Chapter Twenty-Two
NATE
“I’m going back,” I said over the radio to Baller.
“No, wait until we know what’s going on,” Baller replied.
“I can’t wait; it could be too late.”
I jumped out of our SUV to make my way back to the area where the firefight had just happened. I took care to go a different route so I could get first sight on the rebels and wouldn’t get ambushed by them.
“Wait,” I heard a man’s voice say.
When I turned around, it was Roane running after me. I didn’t have time to babysit anyone and I certainly didn’t want to risk the life of one of the office workers.
“Go back to the SUV; they will get you to the airport.”
“I can’t leave the women,” Roane said firmly.
The look in his eyes told me he was totally serious and there was no way I was going to convince him of anything else. What Roane may have lacked in tactical skill, he made up for in heart, and it would be good to have an extra set of hands if we got engaged. I glanced down and saw that Roane was carrying the semi-automatic gun from Sandbag, which I hadn’t grabbed when I left. So that was another positive to keeping Roane with me.
“All right, stay close and follow my lead.”
We went two blocks out of the way and then approached the square from the west side. But before we got there, we ran across the SUV that the women had been in. Rake was shot dead in the front seat and the radiator looked like it had taken a shot as well.
“Baller, get a cleanup crew to retrieve Rake; he’s dead.”
“What?”
“Now. I’m not leaving until someone is here. I don’t want his body being used for some sick games by the rebels.”
“I’ll be there in five,” Baller said.
It wasn’t the ideal option to have to wait there for Baller, but I had seen rebels string up troops in the middle of the streets as propaganda and I wouldn’t let that happen to my friend.
“Roane, look around and see if we can get some clues as to where the women were taken, or where they went.”
“You think they were kidnapped?”
“No idea yet. They could have been forced out of the vehicle at gunpoint and brought with the rebels, or they could be on the run.”
Roane made a strained face as he contemplated either of those options and the potential results of what would happen to the women. Neither of us had enough information to know what had happened, so there was no use in getting worked up until we had some more information.
“I’m going to walk up the street and see if I find anything,” Roane said.
“I’ll catch up to you as soon as Baller comes for Rake.”
I stayed with Rake and looked through the SUV to make sure I took anything valuable out of it. It looked like his handgun was missing as well as the extra rounds that he would have had with him. My first instinct was to hope that the women had taken off on foot and were using his gun for their protection, but I still had no real proof.
“Ah, shit,” Baller said when he pulled up next to us. He had gone around the area where we were attached and came from the west. But there was no telling if the rebels were watching us or not.
“Straight to the temple. He didn’t have a chance,” I said as I helped him load Rake into his vehicle.
We had protocol for getting a wounded or killed member out of a war zone and Baller would have to start that process as I continued on trying to find the women. Hopefully, Sandbag had the men safely to the airport by then. It was going to be a long day if we didn’t find the women soon though. They wouldn’t last long if they were out on their own in the daylight.
“Where are the ladies?” Baller asked.
“Not sure yet, I’ll try to track them through these footprints.”
“Let me know as soon as you can. Or radio if you need assistance. But I wouldn’t give too much information over the radio; I don’t trust the signal right now.”
“Understood,” I said and gave Baller a quick handshake before he left with Rake.
Rake had a wife and child back at home and it killed me that his life had been cut short. I wanted to go right back to that square and blow the whole damn thing up to kill the bastards, but I didn’t have the time. I needed to find Ana and the women. They didn’t know what to do or how to stay out of harm’s way. If they started hiking through the city in the middle of the daylight, there were likely to get kidnapped and held by the rebels.
I didn’t want to think about what the rebels would do with a beautiful woman like Ana. Certainly they would keep her as a show of their power and try to get some sort of ransom from her family or country. The only thing that might help her was that she wasn’t American. If she had been American, they certainly would have killed her live on television to prove their power.
I had to stop thinking about the women getting captured. They were probably running for their life toward the airport and hopefully they would make it. Perhaps, they would even realize that they needed to hide until dark again. That was the only way they could actually make it to the airport. I desperately wished I could find them and be there to help Ana and the women get to the airport. I felt helpless knowing that they were out there all alone.
