Chapter Twenty
NATE
“So, let me play the devil’s advocate,” Ana started to say. “What if we can’t get out by car, what’s our backup plan?”
I had to give it to Ana: she was thinking like a true security detail. I didn’t think the lifestyle was anything appropriate for her, but I knew the appeal of the constant action. As much as I wanted to yell and scream at her for showing up, it wouldn’t have helped a thing.
She was trying to prove something, that was obvious. Ana was a strong woman though and I knew it from the moment I laid eyes on her. She didn’t let the adversity of her past keep her down for long and that was very appealing to me. I was really glad our paths had crossed and even kind of glad she was with me in Damascus, although I obviously didn’t like her being in the middle of a war zone.
“We would need to get everyone to the safe house at least, or the airport. Traveling by foot around here is extremely dangerous though, especially with a group of people. It would draw a lot of attention and the rebels would be after us very quickly.”
“Would we travel in the daylight for safety or at night? I can see the benefits of either way.”
“I think at night would be best. Down side roads and hiding in abandoned buildings during the day. But let’s stop talking about all of this; it’s not going to be necessary. I have a feeling we will be able to get both vehicles loaded up and out of here at 0400. Then we will be on a plane home within a few hours after that. Sometimes these dangerous jobs actually end up being straight forward and easy.”
Ana did not look very convinced at all. She grimaced at my words, and we walked out to the main area to join the few adults who were organizing and cleaning things. Even though they knew we would finally be leaving their building soon, the women insisted on cleaning up and making sure everything looked nice when they left. I couldn’t help but think that they hoped the war would end soon and they would be able to return to their jobs. Unfortunately, I knew that once the building was emptied, it would only be a matter of time before all its contents were pillaged through and the building left uninhabitable.
“You ladies should get some sleep,” I said as we entered the room.
The women all stopped dead in their tracks and looked at me, but they didn’t understand a thing I was saying. Luckily, one of the men came over and translated for me. He spoke to them much more firmly than I had, and the women quickly left the room and headed to the hidden sleeping room.
“Well, you sure know how to clear a room,” Ana joked.
“The women will be ready in the morning,” Roane said.
“Thank you; please have your men get a couple hours of sleep. Ana and I will keep watched until 0345 and wake you to help gather everyone. We might only be able to take one SUV full, but it is possible we could take everyone, so everyone will need to be ready.”
“Thank you sir,” Roane said. “And thank you, ma’am,” he said to Ana.
“You’re welcome,” Ana said with a huge smile on her face.
She seemed really happy to be there with me, and I was surprised at how well she was handling everything. I knew she had it in her and was strong; I just wasn’t so sure that she knew she had it in her. There had been no visible signs of hand shaking at all since I saw her. If she could handle Damascus, then I was sure she would be able to handle anything that was going on back at home.
“Let’s make a round trip from one side to the other and check the windows, I’ll go with you the first time and show you, then we can split up. Does that sound good?”
“Of course,” Ana answered.
She was eager to learn and it reminded me of the new recruits and how much they wanted to learn and do everything when they first arrived on a job site. Their eagerness to learn was always appreciated, but it couldn’t be in spite of education and knowledge. There were a lot of things that new recruits learned in the military, and Ana certainly wasn’t going to join the military to learn those things.
“You look tired,” Ana said as we walked back into the room we had just made love in.
“Oh, no, you’re not getting me back into bed, young lady,” I joked.
“Ha, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you could take a short nap if you needed an hour. Once you show me what to check for, I can check and just wake you up if I have questions.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her. Ana was seriously telling me, the trained one, that I could take a nap if I wanted to. It was comical how comfortable she was in the middle of the war zone.
“I think you should take a nap,” I answered.
“I’m not tired.”
“Neither am I,” I replied as I looked out the window to see if there was any sort of movement going on out there.
“Well, let’s get to work then; show me how to do this.”
“Just lift the corner and duck down to look out. Don’t open the shades in the middle and always make sure the door is closed behind you and there is as little light as possible,” I showed her. “Now you do it.”
Ana followed my directions exactly and was very careful as she looked out the window. I saw her look left and then right, then she placed the curtain back down gently so there was no movement. She was a natural.
