Anders said to tell Ana he says hi.”
I couldn’t help but smile. Ana was actually pretty damn good. She had arrived in Syria, found a friend in a reputable charity, and got herself to the house. As angry as I was at her, I was still impressed with her resourcefulness. There certainly weren’t many women who could have pulled that off.
“Should we try for extraction at 0400?” I asked.
“Check in at 0345 and we can finalize, but that sounds good.”
“Copy that.”
We had about four hours to wait and there was no way I was going to get any shuteye. I had the men stationed around the house so I would know if there was any movement in the buildings or the streets. It was time to return to Ana and fill her in on what was going on.
“Are we leaving?” she asked eagerly. “Should I have a gun?”
“No, you shouldn’t have a gun. And no, we aren’t leaving for about four hours. There’s at least one person across the street and I’d like to give him time to get some shuteye before we try to get the rest out.” I laughed at her idea of getting a gun.
Ana had barely learned how to shoot one; there was no way I was handing a handgun over to her with that level of knowledge.
“So, what are we supposed to do for four hours?”
“Oh, I’ve got an idea,” I said as I pressed my body into hers and kissed her.