“Got it,” they all responded.
Great, now it was a waiting game. Nic wanted to keep his binoculars trained on Cami, make sure that she stayed safe. All of those women were sitting ducks during the night.
The big man in the chair got up and stretched. “It’s time for bed, tomorrow’s going to be a big day. We’ve sent out all the e-mails today, we’ll see what they have to say back. You better hope for their sake they’ve told me the right thing, otherwise, we’re going to send them a little video of you.” The students’ heads nodded upwards, looking at the man. “Oh yes, you’re going to be on camera for your mamas and papas. You won’t like it. You won’t like it at all,” he laughed.
He snapped his fingers. From out of the gloom two men rushed toward him.
“Stand guard. I don’t want any of them getting any idea to escape. Don’t let them talk to one another.”
Both men nodded. They moved closer to the tied-up students, their feet spread apart, their shoulders thrown back.
With one last look at Cami, Nic trained his binoculars on the big man to watch where he was going.
11
“I told you to shut up.” The words were said in heavily accented English.
Crack. It was the sound of a hand meeting flesh. A man groaned. Who was it? Paul. Brian? It didn’t sound like Travis.
“This one’s not talking, she’s being a good girl.” This time the words were in Spanish.
“Bastardo!” It was Lisa. Then she let out a high cry. Oh God, what now?
“Don’t, you can’t untie her,” a second man said in Spanish. “Whatever we do, we have to leave her tied up,” the words were low, but Camilla could hear them through the gloom of the night.
“Shit, you’re right. But even tied up, we can have fun,” the first man said.
Camilla saw red. She knew what they were planning to do to Lisa and she couldn’t let it happen. She had to stop them somehow.
“Help me!” Camilla yelled out.
“Shut up, bitch,” the first man yelled out.
Nobody came over to her. Dammit, she had to get them away from Lisa.
“Help me, please somebody help me!” This time her words were in Spanish.
She heard the loud stomping of boots. Her head was pulled back with her hair, and fingers dug into her mouth, forcing it wide open.
“Uggrgh.” A rag was shoved into her mouth. She tried to force it out with her tongue, but it was impossible.
“That’ll shut her up. Did you do the same to the other bitch?” He was talking so fast in Spanish that Camilla was having a hard time keeping up.
“Yep,” came the voice from where Lisa was hanging.
“This is even better, we each get one,” the man laughed. Camilla couldn’t even remember if it was the first man or the second man talking. She tried to take in air, but she was starting to choke.
“Stop this, you fuck!” It was Travis.
The man holding her laughed. “If you say another word, I slit her throat,” the animal said in English. “How you like that? She dead because of you. You like that?”
Cami felt the knife at her neck while a big hand was reaching down under the waistband of her capris. She struggled wildly. She couldn’t say anything, she couldn’t make a sound. Listening intently, she tried to hear something from Lisa who was at the other end of the line, but there was nothing. All she could hear were the heavy pants of the man whose hands seemed to be everywhere on her. As she struggled, her injured shoulder jerked, causing the surreal moments of her impending rape to be interspersed with wild, lightning bolts of pain. Red mist swirled around her vision. She felt herself getting ready to pass out, but goddammit, she refused. There was no way she was going to stop fighting. She was not going to give up.
Nic had been running toward the clearing when Max’s voice stopped him.
“Hale, stand down!”
How’d he even know he was moving?
“Raiden, you’re in back of the church. Move to the prisoners now! The guards are getting ready to rape two of the women. I’ll meet you there. We’re going to stop them.”
Nic pulled up his rifle and used the scope to see instead of the binoculars.
It was zero three hundred thirty. Kane and his team were still thirty minutes away. He had a perfect shot—he could take out the man touching Cami without a problem—but then they would lose all hope of a surprise. Surprise was their only hope. God, if only he knew that Max and Raiden would be in time to stop it, in time to…
Both women struggled. The knife that had been at Cami’s neck was on the ground now and the man’s hands roamed her body. Her shirt was ripped open down the front, exposing her chest. One hand kept going from squeezing one breast to the other, back and forth. Nic couldn’t see the man’s other hand; it was behind her back.
