CHAPTER 18
Ram tried not to react when he saw how weakened the hostages were. Their captors had intentionally done this to prepare the women for the truck ride to Baja and the transfer to a container ship bound for Asia. Being weak meant there was no fight in them and no possibility of attempting to escape.
The rain slashed at his face as he brought up the rear after checking on each woman. The sounds of the weather, the gusting wind, all conspired to hide them as they moved away from the fortress after exiting the tunnel.
So far, they hadn’t been discovered, but Ram knew that would change sooner or later. The rain was coming down in sheets now, and it would keep the drug soldiers inside to stay dry. He knew none of them expected an attack. Maybe it was a good thing that Azarola wasn’t the smartest drug kingpin in Mexico. He had no military background and displayed poor discipline to his troops except when it came to transporting drugs to the US border. There, and only there, did the man’s strategy and tactics excel. But then, money was involved. His sex-trafficking trade was new, and Ram hoped to take advantage of his being a neophyte in this area of financial gain.
Water ran in rivulets down his drawn face as he once more jogged up the line. Together, the team fought to move up the tree-encrusted slope, following the same path they’d come in on.
The three German women were all out of shape, and struggling badly. His team took care of them, a steadying hand wrapped around each woman’s upper arm, keeping her upright, urging her to walk as fast as she could. Their gasps for air were loud, explosive sounding, and ragged. The ground was becoming slippery because dried pine needles, when wet, were like walking on ice if on a slant.
Grimly, Ram rechecked the women. They were poorly dressed for this journey, and each man on his team had carried a rain slicker that they could wear in order to remain protected against the elements. Still, the German women were slow, making his concern ratchet up even higher. They had two-and-a-half miles left to go over rough, unforgiving terrain, weaving in and around thousands of pine trees on the mountain. The footing was slippery and fallen limbs around the area were causing them to stumble from time to time. They were too terrorized, distracted and weakened physically, but were doing the best they could. It didn’t help Ram and his team because they were slowed down far more than they’d anticipated during the planning of this op. It was a disaster waiting to happen and he knew it.
Ram jogged up the line to Ali, who was holding onto her sister’s arm. With her, he could at least speak English.
“How are you doing Cara?” he demanded, falling into step on the other side of her, placing his hand on the woman’s upper arm, giving her more stability.
“O-okay,” she gasped, giving him a miserable look. “I’m sorry, I’m so slow . . . ”
“Just do the best you can,” he coaxed gently. He lowered his voice, the mic close to his lips. Ram knew Cara wouldn’t be able to hear his low conversation with Ali as he hailed her on the headset.
“Cara’s not looking well.”
“That’s because she’s dehydrated and weak, Ram.”
“They all are. They must not have been given enough food or water. Azarola kept them incapacitated so they wouldn’t try to escape would be my thinking of why he did this to them.”
Ali snarled, “Yes. It’s a ploy often used by sex traffickers when they’re going to transport a group of kidnapped women to that container ship in Puerto Nuevo. That sonofabitch. I’d give anything to put him in my gun sites.”
Grinning a little, Ram said, “I think that makes all of us. How are you holding up? You doing okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m worried about my sister. The pine needles are slippery and she’s got poor balance. Not to mention, completely distracted and unfocused. I’m trying to continually warn Cara of a limb on the ground in front of her, or getting her to dodge something in her path, but it’s tough. Her mind is sluggish. She’s exhausted, sleep deprived, and her brain isn’t firing on all cylinders. It’s slowing all of us down and that has me worried.”
“Yeah,” he muttered grimly, “none of us anticipated how slow they would be. Look, do the best you can. I’m going to take up rear position. Call me if you need anything.” He glanced over at her. The only way they could make their way across this darkened, rainy area was with their NVGs in place.
“Yes . . . I will . . . thanks.”
Ram heard the hidden emotion in her voice. “We’ll get them to safety,” he promised her. He told Cara he was going to let her go and she nodded. He released her arm, giving her a moment to get used to not having him there for support. She had labored, noisy breathing. Damn! The altitude was too much for her and the other victims. Cara had lived at sea level in Tucson all her life, not at seventy-five-hundred feet. It took a human body days, if not weeks, to adjust to such an altitude change. Looking up at the turbulent sky, water splattering against his face, he prayed that the rain wouldn’t turn to snow. At this altitude, it could happen either way, or as a mix.
As Ram took up the rear position, dropping back a good fifty feet from the main group, he turned, watching for any potential enemy to come up on their six, or rear. He heard Dave Barrett speaking in German to the woman in his care. She suddenly fell hard to her knees and the whole, straggling line halted. Ram watched as the ex-SEAL gently brought the sobbing woman to her feet. She had her hands against her face, nearly hysterical and weaving badly, even though Dave had a firm hold on her arm.
