Tactical Deception: Silent Warrior, Book 2 (26 page)

BREAKING NEWS: Beverly Hills. Bride and five others shot at Greystone Mansion Wedding.

Chapter Thirty

River of Blood Camp

Union County, Georgia

1700 hours

Desperation had clawed Roger’s soul so raw that he couldn’t even put the miracle he needed into words anymore. In the hours he’d lain gagged and bound with Mari in the back of the black van, he’d prayed to God, bargained with God and begged God for something…anything to stop this hellbound journey to death. He’d gotten nothing.

Not that he deserved a miracle, but Mari and the innocent child inside her did. He was so worried about the baby, especially since she had the cramping scare after Dugar’s attack and he kept praying that she’d get some sort of relief somehow. But there had been no stops for gas. No stops for the bathroom. And no response to Mari’s duct-taped moans for help from her siblings even though Mari’s sister had vehemently argued with Mari’s brother about their father’s plans for Mari. The situation was killing him inside.

When the Taser had taken him down, he must have hit his head pretty damn hard because he remembered falling—his muscles a spastic mass of pain—then nothing until he’d awakened to the urgent jab of Mari’s knee against his thigh, her womanly curves pressed all along his side and the blessed scent of sweet jasmine. Seeing her tear-stained face, anxious gaze and duct-taped mouth had filled him with relief that instantly morphed into a fear unlike any he’d ever known as he translated bits and pieces of her sister and her brother’s argument. He discovered that her family was involved in a terrorist plot against the United States and Mari was to be executed within the bosom of her family.

“I thought you were different, Fahran. You are the same as our father. The same as Salaam. You lied to me. You did not come to help Mari and bring her to Father for forgiveness but to harm her.”

“I am honoring our father. That she has married a kafir only proves him right. Allah is punishing us all because of what she has done.”

“What has she done other than marry a man who protects her? She has only known brutality from men of our faith and condemnation from the men in her family.”

“She was wrong to go to the village alone.”

“You were wrong too. You told her to forget her necklace when she told you she had left it. Should you be condemned to death as well, Fahran? And what of the men who attacked her?”

“They still have not been found.”

“Maybe Allah is displeased because they go unpunished yet Father unjustly condemns Mari. He was wrong when he imprisoned her and he was wrong to leave her in a cell to die when we fled.”

“You have no understanding of important matters, Maisa. If one impurity is allowed to go unpunished then all will become impure.”

“Punished by death, Fahran? We both know the only ones deserving of that punishment are the men who defiled her. Father was wrong before and he is wrong to seek her death now. Everything he and Salaam are doing here is wrong. What does more death of innocent people gain but more death?”

“Enough! Or I will tell Salaam of your nonsense. You should be proud that Salaam leads the fight. What is being done—to us, to our country, to Islam—by America and its allies is wrong. They struck our hearts and homes. We are doing the same. Salaam is a highly revered Mullah deserving of your respect. What would he do to hear you speak like this?”

“He would punish me. Severely. But then, he may do that no matter what I do or don’t do. I have not borne him the son he so desperately wants and he grows angrier every day. What punishment do I deserve for my failure, Fahran? Death?”

“Cease this. You don’t know what you are talking about.”

Uppermost in Roger’s mind, aside from the danger to Mari, was that America’s hearts and homes were under attack. The sniper situation. The murder of his uncle. Were Mari’s sister and brother connected to that?

Only one thing was concrete. Hope for escape lessened with every passing mile.

He hadn’t just screwed up. He’d fucked up. Royally. He’d broken a smart soldier’s sacred rule—he had no backup. No one knew where in the hell he’d gone and he was minus his Kimber and his cell phone. What the hell had he been thinking? Quick trip off base to see her family. Simple. No big deal, right?

The van slowed and left asphalt for gravel. Mari looked up at him as if the end of the world had come and rightly so. Their final destination had to be close. She shivered and he urged her closer to him by snagging her leg between his and pulling her more on top of his body until he could feel the pounding of her heart against his aching chest. Rage, frustration and something white hot and pure burst inside of him as he met her gaze.

