Sandra Hill (8 page)

The next thing she noticed was the water tube, which the troll must have placed near her face.
A considerate troll? How odd!
She sipped, but did not overindulge, recalling his warning to conserve the liquid.

Next, she noticed an object next to the water bladder, lying on a scrap of colored parchment. She sniffed it and concluded that it must be food.
The troll has left me food? Why? To fatten me for the kill?
She decided that it mattered not what his motive might have been. She had been fasting for two days. Rolling onto her face, she got up on her knees, her buttocks in the air, and nibbled on the food like a dog in the rushes. The food was delicious. Sweet. With nuts and raisins. Eating like a dog was not so easy, she soon discovered. The bar kept moving away from her till she pushed it up against the wall.

Once replete, she wiggled her body back to its resting place. She’d noticed the knife on the other side of the cave, and did not doubt that the beast had left it deliberately. He was too much a soldier-troll to have been so careless. Later, she would think on why he had done so … there had to be method to his madness.

She was too tired now to crawl over to the weapon. Later. For now, she wanted just a little more sleep. It seemed like years—three years, to be precise—since she’d last felt safe enough to succumb totally to the peace of a deep sleep. Though why she felt safe now, she could not say. She was restrained. Fakhir and his
men would no doubt be tracking her. It was a long, long way to Baghdad, and an even longer trek back to her homeland.

Putting her hands together under her cheek, she yawned widely. Just a few minutes and she would get up, escape these ties, and be on her way. Just a few minutes …

Strange dreams came to her then. Her father. Her brothers and sisters. They were all smiling and beckoning to her. Was it some kind of message? That she should just give up and join them in the otherworld?

Then she noticed something else.
Oh, for Odin’s sake!
Ian the Troll was there, and he was beckoning her, too. She could not see his face clearly in the haze of her dreams, but she would have sworn he was grinning at her.

So, should she just lie here, make no effort to escape, and possibly die? Or should she fight for her freedom? One thing was clear: If she was to escape, she might very well have to kill the troll, despite his kindness to her. That prospect brought a tightening to her heart that she had not felt since the disappearance of her family.

Later, she decided. She would decide what to do later.

The best-laid plans …

“Houston, we have a problem,” Ian said into his mike.

“I copy you,” Geek said.

“Son … of … a … bitch!” Pretty Boy added.

“
Mon Dieu!
” Cage offered.

“My God!” JAM repeated.

Omar said something in Arabic that Ian assumed was an expletive.

Slick made a growling sound, then, “Let me at ’em.”

Sly made the crude observation, “The Big Rat is one sorry motherf—”

“Shhh,” Ian cautioned.

The eight of them were lying on their bellies about thirty feet apart, balaclava hoods in place. High-powered scopes on their weapons were trained on Jamal’s hideout, a good half mile away.

The object of their consternation had just come out
of the largest tent and slumped against a tree. A young Arab girl, no more than sixteen, Ian would guess. She wore only a tattered man’s shirt. One eye was blackened shut. The stains on her outstretched thighs could only be blood. She had obviously been raped … repeatedly.

“Riyad’s granddaughter,” they all guessed at once. A month ago, the son and daughter-in-law of the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Musa Riyad, had been brutally murdered by terrorists. Their daughter Altaira Riyad had simultaneously disappeared, and Aljazeera television had claimed, since there had been no ransom demands, the teenager must be dead. Instead, it appeared that Jamal was taking a particularly cruel form of revenge against Riyad, his sworn enemy. There would probably be pictures, horrible pictures, sent to Riyad sometime soon.

As they watched, a man in a turban and long white robe walked up to the girl and grabbed her by the upper arms, shaking her. He seemed to be yelling something at her. Then he let her drop back down to the ground, like a rag doll.

Eight sets of teeth could practically be heard grinding with frustration. The SEALs would like nothing better than to rush in and save the girl, whether it was Altaira or someone else. Impossible. Not yet. A civilian in the rats’ nest changed the whole game plan.

For one blip of a second, Ian remembered Yasmine’s scars.
Is this brutal treatment what she’s running from? Or is she like those women terrorists you see on CNN with bombs strapped to their bodies?