“Very good. Now let’s go to the other side of the building.”
It only took about ten minutes for us to make out rounds and look out each side of the building. There wasn’t much going on, and I couldn’t see any signs of movement at all. There weren’t any curtains moving in buildings, there weren’t any cars driving on the streets, and there were no pedestrians walking around either. It was well after midnight so none of that was all that surprising, but I still had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I’ll go around this way, and you go the opposite way. We can meet up in the middle,” I told Ana.
She went right to work and didn’t wait for any further instructions. She was a hard worker, obviously, but I couldn’t wait to get her out of that place. My mind drifted back to the time at my cabin and how angry and confused she had been that first night. I couldn’t help but smile at how she had thrown me out of her bedroom because she thought I was trying to hurt her. Yet only a few months later, here she was following me to Syria and trying to help me on one of the most dangerous jobs of my career.
Ana was certainly the kind of woman who would keep me on my toes. I think that was one of the things I admired most about her. She liked taking risks, and even after everything she had been through, she obviously still had risk taking in her bones. That was the same with me. I couldn’t go a month without doing something exciting or dangerous.
Maybe that was why we got along so well. Sure, at first I just wanted her because of her beauty and she needed someone to rescue her. But beauty fades and you can only rescue someone once. Now my passion for Ana was growing into something much bigger, much more rounded, and nothing like anything I had dealt with before.
For the first time in my adult life, I felt like I was with a woman who was my equal. Sure, we had our differences, and I didn’t mean equal in strength, intelligences, etc., because we all have our strengths and downfalls in those areas. I meant that Ana was my equal in personality and lifestyle. She was the woman of my dreams, but I just hadn’t had the balls to dream about her until she dropped into my lap.
As we each made our rounds, I couldn’t help but enjoy having Ana there with me. It was nice to see her sexy smile as I came around from my side of perimeter checks. Ana was certainly easy on the eyes. Her tiny frame was even evident through the layered, beige clothing she had on.
“Hey, stranger, do I know you?” Ana joked as we met up after a perimeter check.
“Nope, but I’d like to know you,” I teased.
We each made another round and as we came back together again, she said something else that made me laugh. It didn’t feel like we were working, and deep down I knew I needed to be paying better attention to what was going on around us. I knew that the interaction I was having with Ana was exactly why men didn’t want to work side by side with women in a war zone.
Yes, it’s politically incorrect to say such a thing, but women are distractions. I don’t blame the woman, or Ana, in this case. It wasn’t her fault that I was distracted by her every time she walked by. It certainly wasn’t her fault that I wanted to pull her into that room again and hear her moan underneath me. But the male, primal instinct was to impress a woman and to catch her attention. It was too difficult to ignore my primal instinct.
Men just couldn’t keep their hands, or thoughts, to themselves when a beautiful woman was around. It didn’t matter how well trained he was; a man was always a man and it was my opinion that they couldn’t handle being around women in war zones.
Of course, I couldn’t tell Ana any of my thoughts on the matter. It certainly wouldn’t make her very happy if she knew I didn’t intend on letting her train to work with me. In fact, the last job in the world that I thought would be all right for Ana was working in dangerous places like I did. Especially because I wanted to be with her, I couldn’t live with the idea that she was going to be in danger all the time.
“It’s 0345; I’m going to call Rake and the guys and tell them to make their way over here. It’s quiet as hell out tonight.”
“What do you need me to do?” Ana asked.
“Let’s get everyone separated into two groups. Women and children in one group, we will send them first. Then the men in the second group. Everyone will have to just sit on laps and cram into the SUVs.”
“I’ll go talk to Roane and have him help translate; the women seemed pretty afraid of you.”
Ana was right. The women were either afraid of me or not supposed to look at me because of religion. Either way, it would be quicker if Ana and Roane gathered everyone then I could talk with Rake and the other guys about the plan. I used my radio to get Rake on the line.
“Rake, come in, we are a go, ten-four.”
“Copy that. Go for all?”
“Yes, go for all. Copy.”
“Copy,” Rake said. “ETA fifteen minutes. Be ready.”