“There’s lots of footprints over here,” Roane said when I finally caught up to him. “Do you think it’s the women?”
I had been following the footprints from the SUV to where Roane was standing. I definitely thought it was the women and teenagers. They must have stopped for a minute, probably to regroup and decide which direction to head out in.
As we started to follow the tracks, I took special care to cover them up behind us. The last thing I wanted was for the rebels to use the same tracks. There was no guarantee that we would find the women, but as the night started to wear off we did need to either find them or hide ourselves until the morning.
We continued through the streets and followed what we thought were the women’s tracks before they dissipated into the cement sidewalks. I thought I could still see some of their tracks going up to a building, but I didn’t feel confident enough to try and break into the building to see if they were in there. The sun was fully up by that point and Roane and I needed to hide right away.
There weren’t many totally abandoned buildings on the street we were on, but we were able to climb to the roof of one building and sought shelter under some clotheslines. It wasn’t a perfect hiding spot, but it did give us a great vantage point to look out over the streets and see if we found the women moving anywhere along the neighborhood. If they were within a half of a mile of us, we were going to see them.
“Nitro, I’ve got a message for you,” Baller said on the radio.
“What’s up?”
“Ana has the women and teenagers; they are heading to the airport. She called some Red Crescent guy who got a hold of Resolve Oil, who then contacted Blankenship. They are hiding out in an abandoned building for the day and will head out as soon as it’s night again.”
“No idea where they are hiding out?”
“Nope, but the call came in only about an hour after the firefight, so they couldn’t have gotten that far.”
“We are sitting tight until night as well. Hopefully we will see them when they take off; I’ve got my night vision with me.”
“Good deal. Stay safe, Nitro.”
“We will.”
Baller sounded shaken by everything that had happened so far. I had forgotten to ask about the men getting to the airport, but I assumed he would have told me if they were in trouble. Now all we had to do was wait out in the 100-degree heat until evening came again, then we could hopefully find the women and help them get to the airport.
“Do you think they are all right?” Roane asked.
“Yes, if they found a place to hide out for the day, I think they will be all right.”
Roane didn’t seem to be convinced by my opinion, but then again, I wasn’t all that convinced by myself either. We didn’t really know if the women were safe and neither of us could predict what the rebels were up to.
It was hot on that roof. Probably ten degrees hotter than it was on the ground. It made the perfect place to dry clothing, but not really the best place for two men to hide out for the day. We tried to stay under the shade of the sheets and other clothing items that were on the clothing lines, but the sun still seemed to find its way to us and beat down on our heads.
We hadn’t been prepared and neither of us had water; we were going to need some if we planned to make it through the day. I climbed into the main building and made my way down the small hallway. I was looking for an apartment where no one was home. There were two apartments on each floor and none of them had noises coming from them, but that wasn’t a guarantee that people were away.
It was a war zone; anyone who was home was probably hiding and that meant they weren’t going to be making a ton of noise at all.
I knocked on a door and waited to see if anyone came to answer. After a few moments of no one answering, I used my knife to get into the apartment. Quickly, I pillaged through the kitchen and found a large container I could fill up with water and got out of the apartment and back up to the roof without leaving a trace. If the family did return home, it wasn’t likely that they would realize their container was gone for a while, and by that time we would be long gone.
When I reached the roof again, Roane had spread the sheets out over the clothing lines to give us better shade. It wasn’t perfect, but it would keep us a few degrees cooler as we waited out the day.
“You have a wife and children with the other group?” I asked Roane.
I hadn’t really thought about all the men and how upset they must have been about their wives and children. It was probably pretty difficult on them to not know if they were safe or not. But if it was at all possible to keep them safe, I was going to do it.
“Yes. My wife, Marini, and my daughter, Danita, are both in that group. I have two smaller children who are safe at the airport now.”
“I’m sorry, Roane, I’ll do what I can to keep them safe. My girlfriend, Ana, is with them. I trust she is also doing what she can to keep them safe.”
