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