Nic gritted his teeth and prayed.
Cami’s damaged arm flailed as she was kicking backward. Nic zoomed in so he could look closer at Cami’s face. He saw the whites of her eyes, then she narrowed them. Ah, God, was she in more pain? He strained to see. No, it wasn’t pain, it was rage. Pure rage.
He adjusted his focus again so he could see the whole scene. Where’s Raiden? Where’s Max? He knew they wouldn’t talk, not if they were going to be so close to the enemy. But where in the fuck are they? He widened his focus again to take in all eleven prisoners. He saw the other woman on the other end. She was not moving, a knife wedged under her chin. When Nic focused in on her, he saw tears running down her face. The man behind her was grinning.
Goddammit! What’s taking Max and Raiden so long?
He whipped the scope back to Cami. Nic’s gut clenched when he saw her slumped over. Then he realized that the man behind her was nowhere to be seen.
“Got my guy,” Max Hogan whispered. “The girl is alive. She wasn’t raped.”
Nic was trembling when he looked back over toward the other woman. Raiden was behind the man, slowly moving around until he stood almost beside him. It was pure poetry as Raiden slid his knife into the side of the fucker’s neck as he simultaneously pushed the asshole’s arm forward so that the man’s knife was forced away from the woman’s throat, then fell to the ground.
The woman remained upright as Raiden dragged the body backward into the gloom behind the church.
“Pulling my guy into the jungle,” Raiden reported. “My girl is alive,” was all he said.
Nic looked at his watch; the whole op had taken ten minutes, but it had felt like a lifetime. Twenty more minutes, then Kane and the others should be here. Twenty more minutes, then they could rain down hellfire like no one had seen before. Twenty more minutes and he could hold Cami and never let her go.
What had just happened? Am I losing my mind? Has the pain finally made me start hallucinating?
Camilla tried to lift her head, but she couldn’t. It was all too much.
“Doctor Ross, are you okay?”
It was Travis.
Camilla opened her eyes and saw her bare breasts. They were black and blue. That explained the pain. Then she saw Roxanne’s phone at her feet. Oh shit. What the hell was going to happen when El Jefe saw that? But then she closed her eyes. Who cared? What did it matter? Tears formed behind her eyelids.
“Doctor Ross?”
She didn’t even care that the boy was looking at her half-naked body. Would anything matter ever again?
“Who was that man?”
At that question, she managed to lift her head and look at Travis. She opened her mouth to reply but remembered it was stuffed with a rag so she couldn’t say anything. She tried to think. If Travis had seen somebody, then that meant she hadn’t been hallucinating, there really was someone there. Somebody really had helped her.
Oh my God. People are out there. Good people.
Camilla’s heart started to race. Her breathing picked up. The gag. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t catch her breath. She shook as she struggled to move her immobile arm. Why couldn’t she take out h
er gag so she could breathe? She needed to fucking breathe!
Camilla closed her wet eyes.
Calm.
Calm.
I can do this.
Calm.
She sniffed to clear her nose, then took in a small breath. Another. Then another.
Okay, people are here. She turned her head. She could see Travis and then beside him was Roxanne, then she was pretty sure it was Jan and Paul, but she couldn’t see any further down the line. She did remember that Lisa was on the end. Even in the darkness, she could see the wooden chair in front of them, the chair where that bastard El Jefe had been sitting. How much more time before he would be sitting there again, deciding their fate?
She pushed at her gag with her tongue, fighting back her revulsion at the foul taste. It started to move. She wiggled her jaw and pushed some more. She made sure to keep breathing as she continued to push out her gag.
This time, her tears were joyful when she spat the gag to the ground. Now what?