I wasn’t about to explain to him that Ana had zero experience in a war zone. It certainly wouldn’t have made him feel better. Although Ana didn’t have experience, she had been doing everything almost exactly as I would have done if I was with the women. Except for covering her tracks, but that was something you learned with time. I was impressed with her skills so far, but I still wasn’t going to have her working in my profession for a living; it was too dangerous.
“Your girlfriend is very skilled. You must be proud of her.”
It seemed an odd statement coming from a man like Roane. In his country, they didn’t let women do very many things outside of the house and women weren’t seen as equals. But he could see that Ana was different. She was a powerful woman and I was happy to see her overcoming her intense fear.
“Yes, she’s tougher than most women I know.”
“I can see that, and very smart.”
“Thank you.”
“Most women wouldn’t be able to come to a place like this and help others like she is. It’s a brave thing.”
“Yes, I think I’m lucky to have her.”
Roane and I spent the rest of the day talking about his family and mine. We talked about what life might be like for him and his family after they left Syria and if they would ever see an end to the war that was going on. It was sad to see how his entire life had to be left behind all because of a war that had continued on without an end. But I had a feeling we were going to be able to get him out alive, as well as his family; so that was good.
As sun moved across the sky and started to dip down into a sunset, I kept my eyes peeled on the streets around us. I hoped that the women wouldn’t take off for the airport just yet, but I didn’t want to miss them if they started early.
We both drank the last of the water and prepared to head out after the women. It was going to be tricky to track them down and catch their attention without the rebels finding us or them. But once we caught up to them, then we could help get everyone to the airport before morning.
The next ten hours were going to be intense; we were going to have to keep our wits about us if we were going to get through it without having any more injuries or deaths. The death of Rake still didn’t seem real at all and probably wouldn’t until we were safe and on our way home with his body. I dreaded the thought of talking to his family. It wasn’t a conversation I ever wanted to have.
“Look,” Roane said as we saw a building a few blocks away. “Do you think that’s them?”
There was movement in the windows; we could see the curtains moving and they hadn’t moved at all during the entire day. The curtains weren’t just moving a little bit, they were being bumped into and jolted around like people weren’t paying attention at all to the fact that someone could be watching them.
If it was Ana, I wanted to yell out to her that they needed to knock it off. In a town full of rebels, a simple thing like moving curtains was enough to get a rocket through the house. The tricky thing was we hadn’t seen any rebels throughout the day, either. I would have expected to see them coming or going a little bit, but the streets had been relatively quiet except for a few military convoys that had rolled through.
The military were our friends, and if needed, we could call on a local group for help, but they couldn’t officially be our allies. The military had long hated that private contractors were in their war zones and doing business right under their noses. We sometimes caused the rebels to get worked up and then left them to be dealt with by the military. It was an unfortunate side effect of our job and we tried to prevent it as much as possible.
Whenever we could avoid contacting them or using the military as a resource, we tried to. There were too many political side effects of getting into bed with them during an ongoing war.
The only person I wanted in my bed was Ana. I had fantasized about her for months while she was in the rehab facility and then worried about her at my house in Atlanta. But after seeing here there in Damascus, I realized she wasn’t that fragile woman who I had thought she was. Not that I thought she would always need me, but she had needed me in Atlanta and she had needed me when I rescued her from Stephano. It was a much different dynamic in Syria between the two of us. Ana clearly didn’t need me at all. She was a strong woman and had some pretty big plans for her life. I only hoped that we could continue with our life and see where things went between us.
There was also the pesky task of dealing with Stephano. His goons had been stalking us and I knew it. Even if I tried to pretend like it could have been anyone, I knew in my gut it was Stephano and I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. When both Ana and I got home safely, I was going to make sure Stephano paid for all that he had put Ana and the other women through.
“There,” I said as I looked through my night vision glasses. “Look, they are leaving that building.”
I handed my glasses to Roane so he could see what the women were doing. From our vantage point on the roof, we could see a clear path to the airport. It was at least seven miles away, but totally possible if everyone was healthy and able to run.
“Let’s catch up to them,” Roane said.
“Yes, let’s get out ladies to safety.”