Ram didn’t know German and wished he did. The woman’s long, red hair was plastered around her face. The huge waterproof poncho she wore at least protected her a little bit. She tried to stop sobbing, trying to move forward with Dave’s help. Tension thrummed through Ram. These women wanted to get to freedom and safety. He knew they were on an adrenaline surge because of the fear of being recaptured. And there was no way they could drop a helo in here to pick them up. There were thousands of acres of trees covering these mountains and nowhere to land. Frustration curdled in his throat.
Ram moved up the line at a fast jog, his combat boots sinking into the wet pine needles. He halted in front of Barnett. “Has she injured herself, Dave?”
“Naw, just weak, scared out of her mind, and coming apart emotionally on me. She’ll be okay in a moment. I’m talking her down. I’ll get her moving now.” He tugged gently at her arm along with a few German words of urging and encouragement. The woman lurched forward, leaning heavily into him, scrambling to get her balance. “Did you give her water yet?”
“Yeah, she drank a quart already. It should start taking hold in a few minutes,” Dave said. “They’re mostly dehydrated and that’s why they’re shaky and their limbs are uncoordinated. As soon as the water starts taking hold, they’ll be in better shape to walk faster. We’re going way too slow as it is.”
Ram scowled. “I know. These women are all trying, and they have heart. They’ll get it together.”
“Sooner,” Dave said, “not later. Okay, she’s moving now.”
“They’re scared and that’s making things worse.”
“Yeah,” Dave huffed, “it is, but that’s to be expected. We’re fine now.”
Ram nodded and then checked on Cory, Tyler, and Randy, making sure the other German women had been given plenty of water to drink. They had to keep them hydrated enough to make this arduous journey. Now it was a matter of how soon the life-giving fluid flooded their bodies, fed their organs, and gave them more strength to push on.
The straggling line moved forward like a convoy of uncoupled box cars. Ram once more took up rear position. He wanted to hurry them, but there was no way. How he wished for a Black Hawk helicopter, but they couldn’t find an open area wide enough to land except at the meadow, where the two trucks were waiting for them.
He switched channels on his radio, getting in touch with one of the truck drivers. The weather report was for heavy rain in the area, and the driver reported to him that the road was beginning to get dangerously slick. Ram was faced with a decision. The women would make it to the meadow one way or another because they were scared enough, and the adrenaline was pumping through their bodies since their rescue. They just about had the strength to make it to the trucks now that they were armed with enough water to drink. Ali had warned him about rain and the clay soil in the area. But once there, what were the chances of one of these trucks sliding off that damned narrow winding dirt road with the hostages on board?
Ram decided to talk with Ali and jogged forward. He touched her left arm.
“Ali? What’s your assessment of this rain and that road we drove in on?”
“Not good. Clay is dangerous. When it soaks in, which will be about half an hour after the rain starts, it gets slippery. The more constant the rain, the deeper it goes into the soil. And then, you have those heavy military trucks sinking up to their axles in muddy clay. It’s not pretty.”
“What’s your overall assessment, then? It’s going to take us another hour to reach the trucks at this pace with our hostages. Would you opt for Black Hawks coming in to pick them up instead of trying to truck them out?”
“I would,” she said, breathing raggedly. “Get the hostages out of here ASAP. The team can take the trucks back and deal with that slick road. And if something happens, at least the hostages aren’t at risk. Only us. And we know how to defend ourselves.”
Nodding, he said, “That’s what I thought. Okay, I’m going to call Captain Gomez and tell him what’s going down. He has Black Hawks standing by for such an emergency. It’s our plan B.”
“Good. We’re going way too slow. The hostages are too weak, and sooner or later, Azarola’s men are going to find them missing. Then all hell is going to break loose. We can’t assume they don’t have NVGs among the drug soldiers. If they do, they can sure as hell track us, and fast. We’re leaving a good trail for them to follow very easily.”
“Yeah,” he grunted, “I know that. Okay, I’ll drop back, make that sat phone call to Gomez and we’ll get the bird up in the air. I’ll alert the rest of our team of the change in plans. Then, I’ll resume my six position at the end of the line.”
“Roger that.”
Ali was all business, and he never appreciated that more than right now. His sat phone was in his harness vest, wrapped in a protective plastic bag to keep it dry. Sheltering himself beneath a huge pine tree, bending over to protect the sat phone, Ram made the call to the Marine captain. He suggested two flight alternatives and the man had to make a decision on which he preferred since safety was the main goal in this rescue.
The news was grim. They couldn’t use a helicopter in their present location, Gomez told Ram. There were too many trees, powerful wind gusts and a basket hoist for each woman would put them in life-and-death peril. The only safe place, Gomez said, was for two helicopters to land in that meadow where the trucks were currently waiting for them. Ram agreed. After alerting his team of the changed plan. He waited for each of his men to “Roger” his transmission. They sounded relieved, laboring beneath their present circumstance.