Okay, if they were going to be rescued, they needed to help the others help them. If that even made any sense. Camilla closed her eyes, trying to clear her head. She needed to communicate with the students. She needed to make sure they were all calm and collected if rescuers came. This was her job, and she was going to get it done, but how?
Think, Camilla!
She gazed into the darkness, trying to come up with an idea. Finally, something came to her. She’d pass down a message, but not so long that it would get lost in translation like a bad game of “telephone”. Multiple short bursts.
She turned her head. “Doctor Ross says stay as quiet as possible, no matter what. Pass it down,” she said to Travis.
He gave her a long look, then turned to Roxanne. She barely heard what he said to her, but she saw her head turn to Jan. Thank God, it was working! She waited three minutes.
“We’re going to be rescued, and we need to be calm, quiet, and cooperate. Pass it down,” she said to Travis. Please God, let it be true.
Travis gave her a long look of hope. He didn’t ask anything, but his expression was filled with a million questions.
“Pass it down, Travis.”
He nodded and turned his head.
12
Kane and the rest of the team arrived ten minutes early.
“Status?” Kane demanded.
“We had twenty-three kidnappers,” Max explained. “Of the four who were patrolling the perimeter, two have been taken out. That leaves us with twenty-one. These guys are hard-core and armed to the teeth. The prisoners are all in one place—they’re staked out in front of the church. Three of them will need to be carried out by the looks of it.”
“Fuck, the church is smack dab in the middle of things,” Kane said. “How do you want us to position ourselves?” Kane asked.
“Zed was going to take a sniper position in the northeast corner after we did close-up wet-work, but with all of you here, he can get into the sniper position immediately. Then we’ll have Ezio do the same thing from the southwest. They can act as spotters for us and then as soon as the first shot is fired they can let loose.”
“The prisoners?” Kane asked. “Do they have guards on them?”
“Not anymore,” Raiden bit out. “And Max, I think you’re wrong, I think we have four who will need to be carried. I was hoping that some of the male students could help, but there isn’t a chance in hell that their arms will be up for it after hanging on that scaffolding.”
“And another thing; this isn’t just a rescue, this is total annihilation,” Nic interrupted. In the last twenty minutes, his eyes hadn’t left Camilla. Thousands of times he’d had to force down his need to run to her. But he was a SEAL, this was a mission, he could do this.
“Nic’s right. They’re all dead,” Max agreed. “Men, state your positions, then Leo, Kane, and Asher, position yourselves accordingly.” There was agreement over Nic’s receiver. “Once you’re in place,” Max continued, “we’ll move out.”
“Unless the prisoners are threatened, we save them for last. Guaranteed, they’ll stir up a ruckus,” Raiden said.
“Makes sense.” Nic could almost hear Kane nodding over his receiver.
Nic explained over the comm where he was positioned, then he waited. He didn’t hear anything, but some sixth sense told him that something was coming toward him on his left. He slowly crouched down even lower and turned his binoculars so he could scope out that area.
“Nic, it’s me,” Leo whispered.
Leo stood up a little taller and for a brief moment, Nic could see Leo’s four-tube night vision goggles, then he was gone.
“Saw you.”
“Backing up now,” Leo said.
There were similar conversations between Asher and Cullen and Kane and Max.
“You all set?” Max asked.
Everybody answered in the affirmative.
“Who has the remaining two patrols in sight?” Max asked.
“I have one,” Nic said. “He’s walking toward me.”
“I’ve got the other one,” Cullen answered.
“Go now. Tell us when it’s done, then we’ll all head out with Ezio and Zed providing direction.”
Nic moved slowly, making no sound as he reached the edge of the jungle. The guard wasn’t even bothering to look anywhere except into the village; how stupid could he be? Didn’t he understand that the threat would be coming from the jungle?
