Within seconds, they contacted the rest of the team, CENTCOM, aircraft in the region, bomb control, and every other military and police unit within a twenty-mile radius. He and three other SEALs were in an SUV headed toward the balloon site, but already they could see one of the balloons starting to drift. Ironically—or perhaps not so ironically—it was one with an American flag motif.
During the next hour, helicopters dropped down bomb specialists into the unmanned balloon to disable the explosives. It became apparent that the plan would have called for a gunman to shoot the balloon with a long-distance weapon, probably from over by the expressway. Once the balloon started to deflate, the clock would have started. The bomb had been set to go off during the third quarter, as close to center field as possible. Fans would have thought it was a special planned entertainment. University officials would have thought it was a balloon gone astray.
None of the terrorists could be found, but they did find evidence in a local motel room, amid the piles of fast-food debris, all of which was gathered for fingerprint analysis. Maps of the stadium and surrounding area. Details of explosives. And an odd reference on a scrap of discarded paper that hadn’t completely flushed down the toilet to Navy SEALs…him, in particular.
Did Arsallah have something to do with this?
How did he know Zach would be here?
Suddenly, Zach pulled out his cell phone and called the commander at home. “Zach here. Hey, Mac, quick question. How come you put me on active duty?”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Your timing stinks, Lieutenant. Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning up after this near–bomb attack?”
Zach bristled. “That’s just what I’m doing. Where did the order come from to put me on this op?”
“How the hell—”
“It’s important, Mac. In fact, it’s urgent. Check it out, and call me right back.”
Zach’s body was on red alert as he filled the rest of the team in on his suspicions.
Fifteen minutes later, Mac called back, and his tone of voice was ominous. “The call to put you on this op came from a low-level secretary in the Department of Defense…a secretary who has suddenly disappeared. This is a royal FUBAR. I’m sorry, Zach—”
“Dammit! Get to my house right away.”
“I’m already on my way. The police are ahead of me.”
“Call and—”
“I already called. There’s no answer.”
Zach swore a blue streak.
“Settle down, boy. You’re not going to accomplish anything in that frame of mind.”
“How would you feel if one of your kids was taken by someone like Arsallah?”
There was silence.
“Keep me on the line till you get there,” Zach ordered, followed by, “please.”
He could hear the commander talking on another phone to someone. Whatever he heard was causing him to curse, too.
“We’re here. There are three guards disabled. Not dead, but they must have been given a huge zap from a Taser. The tangos operated from the house across the street.”
“The Lehmans’?”
“Yeah. Tied up the husband, wife, and two teenagers in a basement closet for about twelve hours. They’re scared shitless, as you would imagine.”
“Someone needs to take Arsallah down. The bastard is a walking target from now on. I don’t care what the ‘play nice’ diplomatic service says, or the two-faced State Department.”
Mac ignored his rant. “Listen, I’ll call you back once I’m inside, but Zach, there’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
“It’s bad.”
There was an increasingly loud buzz in Zach’s ears.
“Britta was here, and she’s gone, too. There was a struggle. And…and blood.”
The buzzing exploded in his head, and he went off to the side of the parking lot where he puked his guts out. Once he rinsed his mouth with the bottled water Cage handed him and was reasonably calm, he told the men, “Get us on a transport ASAP. Arsallah has fucked with the wrong guy this time.”
“No, dude,” Sly corrected, putting a hand on his shoulder, “Arsallah has fucked with the wrong guys, as in plural. We are Navy SEALs, and we are covering your six, all the way.”
I am woman, hear me…kick your butt…
The plan was to take her and Sammy out of America immediately after their capture.
They were taken to a parking arena of the airport. Sammy cowered behind her, his arms wrapped around her thighs. Arsallah and a half dozen other men were there, wearing long Arab-style gowns and head coverings. Two of the balaclava-covered men were there, too, including the one whose nose she must have broken. When he yanked the hood off his head and glared at her, she saw that his nose still dripped blood. All of them, except Arsallah, carried weapons.