After taking up his position in the rear, Ram saw the rain was increasing, coming down with a fury, limiting his vision even with his goggles on. Water leaked down between his neck and his clothing, causing it to rub his skin raw because of the heavy, awkward weight of his pack.
And then, shots rang out in the distance.
Ram twisted around, toward the fortress. Even in the driving rain, he could hear the pop, pop, pop of gunfire. Shit! Azarola’s men must have discovered the hostages were gone! Now, they would be like angry hornets discovering their nest had been smashed. They would grab their rain gear and their weapons, and come after them if they had NVGs—he didn’t know whether they did or not. They’d find out soon enough. His heart rate remained the same, but he could feel the adrenaline begin to flood into his bloodstream.
“Gunfire at the fortress,” he grimly warned his team over his headset. “They know the hostages are gone. Let’s see if we can’t get these women to speed up.” Because if they couldn’t, they were sitting ducks. They were probably a mile and a half into their trek to the meadow. Would they be able to make it there before they got hit by Azarola’s soldiers?
He saw the German women trying to walk faster. They had heard the gunfire, too. He could feel the tension rippling through the broken line. His shoulders tightened.
Cursing under his breath, he saw that Cara was moving better, perhaps because the hydration was finally taking hold, giving her more energy and endurance. In fact, Ali had moved her up past the German retinue and was at the head of the straggling line. Amazingly, the German women saw them go past and dug deeper within themselves. They tried to jog, too. They had heart and Ram felt good about their survival instincts kicking in.
Ali and Cara were an inspiration to them. Silently thanking Ali for her judgment call, he watched as the line began to move marginally faster. He kept turning, looking behind him, waiting to see the drug soldiers coming out of the darkness, out of the heavy curtain of rain, coming at high speed, armed, to interdict them.
Ram once again called Captain Gomez on his sat phone, alerting him to the gunfire behind them. The Mexican Marine sounded tense. He understood what could happen. They were alone out here in the mountains, and there was no one coming to help swell their numbers with guns to fight off an attack from Azarola. They were alone. He heard the frustration and concern in the captain’s voice.
His mind clicked along, looking at other possibilities. The drug soldiers knew this territory like the backs of their hands. They could know about short cuts, other trails, that might intersect where they were presently. He simply didn’t know, but the thought heightened Ram’s tension. He swiveled around, checking out the area around them. The downpour continued, which hid them from their enemy. But it slowed them down, too. His skin was chafing badly; the fifty-pound pack he was carrying bearing down on him. He had a sudden thought that he might never have a chance to tell Ali how he honestly felt about her.
The thought was counter to his focus on seeking out the enemy in the pall of darkness and rain.
Where the hell had that idea come from? Ram wasn’t sure, but he dismissed it quickly. He had no time to feel his way through it because emotions were deadly during an op crisis. Crushing the thought ruthlessly, Ram wouldn’t go there—at least, not yet.
He reasoned that if these hostages could keep up their slow, wobbling jog, it could get them to the meadow sooner, not later. And that meant rescue versus dying.
Hurry! Hurry! He wanted to shout at the women to pull out every survival cell they owned and make it work for them. Ram had found that many civilians had no idea how to survive. Even if faced with death like this, they couldn’t find those nuggets of survival against all odds. Maybe twenty-first century living had bred it out of their DNA? He had no answers, but had seen it often enough with Afghan villagers faced with similar life-and-death situations.
That had blown his mind the first time he’d encountered this loss of survival mechanism, many years ago. Had global society gone so far amuck that the normal, everyday civilian no longer knew how to survive—much less call upon their survival instincts to avoid dying? To fight until their last breath? To gut it out? To dig into that visceral, primal limbic brain to find tools of surviving at any cost? He wouldn’t have believed it, but he’d seen it way too many times in Afghanistan. It was a startling realization.
Now, he prayed to the Lady of Guadalupe to bring these four hostages a sense of survival. They would keep trying, they would keep fighting, and they would try until they took their last breaths, in order to escape. That was what Ram wanted from them right now. They each had to dig deeper than they ever had. The alternative could be death.
Only a mile to go. ONE MILE. How he wished the Raven drone was up above them. The drone could tell them if Azarola had sent a pack of his wild-dog drug soldiers after them and where they were located, or if they’d split up into smaller units, hunting them.
Ali had counted forty men in that fortress from her hide. Forty soldiers against the five of them. And four hostages who were already freaked out of their minds. Ram wished for another escape plan, but there was none. The rain came down harder—if that was possible. He was soaked to his skin, all the straps chafing his skin, rubbing those areas raw, creating a constant burning sensation across his bruised, aching flesh.