He waited for the man to go past him as Nic unsheathed his knife. As he left cover, he took six rapid steps and was behind the man in a heartbeat. He covered his mouth to ensure he didn’t make a sound while he slit his throat. Nic waited until he felt the man die, then he dragged him back into the jungle. The last thing he needed was somebody noticing one of their compatriots’ bodies and sounding the alarm.
“Done,” Nic and Cullen said almost simultaneously.
“Zed, how many do you have?” Ezio asked.
“I’ve got six in my sights,” Zed answered.
“I have seven,” Ezio said. “I can clearly see all the way to the truck with the satellite dish. We’ve got one man bunked outside the truck, sleeping in the back of a Jeep. All of that is in the middle of the village.”
“Shit,” Zed said. “I counted that one too. That means we have eyes on twelve. So there are five unaccounted for.”
“Some of them forced their way into the homes of the village women,” Raiden said. His delivery was flat and unemotional. He didn’t sound good.
“We’ll deal with them after we have the prisoners out of the line of fire,” Max said decisively. “I didn’t see any of the men go into the church, but we don’t know if some of them might have been holed up in there before we arrived.”
“I’m closest to the church, I’ll check it out,” Asher volunteered. “If it’s safe, that’s where we can take the hostages and that will be easy to defend while we take out the trash.”
“Good plan,” Max agreed.
What part of ‘keep quiet’ did Roxanne and Wendy not fucking understand? And why the hell were the others relaying their goddamn questions? If the pain in her shoulder wasn’t close to making her pass out, Camilla thought the pain in her head might actually be an aneurysm caused by stupidity!
God, I shouldn’t have said anything. What can I say to keep them quiet?
Lie.
I can damn well lie.
“The rescue won’t start until everything is silent. We only have one chance. Pass it on.” She glared at Travis as she said it. His eyes widened. He damn well better have gotten the message.
Then she heard it. The sound she’d been dreading. A bird chirping. Then, thousands of them. Oh no, how close were they to dawn? The rescue had to happen fast, otherwise, some of them were going to die, she just knew it.
Camilla tried to turn her head to the left, away from Travis, to see what was going on, but it hurt too much. Every part of her left side felt like it was on fire. This wasn’t just a dislocated shoulder, it fe
lt like her muscles were overcooked strings of spaghetti and they were barely holding her bones in place. What happened when the muscles tore and tendons snapped?
Camilla clamped her jaws shut tight over the laugh that almost escaped. Really? You’re worried about your arm when you’re probably going to die? She’d seen El Jefe and his men; there was no way people were going to be able to overtake them.
Quit being a defeatist, Ross! You’re named after a goddamn Roman warrior! She turned her head again, then squinted her eyes and saw one of the guards sleeping in the back of the Jeep next to the satellite truck. She continued to scan the area, trying to find some of the other guards. She saw another sleeping with his head propped up against the wheel of the satellite truck.
Something caught her eye. She turned farther and hissed. She closed her eyes, willing away the bolt of fire that raced from her shoulder to her neck to her skull. When she could finally open her eyes again, she didn’t see anything except the man in the Jeep now had his arm hanging dangling outside over the car seat. Was he dead?
“Doctor Ross?”
It wasn’t Travis this time, it was Roxanne. In tiny little increments, Camilla turned her head to the right so she could look past Travis and see the girl. She didn’t respond verbally, she glared at Roxanne.
“I think I saw something,” Roxanne said.
“Absolute silence, or you’ll ruin everything. Pass it along just to Roxanne.” Camilla said the words low enough so just Travis could hear her.
If the girl had seen something, maybe she was right and the man in the Jeep really was dead. Were their rescuers silently killing El Jefe’s men just like they had killed the man who had been assaulting her? Camilla felt a surge of hope race through her.
“Doctor Ross?”
Dear God, is Roxanne even louder now?
“My phone is on the ground in front of you. What if they see it?”
There was really no help for this, was there? How in the hell could you stop it? Could she threaten to have her expelled?
Her Faithful Protector: A Navy SEAL Romance (Night Storm Book 6) Page 9