Affirmatives echoed over the headsets. Finally, Smith’s. Thank God. “Roger. Update on captives. Of the twelve taken captive, two dead, four wounded. Images show at least one is critical.”>Searching for any other possible tools among the stolen artifacts, she continued her rambling litany in hopes good guys were on the other side of that nano spy bug. “If somebody doesn’t send some antibiotics back here we won’t last long enough for you to ransom us off to our country in exchange for whatever the going rate is for students.”
Rambling on for whoever might be listening, she pocketed the preserved jaw of some small animal to use like spiked brass knuckles. The tip of a tusk went in her sock.
Too bad they hadn’t stashed her in the ancient war tools room. Just as she’d expected from the beginning, they were gathering artifacts to sell on the black market to fund their separatist group, headed by a radical warlord. The same group that had recently blown up the American ambassador’s private residence, hell-bent on stirring unrest.
But they were planning something more here, something big. Maybe for when the vice president’s wife came to visit to bring national attention to the plight of women in the region? Stella had made progress with one of the guards by pretending to be a student sympathetic to their cause. But somehow, they’d grown suspicious or been tipped off.
Years ago her mother had tried to help the same people who now held her hostage. Talk about irony. And she was still no closer to figuring out missing details from the day her mother died.
The door opened again. Her stomach plunged. She tucked her ankle behind her other leg, just in case they caught sight of the bulge in her sock. The scariest of her captors—not the sneering bastard, but the man who showed no expression at all, a short lean man who should have appeared harmless but reminded her of a cheetah rather than a lion. Just as fast, strong, and lethal.
Wordlessly, he grabbed her arm in a vise grip and hauled her from the room. Would the surveillance bug follow her? Was she on her own now? How close was help? She had to operate on the assumption she was being watched and that help was on the way.
If she could just stay alive long enough.
“Where are we going?” Down a dank hallway, past the two dead Americans tossed in the corner like sacks of garbage, not even a hint of dignity given to the lifeless hulls that once housed a human soul. She vowed to do everything in her power to make sure their families got their bodies back. “You really don’t have to do this. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”
She looked up at the camera in the hall. The enemy’s camera. She’d been left alone so far. The captors had gone for the older ones first, assuming she was a junior agent, low-level status, which meant less intel. They’d gone for the big fish first.
Or maybe they hoped the sounds of torture would soften her up, make her break faster.
She couldn’t weaken. Too many people in the field depended on her silence. Names. Lives.
Guilt weighed her down. She’d been selfish to come to this region of the world with her own agenda. She’d accepted the assignment in hopes of uncovering more about her mother’s death in the region fourteen years ago—distracting enough. Then she’d met Jose and her focus drifted even further.
Her eyes shot back to the dead bodies—an innocent student and a CIA operative. Had a lapse on her part cost them their lives? She’d been so damn sure their cover was rock solid. Even when the separatists had taken the group of students hostage, she’d prayed that was their only agenda. That they didn’t know they’d also landed four undercover operatives as well.
And there was still hope they didn’t know about her. How ironic that she’d come here to retrace her mother’s last days and now she was walking in her footsteps in a more literal way. Her mother’s battered body sent home in a box, the cause of death labeled a car accident. And Stella never had the chance to say good-bye, to apologize for sending her mother off that last time by screaming how much she hated her for leaving them again.
So many regrets.
And her most current regret? One of her biggest? The way she’d broken things off with Jose, the man she’d been so certain was her soul mate.
If she thought about him, she would cry, but then maybe that would seem more natural. She’d tried it at first—no luck. But if it bought her time now, then hell, she would try anything.
She envisioned Jose’s shoulders sagging when he realized she was serious about ending their relationship.
Tears filled her eyes in a flash. Using the emotion to her advantage, she looked up at the cold, detached guard. She let the tears roll down her cheeks, allowed all her anguish to show for once.
“Please, call my mom and dad. They’ll pay you anything you want to get me back.”
Her cover story would hold under scrutiny. Her passport traced back to a concocted profile of her life as a pampered rich kid from Florida who lived off of a hefty trust fund, continuing to enroll in college to avoid getting a job. She’d slid right into the group of students. For them, she’d risked bringing Jose into harm’s way, something she never would have done had she been the only one taken. But for the students and for whatever plan these ruthless bastards were cooking up, she had to think like an agent.
Not like a woman whose heart still ached for a man she couldn’t have.
Her captor jerked her to a stop at the end of the hall. The doorway loomed in front of her. And landing on the corner of the frame, a buzzing little fly.
She stared up into what she prayed was help and one last time she blinked…
Warning: Land mines at the camp gates.
***
Stella’s voice echoed in the earpiece of Jose’s comm set as he stood in the open hatch of a C-130 cargo plane. Wind roared through the open portal. Parched earth and thirsty frankincense trees sprawled far, far below. The rebel camp waited.
With Stella inside.
All he needed was the signal to go and he would jump with Bubbles and the SEALs, parachuting into the compound in the twilight, HALO style—high altitude, low opening. The best way to slip in unnoticed. No tipping anyone off by bringing a helicopter too close. The cargo plane would drop them off at thirty thousand feet with an oxygen mask into a free fall. He would wait until the very last possible second to pop the parachute.