Face rigid with anger, Arsallah snapped some foreign words at Sammy, who whimpered to Britta, “I do not want to go to him. Help me.”
Arsallah repeated his order, and Sammy walked up to his grandfather, feet dragging with reluctance.
The grandfather stared with contempt at his grandson, who came only as high as his thigh, then spat on him.
Sammy, bless his brave little soul, just stood still, tears welling in his eyes.
When Arsallah yelled some other words at Sammy, the boy replied but apparently made the mistake of speaking English, not the Afghan language. For his sin, his grandfather slapped him hard across the face, knocking him to the ground.
“You son of a camel’s arse!” Britta tried to go to the boy, but two guards held her back. One of them punched her in the shoulder, causing her to bend over and go unseeing for a moment.
Upright again, she heard Arsallah snapping questions at the boy and Sammy answering him back in the “correct” language. Arsallah obviously did not like the answers and shoved him aside, stalking up to her.
Glaring, he asked in broken English, “You are the whore of the infidel?”
“Which infidel?” That answer merited her a slap as well. Being taller and stronger than Sammy, she at least was able to stay on her feet. She bit her bottom lip to prevent herself from telling this evil troll what she thought of him.
“The infidel Floyd who soiled my daughter and bred this American cur.” He nodded his head toward Sammy, who was at her side now. Why he saw only the American half of his bloodline and not the Afghan side as well, Britta did not understand.
“I am no whore.”
“You were found in his bed.”
“A guest bedchamber.”
He waved a hand as if it was the same thing. “Has he fucked you?”
Britta knew that he used such vulgar language to insult her. Still, she flinched. Then she made the mistake of revealing, “We have made love.”
Arsallah grinned maliciously and told a man at his side, “We will use them both, the harlot and the mongrel, as hostages.”
They were then pushed and punched, even kicked repeatedly, for the next hour or more, but nowhere that bruises could be seen by outsiders…outsiders being members of something called Aljazeera, who talked at length to Arsallah and pointed black boxes, called cameras, at her and Sammy.
At one point, they brought Sammy forth and forced him to say he hated America, hated his evil father, and wanted to go home to Afghanistan. They took pictures of Britta with their cameras but did not ask her questions, no doubt sensing she was unwilling to speak the words they fed to her.
In the end, Arsallah and the Aljazeera people shook hands, like old friends, and the Aljazeera people left “to catch a plane.”
Some new people came, clearly Arsallah’s followers, to report a problem. Sammy whispered to her, “They can’t get us on an airplane to Afghanistan. They need to find a hiding place till they can hire another private plane to take us away.”
For that reason, they were brought to a basement room, and their stay grew longer and longer as
the problem of getting out of the country continued. And their treatment grew increasingly worse, as well.
Now, after three days, they were still bound but no longer gagged in the basement of an abandoned house near the airport. Incoming and outgoing flights could be heard overheard, day and night.
Sammy wore his sleeping outfit, which was called peejays: loose braies and a shert with little bears imprinted all over. She wore one of Zachary’s Navy SEAL tea-ing sherts, which barely covered her undergarments. They were barefooted.
And now, here was Arsallah again with his crew of camera people. Not Aljazeera, just his followers clicking away. Also accompanying him was the vicious Hakim, who took great pleasure in hurting her and Sammy; the gentler but still cruel Daoud, the man whose nose she had broken and who had taken revenge on her numerous times; and several other of their captors. With neatly trimmed beard, Arsallah was dressed in a pristine white gown and neatly pressed and folded head covering. Unlike her and Sammy, who wore the same clothing and reeked.
When they untied their arms and ankles, pain pricked Britta’s body like a thousand pins and needles. Sammy’s groan indicated he was in similar straits as blood began to circulate in their limbs again.