“This changes everything,” he said into his
inter-squad head phone. Moving quickly but carefully, he crawled over to Pretty Boy, who carried the radio satellite equipment. Pretty Boy already had General Adams at CentCom on the line.

“Garfield, this is Cat One,” Ian said.

“Garfield here. Cat Five briefed me. What’s your take?”

“Tricky situation. Depending on how we play it, it could be a hallelujah mission or a major goat fuck.”

“I read you. We must assume you’ve caught a bird.” Ian didn’t know much Arabic, but he did know that Altaira was the Arabic word for bird. “Do not … I repeat, do not … go in with the original ‘Shock and Awe’ plan.”

“I copy.” The second Ian had seen the girl, he’d known a new strategy would have to be developed. The original plan had been to go in with stealth from seven different directions, taking the tangos out one at a time, except for Jamal.

“There’s always the danger of crossfire,” the general reminded Ian, as if he didn’t already know that. They all did. “Too dangerous to the bird.”

Aside from the basic human concern for an innocent victim, the U.S. already had an image problem in the Arab world. Killing that girl, even accidentally, would be a colossal mistake. “I hear you,” Ian said.

“Stand down,” the general ordered.

“Delay the mission?”

“Correct. Do not engage. I repeat, do not engage.”

“Roger.”

“Retreat back to your prior location.” Ian read that to mean the cave. “Leave two cats behind, to be relieved every three hours. Keep this line open for
further directions. Wait for final orders.” Ian suspected that it would be a nighttime raid now. “Big Bird will be alerted and on standby for extraction.” That meant the chopper, of course.

“Yes, sir. And our priorities?”

“Number one, the Big Rat. Two, the safety of all you cats. Three, taking out as many of the other rats as possible. Four, the Big Rat’s cheese.”

Even though he’d already known what the general would say, his heart sank a bit. Yasmine, aka the cheese, would be sacrificed at the least notice, that’s what the general was saying.

Once they disconnected, Ian ordered Geek and JAM to stay behind for first shift. There would probably be two more shifts before they attacked the site.

Ian was point man, leading the way back to the cave. It was mid-afternoon now. He’d been gone since that morning.

It took them more than an hour to get back to the cave, because they had to take care they weren’t spotted along the way. Once they got to the site, Ian raised a halting hand. The bush was still in place in front of the cave, but that didn’t mean anything. “No firing,” he said into his headset, “no matter what she does.”

He pulled the bush aside and tried to see inside, without actually entering. She was lying on the floor in the same place, except she was facing the wall. Her body, under her hooded robe, was deathly still. Something wasn’t quite right. He could sense it.

He took out his pocket flashlight, shone it inside as he entered. And was attacked by some whirling dervish with a raised knife. Ian made neat work of stepping aside, but still the knife hit his chest … or
rather his assault vest and body armor. It could have been worse … much worse. When he didn’t fall to the ground—dead, for chrissake, if this idiot had her way—the whirling dervish threw herself at him, pummeling him about the chest and head as he lifted her by the waist so that her bare feet dangled off the dirt floor. He lowered his hands to get a better grip.

“Oh, my God!” With a gasp of surprise, he stared at the now screaming dervish in utter astonishment. Because the dervish was butt naked … and said butt was in his hands. He smiled. He couldn’t help himself.

Glancing to the far end of the cave, he saw on closer inspection that her robe was covering piles of leaves and sticks. Ergo, she had to be naked to attack him.

“Listen, sweetheart, you’d better stop squirming and scratching so I can go over and pick up that robe to cover you. Otherwise, you’re going to be doing the full monty for not one but eight men.”

She drew her head back from where she had been attempting to bite his shoulder and yelped, “Eeeek!” on seeing him in the balaclava hood. All he could think of, though, was the view he got of her breasts when she leaned back.
I am not looking. I am not looking. They are not pretty. Nope. Not even close. Hell, who am I kidding? We’re talking Pamela Andersons here. Practically.
He didn’t even care that she had B.O. out the wazoo.

But then, the harridan with practically Pamela Anderson breasts looked over his shoulder toward the cave entrance and did a double eek, “Eeeek! Eeeek!” at all his squad mates in full military gear
gawking at the picture of him holding a squawking, naked shrew. She yanked his hood off his head and glared at him, as if he were at fault. “Get my robe, you lackwit. And stop leering at my breasts. I’m not a cow.”