The conversation between her sister and brother had filled in the gaps for him. He’d learned the source of her pain. The source of her fear. What Neil had saved her from. It had completely undone him. He couldn’t even let himself think about what had happened to her in the past and stay sane. So he’d pushed it to the back of his mind and had focused on what she would face when the van stopped. It killed him that he hadn’t been able to do anything to stop this death ride.

The metal floor of a black utility van had made an uncomfortable prison bed. His attempts to rip through the duct tape binding her wrists and his had failed. His fingers were raw. He hadn’t found a raised bolt or an edge sharp enough to saw through the thick layers of duct tape either. He’d tried to ease her discomfort by pillowing her head on his shoulder but had lost the feeling in his extremities so many times that they were practically useless at this point.

The back of the van was windowless, eliminating any chance he had of figuring out where they were. From the drone of the engine and the smoothness of the ride until the gravel just now, the van had been driven for hours at a good speed on even asphalt with very few traffic stops, which meant that the driver had had no worries about being followed or traveling on an interstate. A pair of men’s hiking boots with red mud caking the soles sat in one corner, hinting that they’d headed south instead of north or west. Iron oxide in the dirt was characteristic of several southern states. The constant side-to-side turns and up-and-down inclines yelled mountainous terrain. And gravel usually meant remote. But that had been all he’d figured out.

The fear inside the vehicle had grown into a clawing beast, ripping at them both. He could feel Mari’s heart and soul clamoring as hard as his. She cried out for help again, clearly trying to appeal to her sister, and he couldn’t stop the tears burning the backs of his eyes.

God help him. Everything inside him wanted to wrap around her, pull her impossibly close to his soul, and make the whole world right. But that wasn’t going to happen. Mari’s sister continued to rail at their brother in their native dialect.

“Tell me, Fahran! Can you not hear Mari crying for help? Your sister, someone Allah expects you to protect.” Mari’s sister’s voice became louder with every question. “Tell me and her what happens next? You take her to Father and what then? Will you hold her upright as he puts a bullet into her heart? Or will he punish her by ordering those in the camp to stone her? Will you honor Father then? Will you pick up a rock and throw it at her? What will you aim for? Her head and pray she dies quickly? Or will you make her suffer as those men who attacked her did and bruise and break her body? What then will make you and the rest any different from those evil men? Is that a man your son can be proud of?”

“Silence!” Fahran slammed on the brakes. They fishtailed on the gravel.

“No. I want an answer. What will you do? And what of Mother? Will she be forced to watch? Will you throw a stone then to honor our father?”

Fahran didn’t reply. He pressed the gas pedal hard and spun wildly in the gravel as he raced ahead. Mari’s sister only yelled louder, more hysterically, as she repeated her questions over and over.

Mari shuddered and sobbed, crying so violently that Roger feared for her baby. He’d prayed for an intervention of the status quo, but hell, something logical and useful would have helped him. This uncontrolled drive to hysteria was worse than the indifference. He and Mari were tossed back and forth with bruising force.

Then suddenly Fahran cried out in anguish. “Allah! Please!” He slowed the van to a stop.

Roger cringed inside. He recognized the cry of a man caught between two hells. He’d known it intimately since Lebanon and the moment he’d ordered a Samson missile strike on the building in which all technical signs indicated that DT’s team had been wiped out by insurgents and a top al-Qaeda leader had entered the building with a storm of men.

Mari’s sister stopped yelling.

“Maisa, if I fail to bring Mari to Father then I will die. I don’t know what is next. What am I supposed to do? My wife and son are under the care of Father and Salaam’s guards in Quetta for a reason. They will be harmed if I don’t do as Father demands.”

Roger was more than familiar with the place. Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province had become a focus in 2007 when the captured Taliban spokesman Abul Haq Haqiq revealed that wanted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was hiding there, reportedly with the help of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The man had yet to be captured since his escape from Afghanistan in 2001 where, as head of the Supreme Council and commander of the Faithful of Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, he’d sheltered Osama bin Laden and numerous militants. In fact, despite all US intelligence capabilities, no one knew for sure what the Taliban’s fervent leader looked like except that he was one-eyed.