For as long as we had known each other, it still impressed me when we were able to complete a job without incident. When a job flowed perfectly, it was like a synchronized dance that we had practiced for weeks. I could only hope assignments would go so smoothly once I started my new company.
The CEO at Resolve Oil was going to be eternally grateful that we had gathered up his remaining employees and their families. I would make sure to send him a detailed assignment breakdown and introduce myself to him. We had met through assignments before, but I couldn’t take the chance that he wouldn’t recognize my name when I approached him later about the new company.
Ana and Roane gathered all the remaining employees and their families and had them waiting by the stairs. The men went first and cleared the bottom floor and then I let Ana and the remaining children come down. It was perfect timing too as we were all downstairs when Rake pulled up with the first SUV and Sandbag was in the second one. Baller was back at our safe house monitoring radios and would give us the best route to the airport.
“Ana, in the front with Rake. Get all the women and children into your SUV. Roane, I’ll ride with you and we will go first to clear the way for the women.”
“Yes, Sir,” Roane replied.
“This way,” Ana said as she motioned for the women and children to get into the second SUV.
They all climbed in, and Ana ran around to the front and got in. I had my eye on her the whole time and motioned for the men to get into the first SUV. If there were rebels out there, it would be best that the men and I engaged them so the women could take a different route and get to the airport. I wasn’t going to take any chances with the women and children, or with Ana.
“Go, go, go,” I said to Sandbag as we pulled out.
There was a sense of relief that we had everyone loaded into the SUVs and there hadn’t been any noise from the house across the street. The time of night probably helped, but then again, the people in the house could have been hiding out like we were. There was no way to tell.
Our SUVs moved slowly through the streets trying not to make too much noise. Ideally I wouldn’t have had them both moving at the same time, but we needed to get everyone to the airport and there hadn’t been any signs of rebels, so I thought it was the best move.
The dark, night air was thick with anticipation as we turned one corner and found a car sitting in the middle of the street. It wasn’t unusual to find a car abounded in the street when it had stopped working, but it was unusual to find a car that was totally blocking the road in both directions.
“Baller, any intel on this parked car two blocks away from office?” I said into the radio.
“No intel. Can you take a side street?”
“Rake, take the street to the right of us, we will have to back up and go that way.”
“Copy that, Nitro; we are turning now. Will wait for you around next corner.”
“Copy that; be there shortly.”
I looked back and watched as Rake’s SUV turned down the road behind us. Sandbag started to maneuver our SUV and then we heard shot ring out.
“Ambush!” I yelled into the radio. “Get them out of here, Rake.”
Then I heard several shot from behind us. There was gunfire coming from every direction, and I didn’t know if they were just shooting at us, or if they had eyes on Rake and Ana’s SUV and were shooting at them as well.
“Sandbag, I need you to get us out of here,” I yelled as he pressed the gas pedal and pushed the car that was in the middle of the street out of our way.
“Copy that, boss, we are pushing our way through.”
“Rake, get everyone to the airport; we will meet you there. We’ll draw their fire,” I said into the radio.
By this point, the men in the SUV with me had their windows down and were returning fire in the direction of where we thought the rebels had been hiding. It was dark out still and we couldn’t exactly tell which floor of the building they had been on, but we could tell which building it was.
With three of us returning fire, we hoped that a few of the rebels had been hit. Taking out rebels didn’t really matter to us though; all we cared about was getting everyone to the airport safely and without incident.
Unfortunately, we had already had an incident, now we just had to worry about getting everyone to the airport safely. I could see all the guys in my SUV were good and didn’t appear to have any injuries.
“Rake, did you guys get out of there all right? Over.”
The silence on the other was deafening. I messed with the radio channels and tried it again. Rake just needed to say he was on his way to the airport. That’s all I needed to know.
“Rake, come in. Are you in route? Over.”
“What the hell is going on?” Baller asked over the radio. “Answer, Rake; we need to confirm your direction.”
Again, there was no answer. We couldn’t hear any interference. There was no faint sound of him trying to say something and we just couldn’t hear him. We heard absolutely nothing. Sandbag and I both looked at each other and knew we would have to go back. We couldn’t leave the women and children there to fend for themselves if something had happened to Rake. There was no other option; we had to help them.