Everyone was in the same condition as he was, and he knew it. Yet, the ex-SEALs and Ali never slowed down, never complained, and never let physical discomfort stop them from attaining their objectives. They were digging deep because they knew the outcome if they didn’t. And every one of them wanted to live to see their loved ones when dawn rose tomorrow morning.
The wind blasted through the area at roughly sixty miles an hour. Ram saw Dave’s hostage get blown down by it. They both tumbled and he let go of her. She rolled part way down the slight incline.
Ram remained where he was. The rear guard was the most important position for keeping his group protected from an attack. Dave would get up and get the woman back on her feet. He hoped like hell she hadn’t busted an ankle or something. That would kill their speed to the meadow.
Turning, he swept the area behind them. Glancing back toward the line that had halted, he saw the German woman getting up with Barnett’s help and heard him cajoling her in her language. She responded valiantly, fighting to get to her feet. So far so good, Ram thought, watching the woman stand. Could she walk? Had she injured herself?
To his relief, she appeared to be fine. Probably badly bruised by the fall, but okay enough to hurry at a fast walk with Dave’s help.
The back of his neck prickled.
Dammit!
It was a warning. A survival red flag for Ram. When the hairs on the back of his neck stood up, it meant the enemy was closing in on them. Digging into the green, grainy field, he couldn’t see anything—yet. But they were coming. How many? God, he hoped not forty of them.
“Torres?” It was Ali.
“Yes?”
“I’m handing Cara off to Dave. She’s strong now and I’m going to have her help the German woman by holding her other arm. Together, they can move faster. I’m coming back to the rear to be with you if that’s okay?”
“Fine,” he answered. Anything to hurry this straggling group along. “I can use another set of eyes. I feel something coming and it’s not that far away from us.”
“I know, I do, too. Be back there shortly . . . ”
Relief flowed through Ram as Ali jogged up to his side. She stood with him, her M4 up and ready to fire, the rifle on a strap across her chest at a level where she could use it in a heartbeat if necessary. Her long, thick braid was hidden by the fifty-pound pack she wore over it. She had taken off her helmet, wearing only a black baseball cap instead, the bill partly shielding her NVGs from the rain so she could see better.
“Anything?” she demanded in a low, ragged voice. Ali was breathing hard. Everyone was.
“No, but I feel them coming. Do you have any idea of how many?” Ram asked.
“No. But knowing Azarola, he’ll send everyone out to search for the hostages.”
“That’s what I thought. Do you know if they have NVGs?”
“No. But I wouldn’t bet against them having some among them.”
“If they don’t will they have flashlights?”
“Yes. I’m looking for beams, but not seeing any.”
“Me either,” he muttered unhappily. Flashlights could give them away and tell Ram where their enemy was located, making it easy to fire at them if necessary.
“We should hang back at least a tenth of a mile,” Ali said. “We need rear-guard action at this point.”
“Yes,” he said, letting the other members of the team know that they were going to take further action. Each man “Rogered” his message and then Ram turned to her. “Just like old times, isn’t it?” He saw the white of her teeth in a smile that was more like a wolf ready to engage the enemy.
“Yeah, old times, Torres. Let’s rock it out. We need to put space between us and our team.”
They began to jog toward the fortress along the well-beaten path. Ali knew to keep at least twenty feet between her and Ram. It was a safety measure. If one of them got shot, the other had time to defend themselves, hide, or run. But he knew if he got nailed, Ali would never leave him. She’d die fighting at his side if she had to. She was loyal, like a SEAL, never leaving her partner or team when the shit hit the fan. And the shit was going to hit at any moment now.
A powerful feeling swept through Ram. There was no way he wanted Ali hurt. He didn’t want her to die out here at his side. He had already settled with God long ago about dying. He was more than ready to give his life for his team—for her. Another feeling took root in his thudding heart as they moved soundlessly through the forest, heading toward their mutual enemy. There was such a visceral yearning for Ali, to meet her, and start all over again. To not have their sordid past muddy their potential present. To meet like the mature adults they were now; not like back then, when he was acting out and defensive.
Swallowing hard, his throat aching with tears that had suddenly welled up, Ram blinked several times. Sweat mingled with the rain water coursing down his face, sometimes blurring his vision. Gulping, he forced back his unexpected emotional reaction. Ali always affected him like this. But tonight for some reason, it was haunting him, calling to him to acknowledge his true feelings for her, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
Would they ever have a time, place, and space just to sit and talk openly with one another? Was that possible? Instinctively, Ram knew it was. He had seen and felt the shifts in Ali since meeting her again, and he sensed that she wanted peace between them as badly as he wanted it with her. That was new and it filled him with hope.
But hell, out here in this wet, cold forest with a chubasco presently sweeping across the area, hope had no place in his life. Right now, it was about brute survival.
And somehow, they all had to survive this even if it went sideways—and Ram knew it could, in the blink of an eye.