Sammy was first to speak for the cameras. The little boy looked gaunt from lack of food and fear. Bruises marked his skinny arms and legs, and there was a bad cut on his cheek. He could have been much worse. Britta had taken many of the blows intended for him. As a result, she had a black eye, which had swollen till her lid was closed, a cut lip, bruises and cuts marring most of her body, finger marks on her neck, and an ankle that very well might be broken; at the least, it was badly sprained. Betimes, she wished they would just kill her, but it was a momentary lapse. She must needs stay strong for the boy.
In a docile voice, he repeated all that he was told to say. “Please, father, do what they ask. America is evil. Do the good deed they demand, and I will be free. Please.”
Britta was resigned to repeating their hateful words by now, but she did so with a raised chin and defiant eyes…well, one defiant eye. Her words were somewhat slurred due to the swollen and cracked lip, but intelligible enough, she supposed. “Zachary, we are being treated well.” That was a jest, of course, that the cameras would surely reveal. “You must do as they demand. ’Tis the moral thing to do. Release the holy warriors in the name of Allah. Do as they say, and we will be released.” She would have blurted out more, but she was certain they would cut out that part.
After Arsallah and Hakim left, Daoud proceeded to retie their arms and legs. He was done with Sammy and finishing up Britta’s wrist restraints when Hakim shouted from the top of the stairs, “Hurry if you want to come for lunch.”
Hakim’s shout startled Daoud, and he jerked up from his bent position behind her. This instant of distraction allowed Britta the opportunity to flex her wrists, causing Daoud to think he was done, when in fact the rope was a little looser than usual.
“Behave, and you will be given food and water shortly,” Daoud remarked as he climbed the stairs.
“And after that, will we be killed?”
Sammy gasped at her question. Apparently women didn’t question in their culture.
“Not if you do as you are told,” Daoud replied.
The door was closed and locked. Much activity seemed to be taking place upstairs. Talking, laughter, doors slamming, cars starting and taking off. Presumably, at least some of them were going out to lunch.
This might be their one and only opportunity.
“Sammy, we’re going to try to escape.”
His eyes went wide, and he whimpered.
“I’m going to turn around. I want you to untie the ropes around my hands. They are a little looser than usual, and your fingers are small. Now, don’t start crying. This is the time to pay attention. Be focused.”
It took him longer than she would have liked. But once untied, she quickly untied the ropes around her ankles and undid Sammy’s restraints, as well. After breaking a wooden chair, keeping one of the legs for a “weapon,” she propped the chair back up at the little table so the damage would not be noticed.
“Listen to me, Sammy. This is all going to have to take place quickly. I’m going to lay the ropes loosely around our ankles, and we will put our hands behind our backs, pretending that we are still tied up. Are you listening?”
He nodded.
“When one of our captors comes in, I will wait till he comes close, then hit him over the head. You must go over and lock the door. I will break the window. Can you do that?”
He nodded again, gulping. “I’m scared.”
“I am, too, dearling, but we can do this.”
“It is a small window,” he pointed out.
“Big enough, even for a giant like me.”
He did not even smile at her mirthsome remark.
“I am going to shove you through that window first. I want you to run as fast as you can and do not look back. Do not wait for me. I will follow, but if I do not, you are still to run till you find someone. Tell them to take you to the police. Tell the police to call your father, Zachary Floyd, a Navy SEAL, and that you were kidnapped. Can you remember all that?”
“Yes, but I don’t wanna go alone.”
“I know you do not, and mayhap I will be with you. But if not, you must needs run as fast as your legs can carry you. Can you run fast?”
He smiled for the first time in days. “I run like hell. That’s what Uncle Danny says.”
Their opportunity did not come till early that evening when Daoud finally came with a tray of food for them: hamburgers, Frankish fries, and fizzy drinks from that Scottish place, McDonald’s. Daoud placed the tray on the table and said, “I will release the arm restraints. Samir first.” Daoud’s English was excellent compared to Arsallah and the others. “While he is eating, I will hold a gun to your head, Miss Asado. The least wrong move by Samir, and you will be dead. Likewise, when he is tied up again, you will eat while a gun is to his head. Do you both understand?”