“What do I want you to do, Fahran? Let them escape. Do it now. We can tell Father Mari’s husband got me and would have killed me if you didn’t let them go.”

Roger couldn’t believe what he was hearing even as he cried out in frustration. Why intervene now? Why not several hundred miles ago? He had no doubt Mari’s father had enough men to hunt him and Mari down, but hell he’d take the odds. His breath and heart seemingly froze as he waited for Fahran’s reply.

The rap of metal on glass ended everything—Fahran’s choice and Roger’s hope. Roger listened as the guard suspiciously questioned why Fahran was just sitting in the road. Then he told Fahran to “hurry to the camp. Something bad happened in Atlanta and Salaam was returning earlier than planned.”

The short ride to the camp was made in dreaded silence. A hefty dose of reality set in when men opened the van doors and yanked him and Mari to the ground. Even if Fahran had freed them minutes ago or an opportunity to escape had risen, neither of them would have been able to move. His arms and legs were useless, throbbing masses of excruciating pain as more blood circulated and the tape binding his ankles was cut. He clenched his teeth. Mari cried out in agony. Was it just the return of her circulation? Was it the baby?
God, help. Please!

Neither of them could walk, so four men and three guards—all armed—dragged them into a crude building that surprisingly was set up like a mess tent with benches, tables and a kitchen area. Hardcore assault rifles hung on the men’s shoulders—AK-47s and M4s. The men stopped before a man with slashing brows that were more prominent than his twisted turban, and a forest of iron-gray hair surrounding his grim mouth. Outrage burned in his deep-set black eyes.

“Who is the kafir with this worthless
sharmotah
?”

Fahran stepped forward. “He is Maryam’s husband.”

“A nonbeliever? No wonder Allah punishes us. She defies all of Islam with her sin.”

Roger stared furiously at Mari’s father. The elderly man had to be a little insane to believe the poison he spewed so fervently. Demented or not, Roger wanted to pound the man’s face into the ground. He could kill him for what he’d done to Mari, what he was doing now, and what he planned to do to her at any minute. White-hot rage coursed through Roger.

Fahran gasped and in one glance between him and the large-screen TV mounted behind Mari’s father, Roger knew the situation’s escalation potential had skyrocketed. His cousin’s face, the mug so similar to his own was front and center on CNN, speaking live from the White House. Arabic scrolled from right to left at the bottom, moving too fast for Roger’s rusty skills to completely understand but seeing his own name and that of his Uncle John in the mix, it was a sure bet the focus of the speech wasn’t on the plummeting world economy. Had Roger been standing, he would have had to lock his knees to stay upright.

Mari’s brother knew who he was. It wouldn’t take them long to find out Mari had lied about their marriage, unless Roger could convince them it was a very recent, completely secret event.

Once Fahran blew the whistle, they’d either kill Mari and him or use them to get to Paul. Adrenaline pounded through Roger’s veins, bringing strength as he waited for the axe to fall. But Fahran didn’t say anything. He just stared at him.

“They must both die!” Mari’s father shouted. “Take them to the field. Once her sins cease, then Allah’s blessings will return to us.”

Mari cried out through her duct-taped mouth.

“Silence!” Her father jerked his rifle from his shoulder, grabbed the stock and swung the butt at Mari’s head. Hands still bound behind his back, Roger exploded into action. Breaking free from the guard, he head-butted Mari’s father in the solar plexus. The older man went down, knocked unconscious. With a spinning round kick, he gave the guard rushing toward him an incapacitating blow to the head and would have been able to grab the man’s M4 and keep his balance if his hands had been tied in front. Instead, he wavered to stay upright, which gave the second guard coming at him the advantage. Roger’s kick to the man’s stomach didn’t have the impact needed to put the man on the ground.