No, baby, you are not.
He walked her over to her robe, her sweet breasts pressed against him; he could swear he felt their firmness all the way through his vest and body armor. He leaned down, with her clutching his neck and her legs wrapped around his hips so that he wouldn’t turn and show her to the rest of the guys. It was clumsy work easing down to a squat and pulling her robe over her head. Thank God for all those duck squats in PT.

“Can we come in now?” Cage asked. “Or is this a private party?”

All five of them were pulling off their hoods and taking off their weapons and vests as they walked in. And they were all grinning.

“You are a beast,” she said and punched him in the arm.

“What did I do now?”

“Bringing all your troll friends here.”

“Hey, it’s not your cave.”

“I was here first.”

“So that’s the cheese, huh?” Pretty Boy remarked. To Yasmine, he said, “Pleased to meet you, pretty lady.”

Someone made a snorting sound of disbelief at the pretty-lady observation. It might have been Yasmine.

“I’m Lieutenant (jg) Zach Floyd, but you can call me Pretty Boy. Everyone does.”

It was definitely Yasmine who snorted with
disbelief now. This time at Pretty Boy’s conceited self-assessment.

Pretty Boy extended a hand to shake with her, but she backed away.

Ian grabbed her forearm and pulled her back. “This is Yasmine, fellows. Yasmine, these are my fellow Navy SEALs.”

She rolled her eyes and muttered something like, “The seal business again!”

One by one, he pointed to and introduced Pretty Boy, Cage, Sly and Omar. They all nodded at her.

Omar said something to her in Arabic, and she replied in the same language. She turned her back to them all and walked a short distance into the back tunnel of the cave and plopped down to a sitting position.

“What did she say?” Ian asked Omar.

“I asked how she was doing, and she pretty much told me to ‘Drop dead!’”

“What’s with the Phyllis Diller hair?” Cage asked.

“She sure is a mess. Poor thing!” Slick observed.

“Are you nuts?” Ian rubbed his chest as if it hurt. “She tried to kill me.”

“With your own knife, I noticed.” It was Pretty Boy who pointed that out to him.
The jerk!

“Did you get a whiff of her B.O.?” Sly asked. “Phew. Even the street people in Harlem smell better than that. Bet she hasn’t taken a shower in a month.”

“Hey, we smell a little ripe about now, too,” Ian pointed out. Even though they’d all probably showered this morning, the stress of a mission in all this heavy gear in the hot sun brought on a lot of perspiration.
But, hell, why am I coming to the shrew’s defense?

“Her hair does look like a haystack,” Omar said. “Sort of like my ex-wife on a bad-hair day.”

They all laughed at that.

“She reminds me of my old girlfriend, Lisette,” Cage said and sighed. Cage had more old girlfriends than God had angels.

Five sets of eyes turned as one to look at Cage. Ian wasn’t sure if he meant there was a resemblance because of her wild appearance or the breasts from outer space.

“Man, did you see those knockers?” Cage whispered.

Yep, that was what he meant.

“That’s enough, guys. We have plenty of serious business to discuss.” They pulled the bush back to the entrance, built a small fire for light, then sat in a circle discussing today’s events and what they should do next. A call from General Adams or Commander Harding back at Special Operations Command in Coronada would seal their final plan.

They decided to have one man stand guard outside the cave, and alternate every hour till the call came. Slick took the first shift. With Pretty Boy, Sly, Omar and Cage settling in for short naps, Ian walked back to their “prisoner.”

“Are you all right?” he asked Yasmine. “Do you need to … uh, relieve yourself … or anything?”

She looked up at him and said, clear as a bell, “Drop dead, troll!”

“Okaaay,” he said, then turned and went back to the fire. He lay down on one side, head on his backpack. He’d slept in far worse situations.

Pretty Boy, across the fire from him, said, “Shot down, eh, lover boy?”

“She couldn’t have done better with an AK-47,” he responded with a laugh. “Can you see my tears?”

Despite his lighthearted words, Ian did feel something for the wretched woman. And he wasn’t sure what it was. There was a very strange connection between them.