The second Daoud bent down to untie Sammy’s ropes, she, still sitting, smote him over the head with the chair leg. He went down, unconscious, immediately. Sammy ran to the door to lock it. She tore off a piece of Daoud’s shert and stuffed it in his mouth. Then she tied his hands behind his back and his ankles together. Quickly, she moved the table over by the window and put Sammy on top.
“Are you ready?”
He nodded.
“Once I hit the window, the noise may attract the others, so there will be no time to hesitate. What are you going to do, Sammy?”
“Run like hell.”
She tried to smile and cracked her lip even more.
“If I am not able to follow,” she said, her voice choking up, “tell your father…tell Zachary that I love him.”
She cracked the window open then, shoved Sammy through, and immediately heard shouts upstairs. It took her a bit longer to get through the window, and by then the basement door had been broken down and there were orders to go after them.
Britta began running in the opposite direction from Sammy, what she had planned all along. It was not an easy exercise with her injured ankle. She could hear the men coming after her, the distance closing between them. Then there was the sound of gunfire.
She glanced right and left. On the one side was a steep hill, which would only slow her down more. On the right side was a steep incline leading to a rocky beach. The ocean or a lake, she could not be sure.
Her best choice lay in running forward, but then she felt a sharp pain in her back. It must be a bullet from one of the weapons. The pain drew her up short. She stumbled. Fell. Then rolled over and over and over, each rock and sharp bramble digging into her already bruised flesh. She could feel a warm substance—blood?—running down her back. She crashed to the bottom, striking her head on a boulder. The pain was excruciating, but soon it eased.
She thought she saw a flock of black birds flying overhead. A sign of death in N
orse legends. The ravens of death. Berserk warriors often saw the vultures in the midst of battle.
With a long sigh, she surrendered to her destiny. The Norns of Fate had won.
So, this is death.
Chapter 19
You win some, you lose some…
The next day, Cage drove Zach to the small Bella Rosa police station near a private airfield fifty miles from San Diego. Cage drove because Zach’s hands were shaking so badly.
Cage’s Jeep was first in a caravan, followed by vehicles holding other SEALs, police, FBI, CIA, State Department, and Department of Defense reps, and Zach’s family: his father and mother, who had put aside their differences for this occasion, Danny, and his grandfather and grandmother. And the news media, of course, who couldn’t be kept away.
Zach had gone through absolute hell the past four days. The first twenty-four hours were bad when Aljazeera had shown an interview with Arsallah, who played the meek-and-injured-party card, pleading for some of his evil cohorts to be released from prison. Like that was ever going to happen. The tangos in question were the worst of the worst. Arsallah had forced Sammy to repeat his demands, interspersed with anti-American insults. Britta had sat in the background, looking a bit bruised but not too bad. He had assumed by the tilt of her chin that she’d declined Arsallah’s “invitation” to speak that time.
But then yesterday, Zach had received a manila envelope containing photos and a tape. These were bad. Really bad. But at least they were not body parts, as he had feared.
They must not have fed Sammy and Britta much or given them more than a minimum of liquids since their capture, because their faces were drawn and haggard. Sammy had bruises over every inch of exposed skin. Britta…poor Britta…had one eye swollen shut, a bleeding, puffy lip, cuts and bruises, and possibly a broken ankle. Her chin had still been raised defiantly as she gave her canned bullshit talk to Arsallah’s cameraman.
On the day of their escape, Britta had somehow managed to get herself and Sammy out of the basement they had been kept in. Sammy had hidden in the garage of an abandoned gas station till the next morning, fearing that he would be caught by Arsallah’s men. Which gave Arsallah’s men time to leave the area. Hell, they’d probably left the country by now. And Britta, well, she had not yet been found. Zach had been warned to expect the worst.